ins 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 flenrg 191. Sage 
 
 1891 
 
 A'M.pU U/3/.l%p.... 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013492909 
 
OLD MAEGAKET 
 
 AND OTHER STOETES 
 
The Works of 
 
 HENEY KINGSLEY. 
 
 The Recollections of Qeoffey H\.mlyn. 
 
 Kavenshoe, 
 
 The HiLLYAHS and the Burtons. 
 
 SiLCOTE OF SiLCOTES. 
 
 Steetton. 
 
 Austin Elliot and The Habvets. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mathilde. 
 
 Old Margaret, and Other Stories. 
 
 Valentin, and Number Seventeen. 
 
 Oakshott Castle and The Grange Garden. 
 
 Keginald Hetherege and Leighton Court. 
 
 The Boy in Gret, and Other Stories. 
 
Old Margaret.] 
 
 THE DEATH OF LEON. 
 Drawn by Robert Saubcr, 
 
 [Page 12. 
 
OLD MARGARET 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY KINGSLEY 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY ROBERT SAUBER 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BO WD EN, LIMITED 
 
 WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C, 
 
 NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE 
 
 [All n'glif/^rsen'ed] 
 
A. WTKo 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 
 
OLD MAEGABET. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 At five-and-forty, Van Kenning was a confirmed old bachelor. 
 Wildways said that in fourteen or fifteen years he might marry 
 his housekeeper and settle in life ; but this was only looked on as 
 a joke, even by the Duke himself. 
 
 " Van Kenning is not such an ass," the Duke said. " He 
 comes of a long-lived stock, and a money-getting stock, and a 
 money-holding stock. He will never let a woman have the 
 dipping of her hand into his pocket." 
 
 "Yet he is fond of a pretty face," said a smirking boy 
 nobleman. 
 
 " Then he had better get your portrait painted by one of his 
 friends, the artists," replied the Duke, "and get it done before 
 you have spoilt it by fast living. I tell you that Van Kenning is 
 a confirmed old bachelor, and that in twenty years you will look 
 older than he does now, puppy." 
 
 The rest of the gentlemen present were seized with a somewhat 
 troublesome cough. The Duke had evidently got out of bed the 
 wrong side that morning. 
 
 " Van Kenning is worth half the grinning gabies in the king- 
 dom," the Duke went on. "He is a wise man: he loves his 
 friends, his pictures, his dinner, and the bow-window of his club. 
 He is a happy old bachelor. I wish to heaven I were ; but that 
 is past praying for." 
 
 It was so painfully true, that the French Ambassador, who 
 happened to be present, showed the tact of his nation by saying 
 that if this weather lasted, the hay would be got in nicely. 
 
 " You should know," said the Duke ; " your people generally 
 make hay while the sun shines. Will you dine down the river 
 with me to-day, Count, and we will talk that matter over again ; 
 and I will catch Van Kenning. His views are very much fixed ; 
 
4 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 lie is a staunch freetrader, and knows more about wool than all the 
 council together." 
 
 " He is strong for the trades unions, though," said the French- 
 man. " Let us have him, however." 
 
 Meanwhile, the unconscious Van Kenning had finished his 
 breakfast, and was preparing to spend his day. When he had 
 shut his street door behind him, and stood in the bright June 
 sunlight, looking up and down the street, he was the best dressed 
 buck in the West-end of the town that day, the dandy Duke not 
 excepted ; and he knew it. Was any one looking at him ? Not 
 a creature but the policeman ; and so he stepped oflf down the 
 street towards his club, to hear the news. 
 
 There was nobody there but old Piffer, whom he hated. And 
 old Piffer said that a glass of Schiedam gin with a small spoonful 
 of honey in it was an excellent thing for the wind, and that he 
 had just been having some of it himself. Van Kenning left the 
 nasty old fellow in the bay-window, and struck resolutely east- 
 wards towards the trading and manufacturing parts of the town. 
 
 Manufactories, which have now been moved nearer to the coal 
 measures, were abundant then, supporting a vast population in 
 streets now let for mere dwelling-houses. No power was in action 
 then in the city excepting hand-power ; steam was not yet utilised, 
 and in so level a country so near the sea, no generation of power 
 was possible by gravitation ; that is to say, there' was no available 
 water-power. The " hands '' had it pretty much their own way, 
 and they knew it, as did their masters also. 
 
 The trades unions of those times were little more than guilds, 
 kept together mainly on sentimental grounds. There was indeed 
 little necessity for any combination of labour against capital. 
 The mechanics were in most respects the most powerful and 
 difficult body in the State. Divide et impera was the only way 
 of managing them at all. It is actually true that violent and fatal 
 riots were common between different trades unions, but on the 
 least symptom of oppression by the aristocracy they were united 
 and dangerous at once. They were united and dangerous now. 
 
 A girl of their order had disappeared. She was not very beau- 
 tiful, and by no means of good character, being in fact a general 
 favourite among the young men, more for her wit and sprightliness 
 than for her discretion. No man would have thought of maiTying 
 her, but she had disappeared, and more than one lord was 
 suspected, and so they were determined to make an Appius and 
 Virginia case of it. 
 
 Certain rumours of this kind had reached good Van Kenning 
 that morning, and he determined to go and hear what was the 
 
OLD MABGARKT. 5 
 
 matter. For Van Kenning stood in rather a curious position. 
 He was one of the richest men in the State, and his money had 
 been made by trade ; yet having realised and retired, he was no 
 longer a representative of the masters, and his knowledge of their 
 ways and habits caused him to be a kind of ambassador between 
 masters and men, exciting no jealousy from either party. 
 
 More than once, on occasions similar to the present, had he 
 assisted at keeping the peace ; more than once had he been com- 
 pelled to depart, muttering, " Confound you, fight it out then ! " 
 On this occasion, he knew little or nothing of the matter, but he 
 very soon discovered that something was wrong. 
 
 He was in a broad and nearly empty street when the boom of a 
 large bell struck on his ear ; he pulled out his watch, looked at it, 
 and fled with two or three others into an archway. It was noon. 
 
 Like the green sea-water through the sluices, when the Dutch 
 have flooded the Polders and the Spaniard stands impotently 
 cursing on the dyke, came the swarm of workmen down the street, 
 recruited at each large house by a fresh stream. They were only 
 going to their dinners, but the experienced eye of Van Kenning 
 saw at once that there was something very wrong. 
 
 The men were boisterous without being merry, laughing, and 
 yet savage. There was a dim, dull anger in their noise at this 
 noontide which he well knew would break into wild fury when 
 night and leisure came as handmaidens, to see sedition to her red 
 couch. There was something evidently worse amiss than he had 
 guessed of at first. A lean little old Alderman, who had taken 
 shelter with him, seemed to be the most Ukely person to inquire 
 of. He asked him what was the matter. 
 
 The Alderman was very lean and very slow of speech. He 
 said — 
 
 " Van Dysart has carried off Martina, and I wish him joy of 
 his bargain". We shall aU be murdered in our beds." 
 " Do you mean that they accuse him of that ? " 
 " They will when they have cut his throat, and burnt the West- 
 end," said the Alderman. 
 
 " I suppose that I had better put a stop to it, then," said Van 
 Kenning, taking out his watch. 
 
 "Don't put yourself out of the way on my account," said the 
 Aldei-man. " Still, if you could nianage to keep your friends' 
 claws off some of our throats for a year or two I should be 
 obliged." 
 
 " The devil shall have the first turn at me, on my honour, 
 said Van Kenning, laughing. " Go to the Club and wait there ; 
 I will go and stop it at once. The rascals must be mad." 
 
6 OLD MAEGABET. 
 
 The street was empty enough now. The old Alderman saw 
 Dandy Van Kenning turn down one of the worst lanes in the 
 neighbourhood and disappear. 
 
 This was ten minutes after twelve. When the men returned 
 to the workshops at one, they paused to read this notice posted at 
 the entrance of each factory : — 
 
 " We have been in error, and no wrong has been done. Heads 
 of Sections desiring further information are requested to apply to 
 the Divisional Secretary." 
 
 One or two did so. The answer was easily given. 
 
 " The girl has become tired of her life, and has gone to 
 religion. She is under the protection of Miss Margaret Van 
 Eyck." 
 
 " Your authority is good ? " 
 
 " Van Kenning.'' 
 
 So instead of being a night of riot it was a night of beer, 
 skittles and flirtation after all. 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 But we have not got through Van Kenning's day yet. 
 
 He walked thoughtfully through the streets until he came to a 
 certain sundial in a certain square belonging to an Inn of Court, 
 at which he was accustomed to set his watch. (Dent, Arnold, or 
 Frodsham were not in business yet.) And while he was doing so, 
 a footman in the royal livery stepped up to him, and bowing, 
 gave him a letter. 
 
 It was the invitation from his Majesty to dine down the river 
 with the French Ambassador. He folded it again, and, followed 
 by the footman, went straight to his Club, and taking pen and ink 
 wrote across the King's letter in French : — 
 
 Kf Of Wfvg gbt Cvshvoez. 
 
 But thinking of the old dodge of discovering cyphers by the 
 recurrence of the letter E and A he made it more difficult. 
 
 Lg, Pg, xgwz, Ecu, and more in the same cypher, the only 
 undiscoverable one ever invented. The King read it, and said, 
 " Hang him, he won't come." 
 
 What Van Kenning had written in French was this : — " I do 
 not want Biur/undi/," and he had gone on, "I shall stick to 
 Schiedam. Tell Champagne not to be seen speaking to me. I 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 7 
 
 have stopped a riot for you of which you knew nothing and I hut 
 little. I enjoy life, and therefore cannot afford to he seen speaking 
 to you. 
 
 " As for the money you want, I have paid it to Margaret. She 
 will give it you. Do not attempt to leave any security with her 
 or with me. Your handwriting would hang us hoth. 
 
 "Is the sheep-dog a wolf? Sometimes I think that it would 
 be bettor to sink this land under the sea for a day ; hut then we 
 should drown Margaret, you say. "Well, I will not dine with 
 you." 
 
 After despatching this insolently seditious letter to his Sove- 
 reign, Van Kenning felt that he must do something respectable. 
 And he was singularly befriended by his good or evil genius. For 
 looking out of the club how-window, whom should he see but the 
 Archbishop, with a book under his arm, walking down the sunny 
 side of the street, and looking into the shop windows. 
 
 He descended swiftly, and put his arm into the Archbishop's. 
 The Archbishop turned his highly noble kindly face towards him, 
 and said — 
 
 " I was looking for you." 
 
 " And I was looking for you," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " What did you want with me ? " said the Archbishop. 
 
 " I wanted to be seen walking with some one respectable," said 
 Van Kenning. 
 
 " Not easy just now. It wiU cost you money. It is an expen- 
 sive luxury. You must pay for it." 
 
 " How much ? " 
 
 " Forty pounds." 
 
 " I will give you all I have, as you know, but this is so strange. 
 You have never asked before." 
 
 " My dear man, I have actually no money left. Never you 
 mind what I have done with my money " 
 
 " As I know, I will not ask," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Well," said the Archbishop, " here is the state of the case. 
 A woman of very bad character has repented of her sins, and 
 being pursued by the bailiffs, requires forty pounds. She has 
 fled for refuge to Margaret, who, of course, declares that her 
 story holds good, and either they must pay the money to-day, 
 or I must, or ymi must. You had much better do it." 
 
 " Dear me," said Van Kenning, " I paid that money last night. 
 Margaret had it." 
 
 "The more foolish you," said the Archbishop. 
 
 " You asked me to {ri.j it yourself just now," said Van Kenning, 
 very naturally. 
 
8 OLD MAHGAEET. 
 
 " To screen Margaret ; yes. It is a case of casuistry. Answer 
 me : Can a clock be right if the hands are wrong ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Yes. Margaret is right in what she has done ; yet she 
 is utterly wrong. As priest I could not warn her; as man of 
 the world you might have done so. My curate tells me that 
 there was to have been a riot about this woman, but that you 
 stopped it. I almost wish that you had not." 
 
 " Is the woman so utterly worthless then ? " asked Van 
 Kenning. 
 
 " When you and I are in our graves, she wiU be working 
 mischief and evil," said the Archbishop. 
 
 " Yet they say that she is kindly, good-humoured, charitable ; 
 and she is certainly popular." 
 
 " She is a devil," said the Archbishop. " She is the last 
 flame which came from Gomorrah before the Dead Sea closed 
 over it." 
 
 " Yet you have been so gentle and so good with these women." 
 
 " Not with such as this. She is the first I have seen." 
 
 " Then why. Archbishop, do you allow her to go into Margaret 
 and Hubert's house ? " 
 
 " Because I can lay my hand on her — because I can tame her 
 by what your friends caU superstition." 
 
 " Hush ! some one will hear you." 
 
 " What do I care ? Let the civil authorities tame their fiends 
 by soHtary confinement, and leave us to tame our devils in our 
 way. I want to mew this woman up." 
 
 " But, my dear Pri I mean Archbishop, are you quite sure 
 
 that you wtderstancl women ? " 
 
 The Archbishop looked down on him with something like con- 
 tempt. 
 
 " I always understood that the accusation which your school 
 brought against us was, that we understood your women better 
 than you did yourselves. I thought that had been always under- 
 stood. Certainly I see twenty women at church for one man. 
 I always thought that the arrangement between the priest and the 
 woman was an accepted thing. I, who am Aichbishop, thought 
 I had seen through the women, and was in hopes that I might get 
 at the men. But when a man of the world like yourself tells me 
 that I cannot even understand a woman, I of course give 
 up." 
 
 " Do not be angry, dear Archbishop," said Van Kenning. 
 " Come, earn the forty pounds, and let us walk and see 
 Margaret." 
 
OLD MARGAEET. S 
 
 " Let us go. She is worth us all." 
 
 " One word more, Archbishop. Is this woman really danger- 
 ous." 
 
 " Not to us. She is cowardly and superstitious. She is no 
 Jezebel or even Cleopatra. To you she is very dangerous. If 
 you knew what was best for you, you Eadicals, you would leave 
 her to our tender mercies." 
 
 " But you priests cannot be trusted," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Oh yes we can, if you treat us fairly," said the Archbishop. 
 ' ' We shall win in the long run if you force our hand ; we have 
 the women, and the women have you." 
 
 " And I could have every church in this town sacked, and every 
 priest hung to-morrow," said Van Kenning, quietly. 
 
 " That is quite true," said the Ai-chbishop. " And what a nice 
 life your women would lead you afterwards. There is a woman at 
 the bottom of everything. For you have the thirty thousand 
 Ursulas — I mean Ursula and the thirty thousand virgins — there 
 is a woman in the matter here. Look at this ! " 
 
 They were opposite one of those nondescript places which might 
 be seen in nearly all towns until the last twenty years. In Paris 
 represented by a flash cafe, in London by a public-house generally 
 kept by a prize-fighter. They have disappeared, or are disap- 
 pearing, even in Australia and Washoe ; but this was one. 
 
 There was a furious riot of some sort inside ; and even while 
 they were asking a policeman the meaning of it, the riot over- 
 flowed the door, and the rioters came pouring out before the 
 Alderman and the Archbishop. The two stepped back against 
 the wall, with the policeman, and looked on a sight seldom seen 
 now, but not uncommon then. 
 
 " There will be a fight," said the Archbishop. 
 
 That was soon evident. The confusion of rioters begun from 
 the very first to show a tendency to make a circle ; that circle 
 grew more defined each moment, and on the utterance of a few 
 sharp and terrible words (not producible here), formed itself 
 perfect, in the dead silence of expectation, with two men opposite 
 to one another in the centre. 
 
 The man who happened to be facing the Alderman and the 
 Archbishop was well known to both of them : a nobleman, on 
 whose person and face were wi-itten three centuries of careful 
 breeding and irresponsible ferocity ; a great man, with the 
 strength of an elephant, and the brain and lissomeness of the 
 tiger ; a man bred as carefully as a race-horse, and with about 
 as much education. The last and nearly the most terrible form 
 of this man which we have produced in England, was killed in 
 
10 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 about his twentieth duel thirty years ago come . We will call 
 
 this man Van Dysart. 
 
 The man whose back was towards them was evidently more 
 slender and younger ; in the wSlee inside he had got uncovered, 
 whUe Van Dysart had his hat on, pressed over his forehead. 
 When the Archbishop got a good sight of this bareheaded young 
 man he tried to force his way through the crowd to get at him. 
 Van Kenning tried also, but said to the policeman, " There will 
 be blood." 
 
 " Death," said the policeman. 
 
 But all the archbishops, policemen, and aldeimcn in the world 
 would not have been peimitted to interfere between the people and 
 their spectacle — that of two of the governing orders at one 
 another's throat. A well brutalised population loves a fight and 
 hates to see it stopped. There arc cases in point : such as that of 
 the fate of the young monk of whom you may read in your Gibbon, 
 during the decadence of the Romans : the fate of any one who 
 would interfere at a buU-fight in Spain, in the present decadence 
 of that country : a solitary policeman at an old English prize- 
 fight — all these cases prove that a brutalised people will have 
 no one standing between themselves and their sport. 
 
 The Archbishop might have got through and have rendered my 
 pen dumb on the subject, but he was told to stand back. Seeing 
 that he could do no good he stood still, and prayed rapidly and 
 silently, in his great haste, a very singular prayer. He prayed 
 that the bareheaded young man with his back towards him might 
 kill Van Dysart. And all this had taken place in about two 
 minutes and a half. 
 
 " My Lord," said the Archbishop's young gentleman, " I have 
 nothing to add to what I said before, when we were separated in 
 the common heU and brothel, into which I only entered because 
 it was the most evil and worst reputed hole in the town, and that 
 therefore I was certain of finding your lordship there. You are 
 a false liar and a false hound. When you say that I blackened 
 your name in a certain quarter you lie. It needed no blackening. 
 When you say that I avoided encountering you, you lie again." 
 
 " Anything more? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 " No. Women scold." 
 
 "Then, as you have to die, you had better die decently. You 
 have the sun full in your face ; and you have lost your hat. Shift 
 round and get the half sun, and we will both fight bareheaded. 
 There goes my hat." 
 
 It was past any one's mending now. There was a sharp click 
 and a sliding sound, snake-like and devilish, and the naked steel. 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 11 
 
 mother of blood, was out, and must be wiped clean before it went 
 back to the scabbard. 
 
 They stood before one another for nearly a minute, with the 
 points of their swords down, tapping the ground in front of their 
 feet, looking one another steadily in the eyes. At last Van 
 Dysart said to the dead silence around, " The embrogliato is 
 to come from me, then?" 
 
 He put his sword in tierce, level with his right eye, and 
 advanced very slowly on his adversary. His adversary met him 
 also in tierce, so declining, but with every muscle in his thigh 
 ready for his backward spring at the first feint. Van Dysart 
 tapped his sword three or four times against his adversary's, 
 made a rapid flickering feint in carte, and walked away 
 laughing. 
 
 For an instant only. Turning and coming swiftly down, he 
 attacked his adversary furiously, while the nearly maddened 
 spectators clawed at one another in their frantic fury, for the 
 devil's own beautiful game had begun with a vengeance now. 
 The past was as nothing, the future was as nothing, in the 
 glorious delight of mad excitement without danger. Nero had 
 never provided such sport as this for the people. Here were 
 two men of a hated and dreaded order, two of the best swords- 
 men in Europe, fighting for their glory and delectation. Grand 
 sport. 
 
 " Did you speak to me, sir," said the policeman to Van 
 Kenning. 
 
 " No," said the Alderman ; " I was only speaking to my friend 
 the Devil here. Make room for him between us, will you, con- 
 stable. The Archbishop has got between him and the show." 
 
 The combatants were quiet again, breathing. No blood had 
 been drawn, which pleased the people much, because they had 
 been afraid lest Van Dysart, a safe killer, would only pink his 
 man ; but before they had time to swear more than a few oaths 
 the two gentlemen were at it once more. 
 
 What are aU our sports now in comparison with fencing? 
 Why, a University race takes over twenty minutes to row — time 
 enough to make your will. The Derby can be run and won in 
 three minutes. In this short and last embroglio the competitors 
 lived ten lives^ in twenty seconds. Eye, hand, brain and muscle 
 acted on one another with a rapidity which was only slowly repro- 
 duced by the spark-like lightning of their swords. In twenty 
 seconds the swords met and parted fifty times. In thirty seconds 
 Van Dysart was wiping his sword on a white handkerchief, and 
 his adversary, with the same fixed attentive look in his face which 
 
12 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 he had worn all through the fight, was standing erect ; then his 
 Imees gave way and he fell down stone dead on his face. 
 
 Then the mob let the Archbishop get to him, and growled at 
 him because he had not stopped the fight. But the Archbishop 
 cared little, for he was kneeling beside the dead youth, holding 
 a crucifix before his sightless eyes, and whispering in his ear from 
 time to time, " Leon ! Leon ! " 
 
 But Leon happened to be dead, and the Archbishop was a 
 practical man and found it out. The poUceman came up to take 
 charge of the body, and the Archbishop asked, " Where was 
 Van Kenning ? " Van Kenning had gone off arm in arm to the 
 Club with Van Dysart. 
 
 The Archbishop shook his head, but gave the policeman gold. 
 " Take the body to my house ; I wiU go and break the news to 
 them." 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 This incident, as the reader may by this time have guessed, did 
 not occur during the wild fierce time which succeeded the last 
 war with France, when the lava stream of national ferocity was 
 beginning to cool and crust, showing from time to time to in- 
 cautious steppers the molten metal below. The surroundings 
 were very similar, however, and in writing down the incident 
 the pen naturally ran as though one were describing an embroglio 
 of 1820. 
 
 But the time was about 1400, and the place was Ghent. Let 
 one hope that concealing the fact for a single chapter has not 
 puzzled the reader. We are free now ; the writer only asks that 
 the reader will allow him to make the characters speak as they 
 would now, and act as they do now, and did act then. 
 
 Perhaps one spccialite of ecclesiastics is their short quick walk. 
 My friend A says that they walk so because they are conscious 
 that they have nothing to do, and want to look as if they were 
 earning their money. My fi-iend B says that it is in consequence 
 of their having worn long ecclesiastical dresses for so many cen- 
 turies ; a theory which sounds rather Darwinian, "although B is 
 an orthodox of the most distinguished. C says that they walk in 
 that manner from their haste after good works, and bend their 
 heads from humility. D only says that he wishes they would 
 walk like other people. However, they wallt so. Why not? 
 
OLD MAEGABET. 13 
 
 Does not a dragoon always walk as though he had his spurs on ? 
 or a groom as though he had a saddle between his legs ? 
 
 The Archbishop had by no means walked in that manner while 
 he was sauntering about and looking into the shops ; but now he 
 walked in the ecclesiastical manner, and came swiftly round the 
 corner on to a little girl about twelve years old, who carefully 
 pulled up her outside frock, chose a clean place and knelt down 
 for the archiepiscopal benediction. 
 
 It was promptly given in the usual manner, after which the girl 
 raised her head and smiled, and the Archbishop said suddenly, 
 and shai-ply, "Why, Marie." 
 
 He had just seen her brother killed in the street, and he was 
 stricken almost dumb. The child was pleased and honoured by 
 seeing him, and rising to her feet reminded him that he had 
 promised to bless a little medal for her, and that he had forgotten 
 to do so. She added, that she was seeking her brother Leon to 
 come home to his dinner. 
 
 " He has had his dinner," said the Archbishop to her, with a 
 sort of idea that he was not actually lying, because it was possible 
 that Leon might be sujjping in paradise, even without the viaticum, 
 having been in the main a most noble and godly youth. " I wish 
 you to come with me, child." 
 
 " I wiU follow you, my father," she said ; and they walked on. 
 
 " Life is pleasant to you, child ? " 
 
 " Yes, father; and the Sisters are kind, with the exception of 
 Sister PrisciUa, who is rough, and who says that I have no heart, 
 not even enough to make my beauty a curse to me." 
 
 " She should not say such things. I will rebuke her. Turn 
 your face to me." 
 
 The girl did so. It was a very beautiful face, with great 
 promise of greater beauty for the future. When it was a little 
 older it was painted by the hand of one of the few who loved her, 
 and it hangs on the walls of the Museum at Bruges to this day, 
 one of the gems of European art. 
 
 "She said the other day," continued the girl, "that the 
 woman Martina, who has taken refuge with Margaret, had a better 
 heart than I had." 
 
 " She should not speak to the child of such things," muttered 
 the Archbishop. " I must speak to Priscilla. My child, do you 
 fear death ? ' ' 
 
 " The Sisters say that it is the gate of paradise." 
 
 "I do not mean for yourself. For another? Suppose your 
 brother Leon were to die." 
 
 " Then my brother Max would have two-thirds of Leon's money. 
 
14 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 and I should have the other third ; that is, if I married John Van 
 Eyck, which I mean to do." 
 
 The Archhishop groaned, for none of his theories would fit this 
 case. He decided, however, that he would discuss the matter 
 with Sister PrisciEa, instead of scolding her, as he had at first 
 meant ; which was a wise resolution, because Sister PrisciUa, in 
 spite of all her religious vows, was not a woman who would take 
 a scolding from the Pope himself, leave alone an Ai-ohhishop, if 
 she had persuaded herself that she was in the right, and if none 
 of them could prove her wi-ong. She was in continual trouble 
 about her vows of obedience. She was always at one time doing 
 penances set her for the breach of those vows. Her practice was 
 to perfonn the penances with a few additional ones, and then 
 commit the sin over again still more emphatically. She had 
 acquired the character of being a Sister of high merit, but peculiar 
 in one or two ways ; given, for example, to persistent and occa- 
 sionally objurgative contradiction. 
 
 There is no doubt that poor old Father Ambrose begged the 
 Archbishop, on his knees, to be removed from the office of con- 
 fessor to the convent of which she was an ornament, and to be 
 sent upon a mission to the Moors, and that he alleged Sister 
 PrisciUa to be the cause of his singular request. He was old, he 
 said, and might earn martyi-dom among the barbarians, but he 
 could not stand the eye of Sister PrisciUa. He was afraid to put 
 even the most ordinary questions to the nuns, not for an instant 
 mentioning the elires. The Archbishop released him from his 
 duties, and was foolish enough to send a strong square-headed 
 young Dominican, with the brains of an elephant and the physical 
 strength of a buU. Hence arose a fearful scandal. It was said 
 that on his first entrance into the haU of the convent. Sister 
 PrisciUa had rushed from the coUected nuns, faUen on that young 
 man, and cufied and towzled him in a disgraceful manner. But 
 scandals in religious houses can be always hushed up (except 
 when they do not exist), and so we know nothing of the truth of 
 that matter. In short, in most things it was considered to be 
 inexpedient to meddle with Sister PrisciUa ; and one great reason 
 was, that every one who knew her liked and thoroughly respected 
 her. 
 
 Ghent, with aU its multitudes, was roaring that day, a little 
 more eager and noisy, if not more busy than usual. In a some- 
 what noisy street the Archbishop paused before a very large house 
 of stone, even then darkened by time, and beat at a large door 
 with his hand. 
 
 Towards the street the house was only a vast, nearly windowless 
 
OLD MAEGAERT. Id 
 
 facade. In an instant the bolt was withdra^vn, the Archbishop 
 entered, and the door was slammed behind him, for one was never 
 sure in those times whether one quiet man or a couple of thousand 
 lunatics were about to enter. 
 
 Here was a change. Here was sudden peace, and nearly silence ; 
 for the roar of voices, and the clatter of wooden shoes over the 
 pavement only came on the Archbishop's ear as the moan of the 
 surf round capes and reefs comes to our ear from a hollow sea 
 sheU. 
 
 The great house formed at the back three sides of a quadrangle, 
 adorned with flower beds set in green well-trhnmed lawns, and 
 broken by groups of shrubs. The fourth side of the quadrangle 
 was made by a high waU, hidden by shrubs, and overarched with 
 whispering poplars. 
 
 The Archbishop turned to the little old porter who had let'them 
 in, and was saying, "Why, Felix, you are as nimble as ever," 
 when he was interrupted by a very quiet, solemn, and clear voice, 
 which said — 
 
 " This is good of you, Archbishop. Come with me to my 
 garden. I wish to speak to you very much." 
 
 " Hubert Van Eyck," said the Archbishop, " I have something 
 very terrible to tell you. Marie, go play." 
 
 The man whom the world has known ever since, was at that 
 time a not very liandgnme man, but one with a very gentle and 
 intensely melancholy face. He had reddish hair, which was 
 covered by a pink velvet skuUcap, trimmed with ermine, other- 
 wise was dressed veiy much like some Austrian soldiers of the 
 present day, in a white tunic, in a few places slashed with blue 
 satin, and tight-fitting blue silk hose. Such was the graceful 
 figure which took the arm of the Archbishop and led him into the 
 garden. 
 
 " I know the news," said Hubert. " I want you to break it to 
 my sister." 
 
 " I have come to do so. Where is she ? " 
 The two turned towards a tall building which formed the left- 
 hand side of the quadrangle. Where it rose from the lawn it was 
 a mere sheet of smooth stone, but aloft began to show out into 
 vei7 early pointed work, and just below the roof developed six 
 long pointed windows. It had, in fact, been the refectory of an 
 old conventual building, of which the liouse itself had been a cell. 
 They entered by a low door, and passed up a nan-ow winding 
 flight of steps, by which probably the superior of the house had 
 in old times mounted to refection, for they came out by a little 
 door on to the dais, now covered with the various lumber of an 
 
16 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 artist's studio, and of a very rich artist also. The dais was 
 covered with costly velvet and satin robes, armour of price, swords 
 and spears. And just where the light, cautiously admitted from 
 one of the six tall windows, fell, was a fuU-sized lay figure of man 
 and horse, in full panoply of damascened steel armour, heavily 
 fringed with green satin. 
 
 The haU was very dark but for this one light, and another little 
 one far down the ball, for the windows were on one side only, the 
 other blocking out the world with a screen of stone. Looking 
 from behind the dead horse and its rider, they saw below them an 
 easel at which a woman stood painting. 
 
 The Ai'ohbishop crossed himself. 
 
 "She is painting Leon's annour," he whispered. "This is 
 terrible." 
 
 " I borrowed it for her yesterday," said Hubert, also in a 
 whisper. 
 
 The Archbishop stepped lightly down from the dais towards 
 her. She was not a beautiful woman, none of her family were 
 beautiful. The forehead was strained and over large, and the 
 skin upon it was tense. Her features were what is called regular ; 
 the eye was of dark hazel, with the concentration of an artist in 
 it ; and the mouth had the pout which an artist frequently gets by 
 the habit of contemplating pa,rticular points carefully and steadily 
 for a long time together ; her figure, though not tail, was majestic, 
 very well held up with a fuU fiue bust. Her hair was closely 
 braided in front of the cap of the time, which spread right and 
 left of her head in two semicircles. Her dress, closed up to the 
 throat, was as close as a lady's riding habit, laced over the bosom 
 with long laces, and falling straight from her hips in long folds ; 
 its tissue was green satin, or its equivalent in those times. She 
 was standing with her right foot advanced, which she was at that 
 moment tapping with her mahlstiok, reminding the Archbishop 
 terribly of the action of Van Dysart's sword an hour before. In 
 her left hand she held her palette and her sheaf of brushes. So 
 stood, and now stands to some of us, Margaret Van Eyck. 
 
 " Margaret ! " said the Archbishop. 
 
 " My Lord ! " she said, quietly, with a brightened face. 
 
 " I am come to see you." 
 
 " Mind your way, my Lord ; step cautiously over that helmet. 
 That is right. Now, what brings you here ? " 
 
 " Put aside your brushes, my child." 
 
 "Not I. I can talk while I am painting. I am painting 
 Leon's armour. I can call him Leon now, good Lord, for the 
 words have been spoken, and he is to marry me." 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 17 
 
 " Margaret, listen ! You will never marry him." 
 
 " Has Van Dysart killed him ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I thought it would be so. Please be very silent. If my little 
 bird were to sing now, I would kill it." 
 
 And she went on painting. 
 
 The Archbishop had in his vocation of priest seen women in 
 most phases of passion and anger. Indeed he had got (having been 
 confessor to some dozen convents) so used to scenes with women, 
 that he had got as much used to them as a doctor ; but here he 
 was fairly terrified. The woman not only would not speak herself, 
 but would not let him speak. Once more he said, " Margaret ! " 
 but she looked at him so terribly that he forbore. He only said, 
 "May I wait here tiU you will speak to me? " and she said, 
 "Yes; " that was all she said, and went on painting. 
 
 So the Archbishop sat down on one of the faldstools, which 
 they had there for religious paintings, and watched her. After 
 a few feeble daubs at her work, she put her tackle on one side, 
 and lay down on a bench, with her arms over her head, and her 
 face turned from him, moaning from time to time. 
 
 " She will C17 soon," said the Ai-chbishop, from his experience, 
 " and then she will remember her religion." 
 
 " What is the matter? " said a hoarse voice, like that of a 
 sixteen-year-old boy, in his ear. 
 
 " Leon has been killed by Van Dysart," said the Archbishop, 
 " and I have told her of it." 
 
 " Hum," said the voice. " A nice youth too. Perhaps the 
 other one wiU do now." 
 
 " I do not understand you," said he. " Had you not better 
 see to her ? ' 
 
 " No ; leave her alone," said Sister Priscilla. " When she 
 wants me she wiU call for me. Let us stay here quiet. She 
 will be like a boar of Ai-dennes in five minutes, if I know her. 
 She and I have vexed our righteous souls in this hideous city of 
 the plain until we are both half mad. Why God does not 
 destroy Ghent is wonder to me." 
 
 " Indeed," said the Archbishop, " it needs prayer and fasting." 
 
 " There is plenty of praying ; it is this fasting which is wanted," 
 said Sister PrisciUa. " It is for you to fix the balance, not a poor 
 nun like me. Who are those at the lower end of the hall, and 
 where is Hubert ? " 
 
 " That is Hubert at the lower end of the hall," said he. " And 
 there is a man behind him. They are going to tell John." 
 
 John Van Byck was sitting far lower down the hall, in a 
 
 8 
 
18 OLD MABGARET. 
 
 partially lighted window, copying some older painting than his 
 brother's. The Archbishop and Sister Priscilla saw two figures 
 approach him and tell him the news. They saw the boy — for he 
 was httle more — drop his painting tackle and cover his eyes with 
 his hands, and then they saw the two older gentlemen coming 
 slowly up to where they sat. 
 
 "They are coming," said Sister Priscilla. "I must rouse 
 her. He will catch it." 
 
 "Hubert?" 
 
 " No, the other. Margaret, get up ; here is your brother 
 Hubert and another gentleman." 
 
 Margaret roused herself, looked about for her painting things, 
 and not seeing them, looked about her rather wildly. The sight 
 of her brother seemed to restore her, but the group soon found 
 that she was not looking at him but at the man behind him. 
 When she saw him she stood erect and bold, and called to him 
 by name. 
 
 Every one present prepared for a scene, but for no such scene 
 as followed. The Archbishop and Hubert hoped that she would 
 have cried. Sister Priscilla hoped she would have scolded. She 
 deceived them all. 
 
 She said quietly and sternly — 
 
 " Bm'gundy, stand forth from behind my brother's shoulder 
 and answer." 
 
 " Before what court. Madam ? " 
 
 " Before the court of an injured woman. More kings have lost 
 their lives, my Lord, in that court than in any other. A seditious 
 mob may be cut down, Duke, but even if you kiU an injured woman 
 her wrongs Uve after her and plague you for generations. Come 
 before my court, my Lord Duke of Burgundy ! " 
 
 Burgundy stood there before her, looking shamefaced and 
 abashed, as dissipated men do look before women. His hair, cut 
 short across low over his forehead, gave him a somewhat siUy 
 appearance ; his bad complexion, and the working of a rather 
 ugly mouth, did not much improve him ; and he had shoved his 
 black and gold velvet bonnet on to the back of his head, which 
 made him look nearly idiotic. If one could see that face in 
 profile, which one cannot, one would find power in it. The 
 Duke of Burgundy, as he stood before Margaret Van Eyck that 
 day, looked like a guilty fool, and he was neither, at least as 
 politics went in those days. Certainly Louis XVI. was cxo'cuted 
 for less, but times have changed. 
 
 The Duke of Burgundy stood abashed before her anger. 
 "What would you have me do?" he said. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 19 
 
 And slie replied — 
 
 " I want you to prove yourself a Duke — to do justice to your- 
 self. ' ' 
 
 "But how, and for what? Count Leon was killed in fair 
 duel." 
 
 " Fair ? yes. But listen to the whole story. I plead as an 
 infuriated woman before my Sovereign. I have had three lovers 
 — Van Kenning, Van Dysart, and Leon. 
 
 " I cannot teU. you why I did not marry Van Kenning ; 
 perhaps he was too old. But I can tell you why I did not marry 
 Van Dysart : — because he ruined and cast to the dogs — to the 
 dogs of the gutter — a woman with elements of good in her far 
 greater than he ever had ; and because I always hated him, 
 Duke. He has avenged my hatred this unhappy day." 
 
 No one spoke. She went on : " Leon I would have had, a 
 noble youth, my Lord Duke — a noble youth." 
 
 " But what can I do ? " 
 
 " I want justice, vengeance on the murderer of Leon." 
 
 " But it was not a murder. The man also is in good repute, 
 both with courtier and workman. He is one of the shrewdest and 
 most valuable counsellors I have. The Archbishop himself saw 
 the duel ; it was perfectly fair, was it not, sir ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," said the Archbishop. 
 
 "It is a lie," snarled Sister Priscilla, in a voice which made 
 them all start. 
 
 " I think not," said the Archbishop, very meekly. " I think 
 it was a very fair duel indeed. Most pretty fencing from first to 
 last." 
 
 " And you call yourself a priest ! " cried Priscilla. 
 
 " Certainly, Sister ; and consequently speak the truth about 
 what I have seen, without regarding any of your idiotic aud 
 impudent declamations about things which you have not seen. It 
 was a perfectly fair duel." 
 
 " Well then, you see. Marguerite Van Eyck, I can do nothing. 
 Hubert, what can I do ? " 
 
 " You can do nothing whatever, Duke. I might fight him, but 
 I should only get killed. I see no use in it ; do you, Sister 
 Margaret?" 
 
 "No, leave him alone," she said, wearily. "You are all 
 against me, sir." 
 
 Aud they went, without one word of further protest from Sister 
 Priscilla, which was odd, for her heart was in this matter. But 
 that exceedingly shrewd woman had perceived that there was 
 some set purpose between the threff men, from seeing their eyes 
 
20 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 meet. She hoisted herself into a high window, and saw the three 
 go away together, with heads hent to her across the grass plot ; 
 and when she saw that she said, " God help Van Dysart, with 
 those three against him — a priest, a rogue, and a genius." After 
 which remarkable sentiment she came down and saw to poor 
 Margaret. 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 These three strange heads, those of Hubert Van Eyck, the Duke 
 of Burgundy, and the Ai'chhishop of Ghent, were indeed close 
 together, in very keen discussion indeed. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the Duke, "let yours then be the open 
 opposition ; hut remember always that I am assisting you, even 
 when you see me smile upon him. The time may be long, and 
 my hand may never he seen, but the end wiU come. Good 
 morning. We shall not in futui'e be so familiar as we were." 
 
 The Duke went between the flower-beds towards the wall which 
 formed the fourth side of the square, and passing through the 
 shrubs, opened a postem gate and came suddenly on a narrow 
 canal overhung with windowless huildings. A harge lay a little 
 way up, with a closely-dra\vii awning hehind, rowed by four young 
 men, chosen apparently for their good looks and their impene- 
 trable stupidity, and steered by a very old man who had the 
 expression of having seen a great deal. I should not like, had I 
 been the Duke's enemy, to have been with them in that barge on 
 a dark night in a lonely place. 
 
 A watchful face was peering from the awning as he stepped in. 
 It was Van Kenning's. 
 
 " Well, my Lord Duke, and what said she ? " 
 
 " She has demanded vengeance." 
 
 Not another word was said. At a sign from the Duke the men 
 gave way, and going a little way along the canal, puUed up at 
 some steps which rose from the water to a postem in the wall. 
 Van Kenning stepped lightly ashore, gave a glance round, and 
 disappeared in the doorway. The Duke's young men gave way 
 once more, and soon every ripple had die.d away upon the siu'face 
 of the canal. 
 
 But the Archbishop and Hubert walked up and down among 
 the flower-beds, and during their walk they came upon a pretty 
 sight which made them pause •and withdraw silently. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 21 
 
 _ Seated on the grass was young John Van Eyck, then ahout 
 eighteen, in all the heydey of youth and fine clothes, and on his 
 shoulder lay the beautiful head of Marie. She had been crying, 
 but was quiet now and playing with a flower he had given her. 
 
 " He has told her and has comforted her," said Hubert. 
 
 " That is not a very difficult thing to do, my son," quoth the 
 Archbishop. 
 
 Hubert only sighed, and they walked quietly away. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 In the best corner of the best public room in a very large and 
 elegant tavern, sat Van Dysart, wondering what he would do with 
 himself. 
 
 Had he known everything he might have spared himself the 
 trouble of thinking about that matter, for some others had taken 
 his life in their hands. The man thought himself a gay and 
 independent bachelor. Poor fool ! 
 
 The world was well with him : he was rich, handsome, young, 
 well-di'essed, of good health and great personal strength and 
 courage. Politically, also, he had great power. He was the bully 
 of the Court and the representative of the working classes there. 
 
 He laughed as he thought, " I am the most dangerous man in 
 Ghent." That was very true ; hut at the same time, dangerous 
 men in Ghent, about the year 1400, were extremely apt to be 
 unlucky. Advanced Whiggery was tolerated at Court — nay, even 
 flattered and caressed, yet the caresses of that particular Duke of 
 Burgundy were apt to be like certain precious oils which broke the 
 recipient's head. 
 
 Lying there, a blaze of blue and scarlet satin, he pondered on 
 what excitement there might be afloat, or who would drop in that 
 morning. He might have saved himself the trouble quite well. 
 There was amusement enough in store for him. Two voices, in 
 rather more than friendly argument, were beginning to make 
 themselves heard as they drew nearer to the room. One he knew, 
 the other speaking in a foreign accent puzzled him. 
 
 " I am not a disputant either at backgammon or cards, neither 
 am I a fighting man, Signor Spada, but I must take the liberty 
 of teUing you once more that you threw six ace from your ace- 
 point and inoved two points into your second table," 
 
22 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 Van Dysart lay listening like a cat. That iU-tempered old cur 
 Van Kenning was accusing the terrible Spada of Bologna, best 
 swordsman of the day, of cheating. 
 
 By this time they were in the room. 
 
 " Sir," said the low growling voice of the Italian, " I have 
 denied the fact once before. I moved six ace." 
 
 " You did not," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Sir," said the Italian, " are you ready to fight ? " 
 
 " Not with a man of your reputation," said Van Kenning, coolly. 
 
 " What do you mean by that, sir ? " 
 
 " I mean with a man of your reputation as a swordsman." 
 
 The Italian growled, and threw his sword upon the table with a 
 sniff. Van Kenning did not seem to be in the least disturbed, and 
 the pair stood silent. Van Kenning drumming on the table with 
 his knuckles. 
 
 Van Dysart was immensely interested. This was Count Spada 
 of Bologna, the bravest man and the most comsummate scoundrel 
 in Europe without any known exception. Van Dysart had heard 
 of his arrival at Ghent, and was dying to make his acquaintance : 
 of course that old fool Van Kenning had picked him up first, and 
 might have put him mix mieux with the Duke had it not been for 
 the quarrel. Van Dysart looked at his man. 
 
 A middle-sized buU-necked Italian of about thirty, dressed in 
 white with crimson slashes, with a scarlet bonnet and an ostrich 
 plume of the same colour coming down over his left shoulder ; a 
 buUet-headed man, with an eye like polished jet and a beard like 
 closely packed black horsehair, elasticity and vigour in bis carriage, 
 and a good-humoured rascality in every line of his face — such was 
 the tenible Spada of Bologna. 
 
 " Two and two do not make five. Count," said Van Kenning ; 
 " neither do six-ace make seven." 
 
 "By St. Christopher and his holy coat, sir," said Spada, who 
 although devoutly religious after each of his murders, was not up 
 in details, " if I had a friend in the town, which I have not, you 
 should answer for that language with your life." 
 
 "Very good, sir," said Van Kenning. "You threw six-ace, 
 and played seven." 
 
 Of course there was nothing for Van Dysart to do but to rise 
 and interfere. The blue and scarlet apparition arose from the 
 sofa, to the great astonishment of Count Spada, who snatched up 
 his sword, and retreating towards the door confronted his new 
 adversary with a haughty bow. 
 
 " My dear Van Kenning," said Van Dysart, " may I ask what 
 is wrong between vou two ? " 
 
OLD MARGARET. 23 
 
 "He threw six ace and played seven," said Van Kenning, 
 emphatically drumming on the table. 
 
 Spada stood erect, a column of unprotected innocence, without 
 a friend in the town. 
 
 " Oh, but come, old Van Kenning, you tidnk he did." 
 
 " I know he did." 
 
 Spada's muscles were as stiff as bone ; he tapped his sword- 
 hilt. 
 
 "Not one friend to back Spada of Bologna," he said, in a low 
 melancholy voice. " If Van Dysart the swordsman could be found, 
 he would not see me wronged thus, for we have heard of one 
 another." 
 
 Had Van Dysart looked at Van Kenning's face instead of looking 
 at Spada with a face of silly vanity at the compliment, he would 
 have seen a look of utter wonder in Van Kenning's eyes. The 
 unutterable impudence and dexterity of the Italian's last speech 
 was too much for him, for he had just been spending what he 
 thought wasted time in trying to teach him Van Dysart's name. 
 
 " I am that Van Dysart," cried out that gentleman. " Let me 
 have the pleasure of making my rival's acquaintance." 
 
 The Italian took off his bonnet, and saluted courteously. 
 
 " You will then doubtless act for me in this matter. Coming 
 an utter stranger into this town, and playing the game of tables 
 with this gentleman (a game we play little in Italy), I am accused 
 of cheating. There is, of course, but one way out of such an 
 affair." 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " said Van Dysart. " No one minds old Van 
 Kenning. He is a non-combatant." 
 
 "In Italy," said Spada, "non-combatants keep their tongues 
 between their teeth. If you think my honour acquitted, Van 
 Dysart, I am content." 
 
 "Could anyone question yours? Nonsense, my dear Count. 
 A swordsman like you would only make himself ridiculous by an 
 encounter with Van Kenning. Is it not so, my prince of good 
 feUows?" 
 
 " I suppose so," said Van Kenning ; " but he threw six ace and 
 played six deuce for all that. You are going to take up with him. 
 Van Dysart, I see that. Now in anything which follows from your 
 acquaintance with him, never you have the impudence to say that 
 I did not warn you of him." 
 
 And so he turned and went, leaving them both staring. 
 
 "A singular man," said the Italian, laughing. 
 
 " A very singular man," said Van Dysart. " He and I proposed 
 to ourselves at one and the same time the honour of alliance with 
 
24 OLD MAEGAKET. 
 
 the same young lady. She had the good sense to save me the 
 trouble of putting my sword through him by refusing him. Since 
 then I have liked the fellow." 
 
 " But he does not fight," said the Italian. 
 
 "No; but we have leamt something from Italian civilisation, 
 and one of my grooms cames a knife. You understand." 
 
 " Oh, perfectly," said Count Spada. And, to do him justice, 
 he spoke the truth for once. 
 
 " WiU you drink ? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 " A hogshead, if you like." 
 
 " WiU you play ? " 
 
 " Till morning, if it suits you. I am just now very rich, and 
 shall never be comfortable until I have lost all my money." 
 
 "You are a good conmade." 
 
 "I am reputed so. My sword is rather rusty. Do you ever 
 have an embrogho in the streets here ? I should like a fight before 
 we begin." 
 
 "I am the worst man in the world to come to just now. I 
 killed a man in the street only three weeks ago, and my clients 
 would not stand another. They have been disagreeable about 
 Jtiiii." 
 
 " Your clients? " 
 
 " I mean the working men." 
 
 '" Ho ! " said Spada. " And what was the young gentleman's 
 name who got himself killed ? " 
 
 "Well," said Van Dysart, " it was rather an ugly business. 
 Let us have some Burgundy." 
 
 "I want Burgundy, at least the Duke of that name, most 
 particularly," said Spada ; " and I mean that you should present 
 me to him. But a gallon of the wine meanwhile, if you please." 
 
 They had drunk two or three draughts — a modem pint of that 
 noblest of wines — before Spada spoke again. 
 
 " Now about the young Count Leon. Was it a good rattle? 
 Did he come rattling down on the back of his head, like a gentle- 
 man, or did be fall towards you and break your best sword, as that 
 best and joUiest of companions, Nicolo of Padua, did with me when 
 I kiUed him ? I was very sorry for that business, for I loved the 
 man ; but we both wanted the same thing, and — what would you ? 
 By the organ of St. Agnes ! I shed positive tears, sir, when I saw 
 my beautiful Andrea Fen-ara broken in half." 
 
 Van Kenning said once, that Providence intended to spare this 
 man by showing him a caricature of his own cruelty. 
 
 "I wiU teU you about it," said Van Dysart, a little sulkily. 
 "I suspected him of telling tales to my detriment in a certain 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 25 
 
 quarter, and I said openly that I should kill him. I was utterly 
 wrong. He behaved most honourably, although he supplanted 
 me. The mischief was done by a nun, one Priscilla. Since I 
 killed him, I have had a letter which proves it. I have it here." 
 
 " So you kiUed the wrong man ? " 
 
 " It seems so." 
 
 "Yet he was a rival? " 
 
 " It is true ; but I was not very keen on the scent." 
 
 " Ha ! You are cold-blooded, you Flemings. You are ill, and 
 unfit for play. Let us drink some more, and then take me to the 
 Duke's court." 
 
 " Good ; I will go comb my hair. Do the Italian gallants wear 
 their hair in your fashion now ? " 
 
 Spada said that it was the latest fashion. He might have added, 
 among soldiers of fortune and maitres d'armes, but did not. Yan 
 Dysart went away to comb his hair. 
 
 When he was gone Spada looked puzzled. " There seems to 
 be a soft place in the man ; they told me there was none." 
 
 Van Dysart came back, and having adjusted their swords, they 
 walked away through the streets towards the palace. 
 
 It was evening, and the workmen were abroad sitting almost in 
 thousands in front of their houses. Van Dysart seemed almost 
 ostentatiously to choose the streets which were most frequented by 
 them. Many of them greeted him warmly, most looked kindly at 
 him. It might seem at first strange that a young nobleman, known 
 as a dicer and duellist and worse, should have power with them, 
 as he undoubtedly had ; but in any dispute he had always been on 
 their side, and as for his amours, they had never been among their 
 order. And his strength and splendid physical courage rendered 
 him admirable to a great extent among a people who lived by their 
 strength, dearly loved fighting, and who were as brave as their 
 ancestors. Why, in the last half century England and America 
 have both sent prizefighters to Parliament. And this man had 
 infinitely more brains and mental training than Gully or 
 Heenan. 
 
 Besides, why or wherefore does not matter just now, this man 
 was very charitable. In spite of the Gilden there was often sharp 
 distress, and this man's hand was always open. He had a good 
 heart, said they, and would cure himself of his foUies, which after 
 all were only those of his order. 
 
 A popular man most undoubtedly. Had he not been lazy and 
 vicious he might have been a rival to Van Kenning. But the 
 working hands could only be fairly led by Van Kenning, whose 
 good word was always for Van Dysart, 
 
26 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 " So your rdle is to lead the rabble," said Spada, as they walked 
 along. 
 
 " Yes," said Van Dysart, with a sneer. "And not a bad one. 
 You shall see the reception at Court directly of the man who could 
 bum the Duke's palace about his ears in an hour." 
 
 " The people are hut little understood and not very well treated," 
 said Spada, with a degree of honest emphasis, for his father had 
 been an armourer or blacksmith, and he himself had been chosen 
 as page for his beauty, and had risen to the position of Mameluke 
 for his fiendish, careless courage, which his amazing physical 
 vitality had saved from being spoiled by vice. In fact, like many 
 another healthy pirate, he rather disliked vice, as interfering with 
 business. 
 
 " Of that I know nothing, and care less," said Van Dysart. " I 
 want power, and I get it through them. That is all." 
 
 " You have no sentimental feeUngs about the preservation of 
 your order, then ? " asked Spada. 
 
 " None whatever. All said and done, man, they are worse 
 scoundrels than the workmen. I do not believe that there stands 
 in this street a greater rascal than the Duke." 
 
 " You mean the Duke of Ferrara ? " 
 
 "Yes, of course; the Duke of Ferrara. Hah! hah! You 
 might have thought I meant the Duke of Burgundy." 
 
 " Not I. I agree with you about the Duke of Ferrara. He 
 owes me money. Is he a good paymaster ? " 
 
 " Yes ; for dirty work. I never heard of a man asking for credit 
 of his chimney-sweep." 
 
 Spada sung a httle Provencal song, and sang it veiy prettily too. 
 It was indiscreet, looking at the task in hand, but — he couldn't 
 help it. 
 
 " Ci-git Abelard, 
 Ci-glt il ; 
 Parcequ'il croyait, 
 Ce que tout a dit." 
 
 " Quem deus vult perdere." They came to the door of the 
 palace and went in. 
 
 Was there ever such a Court before or since ? One fancies a 
 great many. But Ghent at that time was exceptional, by all 
 accounts. 
 
 There have been more drunken courts — that of James I. of 
 England, let us say. There have been more extravagantly dressed 
 courts — that of Venice in 1200. There have been more riotous 
 courts, Tliere have been more ferocious courts ; but there have 
 
OLD MARGARET. 27 
 
 been very few which equalled for combined riot, fury, sumptuaiy 
 extravagance and general dissipation that of Ghent in those times. 
 
 The whole of the entrance-haU and the great stone staircase 
 were crowded by courtiers in all kinds of fantastic dresses. 
 
 Van Dysart and Spada pushed their way through all this, up 
 the stairs and into the hall of reception. Here matters were decent. 
 There were chamberlains and officers around the Duke, who ceased 
 speaking as the two splendid young dandies advanced up the room. 
 
 The Duke looked with keen interest at the two new-comers, 
 more particularly at Count Spada. He seemed greatly satisfied. 
 
 " I have to ask leave to present to you Count Spada of Bologna, 
 Duke." 
 
 " I receive Count Spada with all good will and honour," said 
 the Duke. "You will sup with me to-night, you two. Do you 
 make a long stay, Count Spada ? " 
 
 " Who can say, Duke of Burgundy ? I suppose until I have 
 diced away my money, or have killed a man in a brawl, or done 
 something else which will make me fly your Court. Pew courts 
 keep me long. I am better known than trusted. Dicing and 
 brawling are the elements in which I live." 
 
 " Faith, then, you will do here," said the Duke, with a sneer. 
 "Welcome to Pandemonium, thou fallen angel. I think that, 
 take us all in all, we are the worst set of scoundrels in all Europe. 
 What says Van Dysart, mine enemy ? " 
 
 " Your Highness's very good friend," said Van Dysart. 
 
 " True, true," said the Duke. " There are none virtuous but 
 you and I. Our virtue rusts at times, but it is there. €ount 
 Spada, you are welcome." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The winter came down, the dykes and canals were frozen, and the 
 snow brought new light and beauty to Ghent, and new misery to 
 the lower part of the working population. 
 
 There was no good organisation of charity m those days, though 
 perhaps as much of it as there is now. Immense doles were some- 
 times given, but they were ill administered. The Gilden, one is 
 told took as good care of their broken-do™ members as do the 
 trades unions and benefit societies of to-day, all honour to them. 
 There was but small poverty among th<'m. It was among the class 
 lower than them, among the hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
 
28 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 the horse-holders and the innumerahle ministers to the summer's 
 luxury, in which the great distress was. Also great numbers of 
 the lower agricultural population, who had gained a scanty sub- 
 sistence in the countiy during summer, returned in winter to die 
 waim instead of cold. It was among these classes that the work 
 of the religious bodies lay. 
 
 And they did their best possible, notwithstanding occasional 
 squabbles among one another, and a great deal of mismanage- 
 ment and ignorance (we are not free from that yet). Great charities 
 had then, as now, been diverted from their first intention, and had 
 some of them, instead of (as now) being put into commission, been 
 swallowed by the esurient house of Burgundy for their sins, to the 
 never-ending exasperation of Father Peter and his bosom friend. 
 Sister PriscUla, who were always going to write to Kome about 
 these things, but who never had time. 
 
 Father Peter was a secular clergyman of extremely advanced 
 radical views, like his coadjutor. Sister Priscilla. These two 
 worthy democrats between them led the good Archbishop the 
 deuce of a life. They were always urging him to write to Rome 
 for them, and he was always pointing out to them that it would 
 be certain ruin to all three to do so. As for those two, they 
 would have walked barefooted to Rome, and denounced the great 
 and awful house of Burgundy before that most terrible of tribunals. 
 
 It was a cold day, and all the ai'chitecture was marked by lines 
 of silver snow upon its frettings, when Sister Priscilla and Father 
 Peter met at a windy street corner, and refreshed themselves with a 
 little sedition. 
 
 "A plague on Dukes, 7 say," began Sister Priscilla, "I am 
 sick and stupid with Dukes ; and what do we want here with 
 Dukes of Burgundy ? I wish he would go back there, and then 
 holiest folks might lead decent lives." 
 
 " It is good for trade," said Priest Peter, whose nose was blue 
 with cold, who was fasting, who had unwittingly lost a paper 
 containing a handsome list of masses, which had been farmed out 
 to him, and in consequence the money for them ; which was part 
 of his miserable income : so he was fractious and impracticable. 
 
 " Why ? " said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 " Why ? " snapped Priest Peter ; " you may well say why ? " 
 
 " Then I will say it again," said Sister Priscilla, and did so. 
 Whereupon Priest Peter, well knowing her powers of iteration, 
 asked her suddenly which way she was walking. She on her part 
 answered him after her usual manner, that is to say, by keeping 
 to her subject until she had made an end of it. 
 
 " Trade ! and you a Christian priest | Trade ! Devil's trade | 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 29 
 
 Trade ! I wish he would trade away to Paris again. We Flem- 
 ings were honest until these Burgundians with their scum of 
 Paris and scum of Italy came and polluted us. As far as a 
 Christian may curse, I curse the worthless house of Burgundy." 
 
 "Thanks, sweet nun," said a clear, sharp voice behind her. 
 " I wiU remember you in my prayers the next time I do not forget 
 to say them. Philip, of that accursed house of Burgundy, would 
 be glad for a direction to the Judenstrasse." 
 
 Peter the Priest slunk away appalled. While he had been 
 arguing with Sister Priscilla a large procession had approached 
 them over the silent snow unheard ; that procession now stood 
 silent in the bright white street, so fantastically strange and 
 beautiful, that he paused in his terror to look on the splendid 
 picture. 
 
 Contrasted with the white snow were a gaudily-dressed group of 
 nobles and courtiers, perhaps numbering some twenty, grouped 
 with imstudied elegance. When I say that they were gaudily 
 dressed, I simply mean to use that word in its old sense, for their 
 clothes were selected with that instinct for pure colour which we 
 lack now, and for which our best artists are returning, as it were 
 humbly and on their knees, to learn of the men of olden time. 
 The effect to the eye was that of a number of the best and most 
 tenderly coloured butterflies, say purple emperors and Camberwell 
 beauties, on a ground of surrounding snow. Crimson passed into 
 purple, and purple into bright cold sharp blue ; maroon declined into 
 brown, and then was lit up with pure primrose yellow, and amidst 
 it all was the gleam of gold everywhere, and the firelike flash of 
 jewels. The slight motion which they allowed themselves was 
 merely marked by the motion of the plumes in their bonnets, that 
 head-dress which aU nations have abandoned save the Scotch. 
 Otherwise the magnificent bevy of beautifully-dressed feudalists 
 was still in amused expectation. Further away in the snow the 
 Priest could see a file of grey steel-clad guards, solemn, inexorable, 
 with thought and responsibility crushed out by routine ; behind 
 again, the dim-coloured mob, each man of which was a world to 
 himself, save for a few days in each year, when the privileges of 
 his order were in danger, and he rose, fought, and died as bravely 
 as the best courtier among them all. 
 
 Priest Peter stood entranced. Kadical and ecclesiastic as he 
 was, he would have made his picture of showily-dressed ecclesias- 
 tics, and an entourage of dimly-coloured poor, who should follow 
 the ecclesiastics, and do their bidding humbly. But it was not 
 so : there were the courtiers in all their beauty, grace of move- 
 ment, power of action, perfection of cultivated colour ; behind 
 
30 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 them grey inexorable guards ; behind the guards the people, gazing 
 as near as they dared at the men who were eating their hearts, yot 
 ready to swarm on them at any moment, and hunt them like wild 
 beasts, and who had, in fact, done so before, and were to do so 
 again, as it were fruitlessly, until the dull thunder of Drake's 
 cannon came booming upon the ear of Parma, and the uncertain 
 dawn of freedom began to grow into certain glorious day, and the 
 romantic art which these nobles represented, to cease upon the 
 world of nature. 
 
 Priest Peter, hating it all, still admired : his eye had been 
 educated ecclesiastically, and had taught him what colour was ; 
 and, moreover, a man gets his purest and most delicate ideas of 
 colour from the half-toned dresses of the poor. Yet after a minute 
 of admiration for the courtiers, and a glimpse of thought about 
 the political situation which the spectacle showed him, his atten- 
 tion was entirely absorbed by the gi'oup of three, which was in 
 advance of the courtier group, and nearest to him, the group from 
 which he had seceded. 
 
 Sister Priscilla, coal black, with her legs planted in a determined 
 manner into the snow. 
 
 Philip of Burgundy, afterwards Philippe le Bon — a pale youth, 
 of great physical power but loosely built, dressed in violet velvet 
 with crimson hose, not as you sec him now, but brighter and younger, 
 with a sense of humour about that great mouth of his, which wu 
 look in vain for afterwards. 
 
 John Van Eyck, his alter ego, who was to become his love con- 
 fidant, the wooer of his bride — to play Buckingham to his Charles 
 Stuart — to leave Margaret and Hubert and to follow his darling 
 prince — to leave the people for the Court — to leave his wife to the 
 lotteiy, his daughter to the nunnery — and yet, though degenerated 
 from his greater brother, to keep his art pure and undefiled through 
 it all : raising our souls nigh heaven, while he must have been 
 dragging his own near hell. An old story this of the handsome 
 youth who stood by young Philip of Burgundy in the snow, dressed 
 in puce satin slashed with crimson. An old, old story. The 
 priests insist to one that the merits of the ordinances are not 
 retracted by the unworthiness of the ministrant ; may it be so in 
 art ? One who was a courtier, and no more, could not have 
 painted the four kneeling angels. 
 
 "Nun, nun," said young Philip of Burgundy, "you were 
 cursing our house. What prevents me from delivering you over 
 to justice, and having' you fried ? " 
 
 Sister PrisciUa snitt'ed, and pointed right over his head at the 
 dull-coloured swarming behind the guards. 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 31 
 
 " Precisely," said Philip. " John Van Eyck, my beloved, this 
 woman is a woman of vast penetration. Van Janssen ! " 
 
 A courtier stepped up at once. 
 
 " Catch me that lurking priest, will you ? bring him here, and 
 call up a file of the guards and walk him off to pVison." 
 
 Priest Peter was at once brought back, five guards were put in 
 possession of his person, and Philip gave them the order to take 
 him to the gaol in the Place. 
 
 " Which way. Sire? " asked the courtier. 
 
 " Which way, fool? There is but one; back that way, right 
 through the mob, to be sure." 
 
 And Priest Peter with five guards was marched solemnly through 
 the swarming workmen, Philip of Burgundy never waiting to see 
 the result, but marching away with his guards and courtiers in 
 another direction, with the enforced attendance of Sister Priscilla. 
 
 " There is nothing against the priest," said John Van Eyck. 
 
 " I only wanted to give those dogs a lesson," said Philip. 
 " Now, Mistress Nun, step out : gentlemen, follow." 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 " Move on, gentlemen," said young Philip of Burgundy ; and the 
 procession moved quicldy through the snow after him, Philip, 
 John Van Eyck, and Sister Priscilla foremost. Philip in violet 
 velvet and crimson hose ; John Van Eyck in puce satin slashed 
 with crimson ; and Sister PrisciUa in most inexorable and 
 emphatic black. Behind them the courtiers, dressed in colours 
 which would kill Mr. Bm-ne Jones with envy. Behind the grey 
 steel-coloured guards ; behind again the dull brown-coloured mob, 
 swarming along the snow-white street, like a highland river in 
 spate amidst snow-covered meadows. 
 
 "Nun," said Philip of Burgundy, "do you know what I am 
 going to do ? " 
 
 "No good, I should say, if you are your own father's son," 
 replied Sister Priscilla. " But it is a wicked world, and they say 
 that you are not wicked." 
 
 Philip of Burgundy laughed, just as he laughed aftenvards when 
 Bruges had been destroyed. " She is a vixen, this nun, John," 
 he said. 
 
32 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 John Van Eyck was decidedly of opinion that she was little 
 better. 
 
 " Hear me, nun," said Philip of Burgundy. " I am going to 
 18, Judenstrasse, an ugly place, and I am going to take you, as a 
 religious woman, for respectability's sake." 
 
 " To keep off the mob ? " remarked Sister Priscilla. 
 
 "Exactly so," said Philip. 
 
 " What do you want there ? " she asked. " But," she con- 
 tmued, " what is the good of asking ? Your house are all liars 
 bom and Uars bred. If I wanted to get the truth from any 
 member of the cursed house of Burgundy I should have to lie 
 myself, in hopes that I might get the truth from you through 
 sheer opposition. Your house is winning, and that is the cha- 
 racter which you have gained from the people. I speak as one who 
 knows the people ; that is to say, one who knows the opinions of 
 the men's wives. Van Kenning wiU tell you what the men tell him, 
 and he knows much. Van Dysart will tell you what the men tell 
 him, and he knows nothing. The men tell their wives their whole 
 soul, and the wives tell me. And the men have told their wives, 
 and their wives have told me, that the house of Burgundy is a 
 rotten, stupid, and cruel house, and that it shall go down." 
 
 " How soon, vixen ? " 
 
 She knelt down on the snow, and began in a loud, shrUl voice, 
 the 76th Psalm. 
 
 " Take her up. Van Eyck," said Philip, furiously. "Popery 
 is maddening aU these fools. What do you mean by kneeling on 
 the snow ? " 
 
 " Some shall kneel on the snow, but not to thee. Burgundy," 
 was her very quaint answer. What she meant when she spoke 
 was that the trades unions, led by ecclesiastics, would kneel 
 on some winter's night, before a revolutionary movement. Her 
 words were fulfilled oddly enough aftenvards. 
 
 AVhilc John Van Eyck was dusting the snow off her knees, 
 Philip of Burgundy asked her once more, " Do you know for what 
 purpose we are going to 18, Judenstrasse, and why I have taken 
 you into custody to keep away the mob ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Sister Priscilla, " yes, I know. Thank you, John 
 Van Eyck, you are a gentleman. Yes, I know all about it. We 
 are all bent on the same object. Some of us wiU go to heaven 
 and some to hell. With regard to this expedition : I understand 
 all about it. You want to catch Van Dysart in that house." 
 " You are right, nun," said Philip of Burgiindy. 
 Sister Priscilla turned on him with a look of utter scorn. " Of 
 course I am right," she said. 
 
OLD MABGARBT. 33 
 
 " Shall we catch him ? " said Philip. 
 
 " He must be a great fool if we do ; as great a fool as you are 
 yourself," said Sister Priscilla. " I sent him word that you were 
 coming three hours ago." 
 
 The good nature of Philippe le Bon never deserted him. He 
 only said, " Your reason ? " 
 
 Sister PrisciUa looked at him for a moment and then said 
 quietly, " Sir, you are the first true gentleman of your house. I 
 will tell you why I have traversed your plans in this manner. 
 The man's time is not come. I am, like yourself, though for 
 different reasons, engaged in the ruin of this man ; hut his time 
 is not come. Burgundy, consider. If I had allowed the net to 
 be drawn round that man to-day ; if I had allowed 5'ou, in your 
 blundering, stupid Burgundian foUy, to take that man in the 
 stronghold of the Jewish illuminati, he would have had the peoisle 
 with him. I want him free for a time, until the people understand 
 him. I want him to have it all his own way, tiU the time comes 
 which has not come yet. You could have hung him to-day. 
 what then ? The murderer of Margaret's lover — I speak to you, 
 John Van Eyck — would have been a martyr. John, I wiU not 
 have it so. John Van Eyck, leave this man to us — to PrisciUa 
 the nun, to Van Kenning the politician, to Spada the scoundrel. 
 He thinks that he is going to be let off so easily. He thinks that 
 he is going to die in peace — he, the murderer of Leon. No ! 
 No ! Ten thousand times no. Every hound is on his trail. 
 Every sin against him is being brought up. The Bishop, Father 
 Peter, Spada, Van Kenning, all of us, bad and good, are on his 
 track, and this stupid house of Burgundy chooses to step in 
 between us and our vengeance. Ha ! Ha ! " 
 
 " You are mad, and your sentiments are not those of a religious 
 woman," said John Van Eyck, with the base Court twang. 
 
 " You are a greater fool than your friend Philip of Burgundy," 
 said Sister Priscilla, looking at Philippe le Bon. " He will use 
 you and ruin you. Princes always do. But he knows what 
 vengeance is, and I am one in a great plot to avenge the death of 
 your sister's lover." 
 
 "But she does not know anything of this ? " said Philippe le 
 Bon. 
 
 " She asked your father for vengeance, my Lord — at least, my 
 Lord, they say so. She asked for vengeance. She asked it of 
 Van Kenning, and he asked the Duke." 
 
 "You are a very curious sort of nun," said Philippe le Bon. 
 " How do you make all this fit in with your Christianity ? " 
 
 "I am a very curious sort of nun" said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 4 
 
34 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 " Every one knows it ; and I do not make it fit in with my 
 Christianity in any way whatever. One thing I do know. Van 
 Dysart killed my own Margaret's pretty lover, and I will hunt 
 him to ruin for it if I should lose heaven in doing so." 
 
 " But surely," said Philip of Burgundy, " her brothers " 
 
 "Her brothers!" said Sister Priscilla, furiously. "Her 
 brothers would quarrel with her if she did not mix their paints 
 right. He, the good Leon, killed like a dog by this scoundrel 
 Van Dysart, would have been petulant with her after he was tired 
 of her. It is so with men. I have read in Scripture that there 
 is a love between men, a pure and beautiful love surpassing the 
 love of man for woman — of which I know nothing. But, Bur- 
 gundy, there is a love of woman to woman surpassing the love of 
 man towards woman. I have this love for Margaret Van Eyck. 
 I tried to laugh her out of her love for Leon, but could not, and 
 so I yielded, and he became flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. 
 And Van Dysart kiUed our pretty boy in the street, Bui-gundy, and 
 I am mad against him." 
 
 " Madam," said Philip of Burgundy, who was a gentleman after 
 the pattern of his time, " think of your religious vows." 
 
 " That is what maddens me," said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 PhUip could think of nothing particular to say, matters had gone 
 utterly out of his sphere. But he found that he was conceiving a 
 profound respect for this famous nun, although he could not help 
 thinking that she was at no good work. 
 
 John Van Eyck, with the dreadful voice of the artist-courtier, 
 remarked — 
 
 "If the good Sister is correct, why should we go on to 18, 
 Judenstrasse ? " 
 
 "Let us go on," said Sister PrisciUa. " He mil think that 
 we have played our trumps. Let us go on. He will shame us 
 through not having been there. But mind you, Burgundy and 
 Van Eyck, that we must keep our own counsel. Cannot you 
 imprison me for false information. Burgundy ? " 
 
 " I will speak to my father about it, if it is agreeable to your- 
 self," said Philippe le Bon ; " but I do not think that you would 
 hke it. However, I have not the least doubt that my father would 
 hang us aU up by the neck, if we asked him. Here is 18, Juden- 
 strasse." 
 
 A place like a wynd in Edinburgh. The courtiers swaimed in, 
 with Burgundy, John Van Eyck, and Sister Priscilla. It was a 
 house of bad repute, and the young courtiers were noisy and 
 riotous when they got into the large room upstairs, having no 
 idea in the world for what purpose they were brought there. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 35 
 
 There was an old lady, who bowed very much, and was glad to 
 see such a gallant company in her poor rooms. Nothmg else. 
 No Van Dysart or Spada, not a shadow of them. One jocular 
 young courtier thought that he would amuse Burgundy by kissing 
 Sister PriscUla ; which he did : but the next instant the old 
 Burgundy fist — a very emphatic one — knocked out two of his 
 teeth, and left him lying with his head in the fireplace ; and the 
 old Burgundy voice — -also a very emphatic one — said, " Curse 
 you, you hound, leave the nun alone ! " 
 
 That night Philippe le Bon (as he was to he) could not go to 
 bed without John Van Eyck to take ofl' his shoes. And Philip 
 said to John — 
 
 " We are not in a good business at all ! " 
 
 And John Van Eyck asked him what he meant. 
 
 "This revenge business. We are aU wrong. What does 
 Hubert say of it ? " 
 
 " I am not my brother's keeper," said John Van Eyck, with 
 a smirk. 
 
 " Well," said Philip, " our house has done darker jobs than 
 this. But I don't like it. That nun PrisciUa has upset me : 
 blow out that candle, and go to bod. — What's that ? Fallen 
 down ? I should think you had, from the noise. Fallen 
 over the page, eh ? Kick the young rascal in the ribs, and tell 
 him if he snores I will comb his head with the bedstaff. — I say, 
 John ! " 
 
 " My Lord ! " 
 
 " My groom is on the floor there, in the corner somewhere. 
 Kick him, will you ? " 
 
 John Van Eyck found a young man in a corner near the fire, 
 and aroused him gently. 
 
 •' You dog ! " said Philip. 
 
 " My Lord ! " said the groom. 
 
 " If you do not wake me at dawn to-morrow morning, I will 
 have you flayed alive." 
 
 " Yes, my Lord." 
 
 " Have you heard the conversation between myself and John 
 Van Eyck?" 
 
 " Every word, my Lord." 
 
 " Then you must be put to death." 
 
 " Yes, my Lord." 
 
 " Go to bed, Van Eyck, do. I do not know which is the greatest 
 fool of us all. Sometimes I think I am, but generally I think it is 
 you : the groom is the wisest man of the lot, for he can tell the 
 truth — a habit which you and I have forgotten." 
 
36 OLD MAEGAEBT. 
 
 John Van Eyck went to bed, and the groom and page slept 
 before the fire in the room of young Phihp of Burgundy. But in 
 the middle of the uight they were awakened. Philip of Burgundy 
 had given the cry which had awakened them, and as he slept 
 naked, as all men did then, what they saw when they started, 
 scared from their slumbers, was the young duke in bed, sitting 
 up, bare to the waist, with the horror of nightmare on his face, 
 and cvoiy nmscle in his body rigid. 
 
 " The nun is the worst devil ! " he shrieked. " Where is my 
 mother ? ' ' 
 
 The groom, his foster-brother and henchman — an arrangement 
 which prevails still in the Highlands — put his ann round his neck, 
 and tried to soothe him. 
 
 " Jan ! Jan ! " said Burgundy, " I have been dreaming of all 
 the devils in hell, and the worst devUs were the nun and Van 
 Kenning. I told Van Eyck to kick you ; I would have kiUed him 
 if he had. But lie knows that. Do you approve of this ? " 
 
 "Of what, my Lord?" 
 
 " Of this — of this horrible conspiracy. If I wore to tell you, 
 would you kill a man for me at once ? ' ' 
 
 " Of course I vrould, my Lord. Go to sleep ; you are joking." 
 
 " It were better to have him killed at once. I will go to 
 Hubert to-morrow." 
 
 " If you wish my knife into his body, my Lord, you had better 
 not speak to Hubert Van Eyck ; he would never permit it." 
 
 " Your knife ? and into whose body ? " 
 
 " Maria ! into Van Dysart's. Is there a Burgundian who 
 would not assassinate him ? hut leave him to his own ways, and 
 trust in the devil's justice." 
 
 And so Philip of Burgundy fell from his henchman's arms and 
 slept. 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 The man Van Dysart was utterly doomed. The earth was sick 
 of the dog, and in the whole world he had no friend — at least, no 
 fi-iend who had the least power. I only wiiie the present story to 
 show how a man may be hunted to death by a combination of 
 j)eople acting under dilicrout motives for the same object. Some 
 people have a way of making deeply bitter enemies : Van Dysart 
 was one. I fear that I must ask you to follow me while I go through 
 
OLD MARGARET. 37 
 
 the list of this most unhappy man's enemies ; and I fear also that 
 I must ask you to remember them. If the man had no friend in 
 the world, surely in common chivalry we may remember the names 
 of his enemies. 
 
 First, then. Van Kenning — why not John Duke of Burgundy ? 
 you say. I answer, that the Whig, Van Kenning, was much 
 more powerful than John Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy knew it. 
 Van Kenning was the Whig of the time ; he kept peace between 
 the Court and the workers. He was the soul's health and comfort 
 to John of Burgundy. Van Dysart was one person, Van Kenning 
 was another. Van Dysart was a man who would bet that the 
 cathedral could be knocked down without his own house, built just 
 below it, suffering in any way. Van Kenning, on the other hand, 
 knew well that even the boldest of the labouring hands were not 
 sufficiently foolish to wish for a redistribution of that fund which 
 is called by some wages fund, by others capital, for say, twenty- 
 five years, with the loss accruing on interest, at that time some 
 thirty-five per cent. Van Kenning considered, as a Whig, that 
 matters could be brought round comfortably without an elec- 
 tive presidency : Van Dysart rather liked the idea of an elective 
 presidency. So they were political enemies, and the political 
 question remains to this very day ; it is scarcely altered from its 
 old position. The question still remains — " Are the people fit to 
 govern themselves, or are they not ? " To this great question we 
 decline to give an answer here. We only say, that Van Kenning 
 was of opinion that the people in Ghent required guiding ; and 
 that Van Dysart, the gamester, said that he thought that the 
 lowest and least educated class in the community were fit to 
 manage their own affairs. Further than this we have nothing 
 whatever to do with the matter. But it enables us to see that 
 Van Kenning, the respectable Whig, and Van Dysart, the Tory 
 radical, were at loggerheads on political matters. 
 
 Now Van Kenning had a devotion to Margaret Van Eyck, to 
 which the devotion of Abelard to Heloise was a boyish passion, 
 to which the love of Petrarch to Laura was a mere piece of 
 maundering sentimentality. He was a man of pure life and 
 of excellent morality. He was what would now be called a doc- 
 trinaire radical : a man who felt deeply the wi-ongs of the people, 
 and a man who would right them by any means. When he was 
 a little younger than he was at the time of which we speak, Mar- 
 garet Van Eyck had appeared to him one morning, and in her 
 quiet calm way had required him to come to her brother's studio 
 and sit to her for his portrait. He agreed, and so day after day he 
 sat before her, talking with her about the wrongs ot the people. 
 
38 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 The result in one way is the ijortrait of the man in minever on 
 the left voile of the greatest picture in Europe ; the result in 
 another way was this : that Van Kenning fell deeply in love with 
 her, and that he asked her to marry him. 
 
 She said that she would marry no one. 
 
 Said Van Kenning, " I think you lie ! " for they spoke so in 
 those times. 
 
 " I think I do not," said Margaret. " I would not marry any 
 man. "Why should I ? K you wish to ho answered that I love 
 you deeply and heartily, you may go away with that assurance. 
 But I do not wish to marry you. Why should we marry. I think 
 that I love you too well to many you. Surely we can love one 
 another without manying." 
 
 " Will you marry another man ? " said Van Kenning. 
 
 "Which man?" 
 
 " Van Dysart." 
 
 " Let him many Martina." 
 
 "Leon?" 
 
 Margaret put down her palette and her brushes very quietly, 
 and looked Van Kenning straight in the face. " I doubt I did 
 lie. Van Kenning," she said. " I think I would many him, if he 
 asked me." 
 
 " Let it be so, then," said Van Kenning, quite quietly. 
 
 " In what way ? " said Margaret Van Eyck. 
 
 " Merely in this way," said Van Kenning : " You are my 
 choice ; he is yours ; I give all my life to you and to him. I 
 would give all my life to you, but you will not accept it. My 
 life must be given to you and to him. This answer of yours 
 is death to me ; but I wiU try to do my duty by you and by 
 Leon." 
 
 Now it occurred to him that he had not done his duty according 
 to his promise, in the fatal duel between Vau Dysart and Leon. 
 The only ugly thing in the whole life of Van Kenning was that 
 duel. He could have raised the veiy devil of democracy over that 
 duel, but did not. He could have stopped it, hut did not. The 
 Archbishop, douce man, could have done nothing ; but Van Ken- 
 ning could have roused the people by many cries. Why did he 
 not do so ? It is an ugly question, not to be answered by me. 
 Margaret forgave him, and he is walking towai'ds the gloiy of 
 heaven in the left voile of the great picture ; but he never forgave 
 himself. The most dangerous, ruthless, and deadly enemy Van 
 Dysart had for a time was Van Kenning. 
 
 John of Burgundy was of course Van Dysart's enemy. We in 
 these days have done what Sieyes said he had done (which he had 
 
OLD MAEGAHET. 39 
 
 not), Achever la pnlitiqne. Mr, Bright siJeaks some sharp truths, 
 and Auberoii Herbert does the same. In the cases of Van 
 Kenning and Mr. Bright you expect chronic radicaHsm ; but 
 when you see young aristocrats going in for strong radicalism, as 
 in the cases of Auberon Herbert and Van Dy^art, you may depend 
 that something is wrong in the State. We are very sorry to have 
 to make any personal allusions in a novel ; but Mr. Auberon 
 Herbert so nobly represents his order, that I think I have full 
 right to speak of him in comparison with the typical Cimbrian 
 nobleman of the fifteenth century, Van Dysart. These aristo- 
 crats have learnt their lessons, and are doing grandly. The 
 people are not out of their leading-strings yet, but require leaders. 
 In the fifteenth centui-y they had such leaders as Van Kenning 
 and Van Dysart. In the nineteenth century they get leaders like 
 Gladstone, Bright, Lowe, and Auberon Herbert. Compare the 
 new with the old, and you will see how far the people are winning ; 
 compare Van Dysart with any leader of the day, and form your 
 own conclusions. It seems that the educated class have learnt 
 their duty, and are honestly bent on pursuing it. 
 
 John of Burgundy hated the people, and the people hated him ; 
 had Van Dysart had the virtues of a good modem nobleman, he 
 might have been dangerous to the terrible Burgundy himself. 
 He was not dangerous, for the people believed in his virtue, with 
 all their faults ; but John of Burgundy thought him dangerous, 
 and Philip his son hated the man heartily. 
 
 The Archbishop was a churchman and a gentleman, a perfectly 
 good man in every way. The Archbishop had large revenues, but 
 they were not spent on himself, but on the poor. A decent 
 sumptuousness prevailed in his house, but only for the credit of 
 his church. His sisters lived with him and managed his house- 
 hold ; there was not a better managed house in the Netherlands. 
 To the Archbishop the man Van Dysart was a hideous horror. 
 
 A priest, be he Catholic or Protestant, lives solely for his 
 religion. It is the breath of his nostrils : there are some hypo- 
 crites among the ministers of all creeds, but we believe but very 
 few ; and a mere hypocrite will stand by his cloth to the death, 
 as a mutineer will stand by his regiment when shot and shells 
 begin to rive the earth about him. The Archbishop was no 
 hypocrite, but a thorough true and noble person, unceasing night 
 and day in good works, as gallant a man as any in the Nether- 
 lands : radical, as all true priests must be ; conseiwative, as all 
 priests are of necessity. Yet our brave Archbishop had that 
 feminine spite which is born of exclusion. He was married to a 
 bride, to the Church. To liim the Church was a wife. All the 
 
40 OLD MAEGARET. 
 
 powers of his nature were thrown into the Church, and he begot 
 sons upon her, and very noble sons some of them were. Now, 
 with a man of such a nature as the Archbishop's, you will find 
 that it is dangerous to come between him and his wife. Van 
 Dysart was an open .scoffer, and was competing for power among 
 the people with the Archbishop. One of them must go down, and 
 the Archbishop was most emphatically determined that the one 
 who went down should not be he, the Archbishop. The Ai-ch- 
 bishop had sense, courage, and power ; Van Dysart had merely 
 the ear of the more turbulent factory hands ; the Ai'chbishop had 
 the ear of the women. 
 
 And he had determined that Van Dysart must go. Alone he 
 would have been sufficient to destroy the friendless man, for the 
 man was friendless at Court now ; but in addition to the terrible 
 enemies of whom we have spoken above, the unhappy Van Dysart 
 had three others. 
 
 The woman Martina, whom, as they said, he had ruined and 
 cast on the streets, but who, in spite of her sins and her wild- 
 ness, could rouse Ghent, and rousing Ghent in those times, when 
 there were no chassepots, was a fearful thing. Thanks to Haus- 
 mann, who cut into revolutionary Paris while she was asleep, and 
 made her pay £40,000,000 for it afterwards, the party of order 
 cau now pound its St. Antoine at its leisure." In Ghent, at the 
 time of which we speak, things were not so. A woman of bad 
 character, with a dram, half-a-dozen radical priests, and the 
 same number of trades union leaders, were capable of raising such 
 a wasps' nest about the Imperial ears of Burgundy as made 
 Burgundy think twice — nay, three times — before he dared the 
 hazard of the battle. The perfection of artillery is the death of 
 democracy. Storks and Palliser could have stopped the French 
 Eevolution. I'ancy the unutterable hay which would be made of 
 any six hundred dusty-footed gentlemen who advanced on Paris 
 from Marseilles tww. There is something fearful in contemplating 
 the power which is put into the hands of the ruling powers by the 
 mere possession of guns. One comfort is, that the raling parties 
 have not learnt their power, or liberty would be dead. It was 
 not so in Ghent at this time. The working people were closely 
 packed, and Imew personally and by sight eveiy one in any way 
 notorious. They knew Van Dysart and Martina ; they knew how 
 he had treated her, but they were used to that. The dangerous 
 party among the workmen Hked Van Dysart. The safer and 
 more powerful body loved from the bottom of their hearts Van 
 
 * Ah this was written before recent events, 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 41 
 
 Kenning. But nevertheless, God often puts green heads on grey 
 shoulders, and if this girl, young and beautiful yet, were to take 
 it into her head to proclaim her unalterable wrong through 
 Ghent, and call for vengeance, matters might go very ill with Van 
 Dysart. Van Kenning desired that matters should go ill with 
 Van Dysart, and the Duke of Burgundy had hired that utterly 
 scoundrelly good humoured hound, Spada of Bologna, to see that 
 matters did go wi'ong with Van Dysart. 
 
 Duke John and Philippe le Bon were talking together when 
 Spada was shown in. "Come here, you scoundrel," said John 
 Duke of Burgundy. 
 
 " Don't call him scoundrel, father," said Philippe le Bon, aloud, 
 and in the very coolest manner. "You must remember that if 
 he is a scoundrel, he is also a gentleman." 
 
 Spada burst out laughing. " This looks good," he said to the 
 Duke of Burgundy. " This looks like employment, obligation, 
 and what is more to the purpose, money. But with regard to 
 business. When three thorough-going scoundrels get together, 
 my Lord Duke of Burgundy, they generally mean business, and 
 generally talk business." 
 
 " Sir," said the Duke of Burgundy, " you are very insolent." 
 " Of course I am, Duke. If I were not the most insolent man 
 in Europe I should not have been here. I suppose that you want 
 to buy my impudence. It is at your disposal, at a reasonable 
 sum." 
 
 " You should be more respectable," said the Duke. 
 Spada at once cast his bonnet on the floor, advanced to the 
 Duke and kissed his instep. " Anything more required, my Lord 
 Duke, or shall we have it all over at once ? " 
 
 Philippe le Bon began giggling. " Say what you want, father." 
 And the great Duke John laughed again. 
 
 " I want some work from you. Have you diced away aU your 
 money? " 
 
 "No," said Spada, "I have still some left. I wiU not trouble 
 you at present." And saying this the magnificent animal drew 
 himself up and showed himself before the two as the beautiful and 
 terrible scoundrel which he was. The splendid elasticity of his 
 body excited the curiosity of the then head of the athletic family 
 of Burgundy. " Why, man," said Duke John, " you are as strong 
 as L" 
 
 " If your Highness will give me the chance I will prove that I 
 am the stronger," said Spada. 
 
 "I am too old and too fat," said John of Burgundy. "But 
 let us come to business, I want a man out of the way." 
 
42 OLD MARGABET. 
 
 " I have put many men out of the way for many Princes, and 
 hope to put many more. It pays." 
 
 "As to the consideration ? " said the Duke. 
 
 " I always leave the money part of the business to the Prince," 
 said Spada. "I never yet was disappointed in my expectations 
 by a Prince or nobleman in trifling details of this kind. I am a 
 man who does not bear disappointment. What can be done for 
 the goose can be done for the gander. Now, Lord Duke, who is 
 your man, and how is it to be done ? " 
 
 " The man is Van Dysart." 
 
 Spada, with his neiwes of iron, actually started. "I do not 
 understand you," he said. 
 
 " This fellow, Van Dysart, must he got rid of," said the Duke. 
 
 " But I had orders to that effect before, my Lord Duke. I have 
 been as diligent as a man could be." 
 
 " From whom did you get your order? " said the Duke. 
 
 " From yourself through Van Kenning, my Lord." 
 
 " You can't prove that," said the Duke. 
 
 "My Lord," said Spada, "let there be honour among gentle- 
 men. I cannot. I never prove anything. The trade by which 
 I live and thrive requires, like your own, a total absence of logic 
 and morality. I have no more logic or morality than you, my 
 Lord Duke. So I am absolutely and entirely dumb. I was doing 
 the thing you want me to do, but in a roundabout manner. Do 
 you want me to get rid of the man suddenly and shai-ply ; do you 
 wish me to fight him, or do you wish me to assassinate him ? In 
 the case of your requiring his assassination, my Lord Duke, I 
 must require the fullest assurances from you that I must go free. 
 It is a part of the business by which I live which I have never taken 
 up. I must make a very stout bargain with you, my Lord, before 
 I do that." 
 
 " Confound the rascally Italian," said the elder Burgundy. " I 
 don't want the man )iniirkTed. I want him inineil." 
 
 "Oh, that is aU ! " said Spada. " What a pity it is that we 
 had not understood one another before. My dear Duke, you can 
 make your mind perfectly easy ; I am hard at that work, with 
 others. I was afraid that you were going to pay me to cut the 
 throat of my milch cow. My dear Lord, my good Duke, my most 
 reverend Duke of Burgundy, I live by that young man. Conceive 
 the relief it is to my mind to find that you do not want me to cut 
 his throat. Of course I should have done so. I would cut yours 
 if I was paid for it at a sufficient price. You only want me to 
 ruin him? " 
 
 " That is all." 
 
ULU MARGARET. 43 
 
 " That is a very easy business ; there are others at it with me." 
 
 " Allow me to offer you this purse," said the Duke of Burgundy. 
 
 " Thanks, Allow me to decline it. I thought you wanted his 
 throat cut. But I get as much as I want for a man of my simple 
 habits out of the poor hound at play. I won't take your money." 
 
 " You are an honest rascal," said the Duke. 
 
 "Duke, if one rascal may speak to another, I would say that I 
 am an honest rascal." 
 
 " Sir ? " 
 
 " Sir, I will prove it. In this matter you have no need of me. 
 There are two who will hunt that man. Van Dysart, to ruin and 
 never trouble us. You would have thrown the money you would 
 have given me to the dogs, Duke." 
 
 " Wlio are these two ? " asked the Duke. 
 
 " As usual, a priest and a nun," said Spada. " Soldiers, priests, 
 and nuns govern this world as of old." 
 
 " But what priest and what nun ? " asked the Duke, aghast. 
 
 " The priest is called Father Peter, a Secular ; the nun is one 
 Priscilla, a Sister of the order of the Holy Heart." 
 
 " I know them," cried Philippe le Bon. 
 
 "Doubtless," said Spada. " A young Prince so given to holy 
 works as the heir apparent to the throne of Burgundy icould know 
 such people." 
 
 Philippe le Bon's temper broke down utterly at this. " You 
 infernal dog ! " was the only expression which the well-known 
 hereditary powers of objurgation furnished him with. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Spada, very coolly ; " I was talking 
 to your father until you interrupted me. I was saying that this 
 priest and nun will hunt the dog do^vn for us, for love, not for 
 money. Speaking merely as a man of the world and a soldier, 
 I should say that you had better not employ me. My character 
 is not good. I am a notorious bully. I have been seen with you 
 two, and if anything was to happen to this Van Dysart through 
 me, it would be said at once that you had hired me. The priest 
 and the nun will do- the matter quietly. I do not want money ; I 
 can win all the money I want from him. I would really not employ 
 me if I was in your place, Duke." 
 
 And so the Duke said that he would not. 
 
a OLD MAEGARET. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 There went about in these days in Ghent a swift dirty priest, with 
 a little grey dog. And there went usually with him a swift nun, 
 who told beads and said prayers as she walked ; and she said her 
 prayers and told her beads with such singular emphasis, that the 
 people of Ghent called her the Cursing Nun. 
 
 Whenever these two passed through the crowded streets at the 
 dinner hour of the workmen at high bright noon, a lane was made 
 for them, partly from respect, partly from terror. The enormous 
 rush of workmen from the factories in Ghent in those days was so 
 great that no women or children dared stay in the street after the 
 noonday bell. Yet this shabby priest and this cursing nun might 
 go where they listed, and the little grey dog might follow the priest 
 with his little pattering feet, for the dog was of the people, and 
 the people, with their feminine instincts, knew it. Neither John 
 or Philip of Burgundy dare take their bloodhounds among the 
 people, but the little grey dog could go anywhere. 
 
