Transcribed from the 1909 Wells Gardner, Darton, & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

FRIARSWOOD
POST-OFFICE

by
C. M. YONGE,
author of “the heir of redclyffe”

with coloured illustrations
by
a. g. walker
sculptor

london:
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON, & CO., LTD.
3 & 4 Paternoster Buildings, E.C.
and 44 Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W.

CHAPTER I—THE STRANGE LAD

‘Goodness! If ever I did see such a pig!’ said Ellen King, as she mounted the stairs. ‘I wouldn’t touch him with a pair of tongs!’

‘Who?’ said a voice from the bedroom.

‘Why, that tramper who has just been in to buy a loaf! He is a perfect pig, I declare! I only wonder you did not find of him up here! The police ought to hinder such folk from coming into decent people’s shops! There, you may see him now!’

‘Is that he upon the bridge—that chap about the size of our Harold?’

‘Yes. Did you ever see such a figure? His clothes aren’t good enough for a scare-crow—and the dirt, you can’t see that from here, but you might sow radishes in it!’

‘Oh, he’s swinging on the rail, just as I used to do. Put me down, Nelly; I don’t want to see any more.’ And the eyes filled with tears; there was a working about the thin cheeks and the white lips, and a long sigh came out at last, ‘Oh, if I was but like him!’

‘Like him! I’d wish something else before I wished that,’ said Ellen. ‘Don’t think about it, Alfred dear; here are Miss Jane’s pictures.’

‘I don’t want the pictures,’ said Alfred wearily, as he laid his head down on his white pillow, and shut his eyes because they were hot with tears.

Ellen looked at him very sadly, and the feeling in her own mind was, that he was right, and nothing could make up for the health and strength that she knew her mother feared would never return to him.

There he lay, the fair hair hanging round the white brow with the furrows of pain in it, the purple-veined lids closed over the great bright blue eyes, the long fingers hanging limp and delicate as a lady’s, the limbs stretched helplessly on the couch, whither it cost him so much pain to be daily moved. Who would have thought, that not six months ago that poor cripple was the merriest and most active boy in the parish?

The room was not a sad-looking one. There were spotless white dimity curtains round the lattice window; and the little bed, and the walnut of the great chest, and of the doors of the press-bed on which Alfred lay, shone with dark and pale grainings. There was a carpet on the floor, and the chairs had chintz cushions; the walls were as white as snow, and there were pretty china ornaments on the mantel-piece, many little pictures hanging upon the walls, and quite a shelf of books upon the white cloth, laid so carefully on the top of the drawers. A little table beside Alfred held a glass with a few flowers, a cup with some toast and water, a volume of the ‘Swiss Family Robinson;’ and a large book of prints of animals was on a chair where he could reach it.

A larger table was covered with needle-work, shreds of lining, scissors, tapes, and Ellen’s red work-box; and she herself sat beside it, a very nice-looking girl of about seventeen, tall and slim, her lilac dress and white collar fitting beautifully, her black apron sitting nicely to her trim waist, and her light hair shining, like the newly-wound silk of the silk-worm, round her pleasant face; where the large, clear, well-opened blue eyes, and the contrast of white and red on the cheek, were a good deal like poor Alfred’s, and gave an air of delicacy.

Their father had been, as their mother said, ‘the handsomest coachman who ever drove to St. James’s;’ but he had driven thither once too often; he had caught his death of cold one bitter day when Lady Jane Selby was obliged to go to a drawing-room, and had gone off in a deep decline fourteen years ago, when the youngest of his five children was not six weeks old.

The Selby family were very kind to Mrs. King, who, besides her husband’s claims on them, had been once in service there; and moreover, had nursed Miss Jane, the little heiress, Ellen’s foster-sister. By their help she had been able to use her husband’s savings in setting up a small shop, where she sold tea, tobacco and snuff, tape, cottons, and such little matters, besides capital bread of her own baking, and various sweet-meats, the best to the taste of her own cooking, the prettiest to the eye brought from Elbury. Oranges too, and apples, shewed their yellow or rosy cheeks at her window in their season; and there was sometimes a side of bacon, displaying under the brown coat the delicate pink stripes bordering the white fat. Of late years one pane of her window had been fitted up with a wooden box, with a slit in it on the outside, and a whole region round it taken up with printed sheets of paper about ‘Mails to Gothenburg,—Weekly Post to Vancouver’s Island’—and all sorts of places to which the Friarswood people never thought of writing.

Altogether, she throve very well; and she was a good woman, whom every one respected for the pains she took to bring up her children well. The eldest, Charles, had died of consumption soon after his father, and there had been much fear for his sister Matilda; but Lady Jane had contrived to have her taken as maid to a lady who usually spent the winter abroad, and the warm climate had strengthened her health. She was not often at Friarswood; but when she came she looked and spoke like a lady—all the more so as she gave herself no airs, but was quite simple and humble, for she was a very good right-minded young woman, and exceedingly fond of her home and her good mother.

Ellen would have liked to copy Matilda in everything; and as a first step, she went for a year to a dress-maker; but just as this was over, Alfred’s illness had begun; and as he wanted constant care and attendance, it was thought better that she should take in work at home. Indeed Alfred was such a darling of hers, that she could not have endured to go away and leave him so ill.

Alfred had been a most lively, joyous boy, with higher spirits than he quite knew what to do with, all fun and good-humour, and yet very troublesome and provoking. He and his brother Harold were the monkeys of the school, and really seemed sometimes as if they could not sit still, nor hinder themselves from making faces, and playing tricks; but that was the worst of them—they never told untruths, never did anything mean or unfair, and could always be made sorry when they had been in fault. Their old school-mistress liked them in spite of all the plague they gave her; and they liked her too, though she had tried upon them every punishment she could devise.

Little Miss Jane, the orphan whom the Colonel and Mrs. Selby had left to be brought up by her grandmother, had a great fancy that Alfred should be a page; and as she generally had her own way, he went up to the Grange when he was about thirteen years old, and put on a suit thickly sown with buttons. But ere the gloss of his new jacket had begun to wear off, he had broken four wine-glasses, three cups, and a decanter, all from not knowing where he was going; he had put sugar instead of salt into the salt-cellars at the housekeeper’s dining-table, that he might see what she would say; and he had been caught dressing up Miss Jane’s Skye terrier in one of the butler’s clean cravats; so, though Puck, the aforesaid terrier, liked him better than any other person, Miss Jane not excepted, a regular complaint went up of him to my Lady, and he was sent home. He was abashed, and sorry to have vexed mother and disappointed Miss Jane; but somehow he could not be unhappy when he had Harold to play with him again, and he could halloo as loud as they pleased, and stamp about in the garden, instead of being always in mind to walk softly.

There was the pony too! A new arrangement had just been made, that the Friarswood letters should be fetched from Elbury every morning, and then left at the various houses of the large straggling district that depended on that post-office. All letters from thence must be in the post before five o’clock, at which time they were to be sent in to Elbury. The post-master at Elbury asked if Mrs. King’s sons could undertake this; and accordingly she made a great effort, and bought a small shaggy forest pony, whom the boys called ‘Peggy,’ and loved not much less than their sisters.

It was all very well in the summer to take those two rides in the cool of the morning and evening; but when winter came on, and Alfred had to start for Elbury in the tardy dawn of a frosty morning, or still worse, in the gloom of a wet one, he did not like it at all. He used to ride in looking blue and purple with the chill; and though he went as close to the fire as possible, and steamed like the tea-kettle while he ate his breakfast and his mother sorted the letters, he had not time to warm himself thoroughly before he had to ride off to leave them—two miles further altogether; for besides the bag for the Grange, and all the letters for the Rectory, and for the farmers, there was a young gentlemen’s school at a great old lonely house, called Ragglesford, at the end of a very long dreary lane; and many a day Alfred would have given something if those boys’ relations would only have been so good as, with one consent, to leave them without letters.

It would not have mattered if Alfred had been a stouter boy; but his mother had always thought he had his poor father’s constitution, and therefore wished him to be more in the house; but his idleness had prevented his keeping any such place. It might have been the cold and wet, or, as Alfred thought, it might have been the strain he gave himself one day when he was sliding on the ice and had a fall; but one morning he came in from Elbury very pale, and hobbling, as he said his hip hurt him so much, that Harold must take the letters round for him.

Harold took them that morning, and for many another morning and evening besides; while poor Alfred came from sitting by the fire to being a prisoner up-stairs, only moved now and then from his own bed to lie outside that of his mother, when he could bear it. The doctor came, and did his best; but the disease had thrown itself into the hip joint, and it was but too plain that Alfred must be a great sufferer for a long time, and perhaps a cripple for life. But how long might this life be? His mother dared not think. Alfred himself, poor boy, was always trying with his whole might to believe himself getting better; and Ellen and Harold always fancied him so, when he was not very bad indeed; but for the last fortnight he had been decidedly worse, and his heart and hopes were sinking, though he would not own it to himself, and that and the pain made his spirits fail so, that he had been more inclined to be fretful than any time since his illness had begun.

His view from the window was a pleasant one; and when he was pretty well, afforded him much amusement. The house stood in a neat garden, with green railings between it and the road, over which Alfred could see every one who came and went towards Elbury, and all who had business at the post-office, or at Farmer Shepherd’s. Opposite was the farm-yard; and if nothing else was going on, there were always cocks and hens, ducks and turkeys, pigs, cows, or horses, to be seen there; and the cow-milking, or the taking the horses down to the water, the pig-feeding, and the like, were a daily amusement. Sloping down from the farm-yard, the ground led to the river, a smooth clear stream, where the white ducks looked very pretty, swimming, diving, and ‘standing tail upwards;’ and there was a high-arched bridge over it, where Alfred could get a good view of the carriages that chanced to come by, and had lately seen all the young gentlemen of Ragglesford going home for the summer holidays, making such a whooping and hurrahing, that the place rang again; and beyond, there were beautiful green meadows, with a straight path through them, leading to a stile; and beyond that, woods rose up, and there was a little glimpse of a stately white house peeping through them. Hay-making was going on merrily in the field, under the bright summer sun, and the air was full of the sweet smell of the grass, but there was something sultry and oppressive to the poor boy’s feelings; and when he remembered how Farmer Shepherd had called him to lend a hand last year, and how happy he had been tossing the hay, and loading the waggon, a sad sick feeling crept over him; and so it was that the tears rose in his eyes, and he made his sister lay him back on the pillow, for he did not wish to see any more.

Ellen worked and thought, and wanted to entertain him, but could not think how. Presently she burst out, however, ‘Oh, Alfred! there’s Harold coming running back! There he is, jumping over that hay-cock—not touched the ground once—another—oh! there’s Farmer Shepherd coming after him!’

‘Hold your tongue,’ muttered Alfred moodily, as if each of her words gave him unbearable pain; and he hid his face in the pillow.

Ellen kept silence for ten minutes, and then broke forth again, ‘Now then, Alfred, you will be glad! There’s Miss Jane getting over the stile.’

‘I don’t want Miss Jane,’ grumbled Alfred; and as Ellen sprang up and began smoothing his coverings, collecting her scraps, and tidying the room, already so neat, he growled again, ‘What a racket you keep!’

‘There, won’t you be raised up to see her? She does look so pretty in her new pink muslin, with a double skirt, and her little hat and feather, that came from London; and there’s Puck poking in the hay—he’s looking for a mouse! And she’s showering the hay over him with her parasol! Oh, look, Alfred!’ and she was going to lift him up, but he only murmured a cross ‘Can’t you be quiet?’ and she let him alone, but went on talking: ‘Ah, there’s Puck’s little tail wriggling out—hinder-end foremost—here he comes—they are touching their hats to her now, the farmer and all, and she nods just like a little queen! She’s got her basket, Alfred. I wonder what she has for you in it! Oh dear, there’s that strange boy on the bridge! She won’t like that.’

‘Why, what would he do to her? He won’t bite her,’ said Alfred.

‘Oh, if he spoke to her, or begged of her, she’d be so frightened! There, he looked at her, and she gave such a start. You little vagabond! I’d like to—’

‘Stuff! what could he do to her, with all the hay-field and Farmer Shepherd there to take care of her? What a fuss you do make!’ said poor Alfred, who was far too miserable just then to agree with any one, though at almost any other time he would have longed to knock down any strange boy who did but dare to pass Miss Selby without touching his cap; and her visits were in general the very light of his life.

They were considered a great favour; for though old Lady Jane Selby was a good, kind-hearted person, still she had her fancies, and she kept her young grand-daughter like some small jewel, as a thing to be folded up in a case, and never trusted in common. She was afraid to allow her to go about the village, or into the school and cottages, always fancying she might be made ill, or meet with some harm; but Mrs. King being an old servant, whom she knew so well, and the way lying across only two meadows beyond Friarswood Park, the little pet was allowed to go so far to visit her foster-mother, and bring whatever she could devise to cheer the poor sick boy.

Miss Jane, though of the same age as Ellen, and of course with a great deal more learning and accomplishment, had been so little used to help herself, or to manage anything, that she was like one much younger. The sight of the rough stranger on the bridge was really startling to her, and she came across the road and garden as fast as she could without a run; and the first thing the brother and sister heard, was her voice saying rather out of breath and fluttered, ‘Oh, what a horrid-looking boy!’

Seeing that Mrs. King was serving some one in the shop, she only nodded to her, and came straight up-stairs. Alfred raised up his head, and beheld the little fairy through the open door, first the head, and the smiling little face and slight figure in the fresh summer dress.

Miss Jane was not thought very pretty by strangers; but that dainty little person, and sweet sunny eyes and merry smile, and shy, kind, gracious ways, were perfect in the eyes of her grandmamma and of Mrs. King and her children, if of nobody else. Alfred, in his present dismal state, only felt vexed at a fresh person coming up to worry him, and make a talking; especially one whose presence was a restraint, so that he could not turn about and make cross answers at his will.

‘Well, Alfred, how are you to-day?’ said the sweet gay voice, a little subdued.

‘Better, Ma’am, thank you,’ said Alfred, who always called himself better, whatever he felt; but his voice told the truth better than his words.

‘He’s had a very bad night, Miss Jane,’ said his sister; ‘no sleep at all since two o’clock, and he is so low to-day, that I don’t know what to do with him.’

Alfred hated nothing so much as to hear that he was low, for it meant that he was cross.

‘Poor Alfred!’ said the young lady kindly. ‘Was it pain that kept you awake?’

‘No, Ma’am—not so much—’ said the boy.

Miss Jane saw he looked very sad, and hoped to cheer him by opening her basket. ‘I’ve brought you a new book, Alfred. It is “The Cherry-stones.” Have you finished the last?’

‘No, Ma’am.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

But it was a very matter-of-course sort of Yes, and disappointed Miss Jane, who thought he would have been charmed with the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’

Ellen spoke: ‘Oh yes, Alfred, you know you did like it. I heard you laughing to yourself at Ernest and the shell of soup. And Harold reads that; and ’tis so seldom he will look at a book.’

Jane did not like this quite as well as if Alfred had spoken up more; but she dived into her basket again, and brought out a neat little packet of green leaves, with some strawberries done up in it, and giving a little smile, she made sure that it would be acceptable.

Ellen thanked vehemently, and Alfred gave feeble thanks; but, unluckily, he had so set his mind upon raspberries, that he could not enjoy the thought of anything else. It was a sickly distaste for everything, and Miss Selby saw that he was not as much pleased as she meant him to be; she looked at him wistfully, and, half grieved, half impatient, she longed to know what he would really like, or if he were positively ungrateful. She was very young, and did not know whether it was by his fault or her mistake that she had failed to satisfy him.

Puck had raced up after her, and had come poking and snuffling round Alfred. She would have called him away lest he should be too much for one so weak, but she saw Alfred really did enjoy this: his hand was in the long rough coat, and he was whispering, ‘Poor Puck,’ and ‘Good little doggie;’ and the little hairy rummaging creature, with the bright black beads of eyes gleaming out from under his shaggy hair, was doing him more good than her sense and kindness, or Ellen’s either.

She turned to the window, and said to Ellen, ‘What a wild-looking lad that is on the bridge!’

‘Yes, Miss Jane,’ said Ellen; ‘I was quite afraid he would frighten you.’

‘Well, I was surprised,’ said Jane; ‘I was afraid he might speak to me; but then I knew I was too near friends for harm to come to me;’ and she laughed at her own fears. ‘How ragged and wretched he looks! Has he been begging?’

‘No, Miss Jane; he came into the shop, and bought some bread. He paid for it honestly; but I never did see any one so dirty. And there’s Alfred wishing to be like him. I knew you would tell him it is quite wicked, Miss Jane.’

It is not right, I suppose, to wish to be anything but what we are,’ said Jane, rather puzzled by the appeal; ‘and perhaps that poor beggar-boy would only like to have a nice room, and kind mother and sister, like you, Alfred.’

‘I don’t say anything against them!’ cried the boy vehemently; ‘but—but—I’d give anything—anything in the world—to be able to run about again in the hay-field! No, don’t talk to me, Ellen, I say—I hate them all when I see them there, and I forced to lie here! I wish the sun would never shine!’

He hid his eyes and ears in the pillow, as if he never wished to see the light again, and would hear nothing. The two girls both stood trembling. Ellen looked at Miss Selby, and she felt that she must say something. But what could she say?

With tears in her eyes she laid hold of Alfred’s thin hand and tried to speak, choked by tears. ‘Dear Alfred, don’t say such dreadful things. You know we are all so sorry for you; but God sent it.’

Alfred gave a groan of utter distress, as if it were no consolation.

‘And—and things come to do us good,’ continued Miss Jane, the tears starting to her cheeks.

‘I don’t know what good it can do me to lie here!’ cried Alfred.

‘Oh, but, Alfred, it must.’

‘I tell you,’ exclaimed the poor boy, forgetting his manners, so that Ellen stood dismayed, ‘it does not do me good! I didn’t use to hate Harold, nor to hate everybody.’

‘To hate Harold!’ said Jane faintly.

‘Ay,’ said Alfred, ‘when I hear him whooping about like mad, and jumping and leaping, and going on like I used to do, and never shall again.’

The tears came thick and fast, and perhaps they did him good.

‘But, Alfred,’ said Jane, trying to puzzle into the right thing, ‘sometimes things are sent to punish us, and then we ought to submit quietly.’

‘I don’t know what I’ve done, then,’ he cried angrily. ‘There have been many worse than I any day, that are well enough now.’

‘Oh, Alfred, it is not who is worse, but what one is oneself,’ said Jane.

Alfred grunted.

‘I wish I knew how to help you,’ she said earnestly; ‘it is so very sad and hard; and I dare say I should be just as bad myself if I were as ill; but do, pray, Alfred, try to think that nobody sent it but God, and that He must know best.’

Alfred did not seem to take in much comfort, and Jane did not believe she was putting it rightly; but it was time for her to go home, so she said anxiously, ‘Good-bye, Alfred; I hope you’ll be better next time—and—and—’ She bent down and spoke in a very frightened whisper, ‘You know when we go to church, we pray you may have patience under your sufferings.’

Then she sprang away, as if ashamed of the sound of her own words; but as she was taking up her basket and wishing Ellen good-bye, she saw that the strange lad had moved nearer the house, and timid little thing as she was, she took out a sixpence, and said, ‘Do give him that, and ask him to go away.’

Ellen had no very great fancy for facing the enemy herself, but she made no objection; and looking down-stairs, she saw her brother Harold waiting while his mother stamped the letters, and she called to him, and sent him out to the boy.

He came back in a few moments so much amazed, that she could see the whites all round his eyes.

‘He won’t have it! He’s a rum one that! He says he’s no beggar, and that if the young lady would give him work, he’d thank her; but he wants none of her money, and he’ll stand where he chooses!’

‘Why didn’t you lick him?’ hallooed out Alfred’s voice from his bed. ‘Oh! if I—’

‘Nonsense, Alfred!’ cried Miss Jane, frightened into spirit; ‘stand still, Harold! I don’t mind him.’

And she put up her parasol, and walked straight out at the house door as bold as a little lioness, going on without looking to the right or left.

‘If—’ began Harold, clenching his fists—and Alfred raised himself upon his bed with flashing eyes to watch, as the boy had moved nearer, and looked for a moment as if he were going to grin, or say something impudent; but the quiet childish form stepping on so simply and steadily seemed to disarm him, and he shrunk back, left her to trip across the road unmolested, and stood leaning over the rail of the bridge, gazing after her as she crossed the hay-field.

Harold rode off with the letters; and Alfred lay gazing, and wondering what that stranger could be, counting the holes in his garments, and trying to guess at his history.

One good thing was, that Alfred was so much carried out of himself, that he was cheerful all the evening.

CHAPTER II—HAY-MAKING

There was again a sultry night, which brought on so much discomfort and restlessness, that poor Alfred could not sleep. He tried to bear in mind how much he had disturbed his mother the night before, and he checked himself several times when he felt as if he could not bear it any longer without waking her, and to remember his old experience, that do what she would for him, it would be no real relief, and he should only be sorry the next day when he saw her going about her work with a worn face and a head-ache.

Then every now and then Miss Selby’s words about being patient came back to him. Sometimes he thought them hard, coming from a being who had never known sickness or sorrow, and wondered how she would feel if laid low as he was; but they would not be put away in that manner, for he knew they were true, and were said by others than Miss Jane, though he had begun to think no phrase so tiresome, hopeless, or provoking. People always told him to be patient when they had no comfort to give him, and did not know what he was suffering. He would not have minded it so much if only he could have got it out of his head. Somehow it would not let him call to his mother, if it was only because very likely all he should get by so doing would be to be again told to be patient. And then came Miss Jane’s telling him his illness might be good for him, as if she thought he deserved to be punished. Really that was hard! Who could think he deserved this wearing pain and helplessness, only because he had played tricks on the butler and housekeeper, and now and then laughed at church?

‘It is just like Job and his friends,’ thought Alfred. ‘I don’t want her to come and see me any more!’

Poor Alfred! There was a little twinge here. His conscience could not give quite such an account as did that of Job! But he did not like recollecting his own errors better than any of us do, and liked much more to feel himself very hardly used, and greatly to be pitied. Thereupon he opened his lips to call to his mother, but that old thought about patience returned on him; he had mercy on her regular breathing, though it made him quite envious to hear it, and he said to himself that he would let her alone, at least till the next time the clock struck. It would be three o’clock next time. Oh dear, would the night never be over? How often such a round of weary thoughts came again and again can hardly be counted; but, at any rate, poor Alfred was exercising one act of forbearance, and that was so much gain. At last he found, by the increasing light shewing him the shapes of all the pictures, that he must have had a short sleep which had made him miss the clock, and he felt a good deal injured thereby.

However, Mrs. King was too good a nurse not to be awakened by his first movement, and she came to him, gave him some cold tea, and settled his pillow so as to make him more comfortable; and when he begged her to let in a little more air, she went to open the window wider, and relieve the closeness of the little room. She had learnt while living with Lady Jane that night air is not so dangerous as some people fancy; and it was an infinite relief to Alfred when the lattice was thrown back, and the cool breeze came softly in, with the freshness of the dew, and the delicious scent of the hay-field.

Mrs. King stood a moment to look out at the beautiful stillness of early dawn, the trees and meads so gravely calmly quiet, and the silver dew lying white over everything; the tanned hay-cocks rising up all over the field, the morning star and waning moon glowing pale as light of morning spread over the sky. Then a cock crew somewhere at a distance, and Mrs. Shepherd’s cock answered him more shrilly close by, and the swallows began to twitter under the eaves.

‘It will be a fine day, to be sure!’ she said. ‘The farmer will get in his hay!’ and then she stood looking as if something had caught her attention.

‘What do you see, Mother?’ asked Alfred.

‘I was looking what that was under yon hay-cock,’ said Mrs. King; ‘and I do believe it is some one sleeping there.’

‘Ha!’ cried Alfred. ‘I dare say it is the boy that would not have Miss Jane’s sixpence.’

‘I’m sure I hope he’s after no harm,’ said Mrs. King; ‘I don’t like to have tramps about so near. I hope he means no mischief by the farmer’s poultry.’

‘He can’t be one of that sort, or he wouldn’t have refused the money,’ said Alfred. ‘How nice and cool it must be sleeping in the hay! I’ll warrant he doesn’t lie awake. I wish I was there!’

‘You’ll know what to be thankful for one of these days, my poor lad,’ said his mother, sighing; then yawning, she said, ‘I must go back to bed. Mind you call out, Alfred, if you hear anything like a noise in the farm-yard.’

This notion rather interested Alfred; he began to build up a fine scheme of shouting out and sending Harold to the rescue of the cocks and hens, and how well he would have done it himself a year ago, and pinned the thief, and fastened the door on him. Not that he thought this individual lad at all likely to be a thief, nor did he care much for Farmer Shepherd, who was a hard man and no favourite; but to catch a thief would be a grand feat. And while settling his clever plan, and making some compliments for the magistrate to pay him, Alfred, fanned by the cool breeze, fell into a sound sleep, and did not wake till the sun was high, and all the rest of the house were up and dressed.

That good sleep made him much more able to bear the burden of the day. First, his mother came with the towel and basin, and washed his face and hands; and then he had his little book, and said his prayers; and somehow to-day he felt so much less fractious than usual, that he asked to be taught patience, and not only to be made well, as he had hitherto done.

That over, he lay smiling as he waited for his breakfast, and when Ellen brought it to him, he had not one complaint to make, but ate it almost with a relish. ‘Is that boy gone?’ he asked Ellen, as she tidied the room while he was eating.

‘What, the dirty boy? No, there he is, speaking to the farmer. Will he beg of him?’

‘Asking for work, more likely.’

‘I’d sooner give work to a pig at once,’ said Ellen; ‘but I do believe he’s getting it. I fancy they are short of hands for the hay. Yes, he’s pointing into the field. Ay, and he’s sending him into the yard.’

‘I hope he’ll give him some breakfast,’ said Alfred. ‘Do you know he slept all night on a hay-cock?’

‘Yes, so Mother said, just like a dog; and he got up like a dog this morning,—never so much as washed himself at the river. Why, he’s coming here! Whatever does he want?’

‘The lad?’

‘No, the farmer.’

