IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND

By Charles Reade

This attempt at a solid fiction is, with their permission, dedicated to the President, Fellows, and demies of St. Mary Magdalen College. Oxford, by a grateful son of that ancient, learned, and most charitable house.

CONTENTS

[ CHAPTER I. ]

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER I.

George Fielding cultivated a small farm in Berkshire.

This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of the huge percentage it offered them.

But now, I grieve to say, a farmer must be as sharp as his neighbors, or like his neighbors he will break. What do I say? There are soils and situations where, in spite of intelligence and sobriety, he is almost sure to break; just as there are shops where the lively, the severe, the industrious, the lazy, are fractured alike.

This last fact I make mine by perambulating a certain great street every three months, and observing how name succeeds to name as wave to wave.

Readers hardened by the Times will not perhaps go so far as to weep over a body of traders for being reduced to the average condition of all other traders. But the individual trader, who fights for existence against unfair odds, is to be pitied whether his shop has plate glass or a barn door to it; and he is the more to be pitied when he is sober, intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky.

George Fielding was all these, who, a few years ago, assisted by his brother William, filled “The Grove”—as nasty a little farm as any in Berkshire.

Discontented as he was, the expression hereinbefore written would have seemed profane to young Fielding, for a farmer's farm and a sailor's ship have always something sacred in the sufferer's eyes, though one sends one to jail, and the other the other to Jones.

It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor sour land. George's father had one hundred acres grass with it, but this had been separated six years ago.

There was not a tree, nor even an old stump to show for this word “Grove.”

But in the country oral tradition still flourishes.

There had been trees in “The Grove,” only the title had outlived the timber a few centuries.

On the morning of our tale George Fielding might have been seen near his own homestead, conversing with the Honorable Frank Winchester.

This gentleman was a character that will be common some day, but was nearly unique at the date of our story.

He had not an extraordinary intellect, but he had great natural gayety, and under that he had enormous good sense; his good sense was really brilliant, he had a sort of universal healthy mind that I can't understand how people get.

He was deeply in love with a lady who returned his passion, but she was hopelessly out of his reach, because he had not much money or expectations; instead of sitting down railing, or sauntering about whining, what did me the Honorable Frank Winchester? He looked over England for the means of getting this money, and not finding it there, he surveyed the globe and selected Australia, where, they told him, a little money turns to a deal, instead of dissolving in the hand like a lozenge in the mouth, as it does in London.

So here was an earl's son (in this age of commonplace events) going to Australia with five thousand pounds, as sheep farmer and general speculator.

He was trying hard to persuade George Fielding to accompany him as bailiff or agricultural adviser and manager.

He knew the young man's value, but to do him justice his aim was not purely selfish; he was aware that Fielding had a bad bargain in “The Grove,” and the farmer had saved his life at great personal risk one day that he was seized with cramp bathing in the turbid waters of Cleve millpool, and he wanted to serve him in return. This was not his first attempt of the kind, and but for one reason perhaps he might have succeeded.

“You know me and I know you,” said Mr. Winchester to George Fielding; “I must have somebody to put me in the way. Stay with me one year, and after that I'll square accounts with you about that thundering millpool.”

“Oh! Mr. Winchester,” said George, hastily and blushing like fire, “that's an old story, sir?” with a sweet little half-cunning smile that showed he was glad it was not forgotten.

“Not quite,” replied the young gentleman dryly; “you shall have five hundred sheep and a run for them, and we will both come home rich and consequently respectable.”

“It is a handsome offer, sir, and a kind offer and like yourself, sir, but transplanting one of us,” continued George, “dear me, sir, it's like taking up an oak tree thirty years in the ground—besides—besides—did you ever notice my cousin, Susanna, sir?”

“Notice her! why, do you think I am a heathen, and never go to the parish church? Miss Merton is a lovely girl; she sits in the pew by the pillar.”

“Isn't she, sir?” said George.

Mr. Winchester endeavored to turn this adverse topic in his favor; he made a remark that produced no effect at the time. He said, “People don't go to Australia to die—they go to Australia to make money, and come home and marry—and it is what you must do—this “Grove” is a millstone round your neck. Will you have a cigar, farmer?”

George consented, premising, however, that hitherto he had never got beyond a yard of clay, and after drawing a puff or two he took the cigar from his mouth, and looking at it said, “I say, sir! seems to me the fire is uncommon near the chimbly.” Mr. Winchester laughed; he then asked George to show him the blacksmith shop. “I must learn how to shoe a horse,” said the honorable Frank.

“Well, I never!” thought George. “The first nob in the country going to shoe a horse,” but with his rustic delicacy he said nothing, and led Mr. Winchester to the blacksmith's shop.

While this young gentleman is hammering nails into a horse's hoof, and Australia into an English farmer's mind, we must introduce other personages.

Susanna Merton was beautiful and good. George Fielding and she were acknowledged lovers, but marriage was not spoken of as a near event, and latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the young man's name.

Susanna appeared to like George, though not so warmly as he loved her; but at all events she accepted no other proffers of love. For all that she had, besides a host of admirers, other lovers besides George; and what is a great deal more singular (for a woman's eye is quick as lightning in finding out who loves her), there was more than one of whose passion she was not conscious.

William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's sweetheart, but though he trembled with pleasure when she was near him, he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to love her.

On the morning of our tale Susan's father, old Merton, had walked over from his farm to “The Grove,” and was inspecting a field behind George's house, when he was accosted by his friend, Mr. Meadows, who had seen him, and giving his horse to a boy to hold had crossed the stubbles to speak to him.

Mr. Meadows was not a common man, and merits some preliminary notice.

He was what is called in the country “a lucky man”; everything he had done in life had prospered.

The neighbors admired, respected, and some of them even hated this respectable man, who had been a carter in the midst of them, and now at forty years of age was a rich corn-factor and land-surveyor.

“All this money cannot have been honestly got,” said the envious ones among themselves; yet they could not put their finger on any dishonest action he had done. To the more candid the known qualities of the man accounted for his life of success.

This John Meadows had a cool head, an iron will, a body and mind alike indefatigable, and an eye never diverted from the great objects of sober industrious men—wealth and respectability. He had also the soul of business—method!

At one hour he was sure to be at church; at another, at market; in his office at a third, and at home when respectable men should be at home.

By this means Mr. Meadows was always to be found by any man who wanted to do business; and when you had found him, you found a man superficially coy perhaps, but at bottom always ready to do business, and equally sure to get the sunny side of it and give you the windy.

Meadows was generally respected; by none more than by old Merton, and during the last few months the intimacy of these two men had ripened into friendship; the corn-factor often hooked his bridle to the old farmer's gate, and took a particular interest in all his affairs.

Such was John Meadows.

In person he was a tall, stout man, with iron gray hair, a healthy, weather-colored complexion, and a massive brow that spoke to the depth and force of the man's character.

“What, taking a look at the farm, Mr. Merton? It wants some of your grass put to it, doesn't it?”

“I never thought much of the farm,” was the reply, “it lies cold; the sixty-acre field is well enough, but the land on the hill is as poor as death.”

Now this idea, which Merton gave out as his, had dropped into him from Meadows three weeks before.

“Farmer,” said Meadows, in an undertone, “they are thrashing out new wheat for the rent.”

“You don't say so? Why I didn't hear the flail going.”

“They have just knocked off for dinner—you need not say I told you, but Will Fielding was at the bank this morning, trying to get money on their bill, and the bank said No! They had my good word, too. The people of the bank sent over to me.”

They had his good word! but not his good tone! he had said. “Well, their father was a safe man;” but the accent with which he eulogized the parent had somehow locked the bank cash-box to the children.

“I never liked it, especially of late,” mused Merton. “But you see the young folk being cousins—”

“That is it, cousins,” put in Meadows; “it is not as if she loved him with all her heart and soul; she is an obedient daughter, isn't she?”

“Never gainsaid me in her life; she has a high spirit, but never with me; my word is law. You see, she is a very religious girl, is Susan.”

“Well, then, a word from you would save her—but there—all that is your affair, not mine,” added he.

“Of course it is,” was the reply. “You are a true friend. I'll step round to the barn and see what is doing.” And away went Susan's father uneasy in his mind.

Meadows went to the “Black Horse,” the village public house, to see what farmers wanted to borrow a little money under the rose, and would pawn their wheat ricks, and pay twenty per cent for that overrated merchandise.

At the door of the public-house he was met by the village constable, and a stranger of gentlemanly address and clerical appearance. The constable wore a mysterious look and invited Meadows into the parlor of the public-house.

“I have news for you, sir,” said he, “leastways I think so; your pocket was picked last Martinmas fair of three Farnborough bank-notes with your name on the back.”

“It was!”

“Is this one of them?” said the man, producing a note.

Meadows examined it with interest, compared the number with a memorandum in his pocketbook, and pronounced that it was.

“Who passed it?” inquired he.

“A chap that has got the rest—a stranger—Robinson—that lodges at “The Grove” with George Fielding; that is, if his name is Robinson, but we think he is a Londoner come down to take an airing. You understand, Sir.”

Meadows' eyes flashed actual fire. For so rich a man, he seemed wonderfully excited by this circumstance.

To an inquiry who was his companion, the constable answered sotto voce, “Gentleman from Bow Street, come to see if he knows him.” The constable went on to inform Meadows that Robinson was out fishing somewhere, otherwise they would already have taken him; “but we will hang about the farm, and take him when he comes home.”

“You had better be at hand, sir, to identify the notes,” said the gentleman from Bow Street, whose appearance was clerical.

Meadows had important business five miles off; he postponed it. He wrote a line in pencil, put a boy upon his black mare, and hurried him off to the rendezvous, while he stayed and entered with strange alacrity into this affair. “Stay,” cried he, “if he is an old hand he will twig the officer.”

“Oh, I'm dark, sir,” was the answer; “he won't know me till I put the darbies on him.”

The two men then strolled as far as the village stocks, keeping an eye ever on the farm-house.

Thus a network of adverse events was closing round George Fielding this day.

He was all unconscious of them; he was in good spirits. Robinson had showed him how to relieve the temporary embarrassment that had lately depressed him.

“Draw a bill on your brother,” said Robinson, “and let him accept it. The Farnborough Bank will give you notes for it. These country banks like any paper better than their own. I dare say they are right.”

George had done this, and expected William every minute with this and other moneys. And then Susanna Merton was to dine at “The Grove” to-day, and this, though not uncommon, was always a great event with poor George.

Dilly would not come to be killed just when he was wanted. In other words, Robinson, who had no idea how he was keeping people waiting, fished tranquilly till near dinner-time, neither taking nor being taken.

This detained Meadows in the neighborhood of the farm, and was the cause of his rencontre with a very singular personage, whose visit he knew at sight must be to him.

As he hovered about among George Fielding's ricks, the figure of an old man slightly bowed but full of vigor stood before him. He had a long gray beard with a slight division in the center, hair abundant but almost white, and a dark, swarthy complexion that did not belong to England; his thick eyebrows also were darker than his hair, and under them was an eye like a royal jewel; his voice had the Oriental richness and modulation—this old man was Isaac Levi; an Oriental Jew who had passed half his life under the sun's eye, and now, though the town of Farnborough had long been too accustomed to him to wonder at him, he dazzled any thoughtful stranger; so exotic and apart was he—so romantic a grain in a heap of vulgarity—he was as though a striped jasper had crept in among the paving-stones of their marketplace, or a cactus grandiflora shone among the nettles of a Berkshire meadow.

Isaac Levi, unlike most Jews, was familiar with the Hebrew tongue, and this and the Eastern habits of his youth colored his language and his thoughts, especially in his moments of emotion, and above all, when he forgot the money-lender for a moment, and felt and thought as one of a great nation, depressed, but waiting for a great deliverance. He was a man of authority and learning in his tribe.

At sight of Isaac Levi Meadows' brow towered, and he called out rather rudely without allowing the old gentleman to speak, “If you are come to talk to me about that house you are in you may keep your breath to cool your porridge.”

Meadows had bought the house Isaac rented, and had instantly given him warning to leave.

Isaac, who had become strangely attached to the only place in which he had ever lived many years, had not doubted for a moment that Meadows merely meant to raise the rent to its full value, so he had come to treat with his new landlord. “Mr. Meadows,” said he persuasively, “I have lived there twenty years—I pay a fair rent—but, if you think any one would give you more you shall lose nothing by me—I will pay a little more; and you know your rent is secure?”

“I do,” was the answer.

“Thank you, sir! well, then—”

“Well, then, next Lady-day you turn out bag and baggage.

“Nay, sir,” said Isaac Levi, “hear me, for you are younger than I. Mr. Meadows, when this hair was brown I traveled in the East; I sojourned in Madras and Benares, in Bagdad, Ispahan, Mecca and Bassora, and found no rest. When my hair began to turn gray, I traded in Petersburg and Rome and Paris, Vienna and Lisbon and other western cities and found no rest. I came to this little town, where, least of all, I thought to pitch my tent for life, but here the God of my fathers gave me my wife, and here He took her to Himself again—”

“What the deuce is all this to me, man?”

“Much, sir, if you are what men say; for men speak well of you; be patient, and hear me. Two children were born to me and died from me in the house you have bought; and there my Leah died also; and there at times in the silent hours I seem to hear their voices and their feet. In another house I shall never hear them—I shall be quite alone. Have pity on me, sir, an aged and a lonely man; tear me not from the shadows of my dead. Let me prevail with you?”

“No!” was the stern answer.

“No?” cried Levi, a sudden light darting into his eye; “then you must be an enemy of Isaac Levi?”

“Yes!” was the grim reply to this rapid inference.

“Aha!” cried the old Jew, with a sudden defiance, which he instantly suppressed. “And what have I done to gain your enmity, sir?” said he, in a tone crushed by main force into mere regret.

“You lend money.”

“A little, sir, now and then—a very little.”

“That is to say, when the security is bad, you have no money in hand; but when the security is good, nobody has ever found the bottom of Isaac Levi's purse.”

“Our people,” said Isaac apologetically, “can trust one another—they are not like yours. We are brothers, and that is why money is always forthcoming when the deposit is sound.”

“Well,” said Meadows, “what you are, I am; what I do on the sly you do on the sly, old thirty per cent.”

“The world is wide enough for us both, good sir—”

“It is!” was the prompt reply. “And it lies before you, Isaac. Go where you like, for the little town of Farnborough is not wide enough for me and any man that works my business for his own pocket—”

“But this is not enmity, sir.”

Meadows gave a coarsish laugh. “You are hard to please,” cried he. “I think you will find it is enmity.”

“Nay! sir, this is but matter of profit and loss. Well, let me stay, and I promise you shall gain and not lose. Our people are industrious and skillful in all bargains, but we keep faith and covenant. So be it. Let us be friends. I covenant with you, and I swear by the tables of the law, you shall not lose one shilling per annum by me.”

“I'll trust you as far as I can fling a bull by the tail. You gave me your history—take mine. I have always put my foot on whatever man or thing has stood in my way. I was poor, I am rich, and that is my policy.”

“It is frail policy,” said Isaac, firmly. “Some man will be sure to put his foot on you, soon or late.”

“What, do you threaten me?” roared Meadows.

“No, sir,” said Isaac, gently but steadily. “I but tell you what these old eyes have seen in every nation, and read in books that never lie. Goliath defied armies, yet he fell like a pigeon by a shepherd-boy's sling. Samson tore a lion in pieces with his hands, but a woman laid him low. No man can defy us all, sir! The strong man is sure to find one as strong and more skillful; the cunning man one as adroit and stronger than himself. Be advised, then, do not trample upon one of my people. Nations and men that oppress us do not thrive. Let me have to bless you. An old man's blessing is gold. See these gray hairs. My sorrows have been as many as they. His share of the curse that is upon his tribe has fallen upon Isaac Levi.” Then, stretching out his hands with a slight but touching gesture, he said, “I have been driven to and fro like a leaf these many years, and now I long for rest. Let me rest in my little tent, till I rest forever. Oh! let me die where those I loved have died, and there let me be buried.”

Age, sorrow, and eloquence pleaded in vain, for they were wasted on the rocks of rocks, a strong will and a vulgar soul. But indeed the whole thing was like epic poetry wrestling with the Limerick Chronicle or Tuam Gazette.

I am almost ashamed to give the respectable western brute's answer.

“What! you quote Scripture, eh? I thought you did not believe in that. Hear t'other side. Abraham and Lot couldn't live in the same place, because they both kept sheep, and we can't, because we fleece 'em. So Abraham gave Lot warning as I give it you. And as for dying on my premises, if you like to hang yourself before next Lady-day, I give you leave, but after Lady-day no more Jewish dogs shall die in my house nor be buried for manure in my garden.”