 There were very few of these little grey dogs then in the Nether- 
 lands, and indeed there are but few now. The blood of the Mac- 
 donalds has fertilised every battlefield in Europe, yet they for the 
 most part are forgotten, as " the Scotchman abroad " is forgotten. 
 But there had come a Macdonald to offer his person and his sword 
 to John Duke of Burgundy, and he swashbucklered into a public- 
 house, and quarrelled with a Frenchman; and Gil Macdonald knew 
 the use of the claymore better than the Andrea Perrara, and the 
 Frenchman killed our bonny Gil ; and they buried our bonny Gil : 
 so his mother, in the shadow of Scbiehallion, never saw him any 
 more. They thought there was an end and finish of Gil Macdonala, 
 who came, as they believed, from Sweden ; but when the priest had 
 said his say, and the turf was patted down carefully, there remained 
 sitting at the grave's head a little grey dog. 
 
 No one noticed the little grey dog at all. It was a very humble 
 little dog. Dandy Dinmont, of Charlie's Hope, was not to be bom 
 for four hundred years. Yet here sat a little Scotch Dandy at the 
 head of the grave of a Macdonald. 
 
 The little dog, like all Scotch dogs, and Scotch men, had not 
 only a true heart, but a keen brain. It thought a great deal about 
 the matter, and then it came to the conclusion that its master was 
 dead, and that it must shift for itself. So it went back into the 
 city of Ghent, from the glacis where its master, poor Gil Mac- 
 donald, was buried. 
 
 The to^vn was very strange to it, for Gil, glorious lad, was very 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 45 
 
 quarrelsome, and an ill swordsman. His career had been very 
 short. The dog did not know towns ; he was from Fortingal, at 
 the end of Glen Lyon, and was in reality brought up by that most 
 unfortunate clan, so dear to every English schoolboy, the Mao- 
 gregors. I could show how he came into the hands of a Macdonald, 
 if I chose. The situation is the main point. At the beginning 
 of the fifteenth century there was a little Scotch terrier in Ghent, 
 whose master had been kiUed in a duel. 
 
 What was that little dog to do ? It did not know any more than 
 I do. It went back to the town, like Chatterton, but it was utterly 
 unsuccessful. Some said that it was not a dog at all, for who had 
 ever seen a dog like that ? Some said that it ivas a dog, but an 
 amorphous and improbable dog, and must be put to death. This 
 we all know is a very dangerous argument against any dog, human 
 or other ; so the boys took the matter up with their usual good 
 sense, and pelted tlae dog, because, as they argued, the dog was 
 improbable. Scotch terriers are better known now. 
 
 The town was no success for the little grey dog, whose masters 
 have done much of the noblest share in conquering the earth. The 
 unlucky little brute thought that it would find its way back to its 
 dead master's head, at the grave on the glacis, and die there. The 
 dog's intentions were no worse than these. 
 
 But John of Burgundy was building on to his palace, and there 
 were some broken stones lying about, and the little dog had to 
 pass the place ; and the Cimbrian youth considered that a Celtic 
 dog was improbable, therefore impossible, therefore to be destroyed. 
 So they pelted stones at it, and one more dexterous than the others 
 cut its head open. 
 
 Our little grey Macdonald dog ran swiftly and avoided being 
 killed. What goes on in a dog's head is more than my knowledge 
 can tell, but it got free from the suburbs, and crept along under a 
 waU towards the glacis. It said to itself, I think, " Why are men 
 angry with me ? ' ' And behold, as it said so, while it was crouching 
 under the wall, there came towards it a man and a woman in furious 
 anger. The little grey dog lay down and prepared for death. 
 
 "Priscilla," said Father Peter, furiously, "I tell you to leave 
 it to God." 
 
 " We are instruments in the hands of God," said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 " Have you no mercy, no patience ? " 
 
 " None ; Van Dysart must die." 
 
 "Hush!" said Father Peter. "Here is one who wants our 
 mercy more than Van Dysart, Priscilla ; this is the dog of the 
 Swede who was kiUed yesterday by Burgundy's groom. I want 
 something to love, PrisciUa ; I will love this. I am sick of all 
 
46 OLD MARGAHET. 
 
 this hate. I will do what is agreed about the man, but I will love 
 the little dog." 
 
 The little Scotch dog had given itself up by now. It would 
 have preferred to die at its master's grave (for, like aU good 
 Scotchmen, it was in the matter of sentimentaHty an idiot), but 
 it was quite ready to be killed by the infuriated priest or the 
 infuriated nun. It propped against the wall and wagged feebly ; 
 whereupon the nun burst into a furious passion of tears, and 
 cried " Misericordia ! misericordia ! " 
 
 "Let us take it to Margaret," said Father Peter. And the 
 mm took possession of the person of that little Scotch dog, and 
 carried it to the studio of the Van Eycks. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 " Who comes here ? " said John Van Eyck, putting his palette 
 beside him. "A nun and a priest: do not teU me that it is 
 Father Peter and Sister PrisciUa. Margaret ! Margaret ! here 
 are our friends. My feeble souls ! how are you getting through 
 this wicked world ? " 
 
 "As all feeble souls should — by taking something more feeble 
 than ourselves under our protection," said Sister PrisciUa. " It 
 was Martina yesterday ; it is a little Scythian dog to-day. Here 
 it is. Look at it, you Van Eyck, and paint inUj ! " 
 
 She put down the little Scotch dog before him, and the dog, 
 thinking that this was the place of execution, propped up against 
 some armour, and wagged its tail. It was such a very poor little 
 dog, and its head was cut open and bleeding. Hubert Van Eyck 
 said, " Be quiet! " very sharply, and then bent down his grand 
 face toward the face of the little dog. 
 
 " Margaret, come here." 
 
 Margaret was behind him, and had her arm round his neck in 
 an instant, frowning at the others to be silent. 
 
 " Oh, Margaret, Margaret, did you ever see anything like this ? 
 So far from its old home, and without one solitary friend ! " 
 
 " One of your master Burgundy's grooms killed its master 
 in a duel yesterday," struck in Sister PrisciUa. " We know that 
 much, because the dog's master, who was from Tartary, spoke 
 French — and Peter can speak French, and spoke to him about 
 religion, and the young man was a good Catholic. He was a 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 47 
 
 handsome young man, and came from among mountains, but 
 said that he was not a Swiss. Well. Will you be kind to the 
 dog if we leave him here ? " 
 
 Hubert and Margaret Van Eyck were down before the dog, 
 when a very quiet voice s.iid, behind them all — 
 
 " The dog is safe to get good treatment here ; but he will run 
 away, I fear. Let him follow you two among the people. It will 
 be better in the end, I know." 
 
 If she did not, who did? for the woman who spoke was 
 Martina. 
 
 She was amazingly beautiful, but not with the beauty of the 
 ideal Magdalen, or with the beauty of the Fornarina. Of the 
 splendour of her beauty there was no doubt ; in colour, com- 
 plexion, form of face, majestic carriage of head, there was nothing 
 left to be desired ; yet it was a little marred in three ways. In 
 the first place, the mouth was rather too large, too powerful, and, 
 if we dare say it, too sensuous. In the second place, above her 
 really grand and tender eyes, and above her grand mask, there 
 loomed an awful black thunder-cloud of black eyebrow, which had 
 lightning and fury in it. There was a horrible potential wrath 
 under those terrible black eyebrows, which boded no good to some 
 one. A man had better meet a bear deprived of her cubs than 
 this woman, if he had made her hate him. The woman's face 
 was a thunder-cloud ; but just now that face was floating in the 
 peaceful summer air which Hubert and Margaret Van Eyck 
 carried with them everywhere in their goodness. 
 
 The third fault in her beauty was this : Margaret had got her 
 to take the simple and temporary vows of the Order of the 
 Magdalen Sub Cracem, which involved an attention to religious 
 duties, abstinence from sin, good works among the poor, a quiet 
 dress, not specified, and the wearing of the hair cut perfectly short 
 close to the head. It was in consequence of this last rule, of 
 cutting away the hair, that you could see that the woman's head 
 had far more at the back of it than an EngHsh gentleman would 
 care to see at the back of his wife's head. There was power, 
 certainly ; but there was also sensuality. A man who was inclined 
 to marry a woman with those eyebrows, that mouth, and that 
 back to her head, would in these scientific times, were he well 
 educated, ask himself, whether he would prefer blowing his brains 
 out before the ceremony, or after. If he was going to make such 
 a fool of himself at all, he would very likely say before. 
 
 But she was as charming as Cleopatra. She was one of those 
 women who madden fools. It is no use mincing matters in any 
 way. History tells us most emphatically that these women have. 
 
48 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 more often than not, very tender and kind hearts. Generally I 
 think they have a very small capacity for hatred and revenge. 
 Now this woman had. 
 
 To those who had a chance of heing her masters, this woman, 
 Martina, could be dangerous ; to those who would submit, she 
 would be kind. We can go no further now. People recognised 
 matters in those days which we are not allowed to speak of now. 
 Margaret Van Eyck had taken Martina in. Margaret had sub- 
 mitted to her, as she did to every one else, and Martina the 
 suspected sinner was the mistress in one way of Margaret the 
 saint. 
 
 Martina the Cabarus of Ghent, was dressed rather remarkably, 
 because she had been " sitting " for Hubert and for Margaret. 
 She was draped in a sheet of dove-coloui-ed satin, to see how she 
 would do for the Queen of Sheba (young John Van Eyck said she 
 would never do for it, and she did not). She shoved from her 
 shoulders the dove-coloured satin, and sat down on the floor 
 before the little Scotch dog. 
 
 The dog did aU it knew how to do. It propped up and wagged 
 feebly. The little dog thouglit that it was to be put to death. 
 
 " Little dog from Scythia," said Martina, lowering her black 
 eyebrows as a thunder-cloud lowers over SchiehaUion, " will you 
 take the advice of a madwoman ? " 
 
 The little dog did not know what to say. 
 
 It was a far 017 to Ben Lawers. It wagged again weakly. 
 
 " You will, then," said Martina, in Gaelic, " take the advice of 
 a clanswoman, and get back to Glenlyon. It may be bad there, 
 but it is worse here. You cannot cross the sea, nor can I. They 
 call me Martina here, httle dog, but in the shadow of SchiehaUioii 
 there are some now who would call nie Macdonald. Scotch can 
 be of any nation, as they choose ; but, little dog, if you are wise, 
 like our people, get away home out of this hell. If you cannot, go 
 about with Priscilla and Peter. As for me, I shall never get out 
 of it — never more, never more, save when I get into the other 
 hell." 
 
 Margaret had her arm round her neck now. " Do you wish to 
 go from us ? " she said. 
 
 "Yes," said Martina, sharply. "I am a Highland woman; 
 that dog is a Highland dog. I want out. I want SchiehaUion." 
 
 " How was I to linow this, my dear ? " said Margaret. 
 
 " You might have kno^vu it yesterday, when Gil Macdonald was 
 kiUed, when I cast myself howling about the room. If you know 
 anything you miglit have known that I was a Highland ^^oman. 
 And those two bring his dog here to mind me of the old feud 
 
OLD MARGARET. 49 
 
 between us — you miserable Flemings, lying down like dogs under 
 Burgundy's heel. I tell you that you are frogs and we are 
 eagles." 
 
 " My dear," said Margaret Van Eyck, " you rave." 
 
 "Highlanders do generally," she replied, raging; "but the 
 lad Macdonald who was killed was to have been married to me in 
 the old country. That is his little dog. I have no more to say. 
 I would rather that the little dog went with Father Peter and 
 Sister Priscilla than with mo. I am not worthy ot it. The dog 
 has smelt the heather, and so has loved the people ; I am unworthy 
 of it. Let the dog go with them." 
 
 " Then you are not wild any longer ? " said Hubert, kindly. 
 " We have tried to do our best by you." 
 
 "AH the blessings of the God of love rest on you two 
 Flemings," was the answer. " But I am a Macdonald. I should 
 have told it you before, I doubt, but I did not like, lest you should 
 turn me out, and I am half a Macgregor." 
 
 " A Macgregor ! " said Hubert, thinking that she meant some 
 very secret and dangerous society. " What is a Macgregor ? " 
 
 " Scaith to the bride, blood to the bridegroom of the Mac- 
 cuUums ; death in castles, fire in the toun to the Macdonalds ; and 
 hell's deep hell to the Donnachies : mother and child, bride and 
 bridegroom all together ! That's the meaning of a Macgregor." 
 
 Hubert Van Eyck found that he had strack on a well somewhat 
 deeper than he had thought. "And where do all these people 
 come from ? " he asked. 
 
 " Scotland," she said. 
 
 " And where is that? " said Hubert, who did not know. How 
 many people could have mapped the centre of Africa five years 
 ago ? (who can do it now ?) 
 
 "It is beyond the river of death," said the unhappy woman ; 
 " but I was there once, and no Fleming will win there either 
 before death or after. I ask you only, sir, about the little dog. 
 Let him go with that nun and that priest. Scotch folks love 
 the people, and if they do not corrupt the dog she will not corrupt 
 them." 
 
 And John Van Eyck, who had been listening, told his brother 
 ten minutes after that this sort of thing would not do. _ Margaret 
 had taken in a woman who was not only disreputable in life, but 
 was a power among the radicals. And Hubert was notoriously 
 encouraging Peter and Priscilla, open radicals. In short, John, 
 like a young prig as he was (though he could paint), told Hubert 
 that it wouldn't do and that the Court didn't like it. Whereupon 
 Hubert laughed his brave old laugh at John, and Margaret, who 
 
 5 
 
50 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 had heard the argument, looked at Marie, until Marie began 
 crying, which is about as much as she ever did. 
 
 Yet she and John did well for a time. I wonder whether 
 Marie Van Eyck ever cried over the lottery-ticket business when 
 they were all dead save her ? I believe she lost her temper ; 
 but on this matter history, as far as I can get at it, is perfectly 
 silent. 
 
 One only lives for the purpose of giving advice to one's neigh- 
 bours, and I am going to give a little piece of advice to the wives 
 of artists. My dear madam, if you are such a miserable little prig 
 (of course you are not) as the wife of John Van Eyck, do not allow 
 your hwband to paint your portrait. The younger of these Van 
 Eycks has done a most terrible and shameful thing. He has 
 painted the wife of his bosom as she was in the flesh. Fancy 
 being tied to that woman for life ! 
 
 Not being Irish or Corsican we object strongly to righting our 
 innmnerable Avrongs by assassination. If it was excusable in any 
 case, it would be excusable in the case of Marie Van Eyck. She 
 must have been an awful little woman. She on the present 
 occasion would not come back into the studio until " that woman," 
 meaning "the Macdonald," was gone. Then she came in and 
 made herself disagreeable to Hubert and Margaret, who wor- 
 shipped her. She was very tiny, very selfish, and very disagree- 
 able ; but folks married young in those days, and a bride is a 
 bride until aU chivahy and manhood is gone from the world. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Young Philippe le Bon of Burgimdy thought that he would fall 
 in love with Marie Van Eyck at this time, and as he generally 
 did what he liked, he did that. He fell out again in a fortnight 
 — not merely fell out of love, but fell out with the object of his 
 affections, Marie Van Eyck, the bride of John. Burgundy was a 
 fool for his pains ; if he had desii-ed to get a reputation for 
 gallantry he should not have selected such a sour-faced little 
 pepper-box as that. She would not stand him at all. She 
 never to the last knew anything about his objects. She was 
 convent-bred, and so perfectly ignorant of the wickedness of this 
 world. She was most perfectly spotless and rehgious, yet if 
 she had ever known that young Philip entertained the idea of 
 
OLD MAHGAEET. 51 
 
 putting himself in her husband's place, I really doubt whether or 
 no she would not, in spite of her religion, have — we do not like 
 to say the words, but— well— put a knife into his heart. She was 
 the most ferociously virtuous little woman. 
 
 But she was more. She was a narrow and rather violent little 
 woman, who was brought up on the narrow-guage system, and 
 would, had she lived in these days, have apphed' the same lan- 
 guage to the Great Western Eaiiway as the old Pope at Eome 
 ajiplied to the great Montalembert. But she would have stuck 
 to her point also, which is more than the Pope did. Again, she 
 was a precise little woman who spoke her mind, and she didn't 
 like Philippe le Bon, and she told him so. In fact he grew 
 rather warm in his attentions, and wanted to take her hand, and 
 she told him that he was a tipsy young vagabond. She did not 
 box his ears. It was a calumny of Van Dysart's, who hated the 
 young Burgundy, as well as he served the old. Philip carried 
 his plaint to Hubert, who quietly asked what he meant by making 
 love to other men's wives, which presented the matter in a new 
 light to young Burgundy, and to use a vulgarism, " shut him 
 up." 
 
 That fellow Philippe le Bon had a good deal of ill-direeted 
 power. I think it is useless to deny that. But his power could 
 be directed by clever people for their own objects. I hate to 
 hear a Sovereign called " the Good." They tried to lay that 
 title on to the late Prince Albert : his memory was too grand to 
 hold it, and we have dropped it. A man who is called "the 
 Good " is nearly certain to have done nothing at the time when 
 he had to act. 
 
 This short tendresse with John Van Eyck's wife prevented 
 Philip of Burgundy from going to his Club much. Princes were 
 members of Clubs then as they are now. If he had hoard some 
 Club-gossip just then he would have heard something to his 
 very great advantage. He did not, and his pages were not hkely 
 to teli him. 
 
 Just now that section of society which some folks (heaven 
 knows why) call the people ; others (heaven only knows why) call 
 the working class ; others (nobody knows why) call the jacquerie 
 or mob, were getting very dangerous. They had been Van 
 Kenninged and they had been Van Dysarted. Then said a Httle 
 too much. They wanted an advance of wages. Van Kenning 
 had been with them with his figures and had proved to them that 
 it was impossible for them to have it, and they gave him the 
 respectful answer that they were going to have it. Van Dysart 
 had told them that they were quite in the right, whereupon they 
 
52 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 requested him to "lead on." And as "leading on" meant an 
 instant collision with Burgundy's mercenai-ies, Van Dysart 
 pleaded an engagement. The factory hands were tenihly 
 numerous, and were getting very dangerous ; for you must 
 rememher that there were few cannon on the earth in those 
 days. Young Philip, who had wits, might have known this, hut 
 he was always in the wrong place. He was now trying to make 
 love to John Van Eyck's wife, who did not hox his ears. As for 
 John, reigning Duke, he was at Paris. France ! France ! it was 
 in those times that you lost the frontier of the Ehine, never to 
 be regained ; you will be France to your death now, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 In these times, in some of these years, Van Kenning thought 
 he would go out for a walk in the morning ; and he put on his 
 morning suit of maroon velvet, with crimson satin slashings, and 
 his very newest pair of dove-coloured stockings, which covering 
 his leg up to his middle thigh, showed off that very handsome 
 leg most beautifully. Van Kenning was most particular about his 
 stockings. 
 
 And no sooner was he in the street than a Utile grey dog came 
 up and jumped up against them. It would have exasperated a 
 saint, if saints wore silk stockings, which some say they do not. 
 
 Van Kenning was furious ; he went to the length of shaking 
 his gloves (which he had not yet put on) at that little dog. And 
 he used atrocious language to that little dog. He said, " You 
 vei-y naughty little dog, you should not have done this evil thing 
 to my silk stockings." And the little gi-ey dog was very sorry, 
 and it went and propped up humbly against something. And 
 Van Kenning thought it was a new black pump which the dog 
 had propped up against, but looking a second time he saw that it 
 was not a pump at all, but a nun. 
 
 " HaUoa I " he said. " Is that you, you old lunatic ? " 
 
 " I would sooner be a lunatic than an idiot. Here, Van 
 Kcnuiug," said Sister PrisciUa. "Let us give up breaking 
 shafts like wags and fools. The people wiU be up in earnest 
 to-night or to-morrow. Go and see what you can do. I don't 
 want it yet." 
 
 " I thought you did," said Van Kenning. 
 
 "Not yet, not yet. His time is not come. Revenge would 
 not be sweet yet." 
 
 They looked in one another's eyes for just one second : but 
 they understood one another. 
 
 " Spada and he are round the comer now," she said. "WiU 
 you see them first, or go to the lieads of the trades first ? " 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 53 
 
 " Why not make a smash at once ? " said Van Kenning, 
 brushing his silk stockings with his glove. " It must come to a 
 smash between the trades unions and the nobility soon. Whv not 
 now ? " J J 
 
 " The people are not ready." 
 
 " You mean that you have pity. You must have no pity." 
 
 " I have none for him. But I have for others." 
 
 " What fools you women are ! Well, and what do you want 
 me to do?" 
 
 " Get wages raised, you can do that ; and leave him alone just 
 now." 
 
 " Why ? " said Van Kenning. " Will a woman ever give hor 
 reasons ? " 
 
 "Because Margaret wishes it." 
 
 " She asked for vengeance." 
 
 " Well, then, because I am not sure of Martina. She loves 
 the man still." 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 I AM sorry to have to write down the next sentence ; but really 
 and truly Van Kenning, as he walked towards the residence of a 
 certain man, uttered the following remarkable opinion : — 
 
 " Botheration take all these women, body and bones ! " 
 
 It is an awful thing to write down, of course ; but he continued 
 soliloquising, which may give us a clue to his atrocious exclama- 
 tion. I am so little of a scholar myself, that I do not know the 
 Dutch for " botheration " ; in fact, I believe that we are indebted 
 to the Sister Island for the very word itself ; but he said it, or 
 words to that effect. I believe that he used even a worse ex- 
 pression than even "botheration." My male friends have 
 advised me, in confidence, that they have often used strong 
 language with regai-d to that singular habit of the female mind 
 of requiring absolute mastery in all matters. Van Kenning used 
 to say, that a woman would never be anything except a slave or a 
 master. 
 
 " It is as near time as anything else," he said. " Women are 
 as clever and as good as men ; but they have that hungering for 
 power which makes it impossible to make friends with them." 
 
 And the oddest thing in the world is that Geoffrey Chaucer was 
 of the same opinion. 
 
54 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 " I am going to do that lunatic nun's bidding," he went on, 
 "because I shall offend Margaret if I don't. These women 
 force one on to discount one's position. They will not wait ; 
 they win have it all at once, even when they could get more by 
 waiting. This nun, however, is lying ; she lied in the most 
 monstrous way. I cannot think why she wants me to put a stop 
 to a jacqufrie just at the time when Burgundy is not ready. 
 Yet I, like an old idiot, am going to do that same. Where the 
 devil did she get that little dog from ? Well, well ; it is no use 
 talking nonsense. Margaret wishes it, and Margaret shall have 
 it. But no mercy to Van Dysart. Oh, you hound ! If aU the 
 others fall ofi' from the quest of your ruin, I wiU remain true. I 
 wish I could get that little grey dog from that mad nun. There 
 was a Httle girl once, an innkeeper's daughter, at Flushing, and 
 I wanted to many her ; but my father would not let me. And 
 she had a wistful patient face Hke that little dog. I wonder if 
 she wiU give me that little dog ; for I have but little in the 
 world." 
 
 So thinking, he strode into the counting-house of the greatest 
 merchant in the Netherlands, Van Hehnont ; not he of the 
 incubus and succubus, but a member of the family, who had, I 
 think, more sensibly taken to trading instead of writing illimitable 
 balderdash. 
 
 " Van Helmont," said Van Kenning, "my time is rather short, 
 but I have something important to say to you." 
 
 Van Helmont shoved his black cap from ofi' his forehead, and 
 scratched his head — his head was that of a very square-headed 
 Dutchman — and he said not one soHtaiy word. Van Kenning 
 had come there to say something to him, and no gentleman is 
 ever so rudo as to interrupt another. 
 
 " Van Helmont," said Van Kenning, " I have been among the 
 workmen." 
 
 " You ? " said Van Helmont ; " and what do they say ? " 
 
 " Twenty-five per cent, iucrcasc in wages," replied Van Ken- 
 ning. 
 
 " The Duke's troops are in France, I believe," said the practical 
 Van Hehnont. 
 
 " Mainly," replied Van Kenning. " But it is not a question 
 of troops, it is a question of fact, my dear friend. What are you 
 masters going to do ? " 
 
 " Hold out," said Van Helmont. 
 
 " I don't see how you can. I really, as a practical man, 
 cannot see how you can do it. You know best, of course. You 
 know that many of you are netting nearly cent, per cent." 
 
OLD MAHGARET. 55 
 
 "We are doing pretty weU," said Van Helmont ; "but the 
 capital and risk are ours, you know. I don't go among the work- 
 men. Have you any power to make a proposal ? " 
 
 " None. But from my experience I should say that matters 
 lie between an increase of twenty-five per cent, or a,jticqiiene." 
 
 "Exactly," said Van Helmont. "I will see to it. I shall 
 try ten per cent, first, but you know the trade. I'll see to it. 
 But, Van Kenning, use your influence to keep that Scythian 
 woman Martina with these pestilent folks the Van Eycks. If she 
 gets free again, the devil had better be loose." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well," said Van Helmont, "you ought to know as well as 
 I ; you are tradesmaster. But if you don't know that a hand- 
 some woman, with her hair down her back, and a good grievance, 
 howling, won't send our fellows wild, you had better go back to 
 the counter. 
 
 " I see," said Van Kenning. And so he did. 
 
 And walking towards his Club, he once more uttered that 
 atrocious sentiment with regard to women which we have printed 
 above. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 Spada and Van Dysart found a very congenial occupation : they 
 gambled at cards night and day. They also drank pretty freely, 
 although neither of them got any way drunk. About four hours 
 in the day they left ofi' their gambhng and went down and fenced 
 for an hour most vigorously. Spada, notoriously the best swords- 
 man in Europe, was beaten as often as was safe and decent at the 
 fencing. As to the gambling, he lost large sums to Van Dysart. 
 Van Dysai't began to depise the great Italian bully and gamester, 
 and Spada began to curse his luck. One night, after losing 
 nearly one thousand crowns, he got frantic, rubbed his short-out 
 hair wildly, and openly cursed Van Dysart to his face. We decline 
 to give his oaths, but they were given with Italian emphasis. 
 
 " I wish I had never seen you," he said to Van Dysart. " I 
 wish that youi' mother had died in childbed before your iU-starred 
 face ever saw the sun. I have played and fought my way from 
 Naples up to your cursed Ghent, and it is rather hard for a man 
 of my reputation to be picked up by a miserable Fleming like 
 yourself, and cast aside like a stale tunny." 
 
56 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 " Do you wish to quarrel with me ? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 " I am afraid," said Spada, " I am afraid of your sword ; you 
 fence too well for me. I think I could kiU you, but I am not 
 sure ; you are by no means a man I would care to face in anger. 
 I hate you naturally, for you have won my money ; but I am a 
 little afraid of you. I never feared any man before, but I fear 
 you. If we ever come to a fight, and you kiU me, I hope that 
 you will have the honesty to tell the truth." 
 
 " And what is that, sir? " 
 
 " That I taught you how to kiU me, and that you killed me 
 according to my directions," said Spada. "You see that I never 
 calculated on getting such a pupU. I hate you, as I have told 
 you before, and I would have seen you " never mind his exple- 
 tives — " before I would have taught you my tricks, if I had known 
 that you would have been such a splendid pupil. As it is, we 
 must remain as we are. We shall fight some day, and you wiU 
 km me. You have won my money, and I must go and earn other 
 money." 
 
 " You do not say that I have played unfairly ? " said Van 
 Dysart. 
 
 " If I had caught you doing so, I would have had you out into 
 the street and have made you fight in two minutes," said Spada. 
 " You have played fairly enough ; but you have won my money. 
 A man once won all my money and left me a beggar at Prague : 
 I could not get back my money, but I could kOl my man. I was 
 not afraid of him, but I am of you. I spilt a glass of wine in his 
 lap as I was paying him his money, and he did exactly what I 
 wanted him to do, he resented it. I had my sword through his 
 heart at five o'clock the next morning. I could not get back my 
 money, but I could kiU him, and so the money was no use to him 
 in any way. I would kOl you if I could, only I hate you so deeply 
 for winning my money, that I would not even leave you with the 
 reputation of beating the best swordsman in Europe." 
 
 "You are an honest man, and a good swordsman," said Van 
 Dysart, who was a httle drunk. " I don't want your swordsman- 
 ship impugned in any way whatever. I'U fight any man who says 
 that you are not the second swordsman in Europe, and I will 
 fight any man who says that I am not the first. Let us have 
 another bottle of wine." 
 
 " Not on my account, I beg," said Spada. 
 
 " No — winners pay," said Van Dysart. " I'll pay." 
 
 Spada drummed on the table, and the wine was brought and 
 poured into a silver tankard. Spada, with an anxious face, 
 counted out small silver coins on the table. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 57 
 
 " Winner drinks first," said Van Dysart. " Here is to 
 Burgundy ! " 
 
 " Which Burgundy ? " asked Spada. 
 
 "John of Burgundy, you ass," said Van Dysart. "He has 
 virtues, for I am virtuous when I am kept from cards and 
 women." 
 
 If he could have seen the flash of fury in the face of the 
 Italian when he uttered the word " ass," he might have seen 
 something which it would have been good for him to sec. 
 
 "I wiU drink to John of Burgundy," said Spada, a man 
 who never exceeded. "Are not you rather dnmk ? " 
 "I believe that I am: take me to bed." 
 There was really nothing oifensive in this request ; in fact we 
 have heard of drunken gentlemen being put to bed by other 
 gentlemen far later in history than the time to which we refer. 
 Spada got Van Dysart to bed with singular rapidity and 
 dexterity ; he had probably done the same thing once or twice 
 before. 
 
 In those times every one slept naked. Spada strij)ped Van 
 Dysart, and got him on to the bed of the inn in which they had 
 been gambling. Spada, an old hand at this sort of work, would 
 have liked to see Van Dysart between the blankets, that he might 
 have been more quiet ; Wt when Spada had got him naked. Van 
 Dysart got petulant, and Spada let him lie on the bed as he was. 
 On the bed was a naked man in a drunken sleep. Spada him- 
 self, hound as he was, confessed that he was worthy of having a 
 sword sent through his ribs. One leg hung down beside the bed- 
 stead, the other lay under him. There lay the man on the bed in 
 the magnificence of his beauty, without his clothes, without even 
 his very shirt, for Spada had taken care of that detail. Beside 
 the bed, writing at a desk, sat the inexorable Spada, with the 
 naked man's clothes beside him, making priuis of every letter in 
 eveiy pocket. The naked man never moved ; and as Spada went 
 on at his awful precis work, he began to get into his head that he 
 was doing a rather awful business. 
 
 For every letter which he got hold of for the Duke of Burgundy 
 meant death, or worse than death. Van Dysart, sleeping naked 
 on the bed, was pledged by these letters to a course of politics 
 which we can only describe as being milder than Fenianism. 
 From the letters which Spada got and put in jmcis, Van Dysart's 
 ruin was perfectly- safe. Spada had been hired by the Duke of 
 Burgundy to effect Van Dysart's ruin, and by getting the man 
 drunk, and putting him to bed naked, he had his business well in 
 hand. There was enough in the poor young man's pockets to 
 
58 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 condemn him seven times over. He was a political fool, whereas 
 John of Burgundy had hrains. It was a mere case of Whig 
 against Prince, and we shall see who won. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The case against Van Dysart was utterly and entirely hopeless. 
 The quarrel between the house of Burgundy and the Gilden was 
 at that time a very heavy one, and the mercy of the house ol 
 Burgundy was very small. Spada had done much dirty work in 
 his life, and really did not consider this job a peculiarly dirty one : 
 he was hired to do it ; and his man was stripped and drunk on 
 the bed — yet the rascal hesitated. The rascal felt pity, the man 
 was so utterly at his mercy : Spada had needed mercy more than 
 once, and he felt pity now. 
 
 From every pocket came the damning documents. Van Dysart 
 had been elected as " head centre " to every revolutionary society 
 in Belgium. His Honour Beales, M.A., Professor Beesley, and 
 Mr. Bradlaugh, were distinctly objected to in certain quarters in 
 our own day ; but Van Dysart had gone before any of them by 
 hundreds of miles. To talk Reform in those days was death by 
 the hand of Burgundy. Spada turned towards the bed ; the great 
 white chest was quietly heaving nov/, and Spada said, "I think I 
 can save you, lad. I think you stand well with the priests ; but 
 I do what I am paid to do. I wOl ruin you, but I will try for 
 your life. Ravenna was a nasty hole, but these Flemings are 
 dirtier dogs than we and have not our genius. I shall go to 
 Paris." 
 
 And he went on with his work, putting back the papers of the 
 dniuken man just as he found them into the pockets of his clothes 
 — exactly as he iound them. " No one," he said to himself, " ever 
 trusted cue person with a conspiracy. I am too notorious a 
 scoundrel. This fellow is an awful scoundrel, but I think I can 
 save his head. I have a feUow-feeling for him." 
 
 Precis Number Five: "Van Dysart has been elected head 
 manager of the Woolcombers' trade association." Number Six : 
 " Has accepted that office with many congratulations." That 
 would be enough to damn a penniless dog like me, but I wiU get 
 him through all this. Burgundy is afraid of him, and the priests 
 are for Reform. I will go to the mad priest Peter — or, no, I will 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 59 
 
 speak to Van Kenning. I will think what I will do. Quiet. Let 
 me think." 
 
 Van Dysart had moved on the bed while Spada was busy with 
 his papers. This was very dangerous, but Spada was up to the 
 occasion. 
 
 " You fool," he said, " why can't you take your drink hke 
 a man ? You are lying stark naked there after having fought 
 me about putting you between the blankets." 
 
 " Where are my clothes? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 " Just where I threw them down when I stripped you," said 
 Spada. 
 
 " Give me my shirt," said Van Dysart. 
 
 Spada gave it to him at once, but his eyes were starting out of 
 his head. He had enough to ruin the man already, and did not 
 care. It is probable that he would never have thought of looking 
 at the man's shirt at all if he had not asked for it. He, however, 
 gave Van Dysart his shirt at once, and Van Dysart roUed over on 
 to it, keeping it under his breast. Spada knew that there was 
 something left which he must know, and he puzzled how to 
 get it. 
 
 He knew that the liquor would die out of the man soon, and 
 that he would become keenly sensible and fractious. There was 
 wine in the room, and looking at it he took his course. He filled 
 a large glass with white Burgundy, and approached the sleeper ; 
 knowing that white Burgundy is one of the most dangerous wines in 
 existence, he went to the bedside of the sleeping man, and slopped 
 some of it over his head. 
 
 " What is the matter now ? " said the scrupulous Van Dysart. 
 
 " I have been sitting up drinking, and I have got drunk," said 
 Spada. " I am coming to bed." 
 
 "Well, go to your o^vn bed, and don't come plaguing here," 
 
 said Van JDysart. " How dare you come into bed with a gentle- 
 
 9,) 
 
 " I want to sleep somewhere. Manners are different in different 
 countries. Have some of this." 
 
 Van Dysart raised himself up and drank a draught of the white 
 Burgundy, and then he went to sleep again, but without his shirt. 
 Late at night Spada thought he might be cold, so he put his shirt 
 back and put a blanket over him. 
 
 When Van Dysart woke in the morning and cried for Cicely 
 Hacket, he found his shirt where he had put it, and found a 
 blanket over him. He asked Cicely Hacket if she had put the 
 blanket over him, but she repudiated the idea with scorn, and 
 said that the Italian gentleman must have done it, she supposed. 
 
60 OLD MARGAEET. 
 
 Van Dysart was obliged to confess to himself that it was very civil 
 on the part of Spada. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 It was certainly cool on the part of Spada to make Van Dysart 
 drunk, and to make a precis of his papers for the inspection of the 
 Duke of Burgundy and John Van Eyck. Spada said to himself 
 that he would save the man as a brother rascal. Spada thought 
 that the man was merely associated with the Eadicals, as many 
 priests were ; indeed, to tell the whole truth, as viost priests were. 
 
 Spada thought that this man, Van Dysart, whom he had been 
 set to ruin, would be imprisoned for a few years, and then set free 
 for further, and to him congenial rascalities. He thought that he 
 could save his head until he got hold of his shirt, and when he 
 saw what the man carried in the bosom of his shirt, tied up in a 
 sealskin cover, he was fairly puzzled as to the means for saving 
 his brother rascal. 
 
 If Van Dysart had gone honestly among the working class, he 
 might have got through with his head on his shoulders. If he 
 had gone in with the secular clergy, who were then, as they have 
 generally been, on the side of the people, he might have done well. 
 But he was a man who would do nothing, and take no side heartily. 
 "What Spada found in the bosom of his shirt was an acknowledgment 
 of the fact that he was the seducer of Martina, which would put 
 him all wrong with the workmen ; and next, his certificate as one 
 of the lUuminati, which would utterly ruin him with the priests. 
 It seemed utterly impossible for him to save the man now. Spada 
 was a dog and a buUy, but he was paid, and he must earn his 
 money. It seemed to him that he could have saved his man, if 
 his man had left any loophole. But his man was drunk on the 
 bed ; and Spada must give an account to the Duke that night. 
 
 He wanted to save his man, for scoundrels and convicts have a 
 fellow-feeling ; and he was thinking in the street of what he should 
 do. 
 
 He was in a fearful temper, and a little grey dog began leaping 
 on him. He kicked and cursed that little grey dog, and then he 
 saw that the three awful figures sitting in a doonvay close to him 
 were the proprietors, or at least the abettors, of that little dog. 
 The person who sat nearest to him had lace over her head, but no 
 gaudry. Next to her sat a regular priest in grey, with his head 
 
OLD MARGARET. Gl 
 
 uncovered ; beyond him was a nun in black, of secular order, dark 
 as death. 
 
 We are unable to say what Spada said. We will produce it in 
 our own way. " Lorette, Monk, and Nun. After that, the Devil." 
 The Italian bully was afraid of these three ; lie wished that he had 
 not kicked their dog. He has regretted the kicking of that little 
 dog since. If yon want to kick a dog, don't kick a Scotch dog 
 to begin with. And whatever you do, do not kick a dog Inxokcd 
 up as this dog was. 
 
 The priest spoke first. "Here," he said, "is the man of 
 blood." 
 
 Spada said, " My good sir, my good sir." 
 
 Father Peter, having absolutely nothing practicable against 
 Spada, went through the process, which I believe is called de 
 ■prcciser voire accusation — that is to say, he called him a "man 
 of blood " once more. 
 
 Sister Priscilla was not going to have her wicket bowled down 
 like this. She wanted to know why he had kicked her dog. 
 
 Spada instantly explained that it was not their dog at all. It 
 was the dog of Fraulein Macdonald, if it was any one's dog. He 
 (Spada) had an objection to law on many grounds. He had been 
 bothered by the law himself. If there was any law about the dog, 
 it was Fraulein Macdouald's dog. 
 
 "I am Lady Van Dysart," said the unhappy Martina. 
 
 " The day you prove yourself so, Fraulein Macdonald, I will be 
 glad. Why are you sitting there in such company? " 
 
 "We have a common object," said Priscilla. 
 
 "I think you are mistaken," said Spada. "Shall I tell her 
 aU, Sister PrisciUa ? " 
 
 " That veiy much depends on what you have to teU." 
 
 " He is lying drunk on my bed now," said Spada. 
 
 " Come away here," said Sister Priscilla, rising. " Come away 
 with me." 
 
 "Go not with the man of blood. Sister," cried Father 
 Peter. 
 
 " You old fool, who is likely to trouble me? " said Sister PrisciUa, 
 losing her temper with remarkable rapidity. " And if any one did 
 meddle with me, even you cannot deny that I am old enough and 
 ugly enough to take care of myself." 
 
 " He is in the pay of Burgimdy ; he is a traitor ; he goes about 
 catching souls," cried Father Peter. 
 
 " Will you be quiet? " said Sister Priscilla, and indeed Father 
 Peter was not quiet at all, but rambled on to poor Martina, who 
 sat beside him, and with the usual tact of the regular clergy he 
 
62 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 selected for his topic of conversation the illimitahle wickedness of 
 Van Dysart, which drove her half mad, 
 
 Meanwhile Sister PrisciUa and Spada were talking together under 
 an archway. Spada had begun the conversation by declining to 
 speak, hut standing and looking Sister PrisciUa straight in the 
 eyes. At last Sister PrisciUa said, " WeU ? " 
 
 " I knew that I could make you speak first," said Spada. " You 
 women are awful fools. Would you say what you said just now 
 over again ; it struck me as pointed." 
 
 " I only said ' WeU,' " said Sister PrisciUa. 
 
 " Yes ; and do you see that I made you say it twice over ? 
 Nun, nun, we are on a very ugly husiness together. Can you hear 
 me speak the truth for once, and can you understand the truth 
 when you hear it ? " 
 
 " If I can't understand the truth when I hear it," replied Sister 
 PrisciUa, " it wiU be waste of breath for you to teU it to me. ShaU 
 I caU Peter?" 
 
 " No, a nun is bad enough, but a half-monk half-priest is worse, 
 and a lady like her who is sitting beside Father Peter is worse than 
 either of the others. I want to say a few words to you." 
 
 " I'U listen to you," said Sister PrisciUa; "and as you look 
 like a man, I'U heed you as far as I choose." 
 
 " If you were not devoted to a religious life I would marry you," 
 said Spada. 
 
 "You would do nothing of the sort," said Sister PrisciUa. 
 " Two parties are required to every bargain, and in the old 
 times I might have married hundreds of men." 
 
 "You refused them?" 
 
 " None of them ever asked me ; they knew better. But if you 
 are going to begin our present interview by making a fool of me 
 — by asking an old nun to be your wife, I must take the liberty of 
 teUing you that I was not, at any period of my life, fool enough to 
 think of marrying any man. I should say that marriage was an 
 utter mistake ; but you may rest assured that the very last person 
 I should have selected, before my vows, would have been a rascaUy 
 dicer and cut-throat like yourself." 
 
 " Those are hard words, mistress," said Spada, laughing. 
 
 "WeU, they are too hard," said Sister PrisciUa, laughing a 
 hard dry laugh, " Our darling Leon, who is gone to heaven, was 
 a dicer and a duellist. God rest his soul ! " 
 
 " Who kiUed him ? who broke Margaret's heart ? " said Spada. 
 
 " We all know," said PrisciUa. " It was Van Dysart." 
 
 " ShaU I kiU Van Dysart for you ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
OLD MAEGABET. 63 
 
 "But the quarrel is none of mine. I could put my sword 
 through him to-morrow ; but the quarrel is none ot mine." 
 
 " WiU not Burgundy pay you ? " 
 
 " The Duke is a very bad paymaster. I would rather get a 
 better guarantee than the Duke's before I did such a thing. I am 
 too well kno^vn in Europe. I want to ask you one thing, Sister 
 Priscilla — have you no jntij for the man ? " 
 
 "Pity for the man who killed Leon!" she snarled out. "I 
 have no pity for him : when I feel pity for the man who killed 
 Margaret's lover, I hope I may be torn 'to pieces by wild horses." 
 
 Thought Spada, " I have begun at the wrong end. I did not 
 know that women would take up one another's quarrels like this." 
 
 " She," broke out Sister Priscilla, " is more to me than all the 
 world beside. And she wanted a lover, and she got one, as well 
 she might, the bonny beauty ; and Van Dysart killed him in the 
 street, and I want to find a man who will kill Van Dysart. My 
 pretty bird ! think of her losing her lover like that. My pretty 
 sweet ! " 
 
 "And so on," interrupted Spada. "I frankly confess that I 
 did not know how deeply you women get attached to one another. 
 If there was any chance of knocking or, if necessary, kicking sense 
 into the head of a nun, I should say that men occasionally get 
 attached to other men quite as deeply as women get attached to 
 women : there is the case of Jonathan and David to prove my 
 words. But, Mrs. Nun, you must know some things, and this 
 among others, you are the superior sex in every way — let that 
 pass : but men in extreme circumstances can feel pity for other 
 men. I am a Very great scoundrel, so great a scoundrel that no 
 city in Europe wiU be open to me soon. I live merely now by my 
 valour and dexterity in the use of my sword. Yet I tell you, 
 woman, that I feel pity, deep pity, for that young man who is now 
 lying drunk and naked on my bed. Do you feel any ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 " Curse you women, you are more cruel than we are. Why do 
 you feel no pity ? ' ' 
 
 " Because he killed Margaret's lover." 
 
 " Diantre ! " said Spada, " what, in the name of the devil, is to 
 be done here ? ' ' 
 
 " Nothing," said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 Spada set his teeth and began once more. 
 
 " Now, my good Sister Priscilla, listen to me. We are bound 
 to hunt this man, Van Dysart, to death. I am (put me first) paid 
 by the Duke of Burgundy to ruin the man. You see how I trust 
 you. I want your assistance ; wiU you give it to me ? " 
 
64 OLD MARGAEET. 
 
 "Of course I will." 
 
 " Spoken truly and like yourself! Now we shall get on ; now 
 we shaU get at results. What line do you propose ? " 
 
 " I would bum him alive ! He killed Leon." 
 
 "That is very true; but, at the same time, Leon tried to kill 
 him. We wiU let that pass. As for burning him alive, I doubt 
 Yerj much whether we could manage that. The lad fights so veiy 
 well that I should require a large sum down, and time to spend it, 
 before I had him out. I could kiU him, but I should have to go 
 into shai-p training first, and I do not care about that. I can 
 win money from him when I choose ; it has been my policy to lose 
 to him. I want my money back before I kill him. Do you see ? " 
 
 "No," said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 "I have about me documents which would ruin him," said 
 Spada. 
 
 " Where are thoy ? " said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 " In my hose," said Spada. "I see some of your trades union 
 friends in the rear. Did you order them here ? — because it you 
 did, I have documents copied from Van Dysart's private papers 
 which would enable me to have you hung in five minutes." 
 
 "Go off," said Sister PrisciUa; and the half-dozen of blouses 
 retreated at opce. 
 
 "You have power, I see," said Spada; "well, so have I. I 
 think you will act with me. I can either kill Van Dysart, or 
 utterly ruin Van Dysart. I would rather min him. Which thing 
 do you prefer? " 
 
 "KiU him! He kiUed Leon." 
 
 " That is all very well, and does honour to your heart, but does 
 veiy little to your head. I have killed more men than I can 
 remember with this old sword of mine, and hope to kill more ; but 
 I want to ruin this man, not kill him outright." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I pity him ; he is a fool, but he is a man, and I want 
 to spare him." 
 
 " He killed Margaret's lover, and he ought to die," said Sister 
 PrisciUa. " We get no justice here, you dog of an Italian. You 
 know that, if you know anything. I wiU not go with you in this 
 matter. You are in the Duke's pay, and you wish that he should 
 live to make peace between the Duke and the manufacturing 
 hands." 
 
 "Stay a minute, you wild nun," said Spada. " I am a bad 
 man ; my mother broke her heart over me. I am in the pay of 
 Burgundy, or why should I be here ? I am aU that is evil and 
 bad ; I give you aU that ; but why is it that I find you more pitiless 
 
OLD MAEGAHET. 65 
 
 than myself? I do not profess religion — you do. Will you help 
 me to save this unhappy dog ? " 
 
 " No," said Priscilla ; "he killed Leon, and Leon was Margaret's 
 lover. You are a half-hearted man ! " 
 
 So she departed, and Spada watched her flutttering in her nun's 
 dress along the street ; but he waited still, because he knew that 
 he was between Martina and the home of the Van Eycks. 
 
 " I never could work on those women who have taken the 
 vows," he said to himself. "I have tried it a hundred times, 
 but I have always failed. The woman is at once a fool and no 
 fool. She wants Van Dysart out of the way because he killed 
 Leon ; but she is more outrageously inclined for his death because 
 he is deceiving the people and she is deceiving the people. All 
 the devils in hell work at this business." 
 
 It was a quaint thing certainly ; but it was hardly necessary on 
 Spada's part to call for such a singular audience. The man whom 
 we know as Philippe le Bon had got excessively drunk, and Van 
 Kenning was taking him home to the palace. Van Kenning was, 
 of course, perfectly sober ; but Philip was horribly drunk, and 
 was shouting politics to, as he thought, an empty street. Our 
 scholarship does not enable us to give his French in the original — - 
 in fact, the oldest French we know habitually is that of Eabelais, 
 so we must translate the language into plain Enghsh. 
 
 " Don't care a curse," said the prince ; " don't care a hang — 
 don't care the tenth part of a farthing's worth of a hang. The 
 beggar thinks he is going to get the upper hand of my father and 
 
 me with his trades unions. Now, you know ^where are the 
 
 beggars? " 
 
 " They are not here, my Lord," said Van Kenning. 
 
 Philippe le Bon propped himself up into an archway, and 
 said — 
 
 " Van Kenning." 
 
 " My Lord." 
 
 " Where are they? Come, old man, you know where they are 
 as well as another." 
 
 " If there is any tapage nocturne in the street, my Lord, I know 
 where they will be soon. There is a man watching us now." 
 
 It was, in fact, our friend Spada, who came at once solemnly 
 along the street, saluted Philip courteously, and passed into the 
 next entry to hear what the prince and Van Kenning had been 
 saying, though he might have saved himself the trouble, for Van 
 Kenning told him everything. 
 
 "My Lord," said Van Kenning, " I must warn you that you 
 are very drunk." 
 
 6 
 
66 OLD MAKGAEET. 
 
 " Not more than another," said Philip, suddenly aroused. " I 
 am no more drunk than yourself." 
 
 "Excuse my contradicting your Lordship, but you are more 
 drunk than I ever was in my life, or ever mean to be." 
 
 " I must take care of this," said Philippe le Bon. 
 
 " I should recommend your Lordship to do so," said Van Ken- 
 ning. In fact, Philip of Burgundy was no drunkard, and only 
 had, in the language of Dandie Dinmont, "a screed of drink at 
 an orra time." The unfortunate fact was that he was dread- 
 fully drank at this moment, and told everything to a listening 
 Spada. 
 
 "You are a devilish good fellow, Van Kenning, said Philip. 
 " I am obliged to you ; and when a Duke of Burgundy is obliged 
 to a man, he either gives him half what he is worth or hangs 
 him. But I am not Duke of Burgundy yet, do you see ? and so 
 you are perfectly safe. Now to attend to business — for Princes 
 must attend to business some time or another, the later the 
 better — how's your mother ? " 
 
 " I never had any mother," said Van Kenning, quietly. 
 
 " He never had any mother," said Philippe le Bon, sententiously. 
 " You wUl mark that, because it is worthy of notice. I thought 
 so from the very first. Van Kenning never had any mother. What 
 a queer old stick she must have been ! I remember her well ; she 
 was like him. I say. Van Kenning, some of the party are drunk, 
 and it is not me. Turn the other fellows out. "Where is Van 
 Dysart?" 
 
 " Does your Lordship want him ? " 
 
 " You fool, no ; I am sick of him — the earth is sick of him ; I'll 
 have no more of him. Spada said that he would kiU him for me ; 
 but Spada will do nothing until he is paid beforehand." 
 
 " Possibly, then, it would be better to pay Count Spada at 
 once," said Van Kenning. 
 
 "I haven't got any — hie ! — money," said Philip of Burgundy, 
 " and if I had I should give it to — hie ! She has been asking for 
 money a long time now, and she should get some. What between 
 one thing and another. Princes have harder times of it than you 
 fellows. I can't find the ready cash to enable me to get rid of 
 this Van Dysart. What a pity it is that you are not a gentleman, 
 because, don't you see," said Philippe le Bon, with drunken 
 gravity, " if you had been a gentleman, you would have had some 
 feUow sufficiently attached to you to have cut Van Dysart' s 
 throat." 
 
 Van Kenning eyed Philippe le Bon with strong displeasure, and 
 Spada listened more eagerly. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 67 
 
 " My father says," continued Philippe le Bou, " that you agreed 
 to ruin him. Why, in the name of Heaven ! has it not been done ? 
 He can rouse the jucqueiie on us at any time ; and that fellow 
 Spada has had a good deal of money from us, which he seems to 
 have lost at backgammon with him. I wish Van Dysart was off 
 the face of the earth." 
 
 ' ' There are more of your Lordship's opinion, ' ' said Van Kenning, 
 speaking loud enough for Spada to hear ; " but pity is felt for him 
 in some quarters." 
 
 " Where ? " said Philippe le Bon. 
 
 "Among the women," said Van Kenning, talking loudly for the 
 edification of Spada. 
 
 " The nun would have his heart out of his body," said Philip 
 of Burgundy. 
 
 " I am not speaking of the nun," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Anyhow it is very hard to keep a brutal hound like Spada for 
 the mere purpose of assassinating a man, and not have it done 
 after all. Spada has had awful sums of money to do it, and he 
 hasn't done it : that is what I call dishonest. 13y heaven, I'U do 
 it myself! " 
 
 " The trades would scarcely like thatj. my Lord," said Van 
 Kenning. 
 
 " I'U burn Bruges before I am dead," said Philip ; and in fact 
 he did so. But he was now too drunk to be argued with, and Van 
 Kenning had to hold out his hand to Spada, who was in the next 
 doorway ; and between them they got the Prince on his legs, and 
 got him safe to the front door of the palace, under the trees. 
 
 Here was a difficulty. There was a crowd outside the door, the 
 centre of which they could not see. It was an ugly business, the 
 getting a decidedly drunk young prince of Burgundy through a crowd 
 of exasperated " hands." Spada left Philip of Burgundy with Van 
 Kenning, and pushed through the crowd. He was very soon back 
 again. 
 
 " It is that woman," he said, in a whisper. 
 
 " What woman ? " asked Van Kenning. 
 
 " Martina," said Spada. " She has gone mad again, and is 
 beating at the door and demanding to see the Duke, and make 
 him execute vengeance on Van Dysart for the murder of Leon." 
 
 " The devil ! " said Van Kenning. " Let us get this drunken 
 fool in by the postern here. Be quick, Spada, my good soul, if 
 ever you were quick in your life ! " 
 
 Spada had seen much of this work in his very eventful life, and 
 young Philip was bundled in at a side-door without observation. 
 
 In five minutes the great door of the principal entrance was 
 
68 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 thrown open, and there appeared to the crowd outside a great 
 corridor, lined with solemn troops, and lit up with wax candles. 
 Three men came down the steps towards the crowd ; the Duke of 
 Burgundy first and alone, and immediately after him Van Kenning 
 and Spada. 
 
 The sight was very magnificent, for John of Burgundy had 
 hurried on his royal clothes, and came step by step down among 
 the people with an air of confidence, dressed in crimson velvet, 
 and covered with jewels. You cannot see such a sight now. 
 " Sartor Kesartus " was not written then. The man's clothes and 
 the man's awful power were enough for the crowd : they parted as 
 though he wished to go through them. 
 
 His first intention, after he had seen his son brought in drunk 
 by the back-stairs, had been to speak to them. He changed it 
 now, and walked cooUy through them : after which he walked 
 coolly back again. All this time Spada and Van Kenning had 
 grouped themselves on the steps in the blaze of light ; the Duke 
 John of Burgundy bowed right and left, and the crowd were saying 
 one to the other how noble his Grace looked, when there was a very 
 singular interruption. 
 
 A great light was shining down the steps out of the hall of the 
 palace, and Van Kenning and Spada had grouped themselves care- 
 fully in front of that light, in their splendid dresses, looking at 
 the crowd, Spada standing one step below Van Kenning. John 
 of Burgundy, having been through the crowd, had turned at the 
 bottom step, and had bent, speaking to some one there. Next, the 
 crowd saw a tall woman, whom in the great blaze of light they did 
 not recognise for their o^vn Martina, take the Duke's arm and 
 mount the steps with him, followed by a httle dog. When fairly 
 in the hall the Duke of Burgundy turned and bowed, with Martina 
 on his arm and the little grey dog between his legs, Spada and 
 Van Kenning to the right and the left of him. It was enough for 
 them ; they had had their coup de theatre for nothing, 'and they 
 went home to their beds when the doors were shut in their faces. 
 
 But behind the doors, where the brain of the people was, how 
 was it there ? Not quite so comfortable as it was outside. The 
 Duke began at Martina first. 
 
 " I have got you now. You were for raising the mob on me." 
 
 " You have assassins enough in your pay to kiU me. Burgundy, 
 but the people are with me. If you order Spada to kill me he wUl 
 do it, but it will go ill with Spada, and ill with you." 
 
 " Are you going to raise a, jacquerie on me, woman ? " said the 
 Duke. 
 
 " If I had meant to do that I could have done it long ago," 
 
OLD MABGABeT. 69 
 
 '' She speaks the truth there, my Lorcl,"said Spada, roundly. 
 
 " He speaks the truth there, my Lord," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " I know he does," said the Duke. " You wretched Flemings ! 
 Any ' ' I regret to say that the exigencies of modern civilisa- 
 tion prevent my writing down the Duke of Burgundy's language. 
 May I be permitted to go as far as to say that what he meant was 
 this — that any indiscreet female and any indiscreet male, with 
 physical courage and the gift of the gab, can lead a mob any- 
 where. 
 
 " Van Kenning and Spada, I thank you for bringing my drunken 
 son home. You can go, and hold your tongues. Mistress, I am 
 not so sure of you : you will stay here." 
 
 " It is an iU place, but I have stood in worse," said Martina 
 the Scotchwoman. " I will stay here." 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 We leave to wiser and more learned men than ourselves to say 
 how much gunpowder has had to do with the success and non- 
 success of town insurrections. It is certain that in modern times, 
 in crooked streets where artillery cannot act, gunpowder and barri- 
 cades have given the mob a certain chance of winning. Yet in 
 the old time, without gunpowder, street-fighting was considered 
 extremely dangerous by good and excellent generals. The danger 
 in it was that the heavy cavalry would be hampered and their 
 horses killed, in which case their men would be caught overladen 
 with their ai-mour. Every man knew the use of a pike or axe, 
 and the fighting was done at close quarters. The mob were no 
 less naturally "brave than the men-at-anns, and fought with 
 courage, and what is more, with desperation, knowing what would 
 happen to them, their wives, and their houses if they lost. At 
 Ghent even in these pre-reformation times the citizens and hands, 
 the " Gilden," were laying the foundation of the " Dutch Eepub- 
 he," by teaching their brethren of the other towns that by good 
 street-fighting they could in the end extract better terms from 
 their rulers than they would otherwise have got. Street-fighting 
 was by no means a thing to be despised. The toAvns were too 
 crowded and too populous. 
 
 But the Duke of Burgundy wanted money, and he had a 
 Cabinet Council, at which all our friends assembled at twelve 
 
70 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 o'clock in the day in the palace at Ghent. It was extremely 
 noticeable that no courtiers were present, hut only the men who 
 represented the people, and who were, one or two of them, rather 
 supposed to favour the people a little too much. 
 
 Van Kenning was the first man who arrived and was shown 
 into the Council Chamber, through the halberdiers, where he 
 found himself alone for some little time. To him arrived, with 
 the most tremendous formalities and presenting of arms, the 
 Archbishop, who, when the door was shut, said — 
 " This is absolute madness ! " 
 
 " What is he going to do ? " said Van Kenning. " I have not 
 heard. Why has he sent for me ? There was an agreement 
 
 that " 
 
 " I know," said the Archbishop. " Hush ! " 
 "You cannot know," said Van Kenning, testily; "no one 
 heard it but himself and myself." 
 
 " He can keep nothing to himself," said the Archbishop. " If 
 he had only told me I would not have cared, but he has told 
 others. You and he made an an-angement that neither of you 
 were to know anything about one another until you had ruined 
 Van Dysart. That is true, is it not ? Don't swear — it is bad 
 manners." 
 
 But Van Kenning swore nevertheless. 
 
 "It is easy enough to talk about ruining Van Dysart," said 
 the Archbishop ; " but it is not quite so easy to do. I was bent 
 on doing it, as far as a Churchman could, you know, but I am 
 rather sick of the business. The elements seem to choke me 
 every day for carrying on this feud : and this last madness of the 
 Duke's will render it ten-ibly difficult." 
 " What is it? " said Van Kenning. 
 " A tax on salt-fish," said the Archbishop. 
 " Why, the man is mad ! " said Van Kenning. 
 " Assuredly ; but he will have his way for aU that, and we 
 shall have aU our throats out. If Van Dysart heads the mob and 
 Margaret Van Eyck cannot keep that lunatic Martina in, the mob 
 will win. The Duke has not fifteen hundred men in the 
 place." 
 
 "I beUeve that Martina the Scotchwoman has broken out 
 again," said Van Kenning, and went on — 
 " WiU she not turn against Van Dysart ? " 
 The Archbishop shook his head. 
 
 " She loves him," he said, quietly. " She threatens him with 
 death and fury, but when it comes to the point I would not trust 
 her." 
 
OLD MARGABE'J). 71 
 
 They were both silent for a time. 
 
 " When this Council is over, come with me to Margaret Van 
 Eyck," said the Archbishop. 
 
 Van Kenning nodded. The door was opened, and a little 
 Councillor of the town, in blue velvet, ran suddenly in ; and 
 seeing no one but the Archbishop and Van Kenning, stopped 
 himself from making his obeisance to the throne, and coming 
 quicldy np to them, whispered — 
 
 " Strike, Archbishop, strike ! My hands have given notice to 
 leave work to-morrow, and I lose ten thousand." 
 
 " On what grounds have they struck? " said the Archbishop. 
 
 " This preposterous tax — this salt-fish tax." 
 
 "Then, it is known?" 
 
 " Did the Duke of Burgundy ever keep a secret ? Van Dysart 
 has sold us. It is fearfully serious," said the little Councillor. 
 
 " We shall have the people up," said the Archbishop. 
 
 " We shall, indeed," said the little Councillor. " Archbishop, 
 do you know where Father Peter and Sister Priscilla are ? It is 
 more in your way than mine." 
 
 " No," said the Archbishop. 
 
 " Why, they are missing ! " said the little Councillor. 
 
 u Tiie — the — Saints protect us ! " cried the Archbishop. 
 
 "Here is a fine to-do," said Van Kenning. "I shall be no 
 use if those two lunatics are carrying the fiery cross round. 
 Archbishop, you have let them go loose too long." 
 
 The Archbishop spoke out like a man — 
 
 " I meddle with no friends of those poor whom Christ has 
 given me. Those two loved the poor in their way, and the poor 
 loved them." 
 
 Van Kenning was intensely delighted at the Archbishop s reply ; 
 and the two old friends shook hands as honest fellows do when 
 they have been on the verge of a difference. 
 
 " Now," said the Archbishop, smiling blandly on the Councillor, 
 " have you any more good tidings for us ? " 
 
 "Yes," said the Councillor; "Martina is not to be found. 
 She is not at the Van^Eycks." 
 
 " When did you ask? " 
 
 " An hour ago." ^ ■ .^ . 
 
 " Well, then," said Van Kenning, " I thmk we are safe m that 
 quarter. She came into the palace last night ; and if Margaret 
 has seen nothing of her, she must have been here all night." 
 
 " Locked up ? " said the little Councillor. 
 
 " Most unwelcome guests of the Duke, who stay all night, are 
 locked up," said Van Kenning. 
 
72 6Lt) MAilGAtlEf. 
 
 " If he puts her to death," said the Councillor, aghast, " we 
 are all undone. I shall sell out, and go to England." 
 
 " I think that he only wants her kept in, and, in consequence, 
 has not let her out," said Van Kenning. 
 
 The door leading behind the throne was thrown open, and the 
 halberdiers came flashing and clattering on the dais, and forming 
 on the steps of it, nearly a hundred strong, leaving an open space 
 towards the throne. Then there was a pause and a dead silence. 
 Then came a herald, who advanced to the bottom of the steps, 
 and stood like a statue ; then from above came two pages, in blue 
 velvet, who put cushions at the feet of the throne, and sat on 
 them : then there was dead silence again, only that Van Kenning 
 whispered to the Ai-chbishop, behind his hand — 
 
 " There are more expected surely, than we three ? He would 
 never have had aU this tomfoolery for us." 
 
 The Archbishop said, " Hush ; read the riddle for yourself. 
 Do you see ? " 
 
 Slowly through the open door came the Duke of Burgundy, 
 flicking his face with a pocket handkerchief, with his aim round 
 Van Dysart's neck. 
 
 Van Kenning was intensely amused. 
 
 " If he had done as much for me, I would have gone home and 
 hung myself," he said to himself. " This is fine comedy, and 
 that ass Van Dysart believes it to be real life." 
 
 But while jeering, he could not refuse a tribute of honest 
 admiration to Van Dysart himseK, as he left the Duke, and came 
 flaunting down the steps of the dais towards them. Van Kenning 
 bethought himself that once he had a brother, kiUed in France, as 
 handsome as Van Dysart ; yet he thought again that his brother 
 could not have been so handsome, and his brother had never 
 been so beautifully dressed. 
 
 When Van Dysart came down to Van Kenning, Van Kenning 
 shook hands with him warmly ; and Van Dysart said — 
 
 " Good-day, old Judas. I thought you were vowed to my 
 death." 
 
 "You have found tJiat out, have you?" said Van Kenning, 
 coolly. " How many secrets have you trusted to the Duke ? " 
 
 This was very easy to say, for the Duke had given orders that 
 evei-y one should leave the hall ; and so the halberdiers went 
 clanking out. A slight difficulty arose between the herald and 
 the two pages with their cushions, as to who had right of going 
 through the door first. It ended in something very like a free 
 fight between the pages and the herald behind the back of the 
 unconscious Duke, to the extreme confusion of the Archbishop. 
 
OLD MAtlGAilET. ?3 
 
 He had just ascertained that the pages, by hard hammering about 
 the herald's head with their cushions, had won, and had run away 
 with his trumpet, when the doors were closed, and they were 
 invited up on to the dais, to join the Council. 
 
 "I suppose, gentlemen," said the Duke, "that you have 
 heard of my proposal to raise more money ? I may shortly say 
 that I propose to raise it by a tax on salt-fish. Archbishop, what 
 do you say to it ? " 
 
 " We shall have a riot," said the Archbishop. 
 
 " And put it down," said the Duke. " What do you say to it. 
 Van Kenning ? " 
 
 "I agree with the Archbishop," said Van Kenning. "But I 
 would like news from " 
 
 " That is my business," said the Duke, quickly. " What do 
 you say to it. Councillor ? " 
 
 " If it could possibly be avoided, my Lord Duke " began the 
 
 Councillor. 
 
 "It cannot," said the Duke. "What do you say. Van 
 Dysart?" 
 
 " I think I can carry it through for you," said Van Dysart. 
 
 " I think you wiU be able. There are paper and pens there ; 
 just write down your demands for doing so, would you, and give 
 them to me ? " 
 
 For one instant there was a motion towards Van Dysart from 
 Van Kenning's arm, as though he would have stopped him. But 
 the Duke's eye was on him, and he saw that his bargain must be 
 fulfilled. Van Dysart sat down and wrote oiit his own infamy and 
 his o^vn deliberate ruin. Fifty thousand crowns if he could 
 persuade the people to submit to the tax ; one hundred thousand 
 if he could lead a sufficient number of them out into the town into 
 the open where they could be attacked by cavalry. It was written, 
 signed, and given to the Duke, who read it, nodded, and put 
 it in his bosom. Then the conversation was resumed by the 
 Duke. 
 
 " There is one more detail. Van Dysart, which I should wish 
 for. You were the seducer of that petulant woman, Martina ? ' ' 
 
 " I fear that is true." 
 
 " I want to have her executed ; she is a continual plague. 
 That will make no difference in our bargain, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes, that would make a great difierence in our bargain," said 
 Van Dysart. " I should want more money." 
 
 " Well, you will tell me the difference presently ; at present we 
 are agreed," and the Council dismissed. Van Dysart, come to my 
 room in half an hour. I shall see you aU to supper, gentlemen. 
 
74 OLD MABGAHET. 
 
 I need not tell you that this Council is perfectly secret, under pain 
 of death." 
 
 They all four left by the door at the lower end of the room, and 
 the Duke followed them to it. When their footsteps had died 
 away, the Duke stood in the middle of the room, and said, 
 quietly — 
 
 " Come out, you two." 
 
 And from behind the hangings on one side came Spada, and 
 from behind the hangings on the other came Martina. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Duke said, " WcU ! " but neither of the other two said any- 
 thing at all, which was confusing. The Duke had to resume the 
 conversation, and said to a woman who entered the room at that 
 moment — 
 
 " We have got him now, Martina." 
 
 "I could have rained him long ago," she- said, "but I have 
 held my hand. I can ruin him now with that paper which you 
 have in your hand. You had better give i,t to me, and let me ruin 
 him at once." 
 
 Spada was standing carefully behind her, and made a slight 
 gesticulation of disapproval. The Duke of Burgundy gave her 
 the paper on which Van Dysart's tei'ms were written in his own 
 hand, and laughed. 
 
 " Now, mistress, you have him in your hands," he said. " You 
 can take your own course now, and can go. I have betrayed him 
 to you, and I suppose you will act ; you heard him say that your 
 life is to be sought for the money to pay for his gambling debts ; 
 you have the power to rain him, and you must certainly have the 
 will. Now go, and do your duty." 
 
 And so Martina went, with the damning paper in her hand, 
 straight to Margaret Van Eyek. 
 
 The Duke of Burgundy and Spada were left alone together. 
 
 " She is safe enough now, I think." 
 
 " Yes," said Spada ; " safe enough to save Van Dysart." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said the Duke. 
 
 " I do not exactly know," said Spada. " I only know that 
 you have done the worst thing you could possibly have done." 
 
 "Why?" said the Duke. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 75 
 
 " Simply because the woman loves the man. The man has 
 wi-onged her, and you have put aU the power in the hands of the 
 woman." 
 
 " But she will use it against him ? " said the Duke of Burgundy. 
 
 " She will iisc it for hii/i, as sure as you are born," said Spada, 
 quietly. " J know them." 
 
 " But why ? " said the Duke, aghast. 
 
 "Because women are better than men, as I have known for 
 some years," said this great rascal. 
 
 " You are mad, Spada," said the Duke. 
 
 " The first time the compliment was ever paid me," said Spada. 
 "You do not know your work, my Lord Duke of Burgundy. 
 That paper should have been given to me, not to her." 
 
 " What would you have done with it ? " 
 
 " I should first of aU have demanded ten thousand pieces from 
 liim on the strength of having it in my possession ; then I should 
 have tried to get ten thousand pieces from you to get it back 
 again. I suspect that if you had given that paper to me instead 
 of to her, I should have been a rich man for life." 
 
 "You might have taken it, fool ! " 
 
 "Not in Burgundy's palace. In a disreputable house the old 
 woman is mistress, and her bullies are always ready." 
 
 " You are impudent ! " said the Duke. 
 
 " I live by impudence," said Spada. 
 
 " Can you get it from her ? " 
 
 " I could if I chose, but I do not choose." 
 
 " You dog ! you would do anything for money." 
 
 "That is true," said Spada, quietly. "For money I would 
 assassinate your Grace. I could quite reconcile that to my con- 
 science ; but the woman is gone. I am rather sick of your Court ; 
 I think that Van Dysart is a good fellow on the whole. You have 
 not paid me as well as I expected, and so I will trouble you to 
 give me those diamonds which you have on you, and which you 
 put on for the purpose of dazzling the eyes of an old fox like Van 
 Kenning. We are perfectly alone, my Lord ; and if you dare to 
 say ' Guard ! ' I will put young Philip on this rascally throne 
 by killing you ! " 
 
 " WiU you listen to reason ? " said the Duke, aghast. 
 
 " No, my Lord, on no account. I have listened to reason too 
 long ; and I have not made much money by it. 1 have always 
 held my Ufe in my hands, and I do not fear death in any way. I 
 require you to give me those diamonds, and to go with me arm in 
 arm to the end of the Judenstrasse. I have given you the best of 
 my advice, and you have not paid for it as you should have. You 
 
16 OLD MaHGAHET. 
 
 have ventured to compare your intellect — that of a mere Bur- 
 gundian, as low as that of an Englishman — with the intellect of an 
 Italian. You must suffer." 
 
 " Spada, you are a great scoundrel I " 
 
 " In that matter I have the honour of comparing unfavourably 
 with your Grace ! Come, man, enough of this fooling ! Give me 
 those diamonds or I will kill you, and go tell Philip. I am sick 
 of this work ; I want fighting, and am sick of an intrigue not fit 
 for a gentleman. I pity the fellow, and I am a soldier." 
 
 The Duke looked at him veiy quietly. 
 
 "What," he said, "are your terms to go to Dendermond and 
 bring in the troops ? " 
 
 Spada sat down in a chair and thought, and the Duke went on — 
 
 "I see you are a tender-hearted rufiian ; they told me that you 
 had killed your own brother." 
 
 " A he ! He was fighting for Parma, I for Florence. He was 
 kUled by Marco Dandolo." 
 
 " That is vei-y possible. I want to know youi- price for going 
 to Dendermond and fetching in the troops ? " 
 
 "A safe conduct," said Spada. 
 
 " Good." 
 
 " Those diamonds." 
 
 " Why the diamonds ? I dislike to part with them." 
 
 "But I want them," said Spada. "I may have to fly if you 
 faU, and I cannot fly laden with gold. I want the diamonds." 
 
 " It is annoying," said the Duke of Burgundy. " You seem to 
 have no mercy. I wanted those diamonds particularly ; they are 
 a favourite set of mine — the last I bought. Will you take fifty 
 thousand cr<)\vns instead ? " 
 
 "Duke, you would have to leave the room to get the money. 
 I have told you before that I will not let you leave the room alive 
 without the diamonds. I will not willingly checkmate myself, for 
 you could raise the guard on me. If you wiU give me those 
 diamonds, and a free pass in your own hand to Dendermond, I 
 will bring in your freelances in time, I give you my word." 
 
 " Well," said the Duke, " you live by yom- military honour, 
 and if you deceive me your character is gone. I perfectly under- 
 stand your motives in asking for the diamonds, because you know 
 that you have to escape my vengeance after you have helped me to 
 win, and will have to ride far and fast. Here, then, are the 
 diamonds ; and I will write you the paper." 
 
 The Duke handed it to him, and looked at him curiously. 
 
 " Spada," he said, " do you ever believe anybody ? " 
 " Very seldom." 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 77 
 
 " Well, believe me for once, if you can. I like you. You Lave 
 cbeckmated me to-night, I confess. Knowing what I know about 
 you Italian soldiers of fortune, I should have had my guards 
 within call. Do you know why I like you ? " 
 
 "No, your Grace." 
 
 " Because you are a gentleman as far as this : you would serve 
 me if I would make it worth your while. I don't ask you to trust 
 yourself in my hands again, because the temper of Burgundy is 
 capricious ; but if you did come under my hands again I think 
 that you would not suffer. Do you see that you hold a terrible 
 power over me ? Do you see that for to-night's work you might 
 render me ridiculous ? Of course I could stop your mouth when 
 you came into my hands again ; hut meantime you are going to 
 Dendermond to fetch in my troops, and wiU have all kinds of 
 opportunities to tell the story of to-night's work, which wiU do 
 me infinite harm. Are we to be friends or enemies ? ' ' 
 
 " Friends, if you wiU spare Van Dysart." 
 
 " I cannot spare him," said the Duke ; " he must go. Now I 
 will take you through the guards, and see you free. Be quick ; 
 the dogs wiU rise to-morrow." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The old studio of the Van Eycks was as quiet as ever. Martina 
 had come in, certainly, and had sat do^vn by the great fire, near 
 Marie Van Eyck ; whereupon Marie had retired to another room, 
 and Margaret had asked Martina not to lie down before the fire 
 with her head near it. But Martina had laid there, nevertheless ; 
 and when Margaret had remonstrated with her once more, Hubert 
 Van Eyck had turned from his easel, and held up his finger. 
 Margaret obeyed at once ; and Hubert beckoned to her. 
 
 She was at his side in a moment. 
 
 " Mag," he said, " will she sit to-night? " 
 
 " No, dear ; she is mad again. There is trouble in the town ; 
 the Duke has put on a tax, and the hands have struck." 
 
 " Mag, what work are you doing ? " 
 
 " I am working at the right voile, at Sister Priscilla." 
 
 " Is she here ? " asked Hubert. 
 
 " She is here," said a deep voice from before Margaret's easel. 
 
 " What is John doing ? " asked Hubert. 
 
78 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 "He is at work at Van Kenning now," said Margaret. 
 " Dearest, how does your work go ? " 
 
 " We are painting the great picture of all time," said Hubert 
 Van Eyck ; " but the world wiU never, never know it. Mag, has 
 that poor woman brought her dog ? " 
 
 " Yes, Hubert ; the little thing is here lying beside her." 
 
 " Mag, put that table out in the light, and get me the little 
 grey dog ? " 
 
 "Why, dear?" 
 
 " I shall paint it for the lamb, in the centre." 
 
 " Dear Hubert — a dog ? " 
 
 "Yes, Mag, a dog-like lamb. That little Scythian dog is the 
 humblest dog I have ever seen. Leave me alone, Mag ; I know 
 that I am right." 
 
 The little Scotch dog was put on the table by Margaret, but 
 was eminently unsuccessful. It tried to do its very best, but it 
 did not understand Dutch, and it propped up and wagged, and 
 would not be held by Margaret Van Eyck. It wanted to be good, 
 but did not know how. 
 
 Hubert Van Eyck put down his brushes, and said — 
 
 ' ' It win not do, Margaret ; yet I know I am right. If I could 
 get the expression of that humble little dog, in the face of the 
 lamb, I should do right ; but I cannot get it." 
 
 "You must try Marie," said Margaret. 
 
 " Marie irritates me, Mag," said Hubert. " I wiU put in the 
 ideal lamb, after aU." 
 
 Which thing, I believe, he did not do ; for I believe that the 
 lamb was painted by John, but we reaUy know very little about 
 this magnificent picture ; in many respects the greatest ever 
 painted. 
 
 "Mag," said he, sitting down wearily beside her, "what are 
 these new troubles in the town ? " 
 
 " Great troubles, brother. The Duke has put on a new tax ; 
 the hands are out ; and the Duke has no soldiery." 
 
 Hubert cried out " John ! " and John came with his palette on 
 his thumb, bright, fresh, handsome, and shallow as ever. 
 
 "Have you heard of the troubles in the town?" said 
 Hubert. 
 
 " Yes," said John, " but I think little of them. I was with 
 Philip to-day at the backgammon at the club, and he says that 
 if the troops come in from Dendermond nothing wiU happen." 
 
 " He lies ! " suddenly cried Martina, rising up from before the 
 fire. 
 
 "I wish, in Heaven's name!" said John Van Eyck, "that 
 
OLD MABGAEET. 79 
 
 you, brother and isister, would not disgrace us by having that she- 
 fiend about the place." 
 
 " She is better here than elsewhere, John," said Margaret, 
 very quietly. " Aiiy of us might want mercy some day." 
 
 John expressed his opinion of her pretty sti-ongly, whereat 
 Margaret, j)er contra, took exception to some ladies about the 
 Court, to whom John would have doffed his bonnet. 
 
 Hubert said suddenly, but in a whisper — 
 
 " The woman shall come here if I choose. The woman could 
 burn our house down if she chose." 
 
 John was at once silent, for he was most heartily afraid of his 
 brother the moment he was roused to anger. Martina, in the 
 meanwhile, said — 
 
 " I am going away — to leave you." 
 
 Margaret drojiped her brushes on the floor, and said, quickly — 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Why ! " she said, wearily, " because I can't be good. John 
 and Marie insult me, and I want to be among the people again. 
 Our clan is not a good clan. I must go." 
 
 Margaret began to cry. 
 
 " You had better stop those tears, Margaret," said Martina, 
 " or they may cost a life. If I see you cry, I get mad, and know 
 no mercy, even to Idm. Hubert and John, come with me." 
 
 Both the brothers were slightly scared by her address. They 
 knew her character — alas ! a very bad one — her political know- 
 ledge, and her terrible determination. It was with the most 
 singular anxiety that they followed her to the lower end of the 
 room. 
 
 " The devil is abroad," she said. 
 
 " In which direction? " said Hubert. 
 
 "In the tax on salt-fish," she said. "Van Dysart leads a 
 rebellion on the subject. Van Kenning knows everything. Well, 
 would you have him ask for Van Dysart's ruin ? " 
 
 "Yes," said John. 
 
 Hubert was silent. 
 
 ' ' The troops are on the march from Dendermond, and Van 
 Dysart can stop them. Van Kenning, Spada, and I know the 
 whole plot. At this moment I can go to him and warn him that 
 the plot is discovered, and save him." 
 
 Again Hubert was perfectly silent, and John said, " No." 
 
 " May I ask you, as a matter of detail, John Van Eyck, 
 whether you intend to repeat any part of this conversation?" 
 said Martina. 
 
 " I shall of course report it to the Duke." 
 
80 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 " I think I would not," she said ; " because I have the power 
 to have you assassinated. You think, then, you two, that you will 
 not spare him? " 
 
 Again there was dead silence, and she left them. As far as 
 they went, the man was doomed. She passed away into the street 
 without a word of farewell, and the little Scotch terrier followed 
 her some distance, but Margaret missed it, and ran after it. So 
 the two women had just time to say good-hye before they 
 parted. 
 
 The Macdonald girl, who called herself Martina, had a heavy 
 heart, and she might have been relieved by tears after her parting 
 with Margaret ; but that was not to be. A heavy hand, like a 
 man's, was on her shoulder, and looking up, she saw Sister 
 PrisciUa. 
 
 " Where are you going now ? " she said. 
 
 " Among the people." 
 
 " So am I," said Sister Priscilla. " Let's go together." 
 
 This was entirely a new view of matters to Martina. She 
 actually laughed. 
 
 " WiU you follow me, or am I to foUow you ? " she said. 
 
 "I'll follow you," said Sister Priscilla, "if you don't mind 
 looking round and getting Father Peter." 
 
 " Not in the least," said Martina. " I should always be glad 
 if I was in no worse company than that of a priest and a nun. 
 But let us talk as we go." 
 
 " We win talk, by aU means," said Sister Priscilla ; but we will 
 talk one at a time, and not both together. Have you any objec- 
 tion to that ? " 
 
 Martina had naturally none. 
 
 " Then I'll begin," said Sister Priscilla, " and I wiU go on as 
 long as I have wind ; and then you shall go on as long as your 
 breath lasts. What are you meaning towards this man ? " 
 
 " You have broken down rather suddenly," said Martina. 
 
 " What are you going to do about this man — this Van Dysart ? " 
 said Sister Priscilla, "this murderer of Leon? What are you 
 going to do about him, woman ? You are going to spare him — 
 you know it. You know that your heart is tender about him stiU, 
 and for the sake of old love you would ruin the liberty of the 
 nation. If that man, with his dandy false republicanism, is 
 allowed to rise at the head of the people just now, he will have 
 committed himself just so far as to be brought up by Burgundy ; 
 for you know that the troops are coming from Dendermond, and 
 that he has power ; and then you have the people in the hands of 
 Burgundy, as red with the blood of Christ's poor as his o^vn wine. 
 
OLD MABGABET. 81 
 
 You are bound in every way to ruin this man. An unsuccessful 
 insurrection would save him." 
 
 " Sister Priscilla," said Martina, "you are entirely wrong. I 
 know what I am talking about; you do not. An unsuccessful 
 insurrection would ruin him. I can make him or mar him. I 
 have accidentally sujireme power in the State just now, and I 
 could do as I choose. But if you will come with me to all those 
 who have vowed to ruin Van Dysart and the others, we will hear 
 what they say. I wish to he clear with you ; I desire your good 
 opinion, though you are a good woman, and I am not a very good 
 woman. I am forced to this ruin of the man who wrought m;/ 
 ruin. So are others— yourself, Spada, Van Kenning, the Van 
 Eycks, Father Peter, the people — some of them at least— Mar- 
 garet, and the Duke of Burgundy. Let us go and pick up Father 
 Peter, and let we three go round to all of them in turn, and see 
 what they wish us to do." 
 
 "Father Peter and I are sound on the subject," said Sister 
 PrisciUa, biting her nails. "I don't much like to be seen with 
 you. It does no good to us. But we will come to Father Peter 
 and get him. After that I will do what you wish." 
 
 " You promise," said Martina. 
 
 "I promise," said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 Father Peter happened to have been out all night with a case 
 of quotidian ague, and as the Jesuits had not then discovered that 
 bark which we debased mortals call chinchona or quinine, he had 
 had to sit up all night until his patient's shivering fit had passed. 
 Consequently he was extremely cross at being pulled out of his bed, 
 on a matter which he distinctly avowed was none of his. His 
 toilette was so very simple, like that of monks in general — judging 
 from those we saw at Brussels the other day among the surrendered 
 French officers, and also remembering our Eabelais' description 
 of a monk's toilet — there was hardly time for much conversation 
 before he came out as savage as a bear with a sore head. Still, 
 Sister Priscilla had time to say to Martina, " We had better bring 
 him." 
 
 Martina said, " Now why? " 
 
 " He represents the obstinate form of the ecclesiastics as re- 
 gards the people," said Sister Priscilla. "He would terrify 
 Burgundy." 
 
 " You have more sense than I gave you credit for," said 
 Martina. " That is just the reason I let you call for him." 
 
 " Let me ? " said Sister Priscilla. 
 
 "Yes, let," said Martina. " I am mistress on this errand. 
 See, here is Father Peter." 
 
 7 
 
82 Old margahet. 
 
 And there was Father Peter, with the chilblains still remaining 
 on his naked feet, excessively cross, but entirely plucky. 
 
 "I," said Sister Priscilla, " have agreed that I should take her 
 wherever she wants to go over this Van Dysart business. Where 
 first, Martina ? " 
 
 " We must take the buU by the horns," said Martina. " We 
 must go to the young Prince of Burgundy first." 
 
 Father Peter immediately sat down on a doorstep and rubbed 
 his knee. 
 
 "Get up, you old fool," said Sister PrisciUa : "the woman 
 knows what she is saying." The only difference in Father Peter's 
 moral attitude was that he stood upright and scratched his ton- 
 sure. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 There happened to be a great gathering at the young Duke's 
 palace that night. The Duke was away to France that day, and 
 young Philip, aftenvards "le Bon," was left to keep Court for 
 him, it being considered good policy that some kind of Court 
 should be kept up at Ghent or Bruges for the sake of the trades- 
 men, who grumble if a Court is removed. The Jenkins of the 
 period has no doubt described that wonderful gathering in the 
 fullest manner ; he has doubtless been as particular as Froissart, 
 or the gentleman who does the Court Circular : we wiU not go 
 into the details of the drosses ourselves : you can see them in the 
 pictures of the Van Eycks, of Memling, and of Coexie : our busi- 
 ness is more with the general effect, which may be worth repro- 
 ducing. 
 
 In the hall, which stands, little altered, to this day, there was 
 a splendid company ; such a company for dress as is never seen 
 now. We have pageants certainly, such as those of the Order of 
 the Garter or Bath ; the Town Council of Edinburgh, or the 
 assembled Doctors at Oxford. But in those days of which we 
 speak every one dressed, and what is more, dressed in good taste, 
 and what is more, went to Court in his best clothes ; clothes 
 which at the time cost, per suit, about three times a dandy's year's 
 tailor's biU of modern times. So that an ordinary Court in those 
 times was a very splendid thing. 
 
 Their ideas of social enjoyment were not great, yet these pohtical 
 crushes must have been nearly as amusing as the crushes of 
 
OLD MABGARET. 83 
 
 modern times, for the devil was always at the door, and no one 
 knew what was going to happen next. So instead of talking 
 about the next ball, people talked of the next insurrection, with 
 the same coolness with which Paris, in the late siege, talked of 
 the last battle. On the night of which we speak, the night on 
 which the wild Macdonald woman. Sister PrisciUa, and Father 
 Peter had determined after consultation to disturb young Bur- 
 gundy's amusements, there was very fine company indeed. 
 
 The Van Eycks were there in their very finest clothes, having 
 put aside their painting, and dressed in the most artistic manner. 
 They were standing and talking close to the dais at the upper part 
 of the hall. Near them was Van Kenning, dressed in scarlet 
 velvet, with white hose and blue shoes, which called down on him 
 the utter reprobation of Hubert Van Eyck, who at once gave him 
 a lesson on colour. Spada was splendid : he had won money — 
 from young Van Kugby of Eotterdam if it mattered — and he had 
 paid cash before delivery to old Van Judenstrasse, and got a 
 beautiful suit of clothes (which Dame Krankenglauber distinctly 
 averred she had seen on Duke John's back long before old Levi 
 got his title of Van Judenstrasse). Spada's clothes were splendid, 
 and the jewels he had borrowed from several young ladies were 
 splendid also. Spada was an entire success, but hardly such a 
 success as Van Dysart. Van Dysart was dressed in light pearl 
 grey from head to foot, without a single ornament. The Duke 
 was very late, and until he came, the Archbishop, birreta in hand, 
 with a cloud of priceless yellow Malines lace over his dark robes, 
 went up and down the hall making himself agreeable until the 
 young Duke came in. I think the sight, aU in aU, was such a 
 one as we cannot see nowadays. 
 
 The Archbishop was at the lower end of the hall, talking dili- 
 gently to every one. He was talking to two ladies when he saw 
 that their attention was not for him, and that their eyes were 
 directed over his left shoulder. Turning he saw that Spada was 
 close to him waiting for an interview, and he instantly turned and 
 took his arm. 
 
 " Walli up the haU with me. Bishop," said Spada. 
 
 " Count Spada " 
 
 " Yes, I know ; but at least come out of earshot." 
 
 " I do not like to be seen with you," said the Bishop. 
 
 " Few do," said Spada. " But if you will take the advice of 
 an old soldier you will be seen with me now." 
 
 The Archbishop at once took the arm of Spada, and walked up 
 and down the haU with him, with an air which showed that the 
 Ai-chbishop committed himself neither one way or another ; which 
 
84 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 made folks say, firstly tliat Spada was a respectable man, or the 
 Ai-chbishop would not have walked with him ; secondly, that the 
 Ai-chbishop was a disreputable man for walking with Spada ; and, 
 thirdly^ that they could not make head or tail of it. However, 
 there was the spectacle of the most immaculate and saintly Arch- 
 bishop' walking up and down with the dreadful Count Spada, and 
 almost immediately afterwards his other arm was taken by Van 
 Dysart, who held him quite as tight as Spada. Van Kenning, 
 who was the sharpest man in Ghent, was determined to see after 
 this arrangement, and followed the Archbishop in time to hear 
 Spada say to Van Dysart, right across the Archbishop, and out 
 loud, " I want to speak to the Archbishop alone." 
 
 "Thank you, good Spada," said Van Dysart, "you shall do 
 so. Father, wiU you give me your benediction? " and then and 
 there he knelt down and got himself blessed by the Archbishop, 
 to Spada' s great amusement. For Spada saw his hand- at once ; 
 he had tinimped Spada's trick utterly. Spada had wished to gain 
 credit by walking arm in arm with the Archbishop, but Van 
 Dysart had startled the Ai-chbishop into a pubhc benediction. He 
 said a few vague words about the salt-fish tax to the Archbishop, 
 and was confidential with him. He said that it was so bad for 
 the Dukedom that the Duke always went away the moment a new 
 tax was imposed. He left the Archbishop with an idea that he 
 was a sensible man of the world, and turned to confront Van 
 Kenning. 
 
 " Did you see that? " he said. 
 
 " What ? " said Van Kenning. 
 
 " That dodge of Van Dysart' s to get the episcopal benediction 
 in public. There are the makings of a very noble rogue about 
 that young man, fool as he is." 
 
 "I saw," said Van Kenning, "he beat you capitally. What 
 are you going to do about him ? Why are you not half-way to 
 Dendci-mond ? You know what is going to happen." 
 
 " I wrote to the young Duke as soon as the old one was out of 
 the way, and I asked him to send after his father to get a con- 
 firmation for bringing the troops from Dendermond." 
 
 " You are a bold man." 
 
 " I was always reckoned so ; but you know more of these 
 Flemings than I do ; wiU they rise to-night or to-morrow night ? " 
 
 " That is a great deal to tell," said Van Kenning. " Ask Van 
 Dysart," he said, scornfully. 
 
 Van Kenning stood aghast : the reckless Italian walked across 
 the hall, and said in a loud voice to Van Dysart, under the very 
 nose of the Archbishop — 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 85 
 
 " Will your people rise to-night ? " 
 
 " Not under my orders," said Van Dysart. " I shall give no 
 orders for to-night, because we are not ready. We expected that 
 you would have been at Dendemiond by now, and we have not 
 prepared." Spada went back to Van Kenning. 
 
 Van Kenning was very cross. " You are too utterly and out- 
 rageously recldess ; what on earth made you force him to declare 
 himself? " 
 
 " Well, I thought that it would be amusing, and I like corn-age. 
 He is a fine feUow you see, though I thought when I first knew 
 him that he was a mean and selfish fool." 
 
 "Your notions of a fine feUow," said Van Kenning, "are a 
 little different to mine. I consider him a rascal." 
 
 " It may be fellow feeling possibly," said Spada, " but I rather 
 like rascals. I don't as a rule like good people ; they are never 
 good when they run short of money, and can't get what they want. 
 I really think that you are the only virtuous person I ever liked in 
 my life." 
 
 Van Kenning looked at him with his keen, steady old eye, and 
 saw that the man was speaking the truth. His reply was like 
 himself, very dry ; he said — 
 
 " What a pity it is that you are such a veiy sad vagabond." 
 
 They had been standing together before an arras, at the further 
 end of the haU, and as the word "vagabond " passed Van Ken- 
 ning's mouth, they each felt a hand on their shoulders, and turn- 
 ing, found themselves face to face with the younger Burgundy, 
 PhOippe le Bon. 
 
 " Quarrelling? " he said, in a whisper. 
 