Mr. Shepherd’s heavy tread was heard below, and, as Alfred said, Ellen had only to hold her tongue for them be able to hear his loud tones telling Mrs. King that the glass was falling, and his hay in capital order, and his hands short, and asking whether her boy Harold would come and help in the hay-field between the post times. Mrs. King gave a ready answer that the boy would be well pleased, and the farmer promised him his victuals and sixpence for the day. ‘Your lass wouldn’t like to come too, I suppose, eh?’

Ellen flushed with indignation. She go a hay-making! Her mother was civilly making answer that her daughter was engaged with her sick brother, and besides—had her work for Mrs. Price, which must be finished off. The farmer, saying he had not much expected her, but thought she might like a change from moping over her needle, went off.

Ellen did not feel ready to forgive him for wanting to set her to field-work. There is some difference between being fine and being refined, and in Ellen’s station of life it is very difficult to hit the right point. To be refined is to be free from all that is rough, coarse, or ungentle; to be fine, is to affect to be above such things. Now Ellen was really refined in her quietness and maidenly modesty, and there was no need for her to undertake any of those kinds of tasks which, by removing young girls from home shelter, do sometimes help to make them rude and indecorous; but she was fine, when she gave herself a little mincing air of contempt, as if she despised the work and those who did it. Lydia Grant, who worked so steadily and kept to herself so modestly, that no one ventured a bold word to her as she tossed her hay, was just as refined as Ellen King behind her white blinds, ay, or as Jane Selby herself in her terraced garden. Refinement is in the mind that loves whatsoever is pure, lovely, and of good report; finery is in disdaining what is homely or humble.

Boys of all degrees are usually, when they are good for anything, the greatest enemies of the finery tending to affectation; and Alfred at once began to make a little fun of his sister, and tell her it would be a famous thing for her, he believed she had quite forgotten how to run, and did not know a rake from a fork when she saw it. He knew she was longing for a ride in the waggon, if she would but own it.

Ellen used to be teased by this kind of joking; but she was too glad to see Alfred well enough so to entertain himself, to think of anything but pleasing him, so she answered good-humouredly that Harold must make hay for them all three to-day, no doubt but he would be pleased enough.

He was heard trotting home at this moment, and whistling as he hitched up the pony at the gate, and ran in with the letter-bag, to snap up his breakfast while the letters were sorted.

‘Here, let me have them,’ called Alfred, and they were glad he should do it, for he was the quickest of the family at reading handwriting; but he was often too ill to attend to it, and more often the weary fretfulness and languor of his state made him dislike to exert himself, so it was apt to depend on his will or caprice.

‘Look sharp, Alf!’ hallooed out Harold, rushing up-stairs with the bags in one hand, and his bread-and-butter in the other. ‘If you find a letter for that there Ragglesford, I don’t know what I shall do to you! I must be back in no time for the hay!’

And he had bounced down-stairs again before Ellen had time to scold him for making riot enough to shake Alfred to pieces. He was a fine tall stout boy, with the same large fully open blue eyes, high colour, white teeth, and light curly hair, as his brother and sister, but he was much more sunburnt. If you saw him with his coat off, he looked as if he had red gloves and a red mask on, so much whiter was his skin where it was covered; and he was very strong for his age, and never had known what illness was. The brothers were very fond of each other, but since Alfred had been laid up, they had often been a great trial to each other—the one seemed as little able to live without making a noise, as the other to endure the noise he made; and the sight of Harold’s activity and the sound of his feet and voice, vexed the poor helpless sufferer more than they ought to have done, or than they would had the healthy brother been less thoughtless in the joy of his strength.

To-day, however, all was smooth. Alfred did not feel every tread of those bounding limbs like a shock to his poor diseased frame; and he only laughed as he unlocked the leathern bag, and dealt out the letters, putting all those for the Lady Jane Selby, Miss Selby, and the servants, into their own neat little leathern case with the padlock, and sorting out the rest, with some hope there might be one from Matilda, who was a very good one to write home. There was none from her, but then there was none for Ragglesford, and that was unexpected good luck. If the old housekeeper left in charge had been wicked enough to get her newspaper that day, Alfred felt that in Harold’s place he should be sorely tempted to chuck it over the hedge. Ellen looked as if he had talked of murdering her, and truly such a breach of trust would have been a very grievous fault.

‘The Reverend—what’s his name? the Reverend Marcus Cope, Friarswood, near Elbury,’ read Alfred; ‘one, two, three letters, and a newspaper. Yes, and this long printed-looking thing. Who is he, Ellen?’

‘What did you say?’ said Ellen, who was busy shaking her mother’s bed, and had not heard at the first moment, but now turned eagerly; ‘what did you say his name was?’

‘The Reverend Marcus Cope,’ repeated Alfred. ‘Is that another new parson?’

‘Why, did not we tell you what a real beautiful sermon the new clergyman preached on Sunday? Mr. Cope, so that’s his name. I wonder if he is come to stay.—Mother,’ she ran to the head of the stairs, ‘the new clergyman’s name is the Reverend Mr. Marcus Cope.’

‘He don’t live at Ragglesford, I hope!’ cried Harold, who regarded any one at the end of that long lane as his natural enemy.

‘No, it only says Friarswood,’ said Ellen. ‘You’ll have to find out where he lives, Harold.’

‘Pish! it will take me an hour going asking about!’ said Harold impatiently. ‘He must have his letters left here till he chooses to come for them, if he doesn’t know where he lives.’

‘No, no, Harold, that won’t do,’ said Mrs. King. ‘You must take the gentleman his letters, and they’ll be sure to know at the Park, or at the Rectory, or at the Tankard, where he lodges. Well, it will be a real comfort if he is come to stop.’

So Harold went off with the letters and the pony, and Ellen and her mother exchanged a few words about the gentleman and his last Sunday’s sermon, and then Ellen went to dust the shop, and put out the bread, while her mother attended to Alfred’s wound, the most painful part of the day to both of them.

It was over, however, and Alfred was resting afterwards when Harold cantered home as hard as the pony could or would go, and came racing up to say, ‘I’ve seen him! He’s famous! He stood out in the road and met me, and asked for his letters, and he’s to be at the Parsonage, and he asked my name, and then he laughed and said, “Oh! I perceive it is the royal mail!” I didn’t know what he was at, but he looked as good-humoured as anything. Halloo! give me my old hat, Nell—that’s it! Hurrah! for the hay-waggon! I saw the horses coming out!’

And off he went again full drive; and Alfred did nothing worse than give a little groan.

Ellen had enough to do in wondering about Mr. Cope. News seemed to belong of right to the post-office, and it was odd that he should have preached on Sunday, and now it should be Tuesday, without anything having been heard of him, not even from Miss Jane; but then the young lady had been fluttered by the strange boy, and Alfred had been so fretful, that it might have put everything out of her head.

Friarswood was used to uncertainty about the clergyman. The Rector had fallen into such bad health, that he had long been unable to do anything, and always hoping to get better, he had sent different gentlemen to take the services, first one and then another, or had asked the masters at Ragglesford to help him; but it was all very irregular, and no one had settled down long enough to know the people or do much good in visiting them. My Lady, as they all called Lady Jane, was as sorry as any one could be, and she tried what she could do by paying a very good school-master and mistress, and giving plenty of rewards; but nothing could be like the constant care of a real good clergyman, and the people were all the worse for the want. They had the church to go to, but it was not brought home to them. The Rector had been obliged at last to go abroad, one of the Ragglesford gentlemen had performed the service for the ensuing Sundays, until now there seemed to be a chance that this new clergyman was coming to stay.

This interested Alfred less than his sister. His curiosity was chiefly about the strange lad; and when he was moved to his place by the window he turned his eyes anxiously to make him out in the line of hay-makers, two fields off, as they shook out the grass to give it the day’s sunshine. He knew them all, the ten women, with their old straw bonnets poked down over their faces, and deep curtains sewn on behind to guard their necks; the farm men come in from their other work to lend a hand, three or four boys, among whom he could see Harold’s white shirt sleeves, and sometimes hear his merry laugh, and he was working next to the figure in brown faded-looking tattered array, which Alfred suspected to belong to the strange boy. So did Ellen. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘Harold ye scraped acquaintance with that vagabond-looking boy; I wish I had warned him against it, but I suppose he would only have done it all the more.’

‘You want to make friends with him yourself, Ellen! We shall have you nodding to him next! You are as curious about him as can be!’ said Alfred slyly.

‘Me! I never was curious about nothing so insignificant,’ said Ellen. ‘All I wish is, that that boy may not be running into bad company.’

The hay-fields were like an entertainment on purpose for Alfred all day; he watched the shaking of the brown grass all over the meadows in the morning, and the farmer walking over it, and smelling it, and spying up to guess what would come of the great rolling towers of grey clouds edged with pearly white, soft but dazzling, which varied the intense blue of the sky.

Then he watched all the company sit or lie down on the shady side of the hedge, under the pollard-willows, and Tom Boldre the shuffler and one or two more go into the farm-house, and come out with great yellow-ware with pies in them, and the little sturdy-looking kegs of beer, and two mugs to go round among them all. There was Harold lying down, quite at his ease, close to the strange boy; Alfred knew how much better that dinner would taste to him than the best with the table-cloth neatly spread in his mother’s kitchen; and well did Alfred remember how much more enjoyment there was in such a meal as that, than in any one of the dainties that my Lady sent down to tempt his sickly appetite. And what must pies and beer be to the wanderer who had eaten the crust so greedily the day before! Then, after the hour’s rest, the hay-makers rose up to rake the hay into beds ready for the waggons. Harold and the stranger were raking opposite to each other, and Alfred could see them talking; and when they came into the nearer hay-field, he saw Harold put up his hand, and point to the open window, as if he were telling the other lad about the sick boy who was lying there.

He was so much absorbed in thus watching, that he did not pay much heed to what interested his mother and sister—the reports which came by every customer about the new clergyman, who, it appeared, had been staying in the next parish till yesterday, when he had moved into the Rectory; and Mrs. Bonham, the butcher’s wife, reported that the Rectory servants said he was come to stay till their master came back. All this and much more Mrs. King heard and rehearsed to Ellen, while Alfred lay, sometimes reading the ‘Swiss Robinson,’ sometimes watching the loading of the wains, as they creaked slowly through the fields, the horses seeming to enjoy the work, among their fragrant provender, as much as the human kind. When five o’clock struck, Harold gave no signs of quitting the scene of action; and Mrs. King, in much anxiety lest the letters should be late, sent Helen to get the pony ready, while she herself went into the field to call the boy.

Very unwilling he was to come—he shook his shoulders, and growled and grumbled, and said he should be in plenty of time, and he wished the post was at the bottom of the sea. Nothing but his mother’s orders and the necessity of the case could have made him go at all. At last he walked off, as if he had lead in his feet, muttering that he wished he had not some one to be always after him. Mrs. King looked at the grimy face of his disreputable-looking companion, and wondered whether he had put such things into his head.

Very cross was Harold as he twitched the bridle out of Ellen’s hand, threw the strap of the letter-bag round his neck, and gave such a re-echoing switch to the poor pony, that Alfred heard it up-stairs, and started up to call out, ‘For shame, Harold!’

Harold was ashamed: he settled himself in the saddle and rode off, but Alfred had not the comfort of knowing that his ill-humour was not being vented upon the poor beast all the way to Elbury. Alfred had given a great deal of his heart to that pony, and it made him feel helpless and indignant to think that it was ill-used. Those tears of which he was ashamed came welling up into his eyes as he lay back on his pillow; but they were better tears than yesterday’s—they were not selfish.

‘Never mind, Alfy,’ said Ellen, ‘Harold’s not a cruel lad; he’ll not go on, if he was cross for a bit. It is all that he’s mad after that boy there! I wish mother had never let him go into the hay-field to meet bad company! Depend upon it, that boy has run away out of a Reformatory! Sleeping out at night! I can’t think how Farmer Shepherd could encourage him among honest folk!’

‘Well, now I think of it, I should not wonder if he had,’ said Mrs. King. ‘He is the dirtiest boy that ever I did see! Most likely; I wish he may do no mischief to-night!’

Harold came home in better humour, but a fresh vexation awaited him. Mrs. King would not let him go to the hay-home supper in the barn. The men were apt to drink too much and grow riotous; and with her suspicions about his new friend, she thought it better to keep him apart. She was a spirited woman, who would be minded, and Harold knew he must submit, and that he had behaved very ill. Ellen told him too how much Alfred had been distressed about the pony, and though he would not shew her that he cared, it made him go straight up-stairs, and with a somewhat sheepish face, say, ‘I say, Alf, the pony’s all right. I only gave him one cut to get him off. He’d never go at all if he didn’t know his master.’

‘He’d go fast enough for my voice,’ said Alfred.

‘You know I’d never go for to beat him,’ continued Harold; ‘but it was enough to vex a chap—wasn’t it?—to have Mother coming and lugging one off from the carrying, and away from the supper and all. Women always grudge one a bit of fun!’

‘Mother never grudged us cricket, nor nothing in reason,’ said Alfred. ‘Lucky you that could make hay at all! And what made you so taken up with that new boy that Ellen runs on against, and will have it he’s a convict?’

‘A convict! if Ellen says that again!’ cried Harold; ‘no more a convict than she is.’

‘What is he, then? Where does he come from?’

‘His name is Paul Blackthorn,’ said Harold; ‘and he’s the queerest chap I ever came across. Why, he knew no more what to do with a prong than the farmer’s old sow till I shewed him.’

‘But where did he come from?’ repeated Alfred.

‘He walked all the way from Piggot’s turnpike yesterday,’ said Harold. ‘He’s looking for work.’

‘And before that?’

‘He’d been in the Union out—oh! somewhere, I forgot where, but it’s a name in the Postal Guide.’

‘Well, but you’ve not said who he is,’ said Ellen.

‘Who? why, I tell you, he’s Paul Blackthorn.’

‘But I suppose he had a father and mother,’ said Ellen.

‘No,’ said Harold.

‘No!’ Ellen and Alfred cried out together.

‘Not as ever he heard tell of,’ said Harold composedly, as if this were quite natural and common.

‘And you could go and be raking with him like born brothers there!’ said Ellen, in horror.

‘D’ye think I’d care for stuff like that?’ said Harold. ‘Why, he sings—he sings better than Jack Lyte! He’s learnt to sing, you know. And he’s such a comical fellow! he said Mr. Shepherd was like a big pig on his hind legs; and when Mrs. Shepherd came out to count the scraps after we had done, what does he do but whisper to me to know how long our withered cyder apples had come to life!’

Such talents for amusing others evidently far out-weighed in Harold’s consideration such trifling points as fathers, mothers, and respectability. Alfred laughed; but Ellen thought it no laughing matter, and reproved Harold for being wicked enough to hear his betters made game of.

‘My betters!’ said Harold—‘an old skinflint like Farmer Shepherd’s old woman?’

‘Hush, Harold! I’ll tell Mother of you, that I will!’ cried Ellen.

‘Do then,’ said Harold, who knew his sister would do no such thing. She had made the threat too often, and then not kept her word.

She contented herself with saying, ‘Well, all I know is, that I’m sure now he has run away out of prison, and is no better than a thief; and if our place isn’t broken into before to-morrow morning, and Mother’s silver sugar-tongs gone, it will be a mercy. I’m sure I shan’t sleep a wink all night.’

Both boys laughed, and Alfred asked why he had not done it last night.

‘How should I know?’ said Ellen. ‘Most likely he wanted to see the way about the place, before he calls the rest of the gang.’

‘Take care, Harold! it’s a gang coming now,’ said Alfred, laughing again. ‘All coming on purpose to steal the sugar-tongs!’

‘No, I’ll tell you what they are come to steal,’ said Harold mischievously; ‘it’s all for Ellen’s fine green ivy-leaf brooch that Matilda sent her!’

‘I dare say Harold has been and told him everything valuable in the house!’ said Ellen.

‘I think,’ said Alfred gravely, ‘it would be a very odd sort of thief to come here, when the farmer’s ploughing cup is just by.’

‘Yes,’ said Harold, ‘I’d better have told him of that when I was about it; don’t you think so, Nelly?’

‘If you go on at this rate,’ said Ellen, teased into anger, ‘you’ll be robbing the post-office yourself some day.’

‘Ay! and I’ll get Paul Blackthorn to help me,’ said the boy. ‘Come, Ellen, don’t be so foolish; I tell you he’s every bit as honest as I am, I’d go bail for him.’

‘And I know he’ll lead you to ruin!’ cried Ellen, half crying: ‘a boy that comes from nowhere and nobody knows, and sleeps on a hay-cock all night, no better than a mere tramp!’

‘What, quarrelling here? ‘said Mrs. King, coming up-stairs. ‘The lad, I wish him no ill, I’m sure, but he’ll be gone by to-morrow, so you may hold your tongues about him, and we’ll read our chapter and go to bed.’

Harold’s confidence and Ellen’s distrust were not much wiser the one than the other. Which was nearest being right?

CHAPTER III—A NEW FRIEND

The post-office was not robbed that night, neither did the silver sugar-tongs disappear, though Paul Blackthorn was no farther off than the hay-loft at Farmer Shepherd’s, where he had obtained leave to sleep.

But he did not go away with morning, though the hay-making was over. Ellen saw him sitting perched on the empty waggon, munching his breakfast, and to her great vexation, exchanging nods and grins when Harold rode by for the morning’s letters; and afterwards, there was a talk between him and the farmer, which ended in his having a hoe put into his hand, and being next seen in the turnip-field behind the farm.

To make up for the good day, this one was a very bad one with poor Alfred. There was thunder in the air, and if the sultry heat weighed heavily even on the healthy, no wonder it made him faint and exhausted, disposed to self-pity, and terribly impatient and fretful. He was provoked by Ellen’s moving about the room, and more provoked by Harold’s whistling as he cleaned out the stable; and on the other hand, Harold was petulant at being checked, and vowed there was no living in the house with Alfred making such a work. Moreover, Alfred was restless, and wanted something done for him every moment, interrupting Ellen’s work, and calling his mother up from her baking so often for trifles, that she hardly knew how to get through it.

The doctor, Mr. Blunt, came, and he too felt the heat, having spent hours in going his rounds in the closeness and dust. He was a rough man, and his temper did not always hold out; he told Alfred sharply that he would have no whining, and when the boy moaned and winced more than he would have done on a good day, he punished him by not trying to be tender-handed. When Mrs. King said, perhaps a little lengthily, how much the boy had suffered that morning, the doctor, wearied out, no doubt, with people’s complaints, cut her short rather rudely, ‘Ay, ay, my good woman, I know all that.’

‘And can nothing be done, Sir, when he feels so sinking and weak?’

‘Sinking—he must feel sinking—nothing to do but to bear it,’ said Mr. Blunt gruffly, as he prepared to go. ‘Don’t keep me now;’ and as Alfred held up his hand, and made some complaint of the tightness of the bandage, he answered impatiently, ‘I’ve no time for that, my lad; keep still, and be glad you’ve nothing worse to complain of.’

‘Then you don’t think he is getting any better, Sir?’ said Mrs. King, keeping close to him. ‘I thought he was yesterday, and I wanted to speak to you. My oldest daughter thought if we could get him away to the sea, and—’

‘That’s all nonsense,’ said the hurried doctor; ‘don’t you spend your money in that way; I tell you nothing ever will do him any good.’

This was at the bottom of the stairs; and Mr. Blunt was off. He was the cleverest doctor for a good way round, and it was not easy to Mrs. King to secure his attendance. Her savings and Matilda’s were likely to melt away sadly in paying him, since she was just too well off to be doctored at the parish expense, and he was really a good and upright man, though wanting in softness of manner when he was hurried and teased. If Mrs. King had known that he was in haste to get to a child with a bad burn, she might have thought him less unkind in the short ungentle way in which he dashed her hopes. Alas! there had never been much hope; but she feared that Alfred might have heard, and have been shocked.

Ellen heard plainly enough, and her heart sank. She tried to look at her brother’s face, but he had put it out of sight, and spoke not a word; and she only could sit wondering what was the real drift of the cruel words, and whether the doctor meant to give no hope of recovery, or only to dissuade her mother from vainly trying change of air. Her once bright brother always thus! It was a sad thought, and yet she would have been glad to know he would be no worse; and Ellen’s heart was praying with all her might that he might have his health and happiness restored to him, and that her mother might be spared this bitter sorrow.

Alfred said nothing about the doctor’s visit, but he could eat no dinner, and did not think this so much the fault of his sickly taste, as of his mother’s potato-pie; he could not think why she should be so cross as to make that thing, when she knew he hated it; and as to poor Harold, Alfred would hardly let him speak or stir, without ordering Ellen down to tell him not to make such a row.

Ellen was thankful when Harold was fairly hunted out of the house and garden, even though he betook himself to the meadow, where Paul Blackthorn was lying on the grass with his feet kicking in the air, and shewing the skin through his torn shoes. The two lads squatted down on the grass with their heads together. Who could tell what mischief that runaway might be putting into Harold’s head, and all because Alfred could not bear with him enough for him to be happy at home?

They were so much engrossed, that it needed a rough call from the farmer to send Paul back to his work when the dinner-hour was over; whereupon Harold came slowly to his digging again.

Hotter and hotter did it grow, and the grey dull clouds began to gain a yellow lurid light in the distance; there were low growlings of thunder far away, and Ellen left her work unfinished, and forgot how hot she was herself in toiling to fan Alfred, so as to keep him in some little degree cooler, while the more he strove with the heat, the more oppressed and miserable he grew.

Poor fellow! his wretchedness was not so much the heat, as the dim perception of Mr. Blunt’s hasty words; he had not heard them fully—he dared not inquire what they had been, and he could not endure to face them—yet the echo of ‘nothing will ever do him good,’ seemed to ring like a knell in his ears every time he turned his weary head. Nothing do him good! Nothing! Always these four walls, that little bed, this wasting weary lassitude, this gnawing, throbbing pain, no pony, no running, no shouting, no sense of vigour and health ever again, and perhaps—that terrible perhaps, which made Alfred’s very flesh quail, he would not think of; and to drive it away, he found some fresh toil to require of the sister who could not content him, toil as she would.

Slowly the afternoon hours rolled on, one after the other, and Alfred had just been in a pet with the clock for striking four when he wanted it to be five, when the sky grew darker, and one or two heavy drops of rain came plashing down on the thirsty earth.

‘The storm is coming at last, and now it will be cooler,’ said Ellen, looking out from the window. ‘Dear me!’ she added, there stopping short.

‘What?’ asked Alfred. ‘What are you gaping at?’

‘I declare!’ cried Ellen, ‘it’s the new clergyman! It is Mr. Cope, and he is coming up to the wicket!’

Alfred turned his head with a peevish sound; he was in the dreary mood to resent whatever took off attention from him for a moment.

‘A very pleasant-looking gentleman,’ commented Ellen, ‘and so young! He does not look older than Charles Lawrence! I wonder whether he is coming in, or if it is only to post a letter. Oh! there he is, talking to Mother! There!’

A vivid flash of lightning came over the room at that moment and made them all pause till it was followed up by the deep rumble of the thunder, and then down rushed the rain, plashing and leaping up again, bringing out the delicious scent from the earth, and seeming in one moment to breathe refreshment and relief on the sick boy. His brow was already clearing, as he listened to his mother’s tones of welcome, as she was evidently asking the stranger to sit down and wait for the storm to be over, and the cheerful voice that replied to her. He did not scold Ellen for, as usual, making things neat; and whereas, five minutes sooner, he would have hated the notion of any one coming near him, he now only hoped that his mother would bring Mr. Cope up; and presently he heard the well-known creak of the stairs under a manly foot, and his mother’s voice saying something about ‘a great sufferer, Sir.’

Then came in sight his mother’s white cap, and behind her one of the most cheerful lively faces that Alfred had ever beheld. The new Curate looked very little more than a boy, with a nice round fresh rosy face, and curly brown hair, and a quick joyous eye, and regular white teeth when he smiled that merry good-humoured smile. Indeed, he was as young as a deacon could be, and he looked younger. He knocked his tall head against the top of the low doorway as he came into the room, and answered Mrs. King’s apologies with a pleasant laugh. Ellen knew her mother would like him the better for his height, for no one since the handsome coachman himself had had to bend his head to get into the room. Alfred liked the looks of him the first moment, and by way of salutation put up one of his weary, white, blue-veined hands to pull his damp forelock; but Mr. Cope, nodding in answer to Ellen’s curtsey, took hold of his hand at once, and softening the cheery voice that was so pleasant to hear, said, ‘Well, my boy, I hope we shall be good friends. And what’s your name?’

‘Alfred King, Sir,’ was the answer. It really was quite a pleasure not to begin with the old weary subject of being pitied for his illness.

‘King Alfred!’ said Mr. Cope. ‘I met King Harold yesterday. I’ve got into royal company, it seems!’

Alfred smiled, it was said so drolly; but his mother, who felt a little as if she were being laughed at, said, ‘Why, Sir, my brother’s name was Alfred; and as to Harold, it was to please Miss Jane’s little sister that died—she was quite a little girl then, Sir, but so clever, and she would have him named out of her History of England.’

‘Did Miss Selby give you those flowers?’ said Mr. Cope, admiring the rose and geranium in the cup on the table.

‘Yes, Sir;’ and Mrs. King launched out in the praises of Miss Jane and of my Lady, an inexhaustible subject which did not leave Alfred much time to speak, till Mrs. King, seeing the groom from the Park coming with the letter-bag through the rain, asked Mr. Cope to excuse her, and went down-stairs.

‘Well, Alfred, I think you are a lucky boy,’ he said. ‘I was comparing you with a lad I once knew of, who got his spine injured, and is laid up in a little narrow garret, in a back street, with no one to speak to all day. I don’t know what he would not give for a sister, and a window like this, and a Miss Jane.’

Alfred smiled, and said, ‘Please, Sir, how old is he?’

‘About sixteen; a nice stout lad he was, as ever I knew, till his accident; I often used to meet him going about with his master, and thought it was a pleasure to meet such a good-humoured face.’

Alfred ventured to ask his trade, and was told he was being brought up to wait on his father, who was a bricklayer, but that a ladder had fallen with him as he was going up with a heavy load, and he had been taken at once to the hospital. The house on which he was employed belonged to a friend of Mr. Cope, and all in the power of this gentleman had been done for him, but that was not much, for it was one of the families that no one can serve; the father drank, and the mother was forced to be out charing all day, and was so rough a woman, that she could hardly be much comfort to poor Jem when she was at home.