Black lightning poured from the old Jew's eyes, and his pent-up wrath burst out like lava from an angry mountain.

“Irreverent cur! do you rail on the afflicted of Heaven? The Founder of your creed would abhor you, for He, they say, was pitiful. I spit upon ye, and I curse ye. Be accursed!” And flinging up his hands, like St. Paul at Lystra, he rose to double his height and towered at his insulter with a sudden Eastern fury that for a moment shook even the iron Meadows. “Be accursed!” he yelled again. “Whatever is the secret wish of your black heart Heaven look on my gray hairs that you have insulted, and wither that wish. Ah, ah!” he screamed, “you wince. All men have secret wishes—Heaven fight against yours. May all the good luck you have be wormwood for want of that—that—-that—that. May you be near it, close to it, upon it, pant for it, and lose it; may it sport, and smile, and laugh, and play with you till Gehenna burns your soul upon earth!”

The old man's fiery forked tongue darted so keen and true to some sore in his adversary's heart that he in turn lost his habitual self-command.

White and black with passion he wheeled round on Isaac with a fierce snarl, and lifting his stick discharged a furious blow at his head.

Fortunately for Isaac wood encountered leather instead of gray hairs.

Attracted by the raised voices, and unseen in their frenzy by either of these antagonists, young George Fielding had drawn near them. He had, luckily, a stout pig-whip in his hand, and by an adroit turn of his muscular wrist he parried a blow that would have stopped the old Jew's eloquence perhaps forever. As it was, the corn-factor's stick cut like a razor through the air, and made a most musical whirr within a foot of the Jew's ear. The basilisk look of venom and vengeance he instantly shot back amounted to a stab.

“Not if I know it,” said George. And he stood cool and erect with a calm manly air of defiance between the two belligerents. While the stick and the whip still remained in contact, Meadows glared at Isaac's champion with surprise and wrath, and a sort of half fear half wonder that this of all men in the world should be the one to cross weapons with and thwart him. “You are joking, Master Meadows,” said George coolly. “Why the man is twice your age, and nothing in his hand but his fist. Who are ye, old man, and what d'ye want? It's you for cursing, anyway.”

“He insults me,” cried Meadows, “because I won't have him for a tenant against my will. Who is he? A villainous old Jew.”

“Yes, young man,” said the other, sadly, “I am Isaac Levi, a Jew. And what is your religion” (he turned upon Meadows)? “It never came out of Judea in any name or shape. D'ye call yourself a heathen? Ye lie, ye cur; the heathen were not without starlight from heaven; they respected sorrow and gray hairs.”

“You shall smart for this. I'll show you what my religion is,” said Meadows, inadvertent with passion, and the corn-factor's fingers grasped his stick convulsively.

“Don't you be so aggravating, old man,” said the good-natured George, “and you, Mr. Meadows, should know how to make light of an old man's tongue; why it's like a woman's, it's all he has got to hit with; leastways you mustn't lift hand to him on my premises, or you will have to settle with me first; and I don't think that would suit your book or any man's for a mile or two round about Farnborough,” said George with his little Berkshire drawl.

“He!” shrieked Isaac, “he dare not! see! see!” and he pointed nearly into the man's eye, “he doesn't look you in the face. Any soul that has read men from east to west can see lion in your eye, young man, and cowardly wolf in his.”

“Lady-day! Lady-day!” snorted Meadows, who was now shaking with suppressed rage.

“Ah!” cried Isaac, and he turned white and quivered in his turn.

“Lady-day!” said George, uneasily, “Confound Lady-day, and every day of the sort—there, don't you be so spiteful, old man—why if he isn't all of a tremble. Poor old man.” He went to his own door, and called “Sarah!”

A stout servant-girl answered the summons.

“Take the old man in, and give him whatever is going, and his mug and pipe,” then he whispered her, “and don't go lumping the chine down under his nose now.”

“I thank you, young man,” faltered Isaac, “I must not eat with you, but I will go in and rest my limbs which fail me, and compose myself; for passion is unseemly at my years.”

Arrived at the door, he suddenly paused, and looking upward, said:

“Peace be under this roof, and comfort and love follow me into this dwelling.”

“Thank ye kindly,” said young Fielding, a little surprised and touched by this. “How old are you, daddy, if you please?” added he respectfully.

“My son, I am threescore years and ten—a man of years and grief—grief for myself, grief still more for my nation and city. Men that are men pity us; men that are dogs have insulted us in all ages.”

“Well,” said the good-natured young man soothingly—“don't you vex yourself any more about it. Now you go in, and forget all your trouble awhile, please God, by my fireside, my poor old man.”

Isaac turned, the water came to his eyes at this after being insulted so; a little struggle took place in him, but nature conquered prejudice and certain rubbish he called religion. He held out his hand like the king of all Asia; George grasped it like an Englishman.

“Isaac Levi is your friend,” and the expression of the man's whole face and body showed these words carried with them a meaning unknown in good society.

He entered the house, and young Fielding stood watching him with a natural curiosity.

Now Isaac Levi knew nothing about the corn-factor's plans. When at one and the same moment he grasped George's hand, and darted a long, lingering glance of demoniacal hatred on Meadows, he coupled two sentiments by pure chance. And Meadows knew this; but still it struck Meadows as singular and ominous.

When, with the best of motives, one is on a wolf's errand, it is not nice to hear a hyena say to the shepherd's dog, “I am your friend,” and see him contemptuously shoot the eye of a rattlesnake at one's self.

The misgiving, however, was but momentary; Meadows respected his own motives and felt his own power; an old Jew's wild fury could not shake his confidence.

He muttered, “One more down to your account, George Fielding,” and left the young man watching Isaac's retreating form.

George, who didn't know he was gone, said:

“Old man's words seem to knock against my bosom, Mr. Meadows—Gone, eh?—that man,” thought George Fielding, “has everybody's good word, parson's and all—who'd think he'd lift his hand, leastways his stick it was and that's worse, against a man of three score and upward—Ugh!” thought George Fielding, yeoman of the midland counties—and unaffected wonder mingled with his disgust.

His reverie was broken by William Fielding just ridden in from Farnborough.

“Better late than never,” said the elder brother, impatiently.

“Couldn't get away sooner, George; here's the money for the sheep, 13 pounds 10s.; no offer for the cow, Jem is driving her home.”

“Well, but the money—the 80 pounds, Will?”

William looked sulkily down.

“I haven't got it, George! There's your draft again, the bank wouldn't take it.”

A keen pang shot across George's face, as much for the affront as the disappointment.

“They wouldn't take it?” gasped he. “Ay, Will, our credit is down, the whole town knows our rent is overdue. I suppose you know money must be got some way.”

“Any way is better than threshing out new wheat at such a price,” said William sullenly. “Ask a loan of a neighbor.”

“Oh, Will,” appealed George, “to ask a loan of a neighbor, and be denied—it is bitterer than death. You can do it.”

“I! Am I master here?” retorted the younger. “The farm is not farmed my way, nor ever was. No! Give me the plow-handle and I'll cut the furrow, George.”

“No doubt, no doubt!” said the other, very sharply, “you'd like to draw the land dry with potato crops, and have fourscore hogs snoring in the farmyard; that's your idea of a farm. Oh! I know you want to be elder brother. Well, I tell'ee what do; you kill me first, Bill Fielding, and then you will be elder brother, and not afore.”

Here was a pretty little burst of temper! We have all our sore part.

“So be it, George!” replied William, “you got us into the mud, elder brother, you get us out of the mire!”

George subdued his tone directly.

“Who shall I ask?” said he, as one addressing a bosom counselor.

“Uncle Merton, or—or—-Mr. Meadows the corn-factor; he lends money at times to friends. It would not be much to either of them.”

“Show my empty pockets to Susanna's father! Oh, Will! how can you be so cruel?”

“Meadows, then.”

“No use for me, I've just offended him a hit; beside he's a man that never knew trouble or ill luck in his life; they are like flints, all that sort.”

“Well, look here, I'm pretty well with Meadows. I'll ask him if you will try uncle; the first that meets his man to begin.”

“That sounds fair,” said George, “but I can't—well—yes,” said he, suddenly changing his mind. “I agree,” said he, with simple cunning, and lowered his eyes; but suddenly raising them, he said cheerfully, “Why, you're in luck, Bill; here's your man,” and he shot like an arrow into his own kitchen.

“Confound it,” said the other, fairly caught.

Meadows, it is to be observed, was wandering about the premises until such time as Robinson should return; and while the brothers were arguing, he had been in the barn, and finding old Merton there had worked still higher that prudent man's determination to break off matters between his daughter and the farmer of “The Grove.”

After the usual salutations William Fielding, sore against the grain, began:

“I did not know you were here, sir! I want to speak to you.”

“I am at your service, Mr. Willum.”

“Well, sir. George and I are a little short just at present; it is only for a time, and George says he should take it very kind if you would lend us a hundred pound, just to help us over the stile.”

“Why, Mr. Willum,” replied Meadows, “I should be delighted, and if you had only asked me yesterday, I could have done it as easy as stand here; but my business drinks a deal of money, Mr. Willum, and I laid out all my loose cash yesterday; but, of course, it is of no consequence—another time—good morning, Mr. Willum.”

Away sauntered Meadows, leaving William planted there, as the French say.

George ran out of the kitchen.

“Well?”

“He says he has got no money loose.”

“He is a liar! he paid 1,600 pounds into the bank yesterday, and you knew it; didn't you tell him so?”

“No; what use? A man that lies to avoid lending won't be driven to lend.”

“You don't play fair,” retorted George. “You could have got it from Meadows, if you had a mind; but you want to drive your poor brother against his sweetheart's father; you are false, my lad.”

“You are the only man that ever said so; and you durstn't say it if you weren't my brother.”

“If it wasn't for that, I'd say a deal more.”

“Well, show your high stomach to Uncle Merton, for there he is. Hy!—uncle!” cried William to Merton, who turned instantly and came toward them. “George wants to speak to you,” said William, and shot like a cross-bow bolt behind the house.

“That is lucky,” said Merton, “for I want to speak to you.”

“Who would have thought of his being about?” muttered George.

While George was calling up his courage and wits to open his subject, Mr. Merton, who had no such difficulties, was beforehand with him.

“You are threshing out new wheat?” said Merton, gravely.

“Yes,” answered George, looking down.

“That is a bad lookout; a farmer has no business to go to his barn door for his rent.”

“Where is he to go, then? to the church door, and ask for a miracle?”

“No; to his ship-fold, to be sure.”

“Ay! you can; you have got grass and water and everything to hand.”

“And so must you, young man, or you'll never be a farmer. Now, George, I must speak to you seriously” (George winced).

“You are a fine lad, and I like you very well, but I love my own daughter better.”

“So do I!” said George simply.

“And I must look out for her,” resumed Merton. “I have seen a pretty while how things are going here, and if she marries you she will have to keep you instead of you her.”

“Heaven forbid! Matters are not so bad as that, uncle.”

“You are too much of a man, I hope,” continued Merton, “to eat a woman's bread; and if you are not, I am man enough to keep the girl from it.”

“These are hard words to bear,” gasped George. “So near my own house, old man.”

“Well, plain speaking is best when the mind is made up,” was the reply.

“Is this from Susanna, as well as you?” said George, with a trembling lip, and scarce able to utter the words.

“Susan is an obedient daughter. What I say she'll stand to; and I hope you know better than to tempt her to disobey me; you wouldn't succeed.”

“Enough said,” answered George very sternly. “Enough said, old man; I've no need to tempt any girl.”

“Good morning, George!” and away stumped Merton.

“Good morning, uncle! (ungrateful old thief).”

“William,” cried he, to his brother, who came the next minute to hear the news, “our mother took him out of the dirt.—I have heard her say as much—or he'd not have a ship-fold to brag of. Oh! my heart—oh! Will!—”

“Well, will he lend the money?”

“I never asked him.”

“You never asked him!” cried William.

“Bill, he began upon me in a moment,” said George, looking appealingly into his brother's face; “he sees we are going down hill, and he as good as bade me think no more of Susan.”

“Well,” said the other, harshly, “it was your business to own the truth and ask him help us over the stile—he's our own blood.”

“You want to let me down lower than I would let that Carlo dog of yours. You're no brother of mine,” retorted George fiercely and bitterly.

“A bargain is a bargain,” replied the other sullenly: “I asked Meadows, and he said No. You fell talking with uncle about Susan, and never put the question to him at all. Who is the false one, eh?”

“If you call me false, I'll knock your ugly head off, sulky Bill.”

“You're false, and a fool into the bargain, bragging George!”

“What, you will have it, then?”

“If you can give it me.”

“Well, if it is to be,” said George, “I'll give you something to put you on your mettle. The best man shall farm 'The Grove,' and the other shall be a servant on it, or go elsewhere, for I am sick of this.”

“And so am I!” cried William, hastily; “and have been any time this two years.”

They tucked up their sleeves a little, shook hands, and then retired each one step, and began to fight.

And how came these two honest men to forget that the blood they proposed to shed was thicker than water? Was it the farm, money, agricultural dissension, temper? They would have told you it was, and perhaps thought it was. It was Susanna Merton!

The secret subtle influence of jealousy had long been fermenting, and now it exploded in this way and under this disguise.

Ah! William Fielding, and all of you, “Beware of jealousy”—cursed jealousy! it is the sultan of all the passions, and the Tartar chief of all the crimes. Other passions affect the character; this changes, and, if good, always reverses it! Mind that, reverses it! turns honest men to snakes, and doves to vultures. Horrible unnatural mixture of Love with Hate—you poison the whole mental constitution—you bandage the judgment—you crush the sense of right and wrong—you steel the bowels of compassion—you madden the brain—you corrupt the heart—you damn the soul.

The Fieldings, then, shook hands mechanically, and receding each a step began to spar.

Each of these farmers fancied himself slightly the best man; but they both knew they had an antagonist with whom it would not do to make the least mistake.

They therefore sparred and feinted with wary eye before they ventured to close; George, however, the more impetuous, was preparing to come to closer quarters when all of a sudden, to the other's surprise, he dropped his hands by his sides, and turned the other way with a face anything but warlike, fear being now the prominent expression.

William followed the direction of his eye, and then William partook his brother's uneasiness; however, he put his hands in his pockets, and began to saunter about, in a circumference of three yards, and to get up a would-be-careless whistle, while George's hands became dreadfully in his way, so he washed them in the air.

While they were employed in this peaceful pantomime a beautiful young woman glided rapidly between the brothers.

Her first words renewed their uneasiness.

“What is this?” cried she, haughtily, and she looked from one to the other like a queen rebuking her subjects.

George looked at William—William had nothing ready.

So George said, with some hesitation, but in a mellifluous voice, “William was showing me—a trick—he learned at the fair—that is all, Susan.”

“That is a falsehood, George,” replied the lady, “the first you ever told me”—(George colored)—“you were fighting, you two boys—I saw your eyes flash!”

The rueful wink exchanged by the combatants at this stroke of sagacity was truly delicious.

“Oh, fie! oh, fie! brothers by one mother fighting—in a Christian land—within a stone's throw of a church, where brotherly love is preached as a debt we owe to strangers, let alone our own blood.”

“Yes! it is a sin, Susan,” said William, his conscience suddenly illuminated. “So I ask your pardon, Susanna.”

“Oh! it wasn't your fault, I'll be bound,” was the gracious reply. “What a ruffian you must be, George, to shed your brother's blood.”

“La! Susan,” said George, with a doleful whine, “I wasn't going to shed the beggar's blood. I was only going to give him a hiding for his impudence.”

“Or take one for your own,” replied William coolly.

“That is more likely,” said Susan. “George, take William's hand; take it this instant, I say,” cried she, with an air imperative and impatient.

“Well, why not? don't you go in a passion, Susan, about nothing,” said George coaxingly.

They took hands; she made them hold one another by the hand, which they did with both their heads hanging down. “While I speak a word to you two,” said Susan Merton.

“You ought both to go on your knees, and thank Providence that sent me here to prevent so great a crime; and as for you, your character must change greatly, George Fielding, before I trust myself to live in a house of yours.”

“Is all the blame to fall on my head?” said George, letting go William's hand with no great apparent reluctance.

“Of course it is! William is a quiet lad that quarrels with nobody; you are always quarreling; you thrashed our carter last Candlemas.”

“He spoke saucy words about you.”

Susan, smiling inwardly, made her face as repulsive outside as lay in her power.

“I don't believe it,” said Susan; “your time was come round to fight and be a ruffian, and so it was to-day, no doubt.”

“Ah!” said George, sorrowfully, “it is always poor George that does all the wrong.