 " Not at all," said Spada. " He called me a vagabond, and he 
 never spoke a truer word in his life. My mother (God bless her ! ) 
 always used to say that I should become one, and she was the 
 best and wisest woman I ever knew. She said I should become a 
 condottiero, and I have become exactly that same thing. I am at 
 a loss to conceive why I should quarrel with my good Van Ken- 
 ning because he has pointed out to me that my mother was one of 
 the wisest women ever known." 
 
 "You are very good-natured, Spada," said Van Kenning. 
 " AUow me to proceed. My mother used to say that, with my 
 remarkable personal advantages, I should be certain to marry a 
 rich woman. Now, there my mother's judgment failed her. 
 
 Now " 
 
 He had got Burgundy off the trail, and was only wanting to find 
 out how much he had heard. Burgundy interrupted him. 
 
 " I have not beard what you were talking over. Will you two 
 
86 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 come np with mc through these gaping fools, and get this Court 
 business over. After that, I want you to follow me out for a 
 consultation. My father has gone, and, as I hear from three 
 lunatics, there is trouble in the town. I wish my father would 
 not go whenever there is trouble. Is Van Dysart here ? " 
 
 " Yes, my Lord." 
 
 " My father says that Van Dysart must go ; and now I find, 
 Spada, that my father had insisted on your going to Dendermond. 
 I am, however, glad that you are here. Van Kenning, go up to 
 the dais, and tell the trumpeter to blow, and the taherdars to be 
 ready." 
 
 Van Kenning waUced rapidly up the hall, saying right and left 
 " The Duke, the Duke ! " and getting hold of the usher, the 
 trumpets were blown, and the throng separated. 
 
 It was a really splendid sight now with the mingling colours of 
 the courtiers on each side, and the lane of bright cai-pet between. 
 The Bishop hurried down, the usher hurried down, and each took 
 their places. Young Phihppe le Bon then took his place between 
 Van Kenning and Spada, to the unutterable astonishment of every 
 one ; then they saw, to their equal astonishment, that the young 
 man was followed by eight guards in steel. The procession moved 
 slowly up the haU, the young Duke not bowing to any one, as his 
 usual custom was, but looking from right to left very keenly, and 
 somewhat angrily. The Aixhhishop and the usher walked in 
 front, a most stately couple ; then the Duke, in violet, and the 
 two others in the brave clothes described before ; after them the 
 steel guards. The procession had gone half way up the haU, 
 when Philippe le Bon called a halt just as he was opposite a 
 handsome young man, dressed in pearl grey — strange contrast 
 to the gaudy figures around him, and a little in advance of the 
 others. 
 
 " Van Dysart," said the young Duke, " you are a foul traitor ! " 
 
 Spada and Van Kenning both whispered — 
 
 " For God's sake ! my Lord." 
 
 "I say," said Philip, "that you are afoul traitor. Guards, 
 seize him ! " 
 
 The clumsy guards ran in on him, but not before he had his 
 sword out ; and, the frightened courtiers having fallen back, he 
 was alone with his naked weapon before them all. The heavUy- 
 armed steel-clad guards knew perfectly weU that it was death for 
 one of them at least to approach a gentleman's sword, and hesi- 
 tated ; but Spada had out his sword like lightning, and dashed at 
 him. They had often fenced in fun, but now they were fencing in 
 earnest. The Italian had him disarmed in half a minute ; but 
 
OLD MARGARET. 87 
 
 after giving him the fatal wrist-cut, Spada committed what he had 
 never committed before in fencing, a bStiac ; he stumbled, and fell 
 on the top of his man. The screaming ladies, and the frightened 
 courtiers, both remarked it. The real truth is, that Spada did it 
 on purpose, and when he was on the ground with his man, he 
 whispered in his car — 
 
 " Submit, and we will save you yot." 
 
 Van Dysart had enough sense left to allow himself to be bound 
 by the guards. But he turned to Philippe le Bon, and said — 
 
 " You will be sorry for this, young Burgundy. I will ruin you 
 for this." 
 
 What followed was singularly like the man, Philippe le Bon, as 
 far as I can make him out. He ordered silence, and thought for 
 a few moments. Then he said — 
 
 " Do you confess yourself a traitor. Van Dysart ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Van Dysart, furiously; " I know I must die, but 
 in dying I can still hurl defiance at a puny boy like you. I do not 
 so much care for the people as I hate your house. I have only 
 truckled with the people because I hate you, and your whole 
 house." 
 
 " Why should you hate us ? " said Philippe le Bon. 
 
 " Because you put us Flemings in an inferior position ; because 
 you have no business here ; because — curse all French ; let me 
 go to my death." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Don't torture me ; let me die at once. Come, young Bur- 
 gundy, you have won, and I have lost ; but these limbs of mine, 
 now to pass into rottenness for ever, were once dear, and may be 
 still dear to a woman, who had better never have seen me. I will 
 tell everything I know without torture." 
 
 "Weil." 
 
 " Let her see me when I am dead ; with death before me, I am 
 very sorry for what I did to her. Come, young Burgundy, al- 
 though I hate your house, you have some manhood." 
 
 " Anything more before you go to death ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Van Dysart. 
 
 " Guards, release that gentleman, and let him go free. Spada, 
 I see that you have his sword — restore it. Van Dysart, you are 
 as free as I am ; but will you remember this, that if the Flemings 
 wiU cease to be factious and riotous, it wiU not be necessary for 
 the house of Burgundy to be cruel." 
 
 It was by this sort of policy that this man, who burnt Bruges 
 afterwards, earned the title of " Philippe le Bon." His poHoy in 
 after times was exceedingly like the (rerman policy of last year ; 
 
88 OLD MAKGARET. 
 
 resistance was resented, but when resistance ceased there was 
 nothing but tenderness. We suppose that to be the true poUcy in 
 war ; it has been ours everywhere, and we have had to see Ger- 
 man Laudwehr giving half their rations to the starving Fi'ench 
 peasantry on the battle-field of St. Provat. Let us, however, go 
 on, for a meeting of some very singular people is at hand ; and 
 the fate of Van Dysart is by no means settled. 
 
 After this scene, Philip, the Ai-chbishop, Spada, and Van 
 Kenning went round a httle among the courtiers, and the com'- 
 tiers were soon got rid of, and all that was lU'cessary had been 
 done, with the solitary exception of sending away a young man 
 who was hanging about, blowing out the lights and listening. 
 That young man having been sent away " with a flea in his ear," 
 the young Duke recommenced. 
 
 " Has he got his lesson ? " said the young Duke. 
 
 The Archbishop thought not. He distrusted Van Dysart stiU. 
 
 Van Kenning did not know. There were ugly points about 
 him. He was a man with a bad temper, who might be more 
 troublesome than many men with a good temper. He did not 
 exactly see his way to Van Dysart, even now. 
 
 " He spoke well," said the young Duke. 
 
 " Oh, yes, he spoke well enough," said Van Kenning ; " but I 
 am by no means sure that he wiU not tm'n Turk for all that. I 
 don't see my way." 
 
 Spada was very emphatic. The man was a hero of rascality, a 
 true hero, who could face death like a man. Spada was tre- 
 mendous. He could not have believed that there was such a high 
 quality of courage to be found in a Fleming. (Whereon Van 
 Kenning asked him to say that again, spoilt his period, and made 
 him repeat the old scene in the back<^ammon club between himself 
 and Van Ki'nning.) Spada said that the man was a man of 
 mettle — a man who might be serviceable to the State — a man who 
 should be bought up at all cost by the house of Burgundy. 
 
 " But the rascal is rich, and can't be bought," said Philippe le 
 Bon. " He is not like you, Spada. Any one could buy you." 
 
 " That is perfectly true," said Spada, without moving a muscle. 
 "I am a cheap article, and he is a dear one. It is merely a 
 matter of destroying him or of buying him : that is aU we have to 
 consider now." 
 
 " We will go, if you please, to another room," said the young 
 Duke, and parting the hangings, he led them into a small rei.Jing- 
 room, and shut the door after him. 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 89 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 In this room there sat, in a row, Father Peter, Sister Priscilla, and 
 the woman Macdonald, who called herself Martina. They rose up 
 as the young Duke came in, and remained silent. 
 
 "Nun, priest, and lunatic," growled Philip to Spada ; "shall 
 we get at the truth among them ? " 
 
 " The lunatic is the most likely one. Will you let me speak 
 to her?" ^ 
 
 " Do so. I suspect that you know the way to speak to her better 
 than I do." 
 
 Spada advanced, and looking straight at Sister Priscilla, 
 said — 
 
 "You are, I believe, the Scotchwoman who calls herself 
 Martina?" 
 
 He knew what he was about perfectly well. Van Kenning put 
 his hand over his mouth to hide his laughter, for he knew as well 
 as Spada that a foolish and angry woman will blurt out the truth. 
 
 " I am not here to be insulted by the condottieri of the bloody 
 house of Burgundy ; I am here to denounce that house as the most 
 bloodthirsty and brutal which the world has ever seen. I am a 
 holy woman, vowed to God, and in your own palace, you pale 
 young Duke, I tell you that your house is doomed. In two days 
 from this time your palaces shall be burning about your ears, for 
 Spada has taken our money to betray you. Why is he not at 
 Dendermond ? Where are the troops ? Who paid him to deceive 
 you after your father's departure? — why, the trades unions." 
 
 " Is this true ? " said Philip, turning pale. 
 
 " Perfectly true," whispered Spada. " The good people offered 
 me the money, and I of course took it. I always do take money 
 when it is offered to me. You wiU find that I have not served you 
 at all ill. Don't interrupt ; let her go on." 
 
 But Sister Priscilla had little more information to give, for the 
 fact of the matter was, that she had told all she knew ; and when 
 challenged to prove her facts, went off into a rather ranting tirade 
 about appealing to the Pope. 
 
 " What has the priest to say? " demanded Spada. 
 
 It turned out that the priest had uncommonly little to say, 
 expecting death every moment for the horrible indiscretion of 
 Sister Priscilla. Father Peter made by no means a good show 
 on this occasion. Father Peter only said that, as a servant of 
 the Holy Father the Pope, he hoped that the Duke would do 
 justice by the people. 
 
90 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 " What business have such cattle as you with the Pope ? " 
 demanded Burgundy. 
 
 " None, if your Lordship wishes," replied Father Peter, perfectly 
 collapsing, to Sister Priscilla's intense disgust, which was expressed 
 by a sniflf. 
 
 "Then hold your tongue," interrupted Spada. "Now, you 
 lunatic, what have you to say ? " 
 
 " That I am a Scotchwoman," said the Macdonald woman ; 
 " and that I never forgive." 
 
 " Not even Van Dysart," said Spada. 
 
 " Ha, that is well put," said Philippe le Bon, in a whisper. 
 
 "For God's sake, my Lord, hold your tongue," said Spada, 
 " and let me speak. You wiU spoil all." 
 
 "You were speaking of Van Dysart," said the Macdonald 
 woman. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And what were ye speering anenthim ? " she said, in Lowland 
 Scotch, forgetting herself, and thinking that she was among Low- 
 landers only, and not among Dutch. 
 
 " Cwd bla thu a' feordsted mu thionnal au duine," she added in 
 Gaelic, more dazed than ever. 
 
 "What languages does she talk?" asked Philip. "Are 
 these the Scythian languages? " 
 
 Spada spoke to her in French. She remembered herself at 
 once. 
 
 " I forget myself at times ; but if you wish to get the truth from 
 me, I will speak always the truth in French. He courted me in 
 that language, and I love it." 
 
 " Who courted you ? " said Spada. 
 
 " The man you wish to ruin," she answered. 
 
 "How can the Duke wish to ruin him, when he has had him 
 arrested and let him go free without any parole of any sort or 
 kind ? " said Spada. 
 
 " What do you say ? " said Martina. 
 
 "I only say that the Duke had him arrested, and has let him 
 go free," replied Spada. 
 
 " Now we are all undone," said Martina. " Cannot you catch 
 him again ? Why, you are all fools ! My Lord Duke of Burgundy, 
 arrest that man. He is dearer to me than all the world, even 
 now, and he wiU arouse the Guilds and ruin himself and them. 
 Did you insult him ? ' ' 
 
 " We bound him for a time, and then let him go," said Philippe 
 le Bon. 
 
 " Then you are all fools together," she said. '' Should not I 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 91 
 
 know him ? I must go and see what I can do ; I must go after 
 him. You should have mewed him up — no, not now, Margaret, 
 not now ! These wiseacres have let Van Dysart go free, and the 
 State is ruined. He knows neither honour or pity, hut I love 
 him." 
 
 They all started and turned to see Margaret Van Eyck standing 
 among them, and Martina passing her through the arras. 
 
 " I heg the pardon of Burgundy," she said, " hut I come hero 
 merely for political reasons. It would seem that the life of a true 
 Fleming just now is half painting, half politics. I have heeu 
 painting for the most part of the day. Burgundy, if you were 
 capahle of understanding it, I have been painting at the picture of 
 aU time. But now. Burgundy, I am here to tell you that your 
 father has made a great mistake in going away, for the people are 
 rising, and I helieve that Van Dysart will head them." 
 
 "Will you kindly sit down, Margaret Van Eyck?" said the 
 young Duke, suddenly. 
 
 " Not while a woman is standing," replied Margaret. So Sister 
 Priscilla came and sat do^vn also. 
 
 ' ' My Lord of Burgundy, have you power to arrest Van Dysart ? ' ' 
 said Margaret. 
 
 " On what charge, Fraulein Van Eyck ? I have arrested him, 
 but have let him go at once." 
 
 "It is a great pity. Do you think that he can be arrested. 
 Van Kenning ? " 
 
 " I should think that it is veiy difficult, Margaret," said Van 
 Kenning. " Why do you ask ? " 
 
 " I hardly know why I ask," said Margaret ; " but is there no 
 chance of arresting him ? ' ' 
 
 "Fraulein Van Eyck," said the young Duke, very kindly and 
 quietly, " he will surely not be so base as to turn against me after 
 my generosity of to-day ? " 
 
 Margaret Van Eyck stood like a statue, thinking ; Van Kenning 
 went up to her and led her away quietly to another room. 
 
 "Margaret," he said, " are you relenting towards him? " 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 "Eemember, Margaret, that he killed Leon." 
 
 "I know that he sent Leon to heaven to wait for me there I 
 But it is all forgiven — all forgiven ! When we meet there we 
 shall say nothing about it all ; you will say nothing, for example." 
 
 "In heaven," said Van Kenning; "no, I shall say nothing 
 there. But here ? " 
 
 " Van Kenning, you loved me once ? " 
 
 " I love you 'to all time : as I loved you on earth so I shall love 
 
92 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 you in heaven. I have done my hest to ruin Van Dysart because 
 he killed Leon, and because I thought that you desired revenge. 
 His enemies are terrible. The man has eight or nine haters, 
 Margaret. He is hated by — attend to me — yourself, for the death 
 of Leon, by myself for the deep love I bear you ; by that mad 
 Scythian woman for her ivrongs ; by Spada the cut-throat, on 
 account of the Duke of Burgundy, who pays him ; by Sister Pris- 
 oilla for your sake ; by a few of the people, for his treatment of 
 Martina ; by the trades unions for his courtierism ; by some of the 
 peoj)le again, because they distrust him. Nothing would be more 
 easy than to ruin the man. We could do it in twenty ways." 
 
 " Van Kenning, save him ! " 
 
 "For your sake? " 
 
 " For my sake." 
 
 " It is a terribly difficult thing to do if he abuses the clemency 
 of the Duke. If he keeps quiet it may be done, but if he heads 
 the rising rebellion I do not think it is possible. Margaret." 
 
 " Yes, Van Kenning." 
 
 "We are alone here in this old room ; wiU you do something 
 for me? " 
 
 "Anything." 
 
 " Then give me one kiss — one kiss I have longed for ever since 
 I knew you —and I wiU be your slave for ever ! " 
 
 She bent up her glorious face to his and kissed him. Were there 
 such things as particular stars, the star of Van Dysart must have 
 been burning brightly now ; for Van Kenning was not a man to 
 let much grass grow between himself and his purpose. 
 
 " You do not want to marry me, dear Van Kenning ? " 
 
 " If you will give me your love I will never ask for that," said 
 Van Kenning. 
 
 " You have had that so many years, my dear, that you make 
 yourself ridiculous," said Margaret, laughing. " We shall be very 
 happy without mariying. Now we are frank and true to one 
 another as brother and sister, I will teU you why I must have that 
 man saved." 
 
 " TeU me, then." 
 
 "Because I cannot paint with enmity in my heart ; because I 
 cannot act with enmity ; because I cannot live with a solitary 
 enemy on the earth ! Hubert says the same." 
 
 "John don't," was the brusque reply of Van Kenning. "He 
 has plenty of enemies, yet he lives well and paints well." 
 
 " I do not speak of John or Marie ; I speak only of Hubert and 
 myself. I and he have forgiven Van Dysart ; help us to save 
 him." 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 93 
 
 "I wish I had known all this before," said Van Kenning. 
 " We plotted his ruin mainly for your sake. It is not easy to 
 undo a plot, Margaret, but I wiU do my best. If it wore possible 
 even now to prevent his making a fool of himself in the coming 
 insurrection we might do it. It can surely be done. "Will you 
 let me ask you one thing ? " 
 
 " All that you will do will be for the best." 
 
 " Do you mind my going and fetching Spada here ? " 
 
 " But, dear Van Kenning, he is such a great rascal." 
 
 "All the better," said Van Kenning. "He has declared for 
 Van Dysart to-night. I see consent in your eyes ; sit do^vn." 
 
 Van Kenning returned with Spada, and the three sat down on 
 chairs fronting one another. Spada bowed most reverentially to 
 Margaret Van Eyck, and began the conversation by saying, with 
 the voice and air of a perfect gentleman — 
 
 " Madam, I am afraid that you think me a sad rascal, and indeed 
 the same thing has been remarked about me before. Madam, 1 
 have sold my sword, but I give you my honour — if it is worth any- 
 thing — that I am no worse than my employers. My mother was 
 a lady, and so I know a lady when I see one. I have at your 
 disposal. Madam, a big chest, an unerring eye, and what is better 
 than aU, a very cool head. I am certainly sold to Burgundy, and 
 must keep faith with him, but otherwise I will do everything which 
 Mademoiselle Van Eyck orders me to do." 
 
 Margaret bowed, and Van Kenning said, " Spada, we wish to 
 save Van Dysart." 
 
 " Exactly," said Spada ; " I thought so. Now if you will allow 
 me to speak first we can entirely simplify matters. Would you 
 be kind enough to listen to me." 
 
 They both bowed. 
 
 " Van Dysart is in a singularly bad position, and if he makes a 
 fool of himself over this insurrection, he will lose his head. So 
 far, so good. I was hired by the Duke of Burgundy here, to help 
 in ruining this man, and have been and shall be paid for doing it. 
 Now the house of Burgundy have behaved on the whole well to me, 
 and I do not think that it would be right for me to neglect their 
 interests in any way. What follows ? I consider that I should 
 neglect their interests if I were to allow them to ruin this young 
 Van Dysart." 
 
 Here Van Kenning said, " Spada, you are awfully bold." 
 
 "I have heard that remarked before," said Spada, "but you 
 Flemings have no manners — you interrupt. I consider that I 
 should be acting against the interests of my employers if I ruined 
 this man. I also have personal feelings, and my personal feelings 
 
94 OLD MAEGABET. 
 
 are always towards a very brave man of no principle, like myself. 
 I will, therefore, try to save this man, but I must be paid." 
 
 " Well, you see," continued Spada, " that is a matter of detail. 
 I risk much because I risk my head with the house of Burgundy, 
 to which house I am sold. I shall have to steer my ship very 
 cautiously." 
 
 " Old Burgundy is away," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Quite so, but young Burgundy is here, and if you think that 
 he is not potentially as cruel as the rest of his family, you may 
 find even yourself mistaken, my Van Kenning. I am not for my 
 part quite sure that I would not as soon face his father as himself. 
 In the price, this must be looked to. The boars of Burgundy are 
 quick at charging." 
 
 " What price do you demand, Spada? " said Van Kenning. 
 
 " It is a very high one, but Mademoiselle Van Eyck can pay 
 it." 
 
 " I will give all I have," said Margaret, " and I am rich, very 
 rich. I wiU give you aU I have and earn more. Please, dear 
 Count Spada, save him, and I am sure we shall not disagree as to 
 terms. Count Spada, I am so terribly unhappy about him that I 
 cannot take the sacrament. I will give you all, I will give you 
 my jewels, I will do anything if you will save him." 
 
 Van Kenning said, "You hear this, Spada; now hear me. 
 You must not ask money from Margaret Van Eyck, ask it from 
 me. I will pay you anything." 
 
 " I do not take money from friends," said Spada, " and I must 
 be paid by Margaret Van Eyck herself. She alone can pay me." 
 
 " What do you demand of her ? " asked Van Kenning. 
 
 " Her friendship, and I hope in better times her esteem," said 
 Spada. " Madam, that is all I ask. Madam, I anticipate every 
 word which is on your lips. I must try to be better. Was that 
 not what you were going to say ? " 
 
 " It was." 
 
 " Give me your friendship, and I wiU try to be better," replied 
 Spada. " In the old times," he continued in a subdued voice, 
 " before this dreadful fight between poverty and this horrible world, 
 which Christ seems to have saved in vain, begun, I would have 
 pled for your hand. I have fallen too utterly low in my own esti- 
 mation to think of such a thing now. What maddens men in my 
 position is the thought that they are so unutterably lower than 
 women like yourself, that they dare not address them as equals. 
 Madam, you think that such sold hounds as myself cannot feel 
 their degradation, and that they have forgotten what their mothers 
 were. Madam, you are completely mistaken ; the old heaven of 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 95 
 
 domestic love is as dear to me now as it was when I was an 
 innocent boy, though the gates of it are shut for ever." 
 
 Van Kenning sat like a stone statue, but with closed eyes. 
 Margaret began sobbing. 
 
 " Spare me those tears, Margaret Van Eyck ; I can stand blood, 
 but not a woman's tears. I am not worthy of them in any way. 
 You will never know on this side of the grave what a villain I 
 have been. But Margaret Van Eyck, when we are before the 
 Judgment throne, you an angel, I a devil, say one word for me to 
 the good God — say this for me : say that I never lost my faith in 
 a good woman, and at my worst was always ready to die for one. 
 Say that for me, Margaret, and I will do anything." 
 
 Margaret bent down her head, and Van Kenning made a pre- 
 tence of looking out of the window. He tried to say to himself 
 that such a quaint mixture of ferocity and sentimentality was 
 unusual ; but it was no good ; he had had a mother himself, and 
 he had been in love ; and so he made what some people would call 
 an ass of himself; he went up perfectly dry-eyed, and put his 
 arm round the rascal Spada's neck. 
 
 Spada turned his handsome face up to his and said, " I have 
 not been good for so long, and I feel so very happy." And when 
 he said this Margaret came over to him and kissed him. " Now, 
 you two good people, this is by no means business. I am a cut- 
 throat by trade you know, and I want to know who I am to murder 
 next. Van Kenning, are you to be the next victim ? " 
 
 He said it so comically that they made beheve to laugh at his 
 joke, but Van Kenning resumed — 
 
 " We want this man saved, dear Spada." 
 
 " What do you propose ? " said Spada. 
 
 " I have not the remotest idea," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Now we are beginning to understand one another," said 
 Spada, " and I will teU you what I wiU do. I will go and find 
 him out. And I will tell you also what I will do. I wiU forbid 
 you to ask another question. Good-night! " And he was gone. 
 
 Margaret and Van Kenning went back to where the young Duke 
 was sitting, and said that Spada was gone. The prince was very 
 much surprised, but supposed it was aU well. It seemed that, as 
 a matter of detail, he had given orders that Father Peter and 
 Sister PrisciUa should be "watched." On getting into the street 
 Van Ktoning discovered that this " watching " had come to a bad 
 end. Father Peter had gone off like a lamb, but not so Sister 
 PrisciUa. For the " watching " of Sister Prisoilla there had been 
 told oif a young man of singular imbecility, but of great personal 
 strength, in reality a carpenter, but who, under the laws of those 
 
96 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 days had to serve his time as a man-at-arms to the Duke, princi- 
 pally hecause he was six feet high. The police and the mihtary 
 were one and the same thing in those times, and it was that un- 
 happy young man's turn for duty, and his duty in due rotation 
 happened to be the " watching " of Sister Priscilla. Sister Pris- 
 ciUa had known him ever since he was eight years old, and he had 
 been at a school where she taught, in fact she had taught him his 
 paters and aves — the alphabet was not taught then, it was not 
 considered safe. The boy had been, although imbecile, very obsti- 
 nate, and Sister Priscilla had frequently cuffed and banged him : 
 grown to a young man, he was detailed by the chapter of accidents 
 to " watch " Sister PrisciUa, which he did by walking close along- 
 side of her in fuU armour with a halbert. 
 
 If we have been able by our poor art to give you the slightest 
 idea of Sister PrisciUa's character, you will perceive that this 
 would be the last thing tolerated by her. She recognised the 
 young man, and ordered him off. 
 
 He declined to go, and said that he had orders from the Duke 
 to watch her. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me, Hans Dyke," she said, with con- 
 centrated fury, '•■ that that miserable little anatomy Uys young 
 Duke of Burgundy has selected the most miserable idiot in all 
 Flanders to watch vie ? Go home, you fool, or I'll make you ! " 
 
 Hans Dyke was very much afraid of her, but the people were 
 laughing at him, and he " got his back up." 
 
 " I shall do my duty," he said. 
 
 "Your duty, you miserable animal!" said Sister PrisciUa. 
 " You did but little of it to your poor old mother. You are sold 
 to Burgundy. People, he is sold to Burgundy. Are you going 
 back to the man who bought you, leaving a quiet woman in peace, 
 or are you not ? " 
 
 " You will hear from Dendermond soon, mistress," said the 
 ymiug man. 
 
 Whereupon Sister PrisciUa flew on him with such suddenness 
 and dexterity, that ho, encumbered with his armour, went down, 
 and he, moreover, went one way and his halbert another. The 
 spectacle of a man-at-arms being accidentaUy knocked down by a 
 nun, was very exciting and dehghtful to the people, but not a soul 
 interfered. The word "Dendermond" had been uttered, and it 
 was enough for them. 
 
 Van Kenning came up when the nun and the soldier were face 
 to face, after having risen. Van Kenning, looking round on the 
 people, took the nun's arm, and at once there was dead silence. 
 Dragooned so terribly as they were, the people had got a political 
 
OLD MARGARET. 97 
 
 insight into matters which the pcoiDle have not now. In the wilder 
 dubs that night (we use the word club before it was invented) the 
 great fact was that there had been a fracas between a soldier and 
 the republican Sister Priscilla ; that Van Kenning had come up 
 and taken the arm of the nun, not that of the soldier. Van 
 Kenning the man of the people, was still for the Church. But 
 what would Van Dysart say ? 
 
 Then in the night at the drinking-houses the matter was argued 
 over again. Van Kenning was obviously for the Church as well 
 as for the people ; Van Kenning was the bosom-friend of the 
 Archbishop, he was the bosom-friend of Burgundy himself ; it was 
 not well of him so ostentatiously to take the nun's part ; yet she 
 was a most notoriously patriotic nun, and had fought a man-at- 
 arms single-handed, and had beaten him ; was the man of the 
 people Van Kenning or Van Dysart ? Once more, where icas 
 Van Dysart ? 
 
 So the clubs and trades unions agitated through the night. In 
 the Judenstrasse Club, a haggard patriot rose and moved that Van 
 Kenning was unworthy of the people's confidence because he had 
 touched a nun. An old man of the Guild of Shoemakers pointed 
 out that she was a democratic nun, known for her vigorous defiance 
 of the house of Burgundy, and the haggard patriot withdrew his 
 motion, with sundry growls. 
 
 The "clubs " sat all that night, and instead of organising a 
 system of resistance to the mercenaries who might arrive at any 
 moment from Dendermond, spent their time in arguing over a 
 possible republic. Alas ! have we not seen the thing more 
 recently ? In the Milkenstrasse the club sat very late — in fact, 
 that club voted itself into " permanent session." Old Pere Gobet, 
 a tanner, in his working clothes, with stained dress and stained 
 hands, was on the platform, hammering away, in a blunt hard- 
 headed manner, about the rights of capital and the rights of 
 labour. He was on the dais, with a curtain behind him, and he 
 had his audience in comj)lete attention, when he was interrupted 
 by a roar from every throat in the haU, and at the same moment 
 he felt a hand upon his shoulder. As he stood dazed among the 
 maddened cheers, the old tanner saw what had ha]ppened, and he 
 sat down. 
 
 What had happened ? Why, only a very old story — Whig and 
 workman. While the old man was speaking, a beautiful young 
 man, dressed in scarlet velvet and white, had come in from behind 
 the cm'tain and laid his white jewelled hand on the old tanner's 
 shoulder. Need we say that it was Van Dysart ? 
 
 It was so, and the die was cast so far as Van Dysart was con- 
 
 8 
 
98 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 cerned. The diamonds and rubies on his fingers looked a little 
 strange on the shoulders of the brown old tanner ; but what odds ? 
 Fine clothes are fine clothes, and folks wiU follow them. The 
 tanner, although a very sensible and excellent man, was nowhere 
 now. Scarlet velvet, personal beauty, and diamonds, against a 
 sensible old tanner who had given up washing as a bad job years 
 ago I It was Lombard Street to a China orange. 
 
 Van Dysart seemed to have the whole power over the meeting 
 in his own hands ; but some of the older folks remembered that 
 the old tanner, instead of coming dovm into the body of the hall, 
 went back through the curtains, and these people aver that 
 he was there and then met by a gentleman in dark-coloured 
 silk and minever, whom most of these old people believe to be Van 
 Kenning, tliough one old lady held out on her very death-bed that 
 it was the devil, to whom the tanner had sold his soul for twenty- 
 four dozen of unsortcd hides. Putting two and two together 
 editorially, I am of opinion that it was not the devil, but only Van 
 Kenning. I think before we have done, that you wiU agree with 
 me. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 We are afi-aid that part of this chapter wiU be, to a certain extent, 
 painful ; but it had loest been writteu. There is nothing shocking 
 or in any way improper in it, but it must be followed, because it 
 accounts for the appearance of Van Kenning at the revolutionary 
 meeting, and for the fact of his carrying away the tanner in the 
 singular way in which he did. 
 
 Van Kenning, when he left the Van Eycks and Philip of 
 Burgundy, was fairly puzzled. He had gone away promising to 
 find Van Dysart and give him good advice, and so he naturally 
 bent his steps towards Van Dysart' s house, with the most perfect 
 certainty that he would not be there. 
 
 The house of Van Dysart had its door open, by which fact Van 
 Kenning knew at once that its master was not in ; but he entered 
 and waUicd up the great staircase. At the top, as he anticipated, 
 he found two grown men and a boy, rolled in rugs, each on a 
 separate stair, with their swords beside them, forming a perfectly 
 impassable barrier to any thief, but showing also that Van Dysart 
 did not disti-ust the people, because he had left his front door 
 open. 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 99 
 
 The young man on the lower step was asleep, but the young 
 man on the next step was awake, talking to the page, who was 
 on the step immediately above him. Van Kenning, with oat-like 
 tread, approached them, for the faces of the two waking figures 
 were turned from him. 
 
 " Hans, you are vn-ong," said the footman to the page. 
 
 " Likely enough, Jan," said the page ; " but we must find a 
 new sei-vice soon." 
 
 " He is rich," said Jan. 
 
 "Burgundy wiU cure him of that," said Hans, "after to- 
 night's work." 
 
 " Where has he gone, Jan ? " 
 
 "How should I know?" said the page. "I want to go to 
 sleep." 
 
 " Come, pretty lad, tell me. You know, for you were with him, 
 and he sent you home. Tell me where ho went, and I will treat 
 you at the lustgarten, and we will have oysters and wine, and you 
 shall see the play." 
 
 The listening Van Kenning drew back. I think I can see him 
 now, with one foot on one stair of the second flight of stairs, and 
 the other advanced above it. Out of sight, and nearly in darkness, 
 he had made his retreat just in time, for these fellows, as he knew, 
 were paid to lie, and they earned their wages. Had he wakened 
 them and challenged them, they would never have told him where 
 their master was. This leaky young page would let out more to 
 his fellow- servant than he would to fifty Van Kennings. 
 
 The page resumed — 
 
 " I should get my throat cut if I told you." 
 
 "Your throat cut? you little ass!" said the footman; "he 
 dares not stir. He may have his throat cut, but I would be safer 
 if I killed him, than if he killed me. Why, young Burgundy 
 arrested him to-night, and let him go in scoru. Why, Van 
 Kenning has gone against him, and vowed his ruin. / heard him 
 do so in the Duke's barge a year ago, when I was one of the Duke's 
 rowers. That Italian, Spada, is gone against him. The Van 
 Eycks are against him. He has not one friend in the whole 
 world. Why, the Scythian woman, Martina, has gone against 
 him, and vowed his ruin." 
 
 " Jan," said Hans. 
 
 " Well, pretty," said Jan. 
 
 " You will take me to the play ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You wiU give me a whole cake of the English honey 
 cake ? " 
 
100 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 " I will. Now, where has he gone ? " 
 
 "To Martina, to the Macdonald woman. I left him there," 
 said the page. 
 
 The footman at once uprose, saying, " This is money ; yon shall 
 have all I have promised, and more. Were you there when they 
 met?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "How did she take him?" 
 
 " Why," said the page, softened hy promises of presents, 
 " they kept on kissing, and so I couldn't hear all. Now, I want 
 to go to sleep ; I don't know anything more." 
 
 The young footman, trained to rascality from his boyhood, was 
 perfectly ready to sell his master ; but a more dexterous hand was 
 in the matter than his. A patrol of the men-at-arms was coming 
 along this veiy street (indeed, there were citizen patroles in every 
 street in those days), when the Dogberry of the watch found him- 
 self confronted by Van Kenning. 
 
 " You know me ? " said ^^an Kcuuing. 
 
 Dogbon-y laughed, and turned to his men as if he should say, 
 " Councillor Van Kenning must lia\e his joke ; " and the men all 
 roared with laughter in concert. 
 
 " I want a man arrested at once. I wiU accuse him to-morrow 
 morning. He comes from the house of Van Dysart. I charge 
 you to an-est him at once ; here he comes." 
 
 And so the young footman, coming out of Van Dysart's house 
 with a wild purpose of knocking up the Duke of Burgundy in the 
 middle of the night, to lay his accusation against his master, 
 found himself quietly arrested, and shut up in jail, without the 
 least idea about what he had been doing. 
 
 " There is one out of the way," thought Van Kenning ; and 
 then he turned to Dogberry. "I see you have three men left. I 
 wish you to come with me into Van Dysart's house." 
 
 Dogberry was only too delighted, for Dogberiy was rather 
 between the devil and the deep sea : on the one side the people, 
 on the other the great house of Burgundy and the mercenaries at 
 Dendermond. Poor Dogberry had a very sad time of it just then ; 
 and indeed the same may be said of all Dogberries. Dogberry 
 was terribly glad to find such a " safe " man on both sides of the 
 hedge as Van Kenning. He would have " sta3-ed the Duke him- 
 self," under the authority of Van Kenning. 
 
 The page on the upper stair had gone to sleep, and the young 
 man on the third stair had never awakened. But they woke now, 
 for clank, clank up the staircase came the town guard — a sound 
 which awakened every one in those days. The young man and 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 101 
 
 the boy were both dazed as they rose from their sleep, and saw 
 Yiin Kenning, whom they knew well, within three stairs of them. 
 
 " Let the young man alone, hut seize the boy," said Van 
 Kenning. 
 
 Dogberry at once did his office on the boy, with a great rehef 
 to his mind ; for the young man had a sword, not to mention an 
 arrangement of knives equal to that of any Highlandman, which 
 Dogberry's soul loathed. 
 
 " Now, you young scoundrel ! " said Van Kenning ; " we have 
 got you at last." 
 
 He had never seen or hoard of the boy before ; but having been 
 for many years a police magistrate, he knew what he was about. 
 To his unutterable astonishment, the boy defied him. 
 
 " I'll say nothing," said the boy ; "he has been a good master 
 to me, and I'll say nothing. I'd tell Jan, but I will not say a 
 single word." 
 
 Dogberry looked as if he was going to speak ; but Van Kenning 
 gave him a look which even Dogberry understood ; and he was 
 silent. Van Kenning said — 
 
 " Come here to me, boy. We know everything ; we know that 
 your master took you to the woman Martina's house to-night ; 
 we know that they have made friends together ; we know that 
 your master is ruined, and that it is in your hands to save him. 
 Come, my boy, speak out." 
 
 The boy began to cry. 
 
 " That is right," said Van Kenning to Dogberry, in a whisper. 
 " My boy, I want you to tell me this : do you know a little grey 
 dog ? — a little Scotch dog ? I want that little dog very much ; 
 and you shall go free without betraying your master, if you will tell 
 me where that little grey dog is." 
 
 It was fearfully sharp practice on Van Kenning's part ; but now 
 that the boy's honour was aroused about his master, it was the 
 only thing to be done. Van Kenning knew that the dog was not 
 with the Van Eycks, or with Father Peter, or Sister Priscilla, and 
 so he suspected that it might be with the Macdonald woman. 
 Hence he put the question to the boy, whom he saw to be in a 
 state of nervous anger and obstinacy ; and his bait took. 
 
 ' ' I know the dog well, ' ' said the boy, frankly, through his 
 tears. " It's the best dog that ever lived. The young Scotchman 
 who was killed told me that there were no dogs like Scotch dogs. 
 I wanted to have the dog myself, but if my master is ruined, as 
 you say, I have no home for it, for I must go into the army. 
 Will you give the dog a home, and a good one ? I wiU tell you 
 where she is." 
 
102 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 "At Mistress Martina Macdonald's," said Dogberry, with an 
 exasperating smile. 
 
 "Oh, yon infernal fool!" exclaimed Van Kenning. "Why 
 did the First Cause ever admit such idiots as you into the 
 Cosmos ? Look here, pretty lad ! wiU you toU me where this 
 little dog is ? I wiU promise that it shall do no harm to your 
 master ; I will promise that it shall do him all good." 
 
 The boy thought, and said — 
 
 " Van Kenning, all men speak well of you. I'll tell you the 
 whole truth. The dog is with the Macdonald woman, the mad 
 woman, at No. 3 of the Judenstrasse." 
 
 " You have saved your master, my lad," said Van Kenning, " if 
 that is any comfort to you. Dogberry, go away ; you are a great 
 fool!" 
 
 DogbeiTy pondered deeply over these last words ; but he has 
 not realised them yet. The page went home and slept on the 
 staircase ; but Van Kenning was on the track of Martina, and was 
 not long in following it. At this point, I am compelled to say, 
 as I did at the beginning of the chapter, that although there 
 might be some things which were painful, there would be nothing 
 to shock any one. 
 
 Van Dysart, in his rage and fmy, after his aiTest and con- 
 temptuous dismissal by young Burgundy, had thro\vn eveiything 
 to the winds, and gone back to the only woman he had ever truly 
 loved — the Macdonald woman. I do not for an instant defend 
 either him or her ; they were both fearful sinners. I only say 
 that the thing has hajjpcnod more than once. When the rascal. 
 Van Dysart, saw the ground going from under his feet, he went 
 back to the woman he had ruined, asked her forgiveness, and told 
 her that he would die for her. It is all \vi'ong, and as bad as any- 
 thing can be, and one hates speaking of such a thing. Their sins 
 towards one another, however, have ceased for ever in this world. 
 We are very sorry to have written this, but we have seen it happen 
 on two occasions, and so it stands. 
 
 CHAPTEK XXII. 
 
 JjY no means was Van Kenning the man to let the grass grow 
 under his feet, and ho was soon knocking at the door of No. 3, 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 103 
 
 Judenstrasse. It was very quioldy opened by no less a woman 
 than the Macdonald, who shall be called Martina no longer. 
 
 "Woman," he said, eagerly, "I beg you, if you hope for 
 mercy, to tell me whore is Van Dysart. Come, girl, you know 
 me for a trusty and, I think, kindly man. Do tell me, girl, for 
 I wish to save him." 
 
 ^"My husband has gone to the Milkenstrasse Club, Van 
 Kenning." 
 
 " Your husband ! " 
 
 " He has married me to-night, and in future I am Frau Van 
 Dysart," she said. 
 
 " Good heaven ! " 
 
 "So 7 say," said the woman, whom we must now call Frau 
 Van Dysart. "All the weaiy old wickedness is over and done 
 with for ever." 
 
 "Let me in, Frau Van Dysart," said Van Kenning. "You 
 and I must talk." She at once led him into a little room, and sat 
 down before him, silent. " Is it trae ? " he said, aghast. 
 
 "It is perfectly true," she said. "Whatever I have boon, I 
 have never been a liar. Here is my wedding-ring," she added, 
 holding out her hand. 
 
 This was an utterly new and confounding complication for Van 
 Kenning ; but his brain was very quick, and he was not long in 
 thinking out the problem. 
 
 " Frau Van Dysart, how did this happen ? " he began. 
 
 She replied — - 
 
 " You had all vowed to hunt him to his death about his duel 
 with Leon. He knew it, and he got desperate, and the gross 
 insult of the young Duke to-day drove him frantic. It was the 
 darkest hour. He looked round the world and saw that he had 
 no friend, and so he came away to me and laid his head here." 
 She pointed to her bosom, and Van Kenning was silent for a time, 
 with an awful silence. 
 
 Frau Van Dysart went on — " His ruin was absolutely certain, 
 that he knew. He knew that if he could pacify the pale-faced 
 Margaret, the rascal Spada, and the gentle Hubert Van Eyck, 
 there would still remain young Burgundy, John Van Eyck, and 
 yourself to iniin him. He lost hope altogether, and so he came 
 to me, and I told him all was forgiven between us, and that at 
 least we could die together. He is gone to the club at the 
 Milkenstrasse." 
 
 " Frau Van Dysart " 
 
 " We were married by a priest to-night. Ho put his weary, 
 worn, handsome head on my bosom and told me all, and I forgave 
 
104 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 him, aud he forgave me. The priests say that there is no many 
 ing or giving in marriage in heaven; but that is no matter to 
 me. We are one soul, and not two, for all eternity. I could 
 have killed him ouce, for I am a Highland woman ; but I will 
 die for him now, and live in heaven with him afterwards." 
 
 " Frau Van Dysart " 
 
 " I hear you. Let me talk, and then I will listen to you. 
 Because a pale-faced boy is killed is he to be hunted to ruin ? 
 Because every one is in love with Margaret Van Eyok, must he 
 pay all the penalty ? A feud is a feud, but marriage stops a feud. 
 I am married, and the feud is over. Margaret is the best of 
 women, and the feud is over with her." 
 
 " Frau Van Dysart- — " 
 
 " For the third time, Van Kenning, I will listen." 
 
 " I have known very many Scotchmen in various regiments," 
 said Van Kenning, " and I have always admired them. One 
 thing I have never missed in them, and that thing it shrewd, 
 hard common-sense. "Will you be kind enough to talk business 
 with me ? ' ' 
 
 Van Dysart's wife, in her new position, was prepared for any 
 amount of business ; but, as a matter of detail, her little dog was 
 shut out, and she asked might she get him. Van Dysart said, 
 " Certainly," and the little grey Scotch dog was brought in and 
 slapped, and set on a stool, where it sat as good as gold, and 
 listened to the singuLar conversation which followed. 
 
 "Frau Van Dysart," began Van Kenning, " you will not deny 
 that at one time there was the most deadly enmity between your- 
 self and Van Dysart." 
 
 She bowed and said, " That is certainly true, but it is all passed. 
 I remember when the priests tried to teach us Latin there was a 
 quotation — " 
 
 "I think I know it," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Amantium iraa amoris integratio est." 
 
 " That is the quotation," said Frau Van Dysart, " but this is 
 not business." 
 
 " The interniption came from you," said Van Kenning. "I 
 will allow that at one time there was a very strong combination 
 against your husband. What is the matter. Madam ? " 
 
 " Only the new word husband : to think that an honest man 
 like you should speak of Van Dysart as my husband. I thank 
 you ; you are the first man who has recognised me ; I will do 
 anything you like now. Be silent for a moment, I will be quiet 
 
OLD MARGARET. 103 
 
 directly. _ Mother ! mother ! your daughter is saved from sin for 
 all eternity." 
 
 Van Kenning, who happened to be practically a Protestant, did 
 not see his way to the theory, but he spoke like a leal and trusty 
 soul. 
 
 "I was not speaking of the consequences of your own actions, 
 Madam, I was merely thinking about Van Dysart, and I was 
 saying — when you advanced the comparatively new theory of 
 forgiveness of God by formula — that there was at one time a very 
 strong combination against your husband. That combination was 
 formed by yourself, myself, Burgundy, Spada, the Van Eycks, 
 and a mad nun and a mad priest ; will you attend to business, 
 and go through them with me, because, Madam, we all want to 
 save your husband." 
 
 " I will go through them," said she. 
 
 " The thing began in this way," said Van Kenning. " Mar- 
 garet said that she wanted vengeance for the murder — though it 
 way a fair duel — of Leon." 
 
 '■ Did Margaret Van Eyck ever ask for vengeance ? " skid Van 
 Dysart's wife. 
 
 " It is perfectly certain." 
 
 " It was very unlike her," said Fran Van Dysart. 
 
 " You see. Madam, that she would never have said a word to 
 you on the subject." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 " I want," continued Van Kenning, " to disabuse your mind — 
 and his — on one point. There was a terribly strong combination 
 against him at one time, and only three enemies remain : of these 
 three two can be easily removed, the third and last is the most 
 powerful and the most terrible." 
 
 " Tell me about these three enemies then," said Frau Van 
 Dysart. 
 
 " I will tell yon about all," said he. " Spada has forgiven him 
 for his courage : Margaret and Hubert out of their love : I for 
 my love for the Van Eycks, and you — his most desperate and 
 deadly enemy — because he has become sentimental to you once 
 more. That last is a good thing, and takes a deal of trouble off 
 our hands." 
 
 "I see three enemies left," said Frau Van Dysart. " Who 
 are they?" 
 
 " Sister PrisciUa and Father Peter." 
 
 " But they are for the people." 
 
 "Also for the Church, and the Archbishop is with them. I 
 am not sure of them one way or the other. I cannot trust them : 
 
106 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 they are always at confession, confessing sins they never com- 
 mitted to worse sinners than ever they were." 
 
 "But," said Frau Van Dysart, "we can easily manage those 
 two. Who is the third and last enemy ? " 
 
 "Burgundy." 
 
 " Ha ! I see," she said ; " that is very serious." 
 
 "It is more than serious," said Van Dysart. " The anger of 
 Burgundy means utter and irretrievable ruin. Are you beginning 
 to foUow me? " 
 
 " I have followed you from the first," she said. 
 
 " Will you help us to save him ? " 
 
 " Can you ask me if I will save my own husband ? " she 
 replied. 
 
 " Give me your hand then," said Van Kenning, and he told 
 Margaret after, what a very pretty little hand it was, 
 
 "If things had been othenvise," he said to her, "matters 
 might have been different between us, but I am glad this has 
 come about. Madam, young Burgundy is very angry. Madam, 
 the young Burgundy is one of those good-natured devUs who 
 would not go out of his way to save his own mother from being 
 burnt alive as a witch." 
 
 " I know that," she replied. 
 
 " He is horribly angry, and he comes of a furious house. 
 He only let Van Dysart go free this afternoon to ruin him most 
 utterly." 
 
 " I wish that I had known that before," she said, " but I did 
 not see it. Would it do any good if I was to assassinate young 
 Burgundy." 
 
 " It would be worse than no use whatever," said Van Kenning, 
 as if it were a mere matter of business. " You could not do it, 
 and Spada is away to Dendermond to fetch the troops. It is idle 
 to think of such a thing. Young Burgundy is the only important 
 enemy which Vau Dysart has, save himself, and Burgundy must 
 be bouijht." 
 
 " Who is to pay the money ? " said she. 
 
 " Oh, I will pay the money for Margaret's sake," said Van 
 Kenning. "It is not a matter of money, the matter is this. 
 Have we time to prevent his committing himself to this lunatic 
 insurrection." 
 
 " Van Kenning, we are nearly, if not quite too late. I have 
 ruined him at last. Why were you not here before ? " 
 
 " Because I am not two men," said Van Kenning. "Brush 
 up your intellect, and see how we can in any way save him. Did 
 you actually send him to the Milkcnstrasse Club ? " 
 
OLD MABGAEET. 107 
 
 "I did." 
 
 " You had better have cut his head off his shoulders. That 
 youug Philip is quite as cruel a hound as his father, but we 
 may buy your husband off, and get him to England ; and the 
 young dog Burgundy is a coward, and so we may frighten hun. 
 These are our only chances. We must be very quick, or all will 
 be lost. Young Burgundy let him go to-day that he might commit 
 himself more deeply, and by now he has done the very thing 
 Burgundy wanted him to do. Come girl, we want to save him ; 
 teU me how." 
 
 " Let me think for ten minutes," she said. 
 
 Van Kenning sat looking at her, and thinking how weirdly 
 beautiful she was with this new life opened before her. After five 
 minutes, she looked at him and said, " Spada is away to Dender- 
 mond ? " and he said " Yes." Before the ten minutes were over 
 slie said to him, " Come away," and he followed her into the 
 street. 
 
 They were both bent on undoing the evil they had done to one 
 man, and they worked with a will. Margaret Van Eyck — the 
 cause of it all — had got wax candles before her easel, and was 
 painting away on the left side of the great picture, on the minever 
 and velvet of Van Kenning. She was late down the next morn- 
 ing, and spoke of her " hard night's work " to Marie, John Van 
 Eyck's wife. But neither of them knew the night's work which 
 Van Kenning and the Macdonald woman were doing for the 
 State. 
 
 "Go to the Milkenstrasse Club, and catch Gobet the tanner," 
 she said, after a short conversation ; " I will go away and warn 
 the people. I can manage much, you can manage the rest." 
 
 It was a very strange night's work indeed. Van Dysart's wife 
 was about everywhere among the working population, showing her 
 wedding ring to the women, and praising her new husband to the 
 skies for his noble and honourable conduct towards her. She 
 told all the women how kind and gentle he had always been to 
 her, and how badly she had behaved to him. She was now, she 
 pointed out, Frau Van Dysart, and a lady ; the wife of the man 
 who had stood before Burgundy beside the good Van Kenning on 
 the side of the people, and she always added to this that Van 
 Dysart said they must wait, only for a little time, but that they 
 must wait. Both Van Kenning and Van Dysart, now good 
 friends, said that they must wait. 
 
 One loud-mouthed fishwoman said that they had waited long 
 enough, and were going to wait no longer. She — the fishwoman 
 —was an honest woman, and no draggletail. She went on to say 
 
108 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 that when women like the woman before them maiTiod gentlemen, 
 they deserted the people, and, in short, gave a slight sketch of 
 the brand new Frau Van Dysart by no means flattering. 
 
 The poor Frau Van Dysart trembled, and thought that it 
 was aU over with her ; when another lady came forward, and 
 said — 
 
 " She has lived an iU life, and who is the best or the worst 
 among us ? It is evident that Van Dysart is with us, for he has 
 ruined himself with the house of Burgundy by marrying her. 
 Let us take it for granted that the woman speaks truth, and let 
 us trust our old friends, Van Dysart and Van Kenning. Van 
 Dysart is a rascal ; I would say that to his face ; but he has done 
 right by this woman at the risk of his head. I say with her, 
 ' wait.' " 
 
 It was at about the third or fourth gathering of women that 
 this occurred ; it was in a drinking house, probably not of the 
 most select character ; aud a voice near the door was heard to 
 exclaim — 
 
 " Where are the men ? " 
 
 It was hard to say ; scarcely any were there, and the women 
 dividing, saw Sister Priscilla, who was evidently in a very bad 
 temper. 
 
 " Go, you cackhng idiots, and get your husbands and brothers 
 home ; there must he no rising to-night. Spada is close by from 
 Dendemiond with the troops, and we are not ready. I have been 
 talking to Van Kenning and Van Dysart, and it is not to be yet. 
 Go after your husbands and brothers ! " 
 
 EveiT word of this was utterly untrue, but I sujjpose that she 
 confessed and was absolved. The real truth is, that she had 
 been with Margaret Van Eyck, and that Margaret had put by her 
 painting, kissed her, and prayed her to go and see that Van 
 Dysart did not make a fool of himself; after which Margaret, 
 like most artists, had gone out of herself once more, and with 
 her wax candles had gone on painting Van Kenning's minever. 
 
 "Why do you grumble at this '? Margaret was a good woman 
 and a shrewd woman ; but for such high work as that of the two 
 brothers and sister Van Eyck, repose is necessary. We hate as 
 much as any one the spectacle of a twopenny novelist or a two- 
 penny poet neglecting his affairs for the pui-pose of -^vriting a little 
 better ; but in the case of great genius considerable latitude 
 should be given. People like the Van Eyoks should not in any way 
 be troubled by sublunary affairs at certain times (and indeed they 
 Avere not, with the exception of John, who insisted on having his 
 finger into every pie before it was baked). Great geniuses in these 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 109 
 
 days, again, ought not to be in any way troubled by pecuniary 
 matters or other, but should be pensioned by the State. But we 
 get out of the difficulty in this way now : we have no great 
 geniuses, and if we had, the publishers and picture dealers would 
 pay them. If a man can wiite well or paint well, he will get 
 quite as well paid by the " trade " as ever he was by any prince 
 who over lived. But the worst of it is that the " trade '"' pay so 
 well that there is a temptation to "scamping" work — a thing 
 which the Van Eycks never did. And so we leave Margaret at 
 her easel — for a time. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The adventures of Van Kenning on this wonderful night were 
 scarcely less singular than those of a modern War Correspondent. 
 He made for the club at the Milkenstrasse, and tried to force his 
 way in at the back-door through the crowd, whereupon he was 
 promptly collared by Dogberry in the dark, and told that he 
 would be brought up for judgment the next morning before him- 
 self. 
 
 " Van Kenning," said Dogberry, with his hand on Van 
 Kenning's collar, " has his faults. He goes too strong after 
 the peojsle, he is always after M. Van Eyck ; but he gives just 
 judgments, and is a friend to the police. He will give a just 
 judgment on you, my lad ! " 
 
 Van Kenning stmggled away from Dogberry, and the mistake 
 was explained. Dogberry was full of explanations, but all that 
 Van Kenning said was — 
 
 " I want Gobet the tanner, you fool ! " 
 
 " Gobet the tanner?" said Dogberry. "It is a wicked and 
 foolish world, to think that I should have laid hands on his 
 honour's sacred person, and told his honour that I would arraign 
 his honour before liis honour's own self." 
 
 "If you don't teU me where Gobet the tanner is, I shall be 
 an-aigned for your murder before the Duke to-morrow morning." 
 
 Dogberry laughed loudly ; his honour would always have his 
 joke. 
 
 Van Kenning got quiet with the fool at once. 
 
 "Look here, my man ! " he said. "You know me; and if 
 you don't take me to the tanner at once you shaU lose your office 
 to-morrow moming." 
 
110 OLD MAEGARET. 
 
 Dogberry was himself directly, and by some narrow passages 
 he got behind the arras on the dais just in time to see Van Dysart 
 before him, prepared to go before the audience. He ran forward 
 and clutched his arm — 
 
 " Van Dysart," he said, " do not be a madman ! " 
 
 " Do not you be a villain ! " said Van Dysart. " All is known 
 to me now. Can you deny that you were in the plot against my 
 life?" 
 
 " I do not deny it," said Van Kenning, " but I am not now." 
 
 " Liar ! you wish for time, that Spada may bring the troops 
 up and rain us." 
 
 The next moment he was on the dais and before the people, 
 while Gobet the tanner was with him. 
 
 " Gobet," said Van Kenning, "the matter is quite hopeless, 
 but I want to save him." 
 
 "You?" 
 
 " Yes, he must be saved ; and we for the present must 
 submit." 
 
 " I trust you," said Gobet ; " you never lie." 
 
 " To show you how little I lie, Gobet," said Van Kenning, " I 
 will teU you this. It is going aU over the town that Spada wiU 
 bring up troops from Dendermond to-night. That is an utter 
 lie ; he cannot be here under three days. If the people choose 
 to rise to-night, they can hold the town and sack Burgundy's 
 palace ! " 
 
 " You are drunk, Van Kenning," said Gobet. 
 
 " I usually am," said Van Kenning, sneering. 
 
 " And yet you recommend no rising ? " 
 
 " Most assuredly so. You would bring the wi'ath of old Bur- 
 gundy on you, and where are you then ? " 
 
 The old man stroked his chin. 
 
 " We can fight," he said. 
 
 "And be beaten," added Van Kenning; "you have no 
 leader." 
 
 "Van Dysart?" 
 
 "He I" said Van Kenning; "a dicing, dandy swordsman. 
 Why, you had better have bought Spada before the Duke bought 
 him." 
 
 "You," said Gobet. 
 
 " I know as much about fighting as a hare does of killing dogs. 
 Besides, you will be certain to lose, and have the town burnt 
 about your ears. You had much better wait ; young Burgundy 
 is frightened, and will yield all we want under my pressure. I 
 tell you plainly that if you and Van Dysart hound out the people 
 
OLD MARGARET IH 
 
 now to commit themselves, everything is lost. Have I ever been 
 unfaithful to the people ? " 
 
 " Never, Van Kenning, never ! " said Gobet. " The people 
 trust you, but I do not see what we are to do." 
 
 " Then I do," said Van Kenning. " "We are both bound by 
 the same terrible vow. As master of your lodge. Brother Gobet, I 
 order you instantly to go and get together ten or twelve young 
 Freemasons, to take them to the Garolus Magnus Lodge, and to 
 wait for me." 
 
 AU the time that Van Kenning had been talking to the old 
 man, he had been thinking how the matter was to be done. Five 
 minutes before this wonderful order was given he remembered 
 that the man was a Mason, and saw the enormous power in his 
 hands, for Masonry was a real power in those days — greater, 
 infinitely greater, than trades unionism is now. Gobet departed 
 on his errand without one word. 
 
 The Carolus Magnus Lodge was one rather affected by extreme 
 democrats, and Van Kenning was this year Master, while the 
 younger Burgundy was Master of the Apollo, or " swell " lodge. 
 Van Dysart had made a little political capital of belonging to the 
 Carolus Magnus ; in fact, he had induced Spada to join the 
 Carolus Magnus, and Spada, whose sole object it was to hear as 
 much as he could, had done so with perfect willingness. As 
 there are no secrets among Masons, and as Philippe le Bon was 
 also a Mason, it is extremely probable that confidences may have 
 passed between Spada and yomig Burgundy, which put that very 
 clever and selfish young gentleman on his guard. It is all very 
 well to say that after the lodge is tiled, and the Master is sitting 
 on the cold gridiron (the gridiron not being needed in its hot 
 state for apprentices), that no politics are talked. Such is by no 
 means the ease. We wiU divulge no secrets ; but we have Jseen 
 told that Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli were as freely handled 
 after the lodge was tiled, the organ playing, and the mysterious 
 fire burning under the Master's nose, as ever they were elsewhere. 
 We have also heard that the characters of the brothers of other 
 lodges are discussed pretty freely ; nay, we have heard that other 
 lodges were suspended, as a whole, in the most violent way. But 
 we shall have the Grand Master down on us if we go on. We only 
 wish to say that Van Dysart knew that he was utterly out of 
 favour with the ApoUo Lodge — many brother Masons had most 
 fraternally told him that — and so when he got a note in a lady's 
 hand just as he came ofi' the dais after making an inflammatory 
 speech, begging him to go at once to the Carolus Magnus Lodge, 
 he went at once. 
 
112 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 Van Kenning had just got that note written by a young woman 
 in a tavern, and she gave it to him as he came out, and fled. 
 The poor girl would have done anything for the piece of gold 
 which Van Kenning gave her. Van Dysart went to the Carolus 
 Magnus Lodge and went in. Dogberry saw him go ; but neither 
 Dogberry nor any other of the general public ever saw him come 
 out again. 
 
 The lodge was sitting when he made the necessary signals, and 
 he got in. He was rather surprised to see Van Kenning in his 
 fuU robes on the gridiron, and to find Grand Sword and the 
 A. K. H. B. with their backs against the door. He could not 
 make out the reason also while the P. 0. F. had on all his robes, 
 and carried not only his battle-axe, but his sword of St. John, 
 and another sword which we cannot mention here. Van Dysart 
 thought he would sit down; but the P. 0. F. forbade him, and 
 ordered him to go before Van Kenning. 
 
 " You masquerading asses," he cried, on a sudden, " this is no 
 true lodge. I appeal to the Grand Master. Van Kenning, you 
 are a false Mason ; you are no Koyal Arch, and the P. 0. F. is 
 no Templar. I protest against such an iniquity against all true 
 and real masonry. This is a plot, a blasphemy, against our holy 
 craft ! " 
 
 " Brother," said Van Kenning to the P. 0. F. But we cannot 
 say what Van Kenning said. They had made a mistake and 
 they rectified it, upon which Van Dysart submitted. 
 
 "You know our rules," said Van Kenning. "The lodge is 
 tiled and in order. Brothers, seize that man ! " 
 
 The young men brought by Gobet surrounded Van Dysart, and 
 he saw that resistance was quite hopeless ; but he took things 
 seriously still. 
 
 " What are the charges against me ? I demand a hearing." 
 
 " You must hear them before the Grand Master," said Van 
 Kenning, bursting into laughter. " Why, Van Dysart, my boy, 
 we would not hurt a hair of your head. Take the villain away, 
 you young men, and see that he wants for nothing. Van Dysart, 
 you will not go out walking for a fortnight. Will you have my 
 old Burgundy for your drink, or shall I send in some of the 
 Portugal wine ? Take him to the dungeon, young men, and mind 
 that he does not escape." 
 
OLD MAEGABET. 113 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Awfully fierce was Van Dysart at being " sold " iu tliis way by 
 the Freemasons, with Van Kenning at their head ; but there were 
 a good many things to be thought of. He had got out of a 
 present scrape through Van Kenning's well-timed friendship, and 
 by Van Kenning's quaint idea of using the formulas of Free- 
 masonry against him, yet 
 
 He had still some terrible enemies, and he knew now that 
 young Philip of Burgundy was the worst. He had played his 
 cards and lost. The people would rise, and he would not be 
 there ; that would ruin him with them. As for Burgundy, be 
 would never forgive. The matter seemed so entirely hopeless, 
 that if he could have broken out of the room where he was, he 
 would have cast everything to the winds and acted up to the 
 infuriated speech which he had made that night, and which would 
 be his destruction. 
 
 And that poor girl too, now his wife, what on earth would 
 become of her ? He had no power to guide, advise, or caution 
 her ; and all his old love for her had come back tenfold ; for 
 when he thought that all the world was against him, and that he 
 was a lost, ruined, hunted hound, this woman had taken him 
 back. He would have died for her now, restless, frantic, wild as 
 she was. It was absolutely maddening. When he thought of 
 her hopeless, helpless future, he left caring for himself at aU. 
 Men of his stamp are perfectly capable of going to any length for 
 a woman who will prove her love by sticking to them in their 
 darkest hour. 
 
 The poor fellow's heart had been softened once that day by 
 this woman, and by the simijle service which the priest had read 
 to them about their mutual duties. It was softened again now 
 when he thought of her. After his furious fit he became quieter, 
 and thought now, not how he could help himself, but how he 
 could help her. It seemed hopeless, and he said, "If God does 
 not help us, there is none on earth who can." 
 
 He saw that Van Kenning meant him well — that he was forced 
 to confess, even in his anger against him. He believed that 
 Van Kenning had practised this ruse upon him to save him from 
 being at the rising that, night ; but he well knew that Van 
 Kenning never could get him out of the country, through the 
 spies of Burgundy. When he was first seized by the Freemasons, 
 even in his anger he was not very sorry to get out of a very 
 troublesome business ; but as you will have perceived by his 
 
 9 
 
114 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 written arguments above, the more lie looked at his own situation 
 the less he liked it. He had taken the mercy of Burgundy, and 
 had most assuredly violated his honour in the frantic speech of 
 that night. All the Van Kennings in the world could not save 
 him now ; but his wife, how was she to be saved ? Was it pos- 
 sible she would have missed him by now, and would be raising 
 the mob ? "If God does not help her, man cannot. Oh, God 
 help me ! " 
 
 It was the first prayer which the poor fellow had said for many 
 a day. 
 
 God helped him in a very singular manner. Ho was walking 
 up and doflTi the room, with his swordless scabbard by his side 
 (they had disai-med him) when he found it in his way, and taking 
 it off angrily, he threw it away, saying — 
 
 " Lie there, scabbard of the dishonoured sword which killed 
 Leon." 
 
 Poor Leon ! he was a pretty lad, and it broke the heart of 
 Margaret ! All of a sudden there came a tingling in his ears and 
 a creeping at the roots of his hair. Margaret, she should save 
 her ! If he could only get to Margaret ; but how ? 
 
 After a little thought, he knocked gently at the door, and a 
 voice said — 
 
 " What do you want. Sir?" 
 
 " A little water. I am unarmed, and you need not fear me." 
 
 The door was at once opened, and old Gobet appeared. 
 
 " Gobet," said Van Dysart, " I wish to send a letter to Margaret 
 Van Eyck." 
 
 Gobet nodded. 
 
 " I will give you this ring, which will make you rich^for life." 
 
 " I want no rings," said Gobet. " One of my boys shall take 
 it. I must not let you go. Van Dysart, but I will do anything 
 short of that for you." 
 
 " Gobet," said Van Dysart, " will they rise to-night? " 
 
 " I do not know," said Gobet. " I would not be certain either 
 way. It is raining, and so they wiU probably go home. But 
 who can tell ? Van Kenning is away to stop Spada with the 
 young Duke's orders." 
 
 " What a young fool Burgundy is," remarked Van Dysart. 
 " There is still time," he thought — probably one day gained. 
 "Gobet!" 
 
 "Sir." 
 
 " Have you seen my wife ? " 
 
 "Being mewed up here with you, it is hardly likely," said 
 Gobet : " but the guard at the door above tell me that you having 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 115 
 
 married her has made the people more mad for you than ever ; 
 and that if you are missed to-moiTow, Burgundy's house will go 
 down. In the meantime, Van Kenning is away to stop the troops 
 coming." 
 
 " What will you take to let me loose ? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 " Sit down and write your letter," said Gobet, in a frightened 
 whisper. " Are you mad ? — you know the vow and the doom ! " 
 
 Van Dysart knew it too well, and knew also that neither the 
 vow nor the doom were idle words in those days. He dared go no 
 further. He sat down and wrote : — 
 
 " Maegaeet, 
 
 " I am in prison, and I fear that nothing can save 
 me, although I am in prison among friendly people. Margaret ! 
 as you hope for God's mercy, do this for me. The woman who 
 in old times was called Martina is now my wedded wife, and is 
 more dear to me than myself. You know her power among the 
 people as well as I do your kindness to her. The murderer of 
 Leon would not appeal to you if he had any one else to appeal to. 
 Forgive the penitent thief, and save her. 
 
 " When she misses me she will rouse the people, and there 
 will he bloodshed ; hut she will go first, for young Burgundy is 
 tired of her power among the people. TeU her that I am 
 perfectly safe at present, and that she only has to keep quiet. 
 After my death, Margaret, persuade her to enter a religious house 
 if you can ; I think she would make a good nursing Sister. I 
 really think that she would do well in the Beggenshof ; hut at 
 present get hold of her, and tell her to keep the people quiet. 
 
 " Van Kenning meant for'the best when he did what he has 
 done, but I am utterly ruined either way. While I am alive, 
 Margaret, I do not ask you to forgive me, but try to do so after I 
 am dead. Before aU things, save her. 
 
 " Van Dysaet." 
 
 " Here is the letter," said he, and Gobet took it. " If there 
 is a rising, Gobet, and I am not at the head of the people, I am 
 ruined with them for ever, I suppose." 
 
 "You would have been, but for your marrying her," said 
 Gobet. " One danger is that, you being missing — only a few 
 knowing where you are, and they being forbidden by vows to tell 
 — the people may get it into their heads that young Burgundy has 
 got you. In which case " 
 
 Gobet whistled. 
 
 " WeU, I can do no more, Gobet, I will go to sleep." 
 
116 OLD MARGABET. 
 
 " And pray to God," said Gobet. 
 
 " I have been doing that, the first time since my mother died," 
 said Van Dysart. 
 
 Gobet shut and locked the door. 
 
 "He is worthy of hving," said the old man, "but nothing 
 on earth can save him now." 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 After having mewed up Van Dysart, Van Kenning had by no 
 means done his night's work. He always used to say, like the 
 Colonel Dobbin, that he cared more about other people's business 
 than his own. There were two people — three besides Burgundy 
 — of whom he was a little distrustful. Two of these people he 
 could manage, the third was more difficult. The two people he 
 could manage were Sister Priscilla and Father Peter : the one he 
 could not manage with certainty was the Archbishop 
 
 In common politeness he should have gone to the Archbishop 
 first, but he thought that he would see Sister Priscilla and 
 Father Peter out of the way first. He was a very excellent 
 poHce magistrate, and these two worthy souls had given him a 
 very great deal of political trouble on various occasions. They 
 had both of them taken quasi regular vows in their different 
 orders, but they were as free to come and go as they liked as any 
 civilian of the lot. In fact, they did so come and go, like leal 
 and trusty souls as they were. The Archbishop did not alto- 
 gether like the " irregular orders," as he called them, but he was 
 not strong enough, either in political power or in strength of 
 character, to meddle much with them under the then Pope, who 
 backed them up. At a very early period of this story we 
 mentioned that Father Peter and Sister Priscilla were always 
 going to appeal to the Pope against the house of Burgundy ; and 
 in fact they and their two orders as nearly repudiated the 
 authority of the Archbishop as possible. Have we not seen the 
 same thing in these Erastian times ? Van Kenning thought of 
 this, and saw his way. 
 
 Sister PrisciUa and Father Peter were under the surveillance 
 of the police now — in fact they had been so before, for there had 
 been scandals. Father Peter and Sister Priscilla had watched a 
 converted young man into a public-house nearly at midnight, and 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 117 
 
 had gone in after him and removed him by main force, and taken 
 him home. In the fracas which ensued, Sister Prisoilla had 
 cuffed the landlord and told him that he was buying the souls of 
 men for filthy lucre. Van Kenning fined her a florin for the 
 assault, and the Archbishop set on her fifty paternosters, but she 
 neither paid the one nor said the other. She was not a dangerous 
 woman, and there was no trouble about her. 
 
 Father Peter also was not a very difficult man to deal with, as 
 far as regarded the Archbishop. We wish it to be understood 
 that no man ever stood in shoes, purer than Father Peter ; and 
 all we say of him is that in his perfect insouciance he had given 
 rise on one occasion to a most tremendous scandal, entirely 
 through his own almost babyish ignorance. We, of course, 
 cannot tell the story : he was as innocent as a babe unborn, but 
 no one believed him to be so ; and we regret to say that, with a 
 certain section of the population, the belief in his guilt made him 
 more popular than he was before. Is it not so now ? Are we 
 any better than they were ? 
 
 Van Kenning did not see much trouble with these two folks : 
 he did not trouble Dogberry about them. He quietly wrote out 
 warrants for their arrest, and stepped round to the room where 
 Father Peter lodged, with two men-at-arms to see them exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 Father Peter and Sister PrisciUa were both there, as he knew 
 from his information that they would be. They were both arrested 
 at once, and he glanced over their papers. 
 
 " Hum ! Ha ! Petition of Sister PrisciUa and Father Peter 
 to the Pope about the misprisions of the bloody house ot Burgundy. 
 That win do. I wiU take these papers and show them to the 
 Duke. Men-at-arms I " 
 
 " Your honour ! " 
 
 " One of you keep the door and see that these people do not 
 escape. One of you come here and witness what I am writing." 
 And he wrote rapidly — 
 
 " This is to certify that I, Van Kenning, magistrate of this 
 town, believing that a deviUsh plot was being organised by Father 
 Peter and Sister PrisciUa against the Duke of Burgundy, have, in 
 virtue of my office, arrested both of them and seized their papers, 
 in the presence of Max Hootman and Jan Platzman. 
 
 " This is also to testify that I, Van Kenning, have in the 
 presence of Max Hootman and Jan Platzman, put these papers in 
 a bag and sealed it with my own seal." 
 
 While he was burning his wax at the candle, and sealing up 
 their papers, he looked at them and said, "I think I have 
 
118 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 finished you two " ; and even Sister Priscilla was cowed, for 
 she knew that it was death, and she had wished to hve a Uttle 
 longer. 
 
 Van Kenning was perfectly unmoved. He asked the two men- 
 at-arms if they could write ; wliereon they looked at one another 
 and laughed, as though Van Kenning was making a good joke. 
 Then Van Kenning took the bag of papers, and having made the 
 men-at-arms put their cross to the document, he walked away, 
 leaving Father Peter and Sister PrisciUa still dumb. They were 
 out of the way ; now for the Archbishop. 
 
 He went to his o^vn house first, and there he deposited the 
 papers and the document signed by the two men-at-arms. Then 
 he went to the Archbishop, who had gone home and gone to sleep, 
 at which he chuckled. 
 
 " I'll make him do anything if I can get him scared, just as 
 he wakes up from his first sleep. I'U get him to sign any- 
 thing.'" 
 
 It was very late even now, but Van Kenning had been often 
 at the Archbishop's later than this on political matters. The 
 Archbishop was perfectly used to be roused up in those troublous 
 old times, for he was by no means a man who shirked his duty ; 
 and his presence had more than once stopped a riot, for the 
 people loved him, and he loved them. This night was a 
 dangerous one ; and the Archbishop had only just said his 
 prayers, and gone to sleep, when he was waked by his conclerije 
 unbarring the door. In two minutes Van Kenning was in his 
 bedroom, and he was sitting up in bed. 
 
 "Are they up ? " said the Archbishop, preparing to jump out 
 of bed. 
 
 "No," said Van Kenning; "and they will not be up to- 
 night." 
 
 "Thank God !" said the Archbishop. "I shall have some 
 sleep." 
 
 " I have been working," said Van Kenning. " I have arrested 
 Father Peter and Sister Priscilla." 
 
 " Good," said the Archbishop. 
 
 " You know, I suppose, that Van Dysart has married that 
 Scotchwoman, the woman we used to call Martina? " 
 
 The Archbishop, without one word, deliberately got out of bed, 
 and sat on the side of it in his shirt, scratching his head. We 
 cannot describe this scene, because we have never seen an Arch- 
 bishop sitting on the side of his bed, in his shirt. We have seen 
 other men doing so, but never an Archbishop. 
 
 Neither can we repeat what the Archbishop said, because we 
 
OLD MARGARET. 119 
 
 have never seen an Archbishop in a state of blind transcendent 
 wonder, suddenly aroused from sleep. Van Kenning says that it 
 was something in the nature of an interjection, but he goes no 
 further. 
 
 " Monseigneur," he said, "just conceive the effect on your 
 prestif/e, if I were to repeat that." 
 
 " Van Kenning," said the Archbishop, "it was forced out of 
 me ; you know I was in the army before I went into the Church. 
 You are too good a gentleman to remember it. Tell me all 
 about this business." 
 
 " I have not time," said Van Kenning. " I am away to young 
 Bm'gundy ; you will hear all soon. For political reasons, Arch- 
 bishop, I want your word that you will not move against Van 
 Dysart. I want your solemn word." 
 
 "I will most heartily give it. Van Kenning," said the Arch- 
 bishop, with the interjection hanging over his head. 
 
 Van Kenning thought he would have had to argue, but the 
 Ai'chbishop saved him all trouble by his indiscretion. 
 
 Van Kenning was . content, and wished the Archbishop good- 
 night. Van Kenning said, " He is a gentleman, and wiU keep 
 his word, priest as he is." 
 
 The Archbishop said to himself, when Van Kenning was gone : 
 " He is a gentleman, and I need not be afraid. What could have 
 induced me to use an oath ? " 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI. 
 
 Walking swiftly down the Canal, and knocking at the door of a 
 little drinking house. Van Kenning immediately saw a light cross 
 the key-hole, and became aware of a dead silence, of which he was 
 not conscious before ; for as he had come up to the door musing 
 deeply, he had hardly noticed that there had been a sound of rather 
 noisy talking within the house. He knocked again. 
 
 " Who is there ? " cried a shrill voice ; " it is after hours, and 
 we will have no drunkards here. Go away." 
 
 "Hoogenstrasse," said Van Kenning. 
 
 The candle was at once set down, and the door was opened. 
 Van Kenning found himself face to face with a fat, ill-looking 
 woman, of about forty-five, who at once pulled him in and shut 
 the door, 
 
120 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 "Bless your honour," she said, in a whisper, "is anything 
 wrong ? ' ' 
 
 Van Kenning put a piece of gold in her hand, and said, " Who 
 is here?" 
 
 " Max Spits, Jan Doos, Jan Hefler ; who is it that you want ? " 
 she said, curtseying. 
 
 "Not those," said Van Kenning, angrily. "I want no one 
 drowned or assassinated. You know that. I mean " 
 
 "I see," she said, not giving him time to answer. "Yes, 
 Martin of Bnissels is here; a safe man." 
 
 "Confound the Jezehel," said Van Kenning, "does she think 
 that I want a love-letter carried ? " For you see that Van Kenning 
 as a police magistrate, and a rather radical politician, knew every 
 scoundrel in the town. " I want a waterman, a man who can be 
 trusted, either a Mason or a Milkenstrasse man, a man under the 
 Milkenstrasse vows, if possible, but I would prefer a Mason." 
 
 " Why, look now," she said, quite radiant, " here is old Max 
 Cramjens, not half dmnk, but as good a man as ever — I'U send 
 him out to you at once. Van Kenning." . 
 
 "WeU." 
 
 " There was a man killed here yesterday." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 " I shall be before you for it to-morrow." 
 
 " You wiU be before Councillor Baumgarten," said Van Kenning. 
 " He takes my duty in my absence." 
 
 " But you will say a good word for me ? you wiU say that my 
 house was a most respectable one, and that the matter was an 
 accident ? you will say that I am a most respectable woman ? " 
 
 "Woman, how could I? your house is a den of thieves and 
 conspirators." 
 
 " Because you see if you can do nothing I shaU have to say that 
 you have been in my house very late on one or two occasions, and 
 that you have been here to-night." 
 
 Van Kenning was perfectly furious when he saw how he was 
 checkmated, hut he held his tongue, and said he would do his 
 best. The next minute he was standing by the side of an old 
 man, Max Cramjens, who was loosing his boat. 
 
 When they were fairly afloat, and along the Canal, Van Kenning 
 said, in the old man's ear, " The private water-gate of the palace " ; 
 and the old man rowed on» 
 
 " You know what I mean. Max ? " 
 
 " Oh yes," said the old man, chuckling ; " five gold pieces if I 
 hold my tongue, and certain death if I say anything about it." 
 
 "Exactly," said Van Kenning, though he had not previously 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 121 
 
 assessed his fare at five gold pieces, but at one. Still, he was 
 amused at the clever old Fleming having outwitted him and named 
 the bargain, from which he could not depart : it was after all cheap, 
 considering what was on hand. So he and the old man went 
 slowly on among the silent canals, and he lay back in his boat 
 dreaming of what might have been and of what never could be 
 . now, until the Canal got narrower and narrower, and at last the 
 boat bimiped against some steps, and he looked round at the high 
 piled masoniy, which sloped suddenly into the water on all sides, 
 and wondered where he was. He soon remembered, and paying 
 the old man five gold pieces, he ordered him off, and as soon as 
 he was out of ear-shot took out a key — there were but three of 
 them in existence, the Duke's, his own, and that of the Arbiter 
 elegantianim — and let himself into the Duke's garden. The Duke 
 of Burgundy had such entire instinctive faith in Van Kenning, 
 however, although he was the Duke's almost hitter opponent, that 
 he had given him this key years before, and had said bravely, 
 " I do not ask you to betray the people, but I ask you to serve me 
 as far as your principles will allow you. This key might ruin me 
 at any moment if the people took me unguarded ; and so I give it 
 to you. There are but three, and I intnist one to the Tribune of 
 the people." All this was buncombe, of course; Van Kenning 
 knew that it was, and the Duke knew that he knew it ; but they 
 were in polite society, and did not laugh in one another's 
 faces. 
 
 Since young PhiUp had grown to an age when he was able to 
 notice anything, his father had the decency and chivaliy to keep 
 his house pure, and his vices out of sight. The frantic objurga- 
 tions of Sister PrisciUa, and the gentlemanlike rebukes of the 
 Archbishop against the wickedness of the palace, were only half 
 true ; there was evil and wickedness enough, and many people were 
 in that palace who had better have been elsewhere. Things had 
 been very bad there at one time, but they were mended out of 
 respect to young Philippe le Bon, after his last arrival from 
 Burgundy. The Arbiter elegantiarum had, in fact, found it dull ; 
 and sitting out in the garden late on this night, he was intensely 
 delighted and excited at hearing a key turned in the private door 
 
 a key which he knew must be Van Kenning's : he actually ran 
 
 to meet him. 
 
 " Is it an insun-ection ? " asked Arbiter. 
 
 " No ; but I want to see young Philip," said Van Kenning. 
 
 "You have disappointed me," said Arbiter; " I was in hopes 
 the dogs were up." . 
 
 " They will be up too often for some of us, Signer Pirno, if we 
 
122 OLD MARGAEET. 
 
 don't mind, I must see young Burgundy at once ; it is life and 
 death." 
 
 Tlie spaniel gave way to the mastiff at once ; and Van Kenning 
 was led in quietly by a back door into a room where young Burgundy 
 had fallen asleep, f'uU dressed, on a couch, with a map of Flanders 
 fallen from his hands. He did not wake as they came in ; and 
 Van Kenning, turning to the Arbiter elegantiarum, said, sharply, 
 " Shut the door when you go out, and leave the lad to me." 
 
 Ai'biter departed, and Van Kenning sat doivn before the sleeping 
 young man. 
 
 " Philip of Burgundy ! " said Van Kenning, quietly. 
 
 The young man moved and half opened his eyes. 
 
 " Philip of Burgundy ! " 
 
 The young man sat up with a wild stare. 
 
 " I dreamt that I had burnt Bruges," he said ; " and that after- 
 wards I was in hell, and I saw Margaret Van Eyck in heaven, and 
 called to her to plead for me ; but she said that I must stay in 
 heU until the consequences of my own actions had ceased to have 
 effect ; and that, she said, was to aU eternity." 
 
 Van Kenning lived long enough to tremble whenever he recalled 
 the young man's speech that night. 
 
 "Philip of Bui-gundy I " he said, with his usual dexterity, 
 " she was right. The consequences of our own actions remain 
 for ever ; and if you believe in the immortality of the soul, and 
 the immortality of conscience, you must see that Margaret was 
 right : the eternal consciousness of such a deed as you speak of 
 would poison heaven and embitter heU." 
 
 " You scare mo more than my dream did," said young Philip. 
 " Who are you who sit there like a carrion crow ? By Heaven, 
 it is Van Kenning ! Are they up ? " 
 
 " Thanks to me, not yet." 
 
 " WiU Spada be in time from Dendermond? " 
 
 " Certainly not, if I do not go out and act," said Van Kenning. 
 " Are you quite awake ? " 
 
 There was no doubt about Philip's being awake now, and Van 
 Kenning saw and remembered an evil cast in the corner of the eye 
 of Philip the Good ; which was possibly the thing which made 
 him shortly retire from politics, for it was not pleasant, and he 
 wished to die in his bed ; now, however, he was master of the 
 situation. 
 
 " I will tell you what I have done," he said ; "I have arrested 
 Van Dysart." 
 
 "On what authority? " 
 
 " Masonic." 
 
OLD MARGARET. 12,-! 
 
 " That was a bold move ; and a good one," Raid Philip. 
 " Where is he ? " 
 
 " Never mind, he is quite safe, I have done everything I can to 
 quiet the people, and I have also arrested Father Peter and Sister 
 Priscilla in my magisterial capacity. I want those two lives, my 
 Lord." 
 
 "They are given frankly; they are most excellent and admir- 
 able idiots, whose only fault is their dislike of our house. That 
 is easy enough. Is there any other friend's life you want for your 
 splendid services ? " 
 
 " Yes, I want Yan Dysart's," said Van Kenning. 
 
 "You cannot have it. Van Kenning," said the young man 
 coolly, and almost contemptuously. "Van Dysart must die; he 
 has had mercy once, and I cannot trust him ; he is a pleasant 
 fellow, but he is in my way and he must go. I am very sorry to 
 disoblige you, but he really must go." 
 
 If the young man had been angry. Van Kenning would have had 
 more hope, but as it was, all hope seemed to be cut from under 
 Van Dysart's feet ; the young Burgundy had got quite cool and 
 business-like, and was playing with his gold chain. 
 
 "I appreciate your services, dear Van Kenning, as much as a 
 man can, and I am sure you will laugh at me when I tell yoa, so 
 much older and wiser than myself, that you allow your feelings 
 towards Margaret Van Eyck to carry you away. That man must 
 really go." 
 
 " Could not he be ransomed ? " said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Eansomed and banished? Well, there is a way out of the 
 difficulty in that way," said Philip the Good, not long out of his 
 teens ; " but that is to be thought of. It would be cheaper in the 
 end to have his head off. You know that he has been making 
 inflammatory speeches this very night, and that he has married 
 that lunatic woman ? " 
 
 " I know it," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " The man really must die. I am veiy sorry for him, but he 
 really must. He ought to have died long ago, but every one who 
 was bound against him is going for him, and I must be firm. It 
 would be much bettor for Van Dysart to go to heaven, instead of 
 remaining here." 
 
 There was something so very terrible to the kindly Van Kenning 
 in the horrible selfishness of the young man, that he was dumb. 
 
 " I'll tell you what I will do," said young Burgundy. " If you 
 wiU prevent a rising before Spada comes from Dendermond, you 
 shall have your man for twenty thousand pieces, and banishment. 
 WiU that suit you ? " 
 
124 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 " It is his fortune and part of mine," said Van Kenning, " but 
 I will answer for the people being quiet, if you will follow my 
 advice." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Send me off to stop Spada ; take off the fish tax, and remain 
 perfectly quiet." 
 
 " Why stop Spada ? " 
 
 " Because your force is not large enough. You would win in 
 the end, and might bum the town down, but nothing could save 
 you. Your dynasty might be saved, but you would go ; there 
 would be no escape for you personally." 
 
 " Have it your own way," said Phihp, laughing. " My 
 father told me to trust you, and I do so. I only warn you that if 
 any insurrection takes place. Van Dysart shall die. Go and stop 
 Spada if you think it better, and I wiU, with your kind permission, 
 go to sleep again ; I am terribly sleepy, and, according to your 
 account, I shall wake with my throat cut. Good-night." And 
 Phdip was snoring on his couch before Van Kenning was out of 
 the room. 
 
 Then he turned his head, like a fox peeping out of its hole ; 
 then he listened, and heard Van Kenning barred out ; then he 
 rose, and not daring to ring a bell, went into the guard-room and 
 looked round. The men were most of them asleep, but two young 
 men were awake, and keeping watch. " Where is the sergeant ? " 
 he said, and they pointed to a heap of scarlet and blue clothes on 
 a bench. The young Duke went to him, and the old soldier started 
 up rubbing his eyes, and recognising his master — " I want you, 
 WiUiam," said he, and led the way to his room. " I want some- 
 thing done, WiUiam." 
 
 " Yes, Duke." 
 
 " Are the streets quiet ? " 
 
 " Yes, Duke." 
 
 " Could you bring a man through them in safety ? " 
 
 " It depends. It is yet early in the night, and many are 
 abroad. The clubs are sitting, but they must go to bed some 
 time. Who is the man ? " 
 
 " Van Dysart." 
 
 " That will be dangerous, even in the early hours of the 
 morning." 
 
 " The Freemasons have got him, but I want him here," said 
 the Duke. 
 
 " / know," said the sergeant ; " v/e shall have to kill his 
 guard, and that cannot be done without noiso." 
 
 " Will money do it ? " 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 125 
 
 " I doubt it, my Lord ; if we could tempt him out it would be 
 as weU, and catch him in the street ! I don't see my way to it 
 myself : we cannot have a disturbance untU Spada comes ; yet 
 there is a chance if you care to risk it." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 ' ' Let some of our young men break the place open fi-om the 
 rear, and let him out ; it is not difficult, the place is weak and iU 
 guarded. We could catch him after." 
 
 So it befell towards morning that Van Dysart was awakened by 
 the working of crowbars at his window, and found himself released 
 and in the street by unknown friends. He was told to run, and 
 he ran ; he was told to get into a boat, and he did so ; he was 
 told to get out of the boat, and he did so ; and he was let into 
 a garden, and was put by the Ai-biter elegantiarum into the 
 deepest cachot in all Burgundy's palace before he knew where 
 he was. We said that no one of the general public ever saw him 
 come out of his lodge again, and we were right. No one of 
 mark save Burgundy and the Arbiter elegantiarum knew pre- 
 cisely where he was, and they were unlikely people to tell. In 
 point of fact Van Dysart was not in the secret himself, but ho 
 very strongly suspected that he was in the hands of young 
 Burgundy. 
 
 I happen to have been in one of the then most famous 
 cachets in one of the most famous prisons in the whole world 
 for a time, with the bolt shot on me, and so I can in some 
 way gather what were Van Dysart' s thoughts when he threw 
 himself on his straw. I have been through it all myself (for 
 five minutes), and so I may speak. The dungeon in which I 
 was confined was at Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, a most 
 famous dungeon, possibly engraved with the names of the 
 prisoners who had been there before, but as it was too dark to 
 see your hand before your face, I cannot say anything about 
 the matter. It was the dungeon among dungeons, and when 
 my companion on a bright happy summer's day shut me in, and 
 shot the bolt on me, I understood it all, — I knew what the old 
 style of imprisonment meant in five minutes. 
 
 The horror of darkness first, for the darkness was hke a 
 velvet mask on one's eyes ; then the thought that one was caged 
 and powerless, and could not move to help oneself; then the 
 hon-ible thought that all who loved you would think that you had 
 deserted them — your wife first, and your friends afterwards. In 
 the cachot where I was there was no light at all as far as I 
 could see. I had room to turn round, but little more ; I could 
 stand upright and walk eight feet one way and six another ; and 
 
126 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 I was to stay here twenty-five years, hopeless, helpless, bookless, 
 letting the world go spin while I spent a worthless life in the 
 straw in this dark hole. 
 
 I wish to notice that my cachot was not the celebrated Cage 
 do Mont St. Michel. Van Dysart was thrust into such a place, 
 without the least hope of release except by death, very likely 
 accompanied by torture. 
 
 Now, " solitary confinement " means absolute solitude with 
 plenty of air, plenty of light, and plenty to eat, with Low-church 
 tracts thrown in as a mental pabulum. Many men not liable to 
 congenital tubercular disease of the brain, go mad under this 
 treatment ; it is quite possible that the High Church wiU say 
 that it is the Low Church tracts which cause this result ; but 
 the result is the same. Solitary confinement in old time meant 
 utter silence, darkness, and a filthiness which cannot be detailed. 
 We have been in British dungeons at Pentonville, and we have 
 been bolted into a cell at Mont St. Michel, and so we can judge 
 between the two. The dandy Van Dysart had got into ono of the 
 old mediaeval prisons, from which there was no exit. 
 
 Yet — yet there was something good in the rascal. He knew 
 that he must die, that was as plain as the nose on his face, but 
 he had held his life in his hand so long that he had never 
 feared death at aU. Men of his stamp never do fear death ; 
 if men like he feared death, the country to which they belonged 
 would cease to exist as a military power. But he feared death 
 now for the first time in his life. One whom he had most 
 deeply wronged had come to him when aU the world was against 
 him, had laid her head on his bosom, and had forgiven him. 
 Ho had for her now a love which might be violent and wild, but 
 which was true, and which would last his life. She was left 
 utterly without guidance while he was mewed up here in the 
 black darkness which we have seen, cursing in his straw. It 
 had all come to this ; a newer, brighter, and better life had 
 dawned upon him, in which she had part ; he was going to live 
 a new life with her. The Archbishop and Sister PrisciUa and 
 Father Peter would show them the way to God ; he would have 
 absolution for the murder of Leon ; he would be utterly humble 
 to all. His wife might live a religious life if she chose, so long 
 as she stayed with him ; they would both give themselves to good 
 works and to labours of love, if God would let him out of this 
 horrible black dungeon in time to save her, for he knew that when 
 she missed him she would rouse the people. 
 
 Black darkness, like a velvet mask across one's face, added to 
 that despair ; added to that a mad anxiety for one suddenly gro^vn 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 127 
 
 dearer than gold ; added to that the consciousness that she was in 
 danger, and that he could not help her. These thoughts were too 
 strong for Yan Dysart's brain, and in his madness he cast himself 
 three times violently against the door of his dungeon, and in his 
 third terrible efibrt struck his head, and feU over almost uncon- 
 scious into his straw. 
 
 I say unconscious, but that is scarcely true ; he was delirious, 
 but hardly unconscious. The jailor, who had been dozing, was 
 awakened by his last mad effort, and found him lying in the straw 
 with his head bleeding. The jailor had seen the same kind of 
 thing before, but Yan Dysart being a man of mark, must be 
 attended to. He washed Van Dysart's head, and while he was 
 doing so Van Dysart said — 
 
 "I have been mad, and have knocked myself about. I am 
 dazed now ; I could not fly to-night. I wiU give you eight 
 thousand pieces of gold if you will get me out to-morrow night, 
 and I wiU see that you get safe into France with the money." 
 
 " I could not do it to-morrow night, for Spada will be here, 
 they say. Cannot you get away now and give me the money ? " 
 
 " Can you do it now ? " 
 
 " I can do it perfectly well if you can guarantee me the money. 
 The Ai'biter's boat is in the canal ; but you must change your 
 clothes. We must be very quick ; take off yours, and I will 
 fetch you others. I make my fortune by this, though I risk my 
 life!" 
 