Alfred was quite taken up with the history by this time, and kept looking at Mr. Cope, as if he would eat it up with his eager eyes. Ellen asked compassionately who did for the poor boy all day.

‘His mother runs in at dinner-time, if she is not at work too far off, and he has a jug of water and a bit of bread where he can reach them; the door is open generally, so that he can call to some of the other lodgers, but though the house is as full as a bee-hive, often nobody hears him. I believe his great friend is a little school-girl, who comes and sits by him, and reads to him if she can; but she is generally at school, or else minding the children.’

‘It must be very lonely,’ said Alfred, perceiving for the first time that there could be people worse off than himself; ‘but has he no books to read?’

‘He was so irregularly sent to school, that he could not read to himself, even if his corner were not so dark, and the window so dingy. My friend gave him a Bible, but he could not get on with it; and his mother, I am sorry to say, pawned it.’

Ellen and Alfred both cried out as if they had never heard of anything so shocking.

‘It was grievous,’ said Mr. Cope; ‘but the poor things did not know the value, and when there was scarcely a morsel of bread in the house, there was cause enough for not judging them hardly, but I don’t think Jem would allow it now. He got some of his little friend’s easy Scripture lessons and the like, in large print, which he croons over as he lies there alone, till one feels sure that they are working into his heart. The people in the house say that though he has been ill these three years, he has never spoken an ill-tempered word; and if any one pities him, he answers, “It is the Lord,” and seems to wish for no change. He lies there between dozing and dreaming and praying, and always seems content.’

‘Does he think he shall get well?’ said Alfred, who had been listening earnestly.

‘Oh no; there is no chance of that; it is an injury past cure. But I suppose that while he bears the Will of God so patiently here, his Heavenly Father makes it up to him in peacefulness of heart now, and the hope of what is to come hereafter.’

Alfred made no answer, but his eyes shewed that he was thinking; and Mr. Cope rose, and looked out of window, as a gleam of sunshine, while the dark cloud lifted up from the north-west, made the trees and fields glow with intense green against the deep grey of the sky, darker than ever from the contrast. Ellen stood up, and Alfred exclaimed, ‘Oh Sir, please come again soon!’

‘Very soon,’ said Mr. Cope good-humouredly; ‘but you’ve not got rid of me yet, the rain is pretty hard still, and I see the beggarmen dancing all down the garden-walk.’

Alfred and Ellen smiled to hear their mother’s old word for the drops splashing up again; and Mr. Cope went on:

‘The garden looks very much refreshed by this beautiful shower. It is in fine order. Is it the other monarch’s charge?’

‘Harold’s, Sir,’ said Ellen. ‘Yes, he takes a great pride in it, and so did Alfred when he was well.’

‘Ah, I dare say; and it must be pleasant to you to see your brother working in it now. I see him under that shed, and who is that lad with him? They seem to have some good joke together.’

‘Oh,’ said Ellen, ‘Harold likes company, you see, Sir, and will take up with anybody. I wish you could be so good as to speak to him, Sir, for lads of that age don’t mind women folk, you see, Sir.’

‘What? I hope his majesty does not like bad company?’ said Mr. Cope, not at all that he thought lightly of such an evil, but it was his way to speak in that droll manner, especially as Ellen’s voice was a little bit peevish.

‘Nobody knows no harm of the chap,’ said Alfred, provoked at Ellen for what he thought unkindness in setting the clergyman at once on his brother; but Ellen was the more displeased, and exclaimed:

‘Nor nobody knows no good. He’s a young tramper that hired with Farmer Shepherd yesterday, a regular runaway and reprobate, just out of prison, most likely.’

‘Well, I hope not so bad as that,’ said Mr. Cope, ‘he’s not a bad-looking boy; but I dare say you are anxious about your brother. It must be dull for him, to have his companion laid up;—and by the looks of him, I dare say his spirits are sometimes too much for you,’ he added, turning to Alfred.

‘He does make a terrible racket sometimes,’ said Alfred.

‘Ay, and I dare say you will try to bear with it, and not drive him out to seek dangerous company,’ said Mr. Cope; at which Alfred blushed a little, as he remembered the morning, and that he had never thought of this danger.

Mr. Cope added, ‘I think I shall go and talk to those two merry fellows; I must not tire you, my lad, but I will soon come here again;’ and he took leave.

Heartily did Ellen exclaim, ‘Well, that is a nice gentleman!’ and as heartily did Alfred reply. He felt as if a new light had come in on his life, and Mr. Cope had not said one word about patience.

Ellen expected Mr. Cope to come back and warn her mother against Paul Blackthorn, but she only saw him stand talking to the two lads till he made them both grin again, and then as the rain was over, he walked away; Paul went back to his turnips, and Harold came thundering up-stairs in his great shoes. Alfred was cheerful, and did not mind him now; but Ellen did, and scolded him for the quantity of dirt he was bringing up with him from the moist garden, which was all one steam of sweet smells, as the sun drew up the vapour after the rain.

‘If you were coming in, you’d better have come out of the rain, not stood idling there with that good-for-nothing lad. The new minister said he would be after you if you were taking up with bad company.’

‘Who told you I was with bad company?’ said Harold.

‘Why, I could see it! I hope he rebuked you both.’

‘He asked us if we could play at cricket—and he asked the pony’s name,’ said Harold, ‘if that’s what you call rebuking us!’

‘And what did he say to that boy?’

‘Oh! he told him he heard he was a stranger here, like himself, and asked how long he’d been here, and where he came from.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said he was from Upperscote Union—come out because he was big enough to keep himself, and come to look for work,’ said Harold. ‘He’s a right good chap, I’ll tell you, and I’ll bring him up to see Alfy one of these days!’

‘Bring up that dirty boy! I should like to see you!’ cried Ellen, making such a face. ‘I don’t believe a word of his coming out of the Union. I’m sure he’s run away out of gaol, by the look of him!’

‘Ellen—Harold—come down to your tea!’ called Mrs. King.

So they went down; and presently, while Mrs. King was gone up to give Alfred his tea, there came Mrs. Shepherd bustling across, with her black silk apron thrown over her cap with the crimson gauze ribbons. She wanted a bit of tape, and if there were none in the shop, Harold must match it in Elbury when he took the letters.

Ellen was rather familiar with Mrs. Shepherd, because she made her gowns, and they had some talk about the new clergyman. Mrs. Shepherd did not care for clergymen much; if she had done so, she might not have been so hard with her labourers. She was always afraid of their asking her to subscribe to something or other, so she gave it as her opinion, that she should never think it worth while to listen to such a very young man as that, and she hoped he would not stay; and then she said, ‘So your brother was taking up with that come-by-chance lad, I saw. Did he make anything out of him?’

‘He fancies him more than I like, or Mother either,’ said Ellen. ‘He says he’s out of Upperscote Union; but he’s a thorough impudent one, and owns he’s no father nor mother, nor nothing belonging to him. I think it is a deal more likely that he is run away from some reformatory, or prison.’

‘That’s just what I said to the farmer!’ said Mrs. Shepherd. ‘I said he was out of some place of that sort. I’m sure it’s a sin for the gentlemen to be setting up such places, raising the county rates, and pampering up a set of young rogues to let loose on us. Ay! ay! I’ll warrant he’s a runaway thief! I told the farmer he’d take him to his sorrow, but you see he is short of hands just now, and the men are so set up and grabbing, I don’t know how farmers is to live.’

So Mrs. Shepherd went away grumbling, instead of being thankful for the beautiful crop of hay, safely housed, before the thunder shower which had saved the turnips from the fly.

Ellen might have doubted whether she had done right in helping to give the boy a bad name, but just then in came the ostler from the Tankard with some letters.

‘Here!’ he said, ‘here’s one from one of the gentlemen lodging here fishing, to Cayenne. You’ll please to see how much there is to pay.’

Ellen looked at her Postal Guide, but she was quite at a fault, and she called up-stairs to Alfred to ask if he knew where she should look for Cayenne. He was rather fond of maps, and knew a good deal of geography for a boy of his age, but he knew nothing about this place, and she was just thinking of sending back the letter, to ask the gentleman where it was, when a voice said:

‘Try Guiana, or else South America.’

She looked up, and there were Paul’s dirty face and dirtier elbows, leaning over the half-door of the shop.

‘Why, how do you know?’ she said, starting back.

‘I learnt at school, Cayenne, capital of French Guiana.’ Sure enough Cayenne had Guiana to it in her list, and the price was found out.

But when this learned geographer advanced into the shop, and asked for a loaf, what a hand and what a sleeve did he stretch out! Ellen scarcely liked to touch his money, and felt all her disgust revive. But, for all that, and for all her fear of Harold’s running into mischief, what business had she to set it about that the stranger was an escaped convict?

Meanwhile, Alfred had plenty of food for dreaming over his fellow sufferer. It really seemed to quiet him to think of another in the same case, and how many questions he longed to have asked Mr. Cope! He wanted to know whether it came easier to Jem to be patient than to himself; whether he suffered as much wearing pain; whether he grieved over the last hope of using his limbs; and above all, the question he knew he never could bear to ask, whether Jem had the dread of death to scare his thoughts, though never confessed to himself.

He longed for Mr. Cope’s next visit, and felt strongly drawn towards that thought of Jem, yet ashamed to think of himself as so much less patient and submissive; so little able to take comfort in what seemed to soothe Jem, that it was the Lord’s doing. Could Jem think he had been a wicked boy, and take it as punishment?

CHAPTER IV—PAUL BLACKTHORN

‘I say,’ cried Harold, running up into his brother’s room, as soon as he had put away the pony, ‘do you know whether Paul is gone?’

‘It is always Paul, Paul!’ exclaimed Ellen; ‘I’m sure I hope he is.’

‘But why do you think he would be?’ asked Alfred.

‘Oh, didn’t you hear? He knows no more than a baby about anything, and so he turned the cows into Darnel meadow, and never put the hurdle to stop the gap—never thinking they could get down the bank; so the farmer found them in the barley, and if he did not run out against him downright shameful—though Paul up and told him the truth, that ’twas nobody else that did it.’

‘What, and turned him off?’

‘Well, that’s what I want to know,’ said Harold, going on with his tea. ‘Paul said to me he didn’t know how he could stand the like of that—and yet he didn’t like to be off—he’d taken a fancy to the place, you see, and there’s me, and there’s old Cæsar—and so he said he wouldn’t go unless the farmer sent him off when he came to be paid this evening—and old Skinflint has got him so cheap, I don’t think he will.’

‘For shame, Harold; don’t call names!’

‘Well, there he is,’ said Alfred, pointing into the farm-yard, towards the hay-loft door. This was over the cow-house in the gable end; and in the dark opening sat Paul, his feet on the top step of the ladder, and Cæsar, the yard-dog, lying by his side, his white paws hanging down over the edge, his sharp white muzzle and grey prick ears turned towards his friend, and his eyes casting such appealing looks, that he was getting more of the hunch of bread than probably Paul could well spare.

‘How has he ever got the dog up the ladder?’ cried Harold.

‘Well!’ said Mrs. King, ‘I declare he looks like a picture I have seen—’

‘Well, to be sure! who would go for to draw a picture of the like of that!’ exclaimed Ellen, pausing as she put on her things to carry home some work.

‘It was a picture of a Spanish beggar-boy,’ said Mrs. King; ‘and the housekeeper at Castlefort used to say that the old lord—that’s Lady Jane’s brother—had given six hundred pounds for it.’

Ellen set out on her walk with a sound of wonder quite beyond words. Six hundred pounds for a picture like Paul Blackthorn! She did not know that so poor and feeble are man’s attempts to imitate the daily forms and colourings fresh from the Divine Hand, that a likeness of the very commonest sight, if represented with something of its true spirit and life, wins a strange value, especially if the work of the great master-artists of many years ago.

And even the painter Murillo himself, though he might pleasantly recall on his canvas the notion of the bright-eyed, olive-tinted lad, resting after the toil of the day, could never have rendered the free lazy smile on his face, nor the gleam of the dog’s wistful eyes and quiver of its eager ears, far less the glow of setting sunlight that shed over all that warm, clear, ruddy light, so full of rest and cheerfulness, beautifying, as it hid, so many common things: the thatched roof of the barn, the crested hayrick close beside it; the waggons, all red and blue, that had brought it home, and were led to rest, the horses drooping their meek heads as they cooled their feet among the weed in the dark pond;—the ducks moving, with low contented quacks and quickly-wagging tails, in one long single file to their evening foraging in the dewy meadows; the spruce younger poultry pecking over the yard, staying up a little later than their elders to enjoy a few leavings in peace, free from the persecutions of the cross old king of the dung-hill;—all this left in shade, while the ruddy light had mounted to the roofs, gave brilliance to every round tuft of moss, and gleamed on the sober foliage of the old spreading walnut tree.

‘Poor lad,’ said Mrs. King, ‘it seems a pity he should come to such a rough life, when he seems to have got such an education! I hope he is not run away from anywhere.’

‘You’re as bad as Ellen, mother,’ cried Harold, ‘who will have it that he’s out of prison.’

‘No, not that,’ said Mrs. King; ‘but it did cross me whether he could have run away from school, and if his friends were in trouble for him.’

‘He never had any friends,’ said Harold, ‘nor he never ran away. He’s nothing but a foundling. They picked him up under a blackthorn bush when he was a baby, with nothing but a bit of an old plaid shawl round him.’

‘Did they ever know who he belonged to?’ asked Alfred.

‘Never; nor he doesn’t care if they don’t, for sure they could be no credit to him; but they that found him put him into the Union, and there an old woman, that they called Granny Moll, took to him. She had but one eye, he says; but, Mother, I do believe he never had another friend like her, for he got to pulling up the bits of grass, and was near crying when he said she was dead and gone, and then he didn’t care for nothing.’

‘But who taught him about Cayenne?’ asked Alfred.

‘Oh, that was the Union School. All the children went to school, and they had a terrible sharp master, who used to cut them over the head quite cruel, and was sent away at last for being such a savage; but Paul being always there, and having nothing else to do, you see, got on ever so far, and can work sums in his head downright wonderful. There came an inspector once who praised him up, and said he’d recommend him to a place where he’d be taught to be a school-master, if any one would pay the cost; but the guardians wouldn’t hear of it at no price, and were quite spiteful to find he was a good scholar, for fear, I suppose, that he’d know more than they.’

‘Hush, hush, Harold,’ said his mother; ‘wait till you have to pay the rates before you run out against the guardians.’

‘What do you mean, Mother?’

‘Why, don’t you see, the guardians have their duties to those who pay the rates, as well as those that have parish pay. What they have to do, is to mind that nobody starves, or the like; and their means comes out of the rates, out of my pocket, and the like of me, as well as my Lady’s and all the rich. Well, whatever they might like to do, it would not be serving us fairly to take more than was a bare necessity from us, to send your Master Paul and the like of him to a fine school. ’Tis for them to be just, and other folk to be generous with what’s their own.’

‘Mother talks as if she was a guardian herself!’ said Alfred in his funny way.

‘Ah, the collector’s going his rounds,’ responded Harold; and Mrs. King laughed good-humouredly, always glad to see her sick boy able to enjoy himself; but she sighed, saying, ‘Ay, and ill can I spare it, though thanks be to God that I’ve been as yet of them that pay, and not of them that receive.’

‘Go on the parish! Mother, what are you thinking of?’ cried both sons indignantly.

Poor Mrs. King was thinking of the long winter, and the heavy doctor’s bill, and feeling that, after all, suffering and humbling might not be so very far off; but she was too cheerful and full of trust to dwell on the thought, so she smiled and said, ‘I only said I was thankful, boys, for the mercy that has kept us up. Go on now, Harold; what about the boy?’

‘Why, I don’t know that he’d have gone if they had paid his expenses ever so much,’ said Harold, ‘for he’s got a great spirit of his own, and wouldn’t be beholden to any one, he said, now he could keep himself—he’d had quite enough of the parish and its keep; so he said he’d go on the tramp till he got work; and they let him out of the Union with just the clothes to his back, and a shilling in his pocket. ’Twas the first time he had ever been let out of bounds since he was picked up under the tree; and he said no one ever would guess the pleasure it was to have nobody to order him here and there, and no bounds round him; and he quite hated the notion of getting inside walls again, as if it was a prison.’

‘Oh, I know! I can fancy that!’ cried Alfred, raising himself and panting; ‘and where did he go first?’

‘First, he only wanted to get as far from Upperscote as ever he could, so he walked on; I can’t say how he lived, but he didn’t beg; he got a job here and a job there; but there are not so many things he knows the knack of, having been at school all his life. Once he took up with a man that sold salt, to draw his cart for him, but the man swore at him so awfully he could not bear it, and beat him too, so he left him, and he had lived terrible hard for about a month before he came here! So you see, Mother, there’s not one bit of harm in him; he’s a right good scholar, and never says a bad word, nor has no love for drink; so you won’t be like Ellen, and be always at me for going near him?’

‘You’re getting a big boy, Harold, and it is lonely for you,’ said Mrs. King reluctantly; ‘and if the lad is a good lad I’d not cast up his misfortune against him; but I must say, I should think better of him if he would keep himself a little bit cleaner and more decent, so as he could go to church.’

Harold made a very queer face, and said, ‘How is he to do it up in the hay-loft, Mother? and he ha’n’t got enough to pay for lodgings, nor for washing, nor to change.’

‘The river is cheap enough,’ said Alfred. ‘Do you remember when we used to bathe together, Harold, and go after the minnows?’

‘Ay, but he don’t know how; and then they did plague him so in the Union, that he’s got to hate the very name of washing—scrubbing them over and cutting their hair as if they were in gaol.’

‘Poor boy! he is terribly forsaken,’ said Mrs. King compassionately.

‘You may say that!’ returned Harold; ‘why, he’s never so much as seen how folks live at home, and wanted to know if you were most like old Moll or the master of the Union!’

Alfred went into such a fit of laughter as almost hurt him; but Mrs. King felt the more pitiful and tender towards the poor deserted orphan, who could not even understand what a mother was like, and the tears came into her eyes, as she said, ‘Well, I’m glad he’s not a bad boy. I hope he thinks of the Father and the Home that he has above. I say, Harold, against next Sunday I’ll look out Alfred’s oldest shirt for him to put on, and you might bring me his to wash, only mind you soak it well in the river first.’

Harold quite flushed with gratitude for his mother’s kindness, for he knew it was no small effort in one so scrupulously and delicately clean, and with so much work on her hands; but Mrs. King was one who did her alms by her trouble when she had nothing else to give. Alfred smiled and said he wondered what Ellen would say; and almost at the same moment Harold shot down-stairs, and was presently seen standing upon Paul’s ladder talking to him; then Paul rose up as though to come down, and there was much fun going on, as to how Cæsar was to be got down; for, as every one knows, a dog can mount a ladder far better than he can descend; and poor Cæsar stretched out his white paw, looked down, seemed to turn giddy, whined, and looked earnestly at his friends till they took pity on him and lifted him down between them, stretching out his legs to their full length, like a live hand-barrow.

A few seconds more, and there was a great trampling of feet, and then in walked Harold, exclaiming, ‘Here he is!’ And there he stood, shy and sheepish, with rusty black shag by way of hair, keen dark beads of eyes, and very white teeth; but all the rest, face, hands, jacket, trousers, shoes, and all, of darker or lighter shades of olive-brown; and as to the rents, one would be sorry to have to count them; mending them would have been a thing impossible. What a difference from the pure whiteness of everything around Alfred! the soft pink of the flush of surprise on his delicate cheek, and the wavy shine on his light hair. A few months ago, Alfred would have been as ready as his brother to take that sturdy hand, marbled as it was with dirt, and would have heeded all drawbacks quite as little; but sickness had changed him much, and Paul was hardly beside his couch before the colour fleeted away from his cheek, and his eye turned to his mother in such distress, that she was obliged to make a sign to Harold in such haste that it looked like anger, and to mutter something about his being taken worse. And while she was holding the smelling salts to him, and sprinkling vinegar over his couch, they heard the two boys’ voices loud under the window, Paul saying he should never come there again, and Harold something about people being squeamish and fine.

It hurt Alfred, and he burst out, almost crying, ‘Mother! Mother, now isn’t that too bad!’

‘It is very thoughtless,’ said Mrs. King sorrowfully; ‘but you know everybody has their feelings, Alfred, and I am sorry it happened so.’

‘I’m sure I couldn’t help it,’ said Alfred, as if his mother were turning against him. ‘Harold had better have brought up the farmer’s whole stable at once!’

‘When you were well, you did not think of such things any more than he does.’

Alfred grunted. He could not believe that; and he did not feel gently when his brother shewed any want of consideration; but his mother thought he would only grow crosser by dwelling on the unlucky subject, so she advised him to lie still and rest before his being moved to bed, and went down herself to finish some ironing.

Presently Alfred saw the Curate coming over the bridge with quick long steps, and this brought to his mind that he had been wishing to hear more of the poor crippled boy. He watched eagerly, and was pleased to see Mr. Cope turn in at the wicket, and presently the tread upon the stairs was heard, and the high head was lowered at the door.

‘Good evening, Alfred; your mother told me it would not disturb you if I came up alone;’ and he began to inquire into his amusements and occupations, till Alfred became quite at home with him, and at ease, and ventured to ask, ‘If you please, Sir, do you ever hear about Jem now?’ and as Mr. Cope looked puzzled, ‘the boy you told me of, Sir, that fell off the scaffold.’

‘Oh, the boy at Liverpool! No, I only saw him once when I was staying with my cousin; but I will ask after him if you wish to hear.’

‘Thank you, Sir. I wanted to know if he had been a bad boy.’

‘That I cannot tell. Why do you wish to know? Was it because he had such an affliction?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘I don’t think that is quite the way to look at troubles,’ said Mr. Cope. ‘I should think his accident had been a great blessing to him, if it took him out of temptation, and led him to think more of God.’

‘But isn’t it punishment?’ said Alfred, not able to get any farther; but Mr. Cope felt that he was thinking of himself more than of Jem.

‘All our sufferings in this life come as punishment of sin,’ he said. ‘If there had been no sin, there would have been no pain; and whatever we have to bear in this life is no more than is our due, whatever it may be.’

‘Every one is sinful,’ said Alfred slowly; ‘but why have some more to bear than others that may be much worse?’

‘Did you never think it hard to be kept strictly, and punished by your good mother?’

Alfred answered rather fretfully, ‘But if it is good to be punished, why ain’t all alike?’

‘God in His infinite wisdom sees the treatment that each particular nature needs. Some can be better trained by joy, and some by grief; some may be more likely to come right by being left in active health; others, by being laid low, and having their faults brought to mind.’

Alfred did not quite choose to take this in, and his answer was half sulky:

‘Bad boys are quite well!’

‘And a reckoning will be asked of them. Do not think of other boys. Think over your past life, of which I know nothing, and see whether you can believe, after real looking into it, that you have done nothing to deserve God’s displeasure. There are other more comforting ways of bringing joy out of pain; but of this I am sure, that none will come home to us till we own from the bottom of our heart, that whatever we suffer in this life, we suffer most justly for the punishment of our sins. God bless and help you, my poor boy. Good night.’

With these words he went down-stairs, for well he knew that while Alfred went on to justify himself, no peace nor joy could come to him, and he thought it best to leave the words to work in, praying in his heart that they might do so, and help the boy to humility and submission.

Finding Mrs. King in her kitchen, he paused and said, ‘We shall have a Confirmation in the spring, Mrs. King; shall not you have some candidates for me?’

‘My daughter will be very glad, thank you, Sir; she is near to seventeen, and a very good girl to me. And Harold, he is but fourteen—would he be old enough, Sir?’

‘I believe the Bishop accepts boys as young; and he might be started in life before another opportunity.’

‘Well, Sir, he shall come to you, and I hope you won’t think him too idle and thoughtless. He’s a good-hearted boy, Sir; but it is a charge when a lad has no father to check him.’

‘Indeed it is, Mrs. King; but I think you must have done your best.’

‘I hope I have, Sir,’ she said sadly; ‘I’ve tried, but my ability is not much, and he is a lively lad, and I’m sometimes afraid to be too strict with him.’

‘If you have taught him to keep himself in order, that’s the great thing, Mrs. King; if he has sound principles, and honours you, I would hope much for him.’

‘And, Sir, that boy he has taken a fancy to; he is a poor lost lad who never had a home, but Harold says he has been well taught, and he might take heed to you.’

‘Thank you, Mrs. King; I will certainly try to speak to him. You said nothing of Alfred; do you think he will not be well enough?’

‘Ah! Sir,’ she said in her low subdued voice, ‘my mind misgives me that it is not for Confirmation that you will be preparing him.’

Mr. Cope started. He had seen little of illness, and had not thought of this. ‘Indeed! does the doctor think so ill of him? Do not these cases often partially recover?’

‘I don’t know, Sir; Mr. Blunt does not give much account of him,’ and her voice grew lower and lower; ‘I’ve seen that look in his father’s and his brother’s face.’

She hid her face in her handkerchief as if overpowered, but looked up with the meek look of resignation, as Mr. Cope said in a broken voice, ‘I had not expected—you had been much tried.’

‘Yes, Sir. The Will of the Lord be done,’ she said, as if willing to turn aside from the dark side of the sorrow that lay in wait for her; ‘but I’m thankful you are come to help my poor boy now—he frets over his trouble, as is natural, and I’m afraid he should offend, and I’m no scholar to know how to help him.’

‘You can help him by what is better than scholarship,’ said Mr. Cope; and he shook her hand warmly, and went away, feeling what a difference there was in the ways of meeting affliction.

CHAPTER V—AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

‘The axe is laid to the root of the tree,’ was said by the Great Messenger, when the new and better Covenant was coming to pierce, try, and search into, the hearts of men.

Something like this always happens, in some measure, whenever closer, clearer, and more stringent views of faith and of practice are brought home to Christians. They do not always take well the finding that more is required of them than they have hitherto fancied needful; and there are many who wince and murmur at the sharp piercing of the weapon which tries their very hearts; they try to escape from it, and to forget the disease that it has touched, and at first, often grow worse rather than better. Well is it for them if they return while yet there is time, before blindness have come over their eyes, and hardness over their heart.