“Oh!” replied the lady, an arch smile playing for a moment about her lips, “I could scold William, too, if you think I am as much interested in his conduct and behavior as in yours.”

“No, no!” cried George, brightening up, “don't think to scold anybody but me, Susan; and William,” said he, suddenly and frankly, “I ask your pardon.”

“No more about it, George, if you please,” answered William in his dogged way.

“Susan,” said George, “you don't know all I have to bear. My heart is sore, Susan, dear. Uncle twitted me not an hour ago with my ill luck, and almost bade me to speak to you no more, leastways as my sweetheart; and that was why, when William came at me on the top of such a blow, it was more than I could bear; and Susan—Susan—uncle said you would stand to whatever he said.”

“George,” said Susan gently, “I am very sorry my father was so unkind.”

“Thank ye kindly, Susan; that is the first drop of dew that has fallen on me to-day.”

“But obedience to parents,” continued Susan, interrogating, as it were, her conscience, “is a great duty. I hope I shall never disobey my father,” faltered she.

“Oh!” answered the goose George hastily, “I don't want any girl to be kind to me that does not love me; I am so unlucky, it would not be worth her while, you know.”

At this Susan answered still more sharply, “No, I don't think it would be worth any woman's while, till your character and temper undergo a change.”

George never answered a word, but went and leaned his head upon the side of a cart that stood half in and half out of a shed close by.

At this juncture a gay personage joined the party. He had a ball waistcoat, as alarming tie, a shooting jacket, wet muddy trousers and shoes, and an empty basket on his back.

He joined our group, just as George was saying to himself very sadly, “I am in everybody's way here”—and he attacked him directly.

“Everybody is in this country.”

The reader is to understand that this Robinson was last from California; and California had made such an impression upon him, that he turned the conversation that way oftener than a well-regulated understanding recurs to any one topic, except, perhaps, religion.

He was always pestering George to go to California with him, and it must be owned that on this one occasion George had given him a fair handle.

“Come out of it,” continued Robinson, “and make your fortune.”

“You did not make yours there,” said Susan sharply.

“I beg your pardon, miss. I made it, or how could I have spent it?”

“No doubt,” said William. “What comes by the wind goes by the water.”

“Alluding to the dust?” inquired the Cockney.

“Gold dust especially,” retorted Susan Merton.

Robinson laughed. “The ladies are sharp, even in Berkshire,” said he.

Mr. Robinson then proceeded to disabuse their minds about the facility of gold.

“A crop of gold,” said he, “does not come by the wind any more than a crop of corn; it comes by harder digging than your potatoes ever saw, and harder work than you ever did—oxen and horses perspire for you, Fielding No. 2.”

“Did you ever see a horse or an ox mow an acre of grass or barley?” retorted William dryly.

“Don't brag,” replied the other; “they'll eat all you can mow and never say a word about it.”

This repartee was so suited to their rustic idea of wit, that Robinson's antagonists laughed heartily, except George.

“What is the matter with him?” said Robinson, sotto voce, indicating George.

“Oh! he is cross, never mind him,” replied Susan ostentatiously loud. George winced, but never spoke back to her.

Robinson then proceeded to disabuse the rural mind of the notion that gold is to be got without hard toil, even in California. He told them how the miners' shirts were wet through and through in the struggle for gold; he told them how the little boys demanded a dollar apiece for washing these same garments; and how the miners to escape this extortion sent their linen to China in ships on Monday morning, and China sent them back on Saturday, only it was Saturday six weeks.

Next Mr. Robinson proceeded to draw a parallel between England and various nations on the other side of the Atlantic, not at all complimentary to his island home; above all, he was eloquent on the superior dignity of labor in new countries.

“I heard one of your clodhoppers say the other day, 'The squire is a good gentleman, he often gives me a day's work.' Now I should think it was the clodhopper gave the gentleman the day's work, and the gentleman gave him a shilling for it—and made five by it.”

William Fielding scratched his head. This was a new view of things to him, but there seemed to be something in it.

“Ay! rake that into your upper soil,” cried our republican orator; then collecting into one his scattered items of argument, he invited his friend George to take his muscle, pluck, wind, backbone, and self, out of this miserable country, and come where the best man has a chance to win.

“Come, George,” he cried, “England is the spot if you happen to be married to a duke's daughter, and got fifty thousand a year and three houses.

“And a coach.

“And a brougham.

“And a curricle.

“And ten brace of pointers.

“And a telescope so big the stars must move to it, instead of it to the stars.

“And no end of pretty housemaids.

“And a butler with a poultice round his neck and whiskers like a mop-head.

“And a silver tub full of rose-water to sit in and read the Morning Post.

“And a green-house full of peaches—and green peas all the year round.

“And a pew in the church warmed with biling eau de Cologne.

“And a carpet a foot thick.

“And a piano-forte in every blessed room in the house. But this island is the Dead Sea to a poor man.”

He then, diverging from the rhetorical to the metropolitan style, proposed to his friend “to open one eye. That will show you this hole you are in is all poor hungry arable ground. You know you can't work it to a profit.” (George winced.) “No! steal, borrow, or beg 500 pounds. Carry out a cargo of pea-jackets and fourpenny bits to swap for gold-dust, a few tools, a stout heart, and a light pair of—'Oh, no; we never mention them; their name is never heard'—and we'll soon fill both pockets with the shiney in California.”

All this Mr. Robinson delivered with a volubility to which Berkshire had hitherto been a stranger.

“A crust of bread in England before buffalo beef in California,” was George's reply; but it was not given in that assured tone with which he would have laughed at Robinson's eloquence a week ago.

“I could not live with all those thieves and ruffians that are settled down there like crows on a dead horse; but I thank you kindly, my lad, all the same,” said the tender-hearted young man.

“Strange,” thought he, “that so many should sing me the same tune,” and he fell back into his reverie.

Here they were all summoned to dinner, with a dash of asperity, by Sarah the stout farm servant.

Susan lingered an instant to speak to George. She chose an unfortunate topic. She warned him once more against Mr. Robinson.

“My father says that he has no business nor trade, and he is not a gentleman, in spite of his red and green cravat, so he must be a rogue of some sort.”

“Shall I tell you his greatest fault?” was the bitter reply. “He is my friend; he is the only creature that has spoken kind words to me to-day. Oh! I saw how cross you looked at him.”

Susan's eyes flashed, and the color rose in her cheek, and the water in her eyes.

“You are a fool, George,” said she; “you don't know how to read a woman, nor her looks, nor her words either.”

And Susan was very angry and disdainful, and did not speak to George all dinner-time.

As for poor George, he followed her into the house with a heart both sick and heavy.

This Berkshire farmer had a proud and sensitive nature under a homely crust.

Old Merton's words had been iron passing through his soul, and besides he felt as if everything was turning cold and slippery and gliding from his hand. He shivered with vague fears, and wished the sun would set at one o'clock and the sorrowful day come to an end.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER II.

THE meal passed almost in silence; Robinson was too hungry to say a word, and a weight hung upon George and Susan.

As they were about to rise, William observed two men in the farmyard who were strangers to him—the men seemed to be inspecting the hogs. It struck him as rather cool; but apparently the pig is an animal which to be prized needs but to be known, for all connoisseurs of him are also enthusiastic amateurs.

When I say the pig I mean the four-legged one.

William Fielding, partly from curiosity to hear these strangers' remarks, partly hoping to find customers in them, strolled into the farmyard before his companions rose from the table.

The others, looking carelessly out of the window, saw William join the two men and enter into conversation with them; but their attention was almost immediately diverted from that group by the entrance of Meadows. He came in radiant; his face was a remarkable contrast to the rest of the party.

Susan could not help noticing it.

“Why, Mr. Meadows,” cried she, “you look as bright as a May morning; it is quite refreshing to see you; we are all rather down here this morning.”

Meadows said nothing, and did not seem at his ease under this remark.

George rose from the table; so did Susan; Robinson merely pushed back his chair and gave a comfortable little sigh, but the next moment he cried “Hallo!”

They looked up, and there was William's face close against the window.

William's face was remarkably pale, and first he tried to attract George's attention without speaking, but finding himself observed by the whole party, he spoke out.

“George, will you speak a word?” said he.

George rose and went out; but Susan's curiosity was wakened, and she followed him, accompanied by Meadows.

“None but you, George,” said William, with a voice half stern, half quivering.

George looked at his brother.

“Out with it,” cried he, “it is some deadly ill-luck; I have felt it coming all day, but out with it; what can't I bear after the words I have borne this morning?”

William hung his head.

“George, there is a distress upon the farm for the rent.”

George did not speak at first, he literally staggered under these words; his proud spirit writhed in his countenance, and with a groan, he turned his back abruptly upon them all and hid his face against the corner of his own house, the cold hard bricks.

Meadows, by strong self-command, contrived not to move a muscle of his face.

Up to this day and hour, Susan Merton had always seemed cool, compared with her lover; she used to treat him a little de haut en bas.

But when she saw his shame and despair, she was much distressed.

“George, George!” she cried, “don't do so. Can nothing be done? Where is my father?—they told me he was here. He is rich, he shall help you.” She darted from them in search of Merton; ere she could turn the angle of the house he met her.

“You had better go home, my girl,” said he gravely.

“Oh, no, no! I have been too unkind to George already,” and she turned toward him like a pitying angel with hands extended as if they would bring balm to a hurt soul.

Meadows left chuckling and was red and white by turns.

Merton was one of those friends one may make sure of finding in adversity.

“There,” cried he, “George, I told you how it would end.”

George wheeled round on him like lightning.

“What, do you come here to insult over me? I must be a long way lower than I am, before I shall be as low as you were when my mother took you up and made a man of you.”

“George, George!” cried Susan in dismay; “stop, for pity's sake, before you say words that will separate us forever. Father,” cried the peace-making angel, “how can you push poor George so hard and him in trouble! and we have all been too unkind to him to-day.”

Ere either could answer, there was happily another interruption. A smart servant in livery walked up to them with a letter. With the instinctive feeling of class they all endeavored to conceal their agitation from the gentleman's servant. He handed George the note, and saying, “I was to wait for an answer, Farmer Fielding,” sauntered toward the farm-stables.

“From Mr. Winchester,” said George, after a long and careful inspection of the outside.

In the country it is a point of honor to find out the writer of a letter by the direction, not the signature.

“The Honorable Francis Winchester! What does he write to you?” cried Merton, in a tone of great surprise. This, too, was not lost on George.

Human nature is human nature. He was not sorry to be able to read a gentleman's letter in the face of one who had bitterly reproached him, and of others who had seen him mortified and struck down.

“Seems so,” said George, dryly, and with a glance of defiance; and he read out the letter.

“George Fielding, my fine fellow, think of it again. I have two berths in the ship that sails from Southampton to-morrow. You will have every comfort on the voyage—a great point. I will do what I said for you” (“he promised me five hundred sheep and a run”). “I must have an honest man, and where can I find as honest a man as George Fielding?” (“Thank you, Mr. Winchester; George Fielding thanks you, sir.”) And there was something noble and simple in the way the young farmer drew himself up, and looked fearlessly in all his companions' eyes.

“You saved my life—I can do nothing for you here—and you are doing no good at 'The Grove'—everybody says so (“everybody says so!”—and George Fielding winced at the words).

“And it really pains me, my brave fellow, to go without you where I know I could put you on the way of fortune. My heart is pretty stout; but home is home; and be assured that I wait with some anxiety to know whether my eyes are to look on nothing but water for the next four months, or are to be cheered by the sight of something from home, the face of a thoroughbred English yeoman, and—a friend—and—and—”

Poor George could read no more, the kind words, coming after his affronts and troubles, brought his heart to his mouth.

Susan took the letter from him, and read out—

“And an upright, downright honest man”—“AND SO YOU ARE, GEORGE!” cried she, warmly, drawing to George's side, and darting glances of defiance vaguely around. Then she continued to read—

“If the answer is favorable, a word is enough. Meet me at 'The Crown,' in Newborough, to-night, and we will go up to Town by the mail train.”

“The answer is, Yes,” said George to the servant, who was at some distance.

Susan, bending over the letter, heard, but could not realize the word, but the servant now came nearer. George said to him, “Tell your master, Yes.”

“Yes? George!” cried Susan, “what do you mean by yes? It is about going to Australia.”

“The answer is yes,” said George.

The servant went away with the answer.

The others remained motionless.

“This nobleman's son respects me if worse folk don't. But it is not the great bloodhounds and greyhounds that bark at misfortune's heels, it is only the village curs, when all is done. This is my path. I'll pack up my things and go.” And he did not look at Susan or any of them, but went into the house like a man walking in his sleep.

There was a stupefied pause.

Then Susan gave a cry like a wounded deer.

“Father! what have you done?”

Merton himself had been staggered, but he replied stoutly:

“No more than my duty, girl, and I hope you will do no less than yours.”

At this moment Robinson threw up the window and jumped out into the yard.

Meadows, under stronger interests, had forgotten Robinson; but now at sight of him he looked round, and catching the eye of a man who was peering over the farmyard wall, made him a signal.

“What is the matter?” cried Robinson.

“George is going to Australia,” replied Merton, coldly.

“Australia!” roared Robinson—“Australia! He's mad. Who ever goes there unless they are forced? He shan't go there! I wouldn't go there if my passage was paid, and a new suit of clothes given me, and the governor's gig to take me ashore to a mansion provided for my reception, fires lighted, beds aired and pipes laid across upon the table.”

As Robinson concluded this tirade the policeman and constable, who had crept round the angle of the farm-house, came one on each side, put each a hand on one of his elbows and—took him!

He looked first down at their hands in turn, then up at their faces in turn, and when he saw the metropolitan's face a look of simple disgust diffused itself over his whole countenance.

“Ugh!!!” interjected Robinson.

“Ay!” replied the policeman, while putting handcuffs on him. “To Australia you'll go, for all that, Tom Lyon, alias Scott, alias Robinson, and you'll have a new suit of clothes, mostly one color, and voyage paid, and a large house ashore waiting for you; and the governor's gig will come alongside for you, provided they can't find the convicts' barge,” and the official was pleased with himself and his wit and allowed it to appear.

But by this time Robinson was on his balance again. “Gentlemen,” answered he with cold dignity, “what am I to understand by this violence from persons to whom I am an utter stranger?” and he might have set for the picture of injured innocence. “I am not acquainted with you, sir,” added he; “and by the titles you give me it seems you are not acquainted with me.”

The police laughed, and took out of this injured man's pocket the stolen notes which Meadows instantly identified.

Then Mr. Robinson started off into another key equally artistical in its way.

“Miss Merton,” snuffled he, “appearances are against me, but mark my words, my innocence will emerge all the brighter for this temporary cloud.”

Susan Merton ran indoors, saying, “Oh! I must tell George.” She was not sorry of an excuse to be by George's side, and remind him by her presence that if home had its thorns it had its rose tree, too.

News soon spreads; rustic heads were seen peeping over the wall to see the finale of the fine gentleman from “Lunnun.” Meantime the constable went to put his horse in a four-wheeled chaise destined to convey Robinson to the county jail.

If the rural population expected to see this worthy discomposed by so sudden a change of fortune, they were soon undeceived.

“Well, Jacobs,” said he, with sudden familiarity, “you seem uncommon pleased, and I am content. I would rather have gone to California; but any place is better than England. Laugh those who win. I shall breathe a delicious climate; you will make yourself as happy as a prince, that is to say, miserable, upon fifteen shillings and two colds a week; my sobriety and industry will realize a fortune under a smiling sun. Let chaps that never saw the world, and the beautiful countries there are in it, snivel at leaving this island of fogs and rocks and taxes and nobs, the rich man's paradise, the poor man's—I never swear, it's vulgar.”

While he was crushing his captors with his eloquence, George and Susan came together from the house; George's face betrayed wonder and something akin to horror.

“A thief!” cried he. “Have I taken the hand of a thief?”

“It is a business like any other,” said Robinson deprecatingly.

“If you have no shame I have; I long to be gone now.”

“George!” whined the culprit, who, strange to say, had become attached to the honest young farmer. “Did ever I take tithe of you? You have got a silver candle cup, a heavenly old coffee-pot, no end of spoons double the weight those rogues the silversmiths make them now; they are in a box under your bed in your room,” added he, looking down. “Count them, they are all right; and Miss Merton, your bracelet, the gold one with the cameo: I could have had it a hundred times. Miss Merton, ask him to shake hands with me at parting. I am so fond of him, and perhaps I shall never see him again.

“Shake hands with you?” answered George sternly; “if your hands were loose I doubt I should ram my fist down your throat; but there, you are not worth a thought at such a time, and you are a man in trouble, and I am another. I forgive you, and I pray Heaven I may never see your face again.”