 Van Dysart stripped while the man went away, but he was 
 quite delirious ; the last effort he had made in speaking to the 
 jailor had been too much for him, and when the jailor came in 
 with the fresh clothes, Van Dysart was standing in his shirt 
 bowing. The jailor saw that the man was for a time mad. He 
 dressed Van Dysart in common clothes, and then he dexterously 
 stuffed Van Dysart's clothes with straw, and threw them doAvn for 
 the benefit of the deputy jailor. Van Dysart's clothes stuffed 
 with straw, looked in the darkness so uncommonly like Van 
 Dysart himself asleep, that the jailor calculated that there were a 
 clear twenty-four hom-s between himself and destruction. 
 
 The boatmen of the Arbiter elegantiarum were very much 
 amused by a young man in a high state of intoxication being 
 brought down to them by the head jailor ; they did not recognise 
 Van Dysart at all, and rowed away where they were told. The 
 head jailor got out with the drunken young gentleman on a certain 
 quay, and the boat was sent back. 
 
128 OLD MAEGAKET. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Philip of Buegundy lay in his bed very late on that day, and 
 when he awoke he lay thinking. And he thought mainly about 
 Van Dysart ; his thoughts took this line. 
 
 " The man is fearfully dangerous, and I am practically alone. 
 Would it not be better to buy him up now, and ruin him after- 
 wards ? Van Kenning wiU pay the money for his freedom or his 
 banishment : it would be much better to let him go free 
 now. 
 
 "I am supported by no one : I cannot in any way trust 
 Spada. Devil take the man, I wish I had never seen him. I know 
 that he will play me some dog's trick at Dendermond, and now 
 Van Kenning has my leave to stop the troops at Dendermond, I 
 shall have my throat cut among them : the dogs ! they shall all 
 die, but I will secure myself anyhow. I have Van Dysart, I will 
 make terms with him. I will go to him, he knows that his 
 position is perfectly helpless, and will treat cheaply : he knows 
 well where he is, and that he must bind himself to my interests 
 or die in the straw. I am master of the situation stiU, now I have 
 got him in prison. That was very clever of me. 
 
 " I thought that his murder of Leon would have set him wrong 
 with the peojile, but this marriage of his with that lunatic Scotch- 
 woman seems to have set him right again. The dogs I the 
 hounds ! they shall be plagued for this when I am at liberty. I 
 wiU make terms with Van Dysart and ruin them all." 
 
 So he lay thinking, when his boy came in and asked him if he 
 
 could see John Van Eyck. He exclaimed " The very ! " 
 
 but stopped himself and said, " Show him in." 
 
 In came John Van Eyck in his most beautiful clothes, and in 
 the most charming temper. Philip of Burgundy was very glad 
 to see him, and he was naturally glad to see Burgundy, he was 
 always glad to see great people. Burgundy rose in liis bed, and 
 put the case before him, and John listened attentively. I have 
 stated the case before, and Burgundy stated it again. I will only 
 use his concluding words. 
 
 " Every one who vowed his ruin for the murder of Leon has 
 now gone for him. Margaret, your brother, Spada, this mad 
 priest and the mad nun, Van Kenning, and the lunatic whom 
 Van Dysart has married. He is horribly dangerous now, and I 
 tremble when I think that I have him here." 
 
 " He is in custody of the Freemasons," said John Van Eyck. 
 
 " He is in mine," said young Burgundy, " and I am not at aU 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 129 
 
 sure that I will not give him a sleeping draught from which he 
 win never awaken." 
 
 " I would not do that," said John Yan Eyck, in a business-like 
 tone. " I would treat with him ; I would buy him. You are not 
 very rich just now, and this salt-fish tax must not he imposed ; it 
 will not do. But Yan Kenning would pay his ransom for my 
 sister's sake." 
 
 Even Burgundy the younger thought to himself, " You are 
 a mean hound." But John Yan Eyck was the only friend he 
 had, and so he kept his thoughts to himself. 
 
 " Could he stop the people if he was bought ? " asked Bur- 
 gundy. 
 
 ' ' Most certainly, now that he has married this woman : it 
 wiU take the people's heart," said John Yan Eyck. 
 
 " Do you think that we are in danger ? " said Burgundy. 
 
 "It is not a question of danger. If you have allowed Yan 
 Kenning to stop the troops from Dendermond we are utterly 
 ruined, neither you nor I shall be alive to-morrow morning. This 
 madwoman is going up and do^vn the town seeking her husband, 
 and the streets are swarming. I suppose you know that the 
 hands are not at work? " 
 
 " The devil ! Then it is a matter of hours." 
 
 "It is a matter of minutes," said John Yan Eyck; " unless 
 you can buy Yan Dysart, you and I must go." 
 
 " Where ? " said Burgundy. 
 
 " To death," said John Yan Eyck. 
 
 " Come with me to his prison," said Philip of Burgundy. 
 " There may be time." And he quickly dressed himself and 
 hurried away. The Seneschal was sent for the chief man-at- 
 arms, and the chief man-at-arms was told to go seek the head 
 jailor. But the chief man-at-arms said that the head jailor had 
 left in the night, and that he was in charge. This fact made 
 both Philip of ]3urgundy and John Yan Eyck very uneasy, 
 though they would have been puzzled to tell you why. The head 
 man-at-arms was asked, did he know where Yan Dysart was, and 
 he replied yes, and showed them the way. 
 
 " I should like my orders, my Lord of Burgundy," he said. 
 
 "As to what ? " said Philip, sharply. 
 
 " As to whether I should assassinate him when the people get 
 in, or let him go free." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Only, my Lord, that the people are up, and that unless the 
 troops arrive from Dendermond we are entirely without protection. 
 Whether the head jailor has turned traitor or not I cannot say, 
 
 10 
 
130 OLD MAEGAEET. 
 
 but already the people have broken into the Masons' Lodge and 
 have not found Van Dysart. Hence they wiU naturally come here 
 next, and we are utterly defenceless. Could not you, my Lord 
 Duke, withdraw quietly with your men-at-arms and wait for better 
 times ? " 
 
 " I will answer that in half an hour," said Philip. " Show 
 me his cell ; give me your lanthorn, and turn back." The man 
 did so, and the young Duke and John Van Eyck stood together 
 in the black darkness of the corridor which led to Van Dysart's 
 dungeon. 
 
 " It gets dangerous," said Burgundy. 
 
 "Most dangerous," said John Van Eyck. "Unless we can 
 treat with him, aU is lost." 
 
 " Come with me, John. I am no coward, but he might assas- 
 sinate me. I was a madman to yield to Van Kenning." 
 
 These cachets are very easily opened from the outside, but not 
 so easily opened from the inside. AU that young Burgundy had 
 to do was to draw back a heavy iron bolt, and so he and John 
 Van Eyck were in the presence of the sleeping Van Dysart. 
 
 " Hold up your lanthorn. Van Eyck," said Bm-gundy. " There 
 he is in the straw, Hola ! ho! Van Dysart, here are friends." 
 There was no answer. 
 
 " Is he dead ? " asked Burgundy, in a hissing whisper. " That 
 might be " 
 
 " It is worse than that, my Lord," said John Van Eyck, who 
 had bent over the form in the straw; "he is gone, and he is 
 loose." 
 
 Burgundy uttered an awful oath, which he ultimately kept. 
 Bruges remembers it to this day. 
 
 "Here," said John Van Eyck," are his clothes stuffed with 
 straw, and he and your jailor are away together." 
 
 " What do you recommend now? " said Burgundy. 
 
 "Suicide, or flight," said John Van Eyck. ''It is all over 
 now. We arc completely ruined. Nothing in heaven or earth 
 can save us now. We are utterly undone." 
 
 " Can we fly ? " said Burgundy. 
 
 " We wiU try at aU events," said John Van Eyck. " Catch 
 your man-at-arms, and make him take us to the canal." 
 
 The thing was easily done, and the prince and John Van Eyck 
 were safely in the Van Eycks' house without the least expose 
 towards the people. The last orders of Burgundy were to defend 
 the palace as long as possible. John Van Eyck was despatched 
 to Dendemiond to hurry the troops up. 
 
 Spada was sent to fetch them. Van Kenning to stop them, and 
 
OLD MABGAEET. 131 
 
 now John Van Eyok was sent to hurry them up. The thing was 
 not incredihle at all. We see the same thing every month with 
 our own Government. We certainly get more cackle for our 
 money, hut otherwise we cannot see that we have improved in 
 any way on the mediaeval plan. We talk more certainly, hut 
 we do little save destructive internal "reforms." This however 
 is apart the purpose. Spada was a man who listened to every 
 one and then took his own line. He never moved a foot until 
 he had heard Van Kenning and John Van Eyck. Then he said, 
 that on the whole he would ahide hy his oi'iginal orders, on his 
 own responsihility, and taking his men, he marched on the city 
 full speed hy the canal. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVin. 
 
 The people were up, of that there was no douht at all ; the mills 
 were silent and the streets were swarming, and there was not 
 one governing head left in the town, unless it was that of the 
 Ai-chbishop. 
 
 Looking at the history of emeutes, successful or unsuccessful, 
 you invariably see one thing, that however mad the mob may be, 
 the clamour is always for a leader, for an autocrat, for a dictator 
 of the old Eoman type. There is an instinct in humanity (demo- 
 cratic humanity) towards " Csesarism " which is as strong under 
 Gambetta as under Julius Csesar. " Pure " Democracy must 
 always end so. The "hour and the man " are facts which are 
 always turning up again and again in the shape of presidents 
 of republics or emperors of free states. The Mob never have led 
 yet, hut must always have a leader for the time being to lead 
 them, and in a "pure " democracy the mob are rather powerful. 
 On this occasion, finding no leader they were led by a half-mad 
 woman, the Macdonald woman, who was now Erau Van Dysart. 
 They had no other leader, but she was enough for them : she had 
 lived a very wild strange life, but the universal opinion about her 
 among the lower orders was that she was perfectly pure, save with 
 Van Dysart, who had now married her. That was the opinion of 
 the people now, and it does not matter whether it was true or false. 
 I know nothing about the life of the woman ; she was considered 
 fit to walk with Sister Priscilla and Margaret Van Eyck in the 
 great picture, and so it is possible that Margaret, a spotless 
 woman, was inclined to think with the people. However, this 
 
132 OLD MARGAEET. 
 
 is most dangerous ground, and when one knows nothing one had 
 better say as little as possible. 
 
 Frau Van Dysart missed her husband, and got wUd. She 
 searched for him all over the town very quietly, but she could get 
 no intelligence. She thought of old Gobet, and went to him. 
 Gobet would tell her nothing. She went to Margaret Van Eyck, 
 but Margaret knew nothing. She went to the house where Sister 
 Priscilla had lodged, but the landlady rated her : then she went 
 to Van Kenning's house, but Van Kenning was away. She had 
 lost her husband just as she had won him, and she was infuriated. 
 She was perfectly certain, through a kind of instinct, that Bur- 
 gundy had got him, and she made up her mind to rouse the 
 people and get him back. She was as mad and as cool as 
 Charlotte Corday. 
 
 She went to the head of the trades unions, Hans Polders, who 
 was sitting up in his shirt and breeches awaiting news, and she 
 sat beside him, without saying one word, for she was determined 
 that he should begin. He began. 
 
 " Where is your husband ? " 
 
 " Van Dysart ? Oh, he is cither in the dungeons of the 
 Freemasons, or in the dungeons of Burgundy. I think that 
 Burgundy has got him." 
 
 " We must have him," said Hans Polders. " We cannot do 
 without him. Woman, you have been a great sinner, and the 
 republic of the future requires virtue." 
 
 " I deny that I have been a great sinner ; I have been mis- 
 understood, I have been maligned. I want to save the State, 
 and to save my husband." 
 
 "Woman," said Hans Polders, a grey-headed, square-faced 
 old Dutchman, " I hope your words are true. Let us forget 
 everything, but we must have Van Dysart, your husband. It 
 seems perfectly inconceivable, but Van Kenning has deserted." 
 
 "It is false, Hans Polders, it is false. Van Kenning would 
 never desert. Hans Polders, you loved your wife, I remember 
 you walking with her under the lime trees." 
 
 Hans Polders said, " I loved her, and I shall follow her soon 
 to God." 
 
 " I love Van Dysart as you loved her. I know that Burgundy 
 is at the bottom of the matter, aud I must see him again or I shall 
 die. Tell me what I am to do." 
 
 " Go out and raise the mob. Get Sister Priscilla and Father 
 Peter to come with you." 
 
 " They are in prison," said Van Dysart's wife. 
 
 "Oh," said Hans Polders, "then go out aloue. Demand 
 
OLD MABGAEET. I33 
 
 him first of the Freemasons, and then make them sack Burgundy's 
 palace. I will go with you, Frau, to share the responsihility, but 
 I could not rouse the men as you could." 
 
 The surging crowds were out in the streets, for it was now six 
 o'clock in the afternoon, and they had found a leader — a leader 
 with a head too, half-mkd as she was : the leader was Frau Van 
 Dysart ; behind her was old Hans Polders, a man trusted by 
 every one. 
 
 It is a perfect mistake to suppose that the very best oratory 
 affects directly more than two or three hundred persons at once. 
 The reporters certainly convey speeches to two or three hundred 
 thousand people at once, but it is a great question whether more 
 than a hundred people ever heard a great speech at once. Frau 
 Van Dysart made no speech to the mob which gathered round 
 her ; she only said the same thing over and over again to every 
 one who approached her : " My husband has been taken from me, 
 either by the Freemasons or by Burgundy 1 We must rise to-night, 
 and we cannot rise without him." 
 
 She told Margaret that she must have said this above one 
 hundred times, when a young man came to her, cap in hand, and 
 said most respectfully — ■ 
 
 "Madam, we have entered both the lodges of the Freemasons, 
 and Van Dysart is not in either. Madam, we believe that he is 
 in the house of the dog, young Burgundy ! WiU you lead us ? " 
 
 " I will lead you, of course. Hans Polders, get your men in 
 order, we will storm the palace ; but I will not have any Vandal- 
 ism or brutality. I wiU be obeyed in this. Go to the rear, Hans 
 Polders, and send the strongest and most respectable young men 
 up to surround me : organise quickly, for we may have the mer- 
 cenaries on us before we have done our work. You had better 
 give the signal for marching ! " 
 
 And so the Scotchwoman stood alone in the street, but not for 
 long. 
 
 The column was forming, and every one feU back for a time ; 
 but the organisation was very good, and it was not long before 
 Hans Polders had selected his young men, and one of them 
 bounded up, and stood beside her, but slightly in her rear. 
 Then they came by threes and by fours until they made nearly 
 a hundred. Then she turned and looked on them, and said — 
 
 " You are very good to me. We must all die over this affair ; 
 Burgundy will never forgive it. Any gentleman who wishes to 
 withdraw, had better do so now. We are on a hopeless errand, 
 those whose hearts are not in it should withdraw now I " 
 
 Not one man flinched, and Holland and Belgium are free to 
 
134 OLD MABGAHET. 
 
 this day. I thought of this scene (after reading Motley) when 
 a Dutch officer told me, at Eotterdam, last August, that the 
 dykes were all mined, and that they would flood and ruin the 
 country sooner than yield either to France or Prussia. Let us 
 do homage to the hravest and most persistent people in the world. 
 The Flemings (if we call them so) followed Frau Van Dysart to 
 the palace of young Burgundy with the greatest gallantry. Of 
 the six young men who siUTOunded her, there was not one who 
 did not know that he was as good as dead, for the house of 
 Burgundy never forgave. 
 
 She marched at the head of these young men, and there was 
 only one episode : a very beautiful girl came out from among the 
 crowd and stayed her sweetheart for an instant. It was only to 
 tell him to go through with the work like a man ; and she, with 
 the coarse manners of her age, put her hand inside his tunic and 
 laid a lock of her hair on his left breast for a spell. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 The young men, with Frau Van Dysart at their head, stood 
 before the door of the palace for a short time, and then, at old 
 Polders' order, they burst down the maindoor, and looked into 
 the hall. The truth is that they were entirely afraid to move, the 
 prestige of Burgundy was so great, and the vengeances of that 
 house had been so terrible, that they were cowed, and those who 
 had helped to break in the door, considered that they had done 
 their duty, and withdrew without orders to the rear ranks. 
 
 Most certainly the palace of Burgundy never looked so terrible 
 as it did now, for there was not a soul to be seen. And at this 
 terrible spectacle the fronk ranks pressed back on the rear ranks 
 with the true cowardice of a mob. " We are betrayed ! " cried a 
 young man in the front row, whereupon Van Dysart's wife walked 
 coolly into the empty hall by herself ; the mob came afterwards, 
 headed by old Polders. 
 
 Frau Van Dysart was walking up the stairs, when she was met 
 by the Arbiter elegantiai-um, who, with the courage of his race, 
 asked her where she wished to go. The mob, seeing a woman 
 before them, took courage and closed in behind her. 
 
 "I want my husband, Van Dysart! " she said; "you have 
 him here." 
 
 "He is not here, Madam ; he has disappeared, and the jailor 
 
OLD MARGABET. 135 
 
 of the palace has disappeared also. I will, if you choose, show you 
 his clothes, but I cannot show you himself." 
 
 Old Polders said, " This dog is lying ! " 
 
 " Can I see the Duke ? " said Prau Van Dysart. 
 
 " Madam, I have not the least idea where the Duke is." 
 
 Those were the last words he ever spoke, for Petronius Arbiter 
 can die silently, and will if it comes to his turn. The woman 
 Van Dysart was lost among the sudden and furious rush of the 
 mob. The devil was loose among them suddenly. The Arbiter 
 saw that the devil of extreme democracy had broken loose, and 
 that he, at all events, was a dead man. I believe that he thought 
 of saving himself at first, but saw that it was quite hopeless. He 
 wont up two stairs and drew his sword. The front rank, pressed 
 on from behind, were thrown against him, and he killed three of 
 them before he was left a mere heap of flesh on the staircase. 
 War is very bad, no one wiU deny that, but war with aU its 
 brutalities and horrors has something honest, and, if we may be 
 allowed to say so, rhythmical about it. Your soldier is not such 
 a bad feUow, even after he has been forced to burn Bazeilles ; but 
 mob war is quite another matter. Arbiter elegantiarum was 
 down, and the mob were in the palace of Burgundy without a 
 leader. 
 
 They behaved as usual ; the best young men tried to steady 
 them, and there was bloodshed between the more honest of them, 
 and the rascals who poured in after them, but it was of no use ; 
 there was no leader, neither a Van Dysart, a Spada, or a Van 
 Kenning — not even Polders, or Frau Van Dysart ; they had fled 
 to the dungeons in hopes of finding Van Dysart. They found his 
 clothes, and his clothes only, and while they were on their quest, 
 the house of Burgundy had been sacked from top to bottom. Half- 
 a-dozen of the bravest young men were with them, and stayed by 
 them through aU which followed ; and they were so mad and so 
 furious, that it is very doubtful whether the appearance of Van 
 Dysart himself would have done any good. 
 
 " He has been spirited away," said Frau Van Dysart. " Where 
 is he, and what are we to do now ? " 
 
 " Wait here," said Polders. And the young men agreed with 
 him. 
 
 " We must reorganise before we can fight these dogs," said 
 the leading young man. " We must reorganise ; for my part, I 
 declare for the Duke and liberty." 
 
 " Will he give it? " growled Polders. 
 
 " If we hold together we can force him," said the leading young 
 man. 
 
136 OLD MABGAKET. 
 
 "Hold together?" said Polders. "We have done that to- 
 night, and there are six of us left ; these dogs of cluhmen will 
 ruin the freedom of the country ; in the devil's name listen and 
 hide." 
 
 " What is that noise ? " said Prau Van Dysart, seizing Polders 
 by the arm ; " is it thunder ? " 
 
 " No ! " he said coolly, "it is only musketry and artillery, 
 which God has ordained to destroy, in the long run, the domina- 
 tion of cities over provinces. The end will not be in our time ; 
 but meanwhUe it is evident that Spada has arrived, and that the 
 house of Burgundy is saved once more by a cut-throat. Hark ! 
 how the young hitch harks ; she will bark louder soon. Gun- 
 powder wiU make real democracy impossible." 
 
 CHAPTEE XXX, 
 
 What tinith there was in old Polders' last remark readers must 
 settle for themselves. This is a work of fiction, not of politics. 
 The noise made by Spada's troops in the streets would sound very 
 poor in the ears of a man in whose ears the ghastly rattle of the 
 battle of Sedan is stiU ringing, but it was terrible enough to Frau 
 Van Dysart, to old Polders, and to the six young men who were 
 with them. Musketry was then as strange in the streets of Ghent, 
 as it is now in the streets of London :— God save our mob from 
 knowing the effects of it ! Van Kenning saw the effects of it for 
 the first time in a crowded street, and he saw at once that the 
 governing power, the power with the resources and anns of the 
 nation in their hands, could hold the towns for all time. Old 
 Polders saw the same thing from a different point of vew. 
 
 Spada, the Italian bully, had hurried the mercenaries on with 
 their new arms just in time for the great riots, or to be more 
 correct a little too late as far as the sacking of Burgundy's palace 
 was concerned. Van Kenning and Spada had had an excessively 
 strong argument about bringing up the mercenaries at all, but 
 Spada had prevailed by saying that they might come to Ghent 
 either with the Duke's leave or without it. Van Kenning saw 
 that it was useless to argue, and came back with Spada, saying, 
 "Your rascals will follow you; I'll be hanged if mine will follow 
 me." 
 
 When they came to the bridge over the Great Canal they recon- 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 137 
 
 noitered, and met with the usual fate of reconnoiterers, war corre- 
 spondents or others, that is to say, they got most dreadfully lied 
 to. But as they were hoth too old to believe any one, they pushed 
 on, and came over the bridge into the town — Van Kenning and 
 Spada being the only men on horseback among fifteen thousand. 
 They were stopped by a young man, who ran up to them and told 
 them as much as he knew of the truth, which was not much. 
 Burgundy's palace was on fire, and the mob were sacking the 
 house of the Van Eycks ; also that Philip of Burgundy had been 
 kiUed. 
 
 These things were utterly untrue ; and, indeed, they did not 
 believe them. But Van Kenning said to Spada, " We must push 
 on and act." 
 
 "We have no authority," said Spada. "Burgundy is my 
 master, and Burgundy is not here. Will you take the responsi- 
 bility as councillor, for I do not want to he scapegoat. You are 
 a gentleman, and I will trust you ; if you want the riot put down, 
 I can do it for you, but I must have authority." 
 
 Van Kenning said very slowly, " Can you do it? " 
 
 Spada said, " I can do it in ten minutes." 
 
 Van Kenning called up the young man who had scouted out to 
 meet them. 
 
 " What authority have you that the house of Hubert VanEyck 
 has been sacked ? " 
 
 " They have broken the doors, because they say that Burgundy 
 and Van Dysart, whom no one can find, are there." An entire 
 lie, but not so very had for an amateur war correspondent. 
 
 Van Kenning turned to Spada — 
 
 "I give you authority to act," he said. " My head is safer 
 than yours." This rascal is lying; but Margaret is in danger. 
 Act." 
 
 " You must give it me in wi'iting, Van Kenning." 
 
 Van Kenning got oif his horse, and wrote on the saddle : — 
 " What is done in the town of Ghent for the next three days is 
 done by authority of me. Van Kenning, Alderman." 
 
 " That is right," said Spada ; " now, where are you going ? " 
 
 " I was going to get on horseback again," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Take my advice, and don't do anything of the kind. Send 
 your horse to the rear with mine, and walk with me. Have you 
 ever heard musketry ? ' ' 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Don't lose your nei-ve, for I shall want you for political pur- 
 poses possibly. Keep to my left, and touch me^ with your 
 elbow." 
 
138 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 The horses were sent to the rear, and they began their terrible 
 march towards the Judenstrasse. 
 
 " God ! " said Van Kenning ; "are you mad ? " 
 
 " No, I am only a soldier," said Spada. " Do not say 
 another ivord, but trust to me. You do not know the power of 
 miisketrij." 
 
 So this dreadful company, fifteen thousand strong, passed into 
 the Judenstrasse, and at their head walked Van Kenning and 
 Spada. Spada said to him — 
 
 " You must never employ cavalry in a street if you can avoid 
 it. Are you still resolute ? " 
 
 " I am perfectly so," said Van Kenning. " I have trusted 
 these fellows too long, and they have betrayed me. Ai-e you sure 
 that you are right in marching down the Judenstrasse ? Could 
 you not even now clear it by bringing up your cavalry from the 
 rear ? " 
 
 And Spada said — " Hold your tongue, good and very dear man. 
 The councillor has handed his authority to the soldier. Can you 
 use your sword? " 
 
 " Yes, well," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Get in behind these pikes if they charge, and keep close to 
 me. Don't lose the touch of my elbow, for you are a good man, 
 and we are on a heavy business. We are saving the State, man, 
 and my grandmother would fight in the cause." 
 
 " I would sooner fight for a woman," said Van Kenning. 
 
 "I have fought for too many," said Spada, " and I have no 
 wife now. Brace yourself up, man, and behave like a man. 
 Here is the Judenstrasse, and here they are in the place I intended 
 to catch them." 
 
 It was a fact ; close to the Duke's palace the mob were out, 
 and were barring the road, armed with pikes and halberts — 
 indeed, with nearly everything they could lay their hands on. * 
 They were under the delusion that they could oppose regular 
 troops, and they were utterly unaware that the good Van Kenning 
 was at their head with Spada. 
 
 Van Kenning said, "Let me go forward; I can send these 
 fools home." 
 
 "To come out again," said Spada. " No, Van Kenning, I 
 must give them their lesson. You have authorised me to act." 
 
 " But the widows and orphans ? " said Van Kenning. 
 
 " There will be more widows and orphans than those of my 
 making, unless these people are taught law by force," said Spada. 
 " "What do you say ? — not that it matters." 
 
 " Let me go," said Van Kenning ; and he went at once, and 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 139 
 
 spoke to the front ranks of the people ; hut they had only one 
 story for him, that they were hetrayed. 
 
 "You betray yourselves," said Van Kenning. "Have I not 
 loved you ? — have I not fought the house of Burgundy for you ? 
 Is there a single man here who dares say that I have not been a 
 true and good friend to the people ? " 
 There was not one. 
 
 "I am here at the head of Burgundy's mercenaries, and why ? 
 Because I cannot trust you in any way. We must have law and 
 order, and you will not allow us to have it. I have always pled 
 for the people — I am of the people myself ; but these new ideas of 
 yours, that property is never to accumulate, but to be equalised, 
 are absolutely idiotic. I am not rich, but am well to do. Because 
 I had a named father before me, is that a reason why I should 
 lose your confidence ? " 
 "No! no! " 
 
 " Burgundy again ! " — here there were clamorous universal 
 cries of " Where is Burgundy ? Where is Van Dysart ? " 
 
 Van Kenning got no hearing after this, and was brought back 
 and put behind the first company of the mercenaries by Spada ; 
 it was obvious that the people would not listen. 
 
 In this last painful and horrible year it is perfectly obvious that 
 a German has only to come into one end of a field to make a 
 Frenchman run out at the other. It was not so with regard to 
 Burgundy's mercenaries, and the men of the Ghent and Bruges 
 trades unions ; they advanced and prepared to fight, when they 
 had the remarkable experience of musketry. 
 
 Spada knew that they would fight, and was ready for them. 
 Van Kenning suddenly left Spada, and ran out between the 
 mercenaries and the mob. 
 
 " Madman ! " cried Spada ; " I am going to fire." 
 " Hear one word, Spada," shouted Van Kenning. 
 But it was too late ; the last words which Spada had time to 
 say were, " Lie down ! " then the never forgotten rattle came. 
 
 The noise frightened the mob more than its effect, for there 
 were but three killed and six wounded in the whole street. Un- 
 like the present Parisian mob, they were totally ignorant of the 
 efi'ect of musketry with lo* aiming. After three or four were 
 killed they rallied again, and charged with pikes ; but Spada was 
 far too good a general to allow them to get at his men. He 
 retreated right and left, and unmasked his artillery. Six guns in 
 that narrow street ! The effect on that crowded mass was simply 
 horrible. Spada, with his splendid audacity, let the crowd ap- 
 proach within fifty yards before he opened fire at aU, then (as he 
 
140 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 calculated afterwards) each shot killed ten men. Tn five minutes 
 the street was piled with dead, the mob had fled into the side 
 streets, and he was left, with a brother Italian cajitain, wondering 
 what he was to do next. 
 
 "Antonio," he said, " what on earth are we to do with these 
 Flemings ? I have no power to act, for Van Kenning is killed, 
 and I only acted under instructions from him." 
 
 " Sack the town," said Antonio of Florence. 
 
 " But I don't know where the Duke of Burgundy is," said 
 Spada. " I should not like to do it without his leave, yet " 
 
 " You had much better sack the town," said Antonio. " Young 
 Burgundy is a dog, and will throw you overboard for this. Ijet 
 us sack the town, and make an anabasis to Dendermond. Let us 
 erect a free state there on strictly Catholic principles. The Holy 
 Father would buy us up at five thousand guilders a man." 
 
 "You are a very clever rogue, my dear," said Spada, "even 
 for an Italian ; but if I could find young Burgundy, I could get 
 more money out of him." 
 
 " You are the oldest and wisest rogue of the two," said Antonio 
 of Florence. " Have your own way. See there in the street. 
 There is a man who is not dead." 
 
 In fact. Van Kenning was by no means dead, but had lain down 
 when Spada called to him, and had continued to lie down tiU it 
 was all over. He approached them, grimly. 
 
 " My dear Van Kenning," said Spada, " you, of all others, are 
 the very man we want." 
 
 "I should think so," said Van Kenning, "after the way you 
 have been hammering at me with your infernal artillery. You told 
 me to lie down, and I have had to lie down for twenty minutes 
 under three dead young men. What do you mean by it ? " 
 
 " I mean that I want your advice and assistance." 
 
 "My advice to you is to take care what you are about with 
 young Burgundy, for when he gets his next panic on he wiU 
 sacrifice you to the people ; and as for assistance, I can only give 
 it in the form of advice. Move your men straight up the Juden- 
 strasse, and billet them in the square in front of the Archbishop's 
 palace. Why ? He says, why ? does this Italian. Why ? — ■ 
 because you must have the Ai-chbishop with you instantly. The 
 clergy manage the women, and the women manage the men. You 
 must manage the Ai'chbishop at once." 
 
 " / see," said Spada. 
 
 " Are you anything of a surgeon ? " said Van Kenning. 
 
 " Pretty good," said Spada. 
 
 " Strip me, then, and look at me, for I am badly hurt." 
 
OLD MABGABET. 141 
 
 It was true. Van Kenning bad a blue lump on bis deltoid, 
 whicb was undoubtedly a bullet. Spada most dexterously cut it 
 out for him, and bound it up. 
 
 "You are a fine made man," he said, when be had bound up 
 the arm. " I should not like to take a buffet from you." 
 
 " Others are of the same opinion," said Van Kenning. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXI. 
 
 The Archbishop declared to his dying day that he would not go 
 through that night again for the price of a Cardinal's hat and the 
 prospect of a Papacy (he got the hat but not the tiara) . It was 
 comparatively early in the evening when the first two lunatics 
 arrived in the persons of Father Peter and Sister PrisoiUa, de- 
 manding sanctuary. The Archbishop pointed out to them that he 
 had no rights of sanctuary out of the cathedral, that they had 
 been imprisoned by a magistrate, and that he should get himself 
 into trouble. But Sister Priscilla was perfectly emphatic about 
 the rights of sanctuary, and the Archbishop yielded, pointing out 
 to her that he had no power at all. After accepting Sister 
 PrisciUa, it did not much matter whether Father Peter was thrown 
 into the bargain, and so he stayed. 
 
 The next arrivals were the Van Eycks, including Marie, John's 
 wife, who thought that they were safer there in the present state 
 of the town than elsewhere. The enibroglio in the town was over 
 when they came, and they had heard the musketry and artillery 
 for the first time in their lives. 
 
 There was a low knocking at the door, and they went down 
 together to open it. The Archbishop opened it with his own 
 hand, keeping the servants back, for he was not sure what was 
 happening, and was perfectly willing to die first. When he saw 
 who were before the door, he uttered a glad cry, and ran out. 
 
 It was Frau Van Dysart leading her husband. 
 
 "I have found him," she said. " I roused the people, but I 
 think they will be quiet now. We want sanctuary for this night. 
 Archbishop, and Margaret is away." 
 
 " Margaret is here," she said, coming forward and kissing her ; 
 whereby we may conclude that Frau Van Dysart was not so black 
 as she was painted. 
 
142 OLD MAHGAEET. 
 
 In the night, very late, they heard the troops coming into the 
 square ; hut the politic Ai-chbishop would make no demonstration. 
 At the earliest dawn of morning it was evident, from the hum and 
 stir in the great square, that something had happened. The 
 Archhishop looked out of window, and saw what had happened 
 — the mob had fraternised with the troops. The Archhishop was 
 a little uncomfortable at first ; but there were loud cries getting 
 up of " Long live the Archbishop ! " It was time for a demon- 
 stration, and the Ai'ohbishop, so well versed in ecclesiastical 
 affairs, aroused himself to the situation. He awakened his guests. 
 
 The great doors of his palace were thrown open suddenly, and 
 on the steps came the Archbishop, Sister PriscUla, Father Peter, 
 Hubert, John, Margaret, and Marie Van Eyck, Van Dysart and 
 his wife — a noble group. The Archbishop, with archiepiscopal 
 humility, stood on the lowest step, nearest to the seething and 
 roaring crowd of mixed soldiers and workmen which now filled the 
 square. In a moment three men were seen pushing their way 
 through the crowd, and then the group on the steps were joined 
 by Van Kenning, Spada, and old Polders. So all our friends 
 were ranked together before the people, and the people knew that 
 their best friends were before them. 
 
 Old Polders held up his hand, and the crowd was silent. " My 
 friends," he said, " we want diligence, order, and law, and I think 
 we can get it ; the people here on these steps have not behaved iU 
 to you." 
 
 There was a cry of " Spada ! " 
 
 ' ' Spada is a mercenaij ; Spada is a man who is trained to war : 
 if you would train yourselves to war like these Italians we should 
 have a great Dutch Eepublic, which the whole world could not 
 meddle with. Spada did his duty according to his lights ; let 
 him be, let him be. I am a good patriot, and I say, let the work 
 of last night he forgotten. I am no lover of the house of Bur- 
 gundy, as you well know, but as long as we cannot lead ourselves, 
 we had better get the house of Burgundy to lead us. The time 
 will come when we may be able to load ourselves, but at present 
 let us keep with that house, and educate ourselves to freedom." 
 
 "But Burgundy is fled to his father," said one man in the 
 crowd, and the ciy was taken up by the crowd. " Where is 
 young Burgundy?" was the cry. 
 
 A voice rang through the crowd. " I am here : " and they all 
 looked up. 
 
 On the top step, above all our friends, stood Philippe le Bon 
 in scarlet and gold, alone, and undaunted, a magnificent figure 
 standing out before the dark archway of the door. The splendour 
 
OLD MABGARET. 143 
 
 of his dress and the beauty of his carriage awed the mob into 
 utter silence, during which he said — 
 
 "I am here, and I mean to stay here till justice shall be done 
 to the people, but if the people do not do justice to me let them 
 beware." 
 
 And so he turned and passed under the arch, and the people 
 cheered madly ; our friends, from whom we have to part now, 
 followed him ; the Archbishop brought up the rear with Sister 
 PrisciUa and Father Peter, and Sister Priscilla suggested that the 
 Archbishop should bless the crowd. The Archbishop turned and 
 did so, and since benedictions were invented we doubt whether 
 any was ever so hearty as his. 
 
 In the hall Van Kenning came against the Archbishop. 
 
 " I had no idea that you had him here," said Van Kenning. 
 
 " I daresay not," said the Archbishop, " but when you repent, 
 and enter the church, I will explain to you the use of coups do 
 theatre." 
 
 Margaret got against Philippe le Bon, and she laid her arm on 
 his shoulder. 
 
 " My Lord, you will forgive Ghent ? " 
 
 " Never," he hissed through his teeth ; and he kept his word 
 like a true Burgundian. 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXII. 
 
 In Scotland, in Perthshire, in Glenlyon, there lived a lady and 
 gentleman who called themselves Macdonalds, although the gentle- 
 man confessed himself to be a Fleming of noble birth, who had 
 taken his wife's name as being nobler than his own. They 
 always told their neighbours that they had come to live among the 
 Macgregors because his wife was not at one with her clan, and it 
 was not long before gossips from the Macgregors and gossips from 
 the Macdonalds met and remembered that the beauty of the 
 Macdonalds, the great beauty of the West, had gone away from 
 the Macdonalds into foreign parts after a young man of their clan, 
 who had been reported as killed by another young man who had 
 taken service with the Duke of Burgundy, and who had come home 
 to see his mother, and had afterwards gone away to take service — 
 lucrative— under the Llama of Thibet. This young man, accord- 
 ing to the legends of his clan, was assassinated at Kashgar, by 
 the Tartars, in consequence of being recognised as an hereditary 
 
Hi OLD MAEGABET. 
 
 Tartar, fighting against his own family, in consequence of Alick 
 ua Dhuin having married one of the innumerable daughters of 
 Kublai Khan. The " Scot abroad " is very difficvdt to deal with, 
 for he marries evei^body. The young man who was afterwards 
 killed at Kashgar, in fact told the whole story about Van Dysart 
 and his wife to the Macdonalds, and the Macdonalds, then at one 
 with the Macgregors in their opposition to the Campbells, told it 
 to the Macgregors. 
 
 The whole story was known, and judged by these simple High- 
 landers : they judged that if they had sinned, they had repented, 
 and they took them to their honest hearts, and loved them in their 
 wild rude fashion most deeply. 
 
 And, indeed, they were very lovable, for they neither of them 
 ceased in good works : they lived in that little castle half-way up 
 Glenlyon, below Innerleithan, and as they had no children they 
 lived very comfortably. She was always about among the poor 
 folks of the Macgregors, and when the wounded were brought in 
 he had as swift a foot on the hiU-side as any one in the way of 
 assistance. 
 
 He spoke once and for all ; he was known as a fighting man, 
 and the Macgregors asked him to lead them against the Camp- 
 bells. He answered " No ; I have ruined my life by killing one 
 man, and I will not kiU another, save to defend my house." So 
 Van Dysart lived on with his wife, doing good with his wealth ; 
 and neither of thum were unhappy. She had the poor, the sick, 
 and the wounded to look after, and he, when he had done working 
 with her, had the moor and the loch. He was completely subdued, 
 and aU the best part of his nature came out. Sometimes he 
 would bring home the biggest deer or the largest salmon, and 
 hoped that she would be home to see them ; but she would often 
 be away among the sick and wounded of the Macgregors, and he 
 would go after her and wait at the door, and when she came out 
 he would say, " Love, I have nothing left save you." 
 
 But the Campbells pressed very hard, there seemed little doubt 
 that Glenlyon must go. The grey heads of the Glen came to 
 Van Dysart and consulted him as a foreign man who knew war. 
 Van Dysart told them that their case was absolutely and entirely 
 hopeless, and that their time was come. The only plan, he said, 
 was to send his wife to Sanctuary at Dunkeld, and in case of his 
 house being threatened, to fight at their head against the Camp- 
 bells. As a foreigner he saw he had no right to fight unless his 
 house was threatened ; in such a case he deemed it the right of a 
 Christian gentleman to fight in defence of his own property. 
 
 That night he sent away his wife, with aU their papers and 
 
OLD MABGAEET. 145 
 
 money, to Dunkeld. She had not been gone eight hours when a 
 swift young man came in from Perth with a parcel, and Van 
 Dysart paid the young man, and fed him, and saw him go naked 
 into his bed-place (they slept so then) before he would open it. 
 For it had come from Ghent, and a terror was on him. 
 
 He unrolled it by himself; first of all he unrolled two oil 
 paintings on canvas, and he saw in the first a portrait of himself, 
 and in the second a portrait of his wife ; in the centre of these 
 was a letter, more precious than the portraits. 
 
 " We hated you once, but we love you now. All the wrong 
 you ever did to us is entirely forgiven. We have the portraits of 
 yourself and your wife by us, and we thought that you would like 
 repHcas of them. 
 
 " Mabgaeet Van Eyck, 
 " Hubert Van Eyck." 
 
 But not John Van Eyck : he never signed that letter. Van 
 Dysart the next morning started oflf the young man to Dunkeld 
 with the pictures and the letter. Shortly after which the Mac- 
 gregor came in. 
 
 " My friend," said Van Dysart, " I am ready to fight for you il 
 you think me worth it, and if you think it is worth while fighting. 
 Is my house in danger ? " 
 
 " You will be burnt out by the Campbells next week, if you last 
 as long. What has made you change your mind ? " 
 
 " I have been forgiven," said Van Dysart. " Your wrongs are 
 iniquitous, and if you wHl ask me to fight I will fight. I have but 
 one solitary enemy now left in the world." 
 
 " WiU you give me his name ? " said Macgregor, " for we have 
 Skene dims in this country." 
 
 " His name is John Van Eyck," said Van Dysart ; "but as 
 you are never likely to meet him, you can keep your skene dhu in 
 your stocking." 
 
 There was a great feast in Campbell's Tower a few nights after 
 
 this conversation. Everybody was there ; it got known among 
 
 the ladies and gentlemen above the salt and near the head of the 
 
 table that a Macgregor had got in, and that he was safe by the 
 
 laws of hospitaUty. How that young man had got in was a very 
 
 interesting subject of conversation at the upper end of the table, 
 
 and how on earth that young man was ever to get out again was a 
 
 subject too large for human contemplation. And again, which was 
 
 the young Macgregor? no one seemed to know. There icas a 
 
 Macarefor, but no one knew which young man he was. 
 5 D . ^^ 
 
1-16 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 Prince Ulrich of Saxony found out (he married Dorothy, 
 fourteenth daughter of a progenitive Campheli whose name we 
 have forgotten and so had to propose Argyll's health). Ulrich of 
 Saxony proposed the health of the house of Campbell, and after 
 the last words of his short speech, declared in very bad German- 
 English, there was not the least doubt that there was a Macgregor 
 in the room. A young man bounded on to the table, among the 
 silver plate, and looking at Argyll, said — 
 
 "Campbell! dog I I am here to denounce you. You are a 
 liar and a thief. You desire our blood. You are a traitor and a 
 scoundrel." 
 
 Campbell moved in his chair for a moment to look at the young 
 Macgregor. 
 
 " There is a young gentleman down there who has had too 
 much to drink," he said, quietly. " He had better be taken off 
 the table, Seneschal. You can go, sir, and carry the ruin of your 
 clan with you." 
 
 The young man went out thinking he must fight for his life, 
 but to his utter astonishment, he was treated like a very prince 
 by the Campbell young men. The Argylls of those times had 
 resolved on the ruin of his clan, and could well afford to spare 
 him. As for the Campbell young men they let him go, and so it 
 is not in any way wonderful that he should have arrived at Van 
 Dysart's Castle, in Glenlyon, after coming over three mountains, 
 neither naked nor wounded. It is not also by any means improb- 
 able that Van Dysart should have cursed the Highland Scotch 
 heartily for fighting about nothing whatever. Probable or im^ 
 probable, he did that thing, and after the young man was gone to 
 bed Van Dysart stepped round to old Macgregor, and asked when 
 he thought the Campbells would move. 
 
 " When we least think it," said old Macgregor. 
 
 " WiU they move to-night? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 " Next year, or the year after," said Macgregor, laughing. 
 " We shall be prepared now, for this will get about among our 
 young men, and we shall be prepared. Campbells do not fight for 
 nothing, and they will wait until we are unprepared." 
 
 He was right. Two months elapsed and Van Dysart was not 
 unhappy ; he might have fled a hundred times over, but the wild 
 life suited him, and his wife was at Dunkeld, so that he could go 
 often to see her, and he knew she was out of danger. 
 
 This pleasant, cultivated church life suited him at times when 
 he was tired of his Highlanders ; and his wife was contented 
 among the religious women. One day, when he had brought 
 down a deer and a salmon to his wife, she told him a most un- 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 147 
 
 expected fact. She was going to be a mother. He felt a new life 
 in him as he took hack the news to the kindly Macgregors, and 
 there were immense and savage rejoicings in Glenlyon. The child 
 yet unborn was at once adopted by the clan, and a grand feast was 
 set going in honour of the little Flanderkin Scot, and a bonfire 
 was lighted on SchiehaUion, to which all the able-bodied of the 
 clan went, as though there were no Campbells waiting for them. 
 
 Van Dysart did not go ; he sat in his little castle reading, and 
 thinking at intervals of the future of his little child, so far away 
 from ah. who could help it. He rose and wrote a letter to Margaret 
 Van Eyok : — 
 
 "Deab Maegaeet, — 
 
 " My wife is going to give me a child. Take care of 
 it and of her. There is danger here among these savages, but I 
 have got to love them with a love deeper than that with which I 
 ever loved my own people, and I cannot desert them. These 
 people have trusted me, and I cannot desert them. Will you teU 
 John that I have forgiven him. Good-bye. 
 
 " Van Dysaet." 
 
 He sat for an hour or two, mostly thinking how utterly foolish 
 these Macgregors were to be gaping at a bonfire with the enemy 
 at their gate, when his door was quietly opened and quietly shut. 
 A ghost stood before him — Spada ! — and he leaped on his feet. 
 
 " Van Dysart," said Spada, " there is no time to talk. I have 
 taken service with the Campbells for the last three weeks, and 
 I have just found out that you were here. I have diced myself 
 out of every city in Europe, and took service with them, and they 
 pay well. But when I heard that you were the Flanderkin whom 
 the Macgregors had among them, I gave up everything, pay and 
 character, to warn you. I have deserted for your sake : your 
 people must fight in the morning, and you and I must get safe to 
 Dunkeld. Where is your wife, and where are your people ? " 
 
 " The people are mainly on the hiU at a bonfire," said Van 
 Dysart, shaking hands warmly with Spada. " My wife is in 
 sanctuary at Dunkeld." 
 
 "That is brave!" said Spada. "Now we' must save our- 
 selves." 
 
 " Spada, do you know that I won't save myself." 
 
 " It is perfectly easy," said Spada. 
 
 " But I cannot do it. I cannot leave these people in their 
 ruin. I thank you deeply for your friendship, but I cannot be a 
 coward now, though I have been a coward in the old times, 
 
148 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 Spada 1 these people have been kind to me, and trust to me to 
 lead them. Spada ! as a soldier and a gentleman, I ask you 
 what you would do if you were in my place. I am a new man 
 now, and I ask you before God what ought I to do ? " 
 
 Spada fidgeted and fumed, and kicked the sticks on the hearth 
 together. At last he said — 
 
 " Devil take it 1 Of course you must stay. I shall stay with 
 you, however." 
 
 " But, my dear Spada, you are a deserter, and will be hung." 
 
 " Well, I have risked that for twenty years, and I don't mind 
 risking it again," said this strange compound of chivalrous 
 gentleman and utter rogue. 
 
 " When win they be on us ? " said Van Dysart. 
 
 Spada stared at him with an amazed countenance. 
 
 " When will they be on us ? " repeated Van Dysart. 
 
 "Do you think I would tell you that?" said Spada. "I 
 know very well, but I would die sooner than give any details." 
 
 " You said we must fight in the morning ? " 
 
 " I said more than I meant, then. But here you may have to 
 fight any hour, and the sooner your people come home the better. 
 God I what is that light on the waU ? — the dogs have followed 
 mel" 
 
 It was too awfuUy true. Spada had been watched and followed ; 
 and before they had time to look round them three hamlets on 
 the right side of Glenlyon were blazing, and the women and the 
 weans were strugghng through the river towards SchiehaUion. 
 Campbell's scouts had brought in the news that the Macgregors 
 were feasting that night because the Macdonald woman was 
 going to have a baby, and when they looked round for Spada to 
 lead them the Campbells found that the treacherous Italian had 
 deserted them. Those of the clan who were ready marched at 
 once, with young Colin Campbell at their head, and going swiftly, 
 almost overtook Spada, while the Macgregors were dispersed 
 without arms on the shoulder of SchiehaUion. 
 
 " Where the are your men ? " said Spada. 
 
 " I can get about fifty here in ten minutes," said Van Dysart. 
 " We can hold the castle with them for an hour until the others 
 come from the hiU. Shall we retreat to the hiU ? " 
 
 " And leave the women and children ? " said Spada. " No ; 
 that would not do. Send the women and children to the hill to 
 hurry your men down. It is almost hopeless, but we may beat 
 the dogs yet." 
 
 Van Dysart could now talk Gaelic, and he pushed the women 
 and children on to the hiU to SchiehaUion to bring their fathers 
 
OLD MAEGAEET. 149 
 
 and brothers up, while the shine of the torches of the Campbells 
 was dancing in the river within two hundred yards of them, for 
 the Campbells were looking for a ford in the river, which they had 
 never crossed before. Spada and Van Dysart heard a dull con- 
 fused splashing as they came through. 
 
 " How many have you behind you ? " said Spada, for it had all 
 taken place in the dark. 
 
 " I think fuUy fifty," said Van Dysart. 
 
 " Can you get them to hold their tongues, and not give the 
 slogan? if so there is life and hope." 
 
 Van Dysart passed the word for dead silence, in Gaelic, and it 
 was observed. As the first Campbells emerged from the water 
 the Macgregors were at them, and Spada said afterwards, at 
 Padua, that he never saw any fighting like that ; and indeed the 
 Highlander fights better than any other man. There was moon 
 enough for the men to see one another, a fact at which Spada 
 rather rejoiced, because young Colin, who led the Campbells, had 
 been impertinent to him, and he intended the young man to die. 
 Spada's exquisite fence was soon a match for Colin's clumsy sword 
 and shield work, and Colin's body went floating down the Lyon, 
 face uppermost, looking at the stars. But Van Dysart had on 
 unapproved Highland armour, like David, of which he was not 
 master, and Duncan Dhu, a Dunniewassel, got through all his 
 fine fencing, and cut him through the neck, so that his body 
 floated down nearly beside Colin's body, and they were found both 
 on the next day in the nearest shallow, side by side. 
 
 So ended Van Dysart, a man who was worthy of better things. 
 The Macgregors were destroyed practically that night. Such 
 things will happen in war ; but search how they would the Camp- 
 bells never caught Spada. They threatened the Bishop of 
 Dunkeld with violation of sanctuary for entertaining him, but the 
 bishop appeared at the door of the cathedral, plenis pontificalibus, 
 and requested them to search the premises. When they had 
 done so he informed them that Spada — a faithful son of the 
 Church — had saUed to Flanders from Perth, three days before. 
 The CamjjbeUs threatened to burn down his cathedral, whereupon 
 he gave them his benediction, and committed them to God's holy 
 keeping : in short he blessed them over the bridge of Dunkeld, 
 he, uttering the most beautiful sentiments, and they swearing like 
 troopers. We believe that Boileau was the first man to point out 
 the awful effects of priestly forgiveness on the very bravest 
 warriors. It had no effect on the Campbells, however, and they 
 went home sulky, thinking about which was to be the next clan 
 they should ruin, and thinking also that they would do their own 
 
150 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 business next time, without employing a rascally Italian like 
 Spada. 
 
 As for the end of Spada, we can perfectly easily tell that. 
 Spada had an old aunt at Padua of considerahle wealth ; Spada 
 had borrowed money of her as long as she would lend him any, 
 after which the old lady refused to see him at all, and kicked him 
 out into the world, hearing of his astounding rascalities through 
 her Father Confessor, who, we may be sure, did not make the 
 least of them, wanting her money for Holy Church. This old 
 lady had Spada tracked everywhere (at a considerable expense), 
 and grew more and more infuriated every day at Spada's villainies. 
 Her director told his bishop that the money was safe for the 
 Church, and his bishop and he settled how they were to spend it. 
 The old lady died, and her will was read out by the notary before 
 the Bishop of Padua and Spada's relations. It was a very 
 singular will : — 
 
 " To the Bishop of Padua (I use English figures) £500 for two 
 west windows in the cathedral. To my director, Father Fran- 
 cesco, £500, which he, being vowed to poverty, must give to his 
 Order. To my maid Dorothea £2000, on condition that she does 
 not go to confession more than twice a year. AU the rest of 
 my property in Padua and elsewhere I leave to my nephew, 
 Michael Angelo Spada, who is worth all the priests that ever were 
 bom!" 
 
 Although the old lady had died in mortal sin, and was doubtless 
 finding it out by the time that the will was read, yet our old friend 
 Spada found himself, for the first time in his life, a very rich man. 
 He was sick of fighting, but the old gambling instinct was stiU in 
 liim, and he took to banking. He entered the firm of Ahasuerus, 
 Jehosaphat, and Jones, as senior partner, and the firm became 
 Spada and Ahasuerus. Jehosaphat and Jones sold out; but 
 Ahasuems knew Spada better than Jehosaphat and Jones did, 
 and wisely stood in. Said Ahasuerus — " You must be half a Jew, 
 Spada, for you have had fine clothes on your back these ten years 
 by gambling. You must have a good head. Bring in your fifty 
 thousand pounds, my boy, and we will found two great famihes, 
 but no gambling, my lad, without previous consultation." There 
 was no gambling without previous consultation ; but they founded 
 two great famihes, one Italian, one English. The Jew was forced 
 to confess that in great and risky speculations the Italian dicer 
 was his master. I suppose that no man is a better master of 
 finance than your botting-man of the present day ; at aU events, 
 Spada and Ahasuerus made their fortunes ten times over, and 
 their descendants rule the money-market to a certain extent still. 
 
OLD MAEGARET. 151 
 
 Spada wanted to marry Ahasuerus's daughter Rebecca. This 
 young lady did not see her way to it at first, being attached to 
 young Aminadab Solomon ; but she pointed out to Aminadah that 
 he had much better marry her sister Esther and come into the 
 firm, and the young man took her advice ; in fine, Spada married 
 Rebecca, and died a respectable and fat banker at the age of 
 eighty-five. The progeny of this marriage are now connected with 
 nearly every royal famUy in Europe. 
 
 The Bishop of Dunkeld found himself with a young widow on 
 his hands, with whom he could do anything. Madame Van 
 Dysart was a fine lady now ; her husband's great wealth had come 
 to her unconditionally. The Bishop thought what he had best do, 
 and he concluded that he had best behave as a gentleman. When 
 he brought the news of her husband's death to her, she was quite 
 calm. 
 
 "I knew that it must be so," she said; "but why he ? — not 
 me ? Your God is a cruel and vindictive God ; I wiU not worship 
 him." 
 
 " My dear," said the Bishop of Dunkeld, " you are talking 
 very foolish words." 
 
 " And you also," she said ; " I wiU have no more of you." 
 
 The Bishop of Dunkeld redoubled his kindness to her, but she 
 grew more rebellious to him day by day, until a lay-sister came in 
 one morning and told him that there was a noble boy in the 
 house. 
 
 He went to her bedside at once, and saw a little pink cheek 
 upon her breast : he had lain in such a place years ago, before he 
 was a man, and before he was a priest ; now he was a priest, but 
 he was still a man, he bent over her and said — 
 
 " Are you better, sister ? " 
 
 She said, " I am much better, I shall be better stiU soon. You 
 forgive my wicked words ? " 
 
 " Who am I to forgive ? " said the Bishop, in a whisper. " I 
 have cursed God in my heart, like Job, and have not died. See, 
 sister. When you get well you must go away from us. You must 
 go to Ghent. You must go to the Van Eycks. You are not fit 
 for a religious life : it would not suit you. Geniuses, fools, and 
 madmen can stand it. You are neither of the three." 
 
 " I will bring up my son as a Churchman, at all events," said 
 the poor widow mother. 
 
 "You had better not " but we will not follow the Bishop of 
 
 Dunkeld in the history of a ruined life : there, that evening, he 
 told the poor woman everything, and she told him everything. 
 Every one was waiting for vespers, but the Bishop had not come, 
 
152 OLD MARGAEET. 
 
 and the choristers and singing men sat opposite one another listen- 
 ing to the roar of the Bran, just outside. The Bishop hurried 
 himself into his cope, and the old sacristan said — 
 
 " You are late, my Lord." 
 
 The Bishop said, " I have been hearing the confession of that 
 Flemish woman. Van Dysart." 
 
 My Lord Bishop of Dunkeld, had she not been hearing yours ? 
 And which of you had given the other absolution ? 
 
 " God has been cruel to me, for I had got to love him so," she 
 now said. 
 
 " You have your child, and a life of usefulness before you." 
 
 That is almost the last which passed between the Bishop of 
 Dunkeld and Madame Van* Dysart. I wonder what the Pope 
 would have said ; in fact, I wonder what the priests woiUd have 
 said. But the Scotch folks knew the truth about the Bishop, 
 though it was kept from the priests : the old wives knew the 
 story, though they hardly dared whisper it one to the other. 
 There had been a black, dark night in Athole, twenty years before, 
 and in the melee one brother had killed the other. It was not the 
 Bishop who was killed. The Bishop was the survivor, and went 
 into holy orders, giving his estates in perpetuity to the Church. 
 Madame Van Dysart had met a man with a sorrow greater than 
 her own, for he had told her all. 
 
 It was strange to see her there with her baby, so patient, so 
 quiet, so hajjpy, and then to see her suddenly remember her hus- 
 band, and burst into frantic hysterical tears. 
 
 " It is a lie," she said to the Bishop once, " to say that he was 
 a bad husband to me. He was the best of husbands : there was 
 no one ever like him, and I think I will go to Margaret and talk 
 about him. She would have had him, I believe, even after he 
 killed Leon. Did you Imow Leon ? " 
 
 "My dear j'oung lady, you are out of your mind," said the 
 Bishop. "Who was Leon?" 
 
 " Loon ! you must be foolish not to know Leon. Leon was as 
 pretty as my love who is gone. My love kiUed him in a duel, my 
 love could kill any one. I wish he had killed John Van Eyck ; 
 he can paint, but that is all that he is fit for. I think that I am 
 a little wild to-night. Bishop. I will be better soon, and go away 
 to Margaret. I want to say something. I want to leave some 
 money to the Church before I go. I am very rich. How much 
 should I give you ? " 
 
 " Write from Ghent," said the honest Bishop. " You are not 
 fit to govern your afi'airs now. Ask this Margaret Van Eyck what 
 you should give us ; let her assess your woe. Something, 
 
OLt) MAEGAEET. 153 
 
 daughter," he continued, smiling. " And at this moment you 
 would give us all, without thinking of yourself? " 
 
 And Madame Van Dysart said, " That is true ; I must tliink of 
 him, and I will go to Margaret Van Eyck." 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXIII. 
 
 The great picture of the " Adoration of the Lamh," was getting 
 on splendidly. The centre was as nearly as possible finished ; 
 though John Van Eyck was touching up his own work, and was 
 waging to touch up his brother Hubert's. I think that Hubert 
 would have allowed him to do so, but Margaret showed temper 
 when he proposed it, and said that she would destroy the picture 
 if John attempted to lay his hands on either Hubert's work or her 
 o^Ti. Hubert took her to task quietly and gently about her exhi- 
 bition of temper. 
 
 " My dearest Hubert," she said, " there was a time when I 
 believed in John, but that time is past. He has no heart, and a 
 painter without sentiment is a fool." 
 
 " You have too much sentiment, Mag," said Hubert. 
 
 " I know that ; but who has painted best in this great picture ? " 
 
 "Well, you have, sister; but then you have chosen to paint 
 only the people you loved." 
 
 " Yet not every one I loved," said Margaret. " You let John 
 paint you, and he has put you beside himself in the rear rank, 
 among the Saints." 
 
 " Where would you have put me ? " said Hubert, kissing her. 
 
 ," In the left voile," she said, " with Van Kenning, Van Dysart, 
 and Spada. That was very good my putting Van Dysart on 
 horseback, and Van Kenning on foot." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because Van Dysart, radical as he is, will never walk when 
 he can ride," she said, laughing. 
 
 " You have left out Leon," whispered her brother. 
 
 " Would you paint me when I am dead ? " she asked. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " No ! Come and look at the right voile, and see how I have 
 been working." 
 
 Hubert came down to her end of the great hall ; and she drew 
 the veil from her picture. Hubert Van Eyck then cast his cap 
 
154 OLD MABGAEET. 
 
 and plume on the floor with an oath ; for on the extreme right of 
 that voile Margaret has painted herself and Sister Priscilla advanc- 
 ing with the light of heaven on their faces. 
 
 "No one ever painted like that," he said; and, indeed, we 
 agree with him, though a vast number of people will disagree with 
 me. We get little true work now ; and that picture has ten years' 
 study in it ; it took more than ten years to paint it. In our 
 opinion, our own best artist is a scene painter when we compare 
 him with the Van Eycks ; and he would be the first person to say 
 so himself. A picture cannot be painted in ten months ; it takes 
 more than ten months to study a picture like the " Adoration." 
 
 Hubert looked at the right voile once more, and he said — 
 
 " Where is Father Peter ? " 
 
 " I have left him to John," she answered. 
 
 "Where is the Macdonald woman — the woman who married 
 Van Dysart, killed among the Scythians." 
 
 " I must leave her to you, Hubert," said Margaret. "I can- 
 not paint her. She has been in the house this three days, but I 
 cannot paint her." 
 
 " In the house ? " cried Hubert. 
 
 " She will never do in the picture as Magdalene," said Margaret, 
 " for she has a baby at her bosom— such a sweet little love, 
 Hubert ! Hubert, dear, be godfather to it ; she and I lay 
 together last night with the little one between us. What do you 
 ask of me ? Can I paint Magdalene with a baby at her breast ? " 
 
 " She was never Magdalene — she was never that," said Hubert, 
 angrily. " As for her political sins, may God forgive them, for 
 she went near to ruin us — but she was never that. Is she in the 
 house ? " 
 
 " I am here as usual, listening to your conversation. I have 
 been a desperate woman, but not a bad one. I have heard and 
 seen things which would make your flesh creep, but that is all. 
 Van Dysart is my only husband. You must put me in the picture, 
 and we will look at it in heaven together." 
 
 " But " said Hubert Van Eyck. 
 
 "But," she said — "precise your accusations against me, and 
 and see what they come to. They come to nothing. I have led 
 a wild mad life, but I request that any man in the town will say 
 one word against me." 
 
 " My dear soul," said Hubert, " this is too audacious ! " 
 
 " But it is true," said she. 
 
 " Do you mean to say ? " said Hubert. 
 
 "Yes, I do," she said; "and I mean to say that I do not 
 intend to continue the discussion before your sister. I am rich 
 
OLD MARGAEET. 155 
 
 and respectable, and in the way you mean I am perfectly innocent. 
 Put me in the picture, Hubert ; I swear that I am worthy of it ! " 
 
 " Shall I paint you, or shall Margaret ? " said Hubert. 
 
 " You had better," she said. 
 
 And so the Macdonald woman is in the picture after all, and you 
 had better find her out. I think that you wiU find a little grey 
 dog near to her ; but, after three days' contemplation of the great 
 picture, you wiU be as good a judge as I. 
 
HETTY. 
 
HETTY. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 Rebecca's reasons foe makeying anybody who would take 
 
 HEE. 
 
 In one of the narrowest and dullest lanes in the neighhourhood of 
 Walham Green lived George Turner, Esq., Solicitor, of Gray's 
 Inn. His house was the largest in the lane, had certainly preten- 
 sions to be, or to have been, a "gentleman's" house, for there 
 was a coach-house and stable beside it ; and the garden before and 
 behind was fuU three-quarters of an acre. 
 
 The other houses in the lane were eight-roomed, semi-detached, 
 brown brick boxes of houses ; with long gardens in front, and little 
 back-yards, with a water-butt and a clothes-hne, behind. They 
 were miserable little places ; yet Eebecca Turner, the youngest 
 daughter, while lolling and yawning, would envy their inhabitants 
 the possession of the key many times a day. 
 
 For there was life among them. Those among them who were 
 thrifty, or well to do, or childless, or whose children were good, 
 had pretty plots of flowers even ; but this was rare, for there were 
 too many children ; and so, on a washing-day, the clothes-lines 
 and poles were always up in the front garden, stamped hard and 
 black by a hundred little feet. Nay, there was another reason 
 against flowers. The landlord of that lane did not see his way to 
 new-palings ; and so, if you wanted flowers, you must keep the 
 palings in repair yourself. Yet there was life enough there. The 
 neighbours — the women — dawdled into one another's houses, and 
 gossiped ; nay, now and then, but very seldom, quarrelled. Once 
 there was a fire, and Miss Turner, the precise elder daughter, 
 seeing them running, hoped it was not their house. "No such 
 
 169 
 
160 HETTY. 
 
 luck," said Miss Eebecoa, with such singular emphasis that her 
 elder sister let her be. 
 
 Turner's house, or The Cedars, stood back from the road, in a 
 blotch of mangy grass, and a blotch of mangy soot- stained gravel, 
 and accounted for its apparent usurped title by one miserable stump 
 and one miserable bough of the tree of Lebanon, which solitary 
 bough pointed meeldy and sorrowfully to where its brother had 
 once stood. Behind the house was a lait of kitchen-garden, and a 
 bit of grass unmown for years ; which would have been something 
 had it been secluded, but even that was denied you. It ended in 
 a wide, wild waste of market-garden, stretching away acre after 
 acre. The timber on the estate consisted of a broken down mulberry 
 tree, and a large quantity of sooty lilac. 
 
 The house, though in habitable repair, was in that half state of 
 dilapidation which is sometimes a good deal more melancholy than 
 a reaUy good downright ruin. The ruin says to you, " Here, come 
 here, I belong to you as much as to any one now ; come, and I will 
 teU you stories ; " and tells them to you accordingly ; whereas the 
 half-dilapidated house says only, "We have secrets here yet." 
 Turner's house was dark red brick, with a high tile roof, perpen- 
 dicular to the top of the garret windows, and then sloping like 
 another — the most hideous of roofs ; its door was approached by 
 high steps, and the windows of the living-rooms were long and 
 narrow, with thick wooden frames, and bulgy glass panes ; some 
 had a nob in the middle, which made looking out of window a 
 luxui-y difficult to indulge in : internally, the furniture was princi- 
 pally of horsehair and dark mahogany. And Miss Eebecca wished 
 it was burned down. 
 
 In this house she lived. Mr. Turner was, in religion, of the 
 strictest form of Calvinism and Sabbatarianism, forbidding any 
 books except theological ones on a Sunday, and never allowing a 
 novel or a book of poetry into the house. There had been a time 
 once when she had been able to escape all this : before she had 
 grown up ; but that was aU over. She had, unlike her sister, 
 grown up good-looking. The widower, her father, had consulted 
 religious women of the congregation ; they had been unanimous ; 
 the girl Eebecca was much too pretty to go out by herself. From 
 that time she was a prisoner, for her father was no man to be 
 trifled with. Can one wonder that a high-spirited girl, capable of 
 any kind of pleasure, should one very wet Sunday evening, after 
 chapel and a sermon of an hour, as she was going to bed, emphati- 
 cally wish she was dead, wish she had never been bom, and most 
 particularly wish she had been ugly. 
 
 " If I had been as ugly as you I could have gone anywhere I 
 
HETTY. 161 
 
 chose, and done as I liked. It was old Mother Kussel and Miss 
 Soper that put him up to my being pretty. I wish they were dead 
 with all my heart." 
 
 " My dear sister Rebecca ! After chapel, too ! " said her sister 
 Carry, solemnly. 
 
 She didn't say she wished that was dead ; she only clenched her 
 hands and gasped for breath. That was the last of it aU — all the 
 duU misery of her life came before her stronger than ever at the 
 mention of chapel, and she cast herself sobbing on the bed. 
 
 " I wish somebody would come and marry me," she said ; " hut 
 there's no chance — no young men ever come near us. I'd marry 
 Akin, I'd marry anybody — except that beast," she added, suddenly, 
 with a shrill determination which pointed to a small chance in 
 favour of the beast's prospects, and then by degrees she sobbed 
 herself quiet. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MES. KUSSEL TELLS MISS SOPER SO MUCH AS SHE KNOWS OP THE 
 FAMILY HISTORY. 
 
 The lady so disrespectfully mentioned by Rebecca as old Mother 
 Russel, was taking tea with Miss Soper. Mrs. Russel had been, 
 some said, born at Walham Green ; but was certainly, with few 
 exceptions, the oldest inhabitant there ; Miss Soper, on the other 
 hand, was a comparatively new-comer. These, it will be remem- 
 bered, were the two ladies who had given poor Rebecca such very 
 dire offence by persuading her father that she was too pretty to 
 walk out by herself ; and, having just taUced through some of their 
 other neighbours in whom we are not interested, and having come 
 to the Turners, in whom we are, we wiU just make bold to listen 
 a little to them. 
 
 Mrs. Russel was a fat, heavy woman, whose fat, unlike that of 
 some people, had become physically distressing to her, and had 
 made her cross. She had discovered the solace of spirits, hut used 
 them moderately. It is possible that she may have been a good- 
 natured woman once, but the continual distress of her earthly load 
 had made her iU-natured. Religion with her meant a slight 
 excitement and society, but little more. 
 
 Miss Soper was a very different woman — pale, gaunt, black, 
 rigid, with a face like a Roman-nosed horse. She had been for 
 some years teacher in a small suburban ladies' school, until she 
 
 12 
 
162 HETTY. 
 
 came into a little money, when she retired, with no heart and a 
 small annuity, to Walham Green. It was in her capacity as ex- 
 schoolmistress that she voted on Rebecca's not going out alone. 
 She was consulted as an expert, and left no doubt on the minds of 
 Mrs. Russel and Mr. Tm-ner as to her opinion on that score. In 
 her religion she was most deeply sincere, in her duties most rigid ; 
 she saw no harm in talking over her neighbours' affairs, and she 
 had a voice like an aged pieman to do it with. 
 
 " That's a bright, clever-looking girl, that Rebecca Turner," 
 she said. " Quick to leani." 
 
 "A deal too quick," said Mrs. Russel. 
 
 " She seems quicker than her sister." 
 
 " Caroline is a real good pious girl, and takes after her father." 
 
 " Rebecca does not, then ? " said Miss Soper. 
 
 "No, Rebecca is another sort of girl. She looks so like her 
 mother sometimes that I shake like a mould of jelly " (which was 
 an apt illustration). " She takes after her mother; and Turner 
 is a man who washes his dirty linen at home, but I misdoubt he 
 has trouble with her now. If he hasn't, he will." 
 
 " Did he have trouble with her mother, then ? " 
 
 ^^ Bo you mean to say yoii have never heard?" said Mrs. 
 Russel, in solemn staccato. 
 
 " How could I ? I had not come to the Green. Do tell," said 
 Miss Soper, eagerly. 
 
 Mrs. Russel took her cup in her hand, and having stirred her 
 tea, used the spoon for rhetorical pm'poses, and solemnly and 
 immediately began. 
 
 "There's never been murder done in that house, my dear, for 
 tliere's many a shp between cup and lip, but it's been hollered often 
 enough. Awful nights have been in that house, my dear, between 
 Turner and his wife," she continued, drawing closer, and speaking 
 low ; " she yelling at the top of her voice at him, caUing him every 
 bad name she could lay her tongue to ; he praying at the top of his 
 voice, to pray the evil spirit out of her, until he'd lose his temper 
 and fist hold of her, and you'd hear her trying to bite him ; and 
 the little children a-screaming, and the maid run away for fear, 
 and all the lane out to listen ! Ah, quiet as Turner looks now, 
 he has had something to go through in his time. You may weU 
 ask if he had trouble with his wife." 
 
 "Was she mad?" 
 
 "He never dared say it of her at all events," said Mrs. Russel. 
 " I'll tell you all I know. She was a lady. Says you, so are we. 
 I mean a real lady. Says you again, so are we. But I mean a 
 real tip-top carriage lady, you know." 
 
HETTY. 163 
 
 So did Miss Soper, who nodded. " And how did she come to 
 marry him, then? " 
 
 " Well, Turner is a good figure of a man ; though it was not 
 that. He had got the management of her affairs when she was 
 left a widow, and he managed them well enough to excite her 
 gratitude ; and she had been ill-used, and her friends had drop^jed 
 away, and I fancy she thought she might do worse, and so she 
 had him ; and a bad job it was. But if a good sound Protestant 
 marries a Papist and a worldling with his eyes open, he must take 
 the consequences." 
 
 "A Papist!" almost screeched Miss Soper. "Mr. Turner 
 marry a Pajjist ! " 
 
 " Well, she had a fine penny of money, mind you, and she was 
 a thorough worldling, and careless of religion, and Turner thought 
 he could convert her. We used to have her name down for con- 
 version in the general prayer ever so long, until she found it out, 
 and had words with him. But it all came to nothing ; she laughed 
 him to scorn when he spoke to her about it ; all of which he has 
 told us at experience-meetings ; and she found that out, and got 
 furious, and things went on from bad to worse, until Caroline being 
 horn put things square for a time. But after that Eebecca was 
 born, Mrs. Turner fell ill, and asked for a priest to come to her, 
 she having, of course, gone to mass on her own accord ; and he 
 made answer that no priest should cross his doors, not if she was 
 on her death-bed. That was the worst scene she made him, for 
 she started up in a shawl and petticoat to run all the way to Cadogan 
 Terrace, by Sloane Street, and had to be fetched back by force. 
 Well, then nothing went right any way, and she seemed to lose 
 head. She accused him of taking her money, and insisted that 
 one of the children should be brought up a Papist, and used to 
 smuggle off Eebecca continually to mass and confession, and such 
 things, and some say got the child baptized into the Eomish faith." 
 
 "It is extremely probable," said Miss Soper; "and how did 
 it end?" 
 
 "It was after a worse row than usual," said Mrs. Eussel, 
 lowering her voice again. " It was the worst and the last, and 
 there had been violence — it all came out at the inquest — and she 
 went out somewhere, some said to the public-house, but I never 
 saw nothing of that, and others will confirm me ; and when she 
 came back he had gone away with little Eebecca, leaving word 
 that she would never see the child no more, for that he had taken 
 it away to save its soul." 
 
 " He was a fool to do that," said Miss Soper. 
 
 Mrs. Russel eyed her curiously. " You're a sensible woman, 
 
164 HETTY. 
 
 ma'am," she said ; " though I doubt if we are right religiously, 
 seeing that he saved it from popery. But," added the vulgar old 
 gossip, flushing up scarlet, "if my man had come between me 
 
 and my children in the old times, I'd have But as I was 
 
 saying, when she hears that, she outs into the lane and carries on 
 to that extent that Mrs. Akin (the washerwoman, you know, my 
 dear soul, Jim Akin's, the costermonger's, mother, whose mother 
 had been with the barrer for years herself) says she never heard 
 anything like it. There was nothing low in it — no vulgar 
 language or swearing — but just downright awful cursing, like 
 that in the Bible ; and it frightened all that heard it. Then she 
 went into the house and upstairs ; and the maid had run away. 
 And when he came home, the neighbours told him what they'd 
 seen, and how the child (that's Caroline now) had been a-crying 
 all the afternoon. And when they burst in there she was a-lying 
 stone dead at the bottom of the stairs." 
 
 " What did the inquest say ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Whether she fell down, or chucked herseK down, 
 there was nothing to show. The child only said that it had found 
 its mamma asleep on her face, and that it wanted its tea, and 
 couldn't make her wake. Well, ma'am, and that's the history of 
 that little mystery." 
 
 " I'll go and see 'em," said Miss Soper, emphatically. " What 
 time do they have their tea ? " 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 eebecca's lovee, and what she thought of him. 
 
 Mr. Turner, a man of about sixty, must have been at one time 
 handsome, but now, although his features were good, his com- 
 plexion was gone ; and the continual habit, persisted in for so 
 many years, of self-contemplation, had left an expression, which 
 was not very pleasant, on his face ; a look which an ill-natured 
 person might say, was something between a scowl and a sneer, as 
 though he was continually saying, " I am George Turner, that is 
 who I am, and who the deuce are you ? " His conversation was, 
 like that of many other men of the same standing, entirely about 
 himself ; arguing, one would fancy, from a certain feeling of being 
 wanting in the more ornamental business of life, and from a 
 
HEl'TY. 165 
 
 detei-mination that the hearer should know what an exceeding fine 
 fellow he was. 
 
 Partly from religion, and partly from temper, he had been very 
 careful to banish eveiything graceful from his house, so that there 
 should not be a snare in it. So he had sternly refused poor 
 Rebecca's, who craved for such things, petitions for cocks and 
 hens, for rabbits, nay, even for one poor little tiny bird. However, 
 m an old house, where there are rats and mice, you must have a 
 cat ; and you'll not hinder a cat having kittens. And so it came 
 about that Rebecca had two kittens to play with ; and her father, 
 letting himself into the house at half-past four on a winter's after- 
 noon, found Rebecca, perfectly happy, lying in the dark before the 
 fire, playing with her two kittens, one of which had a blue ribbon 
 round its neck, and the other a red. 
 
 " Get up," he said, " and don't lie there like a hoyden. 
 Get up, and make yourself tidy. There are people coming to tea." 
 
 Rebecca never answered : that would only make her father 
 colourably and openly angry, and she would have had the 
 worst of it. But by long practice in this happy household she 
 had got the trick of annoying him, and yet of keeping within the 
 law. 
 
 " Pretty little darlings," she said with effusion, as she rose 
 with a cat on each arm. " I wonder if you have immortal souls, 
 dears ; if so, they don't seem to be much trouble to you." 
 
 " Don't talk such nonsense as that. People would say that you 
 were mad, if they heard you. For a grown girl to be kissing cats, 
 too, and a marriageable girl ! Bah ! " 
 
 " Who's coming to tea, pa? " 
 
 " Mrs. Russel and Miss Soper." 
 
 " Daniel Lambert and the Old Dragoon. Pa, I wonder if Miss 
 Soper was regularly discharged from the army, or v/hether she 
 deserted. If I was she I should shave off that moustache, and let 
 my whiskers grow. Who else is coming ? " 
 
 " Mr. Morley," said Turner, without any ojjen manifestation of 
 anger, for certain reasons ; " and also, I believe, Mr. Hagbut." 
 
 "Oh, pa!" 
 
 " I am at a loss to conceive why you should make an exclama- 
 tion at Mr. Hagbut's name," said Turner. 
 
 "Are you?" said Rebecca. "I am not. If you were as 
 young and as pretty as I am, how would you like such a — minister 
 of the gospel, sitting down beside you the whole evening, quoting 
 texts of Scripture to you which bore on the subject of love and 
 marriage ? If he wants to marry me, why don't he say so like a 
 man — and (jet liis answer ? " 
 
166 HETTf. 
 
 "I should feel highly flattered by Mr. Hagbut's attentions," 
 said Mr. Turner; "and, moreover, I should reflect that his suit 
 was backed by your father. Only, mind one thing, Eebecca,— you 
 refuse that good man at your peril. I insist on the match, mind 
 that. You dare refuse him, that is aU." 
 
 Not one word did Eebecca say to this, but left her father 
 secretly fuming with anger. She went upstairs to her room, and 
 began her toilet very slowly and very thoughtfully, and as she 
 thought the face grew darker and darker, until the muscles in it 
 began to quiver, and there grew upon it a look of deep horror and 
 deep loathing, terrible to see. She arose stealthily, and went with 
 her candle to a box in the corner of the room, and, secretly taking 
 out a book, began reading with shaking hands ; the book came 
 open easily at the place she wanted, and she was deep in the 
 passage when she was utterly scared by her sister's voice in the 
 room, crying petulantly, " Why, Eebecca, you'll never be ready 
 in time. Mr. Hagbut's come akeady." 
 
 " I'U be ready directly, dear Cany; don't tell on me. It is 
 only one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and it is so interesting at 
 the end." 
 
 " So it seems," said matter-of-fact Carry. "Why you are as 
 pale as a ghost, and aU of a tremble ! Now I can see why the 
 ministers forbid us to read such godless rant." 
 
 One of Sir Walter Scott's novels, she said. Could it have been 
 the " Bride of Lammermoor " ? Heaven forbid ! 
 
 Although she was going into company which she disliked, and 
 although there was at least one man there whom she hated, and 
 whom she wished to hate her, yet in the irresistible instinct of 
 beauty she dressed herself prettily, and coming calmly and proudly 
 into the room with a bow, sat down by her sister. 
 
 Mrs. Eussel and Miss Soper were there, and two ministers, one 
 of whom she had never seen before, but one of whom was only 
 kno^vn too well. 
 
 He was a very large, stout man, with a head the colour and 
 shape of an addled egg, with the small end uppermost. He had 
 a furze of grey hair, and whiskers shaved close in the middle of 
 his cheeks ; he had large pale blue, almost opaque, eyes, very 
 large ears, and a continual smile on a mouth made for talking. 
 Probably black dress clothes and a white tie are as becoming a 
 dress as exists — on certain people : on him they were hideous ; 
 his collarless cravat was a wisp, the lapels of his coat were like 
 elephant's ears, and the coat itself was perfectly straight down the 
 back, so as to set off his great stomach belter in profile. His 
 cuffs nearly concealed his great fat hands, and his short, iU-madc 
 
HETTY. 167 
 
 trousers scarce met his clumsy shoes. The whole man was a 
 protest against beauty, or grace of life in any way ; to Kebceca he 
 was loathsome, hideous beyond measure ; and she was to marry 
 him — unless she herself, alone and unaided, could fight a battle 
 against all her little world. Poor thing ! it was hard for her ; it 
 was, indeed. Forgive her desperation. 
 
 This horrible great moon-calf rose from his chair when she 
 entered, and with a leering conscious smile on his face stood there, 
 following her with his pale eyes, until she sat down. Mrs. 
 Eussel looked " arch," — ahon-ible thing for anybody to do oiF the 
 stage of a third-rate theatre, still more horrible in the case of a 
 fat old woman. Miss Soper, au fait at things of this kind, moved 
 from her seat, and gave it up to the Kev. Mr. Hagbut, so that he 
 now sat next poor shuddering Eebecca. 
 " Will you ask a blessing, Mr. Hagbut ? " 
 Smooth came the easy words from that mouth, in the well- 
 practised, whining falsetto ; dexterously quoted were the well- 
 known texts of Scripture, so dexterously that he brought in the 
 Marriage in Cana, and made through that an allusion to earthly 
 marriages. "He has not asked me yet," she thought; "and if 
 I am firm they can't kill me." 
 
 His style of talking was what one may be allowed to call 
 spondaic ; that is, he lengthened every sjdlable, and even when 
 he came across one which was unavoidably short he lengthened 
 it as much as possible. Then again he put the emphasis of his 
 sentence just where no one else would have put it ; and his 
 discourse on the whole was one of the most painfully laboured 
 masses of artificiality and affectiition ever seen. That the man 
 may have been a good man I do not deny, I have only to do with 
 his effect on Rebecca, 
 
 He gave himself, if not the airs of an accepted lover, at least 
 of a man who was sure of his game. 
 
 " You heard my discourse the last Sabbath evening. Miss 
 Turner?" he said, bringing his head as near hers as he could. 
 "I heard it," said Rebecca; "but I did not attend to 
 it." 
 
 " The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak," said he, 
 smiling. 
 
 " I don't think the spirit was willing," she answered. " I hate 
 sermons." 
 
 This was very confusing, but under these circumstances one 
 must say something. 
 
 " The prayer, or the hymn, pleases you better, doubtless ? " 
 " I hate the prayer worse than the sermon, but I like some of 
 
168 HETTY. 
 
 the hymns — nay, most of them. I should like the service to be all 
 music, light, and ornament, as it was at the Catholic church 
 where I used to go with my poor mother." 
 
 " Vanity, my dear daughter, vanity." 
 
 "I don't see any particular vanity about it. Why, when you 
 are praying extempore before a large congregation, and take 
 pains, you are thinking all the time how it will succeed with the 
 congregation. I have watched you." 
 
 Pieally it was very uphill work with this young lady ; but sec 
 how beautiful she was, and besides she would have a little pro- 
 perty. Mr. Hagbut drew nearer still to the shrinking hot form 
 that held the ice-cold heart. 
 
 " Ave you cold, dear Miss Tui'ner ? " he drawled. 
 
 "No, I am uncomfortably hot," she snapped out. "I think 
 that I am not well. I think that I shall go nearer the door, if 
 you wUl let me pass." 
 
 He was forced to do so, and with a great gasp she went and sat 
 beside Mr. Morley and her father ; her father seeing the Rev. 
 Hagbut, his future son-in-law, looking exceedingly foolish, went 
 to his assistance, and bound up thu cracks in that savoury vessel, 
 leaving llebecca sitting with Mr. Morley. 
 
 Now Rebecca knew Mr. Morley to be a Dissenting minister, 
 as her father described him, of " great unction " ; consequently 
 she regarded him in the light of her natural enemy, and was 
 prepared to do battle with him on the very smallest provoca- 
 tion. She could not, however, avoid confessing that he was a 
 considerable improvement on that other horrible fat man with a 
 head like an egg. 
 
 Indeed she might have said, a very great improvement, indeed. 
 Mr. Jlorloy was a man with a well-shaped head, good and singu- 
 larly amiable features, hair but slightly grizzled, curling aU over 
 his head, a fine deep brown complexion, and a beautiful set of 
 regular white teeth, which contrasted well with the complexion, 
 and which were pretty frequently shown by a manly, kindly smile. 
 He looked a man every inch of him, although his face was gentle 
 even to softness. 
 
 He had been watching Rebecca and her troubles. He had 
 been brought here as the friend of Mr. Hagbut, he having to-day 
 preached a sermon for him. He had of course been welcomed 
 heartily by Mr. Turner, wlio in the openness of his heart towards 
 a minister, and a frieud of Mr. Hagbut, had let him know the 
 high honour which was in store for Rebecca. So Mr. Morley 
 had watched while talking to Mr. Turner : and he had seen 
 brutish, low, calculating admiration on the one side ; and on 
 
HETTY. 169 
 
 the other a depth of loathing aversion which was terrihle to him. 
 He said to Mr. Turner — 
 
 " They will he happy, you think ? " 
 
 " Any womau woiild be happy with such a man of God as Mr. 
 Haghut." And when he had said it, he scorned himself. Yet 
 for mere decency's sake, seeing that Morley knew, he put in the 
 rider, " If she does not love him in the way of the world now, she 
 win get to do so. Hundreds of girls would give ten years of 
 their life to he in her place." 
 
 " That is, doubtless, true," said Morley, quietly, and the 
 conversation went on to other matters, until it so chanced that 
 the beautiful girl, with rage and fury in her heart, came and sat 
 beside him. 
 
 He had a pleasantly modulated voice, a voice of cultivation too, 
 and he spoke to her. 
 
 " The wind has quite gone doAvn," he said. 
 
 " Has it ? " she answered. " I have not noticed." 
 
 " Yes, it has quite gone down. But it blew hard down at our 
 place last night : I expected some of my chimney-pots down, 
 several times. The E/i:a, in the outside tier, broke from her 
 moorings, and has stove the bows of one of the screw coUiers ; 
 yes, it blew very hard from east, shifting to south-east : are you 
 a sailor at all ? " 
 
 " I know nothing of the sea." 
 
 " Pity, you should. I am half a sailor myself. I should know 
 something about it, for half my work lies among sailors. Have 
 you never been to sea at all, then ? " 
 
 " I have never left this most utterly abominable spot in all my 
 life." 
 
 " Well, I don't want to flatter you," said Morley, "and so I 
 will say that it is intolerably dull. My place is considered almost 
 the very worst and most wretched in London. I am surrounded 
 with sin, crime, and occasionally fury and murder ; but I would 
 sooner he there than here." 
 
 "Where do you live, then, Mr. Morley?" said Eebecca, 
 becoming interested. 
 
 " At Limehouse." 
 
 "Is it uglier there than here ? " 
 
 " Very far uglier. This place is, in aU that the eye desires, a 
 paradise to it. If an educated man, like myself, were doomed to 
 live in Limehouse in idleness, he would break his heart." 
 
 " You have not broken yours." 
 
 " No ; I am too busy," he replied, laughing. 
 
 " Where is it ? " asked Kebecca. 
 
110 setty. 
 
 " Down the river. Down where the ships are." 
 
 " Whore do the ships go to ? " 
 
 " All parts of the world. You can get on board a ship there, 
 and go anywhere." 
 
 " Do any of them go to countries where there are no 
 chapels ? " 
 
 "Plenty, I am sorry to say." 
 
 " Where you can do exactly as you please, and not be called to 
 account for it afterwards ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. No such ships sail, because there is no 
 country such as you describe. Not in all the countless millions 
 of stars which you see on a frosty night is there any such country. 
 Such ships would have plenty of passengers, though." 
 
 " It is a weary world, then," said Kebecca. " Do you believe 
 in the immortality of the soul ? " 
 
 " Certainly I do." 
 
 " Some do not. Is it not so ? " asked Eebecca. 
 
 " Scarcely any," said Mr. Morley. 
 
 " Yet it is such a comfortable doctrine, I should have thought 
 it would be popular. To think, to believe, that death did end it 
 all, and that there was to be no more trouble, no more headache, 
 no more auger. It is reaUy not so, then ? " 
 
 "Assure yourself of that. Ask yourself — Is it conceivable 
 that the will which causes you, so mysteriously, by acting on 
 your muscles, to raise your hand to your head — the will which 
 may prompt you to a noble deed, or save you from a shameful fate 
 — can die 1 I could speak at length of these things to you, but 
 there is your father beckoning." 
 
 She rose without another word, and went towards her father, 
 who was sitting beside Mr. Hagbut ; he moved away and pointed 
 to his seat. 
 
 She, however, stood, and Mr. Hagbut, rising, took her right 
 hand between his two fat ones, and looked her in the face with 
 his sweetest smile. 
 
 She was deadly pale. There was too much fat covering the 
 nerves of Mr. Hagbut's hand, or he would have felt, surely, the 
 creeping hoiTor in hers. It shrunk so from between his palms 
 that it slid out and fell dead and pale by her side before he had 
 time to speak. 
 
 " I was going to ask," said the unconscious nobody, " a little 
 favour of my sweet Christian sister. I was going to ask if I 
 might see her to-morrow morning for half an hour, just to ask one 
 little question, to which I think I shall have a favourable answer. 
 May I come?" 
 
HETIT. l7l 
 
 " Oh Lord, yes," gasped Rebecca. " Come to-morrow and let 
 us get it over," and so left the room abruptly. 
 
 " She has taken him," said Miss Soper to Mrs. Russel, as they 
 blundered home together in the fog. 
 
 " Lucky girl, of course she has," replied Mrs. Russel. 
 
 " He will have trouble with her," said Miss Soper. "I know 
 girls. I've had girls throw themselves out of window before now, 
 and he will have trouble with her." 
 
 "Well, if you come to that, Henrietta," said Mrs. Russel, 
 growing confidential in the dark, and in anticipation of the little 
 hot supper which Miss Soper and she were about to partake of 
 together, and blundering up against Miss Soper in her fat 
 walk, " she wiU have trouble with him. For although he is 
 a Saint, he keeps his saint's temper pretty much in the cup- 
 board ; she'll have to manage him, that's what she'll have to 
 do. I know men, and the management of them. I've had to 
 manage them." 
 
 Mrs. Russel's knowledge of men was confined to two, her 
 husband, whom she had managed into death by worry and 
 delirium tremens ; and her son, whom she had managed into 
 enlisting into the 40th Regiment, now in New Zealand, from 
 which island he had dutifuUy wi-itten, saying that "now the 
 water was betwixt 'em, he could express his mind more free." 
 Which he proceeded to do. 
 
 Morley and Hagbut walked eastward together through the fog, 
 and Morley was the first to speak. 
 
 " Hagbut," he said, " are you going to marry that girl ? " 
 
 " Assuredly, my brother," said Hagbut. 
 
 " Have you thought of what you are doing ? " asked Morley. 
 
 " Indeed, yes, with prayer," said Hagbut. 
 
 " But, see hero, Hagbut. You are as shrewd as another. Let 
 us speak as though we were of the world, worldly. Ai-e you not 
 making a great fool of yourself ? " 
 
 " I think not, brother IMorley," answered Hagbut, far too 
 shrewd to give up sucli advantages as a religious phraseology 
 gave him. "I think, looking at the matter even as one unre- 
 deemed and still of this world, that it promises well. The girl 
 is fair to look upon, and she will have a httle property." 
 
 " But do you think she cares for you ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly. No constraint has been put upon her, and she 
 has as good as taken me. Our roads diverge here, dear brother. 
 Good-night." 
 
 Omnibus after omnibus passed Mr. Morley, yet somehow he 
 preferred to walk, and set his head steadily for Fenchurch Street, 
 
172 HETTY. 
 
 dark as the niglit was. And as lie walked he thought, and 
 thought of one thing only — this approaching marriage. It 
 seemed to him so monstrous a proceeding altogether. If the 
 girl consented it would have been bad enough, but against her 
 
 wiU 
 
 Why the girl's beauty alone ought to ensure her a good match, 
 an excellent provision with any one of a dozen young men of her 
 own age ; and she had fortune too, he heard ; and for the whole 
 of it to be offered up at the shrine of that ugly, windy donkey, 
 with the education of a charity-school boy, and the manners 
 of a boor. How pitiful a case for one so beautiful I And then 
 he went on thinking of her beauty, and pitying her all the way 
 home. Which was not good for the peace of mind of the Eev. 
 Alfred Morloy. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IN WHICH REBECCA LETS HER SENTIMENTS BE KNOWN, NOT ONLY 
 TO HEB LOVER, BUT TO THE WORLD IN GENERAL. 
 
 And, alas ! for poor Rebecca. She was in very evil case indeed. 
 She would have cried aloud for help from man, but there was 
 none to help her ; as for prayer, religion had been for a long time 
 hateful to her, so that way out of her trouble was denied her. 
 