Perhaps this was the true history of much that grieved poor Mrs. King, and distressed Ellen, during the remainder of the summer. Anxious as Mrs. King had been to bring her sons up in the right way, there was something in Mr. Cope’s manner of talking to them that brought things closer home to them, partly from their being put in a new light, and partly from his being a man, and speaking with a different kind of authority.

Alfred did not like his last conversation—it was little more than his mother and Miss Selby had said—but then he had managed to throw it off, and he wanted to do so again. It was pleasanter to him to think himself hardly treated, than to look right in the face at all his faults; he knew it was of no use to say he had none, so he lumped them all up by calling himself a sinful creature, like every one else; and thus never felt the weight of them at all, because he never thought what they were.

And yet, because Mr. Cope’s words had made him uneasy, he could not rest in this state; he was out of temper whenever the Curate’s name was spoken, and accused Ellen of bothering about him as much as Harold did about Paul Blackthorn; and if he came to see him, he made himself sullen, and would not talk, sometimes seeming oppressed and tired, and unable to bear any one’s presence, sometimes leaving Ellen to do all the answering, dreading nothing so much as being left alone with the clergyman. Mr. Cope had offered to read prayers with him, and he could not refuse; but he was more apt to be thinking that it was tiresome, than trying to enter into what, poor foolish boy, would have been his best comfort.

To say he was cross when Mr. Cope was there, would be saying much too little; there was scarcely any time when he was not cross; he was hardly civil even to Miss Jane, so that she began to think it was unpleasant to him to have her there; and if she were a week without calling, he grumbled hard thoughts about fine people; he was fretful and impatient with the doctor; and as to those of whom he had no fears, he would have been quite intolerable, had they loved him less, or had less pity on his suffering.

He never was pleased with anything; teased his mother half the night, and drove Ellen about all day. She, good girl, never said one word of impatience, but bore it all with the sweetest good humour; but her mother now and then spoke severely for Alfred’s own good, and then he made himself more miserable than ever, and thought she was unkind and harsh, and that he was very much to be pitied for having a mother who could not bear with her poor sick boy. He was treating his mother as he was treating his Father in Heaven.

How Harold fared with him may easily be guessed—how the poor boy could hardly speak or step without being moaned at, till he was almost turned out of his own house; and his mother did not know what to do, for Alfred was really very ill, and fretting made him worse, and nothing could be so bad for his brother as being driven out from home, to spend the long summer evenings as he could.

Ellen would have been thankful now, had Paul Blackthorn been the worst company into which Harold fell. Not that Paul was a bit cleaner; on the contrary, each day could not fail to make him worse, till, as Ellen had once said, you might almost grow a crop of radishes upon his shoulders.

Mrs. King’s kind offer of washing his shirt had come to nothing. She asked Harold about it, and had for answer, ‘Do you think he would, after the way you served him?’

Either he was affronted, or he was ashamed of her seeing his rags, or, what was not quite impossible, there was no shirt at all in the case; and he had a sturdy sort of independence about him, that made him always turn surly at any notion of anything being done for him for charity.

How or why he stayed on with the farmer was hard to guess, for he had very scanty pay, and rough usage; the farmer did not like him; the farmer’s wife scolded him constantly, and laid on his shoulders all the mischief that was done about the place; and the shuffler gave him half his own work to do, and hunted him about from dawn till past sunset. He was always going at the end of every week, but never gone; perhaps he had undergone too much in his wanderings, to be ready to begin them again; or perhaps either Cæsar or Harold, one or both, kept him at Friarswood. And there might be another reason, too, for no one had ever spoken to him like Mr. Cope. Very few had ever thrown him a kindly word, or seemed to treat him like a thing with feelings, and those few had been rough and unmannerly; but Mr. Cope’s good-natured smile and pleasant manner had been a very different thing; and perhaps Paul promised to come to the Confirmation class, chiefly because of the friendly tone in which he was invited.

When there, he really liked it. He had always liked what he was taught, apart from the manner of teaching; and now both manner and lessons were delightful to him. His answers were admirable, and it was not all head knowledge, for very little more than a really kind way of putting it was needed, to make him turn in his loneliness to rest in the thought of the ever-present Father. Hard as the discipline of his workhouse home had been, it had kept him from much outward harm; the little he had seen in his wanderings had shocked him, and he was more untaught in evil than many lads who thought themselves more respectable, so there was no habit of wickedness to harden and blunt him; and the application of all he had learnt before, found his heart ready.

He had not gone to church since he left the workhouse: he did not think it belonged to vagabonds like him; besides, he always felt walls like a prison; and he had not profited much by the workhouse prayers, which were read on week-days by the master, and on Sundays by a chaplain, who always had more to do than he could manage, and only went to the paupers when they were very ill. But when Mr. Cope talked to him of the duty of going to church, he said, ‘I will, Sir;’ and he sat in the gallery with the young lads, who were not quite as delicate as Alfred.

The service seemed to rest him, and to be like being brought near a friend; and he had been told that church might always be his home. He took a pleasure in going thither—the more, perhaps, that he rather liked to shew how little he cared for remarks upon his appearance. There was a great deal of independence about him; and, having escaped from the unloving maintenance of the parish, while he had as yet been untaught what affection or gratitude meant, he would not be beholden to any one.

Scanty as were his wages, he would accept nothing from anybody; he daily bought his portion of bread from Mrs. King, but it was of no use for her to add a bit of cheese or bacon to it; he never would see the relish, and left it behind; and so he never would accept Mr. Cope’s kind offers of giving him a bit of supper in his kitchen, perhaps because he was afraid of being said to go to the Rectory for the sake of what he could get.

He did not object to the farmer’s beer, which was sometimes given him when any unusual extra work had been put on him. That was his right, for in truth the farmer did not pay him the value of his labour, and perhaps disliked him the more, because of knowing in his conscience that this was shameful extortion.

However, just at harvest time, when Paul’s shoes had become very like what may be sometimes picked up by the roadside, Mr. Shepherd did actually bestow on him a pair that did not fit himself! Harold came home quite proud of them.

However, on the third day they were gone, and the farmer’s voice was heard on the bridge, rating Paul violently for having changed them away for drink.

Mrs. King felt sorrowful; but, as Ellen said, ‘What could you expect of him?’ In spite of the affront, there was a sort of acquaintance now over the counter between Mrs. King and young Blackthorn; and when he came for his bread, she could not help saying, ‘I’m sorry to see you in those again.’

‘Why, the others hurt me so, I could hardly get about,’ said Paul.

‘Ah! poor lad, I suppose your feet has got spread with wearing those old ones; but you should try to use yourself to decent ones, or you’ll soon be barefoot; and I do think it was a pity to drink them up.’

‘That’s all the farmer, Ma’am. He thinks one can’t do anything but drink.’

‘Well, what is become of them?’

‘Why, you see, Ma’am, they just suited Dick Royston, and he wanted a pair of shoes, and I wanted a Bible and Prayer-book, so we changed ’em.’

When Ellen heard this, she could not help owning that Paul was a good boy after all, though it was in an odd sort of way. But, alas! when next he was to go to Mr. Cope, there was a hue-and-cry all over the hay-loft for the Prayer-book. There was no place to put it safely, or if there had been, Poor Paul was too great a sloven to think of any such thing; and as it was in a somewhat rubbishy state to begin with, it was most likely that one of the cows had eaten it with her hay; and all that could be said was, that it would have been worse if it had been the Bible.

As to Dick Royston, to find that he would change away his Bible for a pair of shoes, made Mrs. King doubly concerned that he should be a good deal thrown in Harold’s way. There are many people who neglect their Bibles, and do not read them; but this may be from thoughtlessness or press of care, and is not like the wilful breaking with good, that it is to part with the Holy Scripture, save under the most dire necessity; and Dick was far from being in real want, nor was he ignorant, like Mr. Cope’s poor Jem, for he had been to school, and could read well; but he was one of those many lads, who, alas! are everywhere to be found, who break loose from all restraint as soon as they can maintain themselves. They do their work pretty well, and are tolerably honest; but for the rest—alas! they seem to live without God. Prayers and Church they have left behind, as belonging to school-days; and in all their strength and health, their days of toil, their evenings of rude diversion, their Sundays of morning sleep, noonday basking in the sun, evening cricket, they have little more notion of anything concerning their souls than the horses they drive. If ever a fear comes over them, it seems a long long way off, a whole life-time before them; they are awkward, and in dread of one another’s jeers and remarks; and if they ever wish to be better, they cast it from them by fancying that time must steady them when they have had their bit of fun, or that something will come from somewhere to change them all at once, and make it easy to them to be good—as if they were not making it harder each moment.

This sort of lad had been utterly let alone till Mr. Cope came; and Lady Jane and the school-master felt it was dreary work to train up nice lads in the school, only to see them run riot, and forget all good as soon as they thought themselves their own masters.

Mr. Cope was anxious to do the best he could for them, and the Confirmation made a good opportunity; but the boys did not like to be interfered with—it made them shy to be spoken to; and they liked lounging about much better than having to poke into that mind of theirs, which they carried somewhere about them, but did not like to stir up. They had no notion of going to school again—which no one wanted them to do—nor to church, because it was like little boys; and they wouldn’t be obliged.

So Mr. Cope made little way with them; a few who had better parents came regularly to him, but others went off when they found it too much trouble, and behaved worse than ever by way of shewing they did not care. This folly had in some degree taken possession of Harold; and though he could not be as bad as were some of the others, he was fast growing impatient of restraint, and worried and angry, as if any word of good advice affronted him. Driven from home by the fear of disturbing Alfred, he was left the more to the company of boys who made him ashamed of being ordered by his mother; and there was a jaunty careless style about all his ways of talking and moving, that shewed there was something wrong about him—he scorned Ellen, and was as saucy as he dared even to his mother; and though Mr. Cope found him better instructed than most of his scholars, he saw him quite as idle, as restless at church, and as ready to whisper and grin at improper times, as many who had never been trained like him.

One August Sunday afternoon, Mrs. King was with Alfred while Ellen was at church. He was lying on his couch, very uncomfortable and fretful, when to the surprise of both, a knock was heard at the door. Mrs. King looked out of the window, and a smart, hard-looking, pigeon’s-neck silk bonnet at once nodded to her, and a voice said, ‘I’ve come over to see you, Cousin King, if you’ll come down and let me in. I knew I should find you at home.’

‘Betsey Hardman!’ exclaimed Alfred, in dismay; ‘you won’t let her come up here, Mother?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Mrs. King, sighing. If there were a thing she disliked above all others, it was Sunday visiting.

‘You must help it, Mother,’ said Alfred, in his most pettish tones. ‘I won’t have her here, worrying with her voice like a hen cackling. Say you won’t let her come her!’

‘Very well,’ said Mrs. King, in doubt of her own powers, and in haste to be decently civil.

‘Say you won’t,’ repeated Alfred. ‘Gadding about of a Sunday, and leaving her old sick mother—more shame for her! Promise, Mother!’

He had nearly begun to cry at his mother’s unkindness in running down-stairs without making the promise, for, in fact, Mrs. King had too much conscience to gain present quiet for any one by promises she might be forced to break; and Betsey Hardman was only too well known.

Her mother was an aunt of Alfred’s father, an old decrepit widow, nearly bed-ridden, but pretty well to do, by being maintained chiefly by her daughter, who made a good thing of taking in washing in the suburbs of Elbury, and always had a girl or two under her. She had neither had the education, nor the good training in service, that had fallen to Mrs. King’s lot; and her way of life did not lead to softening her tongue or temper. Ellen called her vulgar, and though that is not a nice word to use, she was coarse in her ways of talking and thinking, loud-voiced, and unmannerly, although meaning to be very good-natured.

Alfred lay in fear of her step, ten times harder than Harold’s in his most boisterous mood, coming clamp clamp! up the stairs; and her shrill voice—the same tone in which she bawled to her deaf mother, and hallooed to her girls when they were hanging out the clothes in the high wind—coming pitying him—ay, and perhaps her whole weight lumbering down on the couch beside him, shaking every joint in his body! His mother’s ways, learnt in the Selby nursery, had made him more tender, and more easily fretted by such things, than most cottage lads, who would have been used to them, and never have thought of not liking to have every neighbour who chose running up into the room, and talking without regard to subject or tone.

He listened in a fright to the latch of the door, and the coming in. Betsey’s voice came up, through every chink of the boards, whatever she did herself; and he could hear every word of her greeting, as she said how it was such a fine day, she said to Mother she would take a holiday, and come and see Cousin King and the poor lad: it must be mighty dull for him, moped up there.

Stump! stump! Was she coming? His mother was answering something too soft for him to hear.

‘What, is he asleep?’

‘O Mother, must you speak the truth?’

‘Bless me! I should have thought a little cheerful company was good for him. Do you leave him quite alone? Well—’ and there was a frightful noise of the foot of the heaviest chair on the floor. ‘I’ll sit down and wait a bit! Is he so very fractious, then?’

What was his mother saying? Alfred clenched his fist, and grinned anger at Betsey with closed teeth. There was the tiresome old word, ‘Low—ay, so’s my mother; but you should rise his spirits with company, you see; that’s why I came over; as soon as ever I heard that there wasn’t no hope of him, says I to Mother—’

What? What was that she had heard? There was his mother, probably trying to restrain her voice, for it came up now just loud enough to make it most distressing to try to catch the words, which sounded like something pitying. ‘Ay, ay—just like his poor father; when they be decliny, it will come out one ways or another; and says I to Mother, I’ll go over and cheer poor Cousin King up a bit, for you see, after all, if he’d lived, he’d be nothing but a burden, crippled up like that; and a lingering job is always bad for poor folks.’

Alfred leant upon his elbow, his eyes full stretched, but feeling as if all his senses had gone into his ears, in his agony to hear more; and he even seemed to catch his mother’s voice, but there was no hope in that; it was of her knowing it would be all for the best; and the sadness of it told him that she believed the same as Betsey. Then came, ‘Yes; I declare it gave me such a turn, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I asked Mr. Blunt to come in and see what’s good for Mother, she feels so weak at times, and has such a noise in her head, just like the regiment playing drums, she says, till she can’t hardly bear herself; and so what do you think he says? Don’t wrap up her head so warm, says he—a pretty thing for a doctor to say, as if a poor old creature like that, past seventy years old, could go without a bit of flannel to her head, and her three night-caps, and a shawl over them when there’s a draught. I say, Cousin, I ha’n’t got much opinion of Mr. Blunt. Why don’t you get some of them boxes of pills, that does cures wonderful? Ever so many lords and ladies cured of a perplexity fit, by only just taking an imposing draught or two.’

Another time Alfred would have laughed at the very imposing draught, that was said to cure lords and ladies of this jumble between apoplexy and paralysis; but this was no moment for laughing, and he was in despair at fancying his mother wanted to lead her off on the quack medicine; but she went on.

‘Well, only read the papers that come with them. I make my girl Sally read ’em all to me, being that she’s a better scholar; and the long words is quite heavenly—I declare there ain’t one of them shorter than peregrination. I’d have brought one of them over to shew you if I hadn’t come away in a hurry, because Evans’s cart was going out to the merry orchard, and says I to Mother, Well, I’ll get a lift now there’s such a chance to Friarswood: it’ll do them all a bit of good to see a bit of cheerful company, seeing, as Mr. Blunt says, that poor lad is going after his father as fast as can be. Dear me, says I, you don’t say so, such a fine healthy-looking chap as he was. Yes, he says, but it’s in the constitution; it’s getting to the lungs, and he’ll never last out the winter.’

Alfred listened for the tone of his mother’s voice; he knew he should judge by that, even without catching the words—low, subdued, sad—he almost thought she began with ‘Yes.’

All the rest that he heard passed by him merely as a sound, noted no more than the lowing of the cattle, or the drone of the thrashing machine. He lay half lifted up on his pillows, drawing his breath short with apprehension; his days were numbered, and death was coming fast, fast, straight upon him. He felt it within himself—he knew now the meaning of the pain and sinking, the shortness of breath and choking of throat that had been growing on him through the long summer days; he was being ‘cut off with pining sickness,’ and his sentence had gone forth. He would have screamed for his mother in the sore terror and agony that had come over him, in hopes she might drive the notion from him; but the dread of seeing her followed by that woman kept his lips shut, except for his long gasps of breath.

And she could not keep him—Mr. Blunt could not keep him; no one could stay the hand that had touched him! Prayer! They had prayed for his father, for Charlie, but it had not been God’s Will. He had himself many times prayed to recover, and it had not been granted—he was worse and worse.

Moreover, whither did that path of suffering lead? Up rose before Alfred the thought of living after the unknown passage, and of answering for all he had done; and now the faults he had refused to call to mind when he was told of chastisement, came and stood up of themselves. Bred up to know the good, he had not loved it; he had cared for his own pleasure, not for God; he had not heeded the comfort of his widowed mother; he had been careless of the honour of God’s House, said and heard prayers without minding them; he had been disrespectful and ill-behaved at my Lady’s—he had been bad in every way; and when illness came, how rebellious and murmuring he had been, how unkind he had been to his patient mother, sister, and brother; and when Mr. Cope had told him it was meant to lead him to repent, he would not hear; and now it was too late, the door would be shut. He had always heard that there was a time when sorrow was no use, when the offer of being saved had been thrown away.

When Ellen came in, and after a short greeting to Betsey Hardman, went up-stairs, she found Alfred lying back on his pillow, deadly white, the beads of dew standing on his brow, and his breath in gasps. She would have shrieked for her mother, but he held out his hand, and said, in a low hoarse whisper, ‘Ellen, is it true?’

‘What, Alfy dear? What is the matter?’

‘What she says.’

‘Who? Betsey Hardman? Dear dear Alf, is it anything dreadful?’

‘That I shall die,’ said Alfred, his eyes growing round with terror again. ‘That Mr. Blunt said I couldn’t last out the winter.’

‘Dear Alfy, don’t!’ cried Ellen, throwing her arms round him, and kissing him with all her might; ‘don’t fancy it! She’s always gossiping and gadding about, and don’t know what she says, and she’d got no business to tell stories to frighten my darling!’ she exclaimed, sobbing with agitation. ‘I’m sure Mr. Blunt never said no such thing!’

‘But Mother thinks it, Ellen.’

‘She doesn’t, she can’t!’ cried Ellen vehemently; ‘I know she doesn’t, or she could never go about as she does. I’ll call her up and ask her, to satisfy you.’

‘No, no, not while that woman is there!’ cried Alfred, holding her by the dress; ‘I’ll not have her coming up.’

Even while he spoke, however, Mrs. King was coming. Betsey had spied an old acquaintance on the way from church, and had popped out to speak to her, and Mrs. King caught that moment for coming up. She understood all, for she had been sitting in great distress, lest Alfred should be listening to every word which she was unable to silence, and about which Betsey was quite thoughtless. So many people of her degree would talk to the patient about himself and his danger, and go on constantly before him with all their fears, and the doctor’s opinions, that Betsey had never thought of there being more consideration and tenderness shewn in this house, nor that Mrs. King would have hidden any pressing danger from the sick person; but such plain words had not yet passed between her and Mr. Blunt; and though she had long felt what Alfred’s illness would come to, the perception had rather grown on her than come at any particular moment.

Now when Ellen, with tears and agitation, asked what that Betsey had been saying to frighten Alfred so, and when she saw her poor boy’s look at her, and heard his sob, ‘Oh, Mother!’ it was almost too much for her, and she went up and kissed him, and laid him down less uneasily, but he felt a great tear fall on his face.

‘It’s not true, Mother, I’m sure it is not true,’ cried Ellen; ‘she ought—’

Mrs. King looked at her daughter with a sad sweet face, that stopped her short, and brought the sense over her too. ‘Did he say so, Mother?’ said Alfred.

‘Not to me, dear,’ she answered; ‘but, Ellen, she’s coming back! She’ll be up here if you don’t go down.’

Poor Ellen! what would she not have given for power to listen to her mother, and cry at her ease? But she was forced to hurry, or Betsey would have been half-way up-stairs in another instant. She was a hopeful girl, however, and after that ‘not to me,’ resolved to believe nothing of the matter. Mrs. King knelt down by her son, and looked at him tenderly; and then, as his eyes went on begging for an answer, she said, ‘Dr. Blunt never told me there was no hope, my dear, and everything lies in God’s power.’

‘But you don’t think I shall get well, Mother?’

‘I don’t feel as if you would, my boy,’ she said, very low, and fondling him all the time. ‘You’ve got to cough like Father and Charlie, and—though He might raise my boy up—yet anyhow, Alfy boy, if God sees it good for us, it will be good for us, and we shall be helped through with it.’

‘But I’m not good, Mother! What will become of me?’

‘Perhaps the hearing this is all out of God’s mercy, to give you time to get ready, my dear. You are no worse now than you were this morning; you are not like to go yet awhile. No, indeed, my child; so if you don’t put off any longer—’

‘Mother!’ called up Ellen. She was in despair. Betsey was not to be kept by her from satisfying herself upon Alfred’s looks, and Mrs. King was only in time to meet her on the stairs, and tell her that he was so weak and low, that he could not be seen now, she could not tell how it would be when he had had his tea.

Ellen thought she had never had so distressing a tea-drinking in her life, as the being obliged to sit listening civilly to Betsey’s long story about the trouble she had about a stocking of Mrs. Martin’s that was lost in the wash, and that had gone to Miss Rosa Marlowe, because Mrs. Martin had her things marked with a badly-done K. E. M., and all that Mrs. Martin’s Maria and all Miss Marlowe’s Jane had said about it, and all Betsey’s ‘Says I to Mother,’—when she was so longing to be watching poor Alfred, and how her mother could sit so quietly making tea, and answering so civilly, she could not guess; but Mrs. King had that sense of propriety and desire to do as she would be done by, which is the very substance of Christian courtesy, the very want of which made Betsey, with all her wish to be kind, a real oppression and burthen to the whole party.

And where was Harold? Ellen had not seen him coming out of church, but meal-times were pretty certain to bring him home.

‘Oh,’ said Betsey, ‘I’ll warrant he is off to the merry orchard.’

‘I hope not,’ said Mrs. King gravely.

‘He never would,’ said Ellen, in anger.

‘Ah, well, I always said I didn’t see no harm in a lad getting a bit of pleasure.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs. King. ‘Harold knows I would not stint him in the fruit nor in the pleasure, but I should be much vexed if he could go out on a Sunday, buying and selling, among such a lot as meet at that orchard.’

‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know when poor folks is to have a holiday if not on a Sunday, and the poor boy must be terrible moped with his brother so ill.’

‘Not doing thine own pleasure on My holy day,’ thought Ellen, but she did not say it, for her mother could not bear for texts to be quoted at people. But her heart was very heavy; and when she went up with some tea to Alfred, she looked from the window to see whether, as she hoped, Harold might be in Paul’s hay-loft, preferring going without his tea to being teased by Betsey. Paul sat in his loft, with his Bible on his knee, and his head on Cæsar’s neck.

‘Alfred,’ said Ellen, ‘do you know where Harold is? Sure he is not gone to the merry orchard?’

‘Is not he come home?’ said Alfred. ‘Oh, then he is! He is gone to the merry orchard, breaking Sunday with Dick Royston! And by-and-by he’ll be ill, and die, and be as miserable as I am!’ And Alfred cried as Ellen had never seen him cry.

CHAPTER VI—THE MERRY ORCHARD

Where was Harold?

Still the evening went on, and he did not come. Alfred had worn himself out with his fit of crying, and lay quite still, either asleep, or looking so like it, that when Betsey had finished her tea, and again began asking to see him, Ellen could honestly declare that he was asleep.

Betsey had bidden them good-bye, more than half affronted at not being able to report to her mother all about his looks, though she carried with her a basket of gooseberries and French beans, and Mrs. King walked all the way down the lane with her, and tried to shew an interest in all she said, to make up for the disappointment.

Maybe likewise Mrs. King felt it a relief to her uneasiness to look up and down the road, and along the river, and into the farm-yard, in the hope that Harold might be in sight; but nothing was to be seen on the road, but Master Norland, his wife, and baby, soberly taking their Sunday walk; nor by the river, except the ducks, who seemed to be enjoying their evening bath, and almost asleep on the water; nor in the yard, except Paul Blackthorn, who had come down from his perch to drive the horses in from the home-field, and shut the stable up for the night.

She could not help stopping a moment at the gate, and calling out to Paul to ask whether he had seen anything of Harold. He seemed to have a great mind not to hear, and turned very slowly with his shoulder towards her, making a sound like ‘Eh?’ as if to ask what she said.

‘Have you seen my boy Harold?’

‘I saw him in the morning.’

‘Have you not seen him since? Didn’t he go to church with you?’

‘No; I don’t go to Sunday school.’

‘Was he there?’

She did not receive any answer.

‘Do you know if many of the boys are gone to the merry orchard?’

‘Ay.’

‘Well, you are a good lad not to be one of them.’

‘Hadn’t got any money,’ said Paul gruffly; but Mrs. King thought he said so chiefly from dislike to be praised, and that there had been some principle as well as poverty to keep him away.

‘It might be better if no one had it on a Sunday,’ she could not help sighing out as she looked anxiously along the lane ere turning in, and then said, ‘My good lad, I don’t want to get you to be telling tales, but it would set my heart at rest, and his poor brother’s up there, if you could tell me he is not gone to Briar Alley.’

Paul turned up his face from the gate upon which he was leaning his elbows, and gazed for a moment at her sad, meek, anxious face, then exclaimed, ‘I can’t think how he could!’

Poor Paul! was it not crossing him how impossible it would seem to do anything to vex one who so cared for him?

‘Then he is gone,’ she said mournfully.

‘They were all at him,’ said Paul; ‘and he said he’d never seen what it was like. Please don’t take on, Missus; he’s right kind and good-hearted, and wanted to treat me.’

‘I had rather he had hearkened to you, my boy,’ said Mrs. King.

‘I don’t know why he should do that,’ said Paul, perhaps meaning that a boy who heeded not such a mother would certainly heed no one else. ‘But please, Missus,’ he added, ‘don’t beat him, for you made me tell on him.’