And Honesty turned his back in Theft's face.

Robinson bit his lip and said nothing, but his eyes glistened; just then a little boy and girl, who had been peering about mighty curious, took courage and approached hand in hand. The girl was the speaker, as a matter of course.

“Farmer Fielding,” said she curtsying, a mode of reverence which was instantly copied by the boy, “we are come to see the thief; they say you have caught one. Oh, dear!” (and her bright little countenance was overcast), “I couldn't have told it from a man!”

We don't know all that is in the hearts of the wicked. Robinson was observed to change color at these silly words.

“Mr. Jacobs,” said he, addressing the policeman, “have you authority to put me in the pillory before trial?” He said this coldly and sternly; and then added, “Perhaps you are aware that I am a man, and I might say a brother, for you were a thief, you know!” Then changing his tone entirely, “I say, Jacobs,” said he, with cheerful briskness, “do you remember cracking the silversmith's shop in Lambeth along with Jem Salisbury and Black George, and—”

“There, the gig is ready,” cried Mr. Jacobs; “you come along,” and the ex-thief pushed the thief hastily off the premises and drove him away with speed.

George Fielding gave a bitter sigh. This was a fresh mortification. He had for the last two months been defending Robinson against the surmises of the village.

Villages are always concluding there is something wrong about people.

“What does he do?” inquired our village.

“Where does he get his blue coat with brass buttons, his tartan waistcoat and green satin tie with red ends? We admit all this looks like a gentleman. But yet, somehow, a gentleman is a horse of another color than this Robinson.”

George had sometimes laughed at all this, sometimes been very angry, and always stood up stoutly for his friend and lodger.

And now the fools were right and he was wrong. His friend and protege was handcuffed before his eyes and carried off to the county jail amid the grins and stares of a score of gaping rustics, who would make a fine story of it this evening in both public-houses; and a hundred voices would echo some such conversational Tristich as this:

1st Rustic. “I tawld un as much, dinn't I now, Jarge?”

2d Rustic. “That ye did, Richard, for I heerd ee.”

1st Rustic. “But, la! bless ye, he don't vally advice, he don't.”

George Fielding groaned out, “I'm ready to go now—I'm quite ready to go—I am leaving a nest of insults;” and he darted into the house, as much to escape the people's eyes as to finish his slight preparations for so great a journey.

Two men were left alone; sulky William and respectable Meadows. Both these men's eyes followed George into the house, and each had a strong emotion they were bent on concealing, and did conceal from each other; but was it concealed from all the world?

The farm-house had two rooms looking upon the spot where most of our tale has passed.

The smaller one of these was a little state parlor, seldom used by the family. Here on a table was a grand old folio Bible; the names, births, and deaths of a century of Fieldings appeared in rusty ink and various handwritings upon its fly-leaf.

Framed on the walls were the first savage attempts of woman at worsted-work in these islands. There were two moral commonplaces, and there was the forbidden fruit-tree, whose branches diverged, at set distances like the radii of a circle, from its stem, a perpendicular line; exactly at the end of each branch hung one forbidden fruit—pre-Raphaelite worsted-work.

There were also two prints of more modern date, one agricultural, one manufactural.

No. 1 was a great show of farming implements at Doncaster.

No. 2 showed how, one day in the history of man and of mutton, a sheep was sheared, her wool washed, teased, carded, etc., and the cloth *'d and *'d and *'d and *'d, and a coat shaped and sewed and buttoned upon a goose, whose preparations for inebriating the performers and spectators of his feat appeared in a prominent part of the picture.

The window of this sunny little room was open and on the sill was a row of flower-pots from which a sweet fresh smell crept with the passing air into the chamber.

Behind these flower-pots for two hours past had crouched—all eye and ear and mind—a keen old man.

To Isaac Levi age had brought vast experience, and had not yet dimmed any one of his senses. More than forty-five years ago he had been brought to see that men seldom act or speak so as to influence the fortunes of others without some motive of their own; and that these motives are seldom the motives they advance; and that their real motives are not always known to themselves, and yet can nearly always be read and weighed by an intelligent bystander.

So for near half a century Isaac Levi had read that marvelous page of nature written on black, white and red parchments, and called “Man.”

One result of his perusal was this, that the heads of human tribes differ far more than their hearts.

The passions and the heart he had found intelligible and much the same from Indus to the Pole.

The people of our tale were like men walking together in a coppice; they had but glimpses of each others' minds. But to Isaac behind his flower-pots they were a little human chart spread out flat before him, and not a region in it he had not traveled and surveyed before to-day: what to others passed for accident to him was design; he penetrated more than one disguise of manner; and above all his intelligence bored like a center-bit into the deep heart of his enemy, Meadows, and at each turn of the center-bit his eye flashed, his ear lived, and he crouched patient as a cat, keen as a lynx.

He was forgotten, but not by all.

Meadows, a cautious man, was the one to ask himself, “Where is that old heathen, and what is he doing?”

To satisfy himself, Meadows had come smoothly to the door of the little apartment, and burst suddenly into it.

There he found the reverend Israelite extended on a little couch, a bandana handkerchief thrown over his face, calmly reposing.

Meadows paused, eyed him keenly, listened to his gentle but audible, equable breathing, relieved his mind by shaking his fist at him, and went out.

Thirty seconds later Isaac awoke! spat in the direction of Meadows, and crouched again behind the innocent flowers, patient as a cat, keen as a lynx.

So then; when George was gone in, William Fielding and Mr. Meadows both felt a sudden need of being alone; each longed to indulge some feeling he did not care the other should see; so they both turned their faces away from each other and strolled apart.

Isaac Levi caught both faces off their guard, and read the men as by a lightning flash to the bottom line of their hearts.

For two hours he had followed the text, word by word, deed by deed, letter by letter, and now a comment on that text was written in these faces.

That comment said that William was rejoiced at George's departure and ashamed of himself for the feeling. That Meadows rejoiced still more and was ashamed anybody should know he had the feeling.

Isaac withdrew from his lair; his task was done.

“Those men both love that woman, and this Meadows loves her with all his soul, and she-aha!” and triumph flashed from under his dark brows. But at his age calm is the natural state of the mind and spirits; he composed himself for the present, and awaited an opportunity to strike his enemy with effect.

The aged man had read Mr. Meadows aright; under that modulated exterior raged as deep a passion as ever shook a strong nature.

For some time he had fought against it. “She is another man's sweetheart,” he had said to himself; “no good will come of courting her.” But by degrees the flax bonds of prudence snapped one by one as the flame every now and then darted at them. Meadows began to reason the matter coolly.

“They can never marry, those two. I wish they would marry or break off, to put me out of this torture; but they can't marry, and my sweet Susan is wasting her prime for nothing, for a dream. Besides, it is not as if she loved him the way I love her. She is like many a young maid. The first comer gets her promise before she knows her value. They walk together, get spoken of; she settles down into a groove, and so goes on, whether her heart is in it or not; it is habit more than anything.”

Then he watched the pair, and observed that Susan's manner to George was cool and off-hand, and that she did not seem to seek opportunities of being alone with him.

Having got so far, he now felt it his duty to think of her interest.

He could not but feel that he was a great match for any farmer's daughter; whereas “poor young Fielding,” said he compassionately, “is more likely to break as a bachelor than to support a wife and children upon 'The Grove.'”

He next allowed his mind to dwell with some bitterness upon the poor destiny that stood between him and the woman he loved.

“George Fielding! a dull dog, that could be just as happy with any other girl as with my angel. An oaf, so little alive to his prize that he doesn't even see he has rivals; doesn't see that his brother loves her. Ah! but I see that, though; lovers' eyes are sharp. Doesn't see me, who mean to take her from both these Fieldings—and what harm? It isn't as if their love was like mine. Heaven forbid I should meddle if it was. A few weeks, and a few mugs of ale would wash her from what little mind either of them have; but I never loved a woman before, and never could look at another after her.”

And so by degrees Meadows saw that he was quite justified in his resolve to win Susan Merton, PROVIDED IT WAS DONE FAIRLY.

This resolve taken, all this man's words and actions began to be colored more or less by his secret wishes; and it is not too much to say, that this was the hand which was gently but adroitly, with a touch here and a touch there, pushing George Fielding across the Ocean.

You see, a respectable man can do a deal of mischief; more than a rogue could.

A shrug of the shoulders from Meadows had caused the landlord to distrain.

A hint from Meadows had caused Merton to affront George about Susan.

A tone of Meadows had closed the bank cash-box to the Fieldings' bill of exchange, and so on. And now, finding it almost impossible to contain his exultation—for George once in Australia he felt he could soon vanquish Susan's faint preference, the result of habit—he turned off, and went to meet his mare at the gate; the boy had just returned with her.

He put his foot in the stirrup, but ere he mounted it occurred to him to ask one of the farm servants whether the old Jew was gone.

“I sin him in the barn just now,” was the reply.

Meadows took his foot out of the stirrup. Never leave an enemy behind you, was one of his rules. “And why does the old heathen stay?” Meadows asked himself; he clinched his teeth and vowed he would not leave the village till George Fielding was on his way to Australia.

He sent his mare to the “Black Horse,” and strolled up the village; then he showed the boy a shilling and said, “You be sure and run to the public-house and let me know when George Fielding is going to start—I should like to see the last of him.”

This was true!

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER III.

AND now passed over “The Grove” the heaviest hours it had ever known; hours as weary as they were bitter to George Fielding. “The Grove” was nothing to him now—in mind he was already separated from it; his clothes were ready, he had nothing more to do, and he wished he could fling himself this moment into the ship and hide his head, and sleep and forget his grief, until he reached the land whose fat and endless pastures were to make him rich and send him home a fitter match for Susan.

As the moment for parting drew nearer there came to him that tardy consolation which often comes to the honest man then when it can but add to his pangs of regret.

Perhaps no man is good, manly, tender, generous, honest and unlucky quite in vain; at last, when such a man is leaving all who have been unjust or cold to him, scales fall from their eyes, a sense of his value flashes like lightning across their half-empty skulls and tepid hearts, they feel and express some respect and regret, and make him sadder to leave them; so did the neighbors of “The Grove” to young Fielding. Some hands gave him now their first warm pressure, and one or two voices even faltered as they said “God bless thee, lad!”

And now the carter's lad ran in with a message from a farmer at the top of the hill.

“Oh! Master George, Farmer Dodd says, if you please, he couldn't think to let you walk. You are to go in his gig to Newbury, if you'll walk up as fur as his farm; he's afeared to come down our hill, a says, because if he did, his mare 'ud kick his gig into toothpicks, he says. Oh! Master George, I be sorry you be going,” and the boy, who had begun quite cheerfully, ended in a whimper.

“I thank him! Take my bag, boy, and I'll follow in half an hour.”

Sarah brought out the bag and opened it, and, weeping bitterly, put into it a bottle with her name on a bit of paper tied round the neck, to remind poor George he was not forgotten at “The Grove,” and then she gave George the key and went sadly in, her apron to her eyes.

And now George fixed his eye on his brother William, and said to him, “Wilham, will you come with me, if you please?”

“Ay, George, sure.”

They went through the farmyard side by side; neither spoke, and George took a last look at the ricks, and he paused, and seemed minded to speak, but he did not, he only muttered “not here.” Then George led the way out into the paddock, and so into the lane, and very soon they saw the village church. William wondered George did not speak. They passed under the yewtree into the churchyard. William's heart fluttered. They found the vicar's cow browsing on the graves. William took up a stone. George put out his hand not to let him hurt her, and George turned her gently into the lane; then he stepped carefully among the graves. William followed him, his heart fluttering more and more with vague fears. William knew now where they were going, but what was George going to say to him there? his heart beat faint-like. By-and-by the brothers came to this—

[Drawing of Grave]

The grave was between the two men—and silence—both looked down.

George whispered, “Good-by, mother! She never thought we should be parted this way.” Then he turned to William and opened his mouth to say something more to him; doubtless that which he had come to say, but apparently it was too much for him. I think he feared his own resolution. He gasped and with a heavy sigh led the way home. William walked with him, not knowing what to think or do or say; at last he muttered, “I wouldn't go, if my heart was here!”

“I shall go, Will,” replied George, rather sternly as it seemed.

When they came back to the house they found several persons collected.

Old Fielding, the young men's grandfather, was there; he had made them wheel him in his great chair out into the sun.

Grandfather Fielding had reached the last stage of human existence. He was ninety-two years of age. The lines in his face were cordage, his aspect was stony and impassible, and he was all but impervious to passing events; his thin blood had almost ceased to circulate in his extremities; for every drop he had was needed to keep his old heart a-beating at all, instead of stopping like a clock that has run down.

Meadows had returned to see George off, and old Merton was also there, and he was one of those whose hearts gave them a bit of a twinge.

“George,” said he, “I'm vexed for speaking unkind to you to-day of all days in the year; I didn't think we were to part so soon, lad.”

“No more about it, uncle,” faltered George; “what does it matter now?”

Susan Merton came out of the house; she had caught her father's conciliatory words; she seemed composed, but pale; she threw her arms round her father's neck.

“Oh! father,” said she imploringly, “I thought it was a dream, but he is going, he is really going. Oh! don't let him go from us; speak him fair, father, his spirit is so high!”

“Susan!” replied the old farmer, “mayhap the lad thinks me his enemy, but I'm not. My daughter shall not marry a bankrupt farmer, but you bring home a thousand pounds—just one thousand pounds—to show me you are not a fool, and you shall have my daughter and she shall have my blessing.”

Meadows exulted.

“Your hand on that, uncle,” cried George, with ardor; “your hand on that before Heaven and all present.”

The old farmer gave George his hand upon it.

“But, father,” cried Susan, “your words are sending him away from me.”

“Susan!” said George sorrowfully but firmly, “I am to go, but don't forget it is for your sake I leave you, my darling Susan—to be a better man for your sake. Uncle, since your last words there is no ill-will; but (bluntly) I can't speak my heart before you.”

“I'll go, George, I'll go; shan't be said my sister's son hadn't leave to speak his mind to letbe who atool,* at such a time.”

*Let be who it will. Cui libet.

Merton turned to leave them, but ere he had taken two steps a most unlooked-for interruption chained him to the spot. An old man, with a long beard and a glittering eye, was among them before they were aware of him; he fixed his eye upon Meadows, and spoke a single word—but that word fell like a sledge-hammer.

“No!!” said Isaac Levi in the midst. “No!!” repeated he to John Meadows.

Meadows understood perfectly what “No” meant; a veto upon all his plans, hopes and wishes.

“Young man,” said Isaac to George, “you shall not wander forth from the home of your fathers. These old eyes see deeper than yours (and he sent an eye-stab at Meadows); you are honest—all men say so—I will lend you the money for your rent, and one who loves you (and he gave another eye-stab at Meadows) will bless me.”

“Oh! yes, I bless you,” cried Susan innocently.

The late exulting Meadows was benumbed at this.

“Surely Heaven sends you to me,” cried Susan. “It is Mr. Levi, of Farnborough.”

Here was a diversion. Meadows cursed the intruder, and his own evil star that had raised him up so malignant an enemy.

“All my web undone in a moment,” thought he, and despair began to take possession of him.

Susan, on the other hand, was all joy and hope; William more or less despondent.

The old Jew glanced from one to another, read them all, and enjoyed his triumph.

But when his eye returned to George Fielding he met with something he had not reckoned upon.

The young man showed no joy, no emotion. He stood immovable, like a statue of a man, and when he opened his lips it was like a statue speaking with its marble mouth.

“No! Susan. No! old man. I am honest, though I'm poor—and proud, though you have seen me put to shame near my own homestead more than once to-day. To borrow without a chance of paying is next door to stealing; and I should never pay you. My eyes are opened in spite of my heart. I can't farm 'The Grove' with no grass, and wheat at forty shillings. I've tried all I know, and I can't do it. Will there is dying to try, and he shall try, and may Heaven speed his plow better than it has poor George's.”

“I am not thinking of the farm now, George,” said William. “I'm thinking of when we were boys, and used to play marbles—together—upon the tombstones.” And he faltered a little.

“Mr. Levi! seems you have a kindness for me. Show it to my brother when I'm away, if you will be so good.”

“Hum?” said Isaac doubtfully. “I care not to see your stout young heart give way, as it will. Ah, me! I can pity the wanderer from home. I will speak a word with you, and then I will go home.”

He drew George aside, and made him a secret communication.

Merton called Susan to him, and made her promise to be prudent, then he shook hands with George and went away.