 The phase of anger and scorn in which her soul had stayed so 
 long was gone now she was alone. The reaction from it was a 
 feeling of plaintive, pathetic loneliness, infinitely mournful. This 
 in its turn produced silent tears ; they in their turn produced 
 calm, and calm thought. 
 
 Thought sadly lame, incoherent, unconsecutive, but thought 
 still. Here was an evil, to her most real and horrible, to 
 he escaped from. What were her chances alone against the 
 world ? 
 
 Sheer angry persistent defiance and wrath ? How would that 
 do ? Well enough as long as it lasted ; but could she depend 
 on it to last for ever ? Would they not beat her by sheer 
 perseverance ? Hagbut and her father were uncompressible 
 men of strong physical capacity : could they not wear her out ? 
 merely tire her out ? For look at her now ; tired out in body by 
 her long effort, as weak as a child, sitting on the floor crying and 
 calling on her dead mother, without even energy to go to bed. A 
 
HETTT. 173 
 
 fortnight's fight with her father would reduce hor to this state 
 permanently, and they would be able to do as they liked with her. 
 That would not do. 
 
 Craft, procrastination ? No, that would not do with her father. 
 She knew him too well for that. It would only weaken her hand, 
 and the end would bo just the same. No, try again, poor 
 Eebecca ! 
 
 The Eonian Catholics ! Her face brightened, and her breath 
 came fast as she thought of that. If she ran away to the Eoman 
 Catholics, they would take her in for her mother's sake, and shelter 
 her behind their altars. She believed that she had been baptized 
 into tlieir Church ; if so, they would know in Cadogau Street, and 
 that would give them a right over her. It seemed for a moment 
 
 a brilliant idea, but it was soon dulled. The case of Miss T 
 
 was fresh then, and she knew that as a minor (she was but nine- 
 teen), a policeman had only to trace her, her father to demand her, 
 and she would be brought back a culprit, in a worse case than 
 before. 
 
 Evils fairly faced vanish away one-half of them into thin air. She 
 had found no solution as yet, yet she felt if she could only go on 
 thinking, that one would come. It made her almost glad in her 
 desperation, when she first got the faith, that she certainly should 
 find a way out of her trouble if she only thought long enough. So 
 that, when some wandering fiend said to her, " If the worst comes 
 to the worst. Putney Bridge is close by ; and when the tide is 
 ebbing strong there is an undersuok there which gives back nothing 
 alive," she rose, laughed, and shaking out her black sharply curled 
 hair before the glass, looked at her beauty, and said : " Not for 
 him. I will bed in no Thames ooze for such as he." 
 
 " Suicide, no I " she said, proudly ; and all in a moment, as she 
 said the words, a crude, shapeless idea came rolling into her brain, 
 dazing her, and making her gasp. 
 
 Whence came it, this frightful amorphous idea ? Was it only 
 the last result of some mental serites, tangled beyond the possibility 
 of reduction ; or was it a direct suggestion from the unseen powers, 
 in which we all believe in one way or another ? It was so shape- 
 less at first that it made her head whirl ; but as she, in her 
 desperation, steadily faced it, it crystallised itself, and took form. 
 The form it took was ugly enough, yet it looked beautiful to her 
 beside the hideous fate to which she was to be condemned to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Suicide ! Why did lost women commit physical suicide ? Why 
 did weak, cowardly women gather courage to leap ofi' dizzy places 
 into dark water— off places which they shuddered to look at with 
 
174 HRTTY. 
 
 their protecting lovers' arms round their waist ? What gave them 
 this preternatural courage ? Why, they had committed suicide 
 before. They had done that which left them no place in this 
 English world. Done that which made them a loathing, and a 
 scorn to father, brother, sister — to every one, save mother — and 
 she had none. What if she were to pretend to do that which 
 would make it at all events utterly impossible for this horrible old 
 man to marry her. What then ? Was there no escape there ? 
 There was. 
 
 For her father she had no pity whatever. He had brought it 
 on himself, and it would do him good. Her mother had been her 
 only friend, and he had ill-treated her mother. She knew the 
 whole of the old story, partly from memory and partly from cross- 
 examining her foolish sister Caroline. She had no pity for him. 
 He knew well her hatred for this match, and had pitilessly thrust 
 it on. Lot him look to himself. 
 
 But here came a difficulty. How was she, after she had gained 
 her own object, to rehabilitate herself? What means should she 
 use to prove herself utterly stainless and innocent before the world, 
 whenever it should suit her to do so ? She walked up and down 
 an hour thinking over this. Without holding in her hand irrefrag- 
 able proofs of her own innocence, she would have played her part 
 too well, and would have made it impossible for her, at the proper 
 time, to hurl back the scorn of their miserable little world upon 
 itself. The way out of this difficulty came on her suddenly, like 
 a clear flash of light ; and she laughed at her o^vn stupidity in not 
 thinking of it before. 
 
 The night wore on, and she packed away her clothes in her drawers, 
 putting a few necessaries in a cai-pet-bag. She counted out her 
 money — £18 odd — more than sufficient for her purpose. Then 
 she sat down and wrote a short letter to her father : — 
 
 " Sir, — It has pleased you, in spite of my frequently-expressed 
 repugnance, to urge on my marriage with Mr. Hagbut. 
 
 " As I desire to remain single I have chosen, between two evils, 
 to disgrace myself and my family sooner than contract such a 
 monstrous alliance. 
 
 "Your daughter, 
 
 " Eebecca." 
 
 It was not broad daylight until half-past six. At which time 
 Jim Akin, the costermonger, and Mr. Spicer, the sweep, saw her 
 come out of the door with her carpet-bag, close it behind her, and 
 walk straight away, apparently in the direction of Putney Bridge. 
 
HETTY. 175 
 
 " Off at last," said Jim Akin. 
 
 " Wonder she hadn't gone afore," said Mr. Spicer. " She's a' 
 stood it a dratted sight longer ner I thought she -would. Who's 
 the young man, then ? " 
 
 " Doubt there ain't nerry one," said Jim Akin. " I ain't seen 
 none round. 
 
 " She is off to the Catholics, then," said Mr. Spicer. "Her 
 mother was one, and so is my wife. They'll take good care on 
 her." 
 
 " I am glad of that," said Jim Akin, the costermonger ; " for 
 she is a gallus kindly, good wench. She's got what I call a young 
 'art, that gal has. She nigh kep my old girl when I was in — in 
 the 'orspital." 
 
 Mr. Spicer, possibly from a habit of regarding the world in his 
 early youth out of the tops of chimneys, very early in the morning, 
 when there was little smoke, was a philosopher. This, also, was 
 one oi his clean days ; he had had his bath overnight, having sent 
 one of his assistants to the " black bed," and was a respectable 
 tradesman instead of a grimy ruffian. He philosophised thus : — 
 
 " Gals is much the same as boys is. I've hammered and 
 leathered a boy into a cross flue, and he has choked hisself for 
 spite. I've coaxed another boy into that self-same flue, and he 
 has gone through it like a ferret. That gal has been leathered 
 too much morally. I hope she will do no worse than going to the 
 Catholics. Meanwhile it ain't, neither for you nor for me, to give 
 the ofiice on her." 
 
 Mr. Hagbut, coming for his answer at ten o'clock, found a 
 scared household. Turner had not gone to business. He received 
 Mr. Hagbut in the parlour. 
 
 Turner's state of mind was fury, nothing short of it. His 
 daughter had utterly disgraced him, and perhaps it was fortunate 
 for her that she was beyond his reach. At work in Turner's mind 
 just then there were all the elements which, boiled in a caldron 
 together, produce a thorough hell-broth of blind anger. His 
 religion was very precious to him. I cannot say why, for it gave 
 him no comfort, but one sees it every day ; and his pet scheme 
 had been to increase his influence in this sect by the marriage of 
 his daughter to their most popular and most repandu minister. It 
 was to him like a marriage with a duke ; here his vanity was 
 touched. Again, he prided himself on being master in his own 
 house, and had been defied and beaten. Once again, as a man of 
 the world, he Imew that he had been an utter fool in trying to 
 force that beautiful, self-willed daughter of his on this dreadful, 
 crawling old imbecile : here his self-love was touched. Once 
 
176 HETTY. 
 
 more, he saw now that he had acted like a fool throughout : and 
 here was the auctor mali, the dreadful, unctuous old man, with a 
 head like a hladder of lard, turning his hands over and over hefore 
 him, and asking how his sweet sister was this hright morning. 
 
 Turner, who uas a man, saw the utter folly of the whole thing 
 in one moment, 
 
 " If hy your sweet sister you mean my daughter," he said, " she 
 is utterly ruined and lost. She has run away, God knows whither 
 and with whom." 
 
 " Our dear sister fled? " said Mr. Hagbut. 
 
 A man cannot, however religious, continually sit in law courts 
 without knowing something of the ordinary language of his fellow- 
 men. Mr. Turner was excited and angiy, and, in his language at 
 least, fell away from grace. 
 
 " I speak plainly. She has run away ; and, upon my soul and 
 body, I admire her for it. I wish I could get the wench back 
 again, though. There were worse wenches than she. You and I 
 are two fools, I doubt, Hagbut." 
 
 Mr. Hagbut began, " Peradventure " 
 
 " Say perhaps," said Turner, testily. 
 
 "Perhaps, then," said Mr. Hagbut, solemnly, "your other 
 daughter is at home, likewise the handmaiden." 
 
 " Wliat do you want with them ? " 
 
 " Only, in the presence of Christian witnesses, to say that it 
 cannot be with mo and your daughter as it was before. The few 
 sheep in the wilderness " 
 
 " What do you mean, man? " said Turner, sternly. " Do you 
 mean that it is all over between you and my daughter? " 
 
 " Doubtless," said Mr. Hagbut. " The flock " 
 
 " Hang the flock ! " snapped Turner. " Can't you see that my 
 poor girl would not touch you with a pair of tongs ; that she would 
 sooner min her reputation (and she's a high-spirited girl), than 
 have anything to do with you ? Of course it is all over. We 
 were fools to think of it." 
 
 "Doubtless," said Mr. Hagbut. 
 
 " Look here, man," said Turner, speaking as the man and the 
 lawyer ; " there must be one thing understood about my girl. She 
 has left her father's roof, and I don't know where she is gone. 
 But if you, or any of your good women, dare to say one word 
 against her character, without legal proof, by the living Lord I'll 
 make you sweat for it, or I'm no lawyer I Perhaps I've been 
 wrong with the wench, perhaps I was wrong with her mother ; but 
 you mind what I tell you." 
 
 So Rebecca had won her first move. She would have laughed 
 
HETTY. 177 
 
 had she known it, but she did not. She had taken down a tress 
 of grey hair, and had twisted it in one of her own black curls, and 
 had said : " How long will it be, Elizabeth, before they make my 
 hair as grey as yours with their nonsense ? " And old Elizabeth 
 had said : " WcU, we shall see the sea at the next station, and I 
 have not seen it for forty years." 
 
 That was not a lucky day for Mr. Hagbut. He could not go 
 near any one without being sympathised with, which was very 
 terrible. Some lamented with him, some piously congratulated 
 him on his escape ; while the more influential of his congregation, 
 those who could not be well refused, made him tell them all about 
 it. A jilted man always looks more or less of a fool. The world 
 has always put in force its penalty of contempt against those who 
 are unsuccessful in love or war ; and Mr. Hagbut knew that he 
 was undergoing it, and, using his vast powers of looking foolish, 
 he really succeeded in doing so. A most unsuccessful day ! 
 
 Meanwhile, one thing was certain. Whatever had become of 
 Eebecca, she would be persecuted by no more offers of marriage. 
 
 CHAPTEK V 
 
 TWO LITTLE FBIENDS. 
 
 Leader Street, Chelsea, is one of those streets which utterly and 
 entirely belong to the poor. It is a place where you may see the 
 very poor at home in person, and looking at the stalls and shops 
 where they traffic for their daily bread, may guess how hard it is 
 for them to live. 
 
 The largest and most frequented shop in this street, was the 
 coal and greengrocery shop, dealing also in potatoes, bundles of 
 firewood, and ginger-beer. The grocer's was a Saturday-night 
 shop, as was also the butcher's. The greengrocer's, however, 
 supplied some littler want, which might arrive at any moment. 
 Half-a-hundred of coals, a bundle of wood, a couple of pounds of 
 potatoes, were things in demand all the week round. Tibbeys 
 were seldom still. 
 
 Tibbey himself was a very little man, like an innocent little 
 bird, with a little hop, and a twittering way of serving in his shop 
 that reminded you of a robin or some other soft-billed bird. Mrs. 
 
 13 
 
178 HETTY. 
 
 Tibbey was much larger, blonde, stout, and grey, and she looked 
 as though she might have been something of a beauty in her 
 youth ; and indeed she was beautiful now, as far as an expression 
 of gentle goodness could make her so. 
 
 This couple were perfectly devoted to one another, and were 
 uneasy at the absence of either. In religion they were Primitive 
 Methodists ; and they were childless. 
 
 Except indeed by adoption, as it were. One child, whom Mrs. 
 Tibbey had nursed, was very near to both their hearts, and always 
 remembered in their prayers night and morning. They had risen 
 from their knees, and almost had her name in their mouths, when 
 the door opened and she stood before them. 
 
 Eebecca, ready dressed for travelling. Before they had time to 
 ejaculate, she said, " Libber, dear, I have run away to you." 
 Whereupon Mrs. Tibbey, as a preliminary measure, folded her in 
 her arms. 
 
 " And I want my breakfast, please ; I am so hungry. Please 
 put some more tea in, Mr. Tibbey, for I shall want a deal, and I 
 hate it weak. And coidd you let me have the cat ? Then I wiU 
 tell you aU about it." 
 
 She was as wilful with these good souls as she was at home ; 
 but ah ! with what a different wilfulness. 
 
 "Yes," she said, as they began busthng about, "I have run 
 right away, Mr. Tibbey. They were going to many me to Mr. 
 Hagbut." 
 
 "My pretty bird," said Mrs. Tibbey, pausing in her prepara- 
 tions, to swell in pigeon-like indignation, and coo out her wi'ath, 
 " my pretty love, how dared they ? " 
 
 "Like their impudence, was it not?" replied Eebecca, very 
 anxious not to make the matter look too serious. " Well, you 
 know I was not going to stand that — far from it — and so I have 
 run away to you. Libber, to make my terms from a distance. And 
 you wiU lend her to me for three days, won't you, Mr. Tibbey, just 
 to take care of me ? " 
 
 "Miss Eebecca," said the little man, "you may, I think, 
 depend on Elizabeth, as heretofore, always doing what is right. 
 And what is right in this case, my dear young lady, is that she 
 should go with you where you will, so that hereafter the finger 
 do I use too strong an expression, and give offence ? " 
 
 " Just what I mean," cried Rebecca. 
 
 " Then I will use that strong expression ; — that the finger of 
 scorn may never be p'inted. And indeed," continued the good 
 little man, with the ferocious air of that most pugnacious bird the 
 robin, " I should like to see the man who would dare." 
 
Hetty. i?9 
 
 What could Eebecca do but kiss him ? She did it, however ; 
 and Mr. Tibbey toasted a muffiu with many ominous shalies of 
 the head, as though he would say, " I shall have to look some of 
 these folks up some day, if they don't mind their manners." 
 
 It was a dingy little parlour enough (scrupulously neat, in spite 
 of the smell of the stock in trade), though in addition to the smell 
 which 1 have smelt elsewhere, but have always, from early asso- 
 ciation, associated with Leader Street, underlying the whiff of 
 red-herring, cabbage, and coal, with perhaps a whiff of turpentine 
 from the bundles of firewood, there was the true, low-London 
 odour of soot and confined humanity. Yet what a free little para- 
 dise it was to Eebecca ! The inevitable going home was days 
 off in the dim distance as yet. She was free, and with those who 
 loved her ; her heart was so light that she could have sung aloud. 
 
 These simple, gentle Methodists, primitive in more than their 
 methodism, saw nothing very extraordinary in the step which 
 Eebecca had taken. It seemed to them that she had acted with 
 singular discretion in coming straight to them. Living there as 
 they did, in perfect pmity and innocence, with sin and vice and 
 poverty all around them, they were well used to far more terrible 
 things than the mere fact of a young lady, sore-bestead by an 
 uncongenial marriage, taking refuge with them. Only one remark 
 did Mrs. Tibbey make on the subject during breakfast. 
 
 " Why, my dear soul, your good pa must be mad to think of such 
 a thing ! Why, he is sixty ! " 
 
 "He is very rich," said Mr. Tibbey, blowing a saucer of tea. 
 " He is the richest minister in that communion. He got no less 
 than twenty — five — thousand — pound with his last wife. She 
 was the widder of Ackerman of Cheyne Walk, and he convinced 
 her of sin and married her." 
 
 " Law ! " said Mrs. Tibbey, evidently not disinclined to hear 
 more. " That would be a great snare for a minister. Got aU 
 her money, did he ? " 
 
 " Every shilling," said Mr, Tibbey, holding out his cup for some 
 more tea. " It was thought down the river-side way, that her 
 pousin, Mrs. Morley, would have had some of it, for she brought 
 him into the house. But she didn't." 
 
 " What Blrs. Morley was that? " asked Eebecca, interested. 
 
 " Jlinister Morley's wife of Lime'us 'ole, my dear. She is 
 dead some years now. Overworked herself, trapesing round after 
 him among the poor of his communion, as lives round the 'ole, 
 and up Eatcliffe 'ighway, and aU along shore there to Wapping. 
 And she died, poor dear. Ah ! the folks in their communion 
 say that she was never truly awakened, and fell away from grace 
 
180 HETTY. 
 
 to the extent of refusing the ordinances altogether. But he loved 
 her as I love Elizabeth. And she died." 
 
 " I know Mr. Morley," said Kebecca, eagerly. 
 
 " Then, my dear, you know a man who is as a sweet savour in 
 God's nostrils. He is not of our communion on this earth ; but 
 we shall know him in Heaven, and her too, maybe." 
 
 " What luas Mr. Morley? " asked Eebecca. 
 
 " A gentleman, my dear." 
 
 "I thought so," said Eebecca. 
 
 "Yes, a gentleman and a scholar," said Mr. Tibbey ; "with 
 more of the knowledge of this world, and of science — falsely so 
 called — than is good for a true Christian ; for the knowledge of 
 this world is vanity." 
 
 "I should like to judge for myself about that," thought 
 Rebecca. 
 
 "He were a doctor, but he got converted, and joined their 
 comuiunion. He was from Cambridge College — one of the 
 Simonites, I think they call 'em — but he pitched it all up when 
 he got converted. There is the shop. Now you and Elizabeth 
 see what you are going to do." And so the good man went out 
 to weigh coals. 
 
 " Elizabeth," said Rebecca, "we must go from here this morn- 
 ing. Are you afraid to go to Broadstairs ? " 
 
 " Not in the least. Would, indeed, very much like it." 
 
 " Then get ready," was all that Rebecca said; and the good 
 woman departed to do so. The simple woman was entirely at the 
 girl's disposal. She dreaded nothing but sin, and as far as that 
 was concerned, would have trusted her darling anywhere. But 
 she knew also, that as long as she kept by the girl, her fair fame 
 could not be touched ; and she went with cheerful recklessness. 
 
 It was not long before they had found an omnibus in the King's 
 Road. An hour and a half afterwards, they were whirling along 
 through the chalk pits of Kent, towards the sea. In the evening 
 they were having tea together, at an open window in a little cottage, 
 with the sea gossiping to them at their feet ; the Foreland a dim 
 black wall, close on their right, and the white-winged ships creep- 
 ing away to happy lands, where there was no chapel and no 
 Sundays. 
 
 So said Rebecca. "It is good for me to be here," she said; 
 " I could stand everything, except that man, if they would let me 
 come here three days in the year. I could live six months in the 
 recollection, and the next six on the anticipation. Libber, dear, 
 let us run away again next year." 
 
 It was pleasant enough by daylight, it was pleasant enough by 
 
HETTY. 181 
 
 moonlight ; but in the dark, dark morning, when the moon was 
 down, and she awoke in the dark in a strange room, how was it 
 then ? Ghastly, horrible ! What frightful machinery was this 
 she had put in motion for the temporary destruction of her own 
 good name and her father's ? And how was it at that weary, 
 ghostly old house at Walham Green ? What were they saying of 
 her ? And she must go back to it in three days — a marked girl. 
 Would she dare do so ? or would she die of fright, of sheer terror, 
 as she approached it ? There was the horrible old house, and 
 there waited her angry father at the door. She had only taken 
 the sole means to save herself from a fate worse than death ; and 
 now, in the darkness, she felt like a murderess and an outcast. 
 What had she done that God should plague her so ? 
 
 She could lie no longer in her horror. She rose and went to 
 the window. The very blessed sea talked no longer under her 
 windows, but had gone far out on to the sands, and was whis- 
 pering there. There was no light in the sky, and there was 
 darkness and terror in her soul. 
 
 Darkness and terror ! The crowning horror in Frankenstein 
 is the closed room where the monster must be. Her crowning 
 horror was the old house at Walham Green to which she must 
 return and meet her father. The men who study a certain kind 
 of wickedness say that what is wanted with women is opportunity, 
 which is a foul lie. But I believe that if the Eev. Mr. Hagbut 
 had been able to take advantage of his opportunity, and had 
 pressed his suit just then, poor Kebecca would have accepted him 
 and thanked him. As she was in the dark, in the strange room, 
 that man, coarse brute as he was, would have been a release from 
 the closed, dull, disgraced house at home, with all its traditions 
 and respectabilities violated in her wildly audacious person. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI, 
 
 THE KETUEN. 
 
 These were night thoughts, how different were those of the 
 day ! The sea had come back, and was rippling and splashing 
 crisply at her feet. The bright sun was overhead, and a brisk 
 east wind was driving the ships past the Downs and down the 
 channel. A. pleasant sight. The outward-bound ones, full- 
 
182 HETTY. 
 
 lireasted, crowded with canvas, gay ; the home-going ones, sail- 
 loss, melancholy, towed hy steamers against the wind ; however, 
 one need only look at the outward-bomid ones just now ; in three 
 days' time one may think of the others. 
 
 Many ships went to and fro before Kebecca was tired of looking 
 at them. She got more and more interested in them as time 
 went on, asking all manner of questions about them from the 
 boatmen and others on the beach ; simple Cockney questions, 
 which puzzled those she asked in their very simplicity ; even when 
 lier weary head was turned homeward they were stiU in her mind's 
 eye. 
 
 Her despair at going back was so dull that it was nearly pain- 
 less. "What signifies a little agony, more or less?" Here, 
 however, had been three days of which they could not deprive 
 her ; they would last her a long time, these three days. 
 
 She came home about nine o'clock on tlie Saturday night. 
 Her father opened the door, and she passed in quite silently, 
 and, taking off her bonnet, sat down, whereupon her sister Caro- 
 line began to cry, which assisted Mr. Turner in opening the 
 conversation. 
 
 " You may well cry, my poor child," he began ; " you must be 
 worn out with this three days' anxiety, my dear ; your sister 
 seems none the worse for her disgraceful escapade." 
 
 "I am hungry and I want my supper," was all she said. 
 " You can scold while I eat it. Only make a finish .and end of it 
 as soon as you can." 
 
 " Kebecca, where have you been ; and what have you been 
 doing ? " said her father. 
 
 " I am not going to tell you," she replied ; " I am not going to 
 say one word." 
 
 " Are you aware that Mr. Hagbut's visits have permanently 
 ceased, in consequence of your extraordinary conduct, and that 
 your character is not worth that 2 " 
 
 " It was you who drove me to this course by your cruel abetting 
 of that most unnatural man-iage. If my mother had been alive, 
 you would not have dared to do it. Have you anything more to say ? " 
 
 " I have," said Turner, getting thoroughly angry ; " your sister's 
 character and position are affected." 
 
 " What, old Carry ; why what has she been doing ? " 
 
 " I mean that her position is affected through you. Are you 
 aware that young Mr. Vergril seemed exceedingly likely to pay 
 attention to your sister, and that your behaviour has rendered 
 such a course impossible on the part of any member of such an 
 exceedingly strict family." 
 
HETTY. 183 
 
 " Give Can-y the money you were going to give me, in addition 
 to her own, and he will come fast enough, I'll warrant you. My 
 poor old Carry," she went on, kissing her sister, " I hope I have 
 not lost you your sweetheart. They drove me to it, you know." 
 
 Carry only introduced an imhecile whimper into her crying, as 
 though she had been playing the organ, and pulled out another 
 stop. The stop would not go in again, and so she arose swiftly 
 and went hysterically upstairs. 
 
 "Poor Carry," said Eebecca, dolefully, "I am very sorry for 
 her ; she would have liked the persistent self-inflicted misery of 
 that Vergril family, aud would have enjoyed herself thoroughly." 
 So saying, she rose and rang the bell, and, when the maid came, 
 ordered supper. 
 
 When the maid was gone, Mr. Turner had a few more words 
 to say. " You are carrying matters coolly, Eebecca. But there 
 is one thing I wish you distinctly to understand. The next time 
 you leave my house without my pennission, you leave it for 
 good." 
 
 " I quite understand that ! You drove me out of it, and I went 
 for my own purposes. I shall not go again. Have you anything 
 more to say ? " 
 
 " Nothing at present." 
 
 " This may seem an impropitious time to say what I am going 
 to say, but I will say it, nevertheless," resumed Eebecca, very 
 quietly and calmly. "Father, I remember something, and I 
 know more. I know that this has always been a miserable and 
 most unhappy house. I know that you and my mother were bitter 
 enemies, instead of being as husband and wife should be. I know 
 that all your recollections of my poor mother are painful, revolt- 
 . ing, shocking ; aud I know that I, being like her in person and 
 temper, have kept them alive. We have never been friends. 
 Say that it has been my fault. I say that I am tired of it, and 
 wish to be friends ; I am sick of this everlasting antagonism of 
 will between us ; it has done no good. I have resisted you, but 
 you are as obstinate as ever ; you have tried to coerce me, with 
 what success I leave the last three days to teU. Why should this 
 battle — this unnatural battle go on ? Cannot you let me love 
 you ? Such a little yielding on your part would make a heaven 
 out of this most miserable world. Will you answer ? " 
 
 Not one word would he answer, except to say, " Have you 
 anything more to advance ? " 
 
 "Yes. I left here three days ago, a desperate, hardened 
 woman, casting my good name to the winds, to save myself from 
 a fate worse than death, which you had prepared for me. During 
 
184 HETTY. 
 
 those three days I have been lapped in love — a love abundant and 
 never failing, and surrounded by a religion purer and gentler than 
 yours, father ; a religion which hopeth all things, and believeth 
 all things. And in spite of my bold bearing and my hard words, 
 I have come back softened and purified. Father, life is not so 
 very long, and we shall, I suppose, never part again. If I have 
 said hard and bitter things since I came into the house, will you 
 forgive them me as I forgive what you have said, and let us leam 
 to love one another ? " 
 
 No. His heart was dumb to it. He had never yielded to the 
 motlier, was it likely he would yield to the daughter ? He told 
 her in a surly voice to show her repentance and amendment by 
 duty and obedience, and then began supper, as she did also, feel- 
 ing obstinate, angry, and humiliated, but also having " a mighty 
 disposition to cry." 
 
 She spoke next, hard as iron. " My health will suffer if I am 
 entirely confined to this house, and you would scarcely wish that. 
 May I walk up and down the lane, if I promise not to go out of 
 it ? You may set Mrs. Kussel and Miss Soper to watch me, if 
 you like ; or, if you think it worth having, I will give you my 
 word of honour." 
 
 " You may go from one end of the lane to the othei-, but no 
 further. I'll have no scandals any more. I ain't so rich as some 
 think, but I'm weU trusted — very few dream how much. And my 
 good name is more precious to me than any money. And I've 
 tried to keep it good," he went on in a loud excited manner. 
 " And any other would have made thousands, where I've made 
 hundreds ; and no one has ever dragged my name in the dirt 
 except your mother and you. And I served God faithful," he 
 went on, now beginning to weep, poor fellow. "And I tried to 
 keep my name clean : the greatest in the land have said to me, 
 ' Turner, you are not a lawyer, you know, you are a friend, we 
 can trust you here, your name is unspotted ; ' and God has 
 afilicted me like this. First your mother, and then you." 
 
 Kebecca's bolder and more generous nature, which indeed was, 
 ill-directed, the main cause of her petulance, was thoroughly 
 aroused. She went to him and took both his hands, saying, 
 quickly — 
 
 " Father ! father 1 your good name shall not sufier from me. I 
 am as innocent as the day. I can prove my innocence at any 
 moment. Do you think that I have done anything unworthy of 
 you ? Do you think that I did not leave my proofs behind me as 
 clear as noon? " 
 
 " Proofs ! silly girl, yes, but who will believe them ? You little 
 
HETTY. 185 
 
 know this wretched world and its tongues. Do you think that 
 anything will ever quiet old Eussel and old Sopor's tongues? 
 You are a fool if you do." 
 
 "And who are they? " asked Eebecca, loftily. 
 
 "The tongues of the world we live in. The tongues which 
 would turn against me first of all, and ruin me in our religious 
 connection, if anything went wrong. You don't know the world, 
 and are a fool." 
 
 " I wish you had been away with me these three days, father ; 
 you might have got to despise this little squaKd world of ours." 
 
 But he remained sulky and silent. Yet in a surly strange 
 manner he took her into his confidence before he went to bed. 
 
 " You are a bold, courageous girl," he growled. " I needn't 
 ask that ; this week's experience shows that." 
 
 " I believe that I have good courage, father." 
 
 " That's lucky, because your sister Carry is a nervous fool. 
 And you are a light sleeper, too, I know." 
 
 " Yes, the slightest thing awakes me." 
 
 " Then see if you can make yourself useful. If you hear the 
 very slightest noise in the night, you run to my bedroom just as 
 you are, shake me, and pull me out of bed. You wiU find a light 
 burning. I am apt to be mazed and stupid when first awakened. 
 Are you afraid of fire-arms ? " 
 
 " I never saw any. I will do what you tell me. I will trust 
 you thoroughly." 
 
 He went to a drawer in the sideboard, and came back with a 
 Deane and Adams revolver in his hand. 
 
 " See here," he said. " If I am not fairly awake you will find 
 this on the stand by my bed's head. If any man comes into my 
 room before I am ready, take it — so — hold the barrel towards 
 him — so — and keep puUing the trigger back — so. And screech 
 murder, the while. Can you do that ? " 
 
 " I will try. But why is this ? Have you much money in the 
 house?" 
 
 " Money and worse." 
 
 " Could you not pay it into the banker's ? " 
 
 " No, I daren't. I know too much. You would not be fool 
 enough to talk of this ? ' ' 
 
 "Is it likely?" she said, smiling. "Will you say good- 
 night?" 
 
 " Yes, I win say good-night. But mind, your treatment 
 depends on your behaviour. If you think you are forgiven, you 
 will find yourself mistaken. I'll have obedience." 
 
 And so he went, And she began putting away the consumable 
 
18C HETTY. 
 
 portions of tho banquet, that portion of tlio family supplies which, 
 by a fiction current in such houses, the little servant is supposed 
 habitually to pick and steal (their little soi-vant would as lief have 
 oaten molten lead). She had put away the cheese, tho sugar, the 
 whisky, and had locked the cupboard. She had got the ham, the 
 loaf, and the lettuce on a tray, and was starting downstairs to 
 lock them up in the larder away from the cat, who was all the 
 time playing a game combined of cat's cradle and puss in the 
 corner, between her feet, mewing in a bland whisper, when she 
 drove the tray into her father's chest, and brought him up short, 
 as he returned. 
 
 " Ho ! " he said. " Putting the things away. That's right." 
 
 The cat at once intertwined herself between his legs and 
 amicably tripped him up. 
 
 "Bother the cat!" he exclaimed; "but she reminds me, 
 though. I don't want to make it any duller than I can for you, 
 Eebecca ; only I will have order kept. You asked me last year if 
 you might have a dog. And I said, no." 
 
 "You did." 
 
 " I say yes, now. You can have a dog, if it is a pleasure to 
 you " 
 
 " May I have a large one, or a little one ? " 
 
 " Any size, hut let him be a barker, a tearer, a dog that never 
 sleeps. Silcox has got dogs that would tear the heart's life out 
 of a man, if he bent his black brows at them, and the other 
 day I saw his grandchildren playing at horses with them. Get a 
 dog like that if you can ; but get a barker." 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE NEW LIFE. 
 
 In the whole history of insurrections I honestly believe that com- 
 paratively few are entirely unsuccessful. The position of the 
 insurgent party is, in most instances, after a short time, bettered. 
 The fact is, one would fancy that no government is strong enough 
 to stand many serious insurrections, and therefore, as soon as its 
 stomach or its safety will allow, gives magnanimously what it 
 would be dangerous to refuse to a high-spirited and well-organised 
 piinority — like Eebecca. 
 
HETTY. 187 
 
 Her insurrection was not entirely without its fruits. If you 
 come to consider, a daugliter, who has shown herself able and 
 willing, under provocation, to absent herself promptly and secretly 
 from home — making you look like a fool, and harassing you witii 
 inexorable terrors — is by no means a young lady to be trifled with. 
 I once, in the range ol my own personal experience, knew a young 
 lady of tender years, in a certain school, who had the singular 
 physical power of being ill under the slightest contradiction ; I 
 mean ill as people arc ill off the North Foreland. That child 
 ruled the school, and learnt just what she chose — which was 
 nothing. 
 
 Turner was going to have no more escapades in his house. I 
 Rebecca had only Imown her power, she might have done pretty 
 much as she liked, but she did not know it. Her feeling was, 
 that she had utterly overstepped natural bounds, and had been on 
 the whole, for her father, kindly received home. Her feeling 
 about her escapade was one of sheer terror, now that the whole 
 manner of life was all around her. It would take a still more 
 dreadful provocation to make her take such a step again. 
 
 Women, trained for so many centuries to entire dependence, 
 are not good at a long, steady defiance to association and habit. 
 That they are capable oi it, the whole world knows ; but if it is 
 forced on them, the sustained effort which it costs them makes 
 them coarse, fierce, and unwomanly. This continual eftbrt of 
 defiance will soon make, from habit, a woman's voice hoarse and 
 man-like. 
 
 Rebecca happily escaped this. Her father had yielded, grudg- 
 ingly indeed, yet still had yielded ; more than she had hoped for. 
 Her condition was improved. The heretofore forbidden lane, with 
 all its wonders, was at all events hers now. With fresh, healthy 
 vitality, with the curiosity towards the world and its ways of a 
 child in a wood, this lane, with its swarming, dirty population, 
 was as a deeply interesting book to her, which she was eager to 
 read. 
 
 She was the first moving in the household on Monday morning : 
 the intervening Sunday she had passed in bed. She roused the 
 maid, and left the others sleeping. When they came down, there 
 was breakfast ready, the Bible set by her father's plate, his boots 
 in their place, the newspaper warmed and ready for him, and his 
 rasher of bacon hot in the fender. These facts, being taken by 
 the allied powers as denoting contrition on her part, were received 
 by her father in dumb silence, and by good Carry, who always 
 tramped her father's trick, by a wondering sniff or two. 
 
 She did not care. She was to go into the lane, and have a dog 
 
188 HETTY. 
 
 of her own. Hagbut was a thing of the past ; she would soon win 
 these two over. 
 
 The portion of Scripture which Mr. Turner had to read that 
 morning was rather unpropitious to his pui'pose of twisting a 
 moral out of it to hurl at Kebecca's head. It was the journey of 
 Jonah to Nineveh. He thought that he should have to leave her 
 moral exercitation to the prayer, when, stumbling on, he came to 
 the fact that Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's 
 belly, exactly the time which Rebecca had been away. He 
 emphasised this point so strongly, and paused so long, that Carry 
 groaned, and the little maid — aroused suddenly from the orthodox 
 religious coma, into which she always fell on the celebration of 
 any form of worship, public or private — exclaimed, " Laws a 
 mercy me ! " 
 
 It was a great, although unforeseen point or hit, this suggested 
 parallel between Jonah and Rebecca ; but Mr. Turner was too old 
 a hand not to see that it would not hold water too far. Rebecca 
 thought that he would have twisted it into the prayer ; but he 
 knew better. He started from an entirely new basis of operations. 
 "It don't matter," said Rebecca; "I shall catch it somehow." 
 And so, when her father said, " Let us pray," she knelt down, 
 wondering how he was going to do it. 
 
 He led up to his theme in the most masterly manner. It was 
 feebly like some Scotch sermons, which one dimly remembers. 
 You know the preacher's theme from his text, and you hear him 
 go away into subjects apparently irrelevant, possibly three vague 
 themes, which seem to have no relation to his text. You sit 
 puzzled, and yet pleased, while he spins his first cnide mass of 
 yarn oiT into a single thread and leaves it. Then he spins you 
 another heap of 'yarn into a thread; and leaving that, another; 
 and then, taking his three threads, he spins them into a cord, 
 which brings you back to his original proposition, and his text. 
 Then you take out your watch, and find that you have been 
 sitting, with your intellect at its highest power, for one hour or so, 
 and have thought it twenty minutes. A good Scotch sermon is 
 not a thing to be despised. The Scotch are not considered to be 
 devoid of brains, and they like such sermons. 
 
 Turner's prayer had no similarity to a good Scotch sermon 
 more than this. Rebecca knew that she would be his theme, and 
 wondered how he would handle it. He handled it well enough 
 for an Englishman. A Scotchman or a French preaching priest 
 would have done it better ! but it was creditable in a mere 
 amateur. 
 
 Turner began by airing the pld cjuestion gf the periuissiou of 
 
Hetty. iso 
 
 evil. The higher power doubtless knew best, he wished that there 
 might be no mistake about that ; but, at the same time, he, 
 Turner, did beg and pray the First Cause to reconsider his 
 opinions, and take to governing the universe more in accordance 
 with bis. Turner's, ideas than heretofore. He proceeded to oifer 
 a singular number of practical suggestions to the First Cause, 
 which he hoped might be practically attended to on the first 
 opportunity. And then he began to draw up to Rebecca, who 
 knelt with her head on one side, wondering what he was going to 
 say. 
 
 It was in the thanksgiving part of the prayer that he overthrew 
 and demolished Rebecca, to her great admiration and wonder. 
 She had begun to think that he was going to leave her alone 
 altogether, for she was at a loss to understand how he could have 
 any great thanksgiving to make on her account ; but when he 
 began to thank the First Cause for such afflictions as had been 
 sent him, and also for the strength which had been given to him 
 in bearing them, she saw how he was going to do it — and 
 admired. 
 
 She wondered much at his ingenuity in attacking her under a 
 form of thanksgiving to the Deity. She wondered stiU more at 
 the ingenuity of the details ; but what she admired most of all 
 ■was the singular self-complacent egotism which underlay his 
 whole prayer, and which cropped up at every point. She knew of 
 old her father's habit, comrhon enough to men who live in a little 
 world, of talking of himself to other men ; but to hear him, while 
 attacking her, point out his manifest excellences to the Deity, and 
 then compare himself to a miserable worm, fiUed her with pure 
 astonishment. She had never before seen how entirely her father 
 was given to self-worship. Abraham's pleading was reasonable ; 
 her father's was utterly unreasonable. When he came to the 
 ultimate point of summing up his utterly blameless life, and 
 thanking Providence for afflicting him with an undutiful and 
 rebellious daughter to keep him from the sin of self-glorification, 
 she was pained and dazed. She wanted to love him ; how could 
 she when he was so far from all else that she loved ? Her father's 
 religious exercise this morning had by no means a good effect on 
 her. She was angry and sulky when she rose from her knees. 
 
 And she had meant to be so good. She left Carry to administer 
 the little cares of domestic life which she, in the warmth of her 
 heart, had prepared. She was silent and angry, and her father 
 congratulated himself on having brought her to a sense of sin. 
 He had brought her to a deep hatred of his foi-m of religion. 
 
 She ate her breakfast in silence, but, keeping in mind the 
 
190 fiEl?TY. 
 
 admissions of last night, saw that they must be kept before him. 
 Towards the end of breakfast she said — 
 
 " I am to have a dog ; and I am to walk up and down the lane ; 
 that is allowed. I wish that some arrangement might be come to 
 under which I was not to be prayed at by pa before the maid, but 
 that I suppose is hopeless. I can only say that if it happens 
 again, I shall rise from my knees and walk in the lane. I hate 
 it." 
 
 " My dearest Rebecca ! " said poor Carry. 
 
 "You may well say your dearest RelDecca, you two," said 
 Rebecca, sullenly. " I meant to be as good as gold this morning, 
 and submit, and be cheerful, and all that sort of thing. But I 
 wish it understood that I will not be prayed at by pa, and thanks- 
 givinged for by pa, or by any one else. I may as well slate my 
 intentions at once. It is more than probable that very shortly I 
 shiiU join the communion of the Primitive Methodists." 
 
 This was not quite such a dreadful threat to Mr. Turner as it 
 was to Carry. Certainly, Mr. Turner reflected, the poor little 
 Primitives were a low and poor sect, and the secession of one of 
 the members of his household from a sect so rich as his, small 
 though it was, a sect which was looked on with envy for its 
 wealth, would be as sad a thiug as the secession of an ultra- 
 evangelical in the National Church to Wesleyanism, or the 
 Baptists. Yet, after aU, if she go, it would be one way of 
 accounting for her eccentricity. He put on his boots, and went to 
 business in tolerable humour. If she did not do worse than go 
 to the Primitive Methodists, and if that abominably sleepy police- 
 man would keep his eye on the house for a few months, matters 
 would right themselves. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LOED DUCETOY. 
 
 The moment that Turner had shiikcn the dust of his own house 
 oil' his feet, the little anxieties of that house were cast in the 
 background, and he was in another world. For, to tell the truth, 
 at this very time Turner's religion, and Turner's domestic troubles, 
 were actually swamped in another great matter — had become for 
 a time, as it were, relaxations. The man was living two discon- 
 nected lives (unless Rebecca could connect them), and the least 
 
HETTY. 191 
 
 disagreeable was to him almost a relaxation. This great matter 
 shall doTelop itself. 
 
 On Walham Green he caught the white Putney omnibus as 
 usual ; but not as usual did it drop him at the bottom of Chancery 
 Lane. He got out at Arlington Street, Piccadilly, and made his 
 way quickly to a private house in Duke Street, St. James. 
 
 " Is Lord Ducetoy up ? " he asked of the quiet-looking servant 
 in black who came to the door. 
 
 Lord Ducetoy was up, had finished breakfast, and was ready for 
 Mr. Turner. He was shown upstairs into Lord Ducetoy's presence, 
 and he looked on him with very great curiosity. 
 
 A handsome, weU-made, young man enough, light in hair, 
 blonde in moustache, with the deep brown of the Western 
 prairies stiU on his face ; standing, with his back against the 
 chimney-piece, and lovingly wiping a gun with his handkerchief. 
 
 "How d'ye do, my dear Mr. Turner?" said Lord Ducetoy. 
 " Thanks for coming so promptly, for I am in trouble." 
 
 "In trouble, my lord," said Turner, very seriously. "Please 
 tell me how." 
 
 " WeU, it seems that I have not got any money." 
 
 "Your lordship has plenty of money. I can let you have a 
 thousand pounds at this moment." 
 
 " Then I wish you would. I wrote a cheque for a hundred 
 pounds on my uncle. Sir Gorham Philpott, yesterday, and they 
 have cashed it certainly. But they have written to me to say, 
 as there is only ^£37 10s. in their hands, they request, either 
 that more money may be paid in, or that our account may be 
 closed." 
 
 " Oh, that is their move, is it ? " said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " That is their move, my dear Mr. Turner," said Lord Ducetoy. 
 " Eather a disagreeable one for me. You must know, as my 
 uncle's old man of business, that I never expected to come into 
 this earldom, and this money. My uncle's death was utterly un- 
 expected ; my cousin's death at Madeira, equally so. I was 
 hammering about in Canada, trying to invest a certain thousand 
 pounds I had, so as to bring me in a living, when I suddenly found 
 myself an earl, with a considerable income. Coming home, I find 
 my cheque nearly dishonoured at my own uncle's for one hundred 
 pounds. I am a quiet fellow, but must live. I should be glad of 
 some money." 
 
 " There 'is plenty of money," said Turner. 
 
 " I should like to see some of it," said Lord Ducetoy. 
 
 Turner sat musing and looking at Lord Ducetoy for some little 
 time. At last he said— 
 
192 HETTY. 
 
 " I suppose you know your estates are rather heavily mort- 
 gaged ? " 
 
 " I have heard as much." 
 
 " And that the mortgages are held by Sir Gorham Philpott & 
 Co.?" 
 
 Lord Ducetoy had not heard that. 
 
 " Do you know that Sir Gorham Philpott & Co. are now Sir 
 Gorham Philpott & Co., Limited? " 
 
 Lord Ducetoy laughed, and said, " that he was not aware of 
 the fact : but their ideas of credit were certainly limited." 
 
 " They are, my lord," said Turner. " For limited liability is 
 only another name for unlimited irresponsibility. Do you know 
 nothing of the family jewels, of the family papers ? " 
 
 " I know that there are great jewels, and cash, and papers. I 
 suppose they are at the banker's." 
 
 " My lord, they are nothing of the kind. They are at my 
 house. My lord, the limited bank, long really bankrupt, which 
 has been trading under the name, once respectable, of Sir Gorham 
 Philpott, holds the mortgages on your estates, about the only 
 asset they have. It has not seemed to me expedient to break with 
 them, and bank with another house, lest they should inconveniently 
 foreclose. But I have kept all out of their hands that I could. I, 
 as executor under your uncle's wiU, have received the plate, the 
 jewels, the deeds, under my own roof; and the responsibility of 
 them is tuming me grey." 
 
 " Could we not send them to Child's or to Drummond's ? " 
 
 "My lord, we owe Philpott's money — a great deal, I 
 doubt." 
 
 " Can we pay it ? " 
 
 "Yes, we can pay it. But their name is and when the 
 
 smash comes we must take our chance with the others. I don't 
 want our jewels and plate to be put into their bankruptcy." 
 
 " Then keep them where they are," said Lord Ducetoy. " I 
 can trust you." And he whistled as he nibbed his gun, and said, 
 laughing, " Well, I suppose now I have got money, I shall never 
 be happy again. There is one thing I wish to say, in our prairie 
 way, Mr. Turner. My mother says that I can trust you through 
 thick and thin ; and so I mean to, for she never was wrong in her 
 life. So, if you find it possible, I should like to make our rela- 
 tions as friendly as possible. There is, by the way, a touch of 
 New England in that, because I can't do without you. I don't 
 mean that we are to rush into one another's arms, but if we try we 
 may get friendly in time, I don't think it will take long." Here 
 he got very red. " I only just remember my cousin. I hope to 
 
HETTY. 193 
 
 know her husband better. Will j'ou dine with my mother and me 
 to-day?" 
 
 Turner went up to him, and taking his hand, looked him franldy 
 in the face, and said, " Did she ask me ? " 
 
 Lord Ducetoy nodded. 
 
 " Then tell her No. It is best all over and done with. Tell 
 her, also, that the trouble we thought past has begun again in my 
 daughter. Good-bye. You may trust me." 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE SKYE TERKIER. 
 
 Eebecca's good humour came back the instant she was outside 
 the garden, and into the lane. She had tempted Carry to come, 
 but Carry wouldn't. " You had better come," said Rebecca, 
 "we shall have some amusement. I am going to Jim Akin 
 about a dog, and it wiU be very pleasant." Carry would have 
 liked to have gone very much, but she had said that she wouldn't 
 in the first instance ; and consistency, or as low people call it, 
 obstinacy, is the brightest jewel in the British female's crown, so 
 she declined to enjoy herself with her sister ; and visited her self- 
 imposed querulousness on the little maid. 
 
 Neither Jim Akin nor Mr. Spicer the sweep was out. With 
 Akin it was always a slack day on Mondays, having worked 
 Chelsea, principally Jews-row and Turks-row, with periwinkles, 
 whelks, and shrimps the Sunday afternoon, and resting before 
 going out to buy stock from the market gardeners. With Mr. 
 Spicer also it was a "clean" day, few owners of houses of 
 sufficient respectability to require their chimneys swept by the 
 hand of a master, caring to make preparations for the sweep on 
 Sunday night. 
 
 Very respectable Mr. Spicer looked, in his off-duty clothes, 
 comically unlike the hideous fiend-like figure he was when on duty. 
 Rebecca had the advantage of the respectful counsel of these two 
 excellent people on this occasion. 
 
 "If you please, Mr. Akin and Mr. Spicer," she said, after the 
 usual salutation, " I want to get a dog; pa is going to let me 
 keep a dog." 
 
 They were both deeply interested at once. Mr. Akin being 
 
194 HETTT. 
 
 professionally more accustomed to conversation, dashed into the 
 subject at once. 
 
 " Warmint or general, Miss ? " 
 
 " I don't quite understand," said Eebecca ; and so Mr. Spicer, 
 a sententious man, much looked up to in the row, leant against 
 the fence and defined after the Aristotelian method. 
 
 " A warmint dog. Miss, as his name implies, is a dog as is kept 
 for the killing of warmint. Now there's a many kinds of 'em : 
 bull-dog, buU-terrier, fox-terrier, black-and-tan-terrier, toy. Dandy, 
 and Skye. Similarly there's varieties in the nature of warmint, 
 as badger, pole-cat, weasel, and rat. Of badgers there is country 
 badgers and old hands. Of pole-cats there is wild and tame. Of 
 rats, why there's as much difference in rats, lor bless you, as what 
 there is in Christians. I've seen big rats as a new-bom kitten 
 could kiU ; and contrariwise, one of my young men went to enter 
 a well-bred year-old toy with an old rat, and I'm blessed if the dog 
 didn't cut and run for his life, howling, round the lanes, and the 
 rat after him." 
 
 " I seen it," said Jim Akin. 
 
 " But I don't want a dog to kiU anything," said Eebecca. 
 
 "Miss wants a general dog, I expect, miller," said Jim Alvin 
 to the master chimney-sweep. " Tip her some of your advice 
 now." 
 
 " General dogs, Miss," said the miller, complacently, " is like 
 warmint dogs, various ; and I never seen none that was much 
 'count, takin' into consideration what dogs was made for. Still 
 Providence made 'em, and the fancy gives prizes for 'em, similarly 
 as they do for fantails and pouters, and other rubbish that were 
 only created for showing and dealing. If I bad my will, Miss, 
 there should be no prizes for any pigeons except carriers, and none 
 for any dogs except real warmint." 
 
 " Greyhounds," murnmred Jim Aldn. 
 
 "And you may add pointers and setters," said Mr. Spicer; 
 " but they're gentry dogs. When you are a gentleman with a 
 moor in the 'ighlands, talk about 'em ; not now." 
 
 " Miss wouldn't want a fighting dog ? " suggested Jim Akin, 
 accepting the rebuke. 
 
 "Do she look like it, neighbour?" said Mr. Spicer, almost 
 severely. 
 
 " A fighting dog ain't half a bad thing to mind a young lady, 
 if she wanted to go a walking far by herself," said Jim Akin, not 
 to bo entirely driven from his point. 
 
 Mr. Spicer was very fond of his neighbour, but he had to ignore 
 hioi, he was getting low. 
 
HETTY. 195 
 
 " With regard to general dogs, Miss, which were your views ? " 
 
 " Well," said Eebecca, " I should like a dog which would bark 
 if it heard a noise, and a dog I should be fond of. I think I 
 should like a little dog the best. I think I should like a little 
 hairy dog, like the Queen's in the picture, you know, which is 
 begging to the macaw for its biscuit ; if it did not cost too much." 
 
 I know nothing of the private life of Mr. Spicer or Mr. Akin ; 
 when I am thrown against gentlemen in that particular circle of 
 society, I ask few questions. If any of ourselves had no educa- 
 tion, and associated with, bought and sold with, ay, and inter- 
 married with the criminal classes, should we look on the lighter 
 crimes with the same detestation we do now I A man whose 
 wife's brother has been transported, and yet who gets treated as a 
 respectable and trustworthy person by the district inspector, seems 
 to me to be in his way meritorious. If a stray dog follows him 
 home, or if a strange pigeon come into his trap, why, he is possibly 
 not so chivalrously particular as you or I should be ; when you 
 get to the very verge of the criminal class, you must make allow- 
 ances. 
 
 Jim Akin and Mr. Spicer interchanged a glance, and then Jim 
 Akin spoke. " I have got a little dog in my back yard, Miss, 
 which you might care to look at." 
 
 "Undeniable character," said Mr. Spicer. "Never 'tised, but 
 character un-de-niable, against all the Pleece in creation." 
 
 Rebecca assented at once, and they went in through Jim Akin's 
 close-smelling house, which had a mingled scent of washing, dirt, 
 children, cabbage-stalks, baby, and cheese ; and out into the 
 little back yard, separated from the neighbours' back yards by a 
 low, broken paling. There was no vegetation in it, except, at 
 the farther corner, an elder-tree. And at the foot of the elder- 
 tree there was an American flour-barrel, and at the entrance of the 
 flour-barrel, sat a little tiny innocent dog, chained up and looking 
 very unhappy. 
 
 It was a very beautiful little Skye terrier, a dog worth money, 
 but grimed with ashes and soot, unkempt, unwashed, utterly and 
 entirely miserable and woebegone. It was a dog which had been 
 cared for and loved, and tended in its time, so carefully tended 
 that it had lost its instinct of self-care, and had lost its mistress, 
 or let itself be stolen, and had come to this. It cowered when it 
 saw Jim Akin and Mr. Spicer ; but when it saw a lady with them, 
 it looked up at her with its light hazel eyes, and held up its poor 
 innocent little paw. 
 
 Her father might well call her a fool. I suppose she was a 
 fool according to his light. Her heart seemed to swell suddenly 
 
196 HETTY. 
 
 within her, and her eyes not all unready for tears, for the little 
 dog, out of its misery, had appealed to her, as Friday did to 
 Crusoe. She went straight to the barrel, undid the dog, and took 
 it to her bosom. 
 
 " I wiU buy this dog of you, Mr. Akin," she said, without turn- 
 ing round. " My father will pay for it. Send in a moderate price 
 to him, or he will not let me have it. I will pay the diiference. 
 I will have this dog." 
 
 " Will you let me give you the little dog ? " said a voice, close 
 at her elbow. 
 
 She turned quicldy round. It was Mr. Morley, the Dissenting 
 minister, who stood close beside her. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 MR. MOBLEy. 
 
 Nobody likes to be caught suddenly in a sentimental mood. 
 Every true-born Briton hates it almost as much as he hates being 
 caught in (respectable) sin. Kebecca had just been caught in a 
 sentimental mood, over a grimy Skye terrier, in company with a 
 chimney-sweep and a costermonger, by a Dissenting minister. In 
 the revulsion brought on by a nearly strange face, the situation, 
 instead of being really beautiful, as it was one minute ago, was in 
 the highest degree ridiculous — as she thought. 
 
 " How did you come here, Mr. Morley? " she asked. " I am 
 surprised." 
 
 " I came to see you, and I saw you come in here, and I followed 
 you." 
 
 " I am much obliged. My father's house is over the way. I 
 think you asked me if you might pay for this dog ? My answer 
 is. No." 
 
 "There ain't nothing to pay," said Jim Akin. "Miss has 
 took a fancy to the dog, and she is welcome to her." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you wiU give me the dog as a 
 present ? " 
 
 " Certainly, Miss, and will swear to her agin all Christendom." 
 
 "I'll take it, Jim Akin," she said. "And I'll never pay one 
 farthing for it, except in good will. If I don't pay you in cash, I 
 will pay you in kind. Let me give you one more chance, I will 
 
HETTT. 197 
 
 give you a five-pound note for this dog ; I will go across the street 
 and get it now." 
 
 " Won't take it, Miss. I'll take it out in good will. The 
 mistake as you gentry makes," continued Jim Akin, speaking 
 sententiously, and looking at Mr. Morley, who certainly looked 
 like a gentleman, "is this. You thinks we're for cash, and all 
 cash ; and it ain't so. I've got as much money as I want. You 
 gentlemen as studies has got good words. Why can't you give 
 us some of your good words now and again, in a friendly way, the 
 same as I give she the little dog ? ' ' 
 
 "Well," said Eebecca, turning homewards with her new 
 treasure in her arms, " aU I can say is, that you shall always 
 have good words from me ; and so good-bye. Mr. Morley, I 
 have just been so cross with you. I am afraid you must think 
 me very siUy." 
 
 " On what grounds ? " 
 
 " On the grounds of being very nearly crying for pity over a 
 poor lonely little dog. If your life were as lonely as mine " 
 
 " What then ? " said Mr. Morley, as they crossed the street. 
 
 " Why then, I fancy, I may he wrong, but I do fancy that you 
 are the sort of person who would be just as likely to make a goose 
 of yourself over such a matter as me." 
 
 "That is not grammar, you know, as it stands," said Mr. 
 Morley. 
 
 " Then let it be grammar as it sits," said Rebecca. " You 
 know what I mean.'" 
 
 " I am afraid I do ; and what is more and worse, I am afraid 
 it is true." 
 
 " Then you do sometimes make a goose of yourself ? " 
 
 " Have I not come to see you ? " 
 
 " That is true enough. Talking of geese, what is the opinion 
 of Pythagoras concerning water-fowl ? " 
 
 ' ' That a minister of the gospel had better mind his own 
 business, and not come to visit houses where common stage plays 
 are read habitually." 
 
 " Only one single number of Knight's Illustrated, I give you 
 my honour," said Rebecca. " You have read it, you know; at 
 least, you seem pretty familiar with it. Did you really come to 
 see me ? " 
 
 " I did, indeed." 
 
 " I have leave to walk up and down the lane. Will you walk 
 with me ? " 
 
 Mr. Morley consented gladly. 
 
 " I want to talk to you very much, but about very many things. 
 
198 HETTY. 
 
 You seem to have had an education different to — to the men I 
 have seen here. For instance, you know Shakspeare ? " 
 
 " I know Shakspeare very well." 
 
 "I know nothing of him but this one play. And that is so 
 wonderful — so utterly unlike, both in thought and diction, to 
 anything I have ever seen before, that I can nearly say it by 
 heart. Ai-e the other plays to be compared in goodness to this 
 one ? " 
 
 " Certainly. In perfect dexterity and elegance, I rank Twelfth 
 Night as high as any ; but for no other qualities. Hamlet is the 
 finest of them all." 
 
 " And what is that about ? " 
 
 " The old Calvinist business — the business without beginning 
 and without end — which keeps so many preachers on their legs, 
 for the simple reason that, let them turn it inside out as often as 
 they will, there is no answer to it. Hamlet, with its beautiful 
 language and deep thought, runs mainly on predestination, the 
 permission of evil and the responsibility in this world and in the 
 next of bad or careless action, committed, as it would seem, almost 
 unavoidably." 
 
 "And how does Shakspeare get us out of the old difficulty, 
 familiar enough to me, I am sure ? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 " The characters aU stab and poison one another," said Mr, 
 Morley. 
 
 " Mark my words, Mr. Morley," said Eebecca, stopping short, 
 and stroking the head of her little dog, who, under the impression 
 that it had only been stolen once more in a different sort of way, 
 was low in its little mind; " mark my words, Mr. Morley, that 
 Shakspeare was a man not entirely deprived of understanding. I 
 am aware that you people hate him, curse him from your pulpits, 
 and so on. But there is something in the man." 
 
 " I never cursed him," said Morley. " I love him." 
 
 " You ! " said Rebecca. " I never sat under you. The man 
 whom you call your brother — the man whose opinions you are 
 bound to endorse, does, though. I mean the man Hagbut, for 
 I have heard him." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Hetty's lover. 
 
 " It is not so pleasant in here as in the lane," said Rebecca, 
 leading the way in to their dull, narrow-windowed sitting-room. 
 
HETTY. 199 
 
 "This is the place where I am scolded and admonished. I 
 sit here, do you see, and you sit there. Now, will you please 
 begin and get it over." 
 
 " Can you suppose that I mean to scold you ? " he said. 
 
 " I suppose that you have come commissioned by my father to 
 see after my spiritual state," she replied. "Are you not Mr. 
 Hagbut's successor ? If so, I am afraid that you wiU have a 
 thankless task." 
 
 "I assure you on my honour," he said, eagerly, "that my 
 visit is solely and entirely to you ; that I dislike Mr. Hagbut ; 
 that I have no commission from your father whatever. May I go 
 on? I am much older than you, and God knows, I wish you 
 weU." 
 
 " If you put matters on those friendly grounds, I am sure that 
 you may say what j'ou like. If you intend to be truly my friend 
 in a worldly point of view, I can meet you half-way, for I am sure 
 I want one badly." 
 
 " We wiU sign no compact of friendship," he answered ; " but 
 you shall try me. I am an old widower of forty-two, and have 
 a daughter nearly as old as you." 
 
 " A daughter ! " said Eebecca. " I never heard of that before." 
 
 She blushed scarlet as she said it, for she betrayed the fact 
 that he was interesting to her, and that she had inquired about 
 him. 
 
 " Yes, I have a daughter," said Morley, stroking his chin. 
 " Yes ; quite so. Hetty (that is short for Hephsibah, not for 
 Esther, you will understand) is nearly as old as you are, I should 
 say." 
 
 " I suppose she is very fond of you ? " said Kebecca, still in 
 confusion. 
 
 " Why, yes," said Mr. Morley, stiU stroking his chin. " Hetty 
 is very fond of me indeed. But I will show you how much I am 
 inclined to put confidence in you. Miss Turner, by telling you that 
 my dear daughter is not a popular person." 
 
 " Is she cross ? " asked Kebecca. 
 
 "No, she's not cross. When I say that she is unpopular, I 
 mean that she is unpopular among our religious connection, and — 
 well — is a great stumbling-block with them." 
 
 " She seems to be very much in my condition then," said 
 Eebecca. 
 
 " Very much indeed," said Mr. Morley, the truth being far too 
 great to be kept back. " Very much so." 
 
 " Did she ever run away and hide for three days, as I did ? " 
 said Rebecca. 
 
200 HETTY. 
 
 Mr. Morley did not answer in speech at all, neither did he look 
 at Eebecca at all. He only looked at space, with a compound 
 expression in which there was, simply in a very slight move- 
 ment of the mouth, a touch of humour, but no anger or sorrow. 
 Kehecca began to have an intense desire to know the young lady, 
 and said so. 
 
 " She would be highly flattered, I am sure," said Mr. Morley, 
 " if I told her so ; but I shall not do it, however. By the 
 by, may I presume to be sufficiently in your confidence to ask a 
 favour?" 
 
 " Provided it is not a guilty secret, of course," said Eebecca. 
 
 " But it is," said Mr. Morley. " Don't say anything about my 
 daughter up here. This part of our connection does not know 
 anything about her. Even Hagbut keeps the dreadful se&ret, 
 knowing that if anything of her ways was known here, Mrs. 
 Kussel and Miss Soper would at once find out or invent quite 
 enough about her to make me perfectly useless as a minister to 
 this congregation, when he wanted my services, as he pretty often 
 does. Besides, the girl is a connection of his. You will not 
 mention her ? " 
 
 " I wiU not, indeed," said Eebecca, pleased very much at being 
 taken into any one's confidence and treated like a woman. " I 
 am sure she is good." 
 
 "There is good in her somewhere," replied Morley, slightly 
 showing his white teeth; "you wiU keep my secret, then, from 
 your Eussel and Soper ; now let us talk of other matters. Your 
 father looks very iU and worn." 
 
 " I have been behaving very ill, and have given him trouble. 
 I ran away for three days to avoid doing something he had set his 
 heart on my doing. I am very truly penitent for having given 
 him anxiety, but I would do it again to-morrow ; and so would 
 your daughter." 
 
 " People don't run away from me," said Mr. Morley; "they 
 are more apt to come after me, I think. While I have been 
 sitting here, and looking out of the window, I have noticed one ; 
 he has found the house at last ; he rings the bell ; he asks for 
 me ; yes, and here your little maid shows him in." 
 
 And into the room came a magnificent young sailor, with the 
 fresh, wild vitality of the sea shining in his bold brown eyes, 
 showing in his noble free gait and bright free smile. A splendid 
 apparition just risen from the ocean, in his ocean's garb ; such a 
 youth as Eebecca had never seen before. As one looked at him 
 with travelled eyes, there came on one dim memories of peaceful 
 seas among soft blue islands far away ; of angry, cruel icebergs ; 
 
HETTY. 201 
 
 of wild, horrible, staggering nights when ruin was abroad, and 
 death looked with pale face over the steersman's shoulder at the 
 dim-lit reeling binnacle. A youth who had looked steadily at 
 death often, and would look again and yet again without terror, 
 and die at the last fighting fiercely. Still young, handsome, and 
 gentle. 
 
 The old narrow-windowed parlour seemed the darker and the 
 dingier for his presence. With the exception of Eebecca herself, 
 there had been nothing there so splendid for many years. Eebecca 
 had never seen anything hke this ; she had seen youth and vitality 
 before, in Jim Akin and the hke, but never anything like this 
 young man. She looked at him with keen curiosity and admira- 
 tion ; and Mr. Morley watched her. 
 
 "I have run you to earth, sir," said the young sailor, who, by 
 his dress, seemed of the superior mate class. " Hetty told me 
 that you would be here." 
 
 " Chapter of accidents," said Mr. Morley. " What business 
 was it of Hetty's, or of yours? " 
 
 "Hetty said that you were to come home to dinner; and, 
 indeed, we want you." 
 
 " You want me a great deal, I have no doubt," said Mr. 
 Morley. 
 
 " Indeed, we do want you very much," said the young sailor ; 
 " in fact, Hetty would not let me into the house until you came. 
 
 She only " 
 
 "Never mind that, sir." 
 
 " Well, I won't," he said, laughing ; " but you know that she 
 will not take her pleasure without your sharing it. And if Miss 
 Turner," he added, with a bright smile, " will spare you to us 
 this one evening, we will try to make amends in future. May I 
 be introduced to Miss Turner ? ' ' 
 
 " This, Miss Turner," said Mr. Morley, " is young Jack Hartop. 
 He is of the salt-water persuasion. The remarkable fact about 
 him is that he never sails in any kind of ship, but what that ship 
 meets with a very serious accident. Likewise, on the occasion of 
 these accidents, some one else is always on the watch. I introduce 
 him." 
 
 " I am delighted, I am sure," said Jack Hartop, " to make Miss 
 Turner's acquaintance. In what you may be allowed to call, on 
 an occasion of this kind, the flowering vale of tears, there is little 
 doubt that our acquaintance wiU be improved to mutual satisfaction. 
 For you must not believe him about me, Miss Turner. His bark 
 is worse than his bite. Nobody cares twopence-halfpenny for him. 
 Now, Mr. Morley, are you coming home to dinner ? ' ' 
 
202 HETTY. 
 
 " Wait for me at the lane's end, boy, and I will come," said Mr. 
 Morley ; and the young sailor bowed and departed. 
 
 " What do you think of him ? " he said to Rebecca, when he 
 had gone. 
 
 " He is very splendid," said Rebecca, dreamily. " I have never 
 seen any one like him." 
 
 "He is a splendid sailor," said Morley. " May I teU you a 
 secret which would ruin us all if it was known ? " 
 
 "There would be a little excitement about it," said Rebecca; 
 " I think you had better tell me." 
 
 " Well, then, I will trust you. He is Hetty's lover." 
 
 " She must have good taste, then. I should not entirely break 
 my heart if he was mine." 
 
 "No? " said Mr. Morley. 
 
 " Well, I don't know," said Rebecca. " That young man and 
 I should never hit it off, you know. He seems as if he liked his 
 own way." 
 
 " The most biddable lad going," said Mr. Morley. 
 
 "Then he wouldn't suit me. Hetty may have him. I want 
 ordering about, I can't take care of myself. But speaking to you 
 as a minister, or, as the Papists call it, a father confessor, Mr. 
 Morley, I confess to you that I could, with very small effort, have 
 fallen in love with that young man. If Hetty has got him, let her 
 keep him. I shall know Hetty one day, I see. For the present 
 I have made my arrangements for marriage." 
 
 " I dare not ask what arrangements." 
 
 " I wiU save your cowardice, then ; I have, for my own purposes, 
 made it impossible for any man to marry me ; and I am going to 
 marry old 'libbey." 
 
 "Tibbey, the Primitive Methodist, in Leader Street? He is 
 married already." 
 
 " Not him, but his wife. I am going to marry her. At aU 
 events, I am going to get out of this house in some way. I would 
 to heaven that I could turn Roman Catholic. They find a life and 
 a business for women like me. If I could swallow their miserable 
 superstitions, I could join them to-morrow. Why do not you 
 extreme Protestants make provision for women who are willing to 
 devote their love to God and to the poor, as do the Papists ? You 
 cry out at the Papists getting so many converts among women ; 
 what is the real reason ? These Papists, with a false, low, and I 
 hope moribund form of Christianity, are the only sect which offers 
 a career to an ordinary and ill-educated woman. Whose fault is 
 it that we are Hi-educated ? You have refused us education, and 
 we are as clever as you. You teach us to play the piano. The 
 
HETTY. 203 
 
 Papists show us a suffering Christ through suffering humanity. 
 
 They find a sphere for a woman " 
 
 " Which you would occupy for possibly a week." 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 hagbut's new intentions. 
 
 She saw no more of her two new acquaintances for nearly a fort- 
 night, and the old life came back again with almost the old misery 
 and dulness. Yet Eebecca was never exactly as she had been any 
 more. She was more desperately unhappy — that I do not disguise 
 — but her unhappiness now was of a different kind. It was actiTS. 
 Her old unhappiness was as that of one imprisoned in a living tomb 
 from her birth, hopeless, and without any room for fancy, which 
 is one of the greatest mitigators of human ills. She was very 
 miserable again now, but only because dreams, now become possible 
 to her, seemed unattainable. Before this she had no dreams at 
 all : her life was merely a painful sleep. And now, also, she had 
 a companion and a confidant, her little dog. 
 
 The man who has never known a woman who wiU confide to a 
 baby or a dog, matters which she would not confide to an intelligent 
 being, must be unfortunate in his experiences. Poor Kebecca told 
 her little Skye terrier a great many things about herself, in which 
 she scarcely believed as to herself, and which she would have 
 denied with the extremest scorn to any person in the world, unless 
 possibly in deep distress to old Mrs. Tibbey. 
 
 She had broken aU bounds for the first time in her life. In her 
 desperation regarding her marriage to Mr. Hagbut, she had been 
 forced into arms ; into a thoroughly successful revolution. True, 
 she had in her weariness come back, as it were, to Cajsarism ; but 
 it rests with the politicians to teU us whether the individual or the 
 nation ever gets back into its old frame of mind again after one 
 good taste of liberty. What has been done once may be done 
 twice. The ruler of a once thoroughly revolutionised kingdom sits 
 uneasy on his throne ; and, what is more to the purpose, the subject 
 knows it. At least Rebecca did. And so now, when the house 
 was dullest, and her father most disagreeable, instead of "wishing 
 she was dead," or declaring that she would marry a costermonger 
 if he would only take her out of this, she used milder formulas ; 
 only told her little dog that he would drive her to it again, he 
 
204 HETTY. 
 
 would : and that Mab and she and Mrs. Tibbey would go to 
 Ramsgate, and stay there altogether this time ; and live on 
 shrimps, and keep a nice little oyster shop, and never go to 
 chapel any more. And if that nasty tiresome Hetty was near, 
 Mab should bark at her. 
 
 This babyish nonsense was very good for her. She had had too 
 little of it in her childhood : books like Hans Andersen's had never 
 been seen in that house. It was well for her that she had stiU 
 child enough left in her after her embittered life, only to talk to 
 her little innocent dog in a petulant childish way about Hetty ; for 
 she might have talked in a very different one a little time before. 
 Yet one thing she told her dog now, but which she never confessed 
 to herself, was that she hated Hetty. 
 
 Hetty the unknown, Hetty the innocent. It was surely un- 
 reasonable. 
 
 It would be merely confusion of counsel to try and account for 
 it as she did. That Hetty was free ; that she could come and go ; 
 that she had a father who loved her ; and was not watched by two 
 pernicious old trots (meaning Mrs. Russel and Miss Soper) ; she 
 did not believe in all that herself. Hetty was welcome to all that. 
 She had been inclined to admire Hetty, until Mr. Morley, for reasons 
 of his own, had told her that the young sailor Hartop was her 
 lover. 
 
 She had not cared at the time ; if he and Hetty had come arm 
 in arm, the next day, and made love before her, she would not 
 have cared much, more particularly if Mr. Morley had come too. 
 But this grand young sailor had left his image on a late awakened 
 and fuUy developed mind, and it would not go. He was the first 
 really splendid man she had ever seen. 
 
 And he had appeared, only to draw her only friend, Mr. Morley, 
 away from her. They had left her at once, to go after this Hetty, 
 and all their schemes, and goings-on down at Limehouse, the gate 
 of freedom : for you might get on board a ship in Limehouse, and 
 you might sail away anywhere — to the happy islands in the Western 
 Sea, where there was no chapel-going, or tea-meeting, or Sunday 
 school, all of which Mr. Morley wished to establish there ; or even 
 further, to those islands where you could do as you pleased, and 
 escape the consequences of your own actions ; in which islands 
 Mr. Morley did not believe. (This was, of course, only said to the 
 little dog.) But even to her sister Carry she grumbled, after a few 
 days. She told her that she thought Mr. Morley had whisked 
 himself off with his young friend rather unceremoniously. 
 
 " I am glad to hear that he has been here," said Carry. 
 
 "Yes; he came to see me. And I should like him to come 
 
HETTY. 205 
 
 again. But the young sailor, to whom his daughter is engaged, 
 came and carried him oif." 
 
 " Mr. Morley has no daughter," said Carry. 
 
 " Indeed but he has, though," said Kebecca. " And I wish he 
 hadn't." 
 
 "Dearest Eebecoa," said CaroHne, with .just such tact as she 
 had gathered from her station, and her school, "believe a tender 
 sister, when she teUs you that Mr. Morley has no family." 
 
 " But I tell you he has. Hetty was alive a week ago ; bother her." 
 
 "You are in a perfect dream, my dear sister," said Carry. 
 "Mr. Morley is perfectly unincumbered, and his prospects are, 
 in a pecuniary point of view, very good indeed. I give you my 
 honour he has no daughter. I tell you, you have been dreaming." 
 
 " 'I hat is true enough," said Kebecca. " I have been dreaming 
 a deal too much. But who told you he had no daughter ? " 
 
 "Mr. Hagbut to-night, at Miss Soper's." 
 
 " How did he come to say it there? " said Rebecca, who was 
 beginning to get a little uneasy about this mysterious Hetty's legal 
 relation to Mr. Morley. 
 
 Carry was a certain kind of British woman, who, when she saw 
 occasion, would walk clean through half a dozen quickset hedges, 
 without, as vulgar people say, winking her eye. She did so on 
 this occasion, as on many others. 
 
 " The fact of the matter is, my dear Rebecca, that Mr. Hagbut 
 has announced his intention to several mutual friends, of paying 
 his addresses to me. He has not committed himself to me in any 
 way as yet ; he has not sufficiently studied my character. But 
 he has said, with a view of my hearing it at second hand, that if I 
 should be found worthy of his great position, and if he sees hopes 
 of forming my character to his standard, he wiU overlook the dis- 
 grace which one member of our family has brought on it ; and 
 
 " He is rapid in his determinations," said Rebecca, quietly. 
 
 " He is very determined. He is a man to be obeyed. But 
 this is a little past the matter. His opinion is that Mr. Morley 
 is very much inclined to marry you, in spite of all that has 
 happened." 
 
 "Yes," said Rebecca, very quietly. 
 
 " Indeed he thinks so," said Carry ; " and we all rejoiced with 
 a great joy. I consider, that if you are careful, such a thing 
 might be. And in the course of conversation I asked if he had 
 any family ; and he said that there was a daughter, but that she 
 was dead." 
 
 " He meant dead in trespasses and sins, you know," said 
 Rebecca, 
 
206 HETTY. 
 
 "He said dead," said Cany. "Now you know the whole 
 truth, my dear." 
 
 Burning lava over boiling water makes a good explosion, as 
 geologists tell us. There were all the elements of it in Eebecca's 
 heart. She could have killed them all with burning words. For 
 them to dare, after her resolution, to buy and seU her like this. 
 The way in which the crust of respectability forms quickly over 
 the lava of revolution is what drives some men, who will not look 
 to the great cyclical advance of matters, mad. And really, 
 Charles the Second and Dryden, as successors and apparently 
 results of Cromwell and Milton, is a bitter pill for a Whig. Men, 
 maddened with this view of things, try to assassinate innocent 
 sovereigns. Can we wonder that Kebecca felt a strong inclina- 
 tion to box her sister's ears ? 
 
 Only for one moment. She was a clear-hearted woman, with 
 all her faults. She saw her own sister before her, and all her 
 little petty woes and wrongs were forgotten. Easily forgotten, 
 for she had freed herself. Instead of giving way to ill -temper, she 
 gave way to good ; and, kneeling before her sister, said — 
 
 " Carry, sister I Wo have always been good friends. In 
 heaven's name have nothing to do with that man. Are you 
 forced. I was forced ; but I beat them, the mean tattlers and 
 time-servers. Do as I did, if you hate it. Come away as I did, 
 sister ; and see what the world is out of this miserable lane. I 
 will never leave you, dear ; no more wUl Elizabeth Tibbey ; no 
 more will Mab. Fly from it, dear, with me. We could keep a 
 little shop, or anything ; Mr. Tibbey would tell us. Or we would 
 go to Mr. Morley, and he would tell us what to do. But oh, that 
 man. Carry ! There is time to save yourself ; in heaven's name 
 think what you are doing." 
 
 Rebecca's wild appeal failed absolutely. Carry's mind was too 
 well formed. Rebecca's appeal to her, beautiful in its affection- 
 ate unselfishness, if in nothing else, was to her hideous and amor- 
 phous — shapeless to her : her sister was a woman with a wild, 
 ill-regulated mind : an object of pity. Yet, in her reply, she 
 unconsciously allowed that there was reason in Rebecca's wild plea 
 to her ; for, instead of showing pity, she showed resentment. 
 And Rebecca had so nearly won, that this resentment took the 
 form of anger : anger expressed as she had heard it expressed in 
 her family, a little coarsely. 
 
 '' You fool, get up, and don't kneel to me ; Imeel to your 
 Maker. You are the plague of our lives. When I am married to 
 him you will always be held over my head like a whip. The old 
 business was just hushed up, when you nmst break out. Get up." 
 
HETTY. 207 
 
 She got up at once, but she smiled kindly, too. " You will be 
 sorry for these words, CaiTy dear, long after I have forgotten 
 them." 
 
 " I know I shall, you wicked thing," said Cany, sobbing bitterly. 
 " Why did you tempt me to say them ? " 
 
 " Because I did not like to see one I love marry a man utterly 
 beneath her, and utterly unworthy of her." 
 
 Whereupon poor old Cany gathered up her skirts, and walked 
 through another quickset hedge, consisting of Mr. Hagbut's 
 virtues. Through which we will not follow her. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 A FRANK EXPLANATION. 
 
 When the sisters had parted, Eebecca was very angiy again. For 
 them to have dared to use her name like this once more. " Still 
 the question arises," she said, "is it not all their own inconceiv- 
 able foUy ? Mr. Morley is far too much of a gentleman to have 
 spoken to any of them, at aU events, before he spoke to me. He 
 is inclined to like me, and I am fond enough of him ; but he does 
 not admire me." 
 
 Her father came in, and, without looking at him, she said — 
 " Has Mr. Morley spoken to you about any intentions of his with 
 regard to me, sir ? " 
 
 "Certainly not!" said her father. "Do you mean matri- 
 monial intentions ? Why, you have scarcely seen him ; and if 
 Morley had any such intentions, he, with his breeding, would most 
 surely have made himself safe with you in the first instance. TeU 
 us the story, Eebecca ; do not let us mistake one another again. 
 Has he shown you any attentions ? " 
 
 " None whatever, except those of an interested friend. He has 
 been veiy kind to me." 
 
 " Then how has this report come about ? " asked her father. 
 And Eebecca simply told him what Carry had told her. 
 
 " So you see," she added, " that my name is the common talk 
 of Miss Soper's tea-table in connection with his." 
 
 " What an abominable shame I Who said it ? " 
 
 "Mr. Hagbut." 
 
 " Oh, I see," said Mr. Turner. " Yes, yes 1 quite so. My 
 
208 HETTY. 
 
 dear daughter, I have reason to believe now that Mr. Morley does 
 really more or less admire you, and that Mr. Haghut has 
 remarked it." 
 
 " Am I never to be let alone ? " cried Rebecca. 
 
 "Do not interrupt; listen — open your eyes. I have reason 
 now to believe that Hagbut at least suspects that, in course of 
 time, Mr. Morley may come to admire you, and that he has, 
 knowing your proud and uncontrollable temper, put this report 
 about in such a way as may set you utterly against Mr. 
 Morley." 
 
 " What on earth is it to him ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " Between five and six thousand pounds, my dear. If you 
 marry so well as Morley — marry, in fact, a gentleman of respect- 
 ability and strength of character, like him — you will have the same 
 fortune as your sister. If j'ou remain single at my death, you 
 will have one hundred a year ; if you make a foolish match, you 
 win have eighteen shillings a week, tied up to you, and payable 
 weekly. Hagbut thinks that if he can in anyway get rid of this 
 match, he will net certainly five, and possibly seven thousand 
 pounds." 
 
 " He is a villain," said Rebecca, with singular emphasis ; " and 
 I always told you so." 
 
 " This is rather sharp practice, certainly," said Mr. Turner. 
 "Now, I may have made such sharp practice, or I may not. I 
 can't say. I meet and am friendly with men who would do such 
 things, and I am never angry with them. But I am angry now. 
 For him to put his pudding brains against mine ! Oh, Master 
 Hagbut, the Pope shall be the richer for that odd money sooner 
 than you. For him to come lawyer. And over me ! " 
 
 " Why is my sister to be sacrificed to such a wretch ? " 
 
 " He is not a wretch. She will lick his feet, and he will let 
 her, and be kind to her. It is the same between priests and 
 women in all churches. I myself would lick the dust off the 
 shoes of any man who could assure me of heaven — still more will 
 a frightened and ignorant woman. He will be very kind to her, 
 and she will adore him. Have you been saying anything to her 
 against him ? " 
 
 "I fear a great deal," said Rebecca, in downright honesty, 
 expecting an outburst. 
 
 " Do not do so again, my dear Rebecca. Nothing can prevent 
 their being husband and wife, and so sow no seeds of discord. 
 Remember that, child. This has not been a happy house ; do not 
 use your power to make another such." 
 
 What between her father's kindness, and her ideal future of 
 
HETTY. 209 
 
 poor Can-y, it was through tears that she promised that she would 
 not. 
 
 " Do you like Mr. Morley ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, very much indeed. But I could never think of marrying 
 him." 
 
 " Don't let us deceive one another, Kebecca. Is there any one 
 else ? " 
 
 " No," she said at once. Who could there be ? She was not 
 allowed to go out of the lane, and never saw any one. But she 
 said it with so poor an air that her father looked suspiciously at 
 her, and said — 
 
 " WeU, my girl, we had a great fight, and you won. Perhaps 
 I am older and wiser than when I knew your mother. At all 
 events, if I made errors with her, I do not wish to repeat them 
 with you. I have told you how you will be situated as regards 
 money matters. Further than that, no more constraint shall be 
 put upon you than is now. Do you understand ? " 
 
 " I am thankful." 
 
 " Keep your ears open, and your attention awake, and never 
 repeat what I am going to tell you. When you brought disgrace 
 on this house as you did, that fellow Hagbut came to me to break 
 off his engagement with you, as he was almost bound to do. But 
 the way he did it showed me he was a rascal and a sneak, every 
 inch of him. By heaven ! he little knew how near he was being 
 pitched into the lane." 
 
 "And yet poor Carry " began Eebecca. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! you have enough to do without minding 
 Carry. Mind yourself and listen to me. You say that no one 
 has your heart ; I ask no further. But mind, if there is, and 
 Hagbut knows who it is, he will, if the man is likely to be entirely 
 displeasing to me, throw him against you." 
 
 Rebecca sat perfectly silent, and her fatlier saw that there was 
 more than he cared to know. At last she said : " Please, father, 
 has Mr. Morley a daughter ? ' ' 
 
 " He may have a dozen for aught I know. I only know his 
 eminent character ; I know nothing of his domestic life, except 
 that he is a widower." 
 
 "Because he told me he had, and told me much about her. 
 And Hagbut denies that there is any such daughter." 
 
 " Hagbut is probably over-reaching himself in some way," said 
 Mr. Turner, coolly. " Suppose, for an instance, that Morley had 
 a daughter who had done him discredit, such as yourself, you 
 know, he might possibly be scheming- to keep her as long as 
 possible in the background, and make anger between you and 
 
 15 
 
210 HETTY. 
 
 Morley. In which, you see, he has already failed, for Morley has 
 told you all about her. Mind, once more, in conclusion ; if there 
 is any man of whom I should disapprove in this case, Hagbut 
 thinks he wins £5,000 by your marrying him, and he will contrive 
 that you should meet him. And so, good-night." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HAETOP. 
 
 Mab, the little dog, used to bark furiously at strangers in general, 
 and regarded both Carry and Mr. Turner in that light. So, when, 
 two days after the last conversation, Rebecca was told that there 
 was a gentleman to see her, Mab barked aU the way downstairs, 
 but on getting to the sitting-room door began to whine and scratch 
 joyously, so that Rebecca thought it was Mr. Morley. 
 
 But it was not ; it was only the magnificent young sailor, Har- 
 top. She was sorry that he had come ; and without perceiving 
 her cold reserved air, be came frankly and joyously up to her, and 
 took her hand. 
 
 " I could not get to you a moment before ; I have been un- 
 loading all the day long, ever since we were in port till to-day. 
 My cousin, Mr. Hagbut, suggested to me that it would be only 
 kind if I were to come and tell you about those two." 
 
 Her father's words came on her with a shock. This, then, was 
 the man selected by Mr. Hagbut as the one most likely to make 
 mischief between her and her father. The man of all others the 
 most dangerous. 
 
 "Yet how could he have known that?" It was indeed a 
 puzzle, if it were not an accident. All this went through her 
 mind so quickly that she did not keep him waiting for his answer. 
 She said, promptly, " Which two ? " 
 
 " Why Mr. Morley and Hetty, to be sure," he replied, 
 wondering. 
 
 " Then there is a Hetty ? " said Rebecca, with animation. 
 
 " There was three days ago," he said, laughing ; " and I think 
 you win find a young person of her appearance, and claiming her 
 name, walking about with her father in the Boopjes of Rotterdam 
 this afternoon." 
 
 " She is a good sailor, I dare say," said Rebecca. 
 
HEtITY. Sll 
 
 " It would be a queer thing for her if she wasn't," said Hartop, 
 with another look of wonder. "But I didn't come here to talk 
 about her; I should talk all the afternoon if I began about her. 
 Do allow me to assure you that of all the pretty, innocent little 
 birds that fly over the tropic sea, she is the prettiest and most 
 innocent ; and of all the brave hearts which beat truest and most 
 steady in the worst gale that ever blew, hers is the truest and 
 steadiest. They will set you against her, but don't believe them." 
 
 " Why should they set me against her ? " asked Eebecoa. 
 
 " She broke through rules, you know," said he, seriously. " If 
 she and I had been what we are now, I should most likely have 
 been against it. But that was aftenvards. We won't talk of 
 her ; you shall iudge her for yourself. Now I want to ask you 
 to walk with me. Do come. It is the only civility I can show 
 you." 
 
 " I will go and ask my father," she said, and so left him. 
 
 Mr. Turner was sitting alone in his bedroom, brooding in his 
 chair, and hearing some one coming, caught up his Bible and 
 bent his head over it ; a fact made patent to Eebecca by seeing 
 that he held it upside down. 
 
 "Father," she said quietly, as soon as she had shut the door, 
 " the young man you warned me of has come from Mr. Hagbut ; 
 and I have come to ask your leave to go out to walk with him for 
 an hour or so." 
 
 " No! " cried Mr. Turner, shutting up his Bible. " Why, this 
 is as good as a play. Tell me all about it. Who is he ? " 
 
 " He is young Hartop, a sailor ; Mr. Hagbut's cousin." 
 
 "Hagbut knows something against him, then, or — stay, let us 
 condemn no man — he has calculated on my having objections to 
 your marrying a sailor ; that is it. Now, my girl, let us have it 
 aU out ; there is more to come. I have not watched witnesses' 
 eyes for nothing aU my life." 
 
 " You remember that Mr. Hagbut denied that Mr. Morley had 
 a daughter? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Well, he has such a daughter, and her name is Hetty ; and 
 this young man is engaged to be married to her. And he describes 
 her as the most perfect being ever seen. I don't know how I 
 know it, but I do know this — if anything were to come between 
 this splendid Hetty and himself, he would be a lost man." 
 
 " Then you see my theory of her being disreputable, and of 
 Hagbut's keeping her in the background to make a quarrel on the 
 score of want of confidence between you and Morley, falls to the 
 ground. I was under the impression that, if there were such a 
 
212 HfiTTt. 
 
 girl, Hagbut would advise Morley to keep her in the background 
 until you were well committed to him, and then reveal her disre- 
 putable existence by means of one of those savoury old catamarans 
 — vessels, I mean. But this theory falls to the ground now, if 
 she is what the young man says she is. She cannot have done 
 anything." 
 
 " She has done something, though, and something rather strong. 
 Her own father hinted it to me, and her own devoted lover con- 
 firmed it. I don't want to know what it is, but the young man, 
 who is to marry her, hoped just now, that the good ladies, whom 
 you so well describe as savoury catamarans, would not prejudice 
 me against her. He says she has broken through rules." 
 
 " I wish / could," said poor Mr. Turner, " but I am too old. 
 Go on, Kebecca, we have had less than half at present. You 
 have never got together evidence yet, my good girl, and so you 
 can't tell by a Avitness's eyes whether the story is aU told." 
 
 Kebecca laughed, and for the first time in her life, sat down by 
 her father's knee and leant her head against it. 
 
 " You are right," she went on. " Do you remember that you 
 said — well, if there was any young man with whom I was in 
 danger, who was disagreeable to you, that Hagbut would throw 
 him against me ? He has done so." 
 
 "Is there danger with this young man then? Where could 
 you have seen him ? " 
 
 "In your own house; here, in the presence of Mr. Morley. 
 And there was danger about him. And I want to go out a-walking 
 with him. And you are going to let me." 
 
 " Then there is no danger now ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," said Eebecca. " He has blown aU my fancies to 
 the winds in ten minutes by his clear, manly frankness, just as I 
 created them in ten minutes for myself. No danger at aU." 
 
 " That is well," said Mr. Turner, noticing that, now his hand 
 was very near his daughter's beautiful hair, there was a strange 
 pleasure in passing his hand through it. " But have you ever 
 been indiscreet about this young man : to Carry, for instance ? " 
 
 " I could not tell Carry what I had never confessed to myself," 
 said Eebecca. " Yet it would seem as if Mr. Hagbut had second 
 sight." 
 
 " Carry jjossibly gave him some hint." 
 
 " But she could not have done so, father. She never heard of 
 him in her life." 
 
 " Then I will tell you what it is, my child. It is only an old 
 dodge of priest-craft, which is now called Jesuitism ; as if a real 
 Jesuit would have made such a risk. He sent him here on chance 
 
HETTY. 213 
 
 of confusing cotinsel, finding himself possible to make the most 
 likely hash of matters, and pick his own interest out — that is aU ; 
 hut Mr. Morley has put you on your guard. Nothing more than 
 that." And indeed, there was nothing more : for Hagbut often 
 overreached himself. 
 
 " Well, he has failed," said Mr. Turner. " Where is the young 
 man ? Let us see him." 
 
 Kebecca, rising, reminded her father that the young man had 
 been waiting downstairs above half-an-hour ; and they went to 
 see him. 
 
 The young man, splendid as he was in beauty and stature, 
 accustomed to bully all sailors and officials in every part of the 
 globe, was terribly frightened at this dry old English attorney. 
 He and Jack Hord (of Wilmington, U.S., the New York branch 
 of the family, lately enriched, call themselves Howard) had with 
 their stretchers alone kept the boat free from the swarm of 
 monkey-like Portuguese, nearly two hundred strong, gesticulating 
 and showing knives, while the rest of their comrades were half- 
 persuading, half-carrying, that very indiscreet young man, Cornelius 
 Kelly, back to the boat ; Cornelius not being in the least drunk, 
 but having been insulted by being called Lutherano, to which he 
 could only answer by howling, " Mono ! Mono ! " That had been 
 a very dangerous disturbance, as dangerous a one as Belem Castle 
 sees often in these peaceful times. Also this young man had been 
 in other rows of a different kind. His strong lungs and his 
 commanding presence had brought him into trouble before now. 
 While he was in the service of a small house, in a screw steamer 
 off the west coast of South America, he, noticing the barometer 
 and the weather generally, had given orders to get up steam and 
 put to sea, the captain being stiU on shore, and he dreading a 
 gale. There was no gale, only an earthquake, and he proved 
 clearly that the ship would have been thrown a mile inland, if he 
 had not given these orders ; but the captain got him dismissed. 
 In short, this young man Hartop had been in all kinds of trouble 
 and bother, and had never yet shown himself afraid of any one. 
 When his certificate was in question he was as bold and as free 
 before the court as any man. But this dry old lawyer frightened 
 him to death. For a guilty man is frightened before a lawyer, 
 and a sailor hates and dreads one. I think a real sailor fears 
 nothing but a lawyer. What must a guilty sailor feel ? 
 