‘Beat him! no,’ said Mrs. King, with a sad smile; ‘he’s too big a boy for me to manage that way. I can’t do more than grieve if he lets himself be led away.’

‘Then I’d like to beat him myself if he grieves you!’ burst out Paul, doubling up his brown fist with indignation.

‘But you won’t,’ said Mrs. King gently; ‘I don’t want to make a quarrel among you, and I hope you’ll help to keep him out of bad ways, Paul. I look to you for it. Good-night.’

Perhaps the darkness and her own warm feeling made her forget the condition of that hand; at any rate, as she said Good-night she took it in her own and shook it heartily, and then she went in.

Paul did not say Good-night in answer; but when she had turned away, his head went down between his two crossed arms upon the top of the gate, and he did not move for many many minutes, except that his shoulders shook and shook again, for he was sobbing as he had never sobbed since Granny Moll died. If home and home love were not matters of course to you, you might guess what strange new fountains of feeling were stirred in the wild but not untaught boy, by that face, that voice, that touch.

And Mrs. King, as she walked to her own door in the twilight, with bitter pain in her heart, could not help thinking of those from the highways and hedges who flocked to the feast set at naught by such as were bidden.

A sad and mournful Sunday evening was that to the mother and daughter, as each sat over her Bible. Mrs. King would not talk to Ellen, for fear of awakening Alfred; not that low voices would have done so, but Ellen was already much upset by what she had heard and seen, and to talk it over would have brought on a fit of violent crying; so her mother thought it safest to say nothing. They would have read their Bible to one another, but each had her voice so choked with tears, that it would not do.

That Alfred was sinking away into the grave, was no news to Mrs. King; but perhaps it had never been so plainly spoken to her before, and his own knowledge of it seemed to make it more sure; but broken-hearted as she felt, she had been learning to submit to this, and it might be better and safer for him, she thought, to be aware of his state, and more ready to do his best with the time left to him. That was not the freshest sorrow, or more truly a darker cloud had come over, namely, the feeling, so terrible to a good careful mother, that her son is breaking out of the courses to which she has endeavoured and prayed to bring him up—that he is casting off restraint, and running into evil that may be the beginning of ruin, and with no father’s hand to hold him in.

O Harold, had you but seen the thick tears dropping on the walnut table behind the arm that hid her face from Ellen, you would not have thought your fun worth them!

That merry orchard was about three miles from Friarswood. It belonged to a man who kept a small public-house, and had a little farm, and a large garden, with several cherry trees, which in May were perfect gardens of blossoms, white as snow, and in August with small black fruit of the sort known as merries; and unhappily the fertile produce of these trees became a great temptation to the owner and to all the villagers around.

As Sunday was the only day when people could be at leisure, he chose three Sundays when the cherries were ripe for throwing open his orchard to all who chose to come and buy and eat the fruit, and of course cakes and drink of various kinds were also sold. It was a solitary spot, out of the way of the police, or the selling in church-time would have been stopped; but as there may be cases of real distress, the law does not shut up all houses for selling food and drink on a Sunday, so others, where there is no necessity, take advantage of it; and so for miles round all the idle young people and children would call it a holiday to go away from their churches to eat cherries at Briar Alley, buying and selling on a Sunday, noisy and clamorous, and forgetting utterly that it was the Lord’s Day, not their day of idle pleasure.

It was a sad pity that an innocent feast of fruit should be almost out of reach, unless enjoyed in this manner. To be sure, merries might be bought any day of the week at Briar Alley, and were hawked up and down Friarswood so cheaply that any one might get a mouth as purple as the black spaniel’s any day in the season; but that was nothing to the fun of going with numbers, and numbers never could go except on a Sunday. But if people wish to serve God truly, why, they must make up their minds to miss pleasures for His sake, and this was one to begin with; and I am much mistaken if the happiness of the week would not have turned out greater in the end with him. Ay, and as to the owner of the trees, who said he was a poor man, and could not afford to lose the profit, I believe that if he would have trusted God and kept His commandment, his profit in the long run would have been greater here, to say nothing of the peril to his own soul of doing wrong, and leading so many into temptation.

The Kings had been bred up to think a Sunday going to the merry orchard a thing never to be done; and in his most idle days Alfred would never have dreamt of such a thing. Indeed, their good mother always managed to have some treat to make up for it when they were little; and they certainly never wanted for merries, nay, a merry pudding had been their dinner this very day, with savage-looking purple juice and scalding hot stones. If Harold went it was for the frolic, not for want of the dainty; and wrong as it was, his mother was grieving more at the thought of his casting away the restraint of his old habits than for the one action. One son going away into the unseen world, the other being led away from the paths of right—no wonder she wept as she tried to read!

At last voices were coming, and very loud ones. The summer night was so still, they could be heard a great way—those rude coarse voices of village boys boasting and jeering one another.

‘I say, wouldn’t you like to be one of they chaps at Ragglesford School?’

‘What lots they bought there on Saturday, to be sure!’

‘Well they may: they’ve lots of tin!’

‘Have they? How d’ye know?’

‘Why, the money-letters! Don’t I know the feel of them—directed to master this and master that, and with a seal and a card, and half a sovereign, or maybe a whole one, under it; and such lots as they gets before the holidays—that’s to go home, you see.’

‘Well, it’s a shame such little impudent rogues should get so much without ever doing a stroke of work for it.’

‘I say, Harold, don’t ye never put one of they letters in your pocket?’

‘For shame, Dick!’

‘Ha! I shall know where to come when I wants half a sovereign or so!’

‘No, you won’t.’

It was only these last two or three speeches that reached the cottage at all clearly; and they were followed by a sound as if Harold had fallen upon one of the others, and they were holding him off, with halloos and shouts of hoarse laughing, which broke Alfred’s sleep, and his voice came down-stairs with a startled cry of ‘Mother! Mother! what is that?’ She ran up-stairs in haste, and Ellen threw the door open. The sudden display of the light silenced the noisy boys; and Harold came slowly up the garden-path, pretty certain of a scolding, and prepared to feel it as little as he could help.

‘Well, Master, a nice sort of a way of spending a Sunday evening this!’ began Ellen; ‘and coming hollaing up the lane, just on purpose to wake poor Alfred, when he’s so ill!’

‘I’m sure I never meant to wake him.’

‘Then what did you bring all that good-for-nothing set roaring and shouting up the road for? And just this evening, too, when one would have thought you would we have cared for poor Mother and Alfred,’ said she, crying.

‘Why, what’s the matter now?’ said Harold.

‘Oh, they’ve been saying he can’t live out the winter,’ said Ellen, shedding the tears that had been kept back all this time, and broke out now with double force, in her grief for one brother and vexation with the other.

But next winter seemed a great way off to Harold, and he was put out besides, so he did not seem shocked, especially as he was reproached with not feeling what he did not know; so all he did was to say angrily, ‘And how was I to know that?’

‘Of course you don’t know anything, going scampering over the country with the worst lot you can find, away from church and all, not caring for anything! Poor Mother! she never thought one of her lads would come to that!’

‘Plenty does so, without never such a fuss,’ said Harold. ‘Why, what harm is there in eating a few cherries?’

There would be very little pleasure or use in knowing what a wrangling went on all the time Mrs. King was up-stairs putting Alfred to bed. Ellen had all the right on her side, but she did not use it wisely; she was very unhappy, and much displeased with Harold, and so she had it all out in a fretful manner that made him more cross and less feeling than was his nature.

There was something he did feel, however—and that was his mother’s pale, worn, sorrowful face, when she came down-stairs and hushed Ellen, but did not speak to him. They took down the books, read their chapter, and she read prayers very low, and not quite steadily. He would have liked very much to have told her he felt sorry, but he was too proud to do so after having shewn Ellen he was above caring for such nonsense.

So they all went to bed, Harold on a little landing at the top of the stairs; but—whether it was from the pounds of merry-stones he had swallowed, or the talk he had had with his sister—he could not go to sleep, and lay tossing and tumbling about, thinking it very odd he had not heeded more what Ellen had said when he first came in, and the notion dawning on him more and more, that day after day would come and make Alfred worse, and that by the time summer came again he should be alone. Who could have said it? Why had not he asked? What could he have been thinking about? It should not be true! A sort of frenzy to speak to some one, and hear the real meaning of those words, so as to make sure they were only Ellen’s nonsense, came over him in the silent darkness. Presently he heard Alfred moving on his pillow, for the door was open for the heat; and that long long sigh made him call in a whisper, ‘Alf, are you awake?’

In another moment Harold was by his brother’s side. ‘Alf! Alf! are you worse?’ he asked, whispering.

‘No.’

‘Then what’s all this? What did they say? It’s all stuff; I’m sure it is, and you’re getting better. But what did Ellen mean?’

‘No, Harold,’ said Alfred, getting his brother’s hand in his, ‘it’s not stuff; I shan’t get well; I’m going after poor Charlie; and don’t you be a bad lad, Harold, and run away from your church, for you don’t know—how bad it feels to—’ and Alfred turned his face down, for the tears were coming thick.

‘But you aren’t going to die, Alf. Charlie never was like you, I know he wasn’t; he was always coughing. It is all Ellen. Who said it? I won’t let them.’

‘The doctor said it to Betsey Hardman,’ said Alfred; and his cough was only too like his brother’s.

Harold would have said a great deal in contempt of Betsey Hardman, but Alfred did not let him.

‘You’ll wake Mother,’ he said. ‘Hush, Harold, don’t go stamping about; I can’t bear it! No, I don’t want any one to tell me now; I’ve been getting worse ever since I was taken, and—oh! be quiet, Harold.’

‘I can’t be quiet,’ sobbed Harold, coming nearer to him. ‘O Alf! I can’t spare you! There hasn’t been no proper downright fun without you, and—’

Harold had lain down by him and clung to his hand, trying not to sob aloud.

‘O Harold!’ sighed Alfred, ‘I don’t think I should mind—at least not so much—if I hadn’t been such a bad boy.’

‘You, Alfy! Who was ever a good boy if you was not?’

‘Hush! You forget all about when I was up at my Lady’s, and all that. Oh! and how bad I behaved at church, and when I was so saucy to Master about the marbles; and so often I’ve not minded Mother. O Harold! and God judges one for everything!’

What a sad terrified voice it was!

‘Oh! don’t go on so, Alf! I can’t bear it! Why, we are but boys; and those things were so long ago! God will not be hard on little boys. He is merciful, don’t you know?’

‘But when I knew it was wrong, I did the worst I could!’ said Alfred. ‘Oh, if I could only begin all over again, now I do care! Only, Harold, Harold, you are well; you can be good now when there’s time.’

‘I’ll be ever so good if you’ll only get well,’ said Harold. ‘I wouldn’t have gone to that there place to-night; but ’tis so terribly dull, and one must do something.’

‘But in church-time, and on Sunday!’

‘Well, I’ll never do it again; but it was so sunshiny, and they were all making such fun, you see, and it did seem so stuffy, and so long and tiresome, I couldn’t help it, you see.’

Alfred did not think of asking how, if Harold could not help it this time, he could be sure of never doing so again. He was more inclined to dwell on himself, and went back to that one sentence, ‘God judges us for everything.’ Harold thought he meant it for him, and exclaimed,

‘Yes, yes, I know, but—oh, Alf, you shouldn’t frighten one so; I never meant no harm.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ sighed Alfred. ‘I was wishing I’d been a better lad; but I’ve been worse, and crosser, and more unkind, ever since I was ill. O Harold! what shall I do?’

‘Don’t go on that way,’ said Harold, crying bitterly. ‘Say your prayers, and maybe you will get well; and then in the morning I’ll ask Mr. Cope to come down, and he’ll tell you not to mind.’

‘I wouldn’t listen to Mr. Cope when he told me to be sorry for my sins; and oh, Harold, if we are not sorry, you know they will not be taken away.’

‘Well, but you are sorry now.’

‘I have heard tell that there are two ways of being sorry, and I don’t know if mine is the right.’

‘I tell you I’ll fetch Mr. Cope in the morning; and when the doctor comes he’ll be sure to say it is all a pack of stuff, and you need not be fretting yourself.’

When Harold awoke in the morning, he found himself lying wrapped in his coverlet on Alfred’s bed, and then he remembered all about it, and looked in haste, as though he expected to see some sudden and terrible change in his brother.

But Alfred was looking cheerful, he had awakened without discomfort; and with some amusement, was watching the starts and movements, the grunts and groans, of Harold’s waking. The morning air and the ordinary look of things, had driven away the gloomy thoughts of evening, and he chiefly thought of them as something strange and dreadful, and yet not quite a dream.

‘Don’t tell Mother,’ whispered Harold, recollecting himself, and starting up quietly.

‘But you’ll fetch Mr. Cope,’ said Alfred earnestly.

Harold had begun not to like the notion of meeting Mr. Cope, lest he should hear something of yesterday’s doings, and he did not like Alfred or himself to think of last night’s alarm, so he said, ‘Oh, very well, I’ll see about it.’

He had not made up his mind. Very likely, if chance had brought him face to face with Mr. Cope, he would have spoken about Alfred as the best way to hinder the Curate from reproving himself; but he had not that right sort of boldness which would have made him go to meet the reproof he so richly deserved, and he was trying to persuade himself either that when Alfred was amused and cheery, he would forget all about ‘that there Betsey’s nonsense,’ or else that Mr. Cope might come that way of himself.

But Alfred was not likely to forget. What he had heard hung on him through all the little occupations of the morning, and made him meek and gentle under them, and he was reckoning constantly upon Mr. Cope’s coming, fastening on the notion as if he were able to save him.

Still the Curate came not, and Alfred became grieved, feeling as if he was neglected.

Mr. Blunt, however, came, and at any rate he would have it out with him; so he asked at once very straightforwardly, ‘Am I going to die, Sir?’

‘Why, what’s put that in your head?’ said the doctor.

‘There was a person here talking last night, Sir,’ said Mrs. King.

‘Well, but am I?’ said Alfred impatiently.

‘Not just yet, I hope,’ said Mr. Blunt cheerfully. ‘You are weak, but you’ll pick up again.’

‘But of this?’ persisted Alfred, who was not to be trifled with.

Mr. Blunt saw he must be in earnest.

‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid it is not a thing to be got over. I’ll do the best I can for you, by God’s blessing; and if you get through the winter, and it is a mild spring, you might do; but you’d better settle your mind that you can’t be many years for this world.’

Many years! that sounded like a reprieve, and sent gladness into Ellen’s heart; but somehow it did not seem in the same light to Alfred; he felt that if he were slowly going down hill and wasting away, so as to have no more health or strength in which to live differently from ever before, the length of time was not much to him, and in his sickly impatience he would almost have preferred that it should not be what Betsey kindly called ‘a lingering job.’

There he lay after Mr. Blunt was gone, not giving Ellen any trouble, except by the sad thoughtfulness of his face, as he lay dwelling on all that he wanted to say to Mr. Cope, and the terror of his sin and of judgment sweeping over him every now and then.

Still Mr. Cope came not. Alfred at last began to wonder aloud, and asked if Harold had said anything about it when he came in to dinner; but he heard that Harold had only rushed in for a moment, snatched up a lump of bread and cheese, and made off to the river with some of the lads who meant to spend the noon-tide rest in bathing.

When he came for the evening letters he was caught, and Mr. Cope was asked for; and then it came out that Harold had never given the message at all.

Alfred, greatly hurt, and sadly worn by his day of expectation, had no self-restraint left, and flew out into a regular passion, calling his brother angry names. Harold, just as passionate, went into a rage too, and scolded his brother for his fancies. Mrs. King, in great displeasure, turned him out, and he rushed off to ride like one mad to Elbury; and poor Alfred remained so much shocked at his own outbreak, just when he meant to have been good ever after, and sobbing so miserably, that no one could calm him at all; and Ellen, as the only hope, put on her bonnet to fetch Mr. Cope.

At that moment Paul was come for his bit of bread. She found him looking dismayed at the sounds of violent weeping from above, and he asked what it was.

‘Oh, Alfred is so low and so bad, and he wants Mr. Cope! Here’s your bread, don’t keep me!’

‘Let me go! I’ll be quicker!’ cried Paul; and before she could thank him, he was down the garden and right across the first field.

Alfred had had time to cry himself exhausted, and to be lying very still, almost faint, before Mr. Cope came in in the summer twilight. Good Paul! He had found that Mr. Cope was dining at Ragglesford and had run all the way thither; and here was the kind young Curate, quite breathless with his haste, and never regretting the cheerful party whence he had been called away. All Alfred could say was, ‘O Sir, I shall die; and I’m a bad boy, and wouldn’t heed you when you said so.’

‘And God has made you see your sins, my poor boy,’ said Mr. Cope. ‘That is a great blessing.’

‘But if I can’t do anything to make up for them, what’s the use? And I never shall be well again.’

‘You can’t make up for them; but there is One Who has made up for them, if you will only truly repent.’

‘I wasn’t sorry till I knew I should die,’ said Alfred.

‘No, your sins did not come home to you! Now, do you know what they are?’

‘Oh yes; I’ve been a bad boy to Mother, and at church; and I’ve been cross to Ellen, and quarrelled with Harold; and I was so audacious at my Lady’s, they couldn’t keep me. I never did want really to be good. Oh! I know I shall go to the bad place!’

‘No, Alfred, not if you so repent, that you can hold to our Blessed Saviour’s promise. There is a fountain open for sin and all uncleanness.’

‘It is very good of Him,’ said Alfred, a little more tranquilly, not in the half-sob in which he had before spoken.

‘Most merciful!’ said Mr. Cope.

‘But does it mean me?’ continued Alfred.

‘You were baptized, Alfred, you have a right to all His promises of pardon.’ And he repeated the blessed sentences:

‘Come unto Me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.’

‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’

‘But how ought I to believe, Sir?’

‘You say you feel what your sins are; think of them all as you lie, each one as you remember it; say it out in your heart to our Saviour, and pray God to forgive it for His sake, and then think that it cost some of the pain He bore on the Cross, some of the drops of His agony in the Garden. Each sin of ours was indeed of that burden!’

‘Oh, that will make them seem so bad!’

‘Indeed it does; but how it will make you love Him, and feel thankful to Him, and anxious not to waste the sufferings borne for your sake, and glad, perhaps, that you are bearing some small thing yourself. But you are spent, and I had better not talk more now. Let me read you a few prayers to help you, and then I will leave you, and come again to-morrow.’

How differently those Prayers and Psalms sounded to Alfred now that he had really a heart grieved and wearied with the burthen of sin! The point was to make his not a frightened heart, but a contrite heart.

CHAPTER VII—HAROLD TAKES A WRONG TURN

Mrs. King was very anxious about Alfred for many hours after this visit from the Curate, for he was continually crying, not violently, but the tears flowing quietly from his eyes as he lay, thinking. Sometimes it was the badness of the faults as he saw them now, looking so very different from what they did when they were committed in the carelessness of fun and high spirits, or viewed afterwards in the hardening light of self-justification. Now they did look so wantonly hard and rude—unkind to his sister, ruinous to Harold, regardless of his widowed mother, reckless of his God—that each one seemed to cut into him with a sense of its own badness, and he was quite as much grieved as afraid; he hated the fault, and hated himself for it.

Indeed, he was growing less afraid, for the sorrow seemed to swallow that up; the grief at having offended One so loving was putting out the terror of being punished; or rather, when he thought that this illness was punishment, he was almost glad to have some of what he deserved; just as when he was a little boy, he really used to be happier afterwards for having been whipped and put in the corner, because that was like making it up. Though he knew very well that if he had ten thousand times worse than this to bear, it would not be making up for his faults, and he felt now that one of them had been his ‘despising the chastening of the Lord.’ And then the thought of what had made up for it would come: and though he had known of it all his life, and heeded it all too little, now that his heart was tender, and he had felt some of the horror and pain of sin, he took it all home now, and clung to it. He recollected the verses about that One kneeling—nay, falling on the ground, in the cold dewy night, with the chosen friends who could not watch with Him, and the agony and misery that every one in all the world deserved to feel, gathering on Him, Who had done no wrong, and making His brow stream with great drops of Blood.

And the tortures, the shame, the slow Death—circumstance after circumstance came to his mind, and ‘for me,’ ‘this fault of mine helped,’ would rise with it, and the tears trickled down at the thought of the suffering and of the Love that had caused it to be undergone.

Once he raised up his head, and saw through the window the deep dark-blue sky, and the stars, twinkling and sparkling away; that pale band of light, the Milky Way, which they say is made of countless stars too far off to be distinguished, and looking like a cloud, and on it the larger, brighter burnished stars, differing from one another in glory. He thought of some lines in a book Miss Jane once gave Ellen, which said of the stars:

‘The Lord resigned them all to gain
The bliss of pardoning thee.’

And when he thought that it was the King of those stars Who was scourged and spit on, and for the sake of his faults, the loving tears came again, and he turned to another hymn of Ellen’s:

‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!’

And going on with this, he fell into a more quiet sleep than he had had for many nights.

Alfred had worked up his mind to a point where it could not long remain; and when he awoke in the morning, the common affairs of the day occupied him in a way that was not hurtful to him, as the one chief thought was ever present, only laid away for a time, and helping him when he might have been fretful or impatient.

He was anxious for Mr. Cope, and grateful when he saw him coming early in the day. Mr. Cope did not, however, say anything very new. He chiefly wished to shew Alfred that he must not think all his struggle with sin over, and that he had nothing to do but to lie still and be pardoned. There was much more work, as he would find, when the present strong feeling should grow a little blunt; he would have to keep his will bent to bear what was sent by God, and to prove his repentance by curing himself of all his bad habits of peevishness and exacting; to learn, in fact, to take up his cross.

Alfred feebly promised to try, and it did not seem so difficult just then. The days were becoming cooler, and he did not feel quite so ill; and though he did not know how much this helped him, it made it much easier to act on his good resolutions. Miss Selby came to see him, and was quite delighted to see him looking so much less uncomfortable and dismal.

‘Why, Alfred,’ said she, ‘you must be much better.’

Ellen looked mournful at this, and shook her head so that Miss Jane turned her bright face to her in alarm.

‘No, Ma’am,’ said Alfred. ‘Dr. Blunt says I can never get over it.’

‘And does that make you glad?’ almost gasped Miss Jane.

‘No, Ma’am,’ said Alfred; ‘but Mr. Cope has been talking to me, and made it all so—’

He could not get out the words; and, besides, he saw Miss Jane’s eyes winking very fast to check the tears, and Ellen’s had begun to rain down fast.

‘I didn’t mean to be silly,’ said little Jane, in rather a trembling voice; ‘but I’m sorry—no—I’m glad you are happy and good, Alfred.’

‘Not good, Miss Jane,’ cried Alfred; ‘I’m such a bad boy, but there are such good things as I never minded before—’

‘Well then, I think you’ll like what I’ve brought you,’ said Jane eagerly.

It was a little framed picture of our Blessed Lord on His Cross, all darkness round, and the Inscription above His Head; and Miss Jane had painted, in tall Old English red letters, under it the two words, ‘For me.’

Alfred looked at it as if indeed it would be a great comfort to him to be always reminded by the eye, of how ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.’

He thanked Miss Jane with all his heart, and she and Ellen soon found a place to hang it up well in his sight. It was a pretty bright sight to see her insisting on holding the nail for it, and then playfully pretending to shrink and fancy that Ellen would hammer her fingers.

Alfred could enjoy the sunshine of his sick-room again; and Ellen and his mother down-stairs told Miss Selby, with many tears, of the happy change that had come over him ever since he had resigned himself to give up hopes of life. Mrs. King looked so peaceful and thankful, that little Jane could hardly understand what it was that made her so much more at rest.

Even Ellen, though her heart ached at the hope having gone out, and left a dark place where it had been, felt the great relief from hour to hour of not being fretted and snarled at for whatever she either did or left undone. Thanks and smiles were much pleasanter payment than groans, murmurs, and scoldings; and the brother and sister sometimes grew quite cheerful and merry together, as Alfred lay raised up to look over the hedge into the harvest-field across the meadow, where the reaper and his wife might be seen gathering the brown ears round, and cutting them with the sickle, and others going after to bind them into the glorious wheat sheaves that leant against each other in heaps of blessed promise of plenty.

Paul tried reaping; but the first thing he did was to make a terrible cut in his hand, which the shuffler told him was for good luck! Some of the women in the field bound it up, but he was good for nothing after it except going after the cattle, and so he was likely to lose all the chance of earning himself any better clothes in harvest-time.

Harold grumbled dreadfully that his mother could not spare him to go harvesting beyond their own tiny quarter of an acre of wheat. The post made it impossible for him to go out to work like the labourers; and besides, his mother did not think he had gained much good in hay-time, and wished to keep him from the boys.

Very hard he thought it; and to hear him grumble, any one would have thought Mrs. King was a tyrant far worse than Farmer Shepherd, working the flesh off his bones, taking away the fun and the payment alike.

The truth was, that the morning when Harold threw away from him the thought of his brother’s danger, and broke all his promises to him in the selfish fear of a rebuke from the clergyman, had been one of the turning-points of his life, and a turning-point for the bad. It had been a hardening of his heart, just as it had begun to be touched, and a letting in of evil spirits instead of good ones.

He became more than ever afraid of Mr. Cope, and shirked going near him so as to be spoken to; he cut Ellen off short if she said a word to him, and avoided being with Alfred, partly because it made him melancholy, partly because he was afraid of Alfred’s again talking to him about the evil of his ways. In reality, his secret soul was wretched at the thought of losing his brother; but he tried to put the notion away from him, and to drown it in the noisiest jokes and most riotous sports he could meet with, keeping company with the wildest lads about the parish. That Dick Royston especially, whose honesty was doubtful, but who, being a clever fellow, was a sort of leader, was doing great harm by setting his face against the new parson, and laughing at the boys who went to him. Mrs. King was very unhappy. It was almost worse to think of Harold than of his sick brother; and Alfred grieved very much too, and took to himself the blame of having made home miserable to Harold, and driven him into bad company; of having been so peevish and unpleasant, that it was no wonder he would not come near him more than could be helped; and above all, of having set a bad example of idleness and recklessness, when he was well. If the tears were brought into his eyes at first by some unkind neglect of Harold’s, they were sure to end in this thought at last; and then the only comfort was, that Mr. Cope had told him that he might make his sick-bed very precious to his brother’s welfare, by praying always for him.