Now Meadows, from the direction of Isaac's glance, and a certain half-surprised half-contemptuous look that stole over George's face, suspected that his enemy, whose sagacity he could no longer doubt, was warning George against him.

This made him feel very uneasy where he was, and this respectable man dreaded some exposure of his secret. So he said hastily, “I'll go along with you, farmer,” and in a moment was by Merton's side, as that worthy stopped to open the gate that led out of George's premises. His feelings were anything but pleasant when George called to him:

“No, sir! stop. You are as good a witness as I could choose of what I have to say. Step this way, if you please, sir.”

Meadows returned, clinched his teeth, and prepared for the worst, but inwardly he cursed his uneasy folly in staying here, instead of riding home the moment George had said “Yes!” to Australia.

George now looked upon the ground a moment; and there was something in his manner that arrested the attention of all.

Meadows turned hot and cold.

“I am going—to speak—to my brother, Mr. Meadows!” said he, syllable by syllable to Meadows in a way brimful of meaning.

“To me, George?” said William, a little uneasy.

“To you!—Fall back a bit.” (Some rustics were encroaching upon the circle.)

“Fall back, if you please; this is a family matter.”

Isaac Levi, instead of going quite away, seated himself on a bench outside the palings.

It was now William's turn to flutter; he said, however, to himself, “It is about the farm; it must be about the farm.”

George resumed. “I've often had it on my mind to speak to you, but I was ashamed, now that's the truth; but now I am going away from her I must speak out, and I will—William!”

“Yes, George?”

“You've taken—a fancy—to my Susan, William!”

At these words, which, though they had cost him so much to say, George spoke gravely and calmly like common words, William gave one startled look all round, then buried his face directly in his hands in a paroxysm of shame.

Susan, who was looking at George, remonstrated loudly, “How can you be so silly, George! I am sure that is the last idea poor William—”

George drew her attention to William by a wave of the hand.

She held her tongue in a moment, and turned very red, and lowered her eyes to the ground. It was a very painful situation—to none more than to Meadows, who was waiting his turn.

George continued: “Oh, it is not to reproach you, my poor lad. Who could be near her, and not warm to her? But she is my lass, Will, and no other man's. It is three years since she said the word. And though it was my hard luck there should be some coolness between us this bitter day, she will think of me when the ocean rolls between us if no villain undermines me—”

“Villain! George!” groaned William. “That is a word I never thought to hear from you.”

“That's why I speak in time,” said George. “I do suppose I am safe against villainy here.” And his eye swept lightly over both the men. “Anyway, it shan't be a mistake or a misunderstanding; it shall be villainy if 'tis done. Speak, Susanna Merton, and speak your real mind once for all.”

“Oh! George,” cried Susan, fluttering with love; “you shall not go in doubt of me. We are betrothed this three years, and I never regretted my choice a single moment. I never saw, I never shall see, the man I could bear to look on beside you, my beautiful George. Take my ring and my promise, George.” And she put her ring on his little finger and kissed his hand. “While you are true to me, nothing but death shall part us twain. There never was any coolness between us, dear; you only thought so. You don't know what fools women are; how they delight to tease the man they love, and so torment themselves ten times more. I always loved you, but never as I do to-day; so honest, so proud, so unfortunate; I love you, I honor you, I adore you, oh! my love!—my love!—my love!!”

She saw but George—she thought but of George—and how to soften his sorrow, and remove his doubts, if he had any. And she poured out these words of love with her whole soul—with blushes and tears and all the fire of a chaste and passionate woman's heart. And she clung to her love; and her tender bosom heaved against his; and she strained him, with tears and sighs, to her bosom; and he kissed her beautiful head; and his suffering heart drew warmth from this heavenly contact.

The late exulting Meadows turned as pale as ashes, and trembled from head to foot.

“Do you hear, William?” said George.

“I hear, George,” replied William in an iron whisper, with his sullen head sunk upon his breast.

George left Susan, and came between her and William.

“Then, Susan,” said he, rather loud, “here is your brother.”

William winced.

“William! here is my life!” And he pointed to Susan. “Let no man rob me of it if one mother really bore us.”

It went through William's heart like a burning arrow. And this was why George had taken him to their mother's grave. That flashed across him, too.

The poor sulky fellow's head was seen to rise inch by inch till he held it as erect as a king's.

“Never!” he cried, half shouting, half weeping. “Never, s'help me God! She's my sister from this hour—no more, no less. And may the red blight fall on my arm and my heart, if I or any man takes her from you—any man!” he cried, his temples flushing and his eye glittering; “sooner than a hundred men should take her from you while I am here I'd die at their feet a hundred times.”

Well done, sullen and rugged but honest man; the capital temptation of your life is wrestled with and thrown. That is always to every man a close, a deadly, a bitter struggle; and we must all wade through this deep water at one hour or another of our lives. It is as surely our fate as it is one day to die.

It is a noble sight to see an honest man “cleave his own heart in twain, and fling away the baser part of it.” These words, that burst from William's better heart, knocked at his brother's you may be sure. He came to William, “I believe you,” said he; “I trust you, I thank you.” Then he held out his hand; but nature would have more than that, in a moment his arm was round his brother's neck, where it had not been, this many a year. He withdrew it as quickly, half ashamed; and Anne Fielding's two sons grasped one another's hands, and holding hands turned away their heads and tried to hide their eyes.

They are stronger than bond, deed or indenture, these fleshly compacts written by moist eyes, stamped by the grip of eloquent hands, in those moments full of soul when men's hearts beat from their bosoms to their fingers' ends.

Isaac Levi came to the brothers, and said to William, “Yes, I will now,” and then he went slowly and thoughtfully away to his own house.

“And now,” faltered George, “I feel strong enough to go, and I'll go.”

He looked round at all the familiar objects he was leaving, as if to bid them farewell; and last, while every eye watched his movements, he walked slowly up to his grandfather's chair.

“Grandfather,” said he, “I am going a long journey, and mayhap shall never see you again; speak a word to me before I go.”

The impassive old man took no notice, so Susan came to him. “Grandfather, speak to George; poor George is going into a far country.”

When she had repeated this in his ear their grandfather looked up for a moment. “George, fetch me some snuff from where you're going.”

A spasm crossed George's face; he was not to have a word of good omen from the aged man.

“Friends,” said he, looking appealingly to all the rest, Meadows included, “I wanted him to say God bless you, but snuff is all his thought now. Well, old man, George won't forget your last word, such as 'tis.”

In a hutch near a corner of the house was William's pointer, Carlo. Carlo, observing by the general movement that there was something on foot, had the curiosity to come out to the end of his chain, and as he stood there, giving every now and then a little uncertain wag of his tail, George took notice of him and came to him and patted his head.

“Good-by, Carlo,” faltered George, “poor Carlo—you and I shall never go after the partridges again, Carlo. The dog shows more understanding than the Christian. By, Carlo.” Then he looked wistfully at William's dog, but he said nothing more.

William watched every look of George, but he said nothing at the time.

“Good-by, little village church, where I went to church man and boy; good-by, churchyard, where my mother lies; there will be no church bells, Susan, where I am going; no Sunday bells to remind me of my soul and home.”

These words, which he spoke with great difficulty, were hardly out of young Fielding's mouth when a very painful circumstance occurred; one of those things that seem the contrivance of some malignant spirit. The church bells in a moment struck up their merriest peal!

George Fielding started, he turned pale and his lips trembled. “Are they mocking me?” he cried. “Do they take a thought what I am going through this moment, the hard-hearted—”

“No, no, no!” cried William; “don't think it, George; I know what 'tis—I'll tell ye.”

“What's it?”

“Well, it is—well, George, it is Tom Clarke and Esther Borgherst married to-day. Only they couldn't have the ringers till the afternoon.”

“Why, Will, they have only kept company a year, and Susan and I have kept company three years; and Tom and Esther are married to-day; and what are George and Susan doing to-day? God help me! Oh, God help me! What shall I do? what shall I do?” And the stout heart gave way, and George Fielding covered his face with his hands and burst out sobbing and crying.

Susan flung her arms round his neck. “Oh! George, my pride is all gone; don't go, don't think to go; have pity on us both, and don't go.” And she clung to him—her bonnet fallen off, her hair disheveled—and they sobbed and wept in one another's arms.

Meadows writhed with the jealous anguish this sad sight gave him, and at that moment he could have cursed the whole creation. He tried to fly, but he was rooted to the spot. He leaned sick as death against the palings.

George and Susan cried together, and then they wiped one another's eyes like simple country folk with one pocket-handkerchief; and then they kissed one another in turn, and made each other's tears flow fast again; and again wiped one another's eyes with one handkerchief.

Meadows griped the palings convulsively—hell was in his heart.

“Poor souls, God help them!” said William to himself in his purified heart.

The silence their sorrow caused all around was suddenly invaded by a voice that seemed to come from another world—it was Grandfather Fielding. “The autumn sun is not so warm as she used to be!”

Yes, there was the whole map of humanity on that little spot in the county of Berks. The middle-aged man, a schemer, watching the success of his able scheme, and stunned and wounded by its recoil. And old age, callous to noble pain, all alive to discomfort, yet man to the last—blaming any one but Number One, cackling against heavenly bodies, accusing the sun and the kitchen fire of frigidity—not his own empty veins! And the two poor young things sobbing as if their hearts would break over their first great earthly sorrow.

George was the first to recover himself.

“Shame upon me!” he cried; he drew Susan to his bosom, and pressed a long, burning kiss upon her brow.

And now all felt the wrench was coming. George, with a wild, half-terrified look, signaled William to come to him.

“Help me, Will! you see I have no more manhood than a girl.”

Susan instinctively trembled. George once more pressed his lips to her, as if they would grow there. William took her hand. She trembled more and more.

“Take my hand; take your brother's hand, my poor lass,” said he.

She trembled violently; and then George gave a cry that seemed to tear his heart, and darted from them in a moment.

Poor Susan uttered more than one despairing scream, and stretched out both her hands for George. He did not see her, for he dared not look back.

“Bob, loose the dog,” muttered William hastily, in a broken voice.

The dog was loosed, and ran after George, who, he thought, was only going for a walk. Susan was sinking pale and helpless upon her brother's bosom.

“Pray, sister,” said gentle William; “pray, sister, as I must.”

A faint shiver was all the answer; her senses had almost left her.

When George was a little way up the hill, something ran suddenly against his legs——he started—it was Carlo. He turned and lifted up his hands to Heaven; and William could see that George was blessing him for this. Carlo was more than a dog to poor George at that cruel moment. Soon after that, George and Carlo reached the crown of the hill. George's figure stood alone a moment between them and the sky. He was seen to take his hat off, and raise his hands once more to Heaven, while he looked down upon all he loved and left; and then he turned his sorrowful face again toward that distant land—and they saw him no more!

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER IV.

THE world is full of trouble.

While we are young we do not see how true this ancient homely saying is.

That wonderful dramatic prologue, the first chapter of Job, is but a great condensation of the sorrows that fall like hail upon many a mortal house. Job's black day, like the day of the poetic prophets—the true sacri vates of the ancient world—is a type of a year—a bitter human year. It is terrible how quickly a human landscape all gilded meadow, silver river and blue sky can cloud and darken.

George Fielding had compared himself this very day to an oak tree, “Even so am I rooted to my native soil.” His fate accepted his simile. The oak of centuries yields to an impalpable antagonist, whose very name stands in proverbs for weakness and insignificance. This thin, light trifle, rendered impetuous by motion, buffets the king of the forest, tears his roots with fury out of the earth, and lays his towering head in the dust; and even so circumstances, none of them singly irresistible, converging to one point, buffeted sore another oak pride of our fields, and, for aught I know, of our whole island—an honest English yeoman; and tore him from his farm, from his house hard by his mother's grave, from the joy of his heart, his Susan, and sent him who had never traveled a hundred miles in his life across a world of waters to keep sheep at the Antipodes. A bereaved and desolate heart went with Farmer Dodd in the gig to Newborough; sad, desolate and stricken hearts remained behind. When two loving hearts are torn bleeding asunder it is a shade better to be the one that is driven away into action, than the bereaved twin that petrifies at home.

The bustle, the occupation, the active annoyances are some sort of bitter distraction to the unfathomable grief—it is one little shade worse to lie solitary and motionless in the old scenes from which the sunlight is now fled.

It needed but a look at Susan Merton, as she sat moaning and quivering from head to foot in George's kitchen, to see that she was in no condition to walk back to Grassmere Farm to-night.

So as she refused—almost violently refused—to stay at “The Grove,” William harnessed one of the farm-horses to a cart and took her home round by the road.

“It is six miles that way 'stead of three, but then we shan't jolt her going that way,” thought William.

He walked by the side of the cart in silence.

She never spoke but once all the journey, and that was about half way, to complain in a sort of hopeless, pitiful tone that she was cold. It was a burning afternoon.

William took off his coat, and began to tie it round her by means of the sleeves; Susan made a little, silent, peevish and not very rational resistance; William tied it round her by brotherly force.

They reached her home; when she got out of the cart her eye was fixed, her cheek white, she seemed like one in a dream.

She went into the house without speaking or looking at William. William was sorry she did not speak to him; however he stood disconsolately by the cart, asking himself what he could do next for her and George. Presently he heard a slight rustle, and it was Susan coming back along the passage. “She has left something in the cart,” thought he, and he began to look in the straw.

She came like one still in a dream, and put her hand out to William, and it appeared that was what she had come back for.

William took her hand and pressed it to his bosom a moment. At this Susan gave a hysterical sob or two, and crept away again to her own room.

What she suffered in that room the first month after George's departure I could detail perhaps as well as any man living; but I will not. There is a degree of anguish one shrinks from intruding upon too familiarly in person; and even on paper the microscope should spare sometimes these beatings of the bared heart. It will be enough if I indicate by-and-by her state, after time and religion and good habits had begun to struggle, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing, against the tide of sorrow. For the present let us draw gently back and leave her, for she is bowed to the earth—fallen on her knees, her head buried in the curtains of her bed; dark, faint and leaden, on the borders of despair—a word often lightly used through ignorance. Heaven keep us all from a single hour, here or hereafter, of the thing the Word stands for; and Heaven comfort all true and loving hearts that read me, when their turn shall come to drain the bitter cup like Susan Merton.

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CHAPTER V.

THE moment George Fielding was out of sight, Mr. Meadows went to the public-house, flung himself on his powerful black mare, and rode homeward without a word.

One strong passion after another swept across his troubled mind. He burned with love, he was sick with jealousy, cold with despondency, and for the first time smarted with remorse. George Fielding was gone, gone of his own accord; but like the flying Parthian he had shot his keenest arrow in the moment of defeat.

“What the better am I?” thus ran this man's thoughts. “I have opened my own eyes, and Susan seems farther from me than ever now—my heart is like a lump of lead here—I wish I had never been born!—so much for scheming—I would have given a thousand pounds for this, and now I'd give double to be as I was before; I had honest hopes then; now where are they? How lucky it seemed all to go, too. Ah! that is it—'May all your good luck turn to wormwood!' that was his word—his very word—and my good luck is wormwood; so much for lifting a hand against gray hairs, Jew or Gentile. Why did the old heathen provoke me, then? I'd as soon die as live this day. That's right, start at a handful of straw; lie down in it one minute and tremble at the sight of it the next, ye idiot. Oh, Susan! Susan! Why do I think of her? why do I think of her? She loves that man with every fiber of her body. How she clung to him! how she grew to him! And I stood there and looked on it, and did not kill them both. Seen it! I see it now, it is burned into my eyes and my heart forever; I am in hell!—I am in hell!—Hold up, you blundering fool; has the devil got into you, too?—Perdition seize him! May he die and rot before the year's out, ten thousand miles from home! may his ship sink to the bottom of the ——. What right have I to curse the man, as well as drive him across the sea? Curse yourself, John Meadows. They are true lovers, and I have parted them, and looked on and seen their tears. Heaven pity them and forgive me. So he knew of his brother's love for her, after all. Why didn't he speak to me, I wonder, as well as to Will Fielding? The old Jew warned him against me, I'll swear. Why? why because you are a respectable man, John Meadows, and he thought a hint was enough to a man of character. 'I do suppose I am safe from villainy here,' says he. That lad spared me; he could have given me a red face before them all. Now if there are angels that float in the air and see what passes among us sinners, how must John Meadows have looked beside George Fielding that moment? This love will sink my soul! I can't breathe between these hedges; my temples are bursting!—Oh! you want to gallop, do you? gallop, then, and faster than you ever did since you were foaled—confound ye!” With this he spurred his mare furiously up the bank, and went crushing through the dead hedge that surmounted it. He struck his hat, at the same moment, fiercely from his head (it was fast by a black ribbon to his button-hole), and as they lighted by a descent of some two feet on the edge of a grass-field he again drove his spurs into his great fiery mare, all vein and bone. Black Rachel snorted with amazement at the spur, and with warlike delight at finding grass beneath her feet and free air whistling round her ears, she gave one gigantic bound like a buck with arching back and all four legs in the air at once (it would have unseated many a rider but never moved the iron Meadows), and with dilating nostril and ears laid back she hurled herself across country like a stone from a sling.