 And Hartop was a deeply guilty man. To the people he loved 
 and trusted more than any in the world, to Hartop and Hetty, Mr. 
 Morley had confided the fact that he was going to ask Eebecca to 
 be his wife, if things looked in any way promising ; and had at 
 
214 HETTY. 
 
 the same time begged them never to confide the fact to any human 
 being. The poor girl must not be put in a false position again. 
 So young Hartop, being full of kindliness and happiness, did not 
 know how much his future father-in-law had said to Rebecca, and 
 was under the general impression that old Turner was a Turk — 
 with a large dowry ready, provided no indiscretion was committed 
 — who knew nothing about the arrangement. And also this Turk 
 was a lawyer, a creature worse than any Turk. So the young 
 man, treading on molten iron, bowed down, terrified, before Mr. 
 Turner. 
 
 Mr, Turner could not have known this, but he might have 
 guessed it possible. He was happy, as far as he could be, but 
 the chance of bullying a young sailor was too good to be lost. He 
 did not reassure that young man at all. 
 
 " How do you do, sir ? My daughter informs me that you wish 
 to take her out for a walk." 
 
 "If it met your views, sir," said young Hartop. 
 
 " The question is whether it meets my daughter's views ? " said 
 Mr. Turner, grimly. " Our neighbours are censorious. But it 
 she wants to go she can." 
 
 " I do want to go, pa," she said. 
 
 " Then get your bonnet on," he added, and followed her. 
 
 " Rebecca," he said to her, following her into her room, " there 
 is no harm in that lad, my child. That lad is in love, and not 
 with you." 
 
 " I know that," said Rebecca, cheerfully. 
 
 " Then look here," said her father ; " don't cross-question him 
 about this daughter of Morley's, this Hetty. It is not fair on 
 him. If she has been a fool he won't care much to tell you about 
 it. Are you quite safe, old girl ? " 
 
 " Quite safe, pa," said Rebecca. And somehow they kissed 
 one another. Aid Rebecca said, " Pa, dear, why are we not 
 always like this ? " 
 
 And he said, " Let us try to be." 
 
 And so ended the incipient romance of the young sailor Hartop. 
 At least as regards Rebecca. 
 
HETTY. 215 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 Rebecca's voyage with him, and what they saw, and what 
 she saw when they came home. 
 
 This was the occasion of Rebecca's first voyage. And she took 
 her voyage in the sole company of the young man whom she had 
 considered to be dangerous to her peace of mind. And it is 
 singular that he was not so now ; now that the brooding en- 
 gendered by the house and by the lane were no more, he was no 
 longer dangerous at all. But she wanted to talk about Hetty, but 
 did not do so because he did not ; and he did not talk about Hetty 
 because he thought her a dangerous subject. For Hetty had 
 broken rules. He talked about the sea, and about the wild 
 free lands that lay beyond Limehouse. He asked her if she were 
 a good sailor, and she answered that she supposed she was no 
 worse than another, and repeated her question, "Was Hetty a 
 good sailor ? " and he repeated his previous mysterious answer, 
 " It would be a queer thing surely if she were not." 
 
 The wind was free and fresh from the south, and the little 
 steamer went fast and busy from wharf to wharf down the river. 
 Under the bright sun, and the nimble pure air, and the changing 
 of the scene, Rebecca grew happy, and showed her happiness by 
 a thoughtful silence. 
 
 " Are you comfortable. Miss Turner," said Hartop. 
 
 " I am more than comfortable. I am perfectly happy. I can- 
 not tell why, but it is so. It was wonderfully kind of you to bring 
 me here. I have never seen anything like this before in my life. 
 This is most wonderful and most beautiful." 
 
 "It is as good as carrying the north-east trade over the line, to 
 hear you say so," replied Hartop. 
 
 Said Rebecca, " I wish we could go to some place where we 
 could see which way the ship was going." 
 
 And so Hartop carried her to the front of the little vessel, and 
 set her there. And she said, " Would you be so good as not to 
 talk to me. You sailors smoke your pipes, I know. Would you 
 kindly smoke yours now, and let me sit in silence." 
 
 Hartop sat on the deck at her feet, to leeward, and smoked. 
 The little throbbing boat earned them both, past the wharves and 
 the city, towards the sea ; she sitting in a Cashmere shawl like a 
 figure-head. From time to time she said to him, " Are you tired ? " 
 and he said, " No. He was very happy. Why should he be 
 tired?" 
 
21G HETTY. 
 
 " Because you are not talking to anybody," said Eebecca. " I 
 don't wish to talk ; and I am afraid that I am bad company." 
 
 " You are very good and comfortable company," said Hartop. 
 " The worst mate of all is a sulky mate, and the next worst is a 
 jawing mate. I took you out for pleasure, not to talk to me. For 
 instance, where were you when you spoke ? " 
 
 " I was at the island of St. Boronden in the Atlantic. The 
 island where all things go right for evermore," said Eebecca. 
 " Where were you ? " 
 
 " I don't know that island," said Hartop. " For my part I was 
 crawling along in a fruit brig under Teneriife, and thinking how 
 Hetty got on in that short chopping North Sea. Break your slate, 
 you know, and tilt the fragment up in the window above the level 
 of your eye, and you get Teneriflfe. But lor, you can't dream 
 what Teneriffe is. And still less Tristan d'Acunha. And still 
 less the approach to the Australian shore. No man knows what 
 that is till he has seen it. Did you ever see the west front of 
 WeUs Cathedral ? " 
 
 "No. Why?" 
 
 " Because it is like Madeira, on the Atlantic side," said Hartop. 
 " But what can you know about islands ? You have never seen any." 
 
 Eebecca had not. 
 
 " Islands are like cathedrals. Have you ever seen a cathedral ? " 
 
 Only St. Paul's it seemed, with a distant view of Westminster. 
 
 "Mr. Morley told us you had seen nothing," said this young 
 man. " Now, islands and cathedrals are one and the same thing. 
 They are the cathedrals of the wide, cruel sea, and God Almighty 
 built them with His own kind hands. The cathedrals ashore were 
 built by the priests : the cathedrals of the sea were buUt by God 
 Almighty's own hands. Think of that, Miss Eebecca. And what 
 is the object of a cathedral ? Peace. I have sailed with all 
 creeds, and they all ask for peace ; and I tell them all, that after 
 the wild wandering sea, you get peace on an island. I wish we 
 could go to an island — us four together." 
 
 Eebecca was too far in dreamland to ask him what he meant 
 by "us four." The river grew yet and yet more busy, and at last 
 the tall masts in the Pool came in sight, the nimble little steamer 
 stopped, and Hartop aroused her by saying, " Will you go back 
 now, or where will you go ? " 
 
 " Take me on towards the sea and let me be still," she said. 
 And in a few minutes the dexterous Hartop had her on board a 
 boat bound for Gravesend, and they throbbed along on their 
 strange voyage once more. 
 
 As the ships grew larger and larger her eyes seemed to expand. 
 
HETTY. 217 
 
 Havtop looked on her with that strange reverential superstition 
 which the highest class of sailor has towards a beautiful woman. 
 The old sailors' fancy is that a ship in fuU sail, a field of corn, and a 
 beautiful woman, are the three finest things in nature; and the reason 
 they will give you for this is that all of these three things shadow 
 out the hope of increase. For my own part I know many less 
 beautiful superstitions ; but that part of it which relates to the 
 beautiful woman was very much in bold Hartop's soul that day, as 
 he sat looking stealthily at her, in the light of his future mother- 
 in-law, thinking that she was really after all worthy even of Mr. 
 Morley ; and, moreover, turning over the wonderful fact that she 
 had never seen Hetty in her life. She spoke at last. 
 
 " Are these the real ships that go down into the great deep 
 sea ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, eagerly. " There they are. Miss Turner, ready 
 for anything, from Cameroons to Sydney. See that long-bodied, 
 low-lying screw there. Very sister ship to that Hetty was wrecked 
 in two years ago." 
 
 " Has Hetty been shipwrecked, then ? " said Kebecca. 
 
 Hartop looked at her wonderingly for an instant, but thought, 
 " She knows nothing. It is for Morley to tell her." 
 
 " Yes, she has been wrecked three times now. That last time 
 was the time when the Queen wrote to her, and sent her the Bible. 
 I have often laughed when I told her that I would never sail in 
 the same ship with her." 
 
 " Wrecked three times ! " said Rebecca, half- awakened. " Was 
 Mr. Morley ever wrecked with his daughter ? " 
 
 " Not likely," said Hartop. " The Lord don't cast his best 
 tools aside like that. It is easy enough, Miss Turner, for a game 
 and plucky girl like Hetty to stand on a cracking, bursting deck, 
 with the cruel sea hurling around her, no hope of life, and keep a 
 parcel of women from going quite mad, by singing of hymns to 
 them, and by telling them of Christ who walked on the waters, as 
 Hetty did ; why that is a thing any woman could do. You could 
 do it if you gave your mind to it. Het did that, and Het is a 
 brick. But she didn't do this. It took a man to do this. Mr. 
 Morley went alone into the rowdiest drinking house in the Nevada 
 track in the old times in California. Taylor himself had warned 
 him that he was a dead man if he went, for to refuse drink in that 
 house meant death. Morley laughed at Taylor himself, went into 
 the grog-shop, was challenged to drink, and then cast the liquor 
 on the ground, and before he came out of that grog-shop had given 
 them a piece of his mind. Taylor said that he would not have 
 done it. What do you think of that for instance ? " 
 
218 HETTY. 
 
 " I am all abroad," said Eebecca. " It would seem that Hetty 
 is brave, but that Mr. Morley is braver." 
 
 " There is no man alive like Mr. Morley," said Hartop. " He 
 don't know what fear is." 
 
 " Let us talk about these ships," said Eebecca, " and leave Mr. 
 Morley to take care of himself." 
 
 So he told her all about them — where they sailed to, how 
 strangely they leaped and plunged in their agony at sea, for all 
 they were so still and silent now. This one had come from sliding 
 on slowly and silently among towering icebergs, the one beside her 
 was fresh from the palm-fringed quays of the Pacific. So he sat 
 in his gentle loyalty and talked to her, she speaking seldom, but 
 sitting wrapped in herself : he never tiring of talking to her and 
 sitting near her. Little did she dream of the tie which bound 
 him so closely to her ; little did she know what sacred and deeply- 
 loved being she was to him ; how he and the two others had talked 
 about her hour by hour ; how deeply important she was to three 
 people : one of whom she had never seen, one whom she had seen 
 but twice, and a third she had scarcely seen half-a-dozen times. 
 These kind souls had been preparing a home for her in their hearts, 
 and she knew not of it. 
 
 It was only when he left her, very late, they having come from 
 Woolwich by railway, at her father's door, that she appreciated 
 how utterly she had lost herself. " I fear he will scold me," she 
 thought, " and our new-made confidence will suifer " ; but the 
 maid only said that he was busy, and that Miss Caroline was 
 in her room. Somehow the company of this most excellent and 
 most admirable Carry did not seem in any way to suit this young 
 Ifidy who had been wool-gathering in the moon all day ; she took 
 off her hat, and catching up her little dog, walked slowly along 
 the hall. 
 
 When she was nearly opposite her father's room-door she put 
 down her little dog and took off her hat, letting her hat fall down 
 by accident. Mab immediately began to run round and round, 
 barking, after her tail. 
 
 The noise instantly aroused Mr. Turner, for coming out quickly 
 and closing the door beliind him, he found himself face to face, 
 under the light in the passage, with a beautiful and noble-looking 
 woman, draped nearly from head to foot in a Cashmere shawl, 
 with part of her hair fallen down — a woman who looked very 
 quiet, still, and calm, and whom he recognised, to his own as- 
 tonishment, as his own daughter, Eebecca. 
 
 He had never realised her before. He had never truly trusted 
 her before. There was something now in the calm, strong, jtentle 
 
HETTY. 219 
 
 face, which made him see an ally, an ally worth aU the world. 
 Mr. Turner had heen something else before he had been converted, 
 it seemed ; for the first real word of confidence he ever uttered to 
 his daughter, smelt very strongly of the evil odour of the old Adam. 
 
 " Where the devil have you been all this time ? " 
 
 " I have been down among the ships with Hetty's lover. Jack 
 Hartop," she said. " I am very sorry, father, but I was so 
 happy " 
 
 " Hang Jack Hartop," said Mr. Turner, in a whisper. " Come 
 in here, and hold your tongue. I want your help, child ; take 
 up your dog and nurse it, it will be an excuse for not talking." 
 
 " Hetty is brave, but Morley is braver," was what she thought. 
 " Let me see what I can do." So she took up Mab, stilled her 
 and passed in, to find two men in her father's room, whom she 
 had never seen before. 
 
 The first her eye rested on was a gallant-looking young gentle- 
 man, Lord Ducetoy. She had seen a specimen of his class before, 
 had been with one all day, indeed, so her eyes turned to the 
 other, who was a man the like of which she had never seen before, 
 and which, I hope, we may never see. 
 
 A noble-looking old gentleman. In his dress, in his hands, 
 in his complexion, there was gentleman written with no unerring 
 hand. Yet sunk in a heap on a chair, with limp limbs, bowed 
 head, and an appealing, whipped hound look in his handsome 
 face. She had never seen such a fine gentleman before ; and she 
 had never seen such a hopeless look oi humble pleading woe. Mr. 
 Spicer the sweep on Sunday, or Jim Akin the costermonger, looked 
 grander than he. 
 
 " My daughter," said Mr. Turner, as he brought in Rebecca. 
 " Lord Ducetoy, Sir Gorham Philpott." 
 
 " You have brought in the young lady to put a stop to this 
 conversation, I suppose? " said Sir Gorham. 
 
 " That is the case exactly," said Mr. Turner. But Lord 
 Ducetoy and Sir Gorham, both heated, continued it. 
 
 "I never harmed you, Ducetoy. That protest from the bank 
 only came from one Oi the raseaUy directors. Why should you 
 serve me thus ? " 
 
 " Because, uncle, as I have told you before, I do not desire 
 that my plate, jewels, and bonds should go in the bankmptcy." 
 
 "And as I have told you before, the mere re-deposit of them 
 would just enable us to pull through. If the chattels and papers 
 so long left in our hands were now deposited again, it would give 
 confidence in quarters where we want confidence, and pull us 
 through." 
 
220 HETTY. 
 
 " Uncle, the utmost I will Jo will be to pay in £500, and not 
 withdraw my account." 
 
 "I have never, I swear solemnly," said Sir Gorham, "done 
 anything to injure any human being. I worked hard at that bank, 
 and we sold it for two hundred thousand pounds. Since then 
 I have been living as a country squire. By my connection with 
 religion I attracted deposits from Christian widows and orphans. 
 It is not I only that am ruined, for my estates wiU not one-half 
 stand the drain on them. I could stand an almshouse myself 
 (God knows, I wish I were alone with God in one now), but 
 aU these widows and orphans are to sink into poverty through 
 their trust in me. I profess, and I ruin widows and orphans, 
 all because my nephew refuses to deposit papers and jewels which 
 would pull us through. And my poor son. Oh, my poor son ! 
 And so you won't pull us through as you might ? The mere fact 
 of your moving them to another banker's is ruin to us." 
 
 " I tell you, uncle, that I will not remove my account." 
 
 " Your account. Our only assets are your mortgages. These 
 papers, you have moved them to another banker's. Where are 
 they then ? " said the old man, with his first flush of fire. Turner 
 answered — 
 
 " Sir Gorham, the papers to which you aUude are in a place 
 which renders it unlikely that they will ever be used in a criminal 
 court against any one. I am sorry to close the conversation in 
 this way, but consider it closed." 
 
 Sir Gorham said not one word, but rose finnly and calmly, and 
 walked towards the door. Lord Ducetoy said, " Good-night, 
 uncle," but the old man never answered him. Mr. Turner was 
 going to escort him to the door, when he suddenly found himself 
 confronted by his daughter, with a candle in her hand, who boldly 
 and fimily put her hand upon his chest and pushed him back. 
 Saying in a whisper — 
 
 " That is a broken man, he wants a woman with him." Turner 
 bowed his head reverentially and went back. Sir Gorham went 
 downstairs with Rebecca holding the light. 
 
 "You have lost your money, sir, have you not?" she 
 
 He answered, "Yes." 
 
 " A good many people who come here have lost their money," 
 she said, briskly. " I wish I had lost mine, all the trouble I ever 
 had in my life has been through the money my father is going to 
 leave me when he dies, which wiU be the bitterest day of my life. 
 Keep up your spirits and laugh about it." 
 
 "You cannot laugh after seventy, madam," said the old man; 
 
HETTY. 221 
 
 yet she fancied that he walked out into the dim dark night more 
 cheerfully for what she had said. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 A CONFIDENCE OP THREE. 
 
 When she came back Lord Ducetoy was walking up and down, 
 and saying — 
 
 ' ' It would have been perfectly monstrous for me to do what he 
 proposed. I might have ruined myself and gone to Canada again 
 to help him ; but to help an unlimited Company, no. You will 
 continue your trust for friendship's sake. Ah, here is my cousin. 
 Cousin, if you were engaged to the finest girl in the whole world 
 — who, I am happy to say, has not ten pounds — you would 
 scarcely put a considerable part of your property into bankruptcy 
 to please your uncle ? " 
 
 " As I never was engaged to the finest girl in the world," said 
 Rebecca ; " and as I have no uncle, I cannot answer the question, 
 Lord Ducetoy. But it is supper-time, and I am very hungry, 
 for I have spent most of the day among the ships down the 
 river, in company with a very handsome young sailor, a man 
 I am getting more and more fond of every time I see him : 
 a young man who wiU be fairly in a position to marry after his 
 next voyage." 
 
 If Lord Ducetoy had lived only in England he might have 
 mistaken her. But he had been to the Westward, and had seen 
 what pure and true gallantry may exist between man and woman 
 with the most entire freedom of innocent speech. Mr. Turner's 
 brow grew dark when she said this. Lord Ducetoy laughed, and 
 said, " You are bridesmaid, then ; and who is the bride ? " 
 
 " Hetty Morley is the bride," said Rebecca, at supper, with her 
 eyes wide open ; "but what she is I cannot conceive. She has 
 done something extraordinary ; has pulled down the pillars of the 
 Philistines' temple in some way. But I want to speak about the 
 old man whom I saw out. Be tender with him, you two. I mean 
 my Lord, and Father." 
 
 "Believe me we wiU, Miss Turner," said Lord Ducetoy. 
 "Believe me tliat we mean nothing else. He will never want 
 
222 HETTY. 
 
 for anything he has been accustomed to till the day of his death. 
 Toll my cousin that, Turner." 
 
 " Why do you call me cousin ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " Your mother was my first cousin," said he. 
 
 And soon after that she went away ; but her father told her 
 not to go to bed. Lord Ducetoy said, when she had gone 
 away — 
 
 " What a splendid creature. How have I angered her ? " 
 
 "By mentioning your cousinship, my Lord. In our case, our 
 family connection with yours has not been happy ; the girl knows 
 something of it, or her instincts have told her. And instead of 
 harking back to the traditions of your order, or staying in the 
 respectable mean of ours, she has cast herself into utter Radical- 
 ism, which has given me great trouble in my religious connection. 
 The girl does not know a duchess from a dustman's wife." 
 
 " Well, I got the same way of thinking in the prairies," said 
 the honest young fellow. 
 
 " Yes, there is no Radical like a young Whig," said Turner, with 
 a sneer. 
 
 " I shall get it aU knocked out of me as I grow up, then ? " 
 said Lord Ducetoy. 
 
 " Undoubtedly," said Turner, suddenly and keenly, some old 
 gleam of Puritan democracy flashing out irrepressibly. " In your 
 class the metal never rings true. It can't. Every word you say 
 is said with a view to excuse your order, to excuse its mere exis- 
 tence." 
 
 " We are afraid of your attacking our property, you see," said 
 the youth; "you democrats are always holding that over us; 
 that is what makes Tories. It is odd that a man like you, who 
 have made so much money by the mere legal waifs and strays of 
 our family property, should be a Radical. I am. I have land in 
 Canada, and land in the United States, and if you don't know it, 
 I can teU you that society in New England is much pleasanter 
 than I can find in this cockneyfied England." 
 
 Mr. Turner was not prepared with arguments. This young 
 lord was mad. At that time. He would not be considered quite 
 so mad now. The idea of a man of many acres, and high posi- 
 tion, craving for the rest and peace of pure democracy was 
 horrifying to him. His religion was tolerably democratic, 
 certainly ; but he had never reduced it to practice. 
 
 There was one thing he knew, however, and practised, too,, 
 which he had got from his religion — mercy. 
 
 Rebecca was waiting for him in his bedroom, and she 
 began — 
 
HETTY. 223 
 
 " What is the matter about that old gentleman ? " 
 "I kept you up to tell you," he answered. "He and his 
 brother sold their bank to a company, and retired on their 
 property, leaving their accumulated property liable to the claims 
 of the limited company ; and his brother has died without any 
 children ; and the old man has left his eldest son in the bank , 
 and both father and son, to keep things square, have forged 
 names. They have forged my name among others ; and I have 
 got the forged papers in the house ; and they know it. And I 
 want to spare the old one if I can ; but the young one knows I 
 have his forgeries here, and he has set men on — for burglary, no 
 less. If those papers were to go out of my hands and get into 
 the bankruptcy which is coming, those two men, father and son, 
 would go to Portland. If I were to move the jewellery to 
 another banker's it would be known, and bring on the smash 
 sooner. And so it is all here, and you know it. Thirty 
 thousand pounds are under that bed. So keep awake, and keep 
 your dog awake. Give me a kiss, and go to bed now." 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 A WEDDING. 
 
 As the little story runs on, we must come again to Mr. Hagbut's 
 affair. 
 
 Was this actually Carry ? Yes, it was actually Carry. Rebecca 
 had helped to dress her, but Eebeoca scarcely knew her, when 
 she came into the room in her modest bride's dress. She was so 
 pretty and so bright that Rebecca scarcely knew her own 
 sister. 
 
 Rebecca was by no means acting as bridesmaid, far from it. 
 In the first place, her father had rebelled against bridesmaids 
 altogether, and in the course of a somewhat peppery conversation 
 with Rebecca, had .said that she herself, considering what her 
 relations with the bridegroom had been, had much better stay 
 away. But Rebecca, getting more and more sure of her position 
 with her father every day, had declined to stay away. 
 
 " Not see old Cany married ! " she said ; " I am sure I would 
 not miss it for all the world. She has been a dear, good, loving 
 
224 HETTY. 
 
 sister to me, and has borne more petulance from me than I ever 
 have from her." 
 
 "Then you don't feel any spite against her or him?" said 
 Mr. Turner. 
 
 "Law, pa, what nonsense ! " said Eehecca. 
 
 Although there were no real bridesmaids, at the same time two 
 young ladies were, as Hartop or Morley (or, for that matter, 
 Hetty) would have said, " told off" to act in that capacity. They 
 were from Miss Soper's late school, and they wept as copiously as 
 any bridesmaids at St. George's, Hanover Square. CaiTy did 
 not feel at all as if she wanted to cry ; but she thought it was the 
 proper thing to do, and cried hard. 
 
 "The neighbours came in and chattered and giggled — Mrs. 
 Russel and Miss Soper among them. After they had come in and 
 saluted the bride. Miss Soper drove her sharp elbow into Mrs. 
 Russel's side, and said — 
 
 " Is he coming? " 
 
 " Who ? " said Mrs. Russel. 
 
 "Morley." 
 
 " I don't know," said Mrs. Russel. " Don't shove like that ; 
 you've broke two of my ribs, I do believe." 
 
 " Where's she ? " said Miss Soper. 
 
 " Who ? " said Mrs. Russel. 
 
 " Rebecca." 
 
 "/don't know," said Mrs. Russel. "She will hardly have 
 the face to show, I should think. I wish you would get out of 
 that trick of ramming your elbow into another person's ribs when 
 
 you ask a question. I'm black and blue No. Why, that's 
 
 her, ain't it, agaiu the wall ? ' ' 
 
 It was her, Mrs. Russel. That grand beauty, with her chin on 
 her hand, and her elbow on her knee, who sat alone, with her 
 great speculative eyes, seeing beyond you and the crowd behind 
 you, was Rebecca. And as she sat there that morning, all alone, 
 dressed in dove-coloured silk and pearls, there was scarcely a 
 handsomer woman in aU old England, from palace to cottage. 
 Your eye was not trained for beauty ; you could not see it. 
 
 Miss Soper could, to a certain extent. In her business of 
 schoolmistress she had had so much beauty put under her eye 
 that she knew it when she saw it. Mrs. Russel's definition of 
 beauty would have limited itself to " a fresh complexion." Miss 
 Soper had a dim idea of generalising from fact. Jewellers' clerks 
 get a knowledge of what is the prevailing taste in jewellery. An 
 old picture-dealer's clerk will tell you what will sell and what wiU 
 not. So Soper, in her trade, knew a pretty girl when she saw 
 
HETTY. 225 
 
 one, though in her office of dragon she disliked receiving them. 
 But she knew more. She was well-connected in the trade, and 
 she knew houses who would take an article which was seldom 
 offered to her, and which often, in her way of doing things, gave 
 her great trouble— a very handsome girl. So looking at Eehecca, 
 she said — 
 
 " She is wonderfully handsome." 
 
 "Do you think so, my dear?" said Mrs. Eussel. "I can't 
 see it." 
 
 " No one ever supposed so," said Miss Soper. 
 
 "Don't shove again, dear; pray don't," said Mrs. Eussel. 
 
 " What did I teU you about that girl when we got her forbidden 
 to go out of the lane ? " said Miss Soper. 
 
 "I forget," said Mrs. Eussel. 
 
 As it seemed that Miss Soper had forgotten also, she resumed 
 the discussion at another point. 
 
 " Shall we go and speak to her ? " said Miss Soper. 
 
 "My dear soul," said the really good though cross Eussel. 
 " I think we ought. The poor child is pining over Mr. Hagbut ; 
 it would be only kind." 
 
 Was she, Mrs. Eussel ? No, she was away from you all, with 
 the sounds of the great sea. While she had been sitting there 
 in her dove-coloured silk aU alone she had watched j^our figm-es 
 till she had tired of them, and had gone to sea once or twice. 
 You were quite out of her thought. She did not want to 
 be naughty, but she could. Why did not you leave her alone ? 
 
 She could be horribly naughty, and she had the most intense 
 dislike for these two ladies. If you had told her that Mrs. 
 Eussel was only a hot-tempered, gossiping scold, who would have 
 given the bed from under her to release the son she had scolded 
 out of doors, she would have laughed at you. If you had told 
 her that that intolerable woman. Miss Soper, was in her way a 
 heroine, and had slaved all her life to keep a ruined family 
 together, and in doing so — in training virtuous women, had done 
 more good than was ever likely to fall to the share of our poor 
 Eebecca, she would have laughed at you again. Their formulas 
 had been rendered hateful to her, and she hated them through 
 their formulas, which had plagued her. She was a very naughty 
 girl, and they made her naughtier. 
 
 She was rounding some dim wild cape in a gale of wind, and 
 there were two with her whom she knew and one who always stood 
 perversely behind her. And the one who stood behind her kept 
 saying like a cuckoo, " Not yet. Not yet." And again like a 
 blackbird, " Not till you're fit. Not till you're fit." And there 
 
 16 
 
226 HETTY. 
 
 suddenly approached to her her deadly enemies, the Kussel and 
 the Soper. What reader would trust her temper under such 
 circumstances ? 
 
 She rose and gave them a sweeping curtsey, and, may I say it, 
 the devil entered into her. It was only a very little one. 
 
 " Are you quite well, Miss Turner ? " said the fat Russel. 
 
 "I am quite well, thank you," said Eehecca. " I had a 
 holiday lately. It has done me much good." 
 
 "Indeed! another?" said the Soper, alluding to the terrihle 
 escapade to Broadstairs. 
 
 " Yes," said Eehecca, looking at her with a look which the 
 Soper had never seen in any of her schoolgirls' faces. " Another. 
 A young gentleman from the sea came and took me out for a 
 lioliday, and he took me down the river all the way to Gravesend. 
 And we were together all day." 
 
 " Who went with you, my dear? " said Mrs. Eussel. 
 
 " He did," said Rebecca. 
 
 " No one else ? " 
 
 " What did we want with any one else ? He wag very hand- 
 some and agreeable, and a third would have been one too many. 
 I should like you to he introduced to that young gentleman. Miss 
 Soper. His hair is so beautiful. Little curls all over his head. 
 He sat at my feet the most of the time, and if I had had a pair 
 of scissors, I believe I should have snipped one off." 
 
 The allied powers retreated. Says Eussel, " That girl will go 
 to the bad." 
 
 "Not she," hissed Soper in her ear. "She is just the very 
 one of all others who won't. She is not in my line, I did not 
 have that article in my establishment, but I know enough to know 
 that." 
 
 Rebecca said to herself, " It is the only way to treat you people. 
 If kings and priests would not make outrageous pretensions, 
 democracy would die : at least pa says so. Ha ! you two. Cany 
 said you were coming." 
 
 SL 3 sat perfectly still after this, in her old attitude, quite quiet, 
 knowing that they would come to her. The chairs beside her 
 were unoccupied, for the Philistines did not know exactly whether 
 they ou ,ht to go near her, and her father made no sign. " Those 
 two," v.ere quickly sitting beside her. She was determined to 
 amuse herself, and in answer to their greetings she rephed, with- 
 out raising her chin from her hand — 
 
 " Where is Hetty ? " 
 
 " She is at home," said Mr. Morley. 
 
 " What is she doing? " said Rebecca, without moving. 
 
HETTY. 227 
 
 " She is not doing anything to-day," said young Hartop. " She 
 is getting the duds together. Change of ship, you know." 
 
 " Now, Jack," said Mr. Morley. " Mind your promise." 
 
 Rebecca, from young Hartop's silence, thought that Morley was 
 angry, but moving her chin from her hand and looking up in his 
 face she saw that his eyebrows were raised, and that the corners 
 of his mouth were down. She also noticed that he looked in his 
 way more handsome than any man she had ever seen. But she 
 had noticed that before. 
 
 The next properly arranged wedding you go to, when you have 
 looked at the bridegroom long enough, look at the bride's father. 
 If it is a well-arranged marriage there will be the same light in 
 the eyes of both. This was not a well-arranged wedding, for our 
 poor Eebecca, whom I hope you have forgiven, had rather spoilt it 
 by her wild conduct. Mr. Hagbut had changed rather quickly 
 too ; and there was a cloud over it by his mere presence. Mr. 
 Turner, man of the world, knew this, and did not show to advan- 
 tage ; he was haggard and worn, and bent his head. 
 
 He had been into the room and out again. She had scarcely 
 noticed him at first, but when he came in a second time, she 
 watched his bowed head and rose to her feet. 
 
 I know a young lady of such strange and radiant beauty, that I 
 and my companion always know, when we go to a country gather- 
 ing, in one instant, whether she is there or not. Rebecca's beauty 
 was not so great as that lady's, I wiU allow ; yet when she rose 
 from between Hartop and Mr. Morley her presence was felt. The 
 babble which was going on in awaiting the bridegroom died into 
 whispers — into silence — as she came softly forward and kissed her 
 father. 
 
 " Give me your blessing, father." 
 
 Turner raised his head as she bent hers. 
 
 " The Lord of Miriam and of Jael bless thee, my daughter. 
 Smite as Jael, then sing as Miriam. Tliou art blessed, oh ! my 
 daughter." 
 
 And so he kissed her, and she went back and sat between Har- 
 top and Mr. Morley again. 
 
 "He has forgiven her," whispered Mrs. Russel. 
 
 "Hold your tongue," said Miss Soper. " There is something 
 1 can't understand about this, and so I don't suppose you can." 
 
 " Keep close to me, you two," said Rebecca, in a whisper ; " I 
 am frightened. Don't leave mo, you two." 
 
 " Ai-e you iU ? " said Hartop, also in a whisper. 
 
 " No, I am never ill. But these people frighten me. This 
 house is frightful, and the lane is frightful. You don't know what 
 
228 HETTY. 
 
 this house is. There is poison in it. My father cannot give me 
 his blessing without frightenipg me. And Carry says there is 
 blood at the foot of the stairs," she added, wildly and hurriedly. 
 " Why should he talk of Jael ? " 
 
 " I wish Hetty was here," said Hartop, in a low voice. 
 
 " Quiet, my child, quiet," said Mr. Morley, laying his hand on 
 her ai-m ; " talk of something else. What shall we talk of ? " 
 
 " The sea," said Eehecca, herself in an instant; "I want to 
 know about the sea, or about Hetty Morley." 
 
 " There is no such person," said Hartop, turning and looking 
 into Rebecca's face. 
 
 " No such person ! " said Rebecca, aghast ; " is she drowned ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it," said Hartop, bringing his face close to hers ; 
 " Hetty is alive, but she is Hetty Hartop now, for she and I were 
 maiTied by Mr. Morley yesterday morning." 
 
 Her duU horror of the old house, and the quaint company, was 
 gone at once by this pretty piece of news. It was something so 
 
 bright, so human, so well, so romantic, that a great smile 
 
 spread over her face as she said — 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Fact, I assure you. Yesterday morning. You were not to 
 be told, but I saw you were getting low." And, indeed, the tact 
 of this young sailor was very great, for Rebecca was quite roused 
 again and gay. 
 
 " You provoking people. I want to see Hetty, and you wiU tell 
 me nothing of her." 
 
 "It wouldn't do here," said Hartop; "they wouldn't stand 
 it." 
 
 " But what is she like ? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 " What is she like ? " said the bridegroom. " Why she is like 
 her father; that's about what she is like. You've seen Mm," he 
 gi'owlod. 
 
 Rebecca turned on Mr. Morley. " She is like you ! " 
 
 "But younger, you know, and more good-looking," said Mr. 
 Morley, with a bow. 
 
 And Rebecca had just settled emphatically in her mind that 
 Hetty was very handsome, when enter the bridegroom. 
 
 " Why, that is never him," said Rebecca, suddenly. 
 
 It was, though. A man at his best (and a man generally makes 
 the best of himself when he is going to be married), is a very dif- 
 ferent thing from a man at his worst. Rebecca and Hartop had 
 only known him at his worst, and even Morley, Imowing him better 
 than they did, was surprised. " That big, fat, pale-faced man," 
 he thought, " has actuaOy more vitality than I have. I shall last 
 
HETTY. 229 
 
 longer, but if I had been what he has been, I could not have 
 shown such a presence." 
 
 A man, we must remember, with sufficient physique for the first 
 or second Life-Guards, who has spent his life in talking religion- 
 ism to foohsh and uneducated women, is very likely to become 
 fat, ill-dressed, and untidy. But put that man on his mettle. Get 
 him rejected by a beautiful girl, and make him bridegroom to 
 another girl, and I fancy you will find some of the old Adam in 
 him. There was a considerable deal of the old Adam in Hagbut 
 that day ; so much that he looked a rather noble person. 
 
 Kebecca leant back in wonder, and said aloud (for she knew 
 that no one could hear her but Mr. Morley and Hartop ; and she 
 did not " mind " them), " I could not have believed it. Why the 
 man is handsome and noble looking." 
 
 " Is there any reason why he should not look noble ? " said Mr. 
 Morley, quietly. " My dear chUd, that man has done more good 
 in his day than ever you will have the chance of doing, even if 
 you had the power or the will. His formulas displease you ; they 
 are purely scriptural, and move the dead bones of the middle class 
 into life. His vulgarity displeases you ; that very vulgarity is the 
 key note of his power among the vulgar, who would dislike and 
 possibly resent the ministrations of a scholar and a gentleman, 
 who could not understand their ways of thought, and who would 
 continually keep their inferiority before their eyes, by talking in a 
 dialect more refined than their own. I pray God that when I die 
 I may claim to have done as much good as Hagbut has." 
 
 "Yes ! " said Eebecca, thinking. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Morley. " There are those who say that 
 such men as Hagbut vulgarise religion. It is not true, or at best 
 only half true. They find a vulgarised religion among vulgar 
 people, and they preach it, as honestly and as nobly as this man 
 has ; -and he raises his people by doing so." 
 
 " How can he raise them by being vulgar? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 "He raises them, in spite of all his vulgarity, to the level of 
 Christianity ; and at that point both he and they cease to be vulgar. 
 I daresay that the Covenanters ate with their knives, but they 
 could die like the best gentleman of the lot. While there are 
 vulgar people, you must have vulgar priests. I, being a gentleman 
 myself, know that well. That man Hagbut, whose ways of speech 
 and of action are an offence to me, has brought more souls to 
 Christ than ever I shall bring, with my twopenny refinements. 
 He- comes of their own class, and their language is his. Their 
 language is foreign to me, and I cannot imitate it. And that 
 lower middle class is the very one which wants rousing and exciting. 
 
230 HETTY. 
 
 The great use of the Dissenting clergymen is to rouse that class, 
 and to ennoble them. Hagbut can do it. I cannot. I am a use- 
 less man compared to him. 
 
 " Yet you can bring sailors to chapel, sir," said Hartop, 
 quietly. 
 
 "Ah, yes, I can do that," said Mr. Morley, with sudden ani- 
 mation. " Yes, boy, I can do that. That was a good thing for 
 you to say. Yes ! yes ! they come again and again. It is not 
 utterly nothing to keep lads in the faith their mothers taught them 
 through all temptations. You must come down and hear me 
 preach some day. Miss Turner. See, the bride is moving. We 
 must go." 
 
 So they went. And Hagbut married Carry ; and the Hagbut 
 episode in her little life came to an end. 
 
 CHAPTER XVni. 
 
 CONFIDENCES. 
 
 And Carry was gone, and Eebecca had to undertake her duties. 
 
 "I shall make a flue mess of it at first, pa," she said to her 
 father on the first day, " for I have been most diligently idle all 
 my life. But I will do the best I can. I can't scold and worry, 
 but I will keep the maids in order for all that. You shan't want 
 anything, my dear." 
 
 " You will do well enough if you care to do it," said Mr. 
 Tumor. " / don't want scolding or worrying ; I have lost my 
 faith in it. That is what made the mischief between your mother 
 and me." 
 
 " Well, dear pa, that is all over and gone. We shall be happy 
 together, you know." 
 
 " I don't know. You may be happy, for you have hope before 
 you — the hope of my death. I am a broken man. I wish I was 
 dead." 
 
 " I am sure I don't know why, father," said Rebecca, with a 
 heavy heart, and a light tongue ; " what nonsense you talk. Is 
 there any man in our connection more honoured than you are ? 
 As for the money I am to have at your death, I wish you would 
 leave it to Carry, and then you would not suspect my love." 
 
 " You are a foolish girl." 
 
HETTY. 231 
 
 " I think you are a vei^ foolish man," said Kehecca, stoutly ; 
 " that prospective money has heen the greatest plague of my life ; 
 
 I wish it was in the deep Atlantic. That Mr. Haghut would 
 
 have left me alone if it had not heen for that money." 
 
 " You were too good for him," said Turner. " Child, have you 
 ever thought of any one else ? " 
 
 "As a husband?" 
 
 " Yes ; as a husband." 
 
 "Certainly," said Kehecca; "for a whole week I thought I 
 should have liked very much to marry young Hartop. But, here, 
 he has gone and married Hetty, leaving me desolate and discon- 
 solate. There was never any one so shamefully deceived as I have 
 been." 
 
 " Do you know Hetty Morley ? " said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " No, I don't," said Kehecca ; " the artful young puss I When 
 I do I will give her a piece of my mind. Young — — I mean Mr. 
 Hartop, has used me shamefully. It is all very well for you to 
 laugh, pa, hut you wouldn't like it yourself." 
 
 " Come here," said Mr. Turner. And Kehecca came and sat 
 at his feet. 
 
 " I have been a hard father to you, my child, and I do not 
 know how I have won your love. But I soem to have it. God is 
 very good. He is not what they want to make Him out, is He ? " 
 
 Rebecca answered her father by stroking his hand and putting 
 it to her lips. 
 
 " My head is growing old, girl. I am a broken man ; but I 
 will do my duty to the very last. I am not to he trusted. This 
 responsibility about Ducetoy's papers is killing me. I never thought 
 I should have found my truest, kindest friend in you, but it is so. 
 You will stay by me to the end ? " 
 
 " To the death, father ; " she did not want him to get excited, 
 and so she said no more. 
 
 " You are a better man than I am, child, and I wander to- 
 night. But, believe me, that Morley 's God is the true God-— is 
 the true God — and — and not Hagbut's. Where is the little 
 dog?" 
 
 " She is here, father," said Rebecca, puttmg Mab on his lap. 
 
 " Pretty little beast ; bonny little beast. Bark for us, little one. 
 Defend us. My dear Rebecca, the God who made this little thing 
 was not Hagbut's God, but Morley's." 
 
 " There is one — but one God, father," said Rebecca. And she 
 said it because she did not know what to say. 
 
 "Yes, but they make two or three. Bee, girl 1 Will you 
 promise me one thing ? " 
 
232 HETTY. 
 
 " I will do as you tell me," said Eebecca ; " if you will be always 
 as you are now." 
 
 " Promise me that you will never join the established church 
 after I am dead." 
 
 Eebecca sat silent for a long time. At last she said — 
 
 " I don't think that I could promise as much as that, father. 
 I think it extremely improbable, but I will not pledge myself. I 
 teU you honestly that if I were to quit our connection, I should go 
 either to the Moravians or to the Primitive Methodists." 
 
 " They are not a very high sect, my child," said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " I don't ivant a very high sect," said Eebecca ; " but that is 
 just where it is." 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 DABKEK HOnRS STILL. 
 
 Dull was the old house, duller, alas ! than ever it was, for there 
 was not oven old Carry now ; and Mr. Turner left alone in the 
 house with the favourite daughter of his dead wife, began to mope 
 and brood over tliat miserable old business. It was evident also 
 to Eebecca, that his mind was not by any means what it had been. 
 
 She was free to go where she would now, but she never went far 
 out of the lane, except a few times as far as Putney Bridge. She 
 used to slip across sometimes to see Mrs. Spiccr or Mrs. Akin, 
 in a quiet neighbourly way, and hear their gossip, give them 
 books, and other little things, doing them high honour. It would 
 have been an evil time for any man who insulted her while Mr. 
 Spicer or Akin were near. 
 
 Those two worthies were the very picture of comfort and con- 
 tentment every Sunday morning, each in his shirt-sleeves and a 
 long pipe in his mouth, as Eebecca took her father to chapel, hut 
 one morning she missed them, and thought they had gone for an 
 expedition somewhere : " It is very little pleasure they get," she 
 thought. " We ought not to begrudge it to them." But when 
 they got inside the chapel, who should be sitting near the door 
 but Spicer and Akin in their best clothes. Eebecca flushed up 
 with real pleasure, and when service was over, she made her father 
 stop while she spoke to them. 
 
 " I am so glad to see you here." 
 
HETTY. 233 
 
 " Yes, miss," replied Akin. " It looked so nice seeing you 
 and the governor going every Sunday, tliat wo tliouglit we'd go. 
 That's about the size of it, miss." 
 
 " I hojje you like it." 
 
 " Yes, miss, we likes it well enough," said Jim Aldn, " but we 
 don't make much fist on it at fust." 
 
 " Ah ! you won't find it strange long," said Eebecea. And so 
 they parted. 
 
 Her father asked her as they went home under the duU grey 
 sky, if she had asked these men to come to chapel : and she had 
 said, " No, that she had never mentioned it to them," and he 
 said, " I am very glad of that. Whatever you do, don't under- 
 take the responsibility of forcing religion on other people. Let 
 
 them find it out for themselves " be was going on to say a 
 
 great deal more, as it seemed to Eebecea from the tone of his 
 voice, but he checked himself suddenly. 
 
 It was dull, miserable, dripping, motionless weather, and she 
 sat day after day utterly alone while her father was away on busi- 
 ness ; alone save for her little dog. She tried hard to be very 
 good, and as is usually the case when a person tries that, she suc- 
 ceeded. Only she fretted a little that she did not hear from her 
 friends in Limehouse. 
 
 Many things in the house-keeping were great puzzles to her, 
 and she used to take them patiently, and lay them at the feet of 
 her beloved old nurse Tibbey, in Leader Street, Chelsea ; but it 
 was rather a long way there, so she saw but little of those excellent 
 souls at present. 
 
 One day there came a letter which made her cry ; it was from 
 Mr. Morley. Jack Hartop and Hetty were off to sea, and Hetty 
 was so hard at work, shifting into her new ship, that it would be 
 quite impossible for her, or Jack either, to get to Walham Green. 
 He added, that as soon as they were gone, he would very likely 
 come and see her himself. She cried a good deal over this letter, 
 but it was not in anger and rebellion. That nightmare, Mr. Hag- 
 but, being removed from his position of possible husband, she 
 rather liked him than otherwise, and was at peace with aU the 
 world ; and the Limehouse people had done her much good ; and 
 she was in one way and another very far from the Rebecca of old 
 times. She cried because she had wanted to see Hetty, and she 
 told her father so, franldy, that night, when he asked her why 
 her eyes were red. 
 
 " Why do you want to see her ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don't know. I am sure she is nice." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
234 HETTY. 
 
 " Because those two are so fond of her, and those two are the 
 nicest people I know." 
 
 " Miss Hetty Morley," said Mr. Turner, " chose to disgrace 
 herself and niin her father's connection, by a stupid and reheUious 
 course of action. As Mrs. Hartop she is continuing it. If you 
 walked the earth round, you would not find, in the Dissenting 
 connection, three such sentimental idiots as Morley, his daughter, 
 and Jack Hartop." 
 
 " Wliat has Hetty done, pa ? " 
 
 "Degraded herself; dropped into a low sphere of life, and 
 dragged her fool of a father down with her. Morley may choose 
 to teU you in his own good time, for he is as obstinate as a pig, 
 what she has done ; but he chooses to keep the secret, and I won't 
 betray him." 
 
 " But you like Mr. Morley, pa." 
 
 " Yes. He is a good and a noble man, a pure Christian, and 
 a real gentleman ; but he will have to answer to God for his 
 indulgence to that girl." 
 
 " But you would listen to him on spiritual matters ? " 
 
 " Yes, to no man sooner. But he has been a fool in a worldly 
 point of view, by allowing that girl to do as she has done." 
 
 And this was all she could get out of her father. And the 
 great mystery about Hetty was no nearer solution than ever. 
 
 This was one of the most weai-y times she had ever had ; for 
 even if Carry had been there, she had lost the heart to scold 
 her, and so her sole amusement was gone. She had her cats, 
 and was still kind to them, though her little dog Mab had 
 supplanted them in her affections. She told Mab everything 
 now ; and Mab seemed to understand. She could have told her 
 father everything, but there was a reason. 
 
 At one time, not long ago, she had believed that there would 
 have been perfect accord between herself and her father. It 
 was not to be. The overwhelming sense of responsibility with 
 regard to Lord Ducetoy's papers were too much for his mind, and 
 it became clouded ; and in its clouding there caine on a phase of 
 religious doubt, which may be laughed at by doctrinaires, but 
 which in practice, in reality, was, to Rebecca at least, horrible. 
 
 If he would have broken out into unbelief and sheer blasphemy 
 at once, she could have stood it better. But he got dreadful 
 silent fits, ending in sharp pointed deductions, the result of an 
 hour's solitary silent argument with himself. He would sit 
 perfectly silent, with his hands occasionally wandering one over 
 the otiior for an hour, until he nearly drove the silently sewing 
 Rebecca, opposite him, out of her mind ; and at last, when the 
 
HETTY. 235 
 
 poor unguided girl, working so hard and so nobly at her duty, 
 was nearly out of her mind through sheer nervousness, he would 
 say, suddenly and sharply — 
 
 " If one actually regains consciousness after the dissolution o< 
 the body, and if one finds that the whole scheme has been a 
 mistake from beginning to end. How then ? One will regret 
 that one had not been a profligate ; a man who takes such 
 pleasure as he can find, and discounts his biUs on the future 
 state." 
 
 And so on. Which has nothing to do with us, farther than 
 this. It was horrible and intolerable to Eebecca. It frightened 
 her. She had rebelled against a certain close form of Non- 
 conformist Christianity, as being narrow, cold, and in her eyes 
 worthless, because it wanted the one element of sentimentalism. 
 There had come to her the stout Nonconformist Morley, who had 
 shown her a form of Dissent, as beautiful and as spiritual as the 
 highest forms of Anglicanism or Romanism, though wanting in 
 the ceremonialisms, which, as the daughter of a Papist mother, 
 she loved in her heart. And now here was her father cutting the 
 ground from under her feet, just as she was feeling for it. De 
 profundis clamavit, that is to say, she turned on her father once 
 and said, most emphatically — 
 
 " I am sorry you have lost your faith, pa ; but I can't see that 
 there is the slightest reason for your undermining mine ; I am 
 beginning to. believe. Please let me." 
 
 Turner saw what she meant, and uttered no more of his doubts. 
 But he sat there opposite Eebecca, night after night, scowling 
 over his Bible as he turned the leaves, and looking unutterable 
 things. Which did not mend matters much for poor Rebecca — 
 which in fact made them rather worse, for she could never tell 
 what he was thinking of now. 
 
 In the foolish old days, before one thought, many of us used to 
 read the account of the prize-fights in Bell's Life ; and one used 
 to read that Bod So-and-so "was a glutton for punishment." 
 Now I claim for Rebecca that she was a better " glutton for 
 punishment " than any snake-headed, bright-eyed young man, 
 who ever made a brute of himself in the prize-ring. 
 
 Punishment enough she got in these days. Her father fading 
 and growing mad before her eyes. No society ; and as it seemed 
 to her, no hope. The responsibility of the enormous amount of 
 valuable heirlooms and papers in the house, thro^\'n on her own 
 shoulders, for her father was as no one, save in his determination 
 to hold by them. No help, no advice, nothing for her but a dull 
 mulish obstinacy ; a determination to act honestly as circumstances 
 
236 HETTY. 
 
 should direct. And all the time her father in one of his " girding " 
 moods ; accusing her of idleness, and making his case good to her 
 about her dead mother. Punishment enough, poor child. But 
 she took it bravely and nobly. 
 
 " Pa," she said, one night, " don't gird at me." 
 
 His face had been fixed before, but it relaxed now. 
 
 " Have I been girding at you, Eebecoa? " 
 
 " Yes, pa. Don't, please." 
 
 "I won't, dear. I didn't mean to. Tell me when I gird at 
 you, and I wiU leave off." 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 OTHELLO, MOOK OF VENICE. 
 
 At last Mr. Morley came. Surely no brown, handsome face, no 
 quiet hazel eyes, no very slightly grizzled head of curling hair, 
 was ever more welcome in a Christian house than were his. 
 
 It was in the dreary middle of the day when he came, and 
 Eebccca, who was Imeading dough (and making an awful mess of 
 it), uttered a joyful exclamation when she saw him. I think that 
 I have mentioned before that in social matters this odd young lady 
 was rather radical. She certainly behaved on this occasion in a 
 way which would have horrified the better conducted' sister Carry. 
 She ran up the stairs and opened the door herself with her hands, 
 nay, with her finely-moulded bare arms all over flour, and she 
 said, " Come in; I thought you must be dead. Tell me about 
 those two." 
 
 " Go and wash your hands, and come and talk to me in the 
 jiarlour," said Mr. Morley, quietly, and Eebecca slid away and 
 did as he told her. 
 
 " Now," she said, when she was seated by him on the sofa, 
 " tell me all about Jack and Hetty." 
 
 " That will depend on your account of your behaviour," said 
 Mr. ]\Iorley. " How have you been behaving ? " 
 
 " I have been as good as gold." 
 
 " Then I shall not tell you one word," said Mr. Morley ; " you 
 are in a vain-glorious and self-seeking frame of mind, and I will 
 mortify you by not telling you one single word." 
 
 " Well, then, I have been very naughty." 
 
 " One of your propositions must be false, and so I shall certainly 
 tell you nothing now." 
 
HETTY. 237 
 
 " Then you are a most disagreeable man, and I hate you — no I 
 don't — don't mind me. I love you very much, Mr. Morley. Only 
 come sometimes and tell me what to do, for really and truly I don't 
 know." 
 
 " You have been well brought up, and you ought to know for 
 yourself. At least I mean to leave you to find out. How is your 
 father?" 
 
 Eebecoa remained perfectly silent, with her chin in her hand 
 for a long time, and Morley sat looking at her steadily, although 
 she did not know it. She sat so long thus that he repeated his 
 question, I very much fear to catch the light in her eye. Eebecca 
 turned to him quicldy for one instant, and he had his wiU. She 
 gave him one kindly glance, and saying, " Wait a little," resumed 
 her old attitude of thought — that of Michael Angelo's Lorenzo de 
 Medici. 
 
 Morley waited for her in silence and in patience. " Here," he 
 said to himself, " is a woman who will actually think before she 
 speaks. Here is also a woman who can act, who has acted, on 
 far-seeing, deliberate conviction, careless of present consequences. 
 Are there two Hettys in the world ? " He sat and watched her, 
 wondering what would come. 
 
 He had a long time to wait before it came, for she did not open 
 her mouth until she had made up her mind. And then she told 
 him everything decisively, and straightforwardly, as one man tells 
 a whole matter to another man who is his friend. 
 
 She moved closer to him on the sofa where they sat, so that the 
 two beautiful faces were not very far apart, and so that her eyes 
 could look straight up into his. And there and then she told him 
 everything. 
 
 Her wasted, rebellious, furious youtli ; her secret hankering 
 after Popery — the religion of her mother, he must mind — as 
 promising some sort of rest to her furious heart ; the quieting 
 effect that the gentle Primitive Methodists had had on her always ; 
 her rage and hatred against Hagbut because he wanted to marry 
 her ; the real reason of her wild escapade to Broadstairs ; her love 
 for her father ; her love for Carry ; her love for her little dog ; her 
 love for Mr. Spioer and Jim Akin ; her love for Jack Hartop ; for 
 Hetty, whom she had never seen, and her love for him — Morley. 
 " I assure you, Mr. Morley, that I believe I am a most affectionate 
 person, if I had a fair chance. But people are so cross. I'd get 
 fond of old Eussel and old Soper if they would only be civil." 
 
 Mr. Morley said, " Quite so." 
 
 Then she went on, resuming the Lorenzo de Medici attitude 
 again, and leaving herself and her experience, told him in a plain, 
 
238 HETTY. 
 
 business-like manner, the whole story of her father, and her 
 troubles from beginning to end. " For," she said, " you have got 
 kind, trustworthy eyes, like Mab's, and if one wants to keep out 
 of Bedlam, one must tell some one." And so she told him all 
 about the fearful responsibility her father had undertaken, pointed 
 out to him that her father's action was nearly illegal, being done 
 without the consent of trustees, of whom Sir Gorham Philpott was 
 one. 
 
 Here j\[r. Morley interrupted her for a moment. "Was Lord 
 Duoetoy married ? ' ' 
 
 " No ; and ho would not get married for a month or so, until 
 affairs were in some way square. He was to be married to Miss 
 Egerton of Delamere." 
 
 Mr. Morley was satisfied at once, and begged her to proceed. 
 
 She went on at once, eagerly, not catching the drift of Morley's 
 last inquiry ; for he was so surprised at Turner's singular and 
 chivalrous behaviour that it had entered into his, not generally a 
 suspicious mind, that Turner wished Lord Ducetoy to many 
 Kebecca. Rebecca, I say, went on, and told him of the clouding 
 of her father's mind ; of his religious doubts ; of his strange mid- 
 night wanderings up and down the old house ; of the awful 
 responsibility which weighed on her with regard to him. She told 
 him all ; and then, turning her face to his again, asked for his 
 advice. 
 
 " It is easily given, Rebecca," he said ; " go on as you are going 
 now. Do your duty to him as you are doing it now, and you will 
 not fail. You have a clear, sharp brain, use it ; and you will do 
 well." 
 
 " But I have done nothing," said Rebecca. 
 
 " What could you do ? " said Morley. 
 
 Rebecca's chin went in her hand again directly ; and after a 
 time she said — 
 
 " I don't see, speaking honestly, that I could have done any 
 more than I have. The time for action has not come. And then 
 I am such a fool, you know." 
 
 "Ai-eyou?" 
 
 " They all say so." 
 
 "Well, then, of course it is true. About this business, taken 
 as a whole, you can do nothing more than you have done. It is 
 one of those matters on which one cannot decide. Your father is 
 behaving splendidly ; but if his religion goes from him in the 
 struggle, your father will die. I will talk to him. You are a 
 good girl; indeed, I always thought you were, do you know;" 
 and Morley laughed. 
 
HETTY. 239 
 
 " That is all very fine," said Eebecca ; " but at the same time 
 one would like a little practical advice." 
 
 " I'll manage matters for you, my child," said Morley. " I'll 
 shift no responsibility off your shoulders on to mine, but I will 
 make things easier for you. You do your little duty, and you will 
 come to no harm. 
 
 " Then you don't think me such a very naughty girl ? " 
 
 " Well, well ! you are behaving well now." 
 
 " Am I naughtier than Hetty ? " 
 
 " You leave Hetty alone ; Hetty is no business of yours." 
 
 " But Hetty was naughty. What did she do, Mr. Morley ? " 
 
 " She was exceedingly naughty, and I was very nearly being 
 angry with her ; that is what she did." 
 
 " Am I never to see Hetty ? " 
 
 " What on earth do you want to see her for ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Eebecca. "1 think I should like her. 
 There cannot be much harm about her, or Jack Hartop would 
 not love her as he does. He says that she has been wrecked 
 three times, and that the Queen wrote her a letter. Why was 
 she shipwrecked ? " 
 
 " Because she shipped on ships which happened to get 
 wi'ecked." 
 
 " Hum I " said Rebecca. " But why did the Queen write to 
 her?" 
 
 " Because she did her duty, as you are doing yours now." 
 
 " But tell me more," said Rebecca, eagerly. " Let me know 
 something of her, for I love her, and I can't tell why. What did 
 she do that the Queen should have written to her ? Tell me." 
 
 Dangerous work this. Two noble and enthusiastic souls sitting 
 close to one another, and telling of great and noble deeds. As for 
 Morley, he had made up his mind long before. He was deter- 
 mined to man-y Rebecca, and Hartop and Hetty knew it. As for 
 Rebecca, she brought her fate on herself. If she had desired her 
 freedom she should not have sat on the sofa beside a very attrac- 
 tive Dissenting minister, and have forced him to tell the tale of 
 his daughter's heroism. All that happened to her was her own 
 fault. But they will do it. Searching among rare old books the 
 other day, I came across a very scarce play called Othello, or the 
 Moor of Venice. In that play the Moor actually wins his Vene- 
 tian beauty by telling travellers' taradiddles of the Sir John 
 Mandeville type. Morley did not do this ; he only told the plain 
 truth about his daughter. But the telling of chivalrous adventures 
 is a very successful way of courting. At least, the man Shakspeare 
 thought so. 
 
240 HETTY. 
 
 "I have no objection to tell you what Hetty did on that occa- 
 sion," said Mr. Morley. " It may show you what a woman may 
 be worth under certain circumstances. She had been up and down 
 the North Devon coast so often that she could tell evei-y headland 
 in the darkest night. Well, one night, working up from Hayle, 
 against a slow eastering wind, and a heavy ebb tide, the wind 
 shifted against the sun, and came from nor' -west a hurricane. 
 The skipper put her head for Cardiff, but that Sirius is the most 
 
 thundering 1 beg a thousand pardons, you must remember 
 
 that I live among sailors." 
 
 " You did not say anything," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Well, I was very near doing it," said Morley. " My dear, 
 that Bride is the most thundering idiot of a ship you ever saw. 
 With even the N.W. sea, she shipped enough water on board to 
 put out her fires, and there she lay entirely without deck ports to 
 let the water away, trusting to her scuppers, which were choked 
 with deck lumber, close to a lee shore, with the seas getting up 
 from the Atlantic, nothing between you and Charleston, South 
 Carolina, and the skipper utterly uncertain as to where he was. 
 Do you understand this, my dear Eebecca ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," she said. " You and Hetty must teach me." 
 
 " We win," said Morley. " My dear Hetty, finding her cabins 
 flooded and the ship nearly water-logged, with fires out, aud 
 stokers and firemen on deck, naturally came on deck herself, bare- 
 lioaded, with all her glorious beauty, wild in the storm ; you know 
 Hetty's beauty — no, hy-the-byo, you don't — ^but it is greater than 
 your own, child. And in the terror of the tempest she asked the 
 skipper where they were. 
 
 " And the skipper said : ' I think we have sea-room. Miss 
 Morley ; we are off the Bideford river, and wo may get anchorage, 
 and ride it out. Can you see to leeward ? Is it not so ? ' 
 
 " But Hetty never answered one word. She peered to leeward 
 through the fury of the tempest, and she came back to him with 
 the message of death, quite quietly. 
 
 " ' My dear Captain Jeffries, you are not off the Bideford river 
 at aU. Look there over the starboard bow. That black wall is 
 Baggy Point. Think ; can it be anything else ? ' 
 
 " And the skipper put his hat on the deck and trampled 
 on it. 
 
 " But Hetty said, ' I wiU go and get my women ready for death, 
 for with this set of the tide, we shall be on the Morte Stone in 
 ten minutes. Alas ! I wish this was untrue.' And the skipper 
 said, ' Is there nothing to be done ? ' And Hetty said, ' Yes. 
 Make sail on her and put her ashore at WoUacombe.' ' With 
 
HETTY. 241 
 
 rising tide ? ' said the skipper. ' It is better than Morte Stone,' 
 said Hetty. 
 
 " And he did it, my dear Eebecca. He made sail on her and 
 put her hehn up. And she burst heavily on shore, with the rising 
 tide behind her, and the rapidly accumulating sea following her 
 and getting more furious each moment. 
 
 " It was a dim, dark winter's night, my dear, and there was no 
 help to be had. One by one the sailors leaped into the long surf, 
 and some were drowned, and some escaped. Hetty got her women 
 into the forecastle, for the ship had gone stem on, and at last no 
 one was left but the women and the skipper. 
 
 " The skipper was doubtful about the ship lasting out the tide, 
 but Hetty pointed out to him, that she, although a beast, was 
 strongly built. To the women under her care she pointed out the 
 fact, that in three hours they would walk on shore. And as she 
 was telling them this the ship, by the rising of the tide, shifted 
 broadside on, with a sickening, thumping lurch, and the sea, 
 which hitherto had only been beating over the poop, burst in its 
 rising anger over the whole ship. 
 
 " And all the women, young and old, huddled round my beau- 
 tiful daughter, crying to her to save them. And she, behoving 
 that the end had actually come, quieted them by prayer." 
 
 A pause. 
 
 " You say they were saved ? Oh yes ! they were saved. The 
 captain and the women walked ashore the next morning and went 
 to Ilfracombe. But the Queen wrote to Hetty, and that is what 
 she wrote about." 
 
 Dangerous talk this, or the rare play of Othello errs. 
 
 Mr. Morley came very often indeed now, and his gentle, kindly 
 ministrations had some good effect on Mr. Turner. Morley toolc 
 this Une with him : that he had devoted his life to what he thought 
 the right, and that if he had erred it was only in searching after 
 a nearly impossible excellence. This was in the main true, and 
 it comforted Turner exceedingly. The effect on Turner was not 
 so satisfactory as Mr. Morley could have desired. He suddenly 
 developed a vain-glorious, boastful mood, and would talk by the 
 hour to Eebecca in particular, on his virtuous and blameless life ; 
 would compare his life to the Hves of all the other men he knew, 
 very much to his o^vn advantage. In fact, the poor man's brain 
 was upset by anxiety, and he had got into that frame of thought, 
 which consists in persistently stating one's case against destiny, 
 proceeds into a perpetual contemplation of self, and ends in 
 Bedlam. Morley saw this after a time, and counteracted it as 
 
 17 
 
242 HETTY. 
 
 well as he was able. On the whole, however, he did Turner much 
 good, and made life easier for Eebecoa. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A SUDDEN SURPRISE. 
 
 One Saturday night her father was in a very silent, thoughtful 
 mood, and would not speak at all, but sat brooding, and now and 
 then would kneel down and pray ; to poor Rebecca's great dis- 
 comfiture. How many bitter tears she shed that night, who can 
 tell ? She saw that ho was not angry with her, for even when he 
 sat by the half- hour together, looking steadily at her, his look was 
 not unkind. This little fact saved her from hysterics, for, to an 
 exceedingly sensitive nature like hers, the fact of having a stem 
 old man, sitting perfectly silent before her, hour after hour, and 
 staring at her with inteiTals of prayer, was nearly too much. 
 She was relieved when he took his candle and prepared to go to 
 bed. 
 
 " Rebecca," he said, "I desire that you will be ready for Mr. 
 Morley to-morrow morning by the first boat." 
 
 " What does he want with me ? " 
 
 " I do not know ; but you will have the goodness to go with 
 him. Good-night ; " and he went. 
 
 It would be very difficult to say what Rebecca's thoughts were 
 that night. They were, one would fancy, not very profound. 
 She had tact enough to see that Mr. Morley would, most probably, 
 ask her no question requiring any immediate answer ; yet he 
 might. Long before morning dawned she had thought it all 
 through, and had come to the resolution that if on this occasion, 
 or on any other, Mr. Morley chose to put a certain question to her, 
 that he would have a most decided and emphatic answer ; an 
 answer which would prevent his ever repeating his question. " For 
 we do love him, Mah, don't we ? " she said, to her little dog. 
 " The only question is, what does he think of us ? " 
 
 She had breakfast ready for him, and was nicely dressed when 
 ho came. " Well, Mr. Morley," she said, " and so I am to have 
 a Sunday out with you ? If you are pleased, I am sure I am. 
 This is very kind and considerate of you, indeed. Whore are we 
 going ? " 
 
HETTY. 243 
 
 " I was going to ask you to come down to Limehouse with me." 
 
 " I am dressed, ready to go where you will. Now we will start, 
 or you wiR be late for your service." 
 
 Morley rose and leant against the chimney-piece, and Kebecca 
 stood before him. The man had resolved the night before to 
 examine her character more closely, in times of trial, for another 
 six months. He had resolved that he would see her under every 
 form of temptation before he committed himself irrevocably ; he 
 had determined that he would see how far he could mould her 
 character — had made a hundred priggish resolutions. But as she 
 stood before him at that moment, she looked so grand, so noble, 
 and withal so good, that his resolutions all went to the wind ; and, 
 like a true man as he was, he spoke his mind. 
 
 " Eebecca, child, I love you more than all the world besides." 
 
 She only flushed up and stood quite still. She was as utterly 
 unprepared for this as he was himself. She hardly thought it 
 would come at all ; stiU less on this day ; stiU less at the begin- 
 ning. But these accidents happen, and Rebecca, although pre- 
 pared with her answer, could not give it from sheer surprise. 
 
 " Are you angry with me ? Is there another ? " he said ; and 
 she quickly found her tongue — " Oh 1 no, no I no other. Please 
 try to love me, Mr. Morley, and I will do my very best." 
 
 And so they kissed one another and jogged out to the steam- 
 boat arm-in-arm, with no further words which would assist the 
 telling of this story ; and it was all over and done, for ever and 
 ever, a great deal sooner than either of them dreamt of. And 
 men of the world have informed me that this is frequently the 
 case. " If a man and a woman," said one of them sententiously, 
 " have made up their minds to make fools of themselves, they no 
 more know at what particular time they wiU do it, any more than 
 you or I do. They, however, always do it before they mean to." 
 
 They jogged out arm-in-arm down the lane in the most sedate 
 manner conceivable. But you cannot keep that sort of thing 
 quiet ; it will show itself. Mr. Spicer and Mr. Akin were taking 
 the refreshment of shag tobacco, out of the style of pipe which 
 they called " long churchwardens," when Mr. Morley and Eebecca 
 passed. They saw what had happened directly. Mr. Akin said — 
 
 " She's took him." 
 
 Mr. Spicer said, " He has got her, hard and fast." 
 
 " He is a Methody, ain't he ? " said Mr. Akin. 
 
 " Oh ! " Said Mr. Spicer, " but he is a sailor Methody. Wliy 
 that man," he went on, pointing after the disappearing Mr. 
 Morley with his pipe-stem, "has been a bursted up, with ship- 
 wrecks, and earthquakes, and gales of wind, more than any skipper 
 
244 HETTT. 
 
 as sails upon the sea. He has got a good 'un, and she has got a 
 good 'iin. There is her little dog a-coming out, Jim, a-trying to 
 foller ; send her back. Hish back, little dog. Hish back, little 
 pretty pet." 
 
 But Jim Akin, having secured Mab, with that intense love of a 
 highly bred dog which seems almost ingrained in the Londoner's 
 nature, possessed himself of Mab's person, and made her take 
 breakfast on a chair among his children. Mab, as great a radical 
 as her mistress, enjoyed this extremely, and was in fact not taken 
 back till just before chapel time ; by which time our two friends 
 were landing far down the river. 
 
 The steamer was nearly empty, for it was very early, and they 
 sat alone and talked. 
 
 " When did you think of this first, my beloved ? " said Blorley. 
 
 " Only very lately. I am utterly taken by surprise." 
 
 " And I a,lso. I never dreamt of speaking so soon. My own, 
 I have no home to offer you. I am bound for the sea." 
 
 "And I must stay by father," she said. "So that happens 
 weU." 
 
 " Then will you wait, Eebecca ? " 
 
 " Wait for what ? " 
 
 " To be married." 
 
 " Of course I will wait any time. I have got your heart ; I 
 care for nothing more." 
 
 " Now I am going to say something which will offend you," 
 said Mr. Morley. 
 
 " I think not," said Eebecca, " but say it." 
 
 " All this has been talked over time after time, between Hetty, 
 Jack Hartop, and I." 
 
 " No, really. Well, I am very glad of that. Does Hetty think 
 she will like mc, dear ? " 
 
 " You shall find out that for yourself." 
 
 " I am content. Alfred, this is the first day I have ever felt 
 peace in my whole life. When may I know Hetty ? " 
 
 " When she comes back from America, perhaps." 
 
 " Only ' perhaps.' Are you going to America, Alfred ? " 
 
 " I am going farther than what one generally calls America. I 
 have failed here to a certain extent. I am only popular among 
 sailors, and sailors come and go ; and the regular connection at 
 Limehouse dislike me for preaching pure moralisms, and for con- 
 sorting with the men of the establishment. They are right. But I 
 am a scholar and a gentleman, and it is a sore temptation for me 
 to mix with the men of the establishment, who are, some of them, 
 scholars and gentlemen. And as for preaching moralisms, what 
 
HETTY. 245 
 
 can one preach else, when the heart is sick ? And, again, Hetty, 
 my darling Hetty, is a standing scandal to a certain set, the rich 
 set, down there ; and so I am going abroad ; and I have no home 
 to give you." 
 
 " But," said Eebecca, " if you have power among the sailors, 
 they should keep you." 
 
 " Well, you see, your brother-in-law, Hagbut, has gone so 
 terribly against Hetty. And he is all-powerful there." 
 
 "I will ask no more about Hetty," said Eebecca, laughing, 
 " because I shan't be told. But all Dissenters are not so narrow 
 as these." 
 
 " Bless you, no. It is only our little connection, fighting for 
 sheer existence, which is so narrow. Any one of the larger sects 
 would welcome me, ay, and Hetty with me." 
 
 " And you could not join them ? " 
 
 "No," said Morley. " Theoretically our people are the only 
 pure Christians. Practically, from ignorance, vanity, and stupidity, 
 we are the weakest of all sects. But I am no turncoat." 
 
 " Where thou goest I will go. Thy people shall be my people, 
 and thy God my God," murmured Eebecca ; and so they went on 
 their Sabbath-day's journey, 
 
 " Until the forward creeping tides 
 Began to foam aud they to draw, 
 From deep to deep to where they saw 
 The great ships lift their shining sides." 
 
 And Mr. Morley said, " This is Limehouse. Do you think you 
 shaUlikeit?" 
 
 " I'U see," said Eebecca, as they went on shore. 
 
 He was very anxious to know, for he had his plans ; but he did 
 not press her, but waited anxiously, for Limehouse is not at all an 
 attractive place. Eebecca's first impressions of it were, that it 
 was veiy dirty ; that it smelt of tar and coals ; that the ladies of 
 Limehouse did not do their hair at their first toilet, or levee, and 
 that they stood in the middle of the street, with their arms crossed, 
 and stopped talking to stare at her. That there were too many 
 bare-armed ladies leaning out of upper windows, who talked to 
 one another across the street, and had the same disconcerting 
 habit of being perfectly and suddenly dumb, as she and Mr. 
 Morley went by. Likewise the gentlemen, although evidently 
 sailors, were by no means sailors of the Hartop type, being far 
 less deferential and far more ostentatious in the admiration of her 
 beauty than was at aU desirable ; and, moreover, she could not 
 disguise from herself that but a few of these gentlemen were 
 
246 HETTY. 
 
 exactly sober, though only one was drank : a Norwegian skipper, 
 a short, stout man, with a great blonde curhng beard down over 
 his broad chest, who had been making a night of it, and was bent 
 on making a day of it, but who was being taken to his ship by 
 a select committee or caucus of experienced topers, and whose 
 reiterated argument was that his ship lay off the back door of every 
 public-house which he passed. This was strange, and not veiy 
 agreeable, to Eebecca, and she still withheld her opinion. 
 
 But, when they went further, she began to alter her opinion, 
 and, in fact, changed it altogether. 
 
 On the edge of the brimming river they came on a quiet, 
 peaceful row of houses. These houses partly faced the river one 
 way, and on the other a dock, in which ships, small ones it is true, 
 but stiU real ships which had fought the great ocean, lay with their 
 yard-arms against the windows of the houses. 
 
 They came along this dock in approaching the river, and 
 Eebecca looked down on the decks of the ships, and began 
 wondering how those dull inert masses must look at the mercy 
 of all the fury of wind and sea combined against them. There 
 was no sign of the great sea struggle on them now ; only a waste 
 of coiled ropes on deck, and cobweb-like rigging aloft. On one of 
 them was a boy, a coaly boy, in a blue jersey. He, in the sur- 
 rounding silence and peace, was remarkable. On board another 
 was another boy (washed, this one), who played with the skipper's 
 dog : this boy was an event ; on another was the skipper's boy 
 climbing up a high ladder to shore with the Sunday's dinner of 
 neck of mutton, with potatoes under it, and a solitary onion atop, 
 balanced on his head, going to the baker's, while, from below, the 
 skipper's wife, baby on ann, watched him breathlessly. 
 
 "I shall like this place very much indeed," she said, em 
 phatically and suddenly. 
 
 " That is weU," said^Morley. 
 
 " Do you know these people ? " asked Eebecca. 
 
 Morley stood still until the boy with the potatoes and mutton 
 had effected his dangerous landing on that iron-bound coast, and 
 continued to look down on to the deck of the ship. After a time 
 the skipper's wife's eye, being diverted from the yerj dangerous 
 landing of that bold young mariner the apprentice, rested on Mr. 
 Morley. Whereupon she danced the baby, and " hailed " Mr. 
 Morley in that peculiar yell with which the wives of coasting 
 skippers hail the wives of other coasting skippers, their gossips, 
 on the high sea. C in alto staccato, I suppose, not being musical 
 myself: notes inaudible to the male ear on the waste of waters, 
 but perfectly audible in dock to a priest as well used to sailors' 
 
HETTY. 247 
 
 wives as Mr. Morley. While Eebecca was reading on the stem 
 of the vessel, Jane, Ilfracombe, she heard the following dia- 
 logue. 
 
 " My dear, tender heart, how be ye ? " 
 
 " AU well here, Mrs. Camp ? " 
 
 " He has a-gone to chapel, my dear," said Mrs. Camp, " and 
 he's a-going to stay. So nice and kind he is. And I'm coming 
 if the boy is back in time ; but I can't leave the ship." 
 
 " Listen to me," said Morley, in a strangely emphatic voice. 
 " Have you any fire on board ? " 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Camp, coming close under him, and speaking 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Then, if the boy don't come back, leave the ship and come 
 and communicate. Eemember it may be the last chance either of 
 you wiU have to communicate together for ever. Come and kneel 
 with him. There wiU be an empty place in his heart some day, 
 maybe, if you do not." 
 
 The woman said "Wait," and went into the cabin, and in a 
 moment had reappeared with a bonnet on, not clean, and a grey 
 shawl over her shoulders (for these people were not rich), and her 
 baby on her arm. "Now," she said, "minister, I am ready. 
 God bless you for pointing it out." 
 
 And they three walked away together. And Rebecca took aU 
 these things, and hid them in her heart. 
 
 Now baby had occurred as a difficulty to Rebecca, but Mrs. 
 Camp had provided for baby, and was going to leave him on the 
 way with one Mrs. Tryon, widow of a deceased warrant officer, 
 R.N., who lived on his pension, and on the letting of lodgings to 
 Dissenting skippers. She was the most terrible tartar in that 
 peaceful waterside community, and the most difficult to manage. 
 "No one," said the dwellers in Pilot Terrace, " could get to the 
 windward of Mrs. Tryon, save Mr. Morley and a sailor's wife in 
 distress." 
 
 Now it so happened, in the everlasting fitness of things, that 
 Captain Moriarty, of Waterford, a Papist, had run his schooner, 
 the Xlnety-Eight, in on the tide opposite her house, and had then 
 incontinently gone ashore and amused himself. And that schooner, 
 finding herself deserted by the tide, with no hawsers, laid out to 
 larboard, had, in an idiotic and beery way, heeled over, and poked 
 her foretopsail-yard through Mrs. Ti-yon's best parlour window, to 
 the destruction of property. If it had been a Protestant ship she 
 would not have cared ; but a Papist ship — the Nhmtij-rir/ht (she 
 was old enough to remember Hoche) was too much. The damage 
 to property was small ; but if a staunch Dissenting Protestant 
 
248 HETTY. 
 
 ■woman'fs -windows were to be broken by the yard-arm of a Papist 
 ship, why then So she had laid in wait for Captain Moriarty. 
 
 Captain Moriarty had kept away like a good sailor and a 
 dexterous Irishman, till ho supposed she had started for chapel. 
 But it was no good. As Mr. Morley and Eebecca came up they 
 were hard at it. Both Mr. Moriarty and Mrs. Tryon were 
 sincerely religious in their very various ways ; and Mrs. Tryon, 
 knowing this well, exercised him principally on religious grounds, 
 until he was half crazy with anger. 
 
 " That is what the old fool at Kome tells you to do, is it ? To 
 break into widows' houses with your foretopsail-yard, and for a 
 pretence make long prayers. Oh, yours is a precious religion, 
 yours is." 
 
 "You insult my religion, Mrs. Tryon," said the Irishman; 
 " I never insulted yours. It was an accident, and I am veij son-y." 
 
 "Accident," said Mrs. Tryon. "Why, if my poor man that 
 is gone had come home the worse for drink, and had moored his 
 ship as you had moored yours, me and my gal would have gone 
 out in the dead of the darkest night, and have taken the hawsers 
 to larboard ourselves. Bah ! " 
 
 By this moment our party had arrived, and had heard what had 
 been said. There was no need for any interference on the part 
 of Mr. Morley, for Mrs. Camp stepped up to Mrs. Tryon with 
 baby, and said — 
 
 " My dear, mind baby for mo. I want to go to chapel with 
 Mr. Morley, and take sacrament with my old man. For we are 
 going to the old Cameroons, on the West Coast, and we shall 
 never come back no more, I doubt." 
 
 Hard-featured Mrs. Tryon flushed up. " Here, Koziah," she 
 said to her maid, " take this baby ; I am going to chapel. 
 Moriarty, don't mind my tongue, for you are a good man ; mind 
 your larboard hawsers." 
 
 And so they all went together. And Eebecca said, as they 
 went, " I think I shall like this place very much indeed." 
 
 When they came out from chapel there was a brimming flood 
 tide under a bright sun, with the ships passing upwards under a 
 good brisk wind from the free happy sea beyond. 
 
 " How far is it to the sea, Alfred ? " asked Eebecca, in a 
 whisper, for the congregation was still round them. 
 
 " Fifty miles." 
 
 " We shall sail on it together one day, sha'n't we, with Hetty 
 and Hartop ? " 
 
 "I hope so," said Mr. Morley, quietly; "but much must 
 happen first. I must provide a home," 
 
HETTY. 249 
 
 "Yes. I do not mean that," said Rebecca; "I was only 
 thinking of your sermon. Why did you take such a text on 
 such a happy day as this, and preach only of the cruelty of 
 the sea ? Such a wild, strange text — ' The burden of the desert 
 of the sea.' " 
 
 " I only wished to check your fanciful love for it, Eebecca. 
 A day will come when you wiU not love it as well as you do 
 now." 
 
 And Rebecca said only, " Well, the present is with us, and I 
 am very happy." 
 
 " I want to ask you, Rebecca, if you have any objection to my 
 telling what has happened between us two to a few intimate 
 friends?" 
 
 " I have none at all, Alfred, if you think it right. I am very 
 proud of it, I assure you." 
 
 I, for my part, don't think that there was much necessity for 
 any announcement at all. The whole congregation might run and 
 read, and in fact did so. When they saw their very handsome 
 and eminently marriageable minister with a beautiful young lady 
 on his arm, to whom he talked in whispers, they formed their own 
 conclusions, and generally " overhauled " her (we are in a nautical 
 neighbourhood) at their one o'clock dinner, some saying she was 
 too fine for him, but the most of them thinking that she would 
 do, but that her beauty put them too strongly in mind of that 
 poor Mrs. Hartop ; they hoped that he might have better luck 
 with his wife than he had had with his daughter, but generally 
 acquiesced in what did not in the least concern them, and wished 
 their good minister well. Two young ladies seceded for a week or 
 so, and met one another at various chapels in the neighbourhood 
 for a few Sundays ; but even they got over it in time. The 
 " minister's wooing " was a patent thing to all. 
 
 But here were the minister and his sweetheart (we have no 
 better word than that dear old English one, except that abomin- 
 able French one, fiancee !) on the breezy quay, with all the con- 
 gregation gone, except a very few, dreaming and whispering. 
 They were aroused by the emphatic voice of Mrs. Tryon, a 
 woman given to management from her youth upwards, who 
 
 said — 
 
 " Where do yoii take your dinner to-day, minister ? " 
 
 "Dear me! " said Mr. Morley, with a start. "I had not 
 
 thought about that." 
 
 " No one ever believed that you had," said Mrs. Tryon. 
 
 " But here are Captain and Mrs. Camp making an extraordinary 
 
 proposal." 
 
250 HETTY. 
 
 And, indeed, there was no one on the wharf but Mrs. Tryon, 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Camp, when Mr. Morley turned round to speak 
 to them. 
 
 "My dear friends," he said, " I want to tell you something. 
 This young lady has promised to be my wife." 
 
 " So I should have supposed," said Mrs. Tryon, the irrepres- 
 sible. " And a lucky woman too, if she only knows it. Well, my 
 dear, I wish you all joy and happiness. There's no such good 
 husbands in the world as sailors, my dear. And he is a sailor, 
 true blue, every inch of him. But what do you say to this 
 ridiculous proposal of Captain and Mrs. Camp ? " 
 
 Captain Camp stood meekly behind his wife and pushed her 
 forward, prompting her in whispers from behind his hand ; and 
 Mrs. Camp did the talking. 
 
 " Mr. Morley, me and my old man thought, that you being a 
 real sailor, and having made no arrangements for dinner, and 
 Mrs. Tiyon's windows being broke in " 
 
 " By the yard-arm of a Papist foretopsail schooner," inter- 
 posed Mrs. Tryon, with emphasis. 
 
 " Quite so, thank you," said Mrs. Camp, turning to Mrs. 
 Tryon gratefully, as if from the stores of Mrs. Tryon's wisdom 
 she had been assisted with an additional argument which had 
 previously escaped her. " Mrs. Tryon's house being broke into 
 by Captain Moriarty, a dear loved friend, I am sure, but 
 incautious : we thought that perhaps — seeing that we're for the 
 Cameroons, and might never come back — that you would have 
 your dinner aboard. But the young lady. Miss, I humbly wish 
 you every joy, but I doubt it wouldn't do for you, Miss." 
 
 "Please let me go, Alfred. Do lot me go," said Eebecca, 
 eagerly. Whereupon Captain Camp came forward, and Kebecca 
 looked at him. 
 
 A splendid young sailor, truly, but not of the Hartop type. 
 Very blonde, with a golden beard, cool, deliberate, but wanting 
 vitality ; a man who is apt to knock under on a bad coast, an 
 anxious man, who kills himself by worrying about his responsi- 
 bilities, when coarser natures, often culpably careless, lose their 
 ships and make such a good sailor-like show before the Board, 
 that they keep their certificates, while men like Captain Camp 
 have theirs suspended. This young man said to them very 
 quietly — 
 
 " If it was possible, Mr. Morley, that you could dine with us, 
 it would give us great pleasure. If this lady is to be a true wife 
 to you, and if you are the same man as ever, she will fare rougher 
 than she will to-day. Our last voyage was to Levant, Miss, and 
 
HETTY. 251 
 
 we can give you pretty and delicate things to eat, which you could 
 scarcely buy in shops." 
 
 " Please let me go, Alfred ! " 
 
 " My dear, I am not preventing you. I should like you to go. 
 Only I thought " 
 
 " Never mind what you thought. I am very hungry, and Mrs. 
 Camp's mutton must be on its way home, so we had better get on 
 board ship as soon as possible." 
 
 "You will do, my dear," said Mrs. Tryon. " Camp, you had 
 better start your boy up to my place for some knives and forks 
 and things. You shall have my place with your back against the 
 mizen-mast." 
 
 " Ai-e you coming ? " said Eebecca, as they walked. " I am 
 glad of that." 
 
 "Are you, my dear? Well, that is good hearing, for it is 
 few that like me. As for coming, I make it a rule never to dine 
 
 ashore on Sundays Rabbit the man, he will never be quiet in 
 
 his grave till he has had my house down." 
 
 This last exclamation was tortured out of her as they rounded 
 the corner and had come in sight of her own house, and the 
 reason of it was this, the schooner Kmcty-eif/ht had righted with 
 the rising tide, and in so righting herself, pulled away the whole 
 of Mrs. Tryon's verandah. It was really a serious disaster in a 
 small way, and Mrs. Camp dreaded a terrible storm. She took 
 Mrs. Tryon the terrible by the arm, and said — 
 
 "Don't be angry with him, dear; he is only an Irishman. 
 Think where we have been together to-day, and don't be angry 
 with him, he is such a good feUow." 
 
 " I won't be angry with him, my dear," said Mrs. Tryon. 
 " But I will have it out of his owners if there is a law in the 
 land." 
 
 " And then the Board will stop his certificate," said Mrs. 
 Camp. " Don't'ee say anything, don't'ee. He was so kind to 
 us, when my man got his ship ashore at Fayal. Don't'ee say 
 anything. Minister, ask her not to quarrel with him." 
 
 " I wiU take no steps at all," said Mrs. Tryon, " further than 
 asking him to moor his ship opposite some other widow's house. 
 But bow has he managed to do it ? My old man used to say, 
 when talking of gunnery, that the angle of incidence was equal to 
 the angle of reflection. So I should have supposed that when he 
 had once poked his yard-arm through my window, he could have 
 taken it out again, without pulling half the wall down. I see, this 
 is your Irish seamanship." 
 
 Captain Moriarty was straight in their way, and it was unavoid- 
 
252 HETTY. 
 
 able that there should be an interchange of broadsides. They 
 were all a little nervous, as the frigate Tryon ranged alongside 
 the frigate Moriarty. Moriarty prepared fire. 
 
 Mrs. Tryon delivered her broadside and passed on, leaving 
 Moriarty in a state of collapse. 
 
 " Seas and tidal waters," she said, " are free to all nations, 
 in times of peace. At the same time. Captain Moriarty, the 
 next time it pleases you to knock a Protestant widow's house 
 about her ears, I would trouble you to remember, that it is 
 better seamanship, according to English Protestant rights, to 
 let a ship right as she went over, and not to alter her angle by 
 useless hawsers. Likewise, if you had let go your larboard 
 tacks and sheets, your yard-arm would have come out of my 
 parlour without carrying away the verandah. "Whereas, there 
 they are all taut now to shame you, as taut as any standing 
 rigging. Have you navigated Mrs. Camp's baby to death, or has 
 it escaped ? " 
 
 No, Mrs. Camp's baby was waiting for them opposite Captain 
 Camp's ship. Keziah had made it iU with ipecacuanha lozenges, 
 but babies generally are ill, as far as I have ever observed, and 
 so it did not much matter. Not only the baby was here, but the 
 boy, arriving fi'om the baker's, with the mutton on his head, and 
 going across the ladder (for it was now high tide) before them, 
 without apology, feeling himself master of the situation. In less 
 than three minutes Eebccca found herself, with her back to the 
 mizen-mast, in a rather small cabin, eating baked mutton and 
 potatoes, and liking it too. 
 
 " I hope you like your dinner, Miss Turner ? " said Mrs. Camp, 
 anxiously. 
 
 "I like it vei7 much," said Rebecca. "And I like the place 
 I eat it in, and I like the people I eat it with." 
 
 " So yoii can make your mind easy, Mrs. Camp," struck in 
 Mrs. Tryon. And to Rebecca, " I knew you were one of us, my 
 dear, the first moment I set eyes on you." 
 
 " I'U da n/y best," said Rebecca. " If people will be kind to 
 me, I will do anything. But I am foolish. If any one is unkind 
 to me, I will sit moping and dull, without any power of action, 
 for days and days." 
 
 " That's bad," said Mrs. Tryon ; " but it is better than flying 
 out and saying things you never meant, and which you can't recall. 
 If a man don't love a woman, her hard words are nothing. If he 
 does, her words mean more than she thought, and he wants time 
 to forget them, and don't always do that. And a man's hard 
 words to a woman are worse, because a woman can't ship for a 
 
HETTY. 253 
 
 voyage as a man can, and come home like a bridegroom. As for 
 me, I only speak of what I have seen in others, for I have had 
 no experience myself." 
 
 " You were married a long time, Mrs. Tryon ? " said Eebecca. 
 
 "Yes, but me and my old man never had words. We both 
 had tempers, and so knowing that, we kept them. And he was 
 a good husband to me ; and the parting was bitter. With the 
 Sacrament in my mouth, I should not bear ill-will ; but it was that 
 African squadron killed him, and so I bear ill-will to the 
 Cameroons. It didn't much matter. Our minister has assur- 
 ance that we shall meet again. And then aU doubts will be 
 cleared up, and old love revived (as if it wanted reviving), and we 
 shall go on hand in hand through eternity. Therefore, Miss 
 Turner, what does such a trifling parting as ours matter? " 
 
 " Then we shall meet our loved ones again ? " said Eebecca. 
 
 " Certainly," said Mrs. Tryon : " unless the Book lies, ' I shall 
 go to him, but he shall not return to me.' I think that finishes 
 the argument, Miss, if there were any. Piff." 
 
 The gentle Mrs. Camp changed the conversation, by arriving 
 after a short absence with her husband, laden with quaint boxes 
 and quainter bottles, the spoils of the East. 
 
 " We sailed to Levant last voyage, Miss," she said, " and we 
 brought these things home, for friends. And if Mr. Morley and 
 his sweetheart (I know no better word. Miss Turner) are not 
 friends, who are ? Here are figs from Syra, better than you can 
 buy, and here are the little grapes from Xante (you call them 
 currants), which I laid in sugar by my own hand, just before baby 
 was born. You don't take wine, I doubt ; but take a little to-day, 
 for our sakes ; this is some that my old man bought at St. Lucaz 
 — Spanish wine, strong, but very good. Do be hospitable, my 
 dear young lady, with a Devonshire woman, and drink a little drop 
 of wine with us." 
 
 Rebecca consented most wiUingly, and indeed the wine was 
 admirable wine like port, a wine not got in this country. 
 
 "You find this cabin close, now," said Mrs. Camp, as soon 
 as the boy, who had waited perfectly, as he waited from good- 
 will, had been sent to his dinner, and baby was established on 
 his throne. " You would feel baked in such a little cabin as 
 this." 
 
 "It is the nicest place I have ever been in," said Rebecca. 
 " I suppose it is different in a gale of wind at sea ? " 
 
 "Ah ! " said Mrs. Camp. " I have been through it all more 
 than once, with the old man, in this cabin. This ain't our first 
 baby. Miss Turner. Our first was drowned down there, under 
 
254 HETTY. 
 
 tliat looker, behind you, when I lay drowned, and nigh dead on 
 this very place, with my head cut open." 
 
 " Well, we don't want to hear about that," said Mrs. Tryon. 
 "Sailors' wives have their trials, and you have had yours. 
 Similarly I have had mine. Similarly Miss Turner will have 
 hers. Why, my boy was eighteen when he sailed for the West 
 Coast, and never came home again. Therefore, what are your 
 troubles to mine ? " 
 
 " That is very true, Mrs. Tryon," said the humble Mrs. Camp ; 
 " and I am wicked to think of my little troubles in any way. But 
 I think I am sentimental to day ; and that is what a sailor's wife 
 should never be. I suppose it is because I went to Sacrament 
 with the old man for the last time." 
 
 " What do you mean by the last time ? " said Mrs. Tryon, 
 sternly. 
 
 " I didn't mean any harm," said Mrs. Camp. " But we are 
 going to the West Coast." 
 
 " Better folks than you have been to the West Coast, and 
 come back again," said Mrs. Tryon. " Don't cry out before you 
 are hurt. The Cleopatra has only lost ten hands in eighteen 
 months. Of course, if you, in your lazy, merchant way, choose 
 to moor in a mango swamp, you will all die. Veer out a couple 
 of cables, and lie well off shore, out of the land fog, as Her 
 Majesty's ships do, and you will come to no harm at all. If you 
 sneak into fever holds, you wiU have fever. Mr. Morley, I am 
 going to chapel." 
 