Mr. Cope had talked it over with Mrs. King; and they had agreed that as Harold was under the regular age for Confirmation, and seemed so little disposed to prepare for it in earnest, they would not press it on him. He was far from fit for it, and he was in such a mood of impatient irreverence, that Mr. Cope was afraid of making his sin worse by forcing serious things on him, and his mother was in constant fear of losing her last hold on him.

Yet Harold was not a bad or unfeeling boy by nature; and if he would but have paused to think, he would have been shocked to see how cruelly he was paining his widowed mother and dying brother, just when he should have been their strength and stay.

One afternoon in October, when Alfred was in a good deal of pain, Mr. Blunt said he would send out some cooling ointment for the wound at the joint, when Harold took the evening letters into Elbury. Alfred reckoned much on the relief this was to give, and watched the ticks of the clock for the time for Harold to set off.

‘Make haste,’ were the last words his mother spoke—and Harold fully meant to make haste; nor was it weather to tempt him to stay long, for there was a chill raw fog hanging over the meadows, and fast turning into rain, which hung in drops upon his eyebrows, and the many-tiered cape of his father’s box-coat, which he always wore in bad weather. It was fortunate he was likely to meet nothing, and that he and the pony both knew the road pretty well.

How fuzzy the grey fog made the lamps of the town look! Did they disturb the pony? What a stumble! Ha! there’s a shoe off. Be it known that it was Harold’s own fault; he had not looked at the shoes for many a morning, as he knew it was his duty to do.

He left Peggy with her ears back, much discomposed at being shod in a strange forge, and by any one but Bill Saunders.

Then Harold was going to leave his bag at the post-office, when, as he turned up the street, some one caught hold of him, and cried, ‘Ho! Harold King on foot! What’s the row? Old pony tumbled down dead?’

‘Cast a shoe,’ said Harold.

‘Oh, jolly, you’ll have to wait!’ went on Dick Royston. ‘Come in here! Here’s such a lark!’

Harold looked into a court-yard belonging to a low public-house, and saw what was like a tent, with a bright red star on a blue ground at the end, lighted up. A dark figure came between, and there was a sudden crack that made Harold start.

‘It’s the unique (he called it eu-ni-quee) royal shooting-gallery, patronized by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ (what a story!) said Dick. ‘You’ve only to lay down your tin; one copper for three shots, and if you hit, you may take your choice—gingerbread-nuts, or bits of cocoa-nut, or, what’s jolliest, lollies with gin inside ’em! Come, blaze away! or ha’n’t you got the money? Does Mother keep you too short?’

If there was a thing Harold had a longing for, it was to fire off a gun! If there was a person he envied more than another, it was old Isaac Coffin, when he prowled up and down Farmer Ledbitter’s fields with an old blunderbuss and some powder, to keep off the birds!

To be sure it was a public-house, but it was not inside one! And Mother would call it gambling. Oh, but it wasn’t cards or skittles! And if he shot away his half-pence, how should he pay for the shoeing of the pony? The blacksmith might trust him, or the clerk at the post-office would lend him the money, or Betsey Hardman. And the time? One shot would not waste much! Pony must be shod. Besides, Dick and all the rest would say he was a baby.

He paid the penny, threw aside his cap, and took the gun, though after all it was only a sham one, and what a miss he made! What business had every one to set up that great hoarse laugh? which made him so angry that he had nearly turned on Dick and cuffed him for his pains.

However, he was the more bent on trying again, and the owner of the gallery shewed him how to manage better. He hit anything but the middle of the star, and just saw how he thought he might hit next time. Next time was barely a miss, so that the man actually gave him a gin-drop to encourage him. That made him mad to meet with real success; but it was the turn of another ‘young gent,’ as the man called him, and Harold had to stand by, with his penny in his hand, burning with impatience, and fancying he could mend each shot of that young gent, and another, and another, and another, who all thrust in to claim their rights before him. His turn came at last; and so short and straight was the gallery, that he really did hit once the side of the star, and once the middle, and thus gained one gingerbread-nut, and three of the gin-drops.

It would have been his nature to share them with Alfred, but he could not do so without saying where he had been, and that he could not do, so he gave one to Dick, and swallowed the rest to keep out the cold.

Just then the town clock struck six, and frightened him. He had been there three-quarters of an hour. What would they say at the post-office?

The clerk looked out of his hole as angry as clerk could look. ‘This won’t do, King,’ he said. ‘Late for sorting! Fine, remember—near an hour after time.’

‘Pony cast a shoe, Sir,’ said Harold. He had never been so near a downright falsehood.

‘Whew! Then I suppose I must not report you this time! But look out! You’re getting slack.’

No time this for borrowing of the clerk. Harold was really frightened, for he had dawdled much more than he ought of late, and though he sometimes fancied himself sick of the whole post business, a complaint to his mother would be a dreadful matter. It put everything else out of his head; and he ran off in great haste to get the money from Betsey Hardman, knocking loud at her green door.

What a cloud of steamy heat the room was, with the fire glowing like a red furnace, and five black irons standing up before it; and clothes-baskets full of heaps of whiteness, and horses with vapoury webs of lace and cambric hanging on them; and the three ironing-boards, where smoothness ran along with the irons; and the heaps of folded clothes; and Betsey in her white apron, broad and red in the midst of her maidens!

‘Ha! Harold King! Well, to be sure, you are a stranger! Don’t come nigh that there hoss; it’s Mrs. Parnell’s best pocket-handkerchiefs, real Walencines!’ (she meant Valenciennes.) ‘If you’ll just run up and see Mother, I’ll have it out of the way, and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

‘Thank you, but I—’

‘My! What a smoke ye’re in! Take care, or I shall have ’em all to do over again. Go up to Mother, do, like a good lad.’

‘I can’t, Betsey; I must go home.’

‘Ay! that’s the way. Lads never can sit down sensible and comfortable! it’s all the same—’

‘I wanted,’ said Harold, interrupting her, ‘to ask you to lend me sixpence. Pony’s cast a shoe, and I had to leave her with the smith.’

‘Ay? Who did you leave her with?’

‘The first I came to, up in Wood Street.’

‘Myers. Ye shouldn’t have done that. His wife’s the most stuck-up proud body I ever saw—wears steel petticoats, I’ll answer for it. You should have gone to Charles Shaw.’

‘Can’t help it,’ said Harold. ‘Please, Betsey, let me have the sixpence; I’ll pay you faithfully to-morrow!’

‘Ay! that’s always the way. Never come in unless ye want somewhat. ‘Twasn’t the way your poor father went on! He’d a civil word for every one. Well, and can’t you stop a minute to say how your poor brother is?’

‘Much the same,’ said Harold impatiently.

‘Yes, he’ll never be no better, poor thing! All decliny; as I says to Mother, what a misfortune it is upon poor Cousin King! they’ll all go off, one after t’other, just like innocents to the slaughter.’

This was not a cheerful prediction; and Harold petulantly said he must get back, and begged for the sixpence. He got it at last, but not till all Betsey’s pocket had been turned out; and finding nothing but shillings and threepenny-bits, she went all through her day’s expenses aloud, calling all her girls to witness to help her to account for the sixpence that ought to have been there.

Mrs. Brown had paid her four and sixpence—one florin and a half-crown—and she had three threepenny-pieces in her pocket, and twopence. Then Sally had been out and got a shilling’s-worth of soap, and six-penn’orth of blue, and brought home one shilling; and there was the sausages—no one could recollect what they had cost, though they talked so much about their taste; and five-pence-worth of red-herrings, and the butter; yes, and threepence to the beggar who said he had been in Sebastopol. Harold’s head was ready to turn round before it was all done; but he got away at last, with a scolding for not going up to see Mother.

Home he trotted as hard as the pony would go, holding his head down to try to bury nose and mouth in his collar, and the thick rain plastering his hair, and streaming down the back of his neck. What an ill-used wretch was he, said he to himself, to have to rattle all over the country in such weather!

Here was home at last. How comfortable looked the bright light, as the cottage door was thrown open at the sound of the horse’s feet!

‘Well, Harold!’ cried Ellen eagerly, ‘is anything the matter?’

‘No,’ he said, beginning to get sulky because he felt he was wrong; ‘only Peggy lost a shoe—’

‘Lame?’

‘No, I took her to the smith.’

‘Give me Alfred’s ointment, please, before you put her up. He is in such a way about it, and we can’t put him to bed—’

‘Haven’t got it.’

‘Not got it! O Harold!’

‘I should like to know how to be minding such things when pony loses a shoe, and such weather! I declare I’m as wet—!’ said Harold angrily, as he saw his sister clasp her hands in distress, and the tears come in her eyes.

‘Is Harold come safe?’ called Mrs. King from above.

‘Is the ointment come?’ cried Alfred, in a piteous pain-worn voice.

Harold stamped his foot, and bolted to the stable to put the pony away.

‘It’s not come,’ said Ellen, coming up-stairs, very sadly.

‘He has forgot it.’

‘Forgot it!’ cried Alfred, raising himself passionately. ‘He always does forget everything! He don’t care for me one farthing! I believe he wants me dead!’

‘This is very bad of him! I didn’t think he’d have done it,’ said Mrs. King sorrowfully.

‘He’s been loitering after some mischief,’ exclaimed Alfred. ‘Taking his pleasure—and I must stay all this time in pain! Serve him right to send him back to Elbury.’

Mrs. King had a great mind to have done so; but when she looked at the torrents of rain that streamed against the window, and thought how wet Harold must be already, and of the fatal illnesses that had been begun by being exposed to such weather, she was afraid to venture a boy with such a family constitution, and turning back to Alfred, she said, ‘I am very sorry, Alfred, but it can’t be helped; I can’t send Harold out in the rain again, or we shall have him ill too.’

Poor Alfred! it was no trifle to have suffered all day, and to be told the pain must go on all night. His patience and all his better thoughts were quite worn away, and he burst into tears of anger and cried out that it was very hard—his mother cared for Harold more than for him, and nobody minded it, if he lay in such pain all night.

‘You know better than that, dear,’ said his poor mother, sadly grieved, but bearing it meekly. ‘Harold shall go as soon as can be to-morrow.’

‘And what good will that be to-night?’ grumbled Alfred. ‘But you always did put Harold before me. However, I shall soon be dead and out of your way, that’s all!’

Mrs. King would not make any answer to this speech, knowing it only made him worse. She went down to see about Harold, an additional offence to Alfred, who muttered something about ‘Mother and her darling.’

‘How can you, Alfred, speak so to Mother?’ cried Ellen.

‘I’m sure every one is cross enough to me,’ returned Alfred.

‘Not Mother,’ said Ellen. ‘She couldn’t help it.’

‘She won’t send Harold out again, though; I’m sure I’d have gone for him.’

‘You don’t know what the rain was,’ said Ellen.

‘Well, he should have minded; but you’re all against me.’

‘You’ll be sorry by-and-by, Alfred; this isn’t like the way you talk sometimes.’

‘Some one else had need to be sorry, not me.’

Perhaps, in the midst of his captious state, Alfred was somewhat pacified by hearing sounds below that made him certain that Harold was not escaping without some strong words from his mother.

They were not properly taken. Harold was in no mood of repentance, and the consciousness that he had been behaving most unkindly, only made him more rough and self-justifying.

‘I can’t help it! I can’t be a slave to run about everywhere, and remember everything—pony losing her shoe, and nigh tumbling down with me, and Ross at the post so cross for nothing!’

‘You’ll grieve at the way you have used your poor brother one of these days, Harold,’ quietly answered his mother, so low, that Alfred could not hear through the floor. ‘Now, you’ll please to go to bed.’

‘Ain’t I to have no supper?’ said Harold in a sullen voice, with a great mind to sit down in the chimney-corner in defiance.

‘I shall give you something hot when you are in bed. If I treated you as you deserve, I should send you to Mr. Blunt’s this moment; but I can’t afford to have you ill too, so go to bed this moment.’

His mother could still master him by her steadiness and he went up, muttering that he’d no notion of being treated like a baby, and that he would soon shew her the difference: he wasn’t going to be made a slave to Alfred, and ’twas all a fuss about that stuff!

He did fancy he said his prayers; but they could not have been real ones, for he was no softer when his mother came to his bedside with a great basin of hot gruel. He said he hated such nasty sick stuff, and grunted savagely when, with a look that ought to have gone to his heart, she asked if he thought he deserved anything better.

Yet she did not know of the shooting gallery, nor of his false excuses. If he had not been deceiving her, perhaps he might have been touched.

‘Well, Harold,’ she said at last, after taking the empty basin from him, and picking up his wet clothes and boots to dry them by the fire, ‘I hope as you lie there you’ll come to a better mind. It makes me afraid for you, my boy. It is not only your brother you are sinning against, but if you are a bad boy, you know Who will be angry with you. Good-night.’

She lingered, but Harold was still hard, and would neither own himself sorry, nor say good-night.

When she passed his bed at the top of the stairs again, after hanging up the things by the fire, he had his head hidden, and either was, or feigned to be, asleep.

Alfred’s ill-temper was nearly gone, but he still thought himself grievously injured, and was at no pains to keep himself from groaning and moaning all the time he was being put to bed. In fact, he rather liked to make the most of it, to shew his mother how provoking she was, and to reproach Harold for his neglect.

The latter purpose he did not effect; Harold heard every sound, and consoled himself by thinking what an intolerable work Alfred was making on purpose. If he had tried to bear it as well as possible, his brother would have been much more likely to be sorry.

Alfred was thinking too much about his misfortunes and discomforts to attend to the evening reading, but it soothed him a little, and the pain was somewhat less, so he did fall asleep, so uneasily though, that Mrs. King put off going to bed as late as she could.

It was nearly eleven, and Ellen had been in bed a long time, when Alfred started, and Mrs. King turned her head, at the click of the wicket gate, and a step plashing on the walk. She opened the little window, and the gust of wet wind puffed the curtains, whistled round the room, and almost blew out the candle.

‘Who’s there?

‘It’s me, Mrs. King! I’ve got the stuff,’ called a hoarse tired voice.

‘Well, if ever! It’s Paul Blackthorn!’ exclaimed Mrs. King. ‘Thank ye kindly. I’ll come and let you in.’

‘Paul Blackthorn!’ cried Alfred. ‘Been all the way to Elbury for me! O Mother, bring him up, and let me thank him! But how ever did he know?’ The tears came running down Alfred’s cheeks at such kindness from a stranger. Mrs. King had hurried down-stairs, and at the threshold stood a watery figure, holding out the gallipot.

‘Oh! thank you, thank you; but come in! Yes, come in! you must have something hot, and get dried.’

Paul shambled in very foot-sore. He looked as if he were made of moist mud, and might be squeezed into any shape, and streams of rain were dropping from each of his many rags.

‘Well, I don’t know how to thank you—such a night! But he’ll sleep easy now. How did you come to think of it?’

‘I was just coming home from the parson’s, and I met Harold putting up Peggy, in a great way because he’d forgotten. That’s all, Missus,’ said Paul, looking shamefaced. ‘Good-night to you.’

‘No, no, that won’t do. I must have you sit down and get dry,’ said Mrs. King, nursing up the remains of the fire; and as Paul’s day-garments served him for night-gear likewise, he could hardly help accepting the invitation, and spreading his chilled hands to the fire.

As to Mrs. King’s feelings, it must be owned that, grateful as she was, it was rather like sitting opposite to the heap in the middle of Mr. Shepherd’s farm-yard.

‘Would you take that?’ she said, holding out a three-penny piece. ‘I’d make it twice as much if I could, but times are hard.’

‘No, no, Missus, I didn’t do it for that,’ said Paul, putting it aside.

‘Then you must have some supper, that I declare.’

And she brought out a slice of cold bacon, and some bread, and warmed some beer at the fire. She would go without bacon and beer herself to-morrow, but that was nothing to her. It was a real pleasure to see the colour come into Paul’s bony yellow cheeks at the hearty meal, which he could not refuse; but he did not speak much, for he was tired out, and the fire and the beer were making him very sleepy.

Alfred rapped above with the stick that served as a bell. It was to beg that Paul would come and be thanked; and though Mrs. King was a little afraid of the experiment, she did ask him to walk up for a moment.

Grunt went he, and in rather an unmannerly way, he said, ‘I’d rather not.’

‘Pray do,’ said Mrs. King; ‘I don’t think Alfred will sleep easy without saying thank you.’

So Paul complied, and in a most ungainly fashion clumped up-stairs and stood at the door. He had not forgotten his last reception, and would not come a step farther, though Alfred stretched out his hand and begged him to come in.

Alfred could say only ‘Thank you, I never thought any one would be so kind.’

And Paul made gruff reply, ‘Ye’re very welcome,’ turned about as if he were running away, and tumbled down-stairs, and out of the house, without even answering Mrs. King’s ‘Good-night.’

Harold had wakened at the sounds. He heard all, but he chose to seem to be asleep, and, would you believe it? he was only the more provoked! Paul’s exertion made his neglect seem all the worse, and he was positively angry with him for ‘going and meddling, and poking his nose where he’d no concern. Now he shouldn’t be able to get the stuff to-morrow, and so make it up; and of course mother would go and dock Paul’s supper out of his dinner!’

If such reflections were going on upon one side of the partition, there were very different thoughts upon the other. The stranger’s kindness had done more than relieve Alfred’s pain: the warm sense of thankfulness had softened his spirit, and carried off his selfish fit. He knew not how kind people were to him, and how ungrateful he had been to punish his innocent mother and sister, and so much to magnify a bit of thoughtlessness on Harold’s part; to be angry with his mother for not driving him out when she thought it might endanger his health and life, and to say such cruel things on purpose to wound her. Alfred felt himself far more cruel than he had even thought Harold.

And was this his resolution? Was this the shewing the sincerity of his repentance through his conduct in illness? Was this patience? Was it brotherly love? Was it the taking up the cross so as to bear it like his Saviour, Who spoke no word of complaining, no murmur against His tormentors?

How he had fallen! How he had lost himself! It was a bitter distress, and threw him almost into despair. He prayed over and over to be forgiven, and began to long for some assurance of pardon, and for something to prevent all his right feelings and wishes from thus seeming to slip away from his grasp at the first trial.

He told his mother how sorry he was; and she answered, ‘Dear lad, don’t fret about it. It was very hard for you to bear, and you are but learning, you see, to be patient.’

‘But I’m not learning if I don’t go on no better,’ sighed Alfred.

‘By bits you are, my boy,’ she said; ‘you are much less fractious now than you used to be, only you could not stand this out-of-the-way trial.’

Alfred groaned.

‘Do you remember what our Saviour said to St. Peter?’ said his mother; ‘“Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.” You see, St. Peter couldn’t bear his cross then, but he went on doing his best, and grieving when he failed, and by-and-by he did bear it almost like his Master. He got to be made strong out of weakness.’

There was some comfort to Alfred in this; but he feared, and yet longed, to see Mr. Cope, and when he came, had scarcely answered his questions as to how he felt, before he said, ‘O Sir, I’ve been a bad boy again, and so cross to them all!’

‘O Sir,’ said Ellen, who could not bear for him to blame himself, ‘I’m sure it was no wonder—he’s so distracted with the pain, and Harold getting idling, and forgetting to bring him the ointment. Why, even that vagabond boy was so shocked, that he went all the way to Elbury that very night for it. I told Alfred you’d tell him that anybody would be put out, and nobody would think of minding what he said.’

‘Nobody, especially so kind a sister,’ said Mr. Cope, smiling; ‘but that is not what Alfred is thinking of.’

‘No, Sir,’ said Alfred; ‘their being so good to me makes it all the worse.’

‘I quite believe so; and you are very much disappointed in yourself.’

‘Oh yes, Sir, just when I wanted to be getting patient, and more like—’ and his eyes turned to the little picture, and filled with tears.

Mr. Cope said somewhat of what his mother had said that he was but a scholar in patience, and that he must take courage, though he had slipped, and pray for new strengthening and refreshing to go on in the path of pain his Lord had hallowed for him.

Perhaps the words reminded Alfred of the part of the Catechism where they occur, for he said, ‘Oh, I wish I was confirmed! If I could but take the Holy Sacrament, to make me stronger, and sure of being forgiven—’

‘You shall—before—’ said Mr. Cope, speaking eagerly, but becoming choked as he went on. ‘You are one whom the Church would own as ready and desirous to come, though you cannot be confirmed. You should at once—but you see I am not yet a priest; I have not the power to administer the Holy Communion; but I trust I shall be one in the spring, and then, Alfred—Or if you should be worse, I promise you that I would bring some one here. You shall not go without the Bread of Life.’

Alfred felt what he said to the depths of his heart, but he could not say anything but ‘Thank you, Sir.’

Mr. Cope, still much moved, laid his hand upon that of the boy. ‘So, Alfred, we prepare together. As I hope and long to prepare myself to have that great charge committed to me, which our Saviour Christ gave to His Apostles; so you prepare for the receiving of that Bread and that Cup which will more fully unite you to Him, and join your suffering to what He bore for you.’

‘How shall I, Sir?’ murmured Alfred.

‘I will do my best to shew you,’ said Mr. Cope; ‘but your Catechism tells you best. Think over that last answer.’

Alfred’s face lighted sweetly as he went over it. ‘Why, that’s what I can’t help doing, Sir; I can’t forget my faults, I’m so afraid of them; and I’m sure I do want to lead a new life, if I didn’t keep on being so bad; and thinking about His dying is the best comfort I have. Nor I’m sure I don’t bear ill-will to nobody, only I suppose it is not charity to run out at poor Mother and Ellen when one’s put out.’

‘Perhaps that is what you want to learn,’ said Mr. Cope, ‘and to get all these feelings deepened, and more earnest and steadfast. If the long waiting does that for you, it will be good, and keep you from coming lightly to the Holy Feast.’

‘Oh, I could not do that!’ exclaimed Alfred. ‘And may I think that all my faults will be taken away and forgiven?’

‘All you repent of, and bring in faith—’

‘That is what they say at church in the Absolution,’ said Alfred thoughtfully.

‘Rather it is what the priest says to them,’ said Mr. Cope; ‘it is the applying the promise of forgiveness that our Saviour bought. I may not yet say those words with authority, Alfred, but I should like to hope that some day I may speak them to you, and bring rest from the weight at your heart.’

‘Oh! I hope I may live to that!’ said Alfred.

‘You shall hear them, whether from me or from another,’ said Mr. Cope, ‘that is, if God will grant us warning. But you need not fear, Alfred, if you thoroughly repent, and put your full faith in the great Sacrifice that has been offered for your sins and the sins of all the world. God will take care of His child, and you already have His promise that He will give you all that is needful for your salvation.’

CHAPTER VIII—CONFIRMATION

If Harold had known all the consequences of his neglect, perhaps he would have been more sorry for it than as yet he had chosen to be.

The long walk and the warm beer and fire sent Paul to his hay-nest so heavy with sleep, that he never stirred till next morning he was wakened by Tom Boldre, the shuffler, kicking him severely, and swearing at him for a lazy fellow, who stayed out at night and left him to do his work.

Paul stumbled to his feet, quite confused by the pain, and feeling for his shoes in the dark loft. The shuffler scarcely gave him an instant to put them on, but hunted him down-stairs, telling him the farmer was there, and he would catch it.

It would do nobody any good to hear the violent way in which Mr. Shepherd abused the boy. He was a passionate man, and no good labourers liked to work with him because of his tongue. With such grown men as he had, he was obliged to keep himself under some restraint, but this only incited him to make up for it towards the poor friendless boy.

It was really nearly eight o’clock, and Paul’s work had been neglected, which was enough to cause displeasure; and besides, Boldre had heard Paul coming home past eleven, and the farmer insisted on knowing what he had been doing.

Under all his rags, Paul was a very proud boy, and thus asked, he would not tell, but stood with his legs twisted, looking very sulky.

‘No use asking him,’ cried Mrs. Shepherd’s shrill voice at the back door; ‘why, don’t ye hear that Mrs. Barker’s hen-roost has been robbed by Dick Royston and two or three more on ’em?’

‘I never robbed!’ cried Paul indignantly.

‘None of your jaw,’ said the farmer angrily. ‘If you don’t tell me this moment where you’ve been, off you go this instant. Drinking at the Tankard, I’ll warrant.’

‘No such thing, Sir,’ said Paul. ‘I went to Elbury after some medicine for a sick person.’

Somehow he had a feeling about the house opposite, which would not let him come out with the name in such a scene.

‘That’s all stuff,’ broke in Mrs. Shepherd, ‘I don’t believe one word of it! Send him off; take my advice, Farmer, let him go where he comes from; Ellen King told me he was out of prison.’

Paul flushed crimson at this, and shook all over. He had all but turned to go, caring for nothing more at Friarswood; but just then, John Farden, one of the labourers, who was carrying out some manure, called out, ‘No, no, Ma’am. Sure enough he did go to Elbury to Dr. Blunt’s. I was on the road myself, and I hears him. “Good-night,” says I. “Good-night,” says he. “Where be’est going?” says I. “To doctor’s,” says he, “arter some stuff for Alfred King.”

‘Yes,’ said Paul, speaking more to Farden than to his master, ‘and then Mrs. King gave me some supper, and that was what made me so late.’

‘She ought to be ashamed of herself, then,’ said Mrs. Shepherd spitefully, ‘having a vagabond scamp like that drinking beer at her house at that time of night. How one is deceived in folks!’

‘Well, what are you doing here?’ cried the farmer, turning on Paul angrily; ‘d’ye mean to waste any more of the day?’

So Paul was not turned off, and had to go straight to his work. It was well he had had so good a supper, for he had not a moment to snatch a bit of breakfast. It so happened that his work was to go with John Farden, who was carrying out the manure in the cart. Paul had to hold the horse, while John forked it out into little heaps in the field. John was a great big powerful man, with a foolish face, not a good workman, nor a good character, or he would not have been at that farm. He had either never been taught anything, or had forgotten it all; he never went near church; he had married a disreputable wife, and had two or three unruly children, who were likely to be the plagues of their parents and the parish, but not a whit did John heed; he did not seem to have much more sense than to work just enough to get food, lodging, beer, and tobacco, to sleep all night, and doze all Sunday. There was not any malice nor dishonesty in him; but it was terrible that a man with an immortal soul should live so nearly the life of the brute beasts that have no understanding, and should never wake to the sense of God or of eternity.