Meadows' house was about four miles and a half distant as the crow flies, and he went home to-day as the crow flies, only faster. None would have known the staid, respectable Meadows, in this figure that came flying over hedge and ditch and brook, his hat dangling and leaping like mad behind him, his hand now and then clutching his breast, his heart tossed like a boat among the breakers, his lips white, his teeth clinched and his eyes blazing! The mare took everything in her stride, but at last they came somewhat suddenly on an enormous high, stiff fence. To clear it was impossible. By this time man and beast were equally reckless; they went straight into it and through it as a bullet goes through a pane of glass; and on again over brook and fence, plowed field and meadow, till Meadows found himself, he scarce knew how, at his own door. His old deaf servant came out from the stable-yard and gazed in astonishment at the mare, whose flank panted, whose tail quivered, whose back looked as if she had been in the river, while her belly was stained with half a dozen different kinds of soil, and her rider's face streamed with blood from a dozen scratches he had never felt.

Meadows flung himself from the saddle and ran up to his own room. He dashed his face and his burning hands into water; this seemed to do him a little good. He came downstairs; he lighted a pipe (we are the children of habit); he sat with his eyebrows painfully bent. People called on him; he fiercely refused to see them.

For the first time in his life he turned his back on business. He sat for hours by the fireplace. A fierce mental struggle wrenched him to and fro.

Evening came, still he sat collapsed by the fireplace. From his window, among other objects, two dwellings were visible; one, distant four miles, was a whitewashed cottage, tiled instead of thatched, adorned with creepers and roses and very clean, but in other respects little superior to laborers' cottages.

The other, distant six long miles, was the Grassmere farmhouse, where the Mertons lived; the windows seemed burnished gold this evening.

In the small cottage lived a plain old woman—a Methodist. She was Meadows' mother.

She did not admire worldly people, still less envied them.

He was too good a churchman and man of business to permit conventicles or psalm-singing at odd hours in his house. So she preferred living in her own, which moreover was her own—her very own.

The old woman never spoke of her son, and checked all complaints of him, and snubbed all experimental eulogies of him.

Meadows never spoke of his mother, paid her a small allowance with the regularity and affectionate grace of clock-work; never asked her if she didn't want any more—would not have refused her if she had asked for double.

This evening, while the sun was shining with all his evening glory on Susan Merton's house, Meadows went slowly to his window and pulled down the blind, and drawing his breath hard shut the loved prospect out.

He then laid his hand upon the table, and he said: “I swear by the holy bread and wine I took last month that I will not put myself in the way of this strong temptation. I swear I will go no more to Grassmere Farm, never so long as I love Susan.” He added faintly, “Unless they send for me, and they won't do that, and I won't go of my own accord, I swear it. I have sworn it, however, and I swear it again—unless they send for me!”

Then he sat by the fire with his head in his hands—a posture he never was seen in before. Next he wrote a note and sent it hastily with a horse and cart to that small whitewashed cottage.

Old Mrs. Meadows sat in her doorway reading a theological work called “Believers' Buttons.” She took the note, looked at it. “Why, this is from John, I think; what can he have to say to me?” She put on her spectacles again, which she had taken off on the messenger first accosting her, and deliberately opened, smoothed and read the note. It ran thus:

“Mother, I am lonely. Come over and stay awhile with me, if you please.

“Your dutiful son, JOHN MEADOWS”

“Here, Hannah,” cried the old woman to a neighbor's daughter that was nearly always with her.

Hannah, a comely girl of fourteen, came running in.

“Here's John wants me to go over to his house. Get me the pen and ink, girl, out of the cupboard, and I'll write him a word or two any way.—Is there anything amiss?” said she quickly to the man.

“He came in with the black mare all in a lather, just after dinner, and he hasn't spoke to a soul since. That's all I know, missus. I think something has put him out, and he isn't soon put out, you know, he isn't.”

Hannah left the room, after placing the paper as she was bid.

“You will all be put out that trust to an arm of flesh, all of ye, master or man, Dick Messenger,” said the disciple of John Wesley somewhat grimly. “Ay, and be put out of the kingdom of heaven, too, if ye don't take heed.”

“Is that the news I'm to take back to Farnborough, missus?” said Messenger with quiet, rustic irony.

“No; I'll write to him.”

The old woman wrote a few lines reminding Meadows that the pursuit of earthly objects could never bring any steady comfort, and telling him that she should be lost in his great house—that it would seem quite strange to her to go into the town after so many years' quiet—but that if he was minded to come out and see her she would be glad to see him and glad of the opportunity to give him her advice, if he was in a better frame for listening to it than last time she offered it to him, and that was two years come Martinmas.

Then the old woman paused, next she reflected, and afterward dried her unfinished letter. And as she began slowly to fold it up and put it in her pocket—“Hannah,” cried she thoughtfully.

Hannah appeared in the doorway.

“I dare say—you may fetch—my cloak and bonnet. Why, if the wench hasn't got them on her arm. What, you made up your mind that I should go, then?”

“That I did,” replied Hannah. “Your warm shawl is in the cart, Mrs. Meadows.”

“Oh! you did, did you. Young folks are apt to be sure and certain. I was in two minds about it, so I don't see how the child could be sure,” said she, dividing her remark between vacancy and the person addressed—a grammatical privilege of old age.

“Oh! but I was sure, for that matter,” replied Hannah firmly.

“And what made the little wench so sure, I wonder?” said the old woman, now in her black bonnet and scarlet cloak.

“Why, la!” says Hannah, “because it's your son, ma'am—and you're his mother, Dame Meadows!”

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CHAPTER VI.

JOHN MEADOWS had always been an active man, but now he was indefatigable. He was up at five every morning, and seemed ubiquitous; added a gray gelding to his black mare, and rode them both nearly off their legs. He surveyed land in half a dozen counties—he speculated in grain in half a dozen markets, and did business in shares. His plan in dealing with this ticklish speculation was simple. He listened to nothing anybody said, examined the venture himself, and, if it had a sound basis, bought when the herd was selling, and sold wherever the herd was buying. Hence, he bought cheap and sold dear.

He also lent money, and contrived to solve the usurers' problem—perfect security and huge interest.

He arrived at this by his own sagacity and the stupidity of mankind.

Mankind are not wanting in intelligence; but, as a body, they have one intellectual defect—they are muddle-heads.

Now these muddle-heads have agreed to say that land is in all cases five times a surer security for money lent than movables are. Whereas the fact is that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Owing to the above delusion the proprietor of land can always borrow money at four per cent, and other proprietors are often driven to give ten—twenty—thirty.

So John Meadows lent mighty little upon land, but much upon oat-ricks, wagons, advantageous leases and such things, solid as land and more easily convertible into cash.

Thus without risk he got his twenty per cent. Not that he appeared in these transactions—he had too many good irons in the fire to let himself be called a usurer.

He worked this business as three thousand respectable men are working it in this nation. He had a human money-bag, whose strings he went behind a screen and pulled.

The human money-bag of Meadows was Peter Crawley.

This Peter Crawley, some years before our tale, lay crushed beneath a barrowful of debts—many of them to publicans. In him others saw a cunning fool and a sot—Meadows an unscrupulous tool. Meadows wanted a tool, and knew the cheapest way to get the thing was to buy it, so he bought up all Crawley's debts, sued him, got judgments out against him, and raising the ax of the law over Peter's head with his right hand, offered him the left hand of fellowship with his left. Down on his knees went Crawley and resigned his existence to this great man.

Human creatures, whose mission it is to do whatever a man secretly bids them, are not entitled to long and interesting descriptions.

Crawley was fifty, wore a brown wig, the only thing about him that did not attempt disguise, and slouched in a brown coat and a shirt peppered with snuff.

In this life he was an infinitesimal attorney. Previously, unless Pythagoras was a goose, he had been a pole-cat.

Meadows was ambidexter. The two hands he gathered coin with were Meadows and Crawley. The first his honest, hard-working hand; the second his three-fingered Jack, his prestidigital hand; with both he now worked harder than ever. He hurried from business to business—could not wait to chat, or drink a glass of ale after it; it was all work! work! work!—money! money! money! with John Meadows, and everything he touched turned to gold in his hands; yet for all this burning activity the man's heart had never been so little in business. His activity was the struggle of a sensible, strong mind to fight against its one weakness.

“Cedit amor rebus; res age tutus eris,” is a very wise saying, and Meadows, by his own observation and instinct, sought the best antidote for love.

But the Latins had another true saying, that “nobody is wise at all hours.”

After his day of toil and success he used to be guilty of a sad inconsistency. He shut himself up at home for two hours, and smoked his pipe, and ran his eye over the newspaper, but his mind over Susan Merton.

Worse than this, in his frequent rides he used to go a mile or two out of his way to pass Grassmere farmhouse; and however fast he rode the rest of his journey he always let his nag walk by the farmhouse, and his eye brightened with hope as he approached it, and his heart sank as he passed it without seeing Susan.

He now bitterly regretted the vow he had made, never to visit the Mertons again unless they sent for him.

“They have forgotten me altogether,” said he bitterly. “Well, the best thing I can do is to forget them.”

Now, Susan had forgotten him; she was absorbed in her own grief; but Merton was laboring under a fit of rheumatism, and this was the reason why Meadows and he did not meet. In fact, farmer Merton often said to his daughter, “John Meadows has not been to see us a long while.”

“Hasn't he, father?” was Susan's languid and careless reply.

One Sunday, Meadows, weakened by his inner struggle, could not help going to Grassmere church. At least he would see her face. He had seated himself where he could see her. She took her old place by the pillar; nobody was near her. The light from a side window streamed full upon her. She was pale, and the languor of sorrow was upon every part of her face, but she was lovely as ever.

Meadows watched her, and noticed that more than once without any visible reason her eyes filled with tears, but she shed none. He saw how hard she tried to give her whole soul to the services of the church and to the word of the preacher; he saw her succeed for a few minutes at a time, and then with a lover's keen eye he saw her heart fly away in a moment from prayer and praise and consolation, and follow and overtake the ship that was carrying her George farther and farther away from her across the sea; and then her lips quivered with earthly sorrow even as she repeated words that came from Heaven, and tried to bind to her heavy heart the prayers for succor in every mortal ill, the promises of help in every mortal woe, with which holy Church and holier Writ comfort her and all the pure of heart in every age.

Then Meadows, who up to this moment had been pitying himself, had a better thought and pitied Susan. He even went so far as to feel that he ought to pity George, but he did not do it; he could not, he envied him too much; but he pitied Susan, and he longed to say something kind and friendly to her, even though there should not be a word or a look of love in it.

Susan went out by one of the church doors, Meadows by another, intending to meet her casually upon the road home. Susan saw his intention and took another path, so that he could not come up with her without following her.

Meadows turned upon his heel and went home with his heart full of bitterness.

“She hates the sight of me,” was his interpretation.

Poor Susan, she hated nobody, she only hated to have to speak to a stranger, and to listen to a stranger; and in her present grief all were strangers to her except him she had lost and her father. She avoided Meadows not because he was Meadows, but because she wanted to be alone.

Meadows rode home despondently, then he fell to abusing his folly, and vowed he would think of her no more.

The next day, finding himself, at six o'clock in the evening, seated by the fire in a reverie, he suddenly started fiercely up, saddled his horse, and rode into Newborough, and, putting up his horse, strolled about the streets and tried to amuse himself looking at the shops before they closed.

Now it so happened that, stopping before a bookseller's shop, he saw advertised a work upon “The Australian Colonies.”

“Confound Australia!” said Meadows to himself, and turned on his heel, but the next moment, with a sudden change of mind, he returned and bought the book. He did more, he gave the tradesman an order for every approved work on Australia that was to be had.

The bookseller, as it happened, was going up to London next day, so that in the evening Meadows had some dozen volumes in his house, and a tolerably correct map of certain Australian districts.

“Let me see,” said Meadows, “what chance that chap has of making a thousand pounds out there.” This was no doubt the beginning of it, but it did not end there. The intelligent Meadows had not read a hundred pages before he found out what a wonderful country this Australia is, how worthy a money-getter's attention or any thoughtful man's.

It seemed as if his rival drew Meadows after him wherever he went, so fascinated was he with this subject. And now all the evening he sucked the books like a leech.

Men observed, about this time, an irritable manner in Mr. Meadows which he had never shown before, and an eternal restlessness; they little divined the cause, or dreamed what a vow he had made, and what it cost him every day to keep it. So strong was the struggle within him, that there were moments when he feared he should go mad; and then it was that he learned the value of his mother's presence in the house.

There was no explanation between them, there could be no sympathy; had he opened his heart to her he knew she would have denounced his love for Susan Merton as a damnable crime. Once she invited his confidence. “What ails you, John?” said the old woman. “You had better tell me; you would feel easier, I'm thinking.”

But he turned it off a little fretfully, and she never returned to the charge. But though there could be no direct sympathy, yet there was a soothing influence in this quaint old woman's presence. She moved quietly about, protecting his habits, not disturbing them; she seemed very thoughtful, too, and cast many a secret glance of inquiry and interest at him when he was not looking at her.

This had gone on some weeks when, one afternoon, Meadows, who had been silent as death for a full half hour, started from his chair and said with sudden resolution:

“Mother, I must leave this part of the country for a while.”

“That is news, John.”

“Yes. I shall go into the mining district for six months or a year, perhaps.”

“Well! go, John! you want a change. I think you can't do better than go.”

“I will, and no later than to-morrow.”

“That is sudden.”

“If I was to give myself time to think, I should never go at all.”

He went out briskly with the energy of this determination.

The same evening, about seven o'clock, as he sat reading by the fire, an unexpected visitor was announced—Mr. Merton.

He came cordially in and scolded Meadows for never having been to see him.

“I know you are a busy man,” said the old farmer, “but you might have given us a look in coming home from market; it is only a mile out of the way, and you are pretty well mounted in a general way.”

Then the old man, a gossip, took up one of Meadows' books. “Australia! ah!” grunted Merton, and dropped it like a hot potato; he tried another, “Why, this is Australia, too; why, they are all Australia, as I am a living sinner.” And he looked with a rueful curiosity into Meadows' face.

Meadows colored, but soon recovered his external composure.

“I have friends there,” said he hastily, “who tell me there are capital investments in that country, and they say no more than the truth.”

“Do you think he will do any good out there?” asked the old man, lowering his voice.

“I can't say,” answered Meadows dryly.

“Tell us something about that country, John,” said Merton; “and if you was to ask me to take a glass of your home-brewed ale I don't think I should gainsay you.”

The ale was sent for, and over it Meadows, whose powers of acquisition extended to facts as well as money, and who was full of this new subject, poured the agricultural contents of a dozen volumes into Mr. Merton.

The old farmer sat open-mouthed, transfixed with interest, listening to his friend's clear, intelligent and masterly descriptions of this wonderful land. At last the clock struck nine; he started up in astonishment.

“I shall get a scolding if I stay later,” said he, and off he went to Grassmere.

“Have you nothing else to say to me?” asked Meadows, as the farmer put his foot in the stirrup.

“Not that I know of,” replied the other, and cantered away.

“Confound him!” muttered Meadows; “he comes and stops here three hours, drinks my ale, gets my knowledge without the trouble of digging for't, and goes away, and not a word from Susan, or even a word about her—one word would have paid me for all this loss of time—but no, I was not to have it. I will be in Devonshire this time to-morrow—no, to-morrow is market day—but the day after I will go. I cannot live here and not see her, nor speak to her—'twill drive me mad.”

The next morning, as Meadows mounted his horse to ride to market, a carter's boy came up to him, and taking off his hat and pulling his head down by the front lock by way of salute, put a note into his hand. Meadows took it and opened it carelessly; it was a handwriting he did not know. But his eye had no sooner glanced at the signature than his eyes gleamed and his whole frame trembled with emotion he could hardly hide. This was the letter:

“DEAR MR. MEADOWS—We have not seen you here a long time, and if you could take a cup of tea with us on your way home from market, my father would be glad to see you, if it is not troubling you too much.

“I believe he has some calves he wishes to show you.

“I am, yours respectfully,

“SUSAN MERTON.

“P. S.—Father has been confined by rheumatism, and I have not been well this last month.”