 Mr. Morley, who had been having a quiet conversation at the 
 end of the table with Mr. Camp, asked Kebecca if she was 
 inclined to go ; but told Mrs. Camp that he was not going to 
 chapel, but had provided for his duty. 
 
 "Then why not stay longer with us" said Captain Camp. 
 " We shall never see you again." 
 
 " She and I have much to speak of, as you may understand," 
 said Mr. Morley. " I only said the words to her this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " You have a prize," said Captain Camp. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said Morley. " I have known her, and watched 
 her for long." 
 
 " What does Hetty think of her ? " said Captain Camp. 
 
 ' ' She has never seen her ; and Rebecca knows nothing of 
 Hetty. Jack Hartop is the only one of our local connection who 
 has ever seen her." 
 
 " But, my dear minister, is this concealment wise ? " 
 
 " Hagbut hates Hetty so ; and he is all-powerful." 
 
HETTY. 255 
 
 " That is true. Well, this Eehecca is a trump, at all events. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 Aud Mr. Morley and Eehecca crossed the ladder, and stood 
 again on the wharf. The afternoon had become wild and rainy, 
 aud the tide was going down ; and Mr. Moriarty's ship's main- 
 topsaU-yard was (through Mr. Moriarty's careless arrangement of 
 hawsers) rapidly approaching Mrs. Tryon's bedroom window. 
 Mrs. Tryon had resigned herself to this fresh desecration of her 
 hearth- stone, and gone to chapel : the Camps had got ready for 
 a sailor's dawdle among the ships. But our two set their heads 
 westward, knowing that their end for the present was Walham 
 Green. 
 
 " Could you get on with such people as those, Kebecca ? " said 
 her. " If I was long away, could you live with them ? " 
 
 " I could live and die with them," said Eehecca. " Those 
 people are alive, ours are dead. Is the sea so cruel as they tell 
 us, dear ? " 
 
 " The sea is very cruel. The world is cruel, also. Come, you 
 have seen that." 
 
 " I shall have to wait for you ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I wish I could wait for you there. Mrs. Tryon is better than 
 Miss Soper ; and I do so dearly like those Camps." 
 
 " You wiU hardly see much of them," said Mr. Morley ; " they 
 are bound on a long voyage." 
 
 Ay, indeed, they were. An old, old story, read in the papers 
 every day ; but a wearisome one to tell, fi'om sheer reiteration. 
 The Camps sailed away on ebb tide, a week after this, with their 
 baby, and their apprentice, and five hands aU told. And they 
 sailed westward, before the east wind of late March ; and they 
 sailed away into the golden west of early spring, and nothing was 
 ever heard of them from that day to this. Nothing will ever be 
 heard of them until the sea gives up her dead. They had taken 
 the Sacrament together for the last time on earth. 
 
 To Eehecca they had been like a bright gleam of sunshine, on 
 the happiest, most April-like day of her whole life. In the times 
 soon to come, when she was all alone, watching a dying life, 
 behind windows which quivered and rattled in the furious blast, 
 she would hear the cry of sailors mooring their ship. And she, 
 in that vague, foolish superstition, of which those who have 
 watched long by the beds of the dying can tell you, would slip 
 down silently, saying, " That is Camp's ship." But it never was 
 Camp's ship, and it never will be ; for Camp's ship, wife, baby, 
 boy, and aU her crew, are at the bottom of the blue, wandering sea. 
 
256 HETTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Rebecca got home soon after afternoon chapel, and Mr. Morley 
 left her at the door. She was very quiet and cool over what had 
 happened, not seeing any great reason why she should be other- 
 wise. Mr. Morley had bidden her teU her father at once, and she 
 went upstairs to do so very quietly. 
 
 He was sitting alone with the little dog on his knee, reading 
 the "Pilgrim's Progress." His mind was perfectly quiet and 
 unclouded this day, and he brightened up when he saw his hand- 
 some daughter before him. The little dog wriggled and scolded 
 in his lap to get at her, and Mr. Turner put her down and smiled 
 when she ran to Rebecca. 
 
 " My dear father, I hope you have not been duU? " 
 
 " No, daughter. I have been very happy. I was at the Com- 
 munion with you in spirit ; and I was glad to think that you 
 were in pleasant goodly company. Come and teU me where you 
 have been." 
 
 "Please, pa," said Rebecca, kneeling at his feet, "I want to 
 tell you something very particular indeed. Mr. Morley has 
 asked me to marry him, and I have said that I would, if you 
 would let me. And you will let me, won't you ? " 
 
 " I am very glad of this," said Mr. Turner ; " this is the only 
 wish I had in this world, I think. I am very glad, my dear ; 
 God bless you. Try to be worthy of him." 
 
 " I will, father, indeed." 
 
 " I doubt you wUl be very poor," said Mr. Turner, as soon as 
 Rebecca was seated. " You wiU have about i£150 a year — he 
 will never have anything to speak of. He is not a drawing man, 
 to any except the poor. But I don't see why you should not be 
 happy. I'll tie your money up and you shall have it when 
 you marry. Four thousand pounds is all I can guarantee you. 
 There may be a little more, but I can't tell. Hagbut is a near 
 man." 
 
 " I was not thinking of money, father," said Rebecca. 
 
 " It would be extremely indecent if you were," said Mr. 
 Turner : " but I was. I have secured you from actual poverty, 
 and Hagbut is hard and near ; and I gave my word to certain 
 things with regard to Carry, or we should have had her on our 
 hands for ever and a day ; and my word is as good as my bond. 
 Beyond this four thousand pounds I can only give you Hobson 
 
HETTY. 257 
 
 Bay scrip, which may be worth something or nothing, but which 
 has escaped that man's ferret eyes. You won't starve, Eebecca." 
 
 " Pa, don't talk about money to-day." 
 
 " Well, I won't. Give me my tea." 
 
 She soon did that, and made him comfortable before the fire. 
 " Come," he said, "don't take all the good things to yourself; 
 give me the little dog," and Mab, a black peaked nose, and hair, 
 was handed reluctantly to him by Eebecca. 
 
 Mab had a great idea of Mr. Turner, considering him in the 
 light of an idol or fetish, requiring contintial propitiation and 
 flattery. So she scufHed over his waistcoat, licked his face, and 
 only desisted from her cultus of him when he gave her a little 
 slap, after which she was quiet. Rebecca thought that she had 
 seen the same sort of thing before in certain chapels ; and indeed 
 one may see the same in certain churches also. 
 
 "Pa," she said, when Mab was quiet, " tell me all about the 
 Establishment." 
 
 " I don't know much about it. Is he going to join it ? " 
 
 " Lor, no. He would die sooner. Only I wanted to know." 
 
 " Well, the Establishment is the gentleman's church. Never 
 mind the Establishment. You listen to me, girl, and never you 
 mind the Established Church." 
 
 " I was only talking to amuse you, sir ; and I wiU trouble you 
 to remember that I have taken brevet rank, that I am engaged to 
 Mr. Morley. So no airs." 
 
 They were but siUy words, but they were said so prettily that 
 Turner himself laughed for a moment. " Come, girl," he said, 
 " you are happy to-day, and indeed, old Rebecca, I am happy in 
 your happiness. I assure you that I am ; but I am in trouble 
 after trouble. Are you going to him at once, for I am sore 
 bestead, and I want you at home ? " 
 
 " My dear father, he has asked me to wait a very long time, 
 and I have told him that I could not leave you, and that he must 
 wait a very long time." 
 
 " That is good," said Mr. Turner ; "that is very good. Listen 
 carefully to me, for my mind is unclouded to-night, and it may 
 be clouded again to-morrow ; for I have had a hard life of it, 
 child. I have never had a day's hohday ; and your mother — 
 well, never mind her, poor dear, you have made it square between 
 us — and my head goes at times ; listen now, and be mute." 
 
 Rebecca listened intently. 
 
 " You have heard of the great house of Philpott & Co. (limited, 
 in all ways, save an unlimited smash)." 
 
 Rebecca nodded. 
 
 18 
 
260 HETTY. 
 
 So she came down. She was very pale, but there was no sign 
 of wildness about her. He was shocked at her appearance, but 
 he did not show it at all. He received her affectionately, and 
 kissed her. 
 
 "My dear Eebecca," he said, "can you explain to me the 
 meaning of the note you sent me down just now ? " 
 
 " No, Alfred," she said ; " an explanation would involve 
 others." 
 
 " So I have supposed for a very long time," he answered. " I 
 have quite expected to hear of something like this for a year past. 
 But that note I got this morning from you was never written. It 
 does not exist." 
 
 "I am no fit wife for you," said Eebecca. 
 
 " I am surely the best judge of that. You are held to your 
 words, Eebecca. Have you repented of that siUy note ? Cannot 
 you trust me, as I am going to trust you ? " 
 
 "E you knew aU, Alfred! " 
 
 " Bah ! sweetheart ; I know more than all. Do you think 
 that your sister knows nothing ? Do you think that Hagbut has 
 not got it out of her ? Do you not think that Eussel and Soper 
 have not heard of it from him, and illustrated it ? My story is 
 that your father has raised money on Lord Ducetoy's title-deeds, 
 to pay Carry's marriage portion." 
 
 " You never dared believe it of him ? " said Eebecca. 
 
 "Not for one instant," said Mr. Morley, laughing; "only, 
 this being the report about him in our little society, I asked his 
 daughter to many me. There is very little time to talk nonsense, 
 my dear ; let us therefore talk sense. If your father's affairs 
 got utterly wrong, what earthly difference would it make between 
 us ? And under any circumstances, you know," he went on, 
 laughing louder, ' ' you can never be the plague and disgrace to 
 me that Hetty has been." 
 
 Whenever he mentioned Hetty, a smile came on his face, and a 
 brightness in his eye. What had Eebecca to say to such wooing ? 
 Why, nothing. 
 
 " I repent. I am aU yours. I will never distrust you again." 
 
 "Bravely said. Now I am going utterly away from you, to 
 leave you entirely alone, without one solitary friend, for a long 
 time. I have no hopes in England ; my chapel is only full of 
 sailors, and sailors do not pay. But our connection has given 
 me the new Tahiti mission, wisely, and well ; for at Tahiti every 
 one can manage the natives, but no one the sailors. Another 
 man was appointed, but has got a good chapel, and has refused. 
 They offered it to me this morning, and it came to me like a 
 
258 HETTY. 
 
 " Well, they are hopelessly smashed for two millions and a half 
 of money. They have been hanki-upt for a long while ; and their 
 last effort was to get our cousin Ducetoy's title deeds, and lease 
 money on them, by which he would have been brought into the 
 bankruptcy. His father had meddled and muddled with them iu 
 the old times, before they were a company ; and they thought 
 they could connect him with the company. I have saved him — 
 utterly Ulegally." 
 
 " But he is nothing to us." 
 
 " He was your mother's cousin, and I owe her reparation," he 
 said, gloomily ; "I have papers which would tell one way, I don't 
 say which. But they dare not ask for them." 
 
 ■' You mean papers which would involve Lord Ducetoy ? " 
 
 "Yes, and I am acting illegally in withholding them." 
 
 "Then why do you withhold them?" asked Eebecca. "Be 
 sure it is best to follow the law." 
 
 " I don't know that," said Mr. Turner; "I have seen too much 
 of law. These papers, if produced, would put Lord Ducetoy's 
 property into the bankmptcy." 
 
 "But the creditors," said Eebecca, aghast; "the poor souls 
 who have invested their money, have you no pity for them ? " 
 
 " They would take any advantage of the company, and they 
 must take their chance." 
 
 "But, pa, wrong can't make right. I am sorry for Lord 
 Ducetoy, but for heaven's sake restore these papers." 
 
 "I can't," said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " Xonsense. Why not ? " asked Eebecca. 
 
 " Because I have burnt them," said Mr. Turner ; " now as you 
 have yoiu' father's character, and in consequence his life in your 
 hands, I wish to point out another httle matter, more in your way 
 of business." 
 
 Eebecca, sitting pale and calm, was dumb from that moment 
 and for ever about her father's felony. But their relations from 
 this moment were altered, never to be replaced on their former 
 footing. 
 
 She never showed this fact to him, but he knew it, and acted 
 on it. He was deferential to her after this. Sometimes he was 
 insolent to her, but very seldom, and for a very short time ; he 
 was generally easy and almost jocular with her, but from this 
 moment she was in a way mistress of the situation. 
 
 She had now entered into a community of guilt with her father. 
 That her father's motives were of the highest order was certain, 
 but stQl licr father might be a convict to-morrow. 
 
 What was the effect of this singular community of fault 
 
HETTY. 259 
 
 between them ? A strange one to ordinary eyes. A love which 
 had never existed before. If pity, combined with admiration and 
 fear for the object, does not produce love, what does ? Again, if 
 admiration and trust do not produce love, what again does ? 
 These two hearts were together now. 
 
 But I must return to the original conversation. Eebecca said, 
 " But these documents will he demanded of you, pa ! " 
 
 "No, they won't, my dear. I have too many forgeries, those 
 of my own name among others, by Sir Gorham and Captain 
 Philpott, for them ever to ask for them. Our danger does not 
 lie here." 
 
 " Where does it lie then, father ? " said Kebecca. 
 
 "In this," said Mr. Turner; "they will try to get into the 
 house, and murder me to get at their own forgeries. So don't 
 leave me, girl, and let the little dog sleep with me." 
 
 And so he went to bed. And Kebecca spent the first evening 
 of her engagement in brooding over the fire, alone and terrified. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 THALATTA. 
 
 Two days after Mr. Morley called, and was told by the little maid 
 that Miss Turner was too iU to see him, but she gave him .a note, 
 which he, as is usual in such cases, opened and read. 
 
 " Deae Sik, — Let Sunday be as though it never had been. 
 Forget it, and forget me. It was all a mistake from beginning 
 to end. I should like to have seen Hetty ; but that can never 
 he. My love for you is unalterable. I never loved any one on 
 earth as I do you. But what we talked of on Sunday is utterly 
 and entirely impossible. 
 
 " Rebecca." 
 
 Morley stepped into Mr. Turner's study, and taking pen and 
 ink, wrote — • 
 
 " Come downstairs directly, and tell me all about it. Don't 
 keep me waiting, for I have news for you, and but little time to 
 give you. Look sharp, and don't dawdle. "A.M." 
 
HETTY. 261 
 
 gleam of light, pretty bird, that my work fof my Master lay among 
 the sailors, and I said yes." 
 
 " I see," said Eehecca, nodding her head, and smiling ; " this 
 is good." 
 
 " I am half a sailor myself, you know, and I can talk to our 
 rough men in their own language without affectation and without 
 mistake, which is a great thing ; for men dislike following a man 
 who exhibits ignorance on their own specialite. They say, he talks 
 seamanship, and makes errors which the cook's mate would be 
 ashamed of ; how can we trust him in other things ? It is silly 
 and illogical on their parts ; but they are silly and illogical. 
 For my part, I think the priest who simply confesses igno- 
 rance, and applies to them for instruction, will have a 
 good chance with them ; possibly better than mine. I mean the 
 man who will show them his ignorance, and then show them their 
 own. But we have not these men. Our men are all too scho- 
 lastic ; they will talk to our fellows about the one thing of which 
 they know nothing — seamanship. Hagbut preached a nautical 
 sermon at my chapel once, which made my ears burn with sheer 
 shame ; and the lubber believes to this day that he produced a 
 profound impression — as indeed he did, of his own utter preten- 
 tious imbecility. I have not time to go into this. I feel that I am 
 the right man in the right place ; and, to use our Saviour's own 
 words, humbly and reverently, ' I go to prepare a place for you.' 
 Are you content ? " 
 
 "I am more than content. You are doing well. Shall you 
 be away long ? " 
 
 " A year, at least." 
 
 " A whole year ? And when do you go ? " 
 
 " The day after to-morrow." 
 
 " That is very sudden. But is aU right and well, and very 
 good, Alfred ? I shall know that you are not lost, but working, 
 and shall leave home to prove to you that I am worthy of you. 
 Yes. This is a little hard, and a little bitter, too : but it is right 
 and good. You have forgiven my foUy of this morning ? " 
 
 " Why, I really don't know that there was any folly to forgive. 
 You acted exactly as I should have wished my wife to act. You 
 are the dearer to me for it." 
 
 " May I help you with your preparations ? " she asked. 
 
 " My chest is always packed," he answered, with a smile. " It 
 does not take long to ship such an old sailor as me. One chest 
 of clothes, and one of books, are all I own ; and my landlady has 
 taken good care of them." 
 
 " But I may come and see you off ? " she asked. 
 
262 HETTY. 
 
 " Surely," he said ;' and they passed on to talk of other matters, 
 and talked until it was time for him to go. 
 
 She scarcely knew how to break this sudden resolution to her 
 father ; whether he would think it a kind of desertion on Mr. 
 Morley's part, she could not tell. He took it quite quietly, and 
 only said, " So soon, hey ! Well, I am glad he has left me you. 
 We wiU wait for him together, my child ; and perhaps when he 
 comes to fetch you away, you shall take me with you out of this 
 hateful, miserable place, to a happier one." 
 
 There was a wild, surging wind from the north-west, bringing 
 with it occasional heavy showers of cold rain, and brilliant gleams 
 of cold sunshine : one of those bitter days which are almost worse 
 than any weather in England, except east. The river was brisk, 
 though dull, leaden, and muddy, dashing in short crisp waves 
 against the piles of Pilot Terrace. Mr. Morley was gone on 
 board a little higher up the river, and Rebecca had said the last 
 words to him. She was standing at the edge of the river, in the 
 piercing blast, wi'apped up from head to foot, shielding her little 
 dog from the cold, and watching. the ships pass swiftly seaward 
 until his should come. 
 
 It was not long in coming. A beautiful schooner eager for her 
 battle with the sea, curving her sharp high bows in triumphant 
 anticipation, flying before the swift squall with only a foretopsail 
 set. He stood upon the poop and waved his hand, and so the 
 ship passed on eastward, under a gleam of sun, towards a heavy 
 black cloud, which lay upon her path, and he was gone. And 
 she stood silently weeping on the shore, and holding her little 
 dog close to nearly the most desolate heart which beat in England 
 that day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 HOMEWARD ALONE, 
 
 But by degrees her silent crying stilled itself, and, the cold blast 
 arousing her, she turned resolutely westward against the wind, 
 which, cold as it was, caused her but little annoyance, for the 
 heavy weariness which showed itself in her gait, and the feeling 
 of solitude which gnawed at her heart, made her indifferent to 
 the weather. 
 
 A gleam of such happiness so rapidly overclouded. She had 
 
HETTY. 263 
 
 only had him for a few days, and had never reahsed actually her 
 position towards him. Never, until she saw him on the deck of 
 the schooner passing rapidly eastward down the river. Then she 
 knew really, for the first time, that Morley had wooed her well ; 
 had understood her thoroughly, and persistently shown her the 
 best side of herself and of himself also ; had petted and encouraged 
 what was good in her, and ignored what was bad ; had gone so 
 high in the art of wooing, that he had shown her herself at her 
 best, and himself as something better still. And she found there 
 was no one like him in the whole of her little world, and she 
 believed no one like liim in the larger world beyond hers. She 
 knew that she loved him entirely, with her whole heart. 
 
 There was not much sentimentality in her love for him. He 
 was very handsome, certainly, of a rare and peculiar beauty, 
 dangerous to the "peace of mind" of most young ladies, but 
 she thought little of that. It was his "way" which was so 
 irresistible, and the impression left on her mind was that he had 
 selected her, the poor wild girl who had been a plague to eveiy 
 one, to do her the highest honour that man can do women. That 
 he was a penniless, friendless, and unpopular man she never 
 considered. She looked on him as having descended from a high 
 pedestal of perfect truth and perfect virtue, to do honour to her. 
 She could not understand it, for, like most very noble people, she 
 utterly undervalued herself ; but the fact was the same. He 
 loved her, and she had lost him. 
 
 So she thought as she set her face westward, in her solitude, 
 towards her miserable home. If there was any mere senti- 
 mentalism in her deep love, it was not for Morley. She could 
 not be romantic and sentimental about him. In fact, a senti- 
 mental young lady would scarcely have liked her lover sailing 
 away in a foretopsail schooner, for a twelvemonth, five days after 
 he had proposed to her. In Eebecca's sensible eyes this only 
 made him nobler and more dear to her ; she was assured of his 
 love, and could laugh at Eussel and Soper, and all the rest of 
 them. 
 
 But this young lady had a good deal of sentimentality also, but, 
 strangely enough, or rather naturally enough, she reserved all 
 her stores of that article, not for Morley, but for his daughter 
 Hetty, whom she had never seen. 
 
 If one was a Frenchman one might wi-ite, " Sentimental love 
 is born of Mystery. Calypso steps from her pedestal and assists 
 Eros to bind the napkin over his eyes." But one is not a French- 
 man, and so will not say it. There was certainly nothing Calyptic 
 about Eebecca's love for Mr. Morley. 
 
264 HETTY. 
 
 But with regard to his daughter. That young lady was a 
 consummate mystery to her (which made Calypso step from her 
 pedestal). And she had certainly, in some way or another, 
 broken through all rules, which caused Rebecca to love her, while 
 knowing nothing about her. (Calypso binds the eyes of Eros.) 
 And so, fighting westward against the wind, she found herself 
 thinking very much about Hetty. " She will be home before 
 him, and we can talk together about him. I know that I shall 
 love her." 
 
 Stereoscopes are to some only magnified photographs. Others 
 have the stereoscopic eye. Let us look at her with a different eye 
 — say the left. 
 
 There went wearily along the streets of Bermondsey that day a 
 weak, ill-clad woman, with a baby on her arm, against the wind 
 westward. There came such a driving, furious storm of cold rain, 
 that this poor woman was forced to put into an archway, and took 
 this opportunity of opening her bosom and giving the baby her 
 milk. 
 
 While she was doing so a shadow passed before her, and she 
 hun'iedly was drawing her shawl over the arrangement, when she 
 saw that it was only a woman, and was more at her ease. 
 
 It was a singular woman, too. Very 5'oung, very handsomely 
 dressed, and wrapped up from head to foot in a shawl, the price 
 of which would have kept that cowering woman for a twelvemonth. 
 Her hat was of golden seal-skin, the value of which that poor 
 woman had reason to know, and in it was set a storm petrel, a 
 bird that woman knew too well also. She carried her head high, 
 this lady, and was so beautiful in face and in carriage that the 
 cowering woman turned away. 
 
 In her bosom this splendid lady had something which was not 
 a baby, only a little dog, with bright eyes, who put its head out 
 to sneeze. 
 
 She put her grand head down to look at it, and caught sight 
 of her shivering companion. She spoke at once, in the high, 
 clear, splendid voice of an unaffected English lady. 
 
 " My dear creature, you are very cold." 
 
 "Yes, my lady," said the woman, "but my master is colder." 
 
 " Where is he ? " said Eebecca. 
 
 "He is gone to sea, my lady, with half his kit, poor dear. He 
 broke his arm in the frost, hauling a rotten foretopsail halyard, 
 and he missed a voyage, and we have pawned everything, and now 
 my man is gone to sea again." 
 
 "So is mine," said Rebecca, without thinking. 
 
 " Yes, iny dear lady, but your good gentleman has his full kit 
 
HETTY. 265 
 
 aboard, no doubt. My poor man will be up reeling topsails in the 
 snow, thin-clad, while yovirs is warm and comfortable." 
 
 " Do you worry and vex yourself all the time your husband is 
 away ? " asked Eebecca. 
 
 "What would be the good?" the woman answered. "I've 
 got to live, and to hope." 
 
 " Has he left you money to live on? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 "Lord bless you, no, he hadn't got none to leave. He will 
 bring back some, though." 
 
 " And what have you to live on, then ? " asked Rebecca, deeply 
 interested. 
 
 " Charing and needle-work." 
 
 " Have you plenty of it ? " 
 
 "Yes," she said. "I don't need to be beholden, I have a 
 connection among seafaring men and women, and I can make my 
 three shillings a week till he comes back." 
 
 " Look here," said Rebecca, suddenly and quickly ; " our cases 
 are similar in some way, but your necessity is greater than mine. 
 I have money, you have not. Take this five pounds. I meant 
 it to buy a present for him, but had not time. When you want 
 more, write to me." 
 
 "But I might be an impostor. Miss," said the woman, aghast. 
 
 " Your words show that you are none," said Eebecca, and giving 
 her address, she walked quicldy away. 
 
 Quiet, through having got thoroughly well tired, she turned, 
 after an eight miles' walls, into her own dismal lane, and found 
 herself confronted with Miss Soper and Mrs. Russel. 
 
 In small communities, news fly fast : the whole earth is a small 
 community now, thanks to the telegraph ; hence our telegrams, 
 which always require to be emphatically contradicted next day. 
 It had got about in the small Walham Green connection, that Mr. 
 Morley was going to marry Miss Turner, but that she had shown 
 such abominable temper that he had shipped on board a fast brig, 
 and gone to sea ; and that she had started early that morning, 
 down to the docks, to bring him to book. This was too good a 
 thing for Russel and Soper to miss. She must come home some 
 time in the afternoon, and so Russel and Soper cruised off the end 
 of the lane, as Anson did for the Acapulco plate ship ; knowing 
 that if they could lay her by the board they would have something 
 to reward them. 
 
 Their cruise was (comparatively speaking) as long as Lord 
 Anson's, and in the end very little more successful. They made 
 raids into the lane, and took Akin's house, and Mr. Spicer's house 
 — with tracts ; but they were always soon on their post off the 
 
2G6 HETTY. 
 
 lane's end ; and after a time the Aoapulco ship arrived, and they 
 boarded her, to the intense delight of Akin and Mr. Spicer, who 
 were watching. 
 
 Eebeeca, tall, handsome, fresh from the sea, head in air, with 
 sealskin hat and storm-petrel for ornament, thinking of things far 
 away, was arrested by Russel and Soper. Mab, who had not been 
 let to walk, had accommodated herself to circumstances so far ; 
 but Soper was too much for her, and she barked so furiously at 
 that good lady that she was put down ; a liberty which she used 
 for a cloak of licentiousness, for she bit Sopor's gown without a 
 moment's hesitation, and kept hold of it, too ; which so agitated 
 Soper that fat old Russel had to do the talking. 
 
 " She is a varmint little thing," said Akin to Spicer, in the 
 distance. 
 
 "So is her mistress," said Mr. Spicer. 
 
 " My dear," said Russel, " we were here, and saw you coming. 
 Are we to congratulate you ? " 
 
 " On what? " said Rebecca. " Mab, you naughty little thing, 
 be quiet." 
 
 " On your approaching marriage with Mr. Morley." 
 
 " No, I think not," said Rebecca. " He sailed for Tahiti this 
 morning. But I am veiy much obliged to you all the same." 
 
 "Is he coming back soon? " said Miss Soper, who had been 
 delivered from Mab by Rebecca. 
 
 "I should think not," said Rebecca. "It is quite impossible 
 that he can be back under a twelvemonth ; possibly, not for two 
 years. But it is of no consequence that I know of." 
 
 And so those two very good people went away, and told the 
 whole truth to the connection. And the whole truth was, that 
 Mr. Morley had found out too much, and had shipped for Tahiti. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 HAGBUT IN A NEW LIGHT. 
 
 But to Rebecca's great and never-ending astonishment, Hagbut 
 came out in an entirely new line at this juncture. Hagbut was 
 stupid, vain, avaricious, and selfish. You will find such characters 
 in every form of religion, just as you will find Morley's. But 
 Hagbut was an exceptional man. The man had power. He had 
 
HETTY. 267 
 
 put a few ends before liim, social and religious ; and in steadily 
 pursuing those ends, he looked neither to the right nor the left. 
 The success of his own small religious connection, and his own 
 personal governance of that connection, were his two great objects. 
 Take him apart from those objects, and you would find a vmn, 
 not without strength, but who seemed narrow, because he referred 
 all matters in heaven and earth to his own service and that of his 
 own sect. If any matter did not appear to him to interfere with 
 these two objects, he coidd be as just and as generous as another. 
 
 Now Kebecca had done no such thing as the scandalous Hetty ; 
 
 and besides — and besides well, he had been fond of Eebecca 
 
 once on a time. And sometimes, when Carry was most religious, 
 and most affectionate — when he was wearied with religious work, 
 and would gladly have heard something of the world which he was 
 bound to despise in words, Hagbut thought seriously that he had 
 made a mistake. Eebecca would not have him, it is true ; still 
 Carry, with her money, was a great bore, and Eebecca was worth 
 ten of her. 
 
 Eussel and Soper invaded him when he was thinking of these 
 things, and saying to himself that he was glad the poor girl was 
 so well fitted with Morley ; and honestly, and, as far as he was 
 able, tenderly, wishing her good luck. Eussel and Soper did not 
 meet with the reception they anticipated. 
 
 "He has gone and left her," said Miss Soper. "Eebecca 
 Turner was down after him to the docks, this morning ; but he 
 has gone and left her." 
 
 " He has gone to provide a home for her," said Mr. Hagbut. 
 
 "Mr. Hagbut, it is not so. Mr. Morley has run away. She 
 told us with her own lips that he was gone away, and that she 
 didn't care when he came back." 
 
 "I know she didn't say that," said Hagbut, bending his ugly 
 pale face on Miss Soper, and thrusting out his powerful jaw in a 
 way which Miss Soper did not like. " What were her 
 words?" 
 
 "Her words were, that he was gone for a twelvemonth, and 
 that it was no matter," said Mrs. Eussel. 
 
 " See how you stand cross-examination, you two," said Hagbut. 
 "I can't trust a word you say. Now look you here, you two. 
 That girl is my sister-in-law, and a good girl, too ; and Morley is 
 the most refined and educated man in our connection — a connection 
 which wants, what I have not got, refinement and education, more 
 than most. I won't have Eebecca's name pulled about. She is 
 a fine creature." 
 
 The more cowardly Eussel was abashed at once ; not so the 
 
268 HETTY. 
 
 more resolute anrl sourer Soper, who had never felt a man's 
 influence, but who had got her living by bullying girls. 
 
 " You pulled her name about at one time pretty freely, yourself," 
 said she. 
 
 " Yes, but that was my business. This is none of yours. You 
 mind what I say, and leave the girl alone. I won't have her 
 meddled with. Mind, I mean what I say." 
 
 And, indeed, he looked very much as if he did. Pale, ugly, 
 and generally lazy, as he was, there was an immense amount of 
 powerful animation in the man, with some shrewd sense. Kussel 
 and Soper had brains enough to find out this ; Eebecca had brains 
 enough to find out more. 
 
 She was alone that evening, with an atlas before her, following 
 Morley across the map, when the little maid told her that Mr. 
 Hagbut was come to see her. And she said, " Show him in." 
 
 Mr. Hagbut came in, and they greeted one another civilly ; after 
 which, Mr. Hagbut pointed to the atlas, and said — 
 
 "After ;im?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You are a happy woman, Eebecca, if it is all right between 
 you and Movley. Come, sister-in-law, tell me that it is." 
 
 "It is 'all right,' as you call it," said Eebecca, laughing. 
 "He is going to be away for an indefinite time ; but we are, what 
 the world calls, engaged." 
 
 "I wish you happy, most heartily,'' said Hagbut, leaning his 
 ugly face on his great fat hands, and looking at her. " It is your 
 own fault if you are not. He is refined, and a gentleman ; I am 
 neither the one nor the other." 
 
 "I think you are a very good man, Mr. Hagbut," she said, 
 looking him frankly in the face. 
 
 "I do among vulgar people, being vulgar myself. And I do 
 good where a gentleman would fail. But, Eebecca, it is well we 
 did not marry." 
 
 "It is very well, indeed," said Eebecca. 
 
 " I suppose you have often put this case to yourself, with regard 
 to me — ' If I had married that ugly, fat man, without ideas, without 
 the manners of a gentleman, without education ; death would have 
 been better than life.' You have put it so, have you not ? " 
 
 " Not so strongly as that, Mr. Hagbut ; but still very strongly," 
 said Eebecca, with resolution. 
 
 "Did you ever put the other side of the question?" asked 
 Hagbut. " Did you ever think of me ? Did you ever think for 
 one instant what a hell on earth (I beg pardon) my hfe would have 
 been ; tied for life to a beautiful, clever, refined, and furiously 
 
HETTY. 269 
 
 rebellious woman like yourself? You congratulate yourself on 
 your escape ; congratulate me on mine. We should not have 
 lived together a month in decency ; for my will is immovable." 
 
 Eebecca paused for a long time. At last she said — 
 
 " It seems to me, brother-in-law, that you are a very honest 
 man. You served me iU once ; but let us forget all, and be friends : 
 God knows I want them. Come, brother-in-law, do not be my 
 enemy, although we can never be companions ; for we should 
 squabble so dreadfully over ways of speech on religious matters, 
 you know : and I doubt if we should agree with regard to Hetty." 
 
 " What do you know of her ? " said Mr. Hagbut. 
 
 " Nothing. What has she done ? " 
 
 " If you do not know, / see no reason for telling you. I have 
 taken my side there, and will maintain it." 
 
 " Well, if you go against her, you will spare me ? " said 
 Kebecca. 
 
 Hagbut would not have taken an oath in a court of justice to 
 save his life ; but, iu his heart, without speech, he swore a deep 
 and terrible oath then. No religionist can be without sentiment ; 
 and the deepest sentimental part of Hagbut' s soul was aroused by 
 the spectacle of this utterly solitary and defenceless girl, whom he 
 had once thought that he had loved, in spite of his fear of her, 
 alone against the world. Hagbut made affirmation silently to 
 himself, that he would stand between this poor child and the 
 world, which meant their small connection. And he did it, like a 
 leal and loyal soul. It is easy to see the worst of these men. You 
 must know them to find out the best of them. For my part, I 
 have known many ministers of religion. Eoman Catholic verbiage, 
 or Dissenting verbiage, may be offensive to the ear ; but in twenty 
 years I have only known two bad ministers of religion of any sect, 
 and that is not a large percentage, after aU : one speaks, of course, 
 merely of a large personal acquaintance. Being on dangerous 
 ground, I will step off it ; only enrolling my opinion, that the 
 ministers of religion, with all their eccentricities, are nearly the 
 most valuable class in the community. 
 
 Hagbut spoke to Kebecca no more after this. Carry would 
 have been jealous had she known that he had said so much. 
 But Eussel and Sopor's vilipendings of Eebecca were now reduced 
 to sniffs and glances. 
 
270 HETTY. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI. 
 
 THE GAZETTE. 
 
 And so it came about, that Eebecca, who began, at the very 
 beginning of this story, by wishing herself dead, wished nothing 
 of the kind now ; but only wished like Jane Eyre, " that she 
 might keep in good health and not die." 
 
 Yet she was infinitely worse off than in the old times when she 
 wished herself dead. She was in utter and entire solitude, for her 
 father was not much better company than can be found in the 
 saner side of Bedlam. She had not a soul to speak to in any sort 
 of way approaching the confidential, except Mab, and Mab could 
 not answer her. 
 
 Altliough Hagbut had stilled all tongues, with his fat emphatic 
 fist, yet even he could not prevent people looking at Kebecca in 
 chapel : and she knew that they were looking at her, and she 
 hated it. She never saw them looking at her, but she felt it ; 
 and the effect of this consciousness on her face was to produce an 
 expression of calm, careless anger, which assisted devotion in no 
 way whatever. 
 
 Had she known that they were only studying, in a humble way, 
 her imperial, magnificent beauty, reading it like a book, and learn- 
 ing from it, as one learns art at first, from a great and traditionally 
 authenticated picture, she might have been content, and have 
 given them at times softer developments of her not very mobile 
 face. But she thought they were only staring at her ; and she 
 hated her chapel worse than ever. 
 
 She felt this more than ever one morning, when she had gone 
 alone, her father being too ill to come. " I wlU never go again," 
 she said. " They hate me." And she stalked out through the 
 crowd with her head in the air. 
 
 Soper was helping Eussel along, and said, " Did you ever see 
 anything like that ? " 
 
 " A bold-faced jig," said Eussel. 
 
 " I mean," said Soper the schoolmistress, " did you ever see 
 such beauty in aU your life ; because I have had some experience, 
 and /never did." 
 
 Soper and Eussel went their ways, and Eebecca went hers ; 
 but she was followed home by two admirers. 
 
 Mr. Akin and Mr. Spicer. When they had turned into their 
 own. lane, they came up beside her, one on each side, and spoke 
 to her boldly and eagerly. 
 
HETTY. 271 
 
 " Glad to see you about, Miss. Mr. Turner is quite well, I 
 hope?" 
 
 " My father is not at all well," said Rebecca. " I am so glad 
 to see you two at chapel." 
 
 " We wiU leave that alone. Miss, at present," said Mr. Spicer. 
 " We want to speak to you very particular indeed. Miss. Don't 
 us, Jim •? " 
 
 "Indeed we do." 
 
 " You see, Miss," said Mr. Spicer the sweep, " we sweeps as 
 a general rule are the cleanest of aU working chaps, always taking 
 a bath afore we turns in. But we have what we call the black 
 bed, into which we turns in all our crock when there's a difficult 
 flue early in the morning. And we got orders for Beaufort House, 
 and (you won't tell on a man for breaking the act) I lay in the 
 black bed with my youngest son Tom, to put he up the flue before 
 the police was round. It was agen the law I know, but that boy 
 loves his profession ; I should say his art : for that boy is as 
 much an artist in a crooked flue, as the great Anelay is in the 
 Mysteries of London. With a father's feelings I went with him 
 of course, and we was no sooner out of our house, than he said — 
 
 " ' See to those coves round Mr. Turner's, father.' " 
 
 " Burglars ? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 " There was two on them, Miss. It was pretty dark, but we 
 could see. One was a young swell, and the other I know'd." 
 
 " This is very alarming," said Rebecca. " What did you do ? " 
 
 " I called out the name of the man I know'd. I said, ' Bob 
 Syers, you hook it.' And he offered in return a low remark, 
 referring to a misfortune of mine in years gone by ; but he hooked 
 it all the same." 
 
 " Whatever shaU we do ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " Put the police to watch. Syers is well know'd, as is doubtless 
 the young swell." 
 
 "I can't employ the police," said Rebecca, incautiously. 
 " Whatever shall I do ? " 
 
 In the following paragraph I am only speaking of what I have 
 seen with my own eyes. It is wrong and immoral, but there it 
 is, for better or for worse — a great deal for worse, I should say. 
 
 Rebecca had won these men. Not by her beauty, for their 
 eyes were too utterly untrained to see her beauty. They would 
 probably have pronounced Buckingham Palace to be finer than 
 WeUs, Bayeux, or Salisbuiy, and have called Winchester a barn. 
 They would possibly have called a red-faced Devon lass far prettier 
 than Rebecca. It was not her beauty which had won these men, 
 it was her sympathy and geniality. They were neither of them 
 
272 HETTY. 
 
 very respectable men ; but either of them would have fought for 
 her, merely in return for kind words and kind acts to their wives, 
 at any time. Now that she had confessed to them that there was 
 something the matter in her father's house, which forbade the 
 police being called in, they would die for her, or risk it. There 
 was a new bond of sympathy between her and these gentlemen 
 now, which made them ready for anything in her behalf. It 
 is all wrong and bad, but so it is. You don't know where the 
 criminal class begins. Still less do you know ivhere the sympathy 
 with the criminal class beyins. 
 
 And further, Mr. Turner, soHcitor and Methodist, had been an 
 offensive person to them both, by his mere existence hitherto. 
 Now that there was an obvious hitch in his affairs, insoluble by 
 those enemies of mankind the Metropolitan police, they began to 
 have a fellow-feeling with him, which they never had before. The 
 sympathies of people like Mr. Spicer and Mr. Akin, are distinctly 
 not on the side of the law. On all sentimental grounds they were 
 perfectly ready to assist Rebecca. 
 
 " Lord bless you. Miss," said Mr. Spicer, " don't vex yourself. 
 We will watch. You have got a little dog as will bark." 
 
 " Yes," said Rebecca, showing Mab. 
 
 "Pretty dear," said Jim Akin, "there she is. Let me have 
 the handling of her. Miss, please. She is worth ten pound. Miss ; 
 there ain't a p'int about this dog which is at fault. Miss," he 
 continued, nursing Mab. 
 
 " Never mind the dog, Jim," said Mr. Spicer. 
 
 '' Ah, but I do mind the dog, Spicer," said Mr. Akin. " You 
 ain't a cynosure in dogs, you see." 
 
 " He'd serve six months for a rat-tailed terrier, Miss," said 
 Mr. Spicer. " We all have our fancies. But see here ; durst 
 you fire a gun ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know how ; my father has sho^vn me." 
 
 "Then," said Mr. Spicer, " every time that little dog barks, 
 you fire a gun out a winder, and me and Jim wiU be with you. 
 They won't try it on often, if you do that. Miss. Their nerves 
 is never good. If it only comes to nothing at aU, they will get 
 soared ; if we get 'em in the house, why then we shall know what 
 to do. You needn't bother about the policemen. In fact, we 
 don't want no police round here." 
 
 "I will do what you tell me," said Rebecca. "If anything 
 were to happen, you could hold your tongues— keep silent — could 
 you not ? " 
 
 Mr. Spicer sniffed, and Mr. Akin, in giving back Mab, winked. 
 " Tell her about the backer, Spicer," said this coarse young man. 
 
HETTY. 273 
 
 " Hold your tongue, you fool," said Mr. Spicer. " "What do 
 you suppose the young lady would want to know about the run- 
 ning of a twopenny-halfpenny, four hundred boxes of cigars, so 
 high up the river as this, in a ballast lighter ? I am ashamed on 
 you. Good afternoon. Miss ; depend on us." And so they 
 went. 
 
 Leaving Eebecca with the terrible impression that she had con- 
 nected herself with the criminal classes, not through her own fault, 
 but utterly without hope of extrication. She was so utterly puzzled 
 by her quaint position, that she was actually whimsical, almost 
 humorous over it. 
 
 " I shall be in gaol, my dear," she said to Mab. " And you 
 will be reduced to bacon and cold potatoes, at Akin's, until I come 
 out again. I icish father had not broken the law in this matter, 
 even from his very high motives. Bother you," she continued, 
 shaking her fist at the law of the land, " you will pass over Sir 
 Gorham Philpott, and Lord Ducetoy, and you will catch my 
 father. You Brute, not if I can stop it." 
 
 She had come at her purpose before she reached home. Her 
 father was in a very difficult position : detaining papers which he 
 had no right to detain : detaining them on very chivalrous grounds. 
 But he bad only seen part of the consequences in a sentimental, 
 or as she put it, Walhani Green way ; the first thing she had to 
 do, was to put the Limehouse view of the question before him. 
 
 So she burst in on him suddenly, and said, " Pa, you have made 
 a nice mess of it. They are going to rob and murder us all. 
 They were about the house two nights ago." 
 
 " So I suppose," said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " So you suppose," said Eebecca. " Well, I tell you, pa, that 
 I am not used to it, and that I am not going to stand it. 
 Trampling about in other people's gardens, indeed ! I tell 
 you, pa, that I am not going to endure it." 
 
 " Are you going to leave me, Becky ? " said Mr. Turner. 
 
 Eebecca had not calculated on this. The thread of her 
 argument was ravelled. 
 
 "Leave you, dear," she said, kneeling at his feet. "Why, 
 father, father, I have no one left but you, now Alfred is gone. 
 My dear, I will never leave you this side of the grave." 
 
 " Is Alfred Morley actually gone? " said Mr. Turner, eagerly. 
 
 "Yes, but he wiU come back. He is only gone for a weary 
 year or two ; just to leave us alone, you know." 
 
 "I thought from your manner that you were angry with me; 
 stay by me." 
 
 " I was and am angry with you," said Eebecca ; " you are moping 
 
 19 
 
274 HETTY. 
 
 and brooding wlien you should be acting. We want your brains 
 to direct us ; we will find hands to assist." 
 
 " We ?" said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " Yes,we,"saidKehecca; " Spicer and Akin and I, not to mention 
 Mab. Tell us what to do." 
 
 " You have strange accomplices," said Turner. 
 
 "And you have done a strange tiling. Their motives are as 
 high as yours. They help us from mere love." 
 
 "What have they seen?" asked Mr. Turner, rousing him- 
 self. 
 
 " Our house was ' attempted ' two days ago by two men. One, 
 Syers, a burglar, and the other a young gentleman. Spicer the 
 sweep knew Syers, and challenged him. The young gentleman 
 he did not know." 
 
 Mr. Turner lay back in his chair and laughed — laughed again 
 almost heartily ; then he began to speak. 
 
 " My dear child, this is exactly as I supposed. The man Syers 
 is, as you tell me, you being acquainted with the criminal class so 
 intimately, a burglar. Now the young gentleman who was with 
 him is Edmund Philpott, whose forgeries, those of my own name 
 in particular, I hold." 
 
 "Well," said Kebecca. 
 
 "You may well say 'well,'" said Mr. Turner, "you don't 
 understand business ; indeed no one will soon, now that financing 
 has come in, and the L. C. & D. can't exactly make out whether 
 Mr. P. owes them six millions of money, or they owe him two-and- 
 a-half millions. But you understand enough for this. That a 
 Limited Liability Company bought the Gorham-Philpott business 
 for JS200,000, and have made a mess of it, as limited companies 
 always do and always will. We don't icant limited liability, girl, 
 we want unlimited responsibility. Ha I look at M. when he was 
 short : what did the trade say to the limited liability companies ? 
 Why they said, one and all, ' we will have the man and not a parcel 
 of irresponsible shareholders. We know the man, and the man 
 is honest as knows the business,' says they, ' but we don't Imow 
 five hundred irresponsible shareholders ' ; and the trade pulled the 
 man through, and there he is now. 
 
 " Well, child, you can't understand this, though every reader 
 of a newspaper can. This Gorham-Philpott business was sold ; 
 and I gave up my position as their attorney. And first of all I 
 did a wrong thing for our relation. Lord Ducetoy — I kept his 
 papers here to save them from the smash. And secondly, to save 
 Sir Gorham, I kept all the papers which young Edmund had 
 forged." 
 
HETTY. 275 
 
 "And you did well and nobly," said Eebecoa. "You have 
 broken the law, I doubt not. But I am with you." 
 
 " Well, that is finely said," said Mr. Turner. " But don't you 
 go breaking the law ; you know one is quite enough in a family. 
 Listen, and don't talk nonsense. The Limited Company has gone 
 to unutterable ruin. The property of the old house was guaranteed 
 to the Company, and their deeds must come into the Bankruptcy 
 Court. Some I have burnt in my brooding folly, some are here 
 still. I hardly know, child, what I have destroyed and what I 
 have not. But young Philpott has forged heavily : he believes 
 that his forgeries are here, and he will murder us all." 
 
 " And indeed he will murder none of us," said Eebecca ; " I'll 
 sort him if he comes here. Pa, dear, what on earth ever caused 
 you to be so silly? " 
 
 "As how?" 
 
 " As to burn those papers." 
 
 "Brooding and brooding," said Mr. Turner; "brooding about 
 your mother eternally, for one thing. I don't know what I have 
 burnt and what I have not." 
 
 " Can't you look and see, pa ? " 
 
 "No, I am gone beyond that. It kiUs me to look at papers. 
 I am a lost man." 
 
 " Are you in debt, pa ? " 
 
 "No. There will be money enough when I am gone. But 
 Hagbut told me on our last meeting about business matters that 
 he saw no signs of grace in me. And he is an experienced man 
 in spiritual matters ; therefore I doubt that I have never been 
 convicted of sin, and am damned everlastingly. That is all." 
 
 "This is worse nonsense than the other," said Eebecca, 
 furiously; "pa, how can you sit there and talk like that, with 
 the good God listening to you ? Hagbut is a good fellow, but he 
 ought to be hung if he told you that." 
 
 " He did not, my dear. I know it," said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " Well, I can do nothing with you," said Eebecca, " except ask 
 you not to talk nonsense. Do you think they will try the house 
 again ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "Shall you shoot young Philpott, if you meet him?" said 
 Eebecca. 
 
 The answer was a curious one. Mr. Turner raised a wan, pale 
 face to hers, from which every kind of expression was banished. 
 Her father's brain had gone. The mechanical work of his office 
 for so many years, his terrible troubles with his wife in old times, 
 and this last miserable, silly, inextricable confusion, had been too 
 
276 HETTY. 
 
 much for him. Eebecca saw that she could not trust him 
 again. 
 
 Once see that dead stare in the eyes of one you love, and love 
 may remain ; but confidence has departed for ever. 
 
 Rebecca repeated her question, with an artificial laugh. " You 
 won't shoot young Philpott, will you, pa ? " 
 
 His answer was worse than his silence. He looked at her 
 steadily, and with some recollection of the old days, of which 
 she knew nothing, said — 
 
 " Trout should he as bright as peacocks before you should catch 
 them. Or to be more correct, like the butterfly called Vanessa 
 lo. You should lay them carefully in cowslips and grass ; an 
 orchis or two atop is not amiss ; Morio or Pyramidalis would do ; 
 but above all things a sprig of ' Geum,' which the hinds call 
 ' Avens,' Lord Imows why. Seek also in the damp meadows for 
 yom' Ophioglossum, and put a piece of it in your biggest trout's 
 mouth. And when she sees it she will know what you mean by 
 her. And she will walk in the sun along the south waU, and will 
 pick for you Rosemary, Old man, and the flower which fools call 
 ' Prince's feather,' but which men call ' Love lies a-hleeding.' 
 That is what she will do, and then go and marry George Somers." 
 
 " Lord help me ! " said poor Rebecca. " His mind is gone." 
 
 Not gone, Eebecca, only babbling of green fields. Most men 
 have lived at least three lives before they get married, and once 
 and for all lay everything at the feet of one woman. He was only 
 dazed a little in his brain, and, as I have noticed in dying men, 
 reverting to the first of his lives — a life she knew not of. He was 
 shrewd enough next morning ; his keenness was more painful to 
 her than his wandering. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE WAIPUEGIS NIGHT. 
 
 Me. Tuenee slept, or pretended to, tiU nine o'clock, then he began 
 furiously ringing his hell. Rebecca came to him in her dressing- 
 gown. 
 
 " Is the Twies come, child ? " he said. 
 
 " How could it be come, pa ? " 
 
 " Go eastward, child, and meet it. Quick, go ! " 
 
 She dressed herself and went eastward, she had got nearly to 
 
HETTY. 277 
 
 the South Kensington Museum before she got the Times, and she 
 hurried bade with it. Her father sat up in bed while ho opened 
 it. After glancing at a column or so, he said, " What a thundering 
 lie ! " 
 
 "What, pa?" 
 
 " Philpott & Co., Limited," he answered, " bankrupt for 
 £800,000. Why, child, I could account for £1,200,000. I 
 will have another nap after that. If any genteel-looking man 
 calls, tell him — well, tell him he had better call somewhere else. 
 We know too much here." 
 
 What between Turner's wildness of the night before, and his 
 shrewd jocularity now, poor Eebecca was utterly puzzled. One 
 thing she knew, and that was that Morley, Hartop, and the never- 
 seen Hetty, were all at sea, that her father's mind was going, and 
 that he and she were alone in the world together. 
 
 One can see how our nation has developed by turning over old 
 novels ; for one, over " Dombey and Son," written by Dickens, a 
 man not imacquainted with the ways of this world, but by our new 
 lights rather behind his time, in a few particulars. 
 
 For instance, Mr. Dombey goes bankrupt for the mean sum of 
 one hundred thousand pounds. That was all very weU in 1848, 
 but we have improved on that since. Mr. Perch, the messenger, 
 congratulated himself on the fact that Dombey had gone for " one 
 hundred — thousand — pound." That is but a small smash now. 
 Great, and heretofore trusted names in trade, seem to be vying 
 with the worst of the old aristocratic scoundrels, and beating them 
 hollow. The frightful recklessness of the habitual gambler, Lord 
 Momington (about £700,000, leaving no one unpaid in the end), 
 or that of the unhappy boy just dead (some £200,000), is fairly 
 beaten out of calculation by the deficiencies of some of the clearest 
 and best heads in the world of business. How these men can keep 
 sane under such a nightmare of hopeless debt is the wonder to 
 some. See if this little case of the Philpotts is overstated in any 
 way. Do we not all know of an honoured (justly honoured) member 
 of the House, now dead and beyond trouble, who sat later than any 
 one at the House ; sat through the most wearisome of business, 
 sooner than //o home. There was a leaden weight of £300,000 
 on that man's soul. That hopeless deficiency of capital, which, 
 well used, would have saved Bethnal Green, or the Isle of Dogs, 
 from their present state, hanging on his mind ; hanging round his 
 neck. It was no error of his, but of younger branches of his 
 family. He was one of the purest, best, and noblest of men, but 
 condemned to silence for the love which he bore to his family. 
 
 Such an old age is not good to think about. Better to study 
 
278 HETTY. 
 
 William Blake, when he is most wildly melancholy, and most 
 unutterably sad. Still in Blake's deepest sadness, there is almost 
 always tenderness and hope. And so we should think of this poor 
 member, who had never one selfish thought in his heart. Turn 
 to Blake's great masterpiece, "Death's Door"* (which I have 
 known since I was six years old, and which never palls on one), 
 when you think of an old man, dishonoured through no fault of his, 
 creeping to his tomb, as Sir Gorham Philpott was to his. 
 
 The younger members of a dishonoured family will, however, 
 sometimes make a fight to save what cannot be saved, more 
 particularly whore there has been criminality. Young Philpott 
 was distinctly criminal. He had forged more boldly than Sir John 
 Paul. He was, unlike that man, dissolute, dissipated, and utterly 
 reckless. He was perfectly safe if he could recover his own 
 forgeries, and he knew that Turner had them all. Could he get 
 those forgeries in his own hand, be was well provided for. With 
 a view to these contingencies he bad bought heavily in foreign 
 funds, denying himself every kind of luxury to do so. In the case 
 of a mere bankruptcy, these funds could not be tracked, but in the 
 case of a criminal prosecution, his money was of little value to 
 him, for he would spend his time at Portland. This made him 
 desperate. 
 
 Another thing made him still more desperate. This young 
 forger was a very handsome young fellow, of good manners, and 
 his family had caused him to make a great aUiance with another 
 great house ; and so he had married, somewhat against his wiU, 
 one of the most beautiful and charming women ever born. 
 
 He married her first, and fell in love with her afterwards, as is 
 often the case. His love for her grew as time went on : her 
 
 • Notes are very unpopular, but one seems necessary here. The piece 
 I mean is to be found at p. 224 of Gilchrist's " Life of Blake," but has 
 been copied many times. A bent old man, doubled up with age, is hobbling 
 on crutches into a vault. He is not well clad, and the winds of the world 
 are blowing on him from behind, and helping him towards the dark door- 
 way — a half-open iron door set in Cyclopic stonework. The attitude and 
 gait of the old man are, as far as my experience goes, not only unapproached 
 but unapproachable. Many Frenchmen — and a few Englishmen — can 
 paint action in double-quick time. Blake here has expressed action, not 
 in double-quick time, or even in quick time, but in sloio time. I have 
 no space to descant on the marvellous sentimental beauties of this 
 wonderful piece, worthy to rank with Michael Angelo's " Loreuzo de 
 Medici," or Velasquez's "Orlando Muerto." Below the feet of the old 
 man, dimly seen in the darkness, are the barred windows of the charnel- 
 house, to which we must all come. But above and aloft, in blazing sun- 
 light, is the newly-awakened figure of a young man rising naked and 
 wondering into the wonders of the new life. 
 
HETTY. 279 
 
 exquisite grace, her perfect equable temper, her beauty, her 
 deference to him, her intelligence — aU had their effect on him. 
 And after two years, he awoke one morning, by her side, and saw 
 the whole of his very ghastly position. He was a felon, who might 
 be in Cold-Bath Fields to-morrow, and she thought him an honest 
 and respectable man. 
 
 ' ' She would stand the bankruptcy, but she could not stand 
 that," was what he said. " By the Lord ! I have a good mind to 
 teU her the whole business, and get it over." 
 
 So it happened one morning that Mrs. Philpott, turning over in 
 her bed, found her husband kneeling at the bedside with the sheets 
 bathed in blood. " I have hurt my head," he said. " I got out 
 of bed incautiously, and have broken my head over the dressing- 
 table." She was piteous and tender over his accident; little 
 thinking that the young man, in his mad despair, had rushed 
 against the wall. Enough of such things ; the man was desperate. 
 
 His desperation little matters to us, save that he brought it to 
 Turner's house, and so involved our Rebecca, and her dog Mab. 
 In a little story, about homely facts like these, one has not room 
 for one's rascals. Neither has one the genius of Shakspeare to 
 develop one's rascal (Falstaff) until wrong gets to be right, and 
 one loves him. 
 
 Rebecca said to her father, " Pa, haven't you made a great mess 
 of it?" 
 
 " Very great indeed, my dear." 
 
 " Why don't you teU the whole truth, pa ? " 
 
 " Because I should be in Cold-Bath Fields Prison, my dear." 
 
 "But we can't come out of it, dear pa, any way." 
 
 " My dear child," said Mr. Turner ; " the whole thing is a stale- 
 mate at chess. No one dare move for his life. I have seen worse 
 muddled matters than this got through." And, indeed, he gave 
 her proof. 
 
 " Why, even in Paul's case," he said ; " if it had not been for 
 a high-minded and indignant parson, the whole thing v/ould have 
 dropped through. I teU you, child, that you don't know business. 
 Nobody is safe except a magistrate's butler. I am very, very tired 
 again, Rebecca. I am going to die." 
 
 " Pa, you had better go to bed again, if you talk such nonsense 
 as that." 
 
 "I am going, my dear. I shall sleep through the day, and 
 wake at night. They wiU try the house to-night. Be ready for 
 them." 
 
 " How shall I be ready for them, father ? " 
 
 " Bless the girl, I don't know. Ducetoy's deeds are in the iron 
 
280 HETTY. 
 
 safe. Philpott's papers are in the box under my bed. Do the best 
 you can, child ; I am horribly drowsy — deadly drowsy. They 
 will try the house to-night, and if the house gets into the posses- 
 sion of the police, I can't say what will happen. Go and see to 
 matters, I am going to sleep." 
 
 Eebecca, seeing that there was nothing more to be got out of 
 her father, did probably the quaintest and most indiscreet thing 
 which she ever did in all her life. Matters were very desperate 
 with her. Anticipated disaster had been familiar with her for 
 some time. But here was disaster itself. Disaster of the very 
 worst kind. She knew perfectly well that in the opinion of 
 experienced lawyers about the great bankruptcy of the Philpotts, 
 her father must sooner or later, through his foUy, be involved. 
 How deep she knew not. Her father, with the highest motives 
 possible, had broken the law. She went for advice and assistance 
 to people whom she dreamt had had some experience that way 
 themselves. 
 
 It was twelve o'clock, high noon, when she put her hat on, and 
 stepped across the lane to Mrs. Akin. 
 
 Mrs. Akin was in a deluge of soapsuds. She took in washing. 
 Rebecca said to her, " Mrs. Akin, is your husband at home ? " 
 
 "Dear Miss," she said; "no. He is out with his barrer. 
 There is some husbands. Miss, which you will find yourself, when 
 you are married, and a nicer gentleman I never see, I am sure, 
 who objects to any washing at home at aU, but wants it all put 
 out, and I am sure I hope for your favours. Miss. Some wiU 
 stand one washing-day in the week, and some won't. But my dear 
 man, he has a washing-day every week, and never grumbles. He 
 may come round home to dinner. Miss, but I ask you to look at 
 his little home, full of damp linen ; you are a-sneezing yourself. 
 If he comes home shall I make him step across ? " 
 
 "If you would be so good," said Eebecca. 
 
 " He would step further than that for you. Miss," she said; 
 " there is a little one in heaven pleading for you with us. Miss. 
 The old fellow shall come across." * 
 
 Rebecca left the costermonger's wife — not a noticeable woman 
 in any way — and went next door to the chimney-sweep's wife, who 
 was decidedly a noticeable person. 
 
 She was a very stout, florid woman, with all the ill-temper which 
 is produced by the accumulation of fat round the heart ; she scowled 
 on Rebecca. 
 
 * To meet any charge of want o£ verisimilitude from any one not 
 acquainted witli tlie labouring classes so well as myself, I have repro- 
 duced actual dialogue. 
 
HETTY. 281 
 
 " Is Mr. Spicer at home, please ? " she said. 
 
 " No, he ain't." 
 
 " I am very sorry for that, for I wanted to speak to him." 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 " I only wanted a little advice," said Eehecca. 
 
 "I can give you some of that. Don't you go trampolinoing 
 about with those Methodist parsons too much. They are no 
 good." 
 
 "I shall not have the chance of doing so any more, Mrs. 
 Spicer," said she. 
 
 " And a good job, too. And now you have come to us for advice, 
 I'll advise you a little more. Don't you come here unsettling my 
 man's mind, and getting him to chapel, and setting his mind to 
 the keeping of the law about the boys. Why I suppose your advice 
 has cost me a cool i620 a year. He won't send a boy up a flue 
 now since he has taken to consort with you. And, if you knew 
 anything at all, you would know there was flues which could not 
 be swep' without boys. And our connection resents it naturally. 
 My man says, ' it is agin the law,' and they make answer, ' do you 
 accuse us of abetting an' breaking the law ? ' and he, with his 
 spirit, makes answer, ' I do.' ' Then you need not call again, Mr. 
 Spicer,' they says ; and that is your doing." 
 
 " You are very impertinent and entirely wrong,'' said Eebecca ; 
 " if I have prevented Mr. Spicer, my very good friend, from send- 
 ing boys up these horrible chimneys, I am very glad. I would 
 have any one transported who sent those children up the chimneys. 
 I want to know when Mr. Spicer will be at home." 
 
 " Then you just shan't. I don't want him near yours. There's 
 worse gone on in that house than sending boys up flues. Better 
 send a boy up a flue than chuck a woman downstairs. You shan't 
 see him — you sha'n't see him — lawk, old man, is that you ? " 
 
 It was indeed that worthy chimney-sweep, who had been awakened 
 by his wife's voice, and had heard the whole of the argument while 
 he was dressing. And a very fine, grave-looking man Mr. Spicer 
 was too ; ugly, but rather grand, owing none of his good looks to 
 his complexion, which was rendered very pale by daily applications 
 of soot. He laid his hand on his wife's shoulder, and with the 
 cool determination which seems almost a spkialite in his trade,* 
 beckoned to her to retire, which she did, perfectly dumb. 
 
 • Chimaey-sweeps are but little koown or understood. Very few people 
 know tbat that splendid young man, Sadler, who raced Kelly himself so 
 hard the other day, was a chimney-sweep. I was trying once to make 
 peace between a working bricklayer (Harris) and a working cooper (Letwell). 
 Old Harris struck out in pride of family ; Letwell's sister (I think) had 
 
282 HETTY. 
 
 "We will walk across the road, Miss, if you please," said Mr. 
 Spicer, and he led the way. As soon as they were clear of the 
 house he said, " The hest woman in the world, Miss, if you only 
 knew it." 
 
 " So I should fancy," said Eehecca ; "she does not like me, 
 but there are many others who do not. In fact I do not at all 
 like myself." 
 
 " Indeed, Miss ! " said Mr. Spicer. 
 
 " No," said Eehecca ; " I do not like myself at all. I do not 
 hate myself, Mr. Spicer ; I only disUke and despise myself. For 
 you know, Mr. Spicer, I am a most contemptible fool." 
 
 "Indeed, Miss. Now, I should not have thought that, unless 
 you had told me. But it is no doubt true, you are better educated 
 than I am." 
 
 " You are not a gentleman, Mr. Spicer," said Eehecca, laughing 
 in spite of herself. 
 
 " No, Miss ; but in what particular ? " 
 
 " When any one accuses themselves to a gentleman, Mr. Spicer, 
 the gentleman excuses them. Now, you have confirmed my view 
 of myself, doubtless from politeness ; but still, you are no gentle- 
 man. You should have told me that I was one mass of wisdom ; 
 as it is, you have merely confirmed my opinion, somewhat emphati- 
 cally, that I am a contemptible fool." 
 
 " I only meant to mind my manners. Miss ; and my manners 
 tell me, that you should never contradict a lady. That is what 
 Mr. Hagbut calls the unwritten law. That is about the size of 
 that." 
 
 " Well," said Eehecca ; " wc must not joke any more, Spicer ; 
 I am in serious trouble." 
 
 "We know all about it, my dear Miss," said Spicer; "the 
 only question is When and where ? ' ' 
 
 " The when is to-night, I am afraid ; and the where will be inside 
 the house." 
 
 " Then there is no reason for much talk. Miss. The least said 
 the soonest mended. Jim and I will come in and lay down any- 
 where." 
 
 " But I want to explain to you," went on Eehecca. 
 
 " Just exactly what we don't want. Miss. We want to know 
 nothing. Did you ever hear a man cross-examined ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Ah ! If the grand jury would take the trouble to follow some 
 
 viarried a sioeep. Old Harris afterwards got two months for a violent 
 breach of the revenue laws, about which I had warned him ; so I suppose 
 there was no further question about family precedence. 
 
HETTY 283 
 
 of their ' true bills ' downstairs, instead of going off to play billiards, 
 they wouldn't send so much downstairs as they do. I don't want 
 no cross-examination, unless I can say, No. TeU me and Jim 
 what you want done, but nothing more." 
 
 "Can Mr. Akin and you sleep together in one garret? And 
 can you know nothing at all ? " 
 
 " We can sleep together well enough, and we can easy manage 
 holding our tongues, if there is nothing told us to talk about." 
 
 " Then come about ten o'clock, please, and I will have every- 
 thing arranged for you." 
 
 Her father slept all day, but at night got up and dressed 
 himself, and took dinner and wine. Then, setting all the doors 
 open, he walked up and down the house. At the last she told 
 him what she had done ; and he, having got feeble and iU again, 
 was persuaded to go to bed, with his clothes and his pistol, all 
 ready. 
 
 " I shall not sleep a wink," he said ; and saying so, laid his 
 weary head over, and was asleep in one moment. 
 
 Then Eebecca began her tiger walk up and down the house, 
 until Mr. Akin and Mr. Spicer turned in. Mr. Akin, a soientifio 
 and experienced hand, got Mab, and put her to sleep in the small 
 of his back ; which, as he explained to his companion, was the 
 wakefuUest place of all for a dog. Mab was well enough content, 
 and scarcely recognised her mistress, during her frequent visits to 
 her two sleeping friends. For they soon slept, after a consulta- 
 tion about taking off their boots. Mr. Spicer could never, he 
 said, sleep well in his boots, unless he was three-quarters on. 
 But Mr. Akin, having pointed out to him that this job would come 
 to rough-and-tumble in any way, or might come to Chevy-liigh-ho 
 the grinder, Mr. Spicer determined to sleep without even the 
 removal of his boots ; which determination he put in force with 
 the rapidity of a man who has to do his day's work long before 
 other people are awake. 
 
 It was a wild night, dripping wet, with great rushes of wind 
 from the westward — the middle of a wild spring, when Eebecca 
 began her night watch. She set dim candles in different rooms, 
 and began her walk up and down ; going from her own room along 
 the main passage at the head of the stairs, towards her father's 
 door, and passing that to the room where her two indifferent, 
 honest friends slept and snored. 
 
 The wind howled at every window and door, in the crazy old 
 house ; and, with an ear tuned to concert-pitch, by anxiety and 
 nervousness, she listened for something more than the wind, but 
 nothing came. 
 
284 HETTY. 
 
 It would have been less dreary, perhaps, had the night been 
 silent and still. But the dreariness of that house to one 
 listening for suspicious sounds, and hearing a hundred, was 
 terrible, even before the lane was stiU and asleep. After that, 
 terror grew into horror, and horror into a kind of temporary loss 
 of judgment. 
 
 Dim, inexpressible, causeless terrors come, I believe, on the 
 most prosperous of us, when we wake in the night, in the dark. 
 I know a military officer of good repute, excellent courage, re- 
 spectable fortune, and without one solitary anxiety in this world, 
 who takes his recreation in these sad, solitary hours, by thinking 
 of death. By putting to himself that he must die some time or 
 another, and trying to make out what the last, horrible hour will 
 he like. Rebecca's fantasies, this night, were scarcely more 
 reasonable than his. 
 
 There was very little cause for fear of any kind : there was 
 nothing of what some call sensational about her position. She 
 was splendidly protected. Her father had done a very quaint 
 thing, but she had practically checkmated all consequences. 
 StiU, she was in a state of nervous anxiety ; and that anxiety 
 became prascordial, and made her start with inexplicable terrors at 
 eveiy sound, and in passing every dark place. The physical 
 effects of this nervousness was to make her knees tremble, and so 
 cause her to walk unsteadily. The mental effects of it were still 
 stranger. 
 
 For her anxiety began to take a single point as its culminating 
 one. I do not think that this is by any means a rare case. A 
 man confused in ruin, brought on by an accumulation of causes, 
 will say, that ho always knew that the beginning of it was some 
 twenty-pound speculation. A man, dazed, stunned, and ruined 
 by his wife's death, will attribute it to her swallowing a pin ten 
 years before, after his neighbours had been hearing her bark her 
 heart out all the winter, with tubercular disease of the lungs. 
 Not weU chosen as examples, possibly, but which wiU do. 
 When people's minds are confused, they will pick out a cause 
 for a particular form of anxiety, seldom the right one. Rebecca 
 did on this occasion. The door behind Carry's bed — disused, 
 and locked and bolted for so many years — was the point she 
 fixed on as the most horrible and dangerous point in the house. 
 
 It communicated, as the reader may remember, between the 
 used portion of the house and the unused. Since her mother's 
 death, that back staircase, and all the adjacent part of the house, 
 had been closed up, and had been a mystery and a horror to 
 them. In very early days, as early as Rebecca could remember, 
 
HETTY. 285 
 
 Carry used to have a habit of slirieking out suddenly, in the 
 night, that some one was trying the door ; after which she would 
 fly, in her nightgown, and leave Eebecca in the terror of death. 
 And now, on this, to her, as she believed, supreme night, Rebecca, 
 with a soHtary candle, feebly lighting up the great room, stood 
 before that door, and thought of what lay behind it. 
 
 What ira,s there, locked up for twenty years, behind Carry's 
 bed ? The skin of her head had a cold, nervous creeping in it 
 (which is what the romantic people mean when they say that 
 So-and-so's hair stood on end). She had a horror on her which 
 was indescribable, as awful as the horror which occasionally 
 precedes death ; it had a somewhat singular effect on her, for 
 she moved Carry's bed out of the way, and looked at the door : 
 and as she did so she says that the handle was softly turned, and 
 some one pressed on the door from the outside. 
 
 One bolt, and the lock was all that opposed her. She had got 
 into a state of horror by solitude and mystery. One simple 
 physical movement, even of a door-handle, restored her to herself 
 in an instant. 
 
 " We will get this through, my gentleman," she thought, with 
 a low laugh : and suddenly and dexterously unlocked and un- 
 bolted the door, threw it open, and said, " Walk in, if you 
 please." 
 
 No one was there. There was nothing before her but a dark 
 passage, ending in darkness. The solitary glance at her feet 
 showed her, not only that no one was there, but that no one had 
 been there at all. The dust of twenty years, so lightly laid by 
 the hand of ever busy Nature, was untouched. The foot of a 
 spider might be traced on it, but not that of a man. The door 
 had been tried by hands not of this world. 
 
 So her horror revived again tenfold ; but, in her obstinacy, she 
 went on into the passage. And as she went she turned round, 
 and saw the marks of her own footsteps in the dust. She was 
 the first there. There were no other footsteps. The door bad 
 been tried by a ghost : and she went on, until she came to the 
 head of the stairs, at the foot of which her mother had been 
 picked up dead. And as she looked down them, her candle 
 struck against something, and she saw that it was a halter hang- 
 ing from the ceiling with a noose in it, ready for any man to put 
 his head into. Had there been a corpse as ghastly as that of 
 Berwick's over the trout stream in it, she could not have been 
 more unutterably terrified. She fled swiftly, with some member 
 of the other world's skinny hand entwined in her back hair, with 
 a view of detaining her, and showing her a little more. But she 
 
286 HETTY. 
 
 was strong and resolute ; and when she had got back to her bed- 
 room, locked and bolted the door, put Carry's bed back, and, 
 found her back hair unruffled, she began to believe that she had 
 been making a fool of herself, and thought she would go and look 
 at her friends. 
 
 Mr. Akin was what you may call a violent sleeper. Like the 
 famous hackney-coachman of our youth, Tamaroo, whatever he 
 did was done with fuiy and effusion. The frantic physical exer- 
 tion which that young man had to go through in going to sleep 
 would have ruined some constitutions. It was a University race 
 to him going to sleep, and a ten-mile handicap (he starting from 
 Scratch) for him to wake up again. At this time he was quies- 
 cent. He had taken off his velveteen coat, strangled himself with 
 the arms rovmd his neck, and suffocated himself by ramming his 
 head into one of the hare-pockets. He likewise found it necessary 
 to cross his left leg over his body, and hold on tight by his left 
 boot with his right hand. It was impossible, in regarding this 
 young man in his sleep, to avoid wondering what Mrs. Akin 
 thought of it. 
 
 In a similar way, when one looked at Mr. Spicer at rest, one 
 wondered whether Mrs. Spicer, in spite of accumulating wealth 
 and good position, did not wish that there might be a few altera- 
 tions in trifling details. For Mr. Spicer, though a quiet 
 sleeper, lay on his back, and spread himself out in every possible 
 direction, snoring magnificently. And, moreover, he talked in 
 his sleep, very constantly, as people who sleep under constant 
 expectation of being awakened always do. And Eebecca heard 
 him say, as she watched them for a moment, " Jane's mother is a 
 lie. The chaney and teaspoons was give to you by word of 
 mouth." 
 
 This was realistic enough to do away with the folly of the 
 deserted staircase ; her father's conduct dissipated her silly terror 
 much more. 
 
 He was sitting up before his writing-table, examining papers 
 and accounts. "Come in, old girl," he said. "Is there any 
 news?" 
 
 "There is none yet, father," she said. "How are you to- 
 night?" 
 
 " I am better, my love ; hard at work, you see." 
 
 " Pa," she said, "is it wise of you to work ? " 
 
 " My dear," he said, " believe an old man. Mere work never 
 hurt any one in this world. Just look at the lives of our public 
 men. Those who have lived the longest are generally found to 
 have worked the hardest. Work don't kiU ; excitement does. 
 
HETTY. 287 
 
 This mechanical work which I am doing now is doing me more 
 good than a doctor's shopfuU of medicine. Where have you 
 been ? " 
 
 " I have been frightened, father. I opened the door beliind 
 Carry's bed, and I got utterly terrified. There was a rope there 
 with a noose to it, as though one was going to hang himself." 
 
 "You silly child, to frighten yourself with fancies, when there 
 is real danger abroad. That is the rope of the old heU which 
 bangs in the cupola." 
 
 " Gracious me 1 " said Eebecca. " What a gaby I must have 
 been not to think of that," 
 
 " Did you see many ghosts ? " said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " Heaps," said Kebecca. 
 
 "How many? " 
 
 " A dozen or two. One of them turned the handle of the door, 
 under my nose." 
 
 " A ghost, you think ? Be sure." 
 
 " Oh, yes, a ghost. The dust on the staircase was quite un- 
 disturbed." 
 
 " You are sure of that ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am quite sure." 
 
 " Because we must mind that they do not get in that way." 
 
 " I win put my sheets on Carry's bed, and sleep there," said 
 Eebecca. 
 
 " I would if I were you," said her father. " Ho ! They will 
 not come to-night." 
 
 " WiU they come at all, father ? " 
 
 " They will most certainly come, one would fancy. But they 
 will come soon, I should think. It is possible that they have been 
 round the house to-night, and have seen us moving. Leave those 
 two good fellows to sleep here for another night or so. We can 
 reward them." 
 
 Morning dawned, and there was no sign of any burglary. 
 Kebecca had a consultation with Mr. Spicer and Mr. Akin before 
 they went away. 
 
 " My opinion is. Miss," said Akin (and Spicer hung on his 
 words, as on those of an expert), " that they won't tiy it on until 
 everything is quiet. Is it plate, Miss, or is it jewels ? " 
 
 " Neither," said Kebecca. " Papers." 
 
 Spicer and Akin looked at one another, and laughed. " Lord 
 love you. Miss ; that accounts for the swell being in it. Papers, 
 eh ? He'U get another professional hand ; we sprung one, and 
 they will make a mess of it at last. Have you got a pistol, or any 
 kind of firearm? " 
 
288 HETTY. 
 
 " We have pistols ; but I am a little afraid of them." 
 
 " Well, we will sleep here, turn and turn about, for a week. 
 Arter that, if you hear anything, fire your pistol, and we wiU be 
 with you. The little dog is your best alarm. I wish you and 
 your father slept closer together. You trust to us and the little 
 dog." 
 
 " Do you know anything about the part of om' house which is 
 shut up ? " asked Kebecca. 
 
 " The part under the bell-tower, Miss ? No, I don't, and I 
 don't want to." 
 
 " Come with me, then," said Rebecca. " Good morning, Mr. 
 Spicer, and a hundred thanks." 
 
 Akin left alone with Rebecca, exhibited a strange unwillingness 
 to foUow her. Still you would be utterly mistaken if you fancied 
 that the cockney was neither chivalrous nor superstitious. He 
 would sooner have fought any man within a mile, than have 
 followed Rebecca. He would sooner have seen a man privately 
 hanged than have gone into the disused part of the house, 
 " where the accident was." 
 
 But she took him to her bedroom. " You see, Mr. Akin, you 
 know more of this sort of thing than I do." (He knew more 
 than he need have done.) " I am going to put my bed across 
 this door. Just move that bed — will you ? — and come with 
 me." 
 
 Akin followed most unwillingly, though it was broad day. 
 "Do you see these footsteps?" she asked, when they were in 
 the passage ; " they are mine last night. Do you see any 
 others ? " 
 
 " There have been no footsteps, but those of yourn for twenty 
 years, Miss," said Akin, with emphasis. " Ai-e you going any 
 farther ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Rebecca ; "I want to see what is below." 
 
 And she led the way down the stairs, Akin following in the 
 same state of mind as Shimei. 
 
 "You are quite right," she chattered, "the stairs are piled 
 with dust. It was aU my fancy last night about some one having 
 got in here. There is not a footmark on the dust. See, here, at 
 the bottom of the stairs, is a shoe with a blue rosette, I will have 
 that" 
 
 " Come away, Miss, and leave it alone," said Akin, sharply ; 
 " there is ghostesses enough without yourn." For Akin had a 
 shrewd suspicion that this shoe had been left there after the 
 removal of Rebecca's mother from the very same place. 
 
 Rebecca got scared also, and came back with him somewhat 
 
HETTY. 289 
 
 liurriedly, with tlie ghost feoHng at her back. But she brought 
 the shoe with her, too. 
 
 " If you put your bed across that door, Miss," said Akin, " as 
 you propose, you stop 'cm tliat way. I can't make out myself 
 which way they will come. There is plenty if we leaves 
 watching." 
 
 " Do\ you think they will come at all, Mr. Akin ? " said 
 Eebecca, confidentially. 
 
 " Will they come ? I gather that there is forged papers. I 
 gather that there is a swell with cash. I gather that the governor 
 has those papers here. And that sweU will come after those 
 papers, with professional assistance, as sure as they apple trees 
 will blossom next April. Sooner or later he will have those 
 papers. Why, if he wiU get two years for 'em, it stands to 
 reason that he will chance three (and it's seldom more for a first 
 offence) for stealing 'em. He'll come fast enough." 
 
 " What cMi poor father do ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " That is easy enough to tell," said Akin ; "let your pa write 
 to that swell and say, ' Here, Tom,' and he says, ' you have been 
 a-writing of other folk's names here, and I have got the writings. 
 None of your gammon,' says your father. 'I've got your forged 
 writing, and I'll Old Bailey you as sure as there is a Old Bailey.' 
 Says your pa again, ' You have been a-hanging about my little 
 place, and giving a world of trouble, keeping Akin and Spicer up 
 all night, and my daughter and me sleeps habitual with Armstrong 
 revolvers in consequence of your goings on. Why,' says your pa, 
 ' you are a regular nuisance, that is about what you are. But I'U 
 tell you what I'U do with you,' says your pa ; ' you send me ten 
 thousand pounds, notes of the Bank of England, and you shall 
 have they documents. Not otherwise. There's been several rows,' 
 says your pa, ' about convicted swells being kep' in the okum yard, 
 at the 'Ouse of 'Crection, but Portland is bleak for delicate constu- 
 tions in the spring months, and the beaks theirselves has been 
 touched up in some of their speculations, and they mean Portland 
 and nothing short.' That is what your father ought to say to this 
 young swell. Your father, as a gentleman, would naturally dress 
 it up, and draw it milder than an ignorant man like me. Still, I 
 wish the plant was mine. I'd have the old girl to Eamsgate every 
 year, if it was." 
 
 " It might be yours," said Rebecca, suddenly, with that strange 
 heedlessness which was the great fault in her. 
 
 " Don't say 'such dreadful things as those. Miss," said Akin, 
 turning pale ; " that ain't worthy of you." 
 
 " What have I said ? " said Rebecca, aghast. 
 
 20 
 
290 HETTY. 
 
 " What was wrote in that book, Miss, which you give us, about 
 Charles Steward ? " 
 
 " The Pretender, yes. What have I said ? " 
 " It is wrote down in that hook, Miss, that Charles Steward, 
 who had heen up to some game or other, I never made out what, 
 had thirty thousand pounds set on his head. And he was loose 
 among the Highlanders (a had lot) and not one of them gave the 
 pleeee the office on him, not one out of all them — not for thirty 
 thousand pound. And you would rank me lower than a common 
 Highland drover." 
 
 " Dear Akin, I did not mean it. I spoke only in compli- 
 ment. I know you would never turn on us. Please don't be 
 angry." 
 
 There was a child in heaven who had left her footprints behind 
 her, which prevented Jim ever being angry with Rebecca. StOl, 
 she had heedlessly touched his honour. There is a mass of 
 potential chivah-y in this queer nation of ours, to which, under our 
 present military regime, we do not get. I wish I had the Queen's 
 commission to raise a regiment. Kingsley's Foot should be as 
 ten-ible as my grand-uncle's, Kingsley's Horse. And equally 
 queer in their antecedents, I doubt. I should trouble Lord 
 Shaftesbury for about two dozen from Field Lane to begin with. 
 
 To Rebecca the next fortnight was actually worse than any time 
 since the breaking of the PhUpott bank. Her father had told her 
 that the house would be broken into for the forged papers, which 
 was one evidence, and Akin, a most experienced man, had confirmed 
 his opinion emphatically. But she believed in it day after day less 
 and less, and after Mr. Spicer and Mr. Akin had taken to sleep at 
 home she was quite comfortable. They were all wrong together. 
 She bad never really believed in it at all. 
 
 The weather might have been better, for even in this part of the 
 metropolis it howled and raved. St. Swithin had been unpropi- 
 tious, and the land was deluged and drowned. StiU, Mr. Morley 
 was possibly safe, and wind was better than burglary. 
 
 " Pa," she said, one night, " they are not going to rob and 
 murder us at all." 
 
 "I am glad to hear it, my dear ; for I am getting very iU." 
 
 " Shall I sleep in your room, pa ? " 
 
 " No. Let me have the little dog. That is a very dear little 
 dog, Rebecca." 
 
 "You can have the dog, pa. She is very nice. Lot me sleep 
 in your room, dear." 
 
 "No, no," said Mr. Turner. "I am well enough, only I am 
 Very ill indeed." 
 
HETTY. 291 
 
 " You have not been to the office for ten days, pa ; you are not 
 well." 
 
 " I am going to sell out of the business, my love. It was too 
 much for me." 
 
 " And the papers ? " said Eebecca. 
 
 " You will hear about them," said he. And they went to their 
 respective beds. 
 
 Eebecca, with her head across the mysterious door, went to sleep 
 and dreamt of absolutely nothing. She told Alfred Morley in after 
 times that she never dreamt less in her life. After, as it seemed 
 to her, a good night's sleep, she was awakened by what she thought 
 was morning. But it was not morning at all. It was the hght of 
 a lantern on her face, held by a man with a black mask on, and 
 two others behind him. 
 
 " Miss Tui-ner," said this man, " we must trouble you to get 
 up. If you speak we shall use violence." 
 
 " How on earth did you get in ? " thought Eebecca. " This 
 your burglary, is it? I'll manage your business," she added to 
 herself. " Mr. Philpott, you have no possible business in a lady's 
 bedroom. If you only came after your own forgeries we should 
 not care ; but there are others. If you wiU retire, I wiU go to my 
 father, and your rascaHties shall be put into your own hand." 
 
 Young Philpott took the key from the door without one solitary 
 word, and locked the door on the outside. The instant he did so, 
 Eebecca was out of bed. She wrapped herself in her dressing- 
 gown, and pulling her bed aside, unlocked and unbolted the door, 
 ran barefooted to the rope of the bell, which hung in the turret. 
 
 Philpott heard the door unlocked, and ran in. But he was too 
 late ; the pluck and nerve of that solitary and defenceless girl had 
 beaten his well-laid plot. The girl who was to have been intimi- 
 dated, and held as hostage until the necessary papers were got from 
 her father had passed through their net. Instead of cowering 
 among them in terror, she was pulling resolutely at a rope, and 
 sending forth upon the night air clang, clang, clang, in a terrible 
 staccato, which in old times would have brought thirty thousand 
 men out of St. Antoine, and even now would peojjle it with ghosts, 
 if there were a St. Antoine ; a tocsin which promised to raise 
 Walham Green, if not St. Antoine. 
 
 Her enemies were utterly beaten. Philpott (no fool) was pre- 
 pared for both pluck and obstinacy ; for such rapidly acting 
 dexterity he was not prepared. The girl's brains were keener 
 than his. He was unused to crime, and accustomed to music. 
 When he heard his burglary proclaimed at midnight in an 
 amorphous staccato (I am sorry to use bad language), he fled. 
 
292 HETTY. 
 
 When he thought of the courage and dexterity through which 
 Eebecca had outwitted him, he fled faster for mere shame. The 
 bell, disused and dumb for twenty years, went on clang, clang, 
 clang, clang, proclaiming him to the world as a rained gamester, 
 who had staked all to keep his wife's respect, and had lost. The 
 poor fellow fled away. 
 
 Lost through the courage and dexterity of an idle girl, who was 
 going to be married to a Methodist parson — (if he came back) ; 
 but who had had messages from the sea which gave her saUors' 
 courage and sailors' recldessness. And she stiU went on ringing 
 that horrible bell. And if he had gone back and cut her throat 
 it would have been much the same. He had met with a nature 
 more powerful than his own. He was beaten. His wife must 
 know all now, and he was desperate, for he, potential felon as he 
 was, did not trust her. 
 
 One hardly knows sometimes whether Providence is kind or 
 unkind. In the end, it seems to me (and to others) that Provi- 
 dence always acts for the best. When you come to mere details, 
 any one can say Providence should have done otherwise. One 
 would say to those who question the government of this world, 
 that you must wait. One would say to them, pai- example, was 
 not the 2nd December the seal of Democracy, not of wax, but of 
 iron. 
 
 I have only a very poor little illustration to ofier for my pre- 
 tentious theory. It gets infinitesimaUy small as one looks at it. 
 StiU, granting that the little dog Mab was not brought into the 
 world for nothing, you must grant this. 
 
 When Rebecca began clanging the bell, Mab began to bark, 
 and aroused Mr. Turner, who put on his trousers, and got hold of 
 his pistol. Coming out he met young Philpott in a mask, but 
 knew him, and challenged him ' by name, holding his pistol 
 towards him. Philpott, in his desperation, fired at him and 
 wounded him, and Mr. Turner fell at the head of the stairs. 
 
 The whole district was gathered round now. Akin and Spicer 
 were in and had Philpott and his accomplices in hand very quickly. 
 Turner only said, " Let them go before the police come, and stop 
 that bell. Where is Rebecca ? " 
 
 Akin, the dexterous, assisted by Spicer, carried the captured 
 men through Rebecca's bedroom to get down the back stairs. On 
 their way they came on Eebecca ringing away as hard as ever. 
 
 " For heaven's sake. Miss, stop that noise," said Akin ; " the 
 parish engine's in the lane. Let us get these folks out this way. 
 Is there any road this way ? ' ' 
 
 There was, it seemed, and Philpott and his friends were got 
 
HETTY. 293 
 
 out. There was nothing saved from the bankruptcy save his 
 ■wife's fortune, and she knows nothing of his midnight meeting 
 with Rebecca. To pleasanter matters, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 TURNER SNUFFS THE SEA WIND. 
 
 The neighbourhood was aroused, and there were six engines in the 
 lane. The parish engine, anxious to assert itself against the office 
 engines, played upon the house for a little time, and then stopped 
 and drivelled into imbecility. The other engines went home 
 smoking pipes, and wondering why they had been sent for, when 
 there was no fire. The policeman had come to see what was the 
 matter, and had been promptly turned out by Rebecca. The lane 
 had gone to bed, on the theory that Mr. Turner had been took by 
 his conscience in the night, and had rung the bell for prayers. 
 There were more unconscious lies told that night, than there are 
 twice a year, and in the midst of it all Mr. Turner lay, severely 
 wounded through the deltoid, and Rebecca minding him. 
 She had got singularly emphatic all of a sudden. 
 " Pa, you don't want a doctor from here ? " 
 " No. All this must be kept quiet." 
 
 "You will die if you don't have one. Will you let me move 
 you to Limehouse ? " 
 
 " That is the best," he said, " good girl. We must take the 
 safe." 
 
 " Lor bless you, yes, dear pa. We will take that fast enough. 
 Bother the safe, I wish it was chucked in the water. You will 
 have to move in an hour, pa." 
 
 " I wish I was well out of it," said he, " with the safe." 
 " You wiU be well out of it directly," she said. " Keep quiet." 
 She ran down to the livery stables near by, and ordered a fly, 
 to take her father away in half an hour's time. It was there 
 punctually, and she hurried him in. 
 
 She had tied everything she could find tight round his deltoid, 
 and it is not a very difficult wound to staunch. He was very 
 quiet, in that lethargic state which comes from loss of blood, and 
 he cared nothing about anything. 
 
 She looked back on the old house until they turned the lane. 
 
294 HETTY. 
 
 And she said, " Theie is an end of that, thank heaven." He did 
 not care at all, " Where are you taking me ? " he said once. 
 
 " Limehouse," she answered. " 9, Pilot Terrace. Keep qniet, 
 or the hemorrhage will come on again." 
 
 " Where is Morley ? " he asked, as they were going along Bird 
 Cage Walk. 
 
 " At sea," she said. " Keep quiet. Evei^thing depends on 
 your keeping ahsolutely quiet and trusting implicitly to me. Your 
 wound is a severe one, and wUl be shortly followed by fever. You 
 must be perfectly quiet." 
 
 When they wore passing Tower HiU, he said, " You are a brave, 
 good girl, Eebecca, where did you get your courage ? " 
 
 " From Hetty," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Where did you see her then ? " said Mr. Turner. 
 
 " I have never seen her," said Eebecca, " and I don't suppose 
 I ever shall. But she is Alfred's daughter. And I have made a 
 daughter for Alfred, whom I suppose does not exist at aU." 
 
 " Talk to me, darling," said Turner. " My own Kebocca, talk 
 to me, for my wound is aching, aud I am going to die. Let me 
 hear you talk. What do you conceive about this Hetty ? " 
 
 " Give me your wounded arm, father, and put it over my 
 breast ; lay your head on my breast, and if you keep quite quiet, 
 I will tell you what I have imagined Hetty to be. If I am wrong, 
 do not undeceive me. 
 
 " Hetty had no mother. Some girls have none. I had none. 
 
 "Hetty was a Eadical and a Dissenter in her heart. For no 
 person is a Eadical or a Dissenter, except from sentiment." 
 
 The wounded man said, " Eadicals and Dissenters form their 
 opinion on pure reason." 
 
 " Hold your tongue, pa, or I wOl knock you. Hetty found her- 
 self, as a Eadical and a Dissenter, bound hand and foot, by Eadical 
 and dissenting haybands. And she broke them." 
 
 " And we all wished she had been at the bottom of Jordan 
 when she did so," said the wounded man. 
 
 " But she was right in what she did, pa." 
 
 " No she wasn't," said he. " She is one of the most thunder- 
 ing fools on the face of the earth. I never heard of the girl doing 
 any good, that a costermonger's wife could not have done. She 
 has smashed her father's connection in our sect, and forced him 
 abroad, for which you have to thank her ; because I am going to 
 die, and you will be all alone until he comes back." 
 
 " But she is good," said Eebecca. 
 
 " ]\Iany fools are," was the only reply she got. 
 
 Hetty had been tried as a, subject of conversation and had 
 
HETTY. 295 
 
 utterly failed. Their silence towards one another was barely 
 become oppressive, when they were at Morley's house. 
 
 Very few words were necessary from Eebecca to tell her stoiy. 
 They were at liome at once. Mr. Morley's landlady was easily 
 aroused, and it was a bright summer morning, with the river 
 gaily dancing on among the ships towards the sea, when Mr. 
 Turner stepped out of his oan-iage, and looked about him. 
 
 " Hush ! " he said. " It is good for us to be here. What a 
 lovely place to die in ! " 
 
 " To get well in, I think you mean, father," said Eebecca. 
 
 " No I don't," said he. " There is but little business left me 
 to do. That done I wiU go to sleep. I am sick of it all." 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 PILOT TEEEACE. 
 
 A TIME now came, which Eebecca has separated from all times in 
 her life. Such a time may come again, she says, but it has not 
 yet. 
 
 Ceaseless activity and care, ceaseless employment, ceaseless 
 -anxiety, ceaseless thought for others. A strange mixture of 
 melancholy waiting for death, and for life. 
 