He was not a man of many words, and nothing passed for a long time but shouts of hoy, and whoa, and the like, to the horse. Paul went heavily on, scarce knowing what he was about; there was a stunned jaded feel about him, as if he were hunted and driven about, a mere outcast, despised by every one, even by the Kings, whose kindness had been his only ray of brightness. Not that his senses or spirits were alive enough even to be conscious of pain or vexation; it was only a dull dreary heedlessness what became of him next; and, quick clever boy as he had been in the Union, he did not seem to have a bit more sense, thought, or feeling, than John Farden.

John Farden was the first to break the silence: ‘I wouldn’t bide,’ said he.

Paul looked up, and muttered, ‘I have nowhere to go.’

‘Farmer uses thee shameful,’ repeated John. ‘Why don’t thee cut?’

Paul saw the smoke of Mrs. King’s chimney. That had always seemed like a friend to him, but it came across him that they too thought him a runaway from prison, and he felt as if his only bond of fellowship was gone. But there was something else, too; and he made answer, ‘I’ll bide for the Confirmation.’

‘Eh?’ said John, ‘what good’ll that do ye?’

‘Help me to be a good lad,’ said Paul, who knew John Farden would not enter into any other explanation.

‘Why, what’ll they do to ye?’

‘The Bishop will put his hand on me and bless me,’ said Paul; and as he said the words there was hope and refreshment coming back. He was a child of God, if no other owned him.

‘Whoy,’ said Farden, much as he might have spoken to his horse, ‘rum sort of a head thou’st got! Thee’ll never go up to Bishop such a guy!’

‘Can’t help it,’ said Paul rather sullenly; ‘it ain’t the clothes that God looks at.’

John scanned him all over, with his face looking more foolish than ever in the puzzle he felt.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘and what wilt get by it?’

‘God’s grace to do right, I hope,’ said Paul; then he added, out of his sad heart, ‘It’s bad enough here, to be sure. It would be a bad look-out if one hoped for nothing afterwards.’

Somehow John’s mind didn’t take in the notion of afterwards, and he did not go on talking to Paul. Perhaps there was a dread in his poor dull mind of getting frightened out of the deadly stupefied sleep it was bound in.

But that bit of talk had done Paul great good, by rousing him to the thought of what he had to hope for. There was the Confirmation nigh at hand, and then on beyond there was rest; and the words came into his mind, ‘There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.’

Poor, poor boy! He was very young to have such yearnings towards the grave, and well-nigh to wish he lay as near to it as Alfred King, so he might have those loving tender hands near him, those kind voices round him. Paul had gone through a great deal in these few months; and, used to good shelter and regular meals, he was less inured to bodily hardship than many a cottage boy. His utter neglect of his person was telling on him; he was less healthy and strong than he had been, and though high spirits, merriment, and the pleasure of freedom and independence, had made all light to him in the summer, yet now the cold weather, with his insufficient food and scanty clothing, was dulling him and deadening him, and hard work and unkind usage seemed to be grinding his very senses down. To be sure, when twelve o’clock came, he went up into the loft, ate his bit of dry bread, and said his prayers, as he had not been able to do in the morning, and that made him feel less forlorn and downcast for a little while; but then as he sat, he grew cold, and numb, and sleepy, and seemed to have no life in him, but to be moving like a horse in a mill, when Boldre called him down, and told him not to be idling there.

The theft in Mrs. Barker’s poultry-yard was never traced home to any one, but the world did not the less believe Dick Royston and Jesse Rolt to have been concerned in it. Indeed, they had been drinking up some of their gains when Harold met them at the shooting-gallery: and Mrs. Shepherd would not put it out of her head that Paul Blackthorn was in the secret, and that if he did really go for the medicine as he said, it was only as an excuse for carrying the chickens to some receiver of stolen goods. She had no notion of any person doing anything out of pure love and pity. Moreover, it is much easier to put a suspicion into people’s heads than out again; and if Paul’s whole history and each day’s doings had been proved to her in a court of justice, she would still have chiefly remembered that she had always thought ill of him, and that Ellen King had said he was a runaway convict, and so she would have believed him to the end.

Ellen had long ago forgotten that she had said anything of the kind; and though she still held her nose rather high when Paul was near, she would have answered for his honesty as readily as for that of her own brothers. But hers had not been the charity that thinketh no evil, and her idle words had been like thistle-down, lightly sent forth, but when they had lighted, bearing thorns and prickles.

Those thorns were galling poor Paul. Nobody could guess what his glimpses of that happy, peaceful, loving family were to him. They seemed to him like a softer, better kind of world, and he looked at their fair faces and fresh, well-ordered garments with a sort of reverence; a kind look or greeting from Mrs. King, a mere civil answer from Ellen, those two sights of the white spirit-looking Alfred, were like the rays of light that shone into his dark hay-loft. Sometimes he heard them singing their hymns and psalms on a Sunday evening, and then the tears would come into his eyes as he leant over the gate to listen. And, as if it was because Ellen kept at the greatest distance from him, he set more store by her words and looks than those of any one else, was always glad when she served him in the shop, and used to watch her on Sunday, looking as fresh as a flower in her neat plain dress.

And now to hear that she not only thought meanly of him, which he knew well enough, but thought him a thief, a runaway, and an impostor coming about with false tales, was like a weight upon his sunken spirits, and seemed to take away all the little heart hard usage had left him, made him feel as if suspicious eyes were on him whenever he went for his bit of bread, and took away all his peace in looking at the cottage.

He did once take courage to say to Harold, ‘Did your sister really say I had run away from gaol?’

‘Oh, nobody minds what our Ellen says,’ was the answer.

‘But did she say so?’

‘I don’t know, I dare say she did. She’s so fine, that she thinks no one that comes up-stairs in dirty shoes worth speaking to. I’m sure she’s the plague of my life—always at me.’

That was not much comfort for Paul. He had other friends, to be sure. All the boys in the place liked him, and were very angry with the way the farmer treated him, and greatly to their credit, they admired his superior learning instead of being jealous of it. Mrs. Hayward, the sexton’s wife, the same who had bound up his hand when he cut it at harvest, even asked him to come in and help her boys in the evenings with what they had to prepare for Mr. Cope. He was not sorry to do so sometimes. The cottage was a slatternly sort of place, where he did not feel ashamed of himself, and the Haywards were mild good sort of folks, from whom he was sure never to hear either a bad or an unkind word; though he did not care for them, nor feel refreshed and helped by being with them as he did with the Kings.

John Farden, too, was good-natured to him, and once or twice hindered Boldre from striking or abusing him; he offered him a pipe once, but Paul could not smoke, and another time brought him out a pint of beer into the field. Mrs. Shepherd spied him drinking it from her upper window, and believed all the more that he got money somehow, and spent it in drink.

So the time wore on till the Confirmation, all seeming like one dull heavy dream of bondage; and as the weather became colder, the poor boy seemed to have no power of thinking of anything, but of so getting through his work as to avoid violence, to keep himself from perishing with cold, and not to hurt his chilblains more than he could help.

All his quick intellect and good instruction seemed to have perished away, and the last time he went to Mr. Cope’s, he sat as if he were stupid or asleep, and when a question came to him, sat with his mouth open like silly Bill Pridden.

Mr. Cope knew him too well not to feel, as he wrote the ticket, that there were very few of whom he could so entirely from his heart say ‘Examined and APPROVED,’ as the poor lonely outcast foundling, Paul Blackthorn, who could not even tell whether he were fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, but could just make sure that he had once been caned by old Mr. Haynes, who went away from the Union twelve years ago.

‘Do you think you can keep the ticket safe if I give it you now, Paul?’ asked Mr. Cope, recollecting that the cows might sup upon it like his Prayer-book.

Paul put his hands down to the bottom of his pockets. They were all one hole, and that sad lost foolish look came over his wan face again, and startled Mr. Cope.

The boys grinned, but Charles Hayward stepped forward. ‘Please, Sir, let me take care of it for him.’

Mr. Cope and Paul both agreed, and Mr. Cope kept Charles for a moment to say, as he gave him a shilling, ‘Look here, Charles, do you think you can manage to get that poor fellow a tolerable breakfast on Saturday before he goes? And if you could make him look a little more decent?’

Charles pulled his forelock and looked knowing. In fact, there was a little plot among these good-natured boys, and Harold King was in it too, though he was not of the Confirmation party, and said and thought he was very glad of it. He did not want to bind himself to be so very good. Silly boy; as if Baptism had not bound him already!

Mrs. Hayward put her head out as Paul passed her cottage, and called out, ‘I say, you Paul, you come in to-morrow evening with our Charlie and Jim, and I’ll wash you when I washes them.’

Good Mrs. Hayward made a mistake that the more delicate-minded Mrs. King would never have made. Perhaps if a pail of warm water and some soap had been set before Paul, he might actually have washed himself; but he was much too big and too shamefaced a lad to fancy sharing a family scrubbing by a woman, whatever she might do to her own sons. But considering the size of the Hayward cottage, and the way in which the family lived, this sort of notion was not likely to come into the head of the good-natured mother.

So she and her boys were much vexed when Paul did not make his appearance, and she made a face of great disgust when Charles said, ‘Never mind, Mother, my white frock will hide no end of dirt.’

‘I shall have to wash it over again before you can wear it, I know,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘Not as I grudges the trouble; he’s a poor lost orphant, that it’s a shame to see so treated.’

Mrs. Hayward did not know that she was bestowing the cup of cold water, as well as being literally ready to wash the feet of the poor disciple.

A clean body is a type and token of a pure mind; and though the lads of Friarswood did not quite perceive this, there was a feeling about them of there being something unnatural and improper, and a disgrace to Friarswood, in any one going up to the Bishop in such a condition as Paul. Especially, as Charles Hayward said, when he was the pick of the whole lot. Perhaps Charles was right, for surely Paul was single-hearted in his hope of walking straight to his one home, Heaven, and he had been doing no other than bearing his cross, when he so patiently took the being ‘buffeted’ when he did well, and faithfully served his froward master.

But Paul was not to escape the outward cleansing, and from one of the very last people from whom it would have been expected. He had just pulled his bed of hay down over him, and was trying to curl himself up so as to stop his teeth from chattering, with Cæsar on his feet, when the dog growled, and a great voice lowered to a gruff whisper, said, ‘Come along, young un!’

‘I’m coming,’ cried Paul.

Though it was not Boldre’s voice, it had startled him terribly; he was so much used to ill-treatment, that he expected a savage blow every moment.

But the great hand that closed on him, though rough, was not unkind.

‘Poor lad, how he quakes!’ said John Farden’s voice. ‘Don’t ye be afeard, it’s only me.’

‘Nobody got at the horses?’ cried Paul.

‘No, no; only I ain’t going to have you going up to yon big parson all one muck-heap! Come on, and make no noise about it.’

Paul did not very well know what was going to befall him, but he did not feel unsafe with John Farden, and besides, his lank frame was in the grasp of that big hand like a mouse in the power of a mastiff. So he let himself be hauled down the ladder, into an empty stall, where, behold, there was a dark lantern (which had been at bad work in its time), a pail, a brush, a bit of soap, and a ragged towel.

John laid hold of him much as Alfred in his page days used to do of Lady Jane’s little dog when it had to be washed, but Puck had the advantage in keeping on his shaggy coat all the time, and in being more gently handled, whereas Farden scrubbed with such hearty good-will, that Paul thought his very skin would come off. But he had undergone the like in the workhouse, and he knew how to accommodate himself to it; and when his rough bath was over, though he was very sore, and stiff, and chilly, he really felt relieved, and more respectable than he had done for many months, only rather sorry he must put on his filthy old rags again; and he gave honest John more thanks than might have been expected.

The Confirmation was to be at eleven o’clock, at Elbury, and John had undertaken his morning’s work, so that Mr. Shepherd grudgingly consented to spare him, knowing that all the other farmers of course did the same, and that there would be a cry of shame if he did not.

Paul had just found his way down the ladder in the morning, with thoughts going through his mind that to him this would be the coming of the Comforter, and he was sure he wanted comfort; and that for some hours of this day at least, he should be at peace from rude words and blows, when he heard a great confusion of merry voices and suppressed laughing, and saw the heads of some of the lads bobbing about near Mrs. King’s garden.

Was it time already to set off, he wondered, looking up to the sun; but then those boys seemed to be in an uproarious state such as did not suit his present mood, nor did he think Mr. Cope would consider it befitting. He would have let them go by, feeling himself such a scare-crow as they might think a blot upon them; but he remembered that Charles Hayward had his ticket, and as he looked at himself, he doubted whether he should be let into a strange church.

‘Paul! Paul Blackthorn!’ called Harold, with a voice all aglee.

‘Well!’ said Paul, ‘what do you want of me?’

‘Come on, and you’ll see.’

‘I don’t want a row. Is Charlie Hayward there? Just ask him for my card, and don’t make a work.’

‘He’ll give it you if you’ll come for it,’ said Harold; and seeing there was no other chance, Paul slowly came. Harold led him to the stable, where just within the door stood a knot of stout hearty boys, snorting with fun, hiding their heads on each other’s shoulders, and bending their buskined knees with merriment.

‘Now then!’ cried Charles Hayward, and he had got hold of the only button that held Paul’s coat together.

Paul was bursting out with something, but George Grant’s arms were round his waist, and his hands were fumbling at his fastenings. They were each one much stronger than he was now, and they drowned his voice with shouts of laughter, while as fast as one garment was pulled off, another was put on.

‘Mind, you needn’t make such a work, it bain’t presents,’ said George Grant, ‘only we won’t have them asking up at Elbury if we’ve saved the guy to bring in.’

‘It is a present, though, old Betty Bushel’s shirt,’ said Charles Hayward. ‘She said she’d throw it at his head if he brought it back again; but the frock’s mine.’

‘And the corduroys is mine,’ said George Grant. ‘My! they be a sight too big in the band! Run in, Harold, and see if your mother can lend us a pin.’

‘And the waistcoat is my summer one,’ said Fred Bunting. ‘He’s too big too; why, Paul, you’re no better than a natomy!’

‘Never mind, my white frock will hide it all,’ said Charles, ‘and here’s Ned’s cap for you. Oh! and it’s poor Alfred’s boots.’

Paul could not make up his mind to walk all the way in the boots, but to satisfy the boys he engaged to put them on as soon as they were getting to Elbury.

‘My! he looks quite respectable,’ cried Charles, running back a little way to look at him.

‘I wonder if Mr. Cope will know him?’ exclaimed Harold, jumping leap-frog fashion on George Grant’s back.

‘The maids will take him for some strange gentleman,’ exclaimed Jem Hayward; ‘and why, bless me, he’s washed, I do declare!’ as a streak of light from the door fell on Paul’s visage.

‘No, you don’t mean it,’ broke out Charles. ‘Let’s look! yes, I protest, why, the old grime between his eyes is gone after all. How did you manage that, Paul?’

Paul rather uneasily mumbled something about John Farden, and the boys clapped their hands, and shouted, so that Alfred, who well knew what was going on, raised himself on his pillow and laughed. It was rather blunt treatment for feelings if they were tender, but these were rough warm-hearted village boys, and it was all their good-nature.

‘And where’s the grub?’ asked Charles importantly, looking about.

‘Oh, not far off,’ said Harold; and in another moment, he and Charles had brought in a black coffee-pot, a large mug, some brown sugar, a hunch of bread, some butter, and a great big smoking sausage.

Paul looked at it, as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. One boy proceeded to turn in an inordinate quantity of sugar, another to pour in the brown coffee that sent out a refreshing steam enough to make any one hungry. George Grant spread the butter, cut the sausage in half, put it on the bread, and thrust it towards Paul.

‘Eat it—s—s,’ said Charles, patting Paul on the back. ‘Mr. Cope said you was to, and you must obey your minister.’

‘Not all for me?’ said Paul, not able to help a pull at the coffee, the mug warming his fingers the while.

‘Oh yes, we’ve all had our breakfastisses,’ said George Grant; ‘we are only come to make you eat yours like a good boy, as Mr. Cope said you should.’

They stood round, looking rather as they would have done had Paul been an elephant taking his meal in a show; but not one would hear of helping him off with a crumb out of Mr. Cope’s shilling. George Grant was a big hungry lad, and his breakfast among nine at home had not been much to speak of; but savoury as was the sausage, and perfumy as was the coffee, he would have scorned to take a fragment from that stranger, beg him to do so as Paul might; and what could not be eaten at that time, with a good pint of the coffee, was put aside in a safe nook in the stable to be warmed up for supper.

That morning’s work was not a bad preparation for Confirmation after all.

Harold had stayed so long, that he had to jump on the pony and ride his fastest to be in time at the post. He was very little ashamed of not being among those lads, and felt as if he had the more time to enjoy himself; but there were those who felt very sad for him—Alfred, who would have given so much to receive the blessing; and Ellen, whose confirmation was very lonely and melancholy without either of her brothers; besides his mother, to whom his sad carelessness was such constant grief and heart-ache.

Ellen was called for by the carriage from the Grange, and sat up behind with the kitchen-maid, who was likewise to be confirmed. Little Miss Jane sat inside in her white dress and veil, looking like a snowdrop, Alfred thought, as his mother lifted him up to the window to see her, as the carriage stood still while Ellen climbed to her seat.

In the course of the morning, Mrs. King made time to read over the Confirmation Service with Alfred, to think of the blessing she was receiving, and to pray that it might rest upon her through life. And they entreated, too, that Harold might learn to care for it, and be brought to a better mind.

‘O Mother,’ said Alfred, after lying thinking for sometime, ‘if I thought Harold would take up for good and be a better boy to you than I have been, I should not mind anything so much.’

And there was Harold all the time wondering whether he should be able to get out in the evening to have a lark with Dick and Jesse.

Ellen was set down by-and-by. Her colour was very deep, but she looked gentle and happy, and the first thing she did was to bend over Alfred, kiss him, and say how she wished he had been there.

Then, when she had been into her own room, she came back and told them about the beautiful large Elbury Church, and the great numbers of young girls and boys on the two sides of the aisle, and of the Bishop seated in the chair by the altar, and the chanted service, with the organ sounding so beautiful.

And then how her heart had beat, and she hardly dared to speak her vow, and how she trembled when her turn came to go up to the rail, but she said it was so comfortable to see Mr. Cope in his surplice, looking so young among the other clergymen, and coming a little forward, as if to count out and encourage his own flock. She was less frightened when she had met his kind eye, and was able to kneel down with a more quiet mind to receive the gift which had come down on the Day of Pentecost.

Alfred wanted to know whether she had seen Paul, but Ellen had been kneeling down and not thinking of other people, when the Friarswood boys went up. Only she had passed him on the way home, and seen that though he was lagging the last of the boys, he did not look dull and worn, as he had been doing lately.

Ellen had been asked to go to the Grange after church to-morrow evening, and drink tea there, in celebration of the Confirmation which the two young foster-sisters had shared.

Harold went to fetch her home at night, and they both came into the house fresh and glowing with the brisk frosty air, and also with what they had to tell.

‘O mother, what do you think? Paul Blackthorn is to go to the Grange to-morrow. My Lady wants to see him, and perhaps she will make Mr. Pound find some work for him about the farm.’

Harold jumped up and snapped his fingers towards the farm. ‘There’s for old Skinflint!’ said he; ‘not a chap in the place but will halloo for joy!’

‘Well, I am glad!’ said Mrs. King; ‘I didn’t think that poor lad would have held out much longer, winter weather and all. But how did my Lady come to hear of it?’

‘Oh, it seems she noticed him going to church in all his rags, and Mr. Cope told her who he was; so Miss Jane came and asked me all about him, and I told her what a fine scholar he is, and how shamefully the farmer and Boldre treat him, and how good he was to Alfred about the ointment, and how steady he is. And I told her about the boys dressing him up yesterday, and how he wouldn’t take a gift. She listened just as if it was a story, and she ran away to her grandmamma, and presently came back to say that the boy was to come up to-morrow after his work, for Lady Jane to speak to him.’

‘Well, at least, he has been washed once,’ said Mrs. King; ‘but he’s so queer; I hope he will have no fancies, and will behave himself.’

‘I’ll tackle him,’ declared Harold decidedly. ‘I’ve a great mind to go out this moment and tell him.’

Mrs. King prevented this; she persuaded Harold that Mrs. Shepherd would fly out at them if she heard any noise in the yard, and that it would be better for every one to let Paul alone till the morning.

Morning came, and as soon as Harold was dressed, he rushed to the farm-yard, but he could not find Paul anywhere, and concluded that he had been sent out with the cows, and would be back by breakfast-time.

As soon as he had brought home the post-bag, he dashed across the road again, but came back in a few moments, looking beside himself.

‘He’s gone!’ he said, and threw himself back in a chair.

‘Gone!’ cried Mrs. King and Ellen with one voice, quite aghast.

‘Gone!’ repeated Harold. ‘The farmer hunted him off this morning! Missus will have it that he’s been stealing her eggs, and that there was a lantern in the stable on Friday night; so they told him to be off with him, and he’s gone!’

‘Poor, poor boy! just when my Lady would have been the making of him!’ cried Ellen.

‘But where—which way is he gone?’ asked Mrs. King.

‘I might ride after him, and overtake him,’ cried Harold, starting up, ‘but I never thought to ask! And Mrs. Shepherd was ready to pitch into me, so I got away as soon as I could. Do you run over and ask, Ellen; you always were a favourite.’

They were in such an eager state, that Ellen at once sprang up, and hastily throwing on her bonnet, ran across the road, and tapped at Mrs. Shepherd’s open door, exclaiming breathlessly, ‘O Ma’am, I beg your pardon, but will you tell me where Paul Blackthorn is gone?’

‘Paul Blackthorn! how should I know?’ said Mrs. Shepherd crossly. ‘I’m not to be looking after thieves and vagabonds. He’s a come-by-chance, and he’s a go-by-chance, and a good riddance too!’

‘Oh but, Ma’am, my Lady wanted to speak to him.’

This only made Mrs. Shepherd the more set against the poor boy.

‘Ay, ay, I know—coming over the gentry; and a good thing he’s gone!’ said she. ‘The place isn’t to be harbouring thieves and vagrants, or who’s to pay the rates? My eggs are gone, I tell you, and who should take ’em but that lad, I’d like to know?’

‘Them was two rotten nest-eggs as I throwed away when I was cleaning the stable.’

‘Who told you to put in your word, John Farden?’ screamed Mrs. Shepherd, turning on him. ‘Ye’d best mind what ye’re about, or ye’ll be after him soon.’

‘No loss neither,’ muttered John, stopping to pick up his shovel.

‘And you didn’t see which way he was gone?’ asked Ellen, looking from the labourer to the farmer’s wife.

‘Farmer sent un off or ever I come,’ replied John, ‘or I’d ha’ gied un a breakfast.’

‘I’m sure I can’t tell,’ said Mrs. Shepherd, with a toss of her head. ‘And as to you, Ellen King, I’m surprised at you, running after a scamp like that, that you told me yourself was out of a prison.’

‘Oh but, Mrs. Shepherd—’

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ interrupted Mrs. Shepherd; ‘and I wonder your mother allows it. But there’s nothing like girls now-a-days.’

Ellen thought John Farden grinned; and feeling as if nothing so shocking could ever happen to her again, she flew back, she hardly knew how, to her home, clapped the door after, and dropping into a chair as Harold had done, burst into such a fit of crying, that she could not speak, and only shook her head in answer to Harold’s questions as to how Paul was gone.

‘Oh, no one knew!’ she choked out among her sobs; ‘and Mrs. Shepherd—such things!’

Harold stamped his foot, and Mrs. King tried to soothe her. In the midst, she recollected that she could not bear her brothers to guess at the worst part of the ‘such things;’ and recovering herself a moment, she said, ‘No, no, they’ve driven him off! He’s gone, and—and, oh! Mother, Mrs. Shepherd will have it he’s a thief, and—and she says I said so.’

That was bad enough, and Ellen wept bitterly again; while her mother and Harold both cried out with surprise.

‘Yes—but—I did say I dare said he was out of a reformatory—and that she should remember it! Now I’ve taken away his character, and he’s a poor lost boy!’

Oh, idle words! idle words!

CHAPTER IX—ROBBING THE MAIL

There was no helping it! People must have their letters whether Paul Blackthorn were lost or not, and Harold was a servant of the public, and must do his duty, so after some exhortations from his mother, he ruefully rose up, hoping that he should not have to go to Ragglesford.

‘Yes, you will,’ said his mother, ‘and maybe to wait. Here’s a registered letter, and I think there are two more with money in them.’

‘To think,’ sighed Harold, as he mounted his pony, ‘of them little chaps getting more money for nothing, than Paul did in a month by working the skin off his bones!’

‘Don’t be discontented, Harold, on that score. Them little chaps will work hard enough by-and-by: and the money they have now is to train them in making a fit use of it then.’

Harold looked anxiously up and down the road for Paul, and asked Mr. Cope’s housekeeper whether he had been there to take leave. No; and indeed Harold would have been a little vexed if he had wished good-bye anywhere if not at home.

There was a fine white frost, and the rime hung thickly on every spray of the heavy branches of the dark firs and larches that overhung the long solitary lane between the Grange and Ragglesford, and fringed the park palings with crystals. Harold thought how cold poor Paul must be going on his way in his ragged clothes. The ice crackled under the pony’s feet as she trotted down Ragglesford Lane, and the water of the ford looked so cold, that Peggy, a very wise animal, turned her head towards the foot-bridge, a narrow and not very sound affair, over which Harold had sometimes taken her when the stream was high, and threatened to be over his feet.

Harold made no objection; but no sooner were all the pony’s four hoofs well upon the bridge, than at the other end appeared Dick Royston.

‘Hollo, Har’ld!’ was his greeting, ‘I’ve got somewhat to say to ye.’

‘D’ye know where Paul Blackthorn is?’ asked Harold.

‘Not I—I’m a traveller myself, you must know.’

‘You, going to cut?’ cried Harold.