Meadows turned away from the messenger, and said quietly, “Tell Miss Merton I will come, if possible.” He then galloped off, and as soon as there was no one in sight gave vent to his face and his exulting soul.

Now he congratulated himself on his goodness in making a certain vow and his firmness in keeping it.

“I kept out of their way, and they have invited me; my conscience is clear.”

He then asked himself why Susan had invited him; and he could not but augur the most favorable results from this act on her part. True, his manner to her had never gone beyond friendship, but women, he argued, are quick to discern their admirers under every disguise. She was dull and out of spirits, and wrote for him to come to her; this was a great point, a good beginning. “The sea is between her and George, and I am here, with time and opportunity on my side,” said Meadows; and as these thoughts coursed through his heart, his gray nag, spurred by an unconscious heel, broke into a hand-gallop, and after an hour and a half hard riding they clattered into the town of Newborough.

The habit of driving hard bargains is a good thing for teaching a man to suppress his feelings and feign indifference, yet the civil nonchalance with which Meadows, on his return from Newborough, walked into the Merton's parlor cost him no ordinary struggle.

The farmer received him cordially—Susan civilly, and with a somewhat feeble smile. The former soon engaged him in agricultural talk. Susan, meanwhile, made the tea in silence, and Meadows began to think she was capricious, and had no sooner got what she asked for than she did not care for it. After a while, however, she put in a word here and there, but with a discouraging languor.

Presently Farmer Merton brought her his tea-cup to be replenished, and upon this opportunity Susan said a word to her father in an undertone.

“Oh, ay!” replied the farmer very loud indeed; and Susan colored.

“What was you saying to me about that country—that Christmas-day is the hottest day in the year?” began Mr. Merton.

Meadows assented, and Merton proceeded to put other questions, in order, it appeared, to draw once more from Meadows the interesting information of last night.

Meadows answered shortly and with repugnance. Then Susan put in: “And is it true, sir, that the flowers are beautiful to the eye, but have no smell, and that the birds have all gay feathers, but no song?” Then Susan, scarcely giving him time to answer, proceeded to put several questions, and her manner was no longer languid, but bright and animated. She wound up her interrogatories with this climax:

“And do you think, sir, it is a country where George will be able to do any good. And will he have his health in that land, so far from every one to take care of him?”

And this doubt raised, the bright eyes were dimmed with tears in a moment.

Meadows gasped out, “Why not? why not?” but soon after, muttering some excuse about his horse, he went out with a promise to return immediately.

He was no sooner alone than he gave way to a burst of rage and bitterness.

“So, she only sent for me here to make me tell her about that infernal country where her George is. I'll ride home this instant—this very instant—without bidding them good-by.”

Cooler thoughts came. He mused deeply a few minutes, and then, clinching his teeth, returned slowly to the little parlor: he sat down and took his line with a brisk and cheerful air.

“You were asking me some questions about Australia. I can tell you all about that country, for I have a relation there who writes to me. And I have read all the books about it, too, as it happens.”

Susan brightened up.

Meadows, by a great histrionic effort, brightened up, too, and poured out a flood of really interesting facts and anecdotes about this marvelous land.

Then, in the middle of a narrative, which enchained both his hearers, he suddenly looked at his watch, and putting on a fictitious look of dismay and annoyance, started up with many excuses and went home—not, however, till Susan had made him promise to come again next market-day.

As he rode home in the moonlight Susan's face seemed still before him. The bright look of interest she had given him, the grateful smiles with which she had thanked him for his narration—all this had been so sweet at the moment, so bitter upon the least reflection. His mind was in a whirl. At last he grasped at one idea, and held it as with a vise.

“I shall be always welcome to her if I can bring myself to talk about that detestable country. Well, I will grind my tongue down to it. She shall not be able to do without my chat; that shall be the beginning; the middle shall be different; the end shall be just the opposite. The sea is between him and her. I am here with opportunity, resolution and money. I will have her!”

The next morning his mother said to him:

“John, do you think to go to-day?”

“Where, mother?”

“The journey you spoke of.”

“What journey?”

“Among the mines.”

“Not I.”

“You have changed your mind, then?”

“What, didn't you see I was joking?”

“No!” (very dryly.)

Soon after this little dialogue Dame Meadows proposed to end her visit and return home. Her son yielded a cheerful assent. She went gravely and quietly back to her little cottage.

Meadows had determined to make himself necessary to Susan Merton. He brought a woman's cunning to bear against a woman's; for the artifice to which his strong will bent his supple talent is one that many women have had the tact and temporary self-denial to carry out, but not one man in a hundred.

Men try to beat an absent rival by sneering at him, etc. By which means the asses make their absent foe present to her mind and enlist the whole woman in his defense.

But Meadows was no ordinary man. Susan had given his quick intelligence a glimpse of a way to please her. He looked at the end, and crushed his will down to the thorny means.

Twice a week he called on the Mertons, and much of his talk was Australia. Susan was grateful. To hear of the place where George would soon be was the nearest approach she could make to hearing of George.

As for Meadows, he gained a great point, but he went through tortures on the way. He could not hide from himself why he was so welcome; and many a time as he rode home from the Mertons he resolved never to return there, but he took no more oaths; it had cost him so much to keep the last; and that befell which might have been expected, after a while, the pleasure of being near the woman he loved, of being distinguished by her and greeted with pleasure however slight, grew into a habit and a need.

Achilles was a man of steel, but he had a vulnerable part; and iron natures like John Meadows have often one spot in their souls where they are far tenderer than the universal dove-eyed, and weaker than the omnipotent. He never spoke a word of love to Susan, he knew it would spoil all; and she, occupied with another's image, and looking upon herself as confessedly belonging to another, never suspected the deep passion that filled this man's heart. But if an observer of nature had accompanied John Meadows on market-day he might have seen—diagnostics.

All the morning his eye was cold and quick; his mouth, when silent, close, firm, and unreadable; his voice clear, decided, and occasionally loud. But when he got to old Merton's fireside he mellowed and softened like the sun toward evening. There his forehead unknit itself; his voice, pitched in quite a different key from his key of business, turned also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly won the hearer by its deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety; and his eye turned deeper in color, and, losing its keenness and restlessness, dwelt calmly and pensively for minutes at a time upon some little household object close to Susan; seldom, unless quite unobserved, upon Susan herself.

But the surrounding rustics suspected nothing, so calm and deep ran Meadows.

“Dear heart,” said Susan to her father, “who would have thought Mr. Meadows would come a mile out of his way twice a week to talk to me about Geo—about the country where my heart is—and the folk say he thinks of nothing but money and won't move a step without making it.”

“The folk are envious of him, girl—that is all. John Meadows is too clever for fools, and too industrious for the lazy ones; he is a good friend of mine, Susan; if I wanted to borrow a thousand pounds I have only to draw on Meadows; he has told me so half a dozen times.”

“We don't want his money, father,” replied Susan, “nor anybody's; but I think a great deal of his kindness, and George shall thank him when he comes home—if ever he comes home to Susan again.” These last words brought many tears with them, which the old farmer pretended not to notice, for he was getting tired of his daughter's tears. They were always flowing now at the least word, “and she used to be so good-humored and cheerful-like.”

Poor Susan! she was very unhappy. If any one had said to her, “to-morrow you die,” she would have smiled on her own account, and only sighed at the pain the news would cause poor George. Her George was gone, her mother had been dead this two years. Her life, which had been full of innocent pleasures, was now utterly tasteless, except in its hours of bitterness when sorrow overcame her like a flood. She had a pretty flower-garden in which she used to work. When George was at home what pleasure it had been to plant them with her lover's help, to watch them expand, to water them in the summer evening, to smell their gratitude for the artificial shower after a sultry day, and then to have George in, and set him admiring them with such threadbare enthusiasm, simply because they were hers, not in the least because they were Nature's.

I will go back, like the epic writers, and sketch one of their little garden scenes.

One evening, after watering them all, she sat down on a seat at the bottom of the garden, and casting her eyes over her whole domain, said, “Well, now, I do admire flowers; don't you, George?”

“That I do,” replied George, taking another seat, and coolly turning his back on the parterre, and gazing mildly into Susan's eyes.

“Why, he is not even looking at them!” cried Susan, and she clapped her hands and laughed gleefully.

“Oh, yes, he is; leastways he is looking at one of them, and the brightest of the lot to my fancy.”

Susan colored with pleasure. In the country compliments don't drip constantly on beauty even from the lips of love. Then, suppressing her satisfaction, she said, “You will look for a flower in return for that, young man; come and let us see whether there is one good enough for you.” So then they took hands, and Susan drew him demurely about the garden. Presently she stopped with a little start of hypocritical admiration; at their feet shone a marigold. Susan culled the gaudy flower and placed it affectionately in George's buttonhole. He received it proudly, and shaking hands with her, for it was time to part, turned away slowly. She let him take a step or two, then called him back. “He was really going off with that nasty thing.” She took it out of his buttonhole, rubbed it against his nose with well-feigned anger and then threw it away.

“You are all behind in flowers, George,” said Susan; “here, this is good enough for you,” and she brought out from under her apron, where she had carried the furtively culled treasure, a lovely clove-pink. Pretty soul, she had nursed and watered and cherished this choice flower this three weeks past for George, and this was her way of giving it him at last; so a true woman gives—(her life, if need be). George took it and smelled it, and lingered a moment at the garden gate, and moralized on it. “Well, Susan, dear, now I'm not so deep in flowers as you, but I like this a deal better than the marigold, and I'll tell you for why; it is more like you, Susan.”

“Ay! why?”

“I see flowers that are pretty, but have no smell, and I see women that have good looks, but no great wisdom nor goodness when you come nearer to them. Now the marigold is like those lasses; but this pink is good as well as pretty, so then it will stand for you, when we are apart, as we mostly are—worse luck for me.”

“Oh, George,” said Susan, dropping her quizzing manner, “I am a long way behind the marigold or any flower in comeliness and innocence, but at least I wish I was better.”

“I don't.”

“Ay, but I do, ten times better, for—for—”

“For why, Susan?”

Susan closed the garden gate and took a step toward the house. Then, turning her head over her shoulder, with an ineffable look of tenderness, tipped with one tint of lingering archness, she let fall, “For your sake, George,” in the direction of George's feet, and glided across the garden into the house.

George stood watching her. He did not at first take up all she had bestowed on him, for her sex has peculiar mastery over language, being diabolically angelically subtle in the art of saying something that expresses 1 oz. and implies 1 cwt.; but when he did comprehend, his heart exulted. He strode home as if he trod on air and often kissed the little flower he had taken from the beloved hand, “and with it words of so sweet breath composed, as made the thing more rich;” and as he marched past the house kissing the flower, need I tell my reader that so innocent a girl as Susan was too high-minded to watch the effect of her proceedings from behind the curtains? I hope not, it would surely be superfluous to relate what none would be green enough to believe.

These were Susan's happy days. Now all was changed. She hated to water her flowers now. She bade one of the farm-servants look to the garden. He accepted the charge, and her flowers' drooping heads told how nobly he had fulfilled it. Susan was charitable. Every day it had been her custom to visit more than one poor person; she carried meal to one, soup to another, linen to another, meat and bread to another, money to another—to all words and looks of sympathy. This practice she did not even now give up, for it came under the head of her religious duties; but she relaxed it. She often sent to places where she used to go. Until George went she had never thought of herself; and so the selfishness of those she relieved had not struck her. Now it made her bitter to see that none of those she pitied, pitied her. The moment she came into their houses it was, “My poor head, Miss Merton; my old bones do ache so.”

“I think a bit of your nice bacon would do ME good. I'M a poor sufferer, Miss Merton. My boy is 'listed. I thought as how you'd forgotten me altogether. But 'tis hard for poor folk to keep a friend.” “You see, miss, my bedroom window is broken in one or two places. John, he stopped it up with paper the best way he could, but la, bless you, paper baint like glass. It is very dull for me. You see, miss, I can't get about now as I used to could, and I never was no great reader. I often wish as some one would step in and knock me on the head, for I be no use, I baint, neer a mossel.” No one of them looked up in her face and said, “Lauks, how pale you ha got to look, miss; I hopes as how nothing amiss haven't happened to you, that have been so kind to us this many a day.” Yet suffering of some sort was plainly stamped on the face and in the manner of this relieving angel. When they poured out their vulgar woes, Susan made an effort to forget her own and to cheer as well as relieve them. But she had to compress her own heart hard to do it; and this suppression of feeling makes people more or less bitter. She had better have out with it, and scolded them well for talking as if they alone were unhappy; but her woman's nature would not let her. They kept asking her for pity, and she still gulped down her own heart and gave it them, till at last she began to take a spite against her pets; so then she sent to most of them instead of going. She sent rather larger slices of beef and bacon, and rather more yards of flannel than when she used to carry the like to them herself. Susan had one or two young friends, daughters of farmers in the neighborhood, with whom she was a favorite, though the gayer ones sometimes quizzed her for her religious tendencies, and her lamentable indifference to flirtation. But then she was so good and so good-humored, and so tolerant of other people's tastes. The prattle of these young ladies became now intolerable to Susan, and when she saw them coming to call on her she used to snatch up her bonnet and fly and lock herself up in a closet at the top of the house, and read some good book as quiet as a mouse, till the servants had hunted for her and told them she must be out. She was not in a frame of mind to sustain tarlatans, barege, the history of the last hop, and the prophecies of the next; the wounded deer shrunk from its gamboling associates, and indeed from all strangers, except John Meadows. “He talks to me about something worth talking about,” said Susan Merton. It happened one day, while Susan was in this sad and I may say dangerous state of mind, that the servant came up to her, and told her a gentleman was on his horse at the door, and wanted to see Mr. Merton.

“Father is at market, Jane.”

“Yes, miss, but I told the gentleman you were at home.”

“Me! what have I to do with father's visitors?”

“Miss,” replied Jane mysteriously, “it is a parson, and you are so fond of them, I could not think to let him go away without getting a word with anybody; and he has such a face. La, miss, you never saw such a face.”

“Silly girl, what have I to do with handsome faces?”

“But he is not handsome, miss, not in the least, only he is beautiful. You go and see else.”

“I hate strangers' faces, but I will go to him, Jane; it is my duty, since it is a clergyman. I will just go upstairs.”

“La, miss, what for? you are always neat, you are—nobody ever catches you in your dishables like the rest of 'em.”

“I'll just smooth my hair.”

“La, miss, what for? it is smooth as marble—it always is.”

“Where is he, Jane?”

“In the front parlor.”

“I won't be a moment.”

She went upstairs. There was no necessity; Jane was right there; but it was a strict custom in the country, and is, for that matter, and will be till time and vanity shall be no more. More majorum a girl must go up and look at herself in the glass if she did nothing more, before coming in to receive company.

Susan entered the parlor; she came in so gently that she had a moment to observe her visitor before he saw her. He had seated himself with his back to the light, and was devouring a stupid book on husbandry that belonged to her father. The moment she closed the door he saw her and rose from his seat.

“Miss Merton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The living of this place has been vacant more than a month.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It will not be filled up for three months, perhaps.”

“So we hear, sir.”

“Meantime you have no church to go to nearer than Barmstoke, which is a chapel-of-ease to this place, but two miles distant.”

“Two miles and a half, sir.”

“So then the people here have no divine service on the Lord's day.”

“No, sir, not for the present,” said Susan meekly, lowering her lashes, as if the clergyman had said, “This is a parish of heathens, whereof you are one.”

“Nor any servant of God to say a word of humility and charity to the rich, of eternal hope to the poor, and” (here his voice sunk into sudden tenderness) “of comfort to the sorrowful.”

Susan raised her eyes and looked him over with one dove-like glance, then instantly lowered them.

“No, sir, we are all under a cloud here,” said Susan sadly.

“Miss Merton, I have undertaken the duty here until the living shall be filled up; but you shall understand that I live thirty miles off, and have other duties, and I can only ride over here on Saturday afternoon and back Monday at noon.”

“Oh, sir!” cried Susan, “half a loaf is better than no bread! The parish will bless you, sir, and no doubt,” added she timidly, “the Lord will reward you for coming so far to us.”

“I am glad you think so,” said the clergyman thoughtfully. “Well, let us do the best we can. Tell me first, Miss Merton, do you think the absence of a clergyman is regretted here?”

“Regretted, sir! dear heart, what a question. You might as well ask me do father's turnips long for rain after a month's drought;” and Susan turned on her visitor a face into which the innocent venerating love her sex have for an ecclesiastic flashed without disguise.

Her companion smiled, but it was with benevolence, not with gratified vanity.

“Let me explain my visit. Your father is one of the principal people in the village. He can assist me or thwart me in my work. I called to invite his co-operation. Some clergymen are jealous of co-operation; I am not. It is a good thing for all parties; best of all for those who co-operate with us; for in giving alms wisely they receive grace, and in teaching the ignorant they learn themselves. Am I right?” added he rather sharply, turning suddenly upon Susan.

“Oh, sir,” said Susan, a little startled, “it is for me to receive your words, not to judge them.”

“Humph!” said the reverend gentleman rather dryly; he hated intellectual subserviency. He liked people to think for them-selves; and to end by thinking with him.

“Father will never thwart you, sir, and I—I will co-operate with you, sir, if you will accept of me,” said Susan innocently.

“Thank you, then let us begin at once.” He took out his watch. “I have an hour and a half to spare, then I must gallop back to Oxford. Miss Merton, I should like to make acquaintance with some of the people. Suppose we go to the school, and see what the children are learning, and then visit one or two families in the village, so I shall catch a glimpse of the three generations I have to deal with. My name is Francis Eden. You are going to get your bonnet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.”

They passed out through the garden. Mr. Eden stopped to look at the flowers. Susan colored.

“It has been rather neglected of late,” said she apologetically.

“It must have been very well taken care of before, then,” said he, “for it looks charming now. Ah! I love flowers dearly!” and he gave a little sigh.

They reached the school, and Mr. Eden sat down and examined the little boys and girls. When he sat down Susan winced. How angry he will be at their ignorance! thought Susan. But Mr. Eden, instead of putting on an awful look, and impressing on the children that a being of another generation was about to attack them, made himself young to meet their minds. A pleasant smile disarmed their fears. He spoke to them in very simple words and childish idioms, and told them a pretty story, which interested them mightily. Having set their minds really working, he put questions arising fairly out of his story, and so fathomed the moral sense and the intelligence of more than one. In short, he drew the brats out instead of crushing them in. Susan stood by, at first startled at the line he took, then observant, then approving. Presently he turned to her.

“And which is your class, Miss Merton?”

Susan colored.

“I take these little girls when I come, sir.

“Miss Merton has not been here this fortnight,” said a pert teacher.

Susan could have beat her. What will this good man think of me now? thought poor Susan. To her grateful relief, the good man took no notice of the observation; he looked at his watch.

“Now, Miss Merton, if I am not giving you too much trouble,” and they left the school.

“You wish to see some of the folk in the village, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Where shall I take you first, sir?”

“Where I ought to go first.”

Susan looked puzzled.

Mr. Eden stopped dead short.

“Come, guess,” said he, with a radiant smile, “and don't look so scared. I'll forgive you if you guess wrong.”

Susan looked this way and that, encouraged by his merry smile. She let out—scarce above a whisper, and in a tone of interrogation, as who should say this is not to be my last chance since I have only asked a question not risked an answer—

“To the poorest, Mr. Eden?”

“Brava! she has guessed it,” cried the Reverend Frank triumphantly; for he had been more anxious she should answer right than she had herself. “Young lady, I have friends with their heads full of Latin and Greek who could not have answered that so quickly as you; one proof more how goodness brightens intelligence,” added he in soliloquy. “Here's a cottage.”

“Yes, sir, I was going to take you into this one, if you please.”

They found in the cottage a rheumatic old man, one of those we alluded to as full of his own complaints. Mr. Eden heard these with patience, and then, after a few words of kind sympathy and acquiescence, for he was none of those hard humbugs who tell a man that old age, rheumatism and poverty are strokes with a feather, he said quietly:

“And now for the other side; now tell me what you have to be grateful for.”

The old man was taken aback and his fluency deserted him. On the question being repeated, he began to say that he had many mercies to be thankful for. Then he higgled and hammered and fumbled for the said mercies, and tried to enumerate them, but in phrases conventional and derived from tracts and sermons; whereas his statement of grievances had been idiomatic.

“There, that will do,” said Mr. Eden smiling, “say nothing you don't feel; what is the use? May I ask you a few questions,” added he, courteously; then, without waiting for permission, he dived skillfully into this man's life, and fished up all the pearls—the more remarkable passages.

Many years ago this old man had been a soldier, had fought in more than one great battle, had retreated with Sir John Moore upon Corunna, and been one of the battered and weary but invincible band who wheeled round and stunned the pursuers on 'that bloody and glorious day. Mr. Eden went with the old man to Spain, discussed with great animation the retreat, the battle, the position of the forces, and the old soldier's personal prowess. Old Giles perked up, and dilated, and was another man; he forgot his rheumatism, and even his old age. Twice he suddenly stood upright as a dart on the floor, and gave the word of command like a trumpet in some brave captain's name; and his cheek flushed, and his eye glittered with the light of battle. Susan looked at him with astonishment. Then when his heart was warm and his spirits attentive Mr. Eden began to throw in a few words of exhortation. But even then he did not bully the man into being a Christian; gently, firmly, and with a winning modesty, he said: “I think you have much to be thankful for, like all the rest of us. Is it not a mercy you were not cut off in your wild and dissolute youth? you might have been slain in battle.”

“That I might, sir; three of us went from this parish and only one came home again.

“You might have lost a leg or an arm, as many a brave fellow did; you might have been a cripple all your days.”

“That is true, sir.”

“You survive here in a Christian land, in possession of your faculties; the world, it is true, has but few pleasures to offer you—all the better for you. Oh, if I could but make that as plain to you as it is to me. You have every encouragement to look for happiness there, where alone it is to be found. Then courage, corporal; you stood firm at Corunna—do not give way in this your last and most glorious battle. The stake is greater than it was at Vittoria, or Salamanca, or Corunna, or Waterloo. The eternal welfare of a single human soul weighs a thousand times more than all the crowns and empires in the globe. You are in danger, sir. Discontent is a great enemy of the soul. You must pray against it—you must fight against it.”

“And so I will, sir; you see if I don't.”

“You read, Mr. Giles?” Susan had told Mr. Eden his name at the threshold.

“Yes, sir; but I can't abide them nasty little prints they bring me.”

“Of course you can't. Printed to sell, not to read, eh? Here is a book. The type is large, clear and sharp. This is an order-book, corporal. It comes from the great Captain of our salvation. Every sentence in it is gold; yet I think I may safely pick out a few for your especial use at present.” And Mr. Eden sat down, and producing from his side pockets, which were very profound, some long thin slips of paper, he rapidly turned the leaves of the Testament and inserted his markers; but this occupation did not for a moment interrupt his other proceedings.

“There is a pipe—you don't smoke, I hope?”

“No, sir; leastways not when I han't got any baccy, and I've been out of that this three days—worse luck.”

“Give up smoking, corporal, it is a foul habit.”

“Ah, sir! you don't ever have a half-empty belly and a sorrowful heart, or you wouldn't tell an old soldier to give up his pipe.”

“Take my advice. Give up all such false consolation, to oblige me, now.”

“Well, sir, to oblige you, I'll try; but you don't know what his pipe is to a poor old man full of nothing but aches and pains, or you wouldn't have asked me,” and old Giles sighed. Susan sighed, too, for she thought Mr. Eden cruel for once.

“Miss Merton,” said the latter sternly, his eye twinkling all the time, “he is incorrigible; and I see you agree with me that it is idle to torment the incurable. So” (diving into the capacious pocket) “here is an ounce of his beloved poison,” and out came a paper of tobacco. Corporal's eyes brightened with surprise and satisfaction. “Poison him, Miss Merton, poison him quick, don't keep him waiting.”

“Poison him, sir?”

“Fill his pipe for him, if you please.”

“That I will, sir, with pleasure.” A white hand with quick and supple fingers filled the brown pipe.

“That is as it should be. Let beauty pay honor to courage; above all to courage in its decay.”

The old man grinned with gratified pride. The white hand lighted the pipe, and gave it to the old soldier. He smiled gratefully all round and sucked his homely consolation.

“I compound with you, corporal. You must let me put you on the road to heaven, and, in return, I must let you go there in a cloud of tobacco—ugh!”

“I'm agreeable, sir,” said Giles dryly, withdrawing his pipe for a moment.

“There,” said Mr. Eden, closing the marked Testament, “read often in this book. Read first the verses I have marked, for these very verses have dropped comfort on the poor, the aged and the distressed for more than eighteen hundred years, and will till time shall be no more. And now good-by, and God bless you.”

“God bless you, sir, wherever you go!” cried the old man with sudden energy, “for you have comforted my poor old heart. I feel as I han't felt this many a day. Your words are like the bugles sounding a charge all down the line. You must go, I suppose; but do ye come again and see me. And, Miss Merton, you never come to see me now, as you used.”

“Miss Merton has her occupations like the rest of us,” said Mr. Eden quickly; “but she will come to see you—won't she?”

“Oh, yes, sir!” replied Susan, hastily. So then they returned to the farm, for Mr. Eden's horse was in the stable. At the door they found Mr. Merton.

“This is father, sir. Father, this is Mr. Eden, that is coming to take the duty here for a while.”

After the ordinary civilities Susan drew her father aside, and, exchanging a few words with him, disappeared into the house. As Mr. Eden was mounting his horse, Mr. Merton came forward and invited him to stay at his house whenever he should come to the parish. Mr. Eden hesitated.

“Sir,” said the farmer, “you will find no lodgings comfortable within a mile of the church, and we have a large house not half occupied. You can make yourself quite at home.”

“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Merton, but must not trespass too far upon your courtesy.”

“Well, sir,” replied the farmer, “we shall feel proud if you can put up with the like of us.”

“I will come. I am much obliged to you, sir, and to your daughter.”

He mounted his horse and bade the farmer good morning. Susan came out and stood on the steps and curtsied low—rustic fashion—but with a grace of her own. He took off his hat to her as he rode out of the gate, gave her a sweet, bright smile of adieu, and went down the lane fourteen miles an hour. Old Giles was seated outside his own door with a pipe and a book. At the sound of horses' feet he looked up and recognized his visitor, whom he had seen pass in the morning. He rose up erect and saluted him, by bringing his thumb with a military wave to his forehead. Mr. Eden saluted him in the same manner, but without stopping. The old soldier sat down again and read and smoked. The pipe ended—that solace was not of an immortal kind—but the book remained; he read it calmly but earnestly in the warm air till day declined.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER VII.

THE next Saturday Susan was busy preparing two rooms for Mr. Eden—a homely but bright bedroom looking eastward, and a snug room where he could be quiet downstairs. Snowy sheets and curtains and toilet-cover showed the good housewife. The windows were open, and a beautiful nosegay of Susan's flowers on the table. Mr. Eden's eye brightened at the comfort and neatness and freshness of the whole thing; and Susan, who watched him furtively, felt pleased to see him pleased.

On Sunday he preached in the parish church. The sermon was opposite to what the good people here had been subject to; instead of the vague and cold generalities of an English sermon, he drove home-truths home in business-like English. He used a good many illustrations, and these were drawn from matters with which this particular congregation were conversant. He was as full of similes here as he was sparing of them when he preached before the University of Oxford. Any one who had read this sermon in a book of sermons would have divined what sort of congregation it was preached to—a primrose of a sermon. Mr. Eden preached from notes and to the people—not the air. Like every born orator, he felt his way with his audience, whereas the preacher who is not an orator throws out his fine things, hit or miss, and does not know and feel and care whether he is hitting or missing. “Open your hand, shut your eyes, and fling out the good seed so much per foot—that is enough.” No. This man preached to the faces and hearts that happened to be round him. He established between himself and them a pulse, every throb of which he felt and followed. If he could not get hold of them one way, he tried another; he would have them—he was not there to fail. His discourse was human; it was man speaking to man on the most vital and interesting topic in the world or out of it; it was more, it was brother speaking to brother. Hence some singular phenomena. First, when he gave the blessing (which is a great piece of eloquence commonly reduced to a very small one by monotonous or feeble delivery), and uttered it, like his discourse, with solemnity, warmth, tenderness and all his soul, the people lingered some moments in the church and seemed unwilling to go at all. Second, nobody mistook their pew for their four-poster during the sermon. This was the more remarkable as many of the congregation had formed a steady habit of coming to this place once a week with the single view of snatching an hour's repose from earthly and heavenly cares.

The next morning Mr. Eden visited some of the poorest people in the parish. Susan accompanied him, all eyes and ears. She observed that his line was not to begin by dictating his own topic, but lie in wait for them; let them first choose their favorite theme, and so meet them on this ground, and bring religion to bear on it. “Oh, how wise he is!” thought Susan, “and how he knows the heart!”

One Sunday evening three weeks after his first official visit he had been by himself to see some of the poor people, and on his return found Susan alone. He sat down and gave an account of his visits.

“How many ounces of tea and tobacco did you give away, sir?” asked Susan, with an arch smile.

“Four tea, two tobacco,” replied the reverend gentleman.

“I do notice, sir, you never carry gingerbread or the like for the children.”

“No; the young don't want lollypops, for they have youth. Old age wants everything, so the old are my children, and I tea and tobacco them.”

After this there was a pause.

“Miss Merton, you have shown me many persons who need consolation, but there is one you say nothing about.”

“Have I, sir? Who? Oh, I think I know. Old Dame Clayton?”

“No, it is a young demoiselle.”

“Then I don't know who it can be.”

“Guess.”

“No, sir,” said Susan, looking down.

“It is yourself, Miss Merton.”

“Me, sir! Why, what is the matter with me?”

“That you shall tell me, if you think me worthy of your confidence.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. I have my little crosses, no doubt, like all the world; but I have health and strength. I have my father.”

“My child, you are in trouble. You were crying when I came in.

“Indeed I was not, sir!—how did you know I was crying?”

“When I came in you turned your back to me, instead of facing me, which is more natural when any one enters a room; and soon after you made an excuse for leaving the room, and when you came back there was a drop of water in your right eyelash.”

“It need not have been a tear, sir!”

“It was not; it was water. You had been removing the traces of tears.”

“Girls are mostly always crying, sir; often they don't know for why, but they don't care to have it noticed always.”

“Nor would it be polite or generous; but this of yours is a deep grief, and alarms me for you. Shall I tell you how I know? You often yawn and often sigh; when these two things come together at your age they are signs of a heavy grief; then it comes out that you have lost your relish for things that once pleased you. The first day I came here you told me your garden had been neglected of late, and you blushed in saying so. Old Giles and others asked you before me why you had given up visiting them; you colored and looked down. I could almost have told them, but that would have made you uncomfortable. You are in grief, and no common grief.”

“Nothing worth speaking to you about, sir; nothing I will ever complain of to any one.”

“There I think you are wrong; religion has consoled many griefs; great griefs admit of no other consolation. The sweetest exercise of my office is to comfort the heavy hearted. Your heart is heavy, my poor lamb—tell me—what is it?”

“It is nothing, sir, that you would understand; you are very skilled and notice-taking, as well as good, but you are not a woman, and you must excuse me, sir, if I beg you not to question me further on what would not interest you.”

Mr. Eden looked at her compassionately, and merely said to her again, “What is it?” in a low tone of ineffable tenderness.

At this Susan looked in a scared manner this way and that. “Sir, do not ask me, pray do not ask me so;” then she suddenly lifted her hands, “My George is gone across the sea! What shall I do! what shall I do!!” and she buried her face in her apron.

This burst of pure Nature—this simple cry of a suffering heart—was very touching, and Mr. Eden, spite of his many experiences, was not a little moved. He sat silent, looking on her as an angel might be supposed to look upon human griefs, and as he looked on her various expressions chased one another across that eloquent face. Sweet and tender memories and regrets were not wanting among them. After a long pause he spoke in a tone soft and gentle as a woman's, and at first in a voice so faltering that Susan, though her face was hidden, felt there was no common sympathy there, and silently put out her hand toward it.

He murmured consolation. He said many gentle, soothing things. He told her that it was very sad the immense ocean should roll between two loving hearts, “but,” said he, “there are barriers more impassable than the sea. Better so than that he should be here and jealousy, mistrust, caprice, or even temper come between you. I hope he will come back; I think he will come back.”

She blessed him for saying so. She was learning to believe everything this man uttered.

From consolation he passed to advice.

“You must do the exact opposite of what you have been doing.”

“Must I?”

“You must visit those poor people; ay, more than ever you did; hear patiently their griefs; do not expect much in return, neither sympathy nor a great deal of gratitude; vulgar sorrow is selfish. Do it for God's sake and your own single-heartedly. Go to the school, return to your flowers, and never shun innocent society, however dull. Milk and water is a poor thing, but it is a diluent, and all we can do just now is to dilute your grief.”

He made her promise: “Next time I come tell me all about you and George. 'Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.'”

It Is Never Too Late to Mend

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND

By Charles Reade

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

THE world is full of trouble.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.