‘Ay,’ said Dick, laying hold of the pony’s rein. ‘The police have been down at Rolt’s—stupid fellow left old gander’s feet about—Mrs. Barker swore to ’em ‘cause he’d had so many kicks and bites on common—Jesse’s took up and peached—I’ve been hiding about all night—precious cold it was, and just waiting, you see, to wish you good-bye.’

Harold, very much shocked, could have dispensed with his farewells, nor did he like the look of his eyes.

‘Thank you, Dick; I’m sorry—I didn’t think—but I’m after time—I wish you’d let go of Peggy.’

‘So that’s all you have to say to an old comrade!’ said Dick; ‘but, I say, Har’ld, I’m not going so. I must have some tin to take me to Portsmouth. I want to know what you’ve got in that there bag!’

‘You won’t have that; it’s the post. Let go, Dick;’ and he pushed the pony forward, but Dick had got her fast by the head. Harold looked round for help, but Ragglesford Lane was one of the loneliest places in the country. There was not a house for half a mile, and Lady Jane’s plantations shut in the road on either side.

‘I mean to have it,’ said Dick, looking coolly up into his face; ‘I mean to see if there’s any of the letters with a half-sovereign in ’em, that you tell us about.’

‘Dick, Dick, it would be robbing! For shame, Dick! What would become of Mother and me?’

‘That’s your look-out,’ said Dick; and he stretched out his hand for the bag. He was four years older than Harold, and much stouter.

Harold, with a ready move, chucked the bag round to his back, and shouted lustily in hopes that there might be a keeper in the woods, ‘Help! Thieves! He’s robbing the post!’

Dick’s hoarse laugh was all the answer. ‘That’ll do, my dear,’ he said; ‘now you’d best be quiet; I’d be loath to hurt you.’

For all answer, Harold, shouting all the time, dealt him a stroke right over the eyes and nose with his riding-switch, and made a great effort to force the pony on in hopes the blow might have made him slacken his hold. But though one moment Dick’s arm was thrown over his watering eyes, the other hand held the bridle as firmly as ever, and the next instant his fist dealt Harold such a blow, as nearly knocked out all his breath. Setting his teeth, and swearing an oath, Dick was pouncing on the boy’s arm, when from the road before them came bursting a meagre thing darting like a wild cat, which fell upon him, hallooing as loud as Harold.

Dick turned in fury, and let go the bridle. The pony backed in alarm. The new-comer was grappling with the thief, and trying to drag him aside. ‘On, on; go on, Har’ld!’ he shouted, but his strength was far from equal to Dick’s, who threw him aside on the hand-rail. Old rotten rail that it was, it crashed under the weight, and fell with both the boys into the water. Peggy dashed forward to the other side, where Harold pulled her up with much difficulty, and turned round to look at the robber and the champion. The fall was not far, nor the water deep, and they had both risen, and were ready to seize one another again in their rage. And now Harold saw that he who had come to his help was no other than Paul Blackthorn, who shouted loudly, ‘On, go on! I’ll keep him.’

‘He’ll kill you!’ screamed Harold, in despair, ready to push in between them with his horse; but at that moment cart-wheels were heard in the road, and Dick, shaking his fist, and swearing at them both, shook off Paul as if he had been a feather, and splashing out of the ford on the other side, leapt over the hedge, and was off through the plantations.

Paul more slowly crept up towards Harold, dripping from head to foot.

‘Paul! Paul! I’m glad I’ve found you!’ cried Harold. ‘You’ve saved the letters, man, and one was registered! Come along with me, up to the school.’

‘Nay, I’ll not do that,’ said Paul.

‘Then you’ll stay till I come back,’ said Harold earnestly; ‘I’ve got so much to tell you! My Lady sent for you. Our Ellen told her all about you, and you’re to go to her. Ellen was in such a way when she found you were off.’

‘Then she didn’t think I’d taken the eggs?’ said Paul.

‘She’d as soon think that I had,’ said Harold. ‘Why, don’t we all know that you’re one of the parson’s own sort? But what made you go off without a word to nobody?’

‘I don’t know. Every one was against me,’ said Paul; ‘and I thought I’d just go out of the way, and you’d forget all about me. But I never touched those eggs, and you may tell Mr. Cope so, and thank him for all his kindness to me.’

‘You’ll tell him yourself. You’re going home along with me,’ cried Harold. ‘There! I’ll not stir a step till you’ve promised! Why, if you make off now, ‘twill be the way to make them think you have something to run away for, like that rascal.’

‘Very well,’ said Paul, rather dreamily.

‘Then you won’t?’ said Harold. ‘Upon your word and honour?’

Paul said the words after him, not much as if he knew what he was about; and Harold, rather alarmed at the sound of the Grange clock striking, gave a cut to the pony, and bounded on, only looking back to see that Paul was seating himself by the side of the lane. Harold said to himself that his mother would not have liked to see him do so after such a ducking, but he knew that he was more tenderly treated than other lads, and with reason for precaution too; and he promised himself soon to be bringing Paul home to be dried and warmed.

But he was less speedy than he intended. When he arrived at the school, he had first to account to the servants for his being so late, and then he was obliged to wait while the owner of the registered letter was to sign the green paper, acknowledging its safe delivery.

Instead of having the receipt brought back to him, there came a message that he was to go up to tell the master and the young gentlemen all about the robbery.

So the servant led the way, and Harold followed a little shy, but more curious. The boys were in school, a great bare white-washed room, looking very cold, with a large arched window at one end, and forms ranged in squares round the hacked and hewed deal tables. Harold thought he should tell Alfred that the young gentlemen had not much the advantage of themselves in their schoolroom.

The boys were mostly smaller than he was, only those of the uppermost form being of the same size. There might be about forty of them, looking rather red and purple with the chilly morning, and all their eighty eyes, black or brown, blue or grey, fixed at once upon the young postman as he walked into the room, straight and upright, in his high stout gaiters over his cord trousers, his thick rough blue coat and red comforter, with his cap in his hand, his fair hair uncovered, and his blue eyes and rosy cheeks all the more bright for that strange morning’s work. He was a well-mannered boy, and made his bow very properly to Mr. Carter, the master, who sat at his high desk.

‘So, my little man,’ said the master, ‘I hear you’ve had a fight for our property this morning. You’ve saved this young gentleman’s birthday present of a watch, and he wants to thank you.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ said Harold; ‘but he’d have been too much for me if Paul hadn’t come to help. He’s a deal bigger than me.’

The boys all made a thumping and scuffling with their feet, as if to applaud Harold; and their master said, ‘Tell us how it was.’

Harold gave the account in a very good simple manner, only he did not say who the robber was—he did not like to do so—indeed, he would not quite believe it could be his old friend Dick. The boys clapped and thumped doubly when he came to the switching, and still more at the tumble into the water.

‘Do you know who the fellow was?’ asked Mr. Carter.

‘Yes, I knowed him,’ said Harold, and stopped there.

‘But you had rather not tell. Is that it?’

‘Please, Sir, he’s gone, and I wouldn’t get him into trouble.’

At this the school-boys perfectly stamped, and made signs of cheering.

‘And who is the boy that came to help you?’

‘Paul Blackthorn, Sir; he’s a boy from the Union who worked at Farmer Shepherd’s. He’s a right good boy, Sir; but he’s got no friends, nor no—nothing,’ said Harold, pausing ere he finished.

‘Why didn’t you bring him up with you?’ asked the master.

‘Please, Sir, he wouldn’t come.’

‘Well,’ said Mr. Carter, ‘you’ve behaved like a brave fellow, and so has your friend; and here’s something in token of gratitude for the rescue of our property.’

It was a crown piece.

‘And here,’ said the boy whose watch had been saved, ‘here’s half-a-crown. Shake hands, you’re a jolly fellow; and I’ll tell my uncle about you.’

Harold was a true Englishman, and of course his only answer could be, ‘Thank you, Sir, I only did my duty;’ and as the other boys, whose money had been rescued, brought forward more silver pledges of gratitude, he added, ‘I’ll take it to Paul—thank you, Sir—thank you, Sir.’

‘That’s right; you must share, my lad,’ said the school-master. ‘It is a reward for both of you.’

‘Thank you, Sir, it was my duty,’ repeated Harold, making his bow.

‘Sir, Sir, pray let us give him three cheers,’ burst out the head boy in an imploring voice.

Mr. Carter smiled and nodded; and there was such a hearty roaring and stamping, such ‘hip, hip, hurrah!’ bursting out again and again, that the windows clattered, and the room seemed fuller of noise than it could possibly hold. It is not quite certain that Mr. Carter did not halloo as loud as any of the boys.

Harold turned very red, and did not know which way to look while it was going on, nor what to do when it was over, except to say a very odd sort of ‘Thank you, Sir;’ but his heart leapt up with a kind of warm grateful feeling of liking towards those boys for going along with him so heartily; and the cheers gave a pleasure and glow that the coins never would have done, even had he thought them his own by right.

He was not particularly good in this; he had never felt the pinch of want, and was too young to care; and he did not happen to wish to buy anything in particular just then. A selfish or a covetous boy would not have felt as he did; but these were not his temptations. Knowing, as he did, that the assault had been the consequence of his foolish boasts about the money-letters, and that he, being in charge, ought to defend them to the last gasp, he was sure he deserved the very contrary from a reward, and never thought of the money belonging to any one but Paul, who had by his own free will come to the rescue, and saved the bag from robbery, himself from injury and disgrace.

How happy he was in thinking what a windfall it was for his friend, and how far it would go in fitting him up respectably!

Peggy was ready to trot nearly as fast as he wished her down the lane to the place where he had left Paul; and no sooner did Harold come in sight of the olive-coloured rags, than he bawled out a loud ‘Hurrah! Come on, Paul; you don’t know what I’ve got for you! ’Twas a young gentleman’s watch as you saved; and they’ve come down right handsome! and here’s twelve-and-sixpence for you—enough to rig you out like a regular swell! Why, what’s the matter?’ he added in quite another voice, as he had now come up to Paul, and found him sitting nearly doubled up, with his head bent over his knees.

He raised his face up as Harold came, and it was so ghastly pale, that the boy, quite startled, jumped off his pony.

‘Why, old chap, what is it? Have you got knit up with cold, sitting here?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Paul; but his very voice shivered, his teeth chattered, and his knees knocked together with the chill. ‘The pains run about me,’ he added; but he spoke as if he hardly knew what he was doing or saying.

‘You must come home with me, and Mother will give you something hot,’ said Harold. ‘Come, you’ll catch your death if you don’t. You shall ride home.’

He pulled Paul from his seat with some difficulty, and was further alarmed when he found that the poor fellow reeled and could hardly stand; but he was somewhat roused, and knew better what he was about. Harold tried to put him on the pony, but this could not be managed: he could not help himself enough, Peggy always swerved aside, nor was Harold strong enough to lift him up.

The only thing to be done was for Harold to mount, and Paul to lean against the saddle, while the pony walked. When they had to separate at the ford, poor Paul’s walk across the bridge was so feeble and staggering, that Harold feared every moment that he would fall where the rail was broken away, but was right glad to put his arm on his shoulder again to help to hold him up. The moving brought a little more life back to the poor boy’s limbs, and he walked a little better, and managed to tell Harold how he had felt too miserable to speak to any one after the rating the farmer had given him, and how he had set out on the tramp for more work, though with hope so nearly dead in his heart, that he only wished he could sit down and die. He had walked out of the village before people were about, so as not to be noticed, and then had found himself so weak and weary that he could not get on without food, and had sat down by the hedge to eat the bit of bread he had with him. Then he had taken the first lonely-looking way he saw, without knowing that it was one of Harold’s daily rides, and was slowly dragging himself up the hill from the ford when the well-known voice, shouting for help, had suddenly called him back, and filled him with spirit and speed that were far enough off now, poor fellow!

That was a terrible mile and a half—Harold sometimes thought it would never be over, or that Paul would drop down, and he would have to gallop off for help; but Paul was not one to give in, and somehow they got back at last, and Harold, with his arm round his friend, dragged him through the garden, and across the shop, and pushed him into the arm-chair by the fire, Mrs. King following, and Ellen rushing down from up-stairs.

‘There!’ cried Harold, all in a breath, ‘there he is! That rascal tried to rob me on Ragglesford Bridge, and was nigh too much for me; but he there came and pulled him off me, and got spilt into the river, and he’s got a chill, and if you don’t give him something jolly hot, Mother, he’ll catch his death!’

Mrs. King thought so too: Paul’s state looked to her more alarming than it did even to Harold. He did not seem able to think or speak, but kept rocking himself towards the fire, and that terrible shivering shaking him all over.

‘Poor lad!’ she said kindly. ‘I’ll tell you what, Harold, all you can do is put him into your bed at once.—Here, Ellen, you run up first, and bring me a shirt to warm for him. Then we’ll get his own clothes dried.’

‘No, no,’ cried Harold, with a caper, ‘we’ll make a scare-crow of ’em. You don’t know what I know, Mother. I’ve got twelve shillings and sixpence here all his own; and you’ll see what I won’t do with it at old Levi’s, the second-hand clothes man, to-night.’

Harold grew less noisy as he saw how little good the fire was doing to his patient, and how ill his mother seemed to think him. He quietly obeyed her, by getting him up-stairs, and putting him into his own bed, the first in which Paul had lain down for more than four months. Then Mrs. King sent Harold out for some gin; she thought hot spirits and water the only chance of bringing back any life after such a dreadful chill; and she and Ellen kept on warming flannels and shawls to restore some heat, and to stop the trembling that shook the bed, so that Alfred felt it, even in the next room, where he lay with the door open, longing to be able to help, and wishing to understand what could have happened.

At last, the cordial and the warm applications effected some good. Paul was able to say, ‘I don’t know why you are so good to me,’ and seemed ready to burst into a great fit of crying; but Mrs. King managed to stop him by saying something about one good turn deserving another, and that she hoped he was coming round now.

Harold was now at leisure to tell the story in his brother’s room. Alfred did not grieve now at his brother’s being able to do spirited things; he laughed out loud, and said, ‘Well done, Harold!’ at the switching, and rubbed his hands, and lighted up with glee, as he heard of the Ragglesford boys and their cheers; and then, Harold went eagerly on with his scheme for fitting up Paul at the second-hand shop, both Mrs. King and Alfred taking great interest in his plans, till Mrs. King hearing something like a moan, went back to Paul.

She found his cheeks and hands as burning hot as they had been cold; they were like live coals; and what was worse, such severe pains were running all over his limbs, that he was squeezing the clothes into his mouth that he might not scream aloud.

Happily it was Mr. Blunt’s day for calling; and before the morning was over he came, and after a few words of explanation, he stood at Paul’s bedside.

Not much given to tenderness towards the feelings of patients of his degree, Mr. Blunt’s advice was soon given. ‘Yes, he is in for rheumatic fever—won’t be about again for a long time to come. I say, Mistress, all you’ve got to do is to send in your boy to the Union at Elbury, tell ’em to send out a cart for him, and take him in as a casual pauper. Then they may pass him on to his parish.’

Therewith Mr. Blunt went on to attend to Alfred.

‘Then you think this poor lad will be ill a long time, Sir?’ said Mrs. King, when Mr. Blunt was preparing to depart.

‘Of course he will; I never saw a clearer case! You’d better send him off as fast as you can, while he can be moved. He’ll have a pretty bout of it, I dare say.

‘It is nothing infectious, of course, Sir?’ said the mother, a little startled by this hastiness.

‘Infectious—nonsense! why, you know better than that, Mrs. King; I only meant that you’d better get rid of him as quick as you can, unless you wish to set up a hospital at once—and a capital nurse you’d be! I would leave word with the relieving officer for you, but that I’ve got to go on to Stoke, and shan’t be at home till too late.’

Mrs. King’s heart ached for the poor forlorn orphan, when she remembered what she had heard of the nursing in Elbury Union. She did not know how to turn him from her door the day he had saved her son from danger such as she could not think of without shuddering; and yet, what could she do? Her rent and the winter before her, a heavy doctor’s bill, and the loss of Alfred’s work!

Slowly she went up the stairs again to the narrow landing that held the bed where Paul Blackthorn lay. He was quite still, but there were large tears coursing one after the other from his eyes, his hollow cheeks quite glazed with them.

‘Is the pain so very bad?’ she said in her soft voice, putting her hand over his hot forehead, in the way that Alfred liked.

‘I don’t—know,’ he answered; and his black eyes, after looking up once in her face with the piteous earnest glance that some loving dogs have, shut themselves as if on purpose to keep in the tears, but she saw the dew squeezing out through the eye-lashes.

‘My poor boy, I’m sure it’s very bad for you,’ she said again.

‘Please, don’t speak so kind,’ said Paul; and this time he could not prevent a-sob. ‘Nobody ever did so before, and—’ he paused, and went on, ‘I suppose they do it up in Heaven, so I hope I shall die.’

‘You are vexing about the Union,’ said Mrs. King, without answering this last speech, or she knew that she should begin to cry herself.

‘I did think I’d done with them,’ said Paul, with another sob. ‘I said I’d never set foot in those four walls again! I was proud, maybe; but please don’t stop with me! If you wouldn’t look and speak like that, the place wouldn’t seem so hard, seeing I’m bred to it, as they say;’ and he made an odd sort of attempt to laugh, which ended in his choking himself with worse tears.

‘Harold is not gone yet,’ said Mrs. King soothingly; ‘we’ll wait till he comes in from his work, and see how you are, when you’ve had a little sleep. Don’t cry; you aren’t going just yet.’

That same earnest questioning glance, but with more hope in it, was turned on her again; but she did not dare to bind herself, much as she longed to take the wanderer to her home. She went on to her son’s room.

‘Mother, Mother,’ Alfred cried in a whisper, so eager that it made him cough, ‘you can’t never send him to the workhouse?’

‘I can’t bear the thought, Alfy,’ she said, the tears in her eyes; ‘but I don’t know what to do. It’s not the trouble. That I’d take with all my heart, but it is hard enough to live, and—’

‘I’m sure,’ said Ellen, coming close, that her undertone might be heard, ‘Harold and I would never mind how much we were pinched.’

‘And I could go without—some things,’ began Alfred.

‘And then,’ went on the mother, ‘you see, if we got straitened, and Matilda found it out, she’d want to help, and I can’t have her savings touched; and yet I can’t bear to let that poor lad be sent off, so ill as he is, and after all he’s done for Harold—such a good boy, too, and one that’s so thankful for a common kind word.’

‘O Mother, keep him!’ said Alfred; ‘don’t you know how the Psalm says, “God careth for the stranger, and provideth for the fatherless and the widow”?’

Mrs. King almost smiled. ‘Yes, Alf, I think it would be trusting God’s word; but then there’s my duty to you.’

‘You’ve not sent Harold off for the cart?’ said Alfred.

‘No; I thought somehow, we have enough for to-day; and it goes against me to send him away at once. I thought we’d wait to see how it is to-morrow; and Harold won’t mind having a bed made up in the kitchen.’

Tap, tap, on the counter. Some one had come in while they were talking. It was Mr. Cope, very anxious to hear the truth of the strange stories that were going about the place. Ellen and Alfred thought it very tiresome that he was so long in coming up-stairs; but the fact was, that their mother was very glad to talk the matter over without them. She knew indeed that Mr. Cope was a very young man, and not likely to be so well able as herself, with all her experience, to decide what she could afford, or whether she ought to follow her feelings at the risk of debt or of privations for her delicate children; but she also knew that though he had not experience, education had given him a wider and clearer range of thought; and that, as her pastor, he ought to be consulted; so though she did not exactly mean to make it a matter for his decision (unless, indeed, he should have some view which had not occurred to her), she knew that he was by far the best person to help her to see her way, and form her own judgment.

Mr. Cope heard all the story with as much eagerness as the Ragglesford boys themselves, and laughed quite out loud at Harold’s spirited defence.

‘That’s a good lad!’ said he. ‘Well, Mrs. King, I don’t think you need be very uneasy about your boy. When a fellow can stand up like that in defence of his duty, there must be the right stuff in him to be got at in time! And now, as to his ally—this other poor fellow—very kind of you to have taken him in.’

‘I couldn’t do no other, Sir,’ said Mrs. King; ‘he came in so drenched, and so terribly bad, I could do nothing but let him lie down on Harold’s bed; and now Dr. Blunt thinks he’s going to have a rheumatic fever, and wanted me to send in to the relieving officer, to have him removed, but I don’t know how to do that; the poor lad doesn’t say one word against it, but I can see it cuts him to the heart; and they do tell such stories of the nurses at the Union, that it does seem hard to send him there, such an innocent boy, too, and one that doesn’t seem to know how to believe it if one says a kind word to him.’ The tears were in Mrs. King’s eyes as she went on: ‘I do wish to let him stay here and do what I can for him, with all my heart, and so does all the children, but I don’t hardly know what’s right by them, poor things. If the parish would but allow him just one shilling and sixpence a week out of the house, I think I could do it.’

‘What, with your own boy in such a state, you could undertake to nurse a stranger through a rheumatic fever!’

‘It wouldn’t make much difference, Sir,’ said Mrs. King. ‘You see I am up a good deal most nights with Alfred, and we have fire and candle almost always alight. I should only be glad to do it for a poor motherless lad like that, except for the cost; and I thought perhaps if you could speak to the Guardians, they might allow him ever so little, because there will be expenses.’

Mr. Cope had not much hope from the parish, so he said, ‘Mr. Shepherd ought to do something for him after he has worked for him so long. He has been looking wretchedly ill for some time past; and I dare say half this illness is brought on by such lodging and living as he got there. But what did you say about some eggs?’

Mrs. King told him; and he stood a moment thoughtful, then said, ‘Well, I’ll go and see about it,’ and strode across to the farm.

When Mr. Cope came back, Ellen was serving a customer. He stood looking redder than they had ever seen him, and tapping the toe of his boot impatiently with his stick; and the moment the buyer had turned away, he said, ‘Ellen, ask your mother to be kind enough to come down.’

Mrs. King came, and found the young Curate in such a state of indignation, as he could not keep to himself. He had learnt more than he had ever known, or she had ever known, of the oppression that the farmer and his wife and Tom Boldre had practised on the friendless stranger, and he was burning with all the keen generous displeasure of one new to such base ways. At the gate he had met, going home to dinner, John Farden with Mrs. Hayward, who had been charing at the farm. Both had spoken out, and he had learned how far below the value of his labour the boy had been paid, how he had been struck, abused, and hunted about, as would never have been done to one who had a father to take his part. And he had further heard Farden’s statement of having himself thrown away the eggs, and Mrs. Hayward’s declaration that she verily believed that the farmer only made the accusation an excuse for hurrying the lad off because he thought him faltering for a fever, and wouldn’t have him sick there.

This was shocking enough; Mr. Cope had thought it merely the kind-hearted woman’s angry construction, but it was still worse when he came to the farmer and his wife.

So used were they to think it their business to wring the utmost they could out of whatever came in their way, that they had not the slightest shame about it. They thought they had done a thing to be proud of in making such a good bargain of the lad, and getting so much work out of him for so little pay; in fact, that they had been rather weakly kind in granting him the freedom of the hay-loft; the notion of his dishonesty was firmly fixed in their heads, though there was not a charge to bring against him. This was chiefly because they had begun by setting him down as a convict, and because they could not imagine any one living honestly on what they gave him. And lastly, the farmer thought the cleverest stroke of all, was the having got rid of him just as winter was coming on and work was scarce, and when there seemed to be a chance of his being laid up to encumber the rates. Mr. Cope was quite breathless after the answer he had made to them. He had never spoken so strongly in his life before, and he could hardly believe his own ears, that people could be found, not only to do such things, but to be proud of having done them.

It is to be hoped there are not many such thoroughgoing tyrants; but selfishness is always ready to make any one into a tyrant, and Mammon is a false god, who manages to make his servants satisfied that they are doing their duty.

It was plain enough that no help was to be expected from the farm, and neither Mrs. King nor the clergyman thought there was much hope in the Guardians; however, they were to be applied to, and this would be at least a reprieve for Paul. Mr. Cope went up to see him, and found Harold sitting on the top step of the stairs.

‘Well, boys,’ he said, in his hearty voice, ‘so you’ve had a battle, I hear. I’m glad it turned out better than your namesake’s at Hastings.’

Paul was not too ill to smile at this; and Harold modestly said, ‘It was all along of he, Sir.’

‘And he seems to be the chief sufferer.—Are you in much pain, Paul?’

‘Sometimes, Sir, when I try to move,’ said Paul; ‘but it is better when I’m still.’

‘You’ve had a harder time of it than I supposed, my boy,’ said Mr. Cope. ‘Why did you never let me know how you were treated?’

Paul’s face shewed more wonder than anything else. ‘Thank you, Sir,’ he said, ‘I didn’t think it was any one’s business.’

‘No one’s business!’ exclaimed the young clergyman. ‘It is every one’s business to see justice done, and it should never have gone on so if you had spoken. Why didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t think it would be any use,’ again said Paul. ‘There was old Joe Joiner, he always said ’twas a hard world to live in, and that there was nothing for it but to grin and bear it.’

‘There’s something better to be done than to grin,’ said Mr. Cope.

‘Yes, I know, Sir,’ said Paul, with a brighter gleam on his face; ‘and I seem to understand that better since I came here. I was thinking,’ he added, ‘if they pass me back to Upperscote, I’ll tell old Joe that folks are much kinder than he told me, by far.’

‘Kinder—I should not have thought that your experience!’ exclaimed Mr. Cope, his head still running on the Shepherds.

But Paul did not seem to think of them at all, or else to take their treatment as a matter-of-course, as he did his Union hardships. There was a glistening in his eyes; and he moved his head so as to sign down-stairs, as he said, ‘I didn’t think there was ne’er a one in the world like her.’

‘What, Mrs. King? I don’t think there are many,’ said Mr. Cope warmly. ‘And yet I hope there are.’

‘Ay, Sir,’ said Paul fervently. ‘And there’s Harold, and John Farden, and all the chaps. Please, Sir, when I’m gone away, will you tell them all that I’ll never forget ’em? and I’ll be happier as long as I live for knowing that there are such good-hearted folks.’

Mr. Cope felt trebly moved towards one who thought harshness so much more natural than kindness, and who received the one so submissively, the other so gratefully; but the conversation was interrupted by Harold’s exclaiming that my Lady in her carriage was stopping at the gate, and Mother was running out to her.