 And all about and around, golden summer weather, bright 
 water, moving ships, distant Kentish hillsides basking in the sun. 
 The tomb at Walham Green had given up the soul so long 
 imprisoned there, and it had escaped not to useless idleness but 
 to anxious usefulness. 
 
 " As I saw him fading away, day after day, before my eyes, I 
 loved him more and more, but, believing that he was going to his 
 God, I do not think I was unhappy. I do not think I could be 
 unhappy under any circumstances at Pilot Terrace." 
 
 The girl was not talking nonsense when she said this. Inbred 
 in her nature was a love for brightness and motion, without which 
 she was petulant and miserable. Hereditary proclivities are one 
 of the few things which are absolutely certain ; in the greatest 
 number of instances, the sire sets his seal upon the race, but in 
 the case of a very strong will in the mother, she may compete 
 with her mate in the formation of characteristics. Eebecca's 
 mother coming of a stock which had been ^sed to light gaiety and 
 
296 HETTY. 
 
 music for centuries, had left this want with Kebecca, as her legacy 
 — the fortune on which she was to exist in the horrible prison at 
 Walhain Green. In addition to this precious legacy of her 
 mother's, she had got from her father not only the virtue, determi- 
 nation, but the vice, obstinacy (as Carry well knew). And further- 
 more, in addition to it all she had got — God knows where — I do 
 not, some bright clear spark of the divine nature, which made her 
 very eiTors and indiscretions lovely. 
 
 Poor child. What if she ran away to Broadstairs, thereby 
 violating a law never mentioned so far south as, and of course 
 never dreamt of, in Philistia : she was very sorry afterwards, and 
 she took her most discreet and excellently-beloved old nurse. 
 Poor old Eebecca, when she found her duty ready to her hand, 
 she did it. Have we all done so ? 
 
 She wanted light and beauty. She had seen dimly in old time 
 the Popish worship with her mother ; and up to the time when 
 she had run away to Broadstairs and seen the sea, that was the 
 only beautiful thing she had seen. There was movement, light, 
 brightness of colour ; the tinsel is as good as the gold to a child. 
 She had dimly recollected it, in the long hours of Puritan seclusion 
 at Walham Green. How long, oh my Puritan brothers, will you 
 make religion hideous to one-half at least of your children ? think, 
 in these days, when the nation is becoming educated to a rough 
 love of light and beauty, what mischief you are doing, not to us, 
 but to yourselves. 
 
 Rebecca says that the first pretty thing she saw when she was • 
 grown up was young Hartop the sailor. She always declares to 
 Hetty that she was desperately in love with Hartop for a week, 
 and that he used her disgracefully. However, Eebecca was 
 worthy of seeing something more than a pretty sailor. She 
 was capable of understanding real beauty, of the very highest 
 form. 
 
 Mr. Morley. I would have made Mr. Morley a duke if I could, 
 only for the simple fact, that he was a Dissenting minister, and 
 considered unsound and unsafe even in that capacity. How 
 many times that brown sailor-like face, that grizzled hair, and 
 those steady brown eyes had passed before Rebecca's retina, 
 before they were fixed on it for ever, I do not know. But they 
 were fixed there firmly enough now. 
 
 He was the first man, practically, who had ever introduced her 
 to real light and beauty. She might have loved Hartop, but 
 Hartop was for Hetty ; and with her keen intellect, she quickly 
 found out this : that Hartop, brave, glorious, beautiful, was not 
 so brave or so glorious as brown-faced Mr. Morley, with th§ 
 
HETTY. 297 
 
 slightly grizzled hair. " I would not change with Hetty," she 
 said. 
 
 However, he was at sea, and she was aU alone, and her 
 father was dying, and she declares that she was not unhappy at 
 this quaint time, which lasted long. And that makes my expla- 
 nation quite good enough for my little story. 
 
 She did well in every detail now. Quick, keen wits, once 
 roused by love, seem to do without experience almost magically. 
 The higher nature seems to descend to the level of the lower, 
 intellect is assisted by instinct, Cupido by Eros (a thinking friend 
 of the writer's says that I am utterly wrong, and that the love of 
 the child for the .parent is reflected. I give him this opportunity 
 of adding to the amount of human knowledge). Love and 
 sympathy supplied experience. If all Sisters and trained nurses 
 had had a conference with Gamp and Prig, they could have done 
 no more for Mr. Turner than Kebecca did, with slight hints about 
 details to the landlady. 
 
 I resume my story. She put his bed in the bow-window so 
 that he could see the river and the ships. The landlady saw 
 after him while Eebecca went out in the early morning until she 
 could find a doctor. There were a dozen doctors close by, and 
 the landlady recommended her to one, and Eebecca knocked 
 him up. 
 
 He put a head out of window, and said — 
 
 " What do you want ? " 
 
 And Rebecca said, "7-fewon't do. Papa would never stand him." 
 
 Then she was going to puU at the bell of the next doctor's, 
 when the door was suddenly opened, and a fat gentleman of fifty 
 said to her, " The advertisement said four o'clock and it is half- 
 past. Come in." Whereupon she marched off ; and thought 
 "You won't do, my gentleman." 
 
 " Bother the doctors," she said. " I wish — I beg your 
 pardon, Sir," for she had run up against a queer little man with 
 one leg shorter than the other, coming round a corner. 
 
 "Go away from me," he said, waving her off, " you most 
 ridiculous and incautious young woman. I am one saturation 
 of scarlet fever from head to foot. I have been attending 
 a scai-let fever case, and I have pulled my pretty ones through. 
 There are between eighty and ninety thousand sporules on your 
 fine velvet cloak at this moment, chuck it over your little sister's 
 bed to keep her warm ; and then say it was me." 
 
 " Yo7i will do," said Eebecca emphatically. 
 
 "Well I suppose so," said the little gentleman; "what do 
 you want ? " 
 
298 HETTY. 
 
 " Pistol wound." 
 
 " My heavens I " he said, turning his queer shrewd little face 
 up to hers. 
 
 " Sir," she answered. 
 
 " Ho ! " he said. " Ha ! aristocratic or long shore ? " 
 
 "Neither. But mysterious." 
 
 " Young man dead ? " 
 
 " No, but faint," said Rebecca. 
 
 " Ha. I'll got these fever clothes oiF and come directly. 
 What is the house ? " 
 
 " 9, Pilot Terrace." 
 
 " Morlcy's ? Yes, quite so. You are Miss Turner. I warned 
 Morley that he was flying his kite too high. I told him that 
 there would be bloodshed if he sought a wife among the 
 Ai'istocrats. And my words have come true, you see. Well, 
 you are a wise young lady in choosing him. I am a Romanist 
 myself : Dr. Slop, you know ; Hey ? Don't know your 
 secret ; of coui'se not. I knew they would shoot some one over 
 
 " That has nothing to do with me," said Rebecca. 
 
 "Of course not," said Dr. Barnham. "Lord bless you, tee 
 know. Of course not. Bless you ! call us Jesuits at one moment, 
 and deny us common knowledge of the world at another. I'll 
 change my fever clothes and come in." 
 
 The whole story of Mr. Turner's pistol wound was carefully 
 explained to Dr. Bamham by at least three people ; but he never 
 believed it. He only said, " Yes ! yes ! quite so. "We are men 
 of the world, we Catliolics." 
 
 But Bamham was a great acquisition to them. He treated 
 Mr. Turner with great skill and bonhomie ; and Mr. Turner loved 
 him and waited for his coming. Both men were intensely in 
 earnest ; Barnham a violent Ultramontane, Turner a violent 
 Protestant. They used to argue furiously, the Bishop of Rome 
 was alternately the old man of Rome on Mr. Turner's side, and 
 something which one does not care to wrirte about another human 
 being, on Dr. Barnham's. These two gentlemen used mutually to 
 assure one another of the utter impossibility of the other's 
 ultimate salvation, in a way which I dare not produce, not 
 believing that God's mercy depends on a few details, as these 
 men did. But they liked one another the better for all their 
 quarrelling : and this^ quaint little Romanist was one of the 
 brightest things in their new short life. 
 
 Turner would bo in the bow-window, looking at the ships 
 going to and fro, and would invent arguments against the 
 
HETTY. 299 
 
 doctor. And ho would say to Eebecca, " Come, old girl, give 
 a hand next time, and we will smash him and put an end to 
 him." 
 
 And Rebecca would laugh, and cower down by her father ; and 
 say, " I won't say one word against him. And you know that 
 you love him in your heart." 
 
 He was indeed the only educated friend they had. Mr. Turner 
 was quietly falling away day after day, and finding his time 
 getting short, he wrote notes to several people calling on them to 
 come. 
 
 Lord Ducetoy was the first. "How de do, my lord," said 
 Turner. " I have summoned up the phantom." 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 LOED DUOETOY's PEOPOSALS. 
 
 Here first she began to learn the artistic value and beauty of 
 tones, crossed indefinitely by other tones, perfectly hai-monious, 
 and sometimes without incident. At times of the night, when 
 the tide was even brimming full, and she was watching, she 
 would open the window, and hear the sounds of the river, all 
 melted into one, and assisted by the dull undertone of the city. 
 At first, in her ignorance and her cockneyishness, she had 
 thought that the city was the sea ; and that the eternal crawling 
 hum, waxing and waning in the night, was the crawling of the 
 breakers upon the shore ; but Lord Ducetoy, standing in the 
 balcony with her one evening, laughed at her for thinking so, and 
 pointed out her mistake. 
 
 " But water runs down hill, my lord ; and the water is running 
 that way." 
 
 " My fair cockney cousin, do you not notice that it runs the 
 other way sometimes ? ' ' 
 
 Yes, it was so. Her beloved sea was further off than she 
 thought, and it was silent to her. He was right. She had mis- 
 taken the music of the hated city for the dim, far-heard melody 
 of the free sea. 
 
 " Do you ever sail upon the sea, my lord ? " she said. 
 
 " Not' at present, my lady," he answered. " Your good father 
 has given me the means of keeping a yacht, and when the king 
 
300 HETTY. 
 
 has his own again perhaps you will sail with me. Have you 
 heard from Mr. Morley ? " 
 
 " Not one word. Nor from Hartop or Hetty, either. I am all 
 alone, with my father." 
 
 " Except for me," he said. 
 
 "Except for you," she answered, looking straight at him; 
 " exactly. It is veiy kind of you to come here and see us." 
 
 " Now, Rebecca, I want to have a serious talk with you. I 
 shall offend you deeply, I know ; but a man must speak what is 
 in him, or " 
 
 " Hold his tongue." 
 
 " Exactly. I am not going to hold mine. Rebecca, do you 
 know that I love you heartily ? " 
 
 "I thought you did, and I am very glad. I suppose there is 
 not the wildest chance of my ever seeing Lady Ducetoy ? " 
 
 " Not if you go to the South Sea Islands. But, Rebecca, do 
 you love me ? " 
 
 " Very much indeed." 
 
 Dead stop. Rebecca had some dim idea that he was going 
 to make a fool of himself ; and she was not going to help him. 
 
 "I suppose," he said, in a very awkward manner, "that no 
 one was ever placed in a more difficult position than I am at this 
 present moment." 
 
 Rebecca merely stood and looked at him. 
 
 " You see, I don't know how to begin." 
 
 " Well, then, don't begin," said Rebecca. " No one wants 
 you to." 
 
 " Yes, but you don't know. I have a great personal admiration 
 for you, and I am your cousin, and I think you an uncommonly 
 gentlemanly old fellow, one of the most splendid creatures, and 
 one of the most admirably formed ladies I have ever met. Now, 
 cousin Rebecca, I am under terribly great obligations to you for 
 your gallantly. I don't know what you father has done for me, 
 or bow his affairs are. Tell me one thing ; what money shall you 
 have when you maiTy Mr. Morley ? " 
 
 Rebecca gave a gasp of relief; she was afraid that he was 
 going to talk some sentimental nonsense. " I don't suppose we 
 shall have any," she said. " Hagbut has drained away pa's cash 
 for Carry's settlements. I should have liked to take him money, 
 and yet I shouldn't." 
 
 " I don't understand," said Lord Ducetoy. 
 
 " Can't you see that, cousin ? I should like to take hira 
 money, because I should like him to have money for his works 
 and his charities, for which he lives. Yet, I should also like to 
 
HETTY. 301 
 
 go to him, cousin, saying, ' You chose me, and here I aui, without 
 one penny. Will you take me still ? ' And he would. And he 
 would love me better without the money than with it. For if I 
 had all Carry's money it would only be a cloud between us. He, 
 the noblest man in all the world, has honoured poor little me, 
 with all my indiscretions and errors, above all women in the world. 
 And I would sooner go to him, in forma yauperis. You are 
 talking to an attorney's daughter, you know." 
 
 " But Rebecca, do you mean to say, that you would sooner 
 marry a mere Dissenting clergyman without money than with. 
 It is totally incredible to me why you should marry him at all : 
 but without the power over him, which money could give ! Are 
 you mad ? ' ' 
 
 " Not in the least. When you find in your order as fine 
 a gentleman as Alfred Morley, I shaU be glad to hear from you." 
 
 " He must be an exception." 
 
 "Of course he is," said she. "There is another exception 
 coming to plague pa. Stay and see the other exception, and finish 
 what you were going to say." 
 
 " Well, Rebecca, I only wanted to know this. If money should 
 run short with you, wiU you accept some from me." 
 
 "Certainly," said Rebecca. "I am very much obHged to 
 you. Some of your money may come in very useful, if pa has 
 been dra-\vn dry by him, and if we have not got any of it. 
 We should be very glad of some of yours under those circum- 
 stances." 
 
 " A few thousands," began Lord Ducetoy. 
 
 " Thousands," said Rebecca, laughing. " If you can find us 
 £150 some day, it is quite as much as we are fit to be trusted 
 with. Don't give Alfred Morley more. He would only give it 
 away. Tell me. Is this offer of money all you were going to say 
 to me when you began ? " 
 
 "It was all, indeed." 
 
 "Bless me, I thought you were going to talk nonsense to me. 
 You were not, were you ? " 
 
 " I assure you, Rebecca, that I had not the least intention of 
 doing so." 
 
 " Quite sure? " 
 
 " I am not quite sure that you are sane in dreaming of such 
 a thing. Come, you are the very last person on the face of 
 the earth that I would dare to talk nonsense to. How Mr. 
 Morley got into his present position with you I don't know. ^ I 
 would not have dared to say as much as he has dared. Cousin, 
 I only wanted to try and help you, and you are so veij quaint 
 
302 HETTY. 
 
 and emportSe that I had to beat about the bush. I was a little in 
 love with you once, but I have quite got over any little sentimental 
 feeling of that sort." 
 
 They had come into the upper room out of the balcony as 
 he said this, and she said, "Bend down your head, my lord." 
 And he bent it down to her and she kissed him, saying, " You are 
 a good man, cousin, and we understand one another." 
 
 And if any one thinks she was wrong I happen to disagree 
 with them. 
 
 Since Eve kissed her firstborn (imfortunately for the illustration, 
 Cain, I believe, unless some new State papers have been grubbed 
 out at Fetter Lane or Simaucas, to the contrary) no purer kiss 
 was given or received than Eebecca gave to Lord Ducetoy, And 
 he, being a gentleman, knew it. 
 
 " Now let us come downstairs," she said. " You have spoken 
 of Mr. Morley as a Dissenting minister. As if they were all alike. 
 As if you Nobles were all alike." And she gave illustrations. 
 " Come and see what I have escaped, will you ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 BREAKING WINDOWS. 
 
 Why do people break windows ? Some do it to get locked up ; 
 but I do not mean them. Why do people who do not want to be 
 locked up at aU, habitually break windows ? Who breaks windows ? 
 Every one. You and I, and Rebecca. You and I are wise people, 
 and hold our hands from a window, unless we can get something 
 by breaking it. Now Rebecca was a fool, and never could keep 
 her hands off a window. Morley said she was nearly as bad as 
 Hetty. 
 
 There is something very exasperating to a certain kind of mind 
 in a smooth square of plate glass. One does not demand much, 
 one only demands what nature will give, at any point, at any time 
 of the year. Half and quarter tints, melting into one another, yet 
 making a great harmony, and an " arrangement," as great as 
 Turner's Heidelberg. That was all Rebecca wanted, though she 
 had never seen it, and could not tell you exactly what she did 
 want. She knew, however, that plate glass with gas behind it, 
 exasperated her. So she was given to window breaking. 
 
HETTY. 303 
 
 One says she had never learnt the suhtle intermmahle delight, 
 and beauty of half tints. It is not true. She had learnt it from 
 Mr. Morley's grizzled head, and brown face. And now she came 
 downstairs with Lord Ducetoy, of the prairies, thinking about 
 Morley of the sea : of men with an inconceivable number of half 
 and quarter loves about them : and she found Hagbut, and Carry ; 
 plate-glass and gas. A window, a bald, shallow window. She 
 instantaneously broke it, with the first stone she could find, and 
 you can generally find a stone if you stoop down. 
 
 It was very naughty of her. I offer no defence. I am not 
 bound to carry a heroine through everything. StiU Hagbut and 
 Carry, sitting in a row, drinking tea, and smiling, were not 
 calculated to make any one the less petulant. 
 
 " Where have you been, Rebecca ?" said her father. 
 
 " Upstairs, with Lord Ducetoy." 
 
 " Did you hear Mr. Hagbut come in ? " 
 
 "Yes, I heard him." 
 
 " Where were you ? " 
 
 " In the upper passage, kissing Lord Ducetoy." 
 
 "Becky, old girl," said Mi-. Turner. "Don't say such 
 things." 
 
 " Why not ? You ought to tell the truth, ought you not. 
 And I ivas kissing Lord Ducetoy on the stairs." 
 
 Hagbut said, very quietly, "For my part, not being a gentle- 
 man myself, I am uneasy in the company of even an ordinary 
 gentleman, still more so in the company of a nobleman. How- 
 ever, by your confession of having kissed his lordship on the 
 stairs, my elephantine awkwardness is somewhat easier to bear. 
 About the outrageous impropriety of the thing happening at all, 
 and of Rebecca telling about it afterwards, I say nothing. But 
 from all I can hear, two very good people have kissed one another, 
 and are not ashamed of it either." 
 
 Lord Ducetoy laughed aloud. . " It was her, you know, Padre, 
 mind that. She kissed me in the passage. You believe me, I 
 am sure." 
 
 "My lord, I am bound to believe the statement of any 
 hereditary legislator, the more particularly in this case, because 
 I am" perfectly certain that you would never have obtained the 
 favour on your own account." 
 
 Carry sat utterly aghast. Lord Ducetoy had kissed Becky ia 
 the passage, and they were all making fun of it. Her husband 
 and her father were laughing, and Becky and Lord Ducetoy were 
 smiling. She began to cry. 
 
 Hagbut did not attend to her at first, for his eyes were fixed on 
 
304 HETTY. 
 
 Mr. Turner. He turned suddenly on Carry and ordered lier to 
 run for the doctor. 
 
 " Kebecca, look at your father," he said. " Good heavens 
 and earth ! it can't be so, while we have been chattering nonsense 
 here. Go away, Rebecca, go and fetch the landlady, or the 
 surgeon, or the fire-engine, or some one. My lord, things have 
 gone wrong here. Are you afraid of death? " 
 
 " Is he dead ? " said Lord Ducetoy. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXII. 
 
 THE GREAT HETTY MYSTERY CLEARED. UP. 
 
 Poor old Turner. He was dead enough. The life, fierce at first 
 in its vitahty, nay, some said wUd, had come to an almost event- 
 less end. He had died in his chair quite quietly laughing. A 
 nobleman and a Dissenting minister were carrying his body to a 
 sofa, and a scared, beautiful daugliter, looking on death now for 
 the first time, was holding the candle. That was the end and 
 finish of it all. 
 
 "Worth?" Yes. "Silence?" Beyond that of most. 
 "Ambition?" Yes. "Money?" Enough. "Love?" Aye, 
 and hate too. We shall never know that story. " Respect in 
 the world ? " More tluai most. " Capabilities of enjoyment ? " 
 Very great, but never exercised. " Religion ? " That is no 
 matter here, just now, when Ducetoy the Puseyite, and Hagbut 
 the Dissenter, are carrying him to the sofa. One of his shoes fell 
 off and Rebecca picked it up and tried to put it on. 
 
 " It is of no use to do that," said Lord Ducetoy. 
 
 No use to put on his shoe. Not one bit. There had come an 
 end and finish. The man as known to sight and touch, was utterly 
 gone, with all his works and ways, bearing the consequences with 
 him. The very tree in front of the house would last longer than 
 he. A few days and the very image must be hidden in the earth. 
 Shall we ever dare to appreciate the memory of death ? Shall 
 we over dare to deduce the great future of the soul, from the con- 
 tempt which our good God shows towards this poor pretty toy of 
 a body which He has lent us ? 
 
 He was dead. Shut your eyes for only one minute, and think 
 
HETTY. 305 
 
 oi it. At one time all a man's schemes and plots, honourable anci 
 other, must come to an end. The man, as you knew him, must 
 be quickly put out of the way and hidden ; the man exists no more. 
 Who can wonder at Religion being the one thing which people are 
 most furious about ? That terror of utter annihilation which pro- 
 duced the slightly illogical Phoedo, is the basis of all religions. 
 There is only one tribe in the world, so far as I know, who dis- 
 believe in a future state, and it would be unpolite to name them. 
 
 However, Turner, with all his sins and virtues, was, to his scared 
 daughter, no more than a heap of bones and flesh. No wrong 
 which one had ever done the other could be righted now. It was 
 all over. She had no means of believing that they would ever 
 meet again. Her religion denied her the shocking and yet beauti- 
 fully tender superstition of masses for his soul ; she had been 
 trained in too shai-p a school to believe that divine mercy could 
 be bought with music and candles. She only thought that her 
 father had done his best, and that God would have mercy on him. 
 In her terror, in her dumb, stunned grief, she would have asked 
 even Hagbut about her father's future ; but his people had told 
 her so many crael things, that she feared he might say that her 
 father was in hell, and she also very much feared that she should 
 believe it ; and so she merely hung round his body tenderly, with- 
 out one solitary tear as yet, and moaned to herself, "Alfred! 
 Alfred ! " 
 
 But Morley was far away on the wild sea. There was no hope 
 from him ; and it was no use lying on the floor beside the corpse, 
 which was on the sofa, and saying at intervals, in a whisper, 
 ghostly from want of hope, " Pa ! " That was obviously no good 
 whatever. All kinds of methods have been tried for speaking 
 with the dead, but I have never heard of one which has succeeded. 
 
 Moaning inarticulately with all the weight of what might have 
 been between her and that poor corpse weighing on her more and 
 moi'e as the minutes went on, she lay dumb and tearless. Lord 
 Ducetoy and Mr. Hagbut, with that delicacy of manhood, which 
 is nearly as fine as that of womanhood, left her alone, and stayed 
 about the house whispering. Carry had been hurried out of the 
 house (being in an interesting condition), not having the least idea 
 that her father was dead. What to do with the moaning, tearless 
 Rebecca was becoming a puzzle to Lord Ducetoy. Hagbut was 
 perfectly calm, and only said, "Wait, my lord. She will have 
 faces round her soon which she will know. I was to preach here 
 to-night, and I have ordered some women of my communion, who 
 are come to hear me, to come to her." 
 
 Rebecca had nearly moaned herself to sleep, on the hard floor, 
 
 21 
 
306 HETTY. 
 
 when she felt a kind, gentle arm round her waist, and heard a 
 very gentle voice say, " My love, come with me. Get up." 
 
 " I will be very obedient," said Eebecca. " I was wrong to go 
 to Broadstairs. Now that death is here I know it. Alfred Morley 
 has forgiven me, and pa forgave me too. I will go to Walham 
 Green, and ask forgiveness of all. I am sure even Miss Soper 
 would forgive me now." 
 
 " My sweet child, my own bonny girl," said old Soper ; " what 
 have I to forgive ? You have got to forgive an iU-tempered old 
 maid, driven wild by girls. Come away, dear, and scold me. See 
 here is Mrs. Russel ; you will come with us, won't you ? " 
 
 '•Pretty sweetheart," said Mrs. Eussel ; "come with us. We 
 never hit it off together yet, but we will do so for the future. 
 Becky, my pretty love, come and he down." 
 
 All the well written or well talked sentimentality in the world 
 could never have had the effect which the kindness of these two 
 old women had on Rebecca. The rock was smitten, and the tears 
 came forth. " 
 
 Soper and Russel behaved gloriously. Soper never yielded an 
 inch in her principles. Rebecca had once done a thing which if 
 done too often would entirely ruin the ladies' school business, for 
 which Soper had a sentimental regard, seeing that she had made 
 a modest competence out of it. About the Broadstairs business 
 Soper nailed her colours to the mast ; but on all other points she 
 gave way, and turned out the thoroughly good fellow which she 
 really was. Russel and she stayed in the house until the end, and 
 as they never got on from one week's end to another without a 
 squabble, they naturally had one here. 
 
 Russel said one evening at tea that Rebecca would be all alone 
 now. Mr. Hagbut was not likely to let Carry see much of her, 
 and she would be alone. 
 
 " A good job too," said Soper. " I hate Carry." 
 
 " She is a weU-conducted girl," said Russel. 
 
 "Her sister is worth ten of her," said Soper, the experienced. 
 ' ' Don't talk nonsense. If Rebecca was a barrack-master's daughter 
 (you don't know what that means, I suppose ?) there would never 
 be a scandal about her." 
 
 Russel was so used to getting her old ears boxed by Soper, that 
 she submitted as usual, and said, "You know best, my dear, of 
 course. That Morley's daughter, that Hetty, will be home soon, 
 and she wiU be thrown against Rebecca. I suppose you will be 
 saying next that you approve of thai." 
 
 "Yes, I shaE," said Soper. "I have retired from business, 
 and sold my connection. I'll say that. There are girls and girls, 
 
HETTY. 307 
 
 and we in our trade don't study that enough. Yes, I'll say that," 
 said Soper, rubbing her nose. " I don't want to injure the woman's 
 business who bought my school ; but I will say as much as that." 
 
 " Don't be angry, my dear," said Eussel. 
 
 " I shall, if I choose. Morley's daughter is the best companion 
 for Morley's wife." 
 
 " After what she has done ? " cried Eussel. 
 
 " Wliat has she done ? " asked Soper. 
 
 " Outraged every law of respectability," said Mrs. Eussel, stoutly. 
 " Oh, Lord ! look there." 
 
 It was only Eebecca in her dressing-gown, looking certainly 
 very ghostly. 
 
 " My dear friends," she said, " is there anything wrong ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Eussel, " Miss Soper is backing up Hetty." 
 
 " And I don't see why I should not," said Soper ; " the girl 
 was plagued out of her hfe, and rebelled. Morley had not any 
 money to give her, and she went honestly and bravely away to 
 get money to keep herself and to help him. And she went as 
 stewardess on board a Scotch steamer. And she went as stewardess 
 on board an American steamer, and she got money, and she got 
 prestige for business habits, and she prospered. She is a noble 
 soul, that is about what she is, and those who decry her are fools." 
 
 " Fool is a strong word," said Mrs. Eussel. " Come, tell the 
 whole truth." 
 
 " About her shipwrecks ? About her heroism ? " 
 
 " You know what I mean," said Eussel. 
 
 " About the Lord Clyde ? Yes, I wiU teH Becky about that. 
 Now, my dear, you shall have the very whole of it. Hetty, long 
 a disgrace to our respectable connection, in consequence of her — 
 a minister's daughter — lowering herself so far as to go to sea as a 
 stewardess. In our connection, my dear, as in some others, we 
 seldom lower ourselves so far as to marry into the ministry. Mr. 
 Spurgeon has pointed out that. But we expect our ministers' 
 daughters to keep their rank. Hetty Morley violated our traditions, 
 and did worse." 
 
 " I am sure she did no wrong," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Oh, didn't she ? " said Soper, now venomous. " If there was 
 a Northern sympathiser, in this world, it was Alfred Morley. If 
 any sect in Catholic Europe was more united than ours on the 
 subject of hatred to the slave-owners of the South, it was ours. 
 Hartop, the man to whom she was engaged, was an open favourer 
 of the Northern States. Wliat did Hetty do ? Flew in the face 
 of her father, her lover, and her connection, and run the blockade 
 into Charleston," 
 
308 HETTY. 
 
 " Is tlictt all she has done ? " asked Eebecca. 
 
 "Enough too," said Eussel, now very angry indeed. "Dis- 
 graced herself hy taking service as a stewardess ; and then, on 
 sentimental gi-onnds, assisting Jezehels of slavery into that strong- 
 hold of abomination, Charleston." 
 
 I believe that it was the late great and good President Lincoln 
 who first said, that you could do nothing with a woman when her 
 back was up. You could do nothing with Soper now. Her major 
 premiss was "Humbug," and she never got to her minor, and 
 dropped grammar in her fury. 
 
 " That Lord Clyde," she said, " was took for blockade running. 
 And Hetty Morley was stewardess aboard of her, in the Clyde. 
 And there comes two ladies, one big with child. And they says, 
 mutually about one another, 'My husband's kiUed,' one on 'em 
 says; 'and hers,' pointing to the one in the family way, 'he is 
 wounded.' ' Do you know the danger ? ' says the skipper. ' I 
 am uncommon deep this time, and they have built a gunboat to 
 catch me : and I doubt I can't take ladies.' " 
 
 " Stop your story, Miss Soper," said Mrs. Russel. " It's too 
 much for her." 
 
 Rebecca, perfectly white, and a Httle wild, was staring at Miss 
 Soper. The experienced Soper looked at her one instant and 
 went on. 
 
 " It won't hurt you to tell. It wiU draw your mind from what 
 is upstairs. The skipper said, ' I can't take ladies.' They says, 
 ' But us. Think on us,' they said. 'For the memory of your 
 mother take us.' And the one whose husband was alive, said, 
 ' She can't see him again, but I may see my man.' And the 
 skipper said, ' You two will never get through without some other 
 woman. I expect to bo took this time. And our stewardess is 
 ordered not to go. I won't trust myself with you without her.' 
 And he asked Hetty ; and Hetty said ' Willing.' And she went ; 
 and all I say is, that God went with her. That is what Hetty 
 did." 
 
 " Did the two slave-owning ladies get safe in ? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 "Yes," said the violent emancipationist Soper, triumphantly; 
 "they did, thank God." 
 
 " Thank God, also," said Rebecca. " Tell us the rest of what 
 Hetty did." 
 
 "Not much," said Soper, "except behaving like an English 
 woman. The Lord Clyde was deep, and touched the ground under 
 a battery, and she was wounded in the face by the splinter of a 
 shell ; but she stood to her work plucky until the very last," 
 
HETTY. 309 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 WAITING BY THE TIDE. 
 
 The little tale is nearly told. A little more trouble. A little 
 more heart gnawing, weary waiting, and our' bold wild hawk wiU 
 have been purged from the fault, mainly brought on her by her 
 old unsuitable life, and our once wild peregrine shall be tamed. 
 She shall stoop to the master's wrist directly ; no lure needed any 
 longer. No need for jesses, hood, or beU ; she shall perch upon 
 his ^vrist, I promise you, and then she shall spread her pretty 
 wings and fly away across the sea towards the morning. 
 
 I tried hard to make you like her from the very first ; but she 
 was a naughty girl, I doubt. Yet love had done for her what law 
 never did, and she was good enough now, poor child, left aU alone. 
 
 AU alone ! Why, no. She could never be alone any more 
 now. Her soul had been awakened in the light of a new dawn, 
 to which the flaming primrose of Australian morning is but dark- 
 ness. The sentimental love and admiration for one greyish headed 
 man, now alone upon the broad weltering sea, a love which, fed 
 on absence, had wrought such a change in her that she found 
 her body transformed into a temple of new hopes and fears, new 
 sympathies and anxieties. She was living, so she could never be 
 alone. 
 
 She had money now, nearly £5,000. Mr. Hagbut, as one of 
 her father's executors, had done better by her than he was abso- 
 lutely warranted by law : of that she never knew. " How on 
 earth," said Lord Ducetoy to her once, " do you manage to get 
 eight per cent, for your money ? I can't." Hagbut knevf. That 
 frank, Americanised young nobleman consulted her often on busi- 
 ness matters relating to his approaching marriage, declaring that 
 he was certain that her father's genius for business must have 
 descended on her. The most he made by it, however, was being 
 looted of £20 for the Sailors' Orphans' Home. 
 
 For she was waiting by the tide for her man at sea who came 
 not, and sent no message or sign. Her life was the life of the 
 sea-folks now. The good Tibbeys from Chelsea had more than 
 once come to see her, and had Ijegged her to come to them ; but 
 her answer was always the same : " That life is dead and past. I 
 am waiting by the tide, my dears, for him who is at sea. I will 
 never go westward again into that wilderness. I wait upon the 
 shore for him, and I think he wiU come back to me. If he does 
 not, I will wait stiU." 
 
310 HETTY. 
 
 Carry and Mrs. Kussel said that poor Rebecca was moping her- 
 self to death all alone down at Limehouse. Now, on the other 
 hand, Miss Soper, whose father was dead, having had a look or 
 two at Limehouse, took apartments there, and carrying her mother 
 down, established herself; thereby emphatically proving her opinion 
 of the difference between Walham Green and Limehouse. The 
 sj)lit between herself and Cany and Russel was complete. 
 
 " Eebecca," said the old schoolmistress, "is worth the lot of 
 you put together. The girl is doing hard work and good work, 
 and I have been used to hard work since I was fourteen" (as, 
 indeed, she had) ; " and I am going to do some more of it. Mrs. 
 Russel, it is the want of hard work which has spoilt my temper 
 and yours ; and it will spoil yours, too, Mrs. Hagbut." The two 
 saw very little of her after this. 
 
 I am not Homer, and so I cannot describe the fearful battles 
 which went on between Miss Soper and Doctor Barnham, the 
 Papist. The numbt'r of times a day which they announced one 
 another's ultimate destruction was something fearful. But they 
 were rxcullent good friends, and worked together admirably, in the 
 little sharp attack of cholera in that year ; partly, I think, from 
 jealousy, to see who could do most. 
 
 So it came to pass that Rebecca saw more of her old enemy 
 than ever she had done before. And when she came to compare 
 Sopor's life with her own, she felt herself a very worthless person. 
 
 The very first and purest pleasure which Eebecca got, when she 
 had settled down, was a certain school for sailors' children, got 
 together and kept together by a fat old woman, Mrs. Frump. 
 She founded it, she taught it (mainly), she managed it, and she 
 paid for it. Slic was it. Soper grubbed out the story about it ; 
 and it was, that her son had gone away, and had been lost in a 
 " cyphoon," leaving her two infant children to educate. And 
 Mrs. Frump had decided that it was best that the children should 
 have company. And so the school had grown from two sailors' 
 orphans to twouty-eight sailors' children, whose fathers might 
 return, or, on the other hand, might not. And it was by the 
 tideway, and the little ones could see the ships as they passed 
 close by. 
 
 It was one of those temporary schools, kept together by the 
 force of character of a single person ; and which, when God 
 thinks fit to say to that person, " Well done, good and faithful 
 servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord," break up and go 
 to pieces, and are heard of no more. 
 
 Yet their good works live after them. I am not foolish enough, 
 of course, to say for an instant that unorganised schools, dependent 
 
HETTY. 311 
 
 on mere individuals, should in any way take the place of organised 
 schools ; yet I say thus much about such schools as these, which 
 I have known, that they have impressed a certain die of character 
 on the children taught there, and have deserved well of the State. 
 Nay, more : I believe, that on the' last great gathering, when one 
 of the founders and keepers of these schools shall come up for 
 iudgment, and the Great One shall say, " Who will speak for this 
 man ? " hundreds of white hands will he held up out of the crowd, 
 and their owners will say, " Lord, he showed us the way to thy 
 Son." 
 
 Well, that is only my opinion about those schools. We are 
 getting too serious, I fear. 
 
 Eebecca watched old Frump as a cat watches a mouse. But 
 she was a determined old girl, our Eebecca, and intended to have 
 her wicked wiD. of Frump. She confronted Frump in the street 
 one day, and asked her if she might come and teach in her school. 
 
 Frump eyed her over from top to toe, and said, " Why ? " 
 
 Eebecca was perfectly ready for her. She told Frump the whole 
 of her story from beginning to end ; and, in conclusion, said piti- 
 fully, " Please, let me help." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Frump, " as a general rule I don't like Dis- 
 senters round my place. But you have got the right kind of eye, 
 and I know Morley. You can come if you like." 
 
 " I thank you very much," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Are you fond of your tea, child ? " asked Frump. 
 
 "Yes, I like it very much," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Then you had better come along and have some of it with 
 me," said Frump. 
 
 And at tea Eebecca explained to Frump that her father had 
 been a Dissenter and her mother a Papist. Frump was inchned, 
 on the whole, to look on this in the light of a good cross ; not 
 like the orthodox thing certainly, but not so very bad. She 
 cautioned Eebecca carefully about the expression of unorthodox 
 opinions on one side or the other. Eebecca promised strict 
 obedience ; and they became good friends. 
 
 So she got among the pretty, innocent sailors' children, and 
 loved them, and worked diligently among them, not only for their 
 own sweet sakes, but for the sake of her own dear sailor far away 
 upon the wild sea. 
 
 Another thing which raised her soul much in these times was 
 this : the ritualisms of the sect to which she clung were not bald 
 and barren to her here, as they were at Walham Green. She 
 craved for light and music in her ritual ; and to some extent she 
 got it here. The light was in the upturned eyes of the little 
 
312 HETTY. 
 
 congregation, the music was got by the rushing of the wind and 
 the lapping of the tide outside the chapel. 
 
 But there was a great attraction in her chapel just now. A 
 young missionary had come home, having lost his wife in some 
 wild attempt to spread Christianity in some dim spot on the 
 Congo, where the Capuchins and Jesuits had failed 200 years 
 before. A wild young man with a tangled head, blazing black 
 eyes, a bad heart-disease, a precarious income of £58 a year, and 
 what I choose to call a golden faith. This young man had gone 
 through more troubles than St. Paul himself, and had come home 
 to take Morley's duty. Barnham, the Papist, told Miss Soper 
 that that man was a loss to the Catholic Church, for that he 
 preached the Keal Presence, as in his language he most certainly 
 did.' She, Soper, -was furious, but Dr. Barnham was a great deal 
 too strong for her, Soper not being able from her professions to 
 urge petitio inincipii against him, and leaving him free to argue 
 from their common major. 
 
 Frump, however, retired on the lines of Torres Vedras, until 
 the counti-y should be wasted before her. Her lines were, that 
 young Jones, the Dissenting missionai-y, was a Jesuit in disguise. 
 Whieli was a safe thing to say. 
 
 But in spite of the rather singular things which this tangle- 
 headed young man said about the necessity of baptism, the incon- 
 ceivable sin of falling away from grace, and the (practically) 
 ultra-liomish views of the communion, Rebecca loved to hear this 
 young man preach. For there was an earnest fury about every 
 word of his which took her heart, and his words carried with them 
 the scent of the distant sea, the waves of which wandered over 
 his dead wife's coffin. 
 
 So, busy and active, yet perfectly peaceful, still she waited for 
 Alfred Morley beside the tide. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 THE FIRST MESSAGE FROM THE SEA. 
 
 So she hung on, doing the work which God in his kindness had 
 given her. Waiting by the tide, month after month, for a message 
 from the sea. Morley, Hartop, and Hetty, had arranged in 
 council to try her, and they tried her hard. But they were sure 
 
HETTY. 313 
 
 of her from the first. Those who go down into the sea in ships, 
 and do their husiness in the great waters, these people know a 
 man or a woman when they see one. 
 
 There came to Eehecca pious Roman CathoHcs, who said, 
 " You have money, and your mother was a Catholic. Come and 
 see what we are doing among the Irish dock lahourers." And' 
 she gave to them. And three weeks afterwards a quiet Protestant 
 gentleman, whUe beginning to give a lectui'e on Garibaldi, at 
 Birkenhead, had the windows of his hall stoned, which rather 
 irritated Rebecca, who loved Garibaldi. 
 
 But there was not much irritation going on at Pilot Terrace. 
 They did not know yet that the Camps were drowned, and they 
 were too busy to be very much irritated. Mrs. Tryon and Miss 
 Soper fought pretty persistently, not being at all fond of one 
 another. Soper set up for being a lady, and Mrs. Tryon thanked 
 heaven that she was not one. This was a very pretty cause of 
 quarrel as it stood, and neither lady was in any way inclined 
 to forego it on any opportunity. As for Rebecca, she never 
 quan-elled with anybody, and no one ever quarrelled with her. 
 She was the pet and the admiration of the whole row. Her 
 extraordinary beauty, now developing rapidly, and her imperial 
 carnage, were sufficient to ensure her from impertinence any- 
 where. It would have been ill for the man who had dared to 
 insult her. She went everywhere, into all kinds of odd places, 
 so much that Carry came weeping to Miss Soper and Mrs. Tryon 
 about it. 
 
 " Fiddlededee," said the Soper. " The girl is right enough. 
 She is doing good and learning good. Stuff! " 
 
 " But she is seeing so much sin," wept Carry. 
 
 "Yes, and its consequences," snapped Soper. "A precious 
 good thing for her." 
 
 Mrs. Tryon took a stronger line, and requested Carry to 
 remark that there were always plenty of sailors about, she 
 believed. 
 
 Poor Carry said that indeed they were such a terrible lot of 
 roughs, she could hardly sleep in her bed for thinking of Rebecca 
 among such savages. 
 
 It is hard to depict the wrath and fury of Mrs. Tryon. 
 
 " Roughs and savages," she growled. " That I at sixty 
 years should have lived to hear my man called a rough and a 
 savage ! Your sister is safer among our lads than ever she would 
 be among your West End dandies. Though, mind you, I have 
 been in many ports, and a woman who respects herself is safe 
 in any one of them. Roughs aud savages ! Even if they were. 
 
314 HETTY. 
 
 such as she should go among them, then, and civilise them. 
 Shame on you, woman ! " 
 
 Carry took nothing at aU, therefore, by her motion whatever, 
 and after this Eebecca was left quite alone to get on with Moriarty, 
 Soper, Kussel, Tryon, Frump, the sailors and the poor as best 
 'she could, which was very well indeed. 
 
 When the wind was very wild, and the rain heat upon the glass, 
 she would get up, and do as she had now so often seen the sailors' 
 wives do, wallc up and down the room with her arms tightly folded ; 
 thinking of the man she loved at sea. 
 
 It was a very wild fierce night six months after she came there; 
 and was very late. She had not long come in, after making one 
 of some eighty women who had been out in the rain and the wild 
 weather to see an accident. Captain Moriarty had drifted from 
 his moorings in the gale, and caused an alarm as great as if the 
 Houses of Parliament wore a-fire. Eebecca had ended with a 
 hearty laugh when all things were put straight, and had come 
 home to her solitary supper of bread and cheese ; and the wind 
 was veiy wild, and her heart was very heavy, and she ate her 
 supper walliing up and down, and, I am very much afraid, crying. 
 
 The door was opened, and a voice coming from a figure which 
 she could not see, said, "If you please, Miss, old Job Partridge, 
 of the Mary Ann, is much worse, and wants to see you imme- 
 diate." 
 
 " I wiU be with you directly," said Rebecca ; " how far 
 is it ? " 
 
 "About a mile straight in the teeth of the wind, and it is 
 raining cats, dogs, marlin-spikes and copper sheathing," said 
 the voice. 
 
 " I will be with you in two minutes," said Rebecca. " I have 
 been out and got my hair wet, and have been drying it. Mr. 
 Moriarty has lost his moorings, but he has been brought up 
 by a hawser from the Elkabeth now. I will not detain you 
 an instant." 
 
 The voice said, in a most emphatic manner, "You will do," 
 and out of the darkness came a young woman shorter than herself, 
 who put her two hands on Rebecca's shoulders, and looked up, 
 and Rebecca knew in an instant that she was looking on a beauty 
 more splendid than her own. 
 
 She was perfectly amazed, and stammered out, "Is it, is it " 
 
 " Of course it is, my dear soul." 
 
 "Is it Hettij ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " Of course it is, my dear. Who else did you think it was ? 
 Now have a good look at me." 
 
HETTY. 315 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXV. 
 
 HETTY AT LAST. 
 
 "Now look at me," said Hetty; and Ecbecca did so, with fixed 
 eyes and open mouth, for this mysterious long-concealed Hetty 
 "Has the strangest creature she had ever seen in her life. 
 
 She was dressed in close-fitting sailor's blue, and had just 
 taken a sailor's tai-pauhn hat ofi' her head, and shaken out her 
 hair ; it was a crown of dark chestnut. In features, more particu- 
 larly in the quaint beautiful mouth, turned habitually up at the 
 corners, she resembled very closely Sir Joshua's Muscipula ; as 
 she shaded her great hazel eyes with her hand, to get a good look 
 at Rebecca, Rebecca saw that she was like her father, but also 
 like some one she had never seen. 
 
 Rebecca was dazed and stunned at the apparition. She had 
 loved beauty deeply, and been told that Hetty was beautiful ; but 
 she was not prepared for this. And where did the girl get that 
 wondrous, tender, pathetic crjiression from, almost as strange as 
 her beauty ? Rebecca soon knew whence came that look. 
 
 " Rebecca, dear," said Hetty, " God is sending Jack and I 
 a little one. Will you nurse me until it is bom, and I am fit to 
 go afloat again? " 
 
 That was all she said, and Rebecca said exactly nothing at all ; 
 but she laughed such a happy laugh that Hetty laughed again ; and 
 kissing her and shaking the raindrops from her hair, sat down 
 upon the easy chair and demanded tea. 
 
 The seed-time of Rebecca's life had been hard and bitter, but 
 the harvest was beginning now. Beginning in doubt, trouble, 
 anxiety, but ending in deep glorious happiness. She was getting a 
 share in the great life which was moving about her. The arrival of 
 this strange, beautiful storm-bird from the wild sea, was now, to her, 
 a deeper, more intense pleasure than all the castles, broughams, 
 opera-boxes, and diamonds, that any lady over had in this world. 
 
 Idle women will not understand this ; on the other hand, women 
 who have courageously done their best to assist in the great task 
 of civilisation, under all kinds of sneers and discouragement, will 
 understand it. 
 
 Do you say that there was nothing to make her absolutely 
 intoxicated with pure sentimental happiness, in the arrival of this 
 little beauty from her strange wild adventures, coming to her for 
 protection ? If you say that, I disagree with you. There was 
 a great deal which made her feel that the harvest-time of her life 
 had fairly begun. 
 
316 HETTY. 
 
 Experts say that those passages in Joachim's intonation of 
 Beethoven, which made ox-like, heavy men, of good brains, twitch 
 their hands nervously in the excess of wonder and pleasure, are 
 got by sliding not impinging. That is to say that the good Herr, 
 in passing from one note to another, gives you an incalculable 
 million of tones, and talks a language not of this earth, but known 
 and half imderstood by most ; whether in the past or the future, 
 I am unable to say. Wordsworth says the past ; but who told 
 him ? The notes in Eebecca's little sonata of life had aU been 
 violently impinged. 
 
 Until she came to Limehouse among the sailor's wives, the 
 music of her life had been written in violent staccato. Now she 
 began to find herself among tones as delicate, as indescribable as 
 those of Joachim or Burne Jones.* 
 
 Here came to her Hetty from the sea. And she was wife of 
 a man she had been inclined to love, and daughter of a man whom 
 she loved better than aU the world put together. And Rebecca 
 loved her : and there was another not yet visible, and she loved 
 it. And it was blowing nearly a gale of wind, and she did not 
 know where Morley was, and Hetty did not know where Hartop 
 was ; and the Camps had not been heard of ; and Mr. Moriarty, 
 in moving the Niiiety-eif/ht to fresh moorings, had got thwart 
 hawse with a Prussian and extremely Protestant brig, and had 
 used language unbefitting him ; and Uttle BiUy Pitcher had tipped 
 himself into the dock at low water, and broken his head ; and she 
 must go and see the chUd as soon as she had made Hetty's tea — 
 Becky was living plenty of half and quarter tones now. 
 
 " Hetty, dear ; Hetty, sweet," said Rebecca ; " can you spare 
 me for a very little time ? BiUy Pitcher has fallen on his head 
 in the dock, and I promised him a horse, and he won't go to sleep 
 without it." 
 
 Said Hetty, drinking her tea — 
 
 " Bother the child. He can get on without his horse to-night. 
 Sailors' children must go to sleep without toys. But, my dear, 
 you must go out, unless you have a girl to send ; you must go 
 to old Tryon, and tell her to come here and bring her things. 
 It is blowing S.S.E., and half a gale, so you wiU get wet. 
 Mind the hawsers, you know, or you will go the way of BiUy 
 Pitcher." 
 
 * I am only speaking of Mr. Bnrne Jones' colour. On other points 
 he has incurred the penalty of death. Perhaps the Habitual Criminals' 
 Bin will touch him up. Ten years' penal servitude among third-rate 
 "Presents par I'Empereur " pictures in France might bring him to a 
 sense of his sins. 
 
HETTY. 317 
 
 And so Eebecca departed, with the wind in her face, to Mrs. 
 Tryon. Mrs. Tryon did not object to the arrangement at all ; but 
 she said that she was not going to Hetty or to any woman in the 
 world until Tommy Bithers had brought his brig in. She was 
 not going to be Moriartied twice ; and Bithers, though a sound 
 Protestant, was worse than Moriarty ; and his berth was opposite 
 her house, and she did not want it pulled about her ears. " Tide 
 would serve about twelve," she said ; " and so you two fools go 
 and talk it over till then." 
 
 Rebecca went back, and sat on the floor by Hetty's sofa, 
 shaking the raindrops out of her hair. Rebecca had heard 
 that when families were to be increased the ladies who increased 
 them were not by any means to be agitated. StiU Hetty had 
 put her arm round her neck, and they were most comfortable 
 together. 
 
 " I think we shall be very fond of one another," said Hetty. 
 
 " That is quite my opinion," said Rebecca. " Where have you 
 been, Hetty?" 
 
 " Slopping round," said Hetty. " I am perfectly sick and 
 tired of these clipper ships ; and I declare most positively, that 
 when what is going to happen has happened, I will never put my 
 kit on board of another. Jack, thank Heaven, has got one of the 
 old sort." 
 
 " Has he got a ship ? " asked Rebecca, eagerly. 
 
 " Certainly he has," said Hetty. " I wiU tell you all about it, 
 if you wUl not jump out of your skin. He has had his certificate 
 now for two years, and the skipper of the Flyinrj Cloud died at 
 AspinwaU. And he was telegraphed to, when he was at New 
 York, to go down and take charge of her ; and he went away, and 
 I went on a little way with the old ship, taking hardware to St. 
 Thomas's, not of much use, for we had no passengers except a 
 fat man whom we rather thought had robbed a bank. But when 
 we came to St. Thomas, there was the Severn (she is the West 
 Indy Mail, my dear), and Captain Gardiner he comes on board in 
 a pretty state of mind for Jane Higgs (his head stewardess, for- 
 merly on the Liverpool and Belfast), had fallen down the com- 
 panion and injured her chest. 'And, Mrs. Hartop,' he said, 'if 
 you dcn't help me, I don't know whatever I shall do : I have 
 got three ladies and eight children for Rio, all as helpless and as 
 innocent as babies.' 'I would do more than that for you. Cap- 
 tain Gardiner,' I said. And so I chucked my kit aboard her, 
 and away we went, thundering southward ! The finest ship ever 
 I sailed in. 
 
 " It was very pleasant. The most of the men knew me, or all 
 
318 HETTY. 
 
 about me, and gold was not too good for me to eat off. Ah ! 
 you don't know sailors yet. If any man on board that ship 
 had dared to look rude at me, I doubt he would have gone 
 overboard. 
 
 " One of the babies died. When I heard the little corpse go 
 sliding overboard, I Imew that God had given a life for the one he 
 had just taken, and I told the poor mother so. She was very glad 
 of it ; I thought that I was perhaps wrong in telling her, for fear 
 of wounding her, but the words came out of my mouth, and they 
 comforted her. For which, God be thanked. 
 
 " Well, my dear, we got to Eio with only this one death. And 
 there the strangest surprise happened ever you heard of in your 
 life. I don't think anything in the ' Arabian Nights ' happened 
 stranger. Our engine-room men had got up steam, and we were 
 moving through the water, when there came in through the heads 
 a great ship, a perfect cloud of duck, Eebecca, carrying on to the 
 last minute. I was standing with Gardiner on the bridge, as she 
 came racing on, and when she stowed sail after sail, and brought 
 up so neat, I said to Gardiner, ' There is a man in command of 
 that ship.' 
 
 " ' What a beauty she is ! What is she ? ' said Gardiner. 
 
 " And old Rangoon, who was down in the waist, and had sailed 
 with me before, sang out, ' She is Missis Hartop's man's ship, 
 the Vi'jinrj Cloud. I know her. That's Hartop himself on the 
 forecastle, piloting himself, as usual. I wouldn't give eighteen- 
 pence for that young man's certificate if he carries on into harbour 
 like this, without a pilot. He has heard of the missis being here, 
 and has been carrying on. My opinion is that your missis is your 
 missis, but that similarly your owners is your owners. I don't 
 hold with skippers carrying away expensive sticks a following of 
 their wives.' 
 
 " Gardiner gave the word to bank up fires, and catch moorings 
 again. We had a boat lowered in five minutes, and in two more 
 I was with Jack on his own quarter-deck — his own, my dear, 
 think of that ! There was no one but he and I and the young 
 man at the wheel. Jack's mate, an excellent young man, but 
 who from his eye looks veiy much like carrying on for a passage 
 — a young man I shaU remove when I am well — he moored the 
 ship, so I had twenty minutes with Jack. He wanted me sadly 
 to go with him ; but I told him what was the matter, and that he 
 had not one woman aboard, and he yielded. God bless that man I 
 He would make any one believe in a good God if one had not done 
 so before. 
 
 " ' God go with you, dear little wife,' he said. ' Gardiner will 
 
HETTY. 319 
 
 see to you. Gardiner is a good man. Go home straight to 
 Rebecca and old Tryon ; they are true salt, both of them.' And 
 so we had a kiss once more, and I went over the side, and came 
 thundering home in the Severn with Gardiner." 
 
 " And where is Jack Hartop gone ? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 " Callao, for orders," said Hetty; "that, he says, expresses, 
 in sailors' language, Greek Kalends. Ships cleared for Callao 
 never know where they are going ; it may be Melbourne, and it 
 may be Hong Kong — one as likely as the other. I shall not see 
 hiru for a year." 
 
 " Are you not impatient? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 "My good soul, if' sailors' wives were to get impatient they 
 would go mad. I have laid my heart and soul at the feet of one 
 sailor, and you have laid yours at the feet of another. Sailors' 
 wives must know how to wait and suffer. And if you have a 
 common religion, if you believe that there is no cloud at death 
 between you and your husband, you can get through anything. 
 That is the case between Jack and myself." 
 
 " Yes," said Rebecca. And there was a great deal in her 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Now," said Hetty, "I am going to tell you a thing which 
 will make you very angry and make you hate me. Jack has 
 openly joined the Church of England, and I have gone with 
 him." 
 
 " Why not, Hetty ? " said Rebecca, turning her face to Hetty. 
 
 " Why not ? " said Hetty. " Why, of all the indiscretions I 
 ever committed, this is the worst. I hope you will not be so 
 foolish as I have been." 
 
 " Why not ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " Because you would cut the last ground from under my father's 
 feet. Rebecca, you have a noble soul committed to your care, for 
 which you will have to answer at the Day of Judgment. Follow 
 him — do not lead him. A led man is an iU thing. I have been 
 to sea, and I know." 
 
 Here there was an interruption : Mrs. Tryon stood at the 
 door. 
 
 " Now then. Miss Turner ; you are talking her to death. Het, 
 old girl, how are you ? You did right to come home to Miss 
 Turner and I, though Miss Turner is a fool." 
 
 "I have known that for a long time," said Rebecca, quietly ; 
 for Mrs. Tryon had called her a fool in a way which did not give 
 offence. There are different ways of calling people fools. 
 
 " Where is your man gone ? " said Mrs. Tryon, to Hetty. 
 
 " To CaUao for orders," said Hetty. 
 
320 HETTY. 
 
 " He is a fool, and you were a fool for letting him go," said 
 Try on. 
 
 " Don't talli nonsense, my dear soul," said Hetty. " You may 
 think it fine, but we do not." 
 
 " Is he going through the Straits or round the Horn ? " asked 
 Tryon. 
 
 " Bound the Horn," said Hetty. " His ship would never beat 
 through the Straits, she is bad to get about. I did not like his 
 crew myself. Too many Malays. I don't hke it altogether, and 
 the ship is, I doubt, wet ; and in my opinion, Mrs. Tryon, she is 
 extremely over-sparred. Why, Jack told me himself that she had 
 broken her main-yard lift by sheer rolling, and dropped it on to 
 the slings. 
 
 " Those iron lifts are all rubbish," said Mrs. Tryon. 
 
 " I know that," said Hetty ; " but that does not make amends 
 for Jack's carrying on round the Horn with iron Hfts. And his 
 ships bows are too far aft, so that she don't seem as though she 
 would lift well with a reefed foresail, when she is going before 
 it. As for laying her to, in a gale of wind, my dear, .if I was on 
 board of her when Jack proposed to do it, I should get out and 
 walk." 
 
 "Look at her," said Tryon, quietly. 
 
 It was Rebecca to whom she called attention. She had gone 
 to sleep on the floor with her head on a hassock. " Pretty 
 sweet," said Tryon. "Have you heard anything of Morley, 
 dear?" 
 
 " Speak veiy low," said Hetty. " Pa has gone on to Pata- 
 gonia in the Klka. And the Sydney Herald says that they are 
 all dead." 
 
 " You don't believe it, dear ? " said Mrs. Ti-yon. 
 
 " Of course I don't," said Hetty. " Jack says that he don't 
 believe a hani/ of it." 
 
 That is the way religious sailors' wives talk confidentially, 
 ladies and gentlemen. Of course they ought not to do so, but 
 they do it. 
 
 " I don't believe a solitary word of it," said Tryon. " But 
 that Patagonian coast is a awful bad 'un. Look how sweet she 
 sleeps, pretty love, pretty dear." 
 
l£ETTY. 321 
 
 CHAPTEK XXX^T. 
 
 NO NEWS. 
 
 There came a long time now, while those two. abode together like 
 Ruth and Naomi. But aU danger to Rebecca was over, in the 
 presence of a necessity greater than her o^vn. Her own self was 
 dead and ended, and she had three others, Morley, Hetty, and 
 Hartop ; not to mention three dozen others in the swarming, 
 seafaring population all around her. 
 
 To lose sight of self utterly for one moment, is to have lived for 
 one moment. 
 
 Rebecca lived much now, for she never had time to think of 
 herself at all. Aud the very person who took her away from her- 
 self most was that bonny, shrewd, beautiful Hetty. 
 
 Mrs. Tryon had a fight with Hetty about her treatment of 
 Rebecca ; but after a long engagement of an hour Tryon retired, 
 with all her masts shot away (but with her colours flying), leaving 
 Hetty the victory : as I cannot, from want of space, give an 
 account of the whole of this great battle, I will give the last part 
 of it ; so that, ecc pede Hemdem, the reader may judge what the 
 beginning of the fight was like. And, I may say, that if the last 
 sentence is not the neatest example of Catachresis written this 
 year, I should be glad to see the other. 
 
 " You worry the girl so," said Tryon. 
 
 " I want to," said Hetty. " I want to take her out of herself, 
 and make her think of me, not of my father." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I am beginning to believe that my father is in 
 heaven," said Hetty. " The Society are gettmg very anxious." 
 
 " But you will make Rebecca dislike you," said Tryon. 
 
 " WeU, that would not much matter that I know of. Perhaps 
 it would be better for her if she could. But that can never 
 happen, Mrs. Tryon. She and I have seen such deep, unutter- 
 able light of love in one another's eyes, more than once, that we 
 know it can never be quenched." 
 
 " But sending her these errands, in such weather," said Mrs. 
 Tryon ; " you will kill her." 
 
 " She is not made of sugar," said Hetty. 
 
 Rebecca came in at this moment, and as an illustration of how 
 much Hetty meant to attend to Mrs. Tryon, she said to Rebecca 
 coolly — 
 
 " I want sardines for my supper. I am to have everything I 
 22 
 
322 HETTY 
 
 fancy, and I fancy them. And the sardines at the comer shop 
 are nothing but pilchards, and taste of hair-oil. Go up the street, 
 and get a box of the small ones at Elms' s." 
 
 And Kebecca went out into the rain again, without one word. 
 
 " I call it shameful usage," said Mrs. Tryon. 
 
 " It is the system I mean to pursue with her," said Hetty, 
 coolly. And the good Tryon flumped out of the room, and went 
 and had tea with Soper and Frump, and Captain Moriarty 
 dropped in for a social chat with the ladies, and to take his tay 
 wather. And Frump (Establishment) fell foul of Soper and Tryon 
 (Dissenting) ; and when they had pretty well blown off the steam, 
 they all three pitched into Moriarty (Papist), and made a kind of 
 religious Walpurgis night of it, giving to one another, aU at once, 
 and at the top of their voices, the most remarkable rehgious ex- 
 periences. Moriarty left at eight to go on board, leaving the 
 ladies in fuU wrangle ; but Moriarty's apprentice deponed to 
 Tryon the next day, that he never came on board till half-past 
 two, and was then disguised in driuk, and singing the seditious 
 song known as " Croppies lie down." 
 
 But Kebecca knew nothing of the good Irishman's eccen- 
 tricities. She came back with the sardines, and Hetty called her 
 to her. 
 
 " Kebecca, Mrs. Tryon has been saying that if I try you as I 
 do you wiU lose your love for me. Is that so ? " 
 
 " She must be perfectly fooHsh," said Rebecca, sharply. 
 " I wish you would try me more. You don't think it, Hetty ? " 
 
 " Not I. I will teU you the whole truth. If sailors' wives 
 brood and think of nothing but themselves and their husbands, 
 they wiU go mad. Unless you are busy you wiU never be happy. 
 My fiithcr told me that when I was very young ; and I acted on 
 it in a way which did not please him or some others very much. 
 Get out of yourself. Make others troubles your own, and your 
 own win be as nothing. I have no letter from Jack, from Val- 
 paraiso." 
 
 " And I have none from Alfred." 
 
 " Self again. You should think of me, not of my father. I 
 told you that pa was gone to Patagonia, and you don't suppose 
 that there are letter-boxes there. You should think about me." 
 
 But Rebecca cried very much indeed, and Hetty let her alone for 
 a little. " She must get trained as I did or she will never stand 
 the news," said Hetty. 
 
 " Becky, dear," she said at last, " get me to bed, and send for 
 Dr. Bamham. I am going to be iU." And Rebecca got her to 
 bed and sent for the doctor. 
 
HETTY. 323 
 
 Meanwhile, Hetty had leant her face to the wall, weeping 
 
 silently. "Father and Jack both together. God, in thine 
 infinite mercy, judge me not too heavily." 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVII. 
 
 THE SECOND MESSAGE FROM THE SEA. 
 
 But a week or more after, Hetty, lying in the same bed where 
 Mr. Turner had died, and watching the ships pass up and down 
 the nver, lay with a brave boy on her bosom, and was quite quiet, 
 and well, saying very little indeed. She asked Eebecca to go out 
 and see how the wind and the mercury were, and Eebecca came 
 back with the intelligence that the wind was S.S.E. half E., and 
 that the mercury was cupped at 29'10. " Not that it matters to 
 you and I, my dear," said Hetty, " only it is a good habit for a 
 sailor's wife to notice ; our men are too far away." 
 
 She had only sent Eebecca out that she might have some fresh 
 air. But Eebecca, sleepy and pale, had arisen and gone after the 
 weathercock and barometer so cheerfully, that Hetty had emphati- 
 cally determined that she should be tried no longer. 
 
 She asked her to take the baby, and when she had done so, she 
 looked her straight in the face, and said — • 
 
 " Eebecca, from this moment I and you are one. Nothing must 
 ever divide us. ' Where thou goest I wiU go, thy people shall be 
 my people, and thy God my God.' " 
 
 " It should be so, and shall be so," said Eebecca. " Hetty, I 
 have loved you so long, and sought your love so hard, it should 
 surely be so." 
 
 " Becky," said Hetty, quietly, " suppose that you were maid- 
 widow, and I was mother-widow, could you give your life to a 
 work?" 
 
 ' ' If you will teU me, I wiU do as you say. But why do you 
 ask me?" 
 
 " Because we may both be widows — some day. WiU you abide 
 with me and work among the sailor's wives, while I drown my grief 
 in the dear salt sea, and work at civilising the sailors ? " 
 
 " I wiU do so ; what you say and do is good to hear, good to do. 
 But why " 
 
324 HETTY. 
 
 " There is old Tryon come to inquire," said Hetty ; " go down 
 and tell her something or another. No, stay, have her up ; for 
 she is true blue salt, a forty fathom woman, if there ever was one. 
 And so are you, Becky. Was there ever a sailor in your mother's 
 family, Beck? " 
 
 " My grandfather was an admiral." 
 
 " Hah I that accounts for it," said Hetty ; "I knew that there 
 were deep sea soundings somewhere. Now go fetch up old 
 Tryon." 
 
 Eebecca went to do so, but Mrs. Tryon, being admitted into the 
 passage, put her hehn down, and, with a smart collision, sent 
 Eebecca into the front parlour. 
 
 She stood looking at Eebecca in a great state of anger, and, 
 after a few seconds, said, " You have made a nice mess of it among 
 you." 
 
 " Please, Mrs. Tryon," said Eebecca, " tell Hetty and myself 
 what is the matter." 
 
 " You may well say what is the matter ? " said Mrs. Tryon. 
 " How is Hetty, and how is the baby ? " 
 
 " They are both quite well." 
 
 " I am glad it is a girl," said Mrs. Tryon. 
 
 " It is a boy," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Well, they have more chance of getting their living than girls. 
 That is one comfort. I suppose you know that Jack Hartop has 
 lost his ship." 
 
 Eebecca was so puzzled by the news that she found ' herself 
 wondering whether Jack Hartop had dropped his ship down an 
 area railings, or lost it at cards, or left it accidentally in a railway 
 carriage, or gone on shore forgetfully and let it sail away by itself 
 into unknown seas ; when Mrs. Tryon said, sharply — 
 
 "You are wool-gathering. Don't do it. He has lost his ship 
 on Cape Noi'thumberland, and his certificate with it." 
 
 " It win kill her," said Eebecca. 
 
 " Yes, if she is told. But she must not be. Now you under- 
 stand." 
 
 " Yes, I understand," said Eebecca, and Mrs. Tryon walked 
 out ; and just after Mr. Morlarty walked in. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Moriarty," said Eebecca, eagerly, " dear old friend. 
 Tell me the truth about this dreadful business." 
 
 " Haven't I come to tell you, divil another ? Mak your mind 
 easy. Miss Turner. He is safe enough." 
 
 " Why do you think so ? " 
 
 " He went to Callao for orders, and was sent to Melbourne. 
 And he has got cast away on Cape Northumberland ; hke any 
 
HETTY. 325 
 
 other gentleman. Why, Miss Turner, you have seen me, on two 
 occasions, come to grief in this very dock." 
 
 " But will he lose his certificate ? " asked Eehecca. 
 
 " He'U have it suspended," said Moriarty ; " you may little 
 think it. Miss Turner, but my certificate was suspended for two 
 years, when I commanded the Tipperarij screw, for, and because 
 only that the Berry, screw coUier, coming up stream, and I going 
 down, I gave her a playful little bit of a Donnyhrook ram in con- 
 sequence of her name. And she got ashore before she sank, which 
 was all she did. And it was potatoes and point with me for two 
 years. Oh, yes, his certificate is gone." 
 
 So Kebecca went up again to Hetty, and made Tryon's apologies 
 for not coming up. 
 
 It was a long time before Hetty was well enough to be told any- 
 thing about Hartop's mishap. It was a much longer time before 
 Eebecca said one word to her about it. 
 
 She did not know what to do. God solved the problem for her 
 ultimately, in this way : 
 
 Hetty had got about, on the wharf, and by the river, with her 
 baby, impressing on the newly-formed retina of that young gentle- 
 man the images of ships. Otherwise the life went on among the 
 sailors' wives left waiting for some who came back hearty and well ; 
 for some who came back broken, though as dear as ever ; and for 
 some who never came back at aU. It had come on to rain one 
 evening, and Rebecca caught Hetty on the wharf, and pulled her 
 into the house. 
 
 " I have news," said Rebecca. 
 
 " You need not trouble to say that, Becky," said Hetty. " Is 
 it Pa or Jack ? " 
 
 " Jack," said Rebecca. " He has lost his ship and been court- 
 martialed." 
 
 " Then he is not dead ? " said Hetty. 
 
 " Not he," said Rebecca. 
 
 " Then," said Hetty, very quietly, " may the good God to 
 whom I have prayed in my deep affliction, comfort you, Rebecca, 
 when your affliction comes, as you have comforted me in mine." 
 
 No self. No care for anything, save her God, her husband, and 
 her duty. 
 
 " To thank me first," she thought. And she stood perfectly 
 quiet, for knowing how Hetty loved Jack Hartop, she was surprised 
 that she took it so quietly. 
 
 " Has Jack lost his certificate ? " asked Hetty. 
 
 " No, Hetty. Hetty, be quiet, and I will tell you everything. 
 Hetty, listen, and be quiet." 
 
326 HETTY. 
 
 "I am quite quiet," said Hetty. "If Jack is alive and well, 
 what care I ? You say that he has not lost his certificate. If 
 they had dared to take it away, I would have tweaked Dr. Deane's 
 nose till they renewed it." 
 
 " But I have to read you something," said Eebecca. 
 
 " You had better read it, then," said Hetty. 
 
 Eebecca read in a vei^ fluttering voice, from a newspaper. The 
 Ari/u.s of ]\Ielhourne : — 
 
 " ' The Board which sat on Captain Hartop, of the ship Flying 
 Cloud, have reported — 
 
 " ' It appears that Captain Hartop was keeping his due course, 
 when, being warned by the sudden fall of the mercury, he made 
 for sea, but in consequence of the calm which preceded the hurri- 
 cane which has devastated our southern shores, he was unable to 
 get way on his ship. After the cyclone struck her, of course there 
 was no possibility of saving her. Up to this point the Board con- 
 sider that Captain Hartop's conduct was most seamanlike ," 
 
 "Thank you for nothing, quoth the gallipot," said Hetty, 
 quietly. "If Jack could not fiddle his ship out of anything in 
 reason, I should like to see the man who could." 
 
 " ' After the ship struck on the reef under Cape Northumber- 
 land, the conduct of Captain Hartop was beyond aU praise for 
 which they can find words. His personal prestige among his 
 sailors seems to have been so great, that on this temhle night 
 they passed quietly into the boats, in the calmer water, in the lee 
 of the reef, without noticing that he himself had remained with his 
 first mate, Green ' " 
 
 "I shall not discharge that young man," said Hetty, with a 
 slight flutter in her voice; "go on, Eebecca. Jack, Jack, you 
 are a sailor." 
 
 " 'In order to see whether there was any chance of saving 
 anything for the underwriters in case of the gale moderating, 
 taking his chance of swimming on shore. The Board wish it to 
 be distinctly understood that their opinion is, that during this 
 unhappy wreck, and in the long march between the place of the 
 wi-eck and the nearest settlement, Captain Hartop conducted him- 
 self from first to last like a splendid British sailor.' " 
 
 'J Of course, Jack did," said Hetty, quietly. " Do not I know 
 him ? Jack is a man of pluck and energy. Jack is a sailor, every 
 inch of him. I suppose his OAvners will give him another ship at 
 once, after that report. If they don't I wiU spend a little time at 
 their ofiice not very pleasantly for them." 
 
 And she looked Eebecca straight in the face as cool as a 
 cucumber. And Eebecca was deeply puzzled. 
 
HETTY. 327 
 
 " Well, and so that is the whole of it, is it ? " said Hetty. " I 
 am glad that beast of a ship is at the bottom of the sea without 
 drowning Jack or any of the men. Is there anything more to 
 teU?" 
 
 Eebecca was getting more and more puzzled. " Has she a 
 heart at all ? " she said to herself. 
 
 "Yes, Hetty," she said; "but I do not know how to tell it. 
 The Panama route " 
 
 There was no need to say more, or to question whether or no 
 Hetty had a heart. The doorway opened quickly, and in the 
 open doorway stood Jack Hartop. 
 
 Hetty stood up and spread out her ten fingers towards him. 
 In less than a second her pretty arms were around his neck, and 
 he was hugging her like a bear. She said, " Love, love, love," 
 and he said "Darling, darling, darling," which is folly the most 
 incurable. But if you will bring me any gentleman who will affirm 
 on his oath that he has never made a fool of himself to the same 
 extent as far as his opportunities have gone, I will politely decline 
 that gentleman's acquaintance. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVIII. 
 
 THE THIRD MESSAGE PKOM THE SEA. 
 
 The life thus enriched by two whom she loved went smoothly on. 
 Not cheerfully, for there came no word of Mr. Morley at all. 
 Hetty and Hartop spoke continually about him, always pleasantly. 
 When it was hot Hetty would say, " I doubt he is cold, poor dear, 
 there where he is," and Hartop would say, " Ay, it is winter there 
 now." At dinner, Hetty might say, "I doubt he has no lamb 
 and green peas to-day, poor man ; " and Hartop would say, " No, 
 he will be having mainly fish and seal beef for his dinner. It is 
 not bad, but not so good as this." 
 
 So they would talk to her, keeping his image perpetually before 
 her mind, they both having given up aU hope. 
 
 They kept from her the news that the missionary ship had been 
 lost, but that a few of the missionaries were heard to be alive three 
 months after. They kept from her their knowledge of the bitter 
 hopeless coast of Patagonia, and Hetty had so persistently forced 
 
328 HETTY. 
 
 on her the maxim that sailors' wives must not fret that she 
 behaved her, and abode in quiet, busy, and not unhappy, ignor- 
 ance of the chances of the sea. 
 
 But day by day it became evident to her that Jack Hartop was 
 growing to be a person of great consequence amongst a certain 
 great and powerful Society. Her father had belonged to this 
 Society, and she had been to a May meeting of it, presided over 
 by a certain great earl ; and one day in these times she found this 
 same earl, whom she knew by sight, talking eagerly and familiarly 
 with Jack Hartop. 
 
 She heard him say, " It is certainly a splendid offer — a splendid 
 offer. And as a sailor, Mr. Hartop, you think that the yacht is 
 big enough." 
 
 " Bless you, my lord, I would sail her any^vhere ! 280 tons — 
 why she is a frigate." 
 
 " It is somewhat singular that Lord Ducetoy, who is not even 
 a subscriber, and a " 
 
 At this moment Rebecca passed with a slight bow, and went 
 on. 
 
 " Who is that young lady ? " asked Lord S. 
 
 " Miss Turner.'" 
 
 " Oh ; I was saying that it seems singular that a mere sports- 
 man like Lord Ducetoy should interest himself so deeply in a 
 cause like this, as to lend her his yacht and stores, and offer to 
 pay a picked crew out of his own pocket, on condition of your 
 commanding the expedition." 
 
 "My lord," said Hartop, "it is easily accounted for. Lord 
 Ducetoy is cousin to Miss Turner, who has just passed, and Lord 
 Ducetoy was under the deepest obligations to her father for saving 
 his property from the Philpott smash." 
 
 " But what has Miss Turner to do with it ? " 
 
 " She is engaged to be married to Morley, and she does not 
 know what you and I do." 
 
 " God help her in her grief," said Lord S., raising his hat 
 solemnly. 
 
 "Amen," said Jack Hartop. 
 
 " When can you sail ? " 
 
 " Well, in consequence of this offer of Lord Ducetoy's, I can 
 get to sea in a week. If they are alive, they owe their lives to 
 Lord Ducetoy." 
 
 " Under God," said Lord S. 
 
 " Under God, I mean," said Jack. " But he has saved us in 
 one way or another two months of valuable time." 
 
 " It is really so." 
 
HETTY. 329 
 
 " By-tlie-bye, my lord, Miss Turner is to know notliiug of Lord 
 Ducetoy's gift." 
 
 " Indeed ! was there ever any tenderness in that quarter ? " 
 
 " Oh, never, I think. He lost his heart effectually before he 
 ever knew much of her ; hut he has a profound admiration for 
 her." 
 
 " Is Mrs. Hartop going ? " said Lord S. 
 
 " Oh yes, my lord, she is going. You maybe quite certain that 
 she could not keep her hand out of a thing of this kind." 
 
 " God go with her ! " said Lord S., and so they parted/ 
 
 " Eehecoa," said Hetty to her, next morning, "Jack has got 
 another ship." 
 
 "A good one ? " 
 
 " A splendid one. A missionary ship. United Missionary 
 Society. The U. M. S. have picked him out. And I am going 
 too." 
 
 " I wish I was," said Eehecca ; " but I am so glad for Jack. 
 I cannot go, for Alfred might come while I was away, and would 
 be very sorry to miss me." 
 
 Hetty went quietly out of the room, humming a tune, as if to 
 fetch something, went upstairs, and threw herself on her bed in 
 a fury and tempest of tears. She believed — as we aU did — that 
 she was bound on a quest for some relic or remnant of the dead, 
 left carelessly by wolf or the hardly less cruel savage. 
 
 Jack, however, had given his orders that Hetty was to be ready 
 in six days, and so there was fine stitching, and sewing, and 
 shopping, with not much time to talk about matters. The yacht 
 had come round from Cowes, and was lying off the terrace, and 
 Moriarty and Jack were working like furies, getting her stores 
 aboard, while Mrs. Tryon sat in a Windsor chair on deck, super- 
 intending in the absence of Hetty, and in fact in charge of the 
 ship. 
 
 " Take another haul on that foretopsail lift," she would say. 
 " Put some elbow-grease into it. B'lay, B'lay. That's better. 
 A good sailor should like to see his wife smart on Sundays, and 
 his ship all the week." 
 
 Another time, to a landsman moving a case clumsily, " Now 
 then, young man, if you think that bitter beer bottles are made of 
 copper sheathing, I don't. Chips," to the carpenter, "just prize 
 that case open, and see how many he has broke and enter it. 
 Besides, young man," she continued severely, " if you conceive 
 that Lord Ducetoy's deck was made for you to shove iron-bound 
 packing-cases about on, you are deceived : I should like to see you 
 try that on board a man-of-war, my lad." 
 
330 HETTY. 
 
 Soper came on board once, with the test intentions, in a boat ; 
 but the hoisting her in, and hoisting her out, and her getting sea- 
 sick, and one thing or another, made such a nuisance that the 
 Tryon recommended her to go ashore and stay there, which she 
 did. 
 
 The ship was to sail on Saturday, and on Friday, all day long, 
 Kebecca was working in Hetty's cabin. She thought to herself, 
 " What a beautiful place." Indeed it was, for it was the cabin 
 which Lord Ducetoy had decorated for his young wife. 
 
 She heard Lord Ducetoy's voice in the main cabin, and a lady's 
 voice who talked to him. She could not help hearing. 
 
 "My love," said the lady. "I quite agree with you; by 
 giving up our cruise the Society gains two months. I do not 
 regret." 
 
 " But I had her decorated for you, love — only for Channel 
 work : and she is going to the ocean." 
 
 "WeU," said Lady Ducetoy, "I frankly and freely give my 
 decorations to the ocean. My husband has done a generous and 
 beautiful deed, for the sake of a noble woman ; that is worth aU 
 decorations to me." 
 
 They did not know she was on board, and they did not see her : 
 but she heard them, and after a time understood what Lady Duce- 
 toy meant. She hid from them, and it was only after the schooner 
 had sailed that she knew that the " noble woman," spoken of by 
 Lady Ducetoy, was none other than her own self. 
 
 For the first time in her life she slept on board ship that night 
 with Hetty and the baby. The baby was quiet, an excellent baby 
 in every relation of life : religious in times and seasons beyond all 
 babies : never cijing before four o'clock in the morning. The 
 swirl of the tide against the bows of the yacht kept her awake 
 nearly all the night, and it was mixed with the cries and the 
 shoutings of men on ships bound for the great ocean, to which 
 she so deeply longed to go ; for she knew that Morley was there, 
 somewhere. Hetty dismissed her very early on the Saturday 
 morning. 
 
 Then she went to the Tryon, who made her have breakfast, and 
 finding that she was tearful, made her go upstairs and lie on her 
 (Tryon's) bed for a good cry. And she had one. And when she 
 had had it, Tryon came and said, " Get up, the slack water is 
 moving seaward, the ebb will down strong directly, and they are 
 going." 
 
 She arose and followed her at once. The wind was from the 
 west, from the Gloucestershire hills which are the home of the 
 river, and the air was thick with smoke. 
 
HETTY. 33X 
 
 On the wharf was a crowd of the strangest people — a bishop, 
 Lord S., and Lord Ducetoy foremost ; with them a larger number 
 of ecclesiastical persons, ranging from two Papist priests to a 
 Quaker gentleman who was solemnly saying something to Jack 
 Hartop about the wearing of flannel. But Kebecca heard her 
 name passed from mouth to mouth, " Miss Turner ! hush, Miss 
 Turner ! " 
 
 She Imew not why. The kind folks had kept the truth from 
 her. She gave a deep sweeping courtesy to the bishop and Lord 
 S., and a smUe to Lord Ducetoy, and then she went up to Jack 
 Hartop, and kissed him heartily on both cheeks. 
 
 " Jack, dear, I am so sorry you should go away. Take care of 
 your Hetty and your ship, dear. God he with you." 
 
 And Jack said nothing at aU, but kissed her. And then he was 
 in his boat, and then he was on his deck with Hetty beside him ; 
 and then the tug had caught the schooner's hawser, and she went 
 out through the mist into the Kent and Essex sunlight. And that 
 was over. 
 
 Lord Ducetoy and the bishop were with her as she rounded the 
 turn of the river. "Kebecca," said Lord Ducetoy, "could we 
 have sent two better ones to seek him ? " 
 
 "To seek whom?" 
 
 "Morley." 
 
 "Is he dead?" 
 
 " They are gone to see," said Lord Ducetoy : " it has been 
 kept from you." 
 
 Kebecca stood amazed, but quite quiet. 
 
 " My dear lady," said the bishop ; " this matter has been kept 
 from you by a consultation of many men. We are very anxious 
 about Morley, and some of us believe that there is no hope. I am 
 not of those who think there is no hope. For I most entirely 
 think that God has a great work in hand for Morley, and that 
 Morley has not been taken to his rest yet. I may be wrong — 
 who can judge God's ways ? but, my dear young lady, I believe 
 you will live to see Morley by your side again, doing God's work 
 with your assistance." 
 
 " Meanwhile ? " said Kebecca, calmly. 
 
 " Meanwhile," said the bishop, calmly, " do as you are doing. 
 If you are not to meet him again on earth, you are rendering 
 yourself more fit to meet him in heaven." 
 
 For the next nine months the inhabitants of Limehouse got 
 familiarised to a tall and splendidly beautiful young lady, always 
 dressed in black, who walked perpetually about among the poor, 
 followed by a withered lady in grey, who caiTied her basket, and 
 
332 HETTY. 
 
 did what the tall young lady told her with never one murmur. 
 These two were Eebecca and Miss Soper, for Eeheoca had con- 
 quered and vanquished her Soper ; and if it had pleased Rebecca 
 to turn Roman Catholic, I fear that the old miin at Rome would 
 have had two converts instead of one. 
 
 Russel and Can-y came down once or twice. But they were an 
 ill match for Rebecca, with the vigorous, wary, and emphatic 
 Soper at her chariot-wheels. The hearty goodness which had 
 always been in Miss Soper, kept in by penury, by responsibility 
 for others, and by formulas, came out now. The lean, wizened, 
 cross old Soper has become one of the best and kindliest workers 
 among the sailors' wives and sweethearts at the East End. 
 
 Said Soper to Rebecca once, in these times, " Becky, I tried to 
 find out the secret of living to God ; and I failed, until you showed 
 it to me. Who showed it to you ? " 
 
 "Morley," said Rebecca. 
 
 Nine months ; and hope growing dead as time went on. Hope 
 of Morley utterly gone now to her, hut not to others. 
 
 She was sitting in her class of girls one day, when the bishop 
 came in, and touched her on the shoulder. Rebecca, although a 
 Dissenter, had that love and reverence for this bishop which, I 
 believe, is common to aU sects in the Church of Christ. She 
 rose from her seat, with her black lace shawl drooping from one 
 shoulder, and bowed deeply. And the young Dissenters stared 
 open-eyed at the spectacle of a real bishop talking to Teacher. 
 
 " I have news from the sea," said the bishop, holding out his 
 left hand. 
 
 " Good or bad, my lord ? " said Rebecca. 
 
 " That is what I cannot make out," said the bishop. " We 
 have heard from Hartop. He has recovered two, hut believes 
 Morley to be alive ten miles to the northward. Until we get his 
 next letter we know nothing." 
 
 " And when shall we get his letter ? " asked Rebecca. 
 
 " Well," said the bishop, " he only allows himself ten days for 
 exploration : and so it comes to this, that he will bring his own 
 letter." 
 
 " Then the news about Mr. Morley will be brought by Hartop 
 and Hetty? " she said. 
 
 " That is exactly the case," said the bishop. 
 
 So she abode quietly, seeing her good works ripen in fruit about 
 her everywhere. As month after month passed she became a 
 great object of interest to people belonging to the great Society 
 which had sent out Hartop and Hetty to seek for Morley. 
 
 There was a romance about her situation which took the kind 
 
HETTY. 333 
 
 hearts of these good people greatly. The beautiful Miss Turner 
 was talked of in many places of which she little dreamt. 
 
 She only knew that people were very kind to her. All sects of 
 Christians were alike kind to her, and perhaps the Jews were as 
 kind as any of them. As Lord Ducetoy said, "In a case of 
 patience and work like that, difleronces of creed vanish, because 
 what was only hiiman has become divine." 
 
 Morley was given up for many months now. By degrees Tryon 
 had broken it to her, and with true kindness had told her that 
 there was no hope at all for him, and that people were even getting 
 anxious about Hetty and Hartop. So she worked harder and 
 harder, and never cried at all except for a few hours in the dead 
 of night when she woke. 
 
 A little of the old life came to her now and then. The Tibbeys 
 would make a Sabbath day's journey to her, and have cake and 
 tea. Mr. Spicer or Mr. Akin would come and bid her God speed, 
 like fine fellows as they were ; and still the little dog Mab trailed 
 after in her swift walking, doing good. 
 
 But one summer's day there was news ; she would not ask what 
 it was, hut she was certain there was news. On the wharf there 
 was Lord S. and Lord Ducetoy, excited, with Moriarty and Mrs. 
 Tryon. Moriarty drew a diagram in the dust for the instruction 
 of Lord Ducetoy, and Mrs. Tryon altered it with the ferrule of her 
 umbrella. Whereupon those two fell out. Eebecca was sure there 
 was news. And so there was. 
 
 It was half-past eleven, and a very dark night, and she was 
 sitting up at some of her charity accounts, but listening for every 
 sound, when she heard a step on the stair and sat rigid. 
 
 She knew it was Hetty's. Hetty came very quickly up the 
 stair, threw open the door in aR her fuU beauty, fresh from the 
 sea, bare-headed, with the very salt on her hair. And Eebecca 
 gave a loud wild cry, not articulate, but meaning much, fur she saw 
 that Hetty was not in mourning. 
 
 Not one solitary scrap of black about her. A great deal of 
 pink ribbon, certainly ; sailors love it, and so their wives wear it. 
 
 "Becky, my sweetheart," she said, "you must keep yourself 
 cool ; it is absolutely necessary that I am not to be disturbed on 
 any account whatever." 
 
 " Is there news ? " said Eebecca. 
 
 " I do not know what you mean by news, Becky,'' said Hetty. 
 " But if you mean that we have foimd pa, and got pa, and brought 
 pa home, and that pa is standing outside the door waiting to come 
 in, why I say you are right." And she sat down on a chair by 
 the door, and beat her knees, and cried. 
 
334 HETTY. 
 
 It was actually true. From the lonely cavern on the ocea 
 shore, death, in whose jaws he had lived so long, had given hir 
 up to love. It seemed incredible, even to Hetty now, but ther 
 was his grizzled hair smothered in Kebeoca's and she laughed am 
 believed. 
 
 They had begun their hunt to the very north, searching ba; 
 after bay, losing heart, losing hope, until they came to the Ba; 
 of St. Julian. Jack and Hetty were on the forecastle, watchin; 
 the reef, but having a fine easterly suck of wind behind them, no 
 caring much whether they took Pigafettas Channel or Sir Francii 
 Drake's ; Hetty was wondering aloud whereabouts Captain Doughtii 
 had been hung, when she uttered a loud cry. 
 
 Before them was a long sandy beach, half-a-mile off, fringec 
 with white surf ; behind the beach was the prairie rolling off west 
 ward toward the Andes, and upon the beach was a soUtary blacl 
 figure, which walked up and down. 
 
 He was perfectly quiet when they got through the surf t( 
 him. 
 
 " I knew Jack would be after me if he could," he said, "but J 
 thought he could not possibly be home in time." * And he tolc 
 them the details of his adventure, and took them to the cave 
 where his last faithful friend. Holt, lay in bed, covered with sea- 
 weed and grass, reading Quarle's "Emblems " to while away the 
 short time before death. 
 
 Hetty had instantaneously possessed herself of the person of the 
 Eev. Mr. Holt, leaving her father to Jack. He had been living 
 on oysters, had Mr. Holt, which Mr. Morley had gathered day bj 
 day, and he said that they lay very cold on his stomach, and that 
 he much missed his Baxter's " Saint's Best," which he had 
 dropped on the Pampas in waUving here with Brother Morley, 
 whom God had doubtless rescued for more successful work. 
 Hetty, directing four of Lord Ducc toy's young men, got him 
 through the surf and aboard, after which she had her will with 
 him, and the Eev. Mr. Holt came home in better condition than 
 he went out. 
 
 Morley was a man of sijlendid physical conformation, yet with 
 a quiet soul which is more powerful than mere physique. None 
 of all this terrible work had made much difference in him. He 
 was certainly a degree more handsome, and a little more grey than 
 ever, otherwise there was no change. 
 
 Those four sat together that night, and the peace which Morley 
 
 * Thia story is so dreadful and painful in reality that I would not 
 write it. The original Morley met with a very different fate. 
 
HETTY. 335 
 
 had brouglit to Rebecca in old times was with them that evening, 
 the peace of God which passes all understanding. 
 
 The news of the safety of Morley had been known in London 
 before Rebecca Imew it. The Society had met, and it was unani- 
 mously agreed that Mr. Morley should be requested to accept the 
 mission of Honawoora as soon as his health would permit. The 
 offer came to him the day after his arrival, and he answered that 
 his health was in perfect order, and that, as he was getting slightly 
 older, the sooner he went the better. He wanted tliree weeks to 
 be married in, and then he was ready. He heartily thanked the 
 committee for appointing his son-in-law, Hartop, to the command 
 of the ship. 
 
 So one day, three weeks after this, Soper, Lord Ducetoy, Mr. 
 Spioer, Lord S., the little Popish doctor, Mrs. Russel, the two 
 Tibbeys, Mr. Akin, Mr. Hagbut, and Carry, and one hundred and 
 fifty new friends, unnamed in this story, went to see the great 
 missionary ship Eirene pass by out on her glorious expedition. 
 
 As she passed they cheered, as surely no people ever cheered 
 before ; for on her quarter-deck stood Morley and Rebecca, Jack 
 Hartop and Hetty. 
 
 Tryon wept violently, and cast herself on Lord Duoetoy's bosom. 
 "It's aU your doing, my dear," she said, between her tears, "if 
 it had not been for that there yacht of yourn, we should never 
 have got him. She only wants twenty ton more iron ballast in 
 her well aft, and the blocks of the topsail lift raised nine inches, 
 to make her a craft in which my man that is gone would not have 
 despised to have sailed in hims3lf." 
 
 And so they went away to the work which God had found 
 them to do. Whether they lived long and died happy, whether 
 they were rich or poor, or whether they had many children or 
 few, is nothing to us. God fitted these four people for a certain 
 work in this world, and three of them had to wait till the fourth 
 was fit to join them. I have tried to show how Rebecca was 
 made ready for the others. Rebecca's difficulties had been so 
 continually before one, that some might think I ought to call my 
 story Rebecca. But I think, if you please, that in honour of the 
 young lady, the reputation of whose deeds kept Rebecca firm, I 
 will call my story after its real heroine, Hetty. 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 A STORY IN TWO CHAPTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Cadets, not at Woolwich or Sandhurst, (such was not their good 
 fortune,) but cadets of old and now impoverished houses — of 
 houses which still kept up their ancient state. They were both 
 handsome, well-grown, well-bred, but utterly poor, and utterly 
 unfitted by their education for anything in the world, or, to speak 
 more truly, for anything in any world but their own. Neither of 
 them had place or provision of any kind, and both had been 
 used to luxury from their youth up. 
 
 They were cousins — Edward Hornby and Lionel Horton. 
 Edward was a large, loud, fierce man, very vicious, very hand- 
 some, a terrible bully (these were in the older times — the Camel- 
 ford times), a splendid rider, a fine shot, as brave as a lion, and 
 as treacherous as a leopard. Lionel was cast in a gentler and 
 more feminine mould to all appearance ; not quite so tall, perhaps 
 even more handsome, and of pleasing genial manners. Somewhat 
 idle even in the few things he had to do, but a most amiable 
 and excellent young fellow, disgusted with his life, and knowing 
 himself fit for higher things. 
 
 They had a third and mutual cousin, slightly younger, a young 
 lady. Her family was as poor as were either of theirs, but she 
 was rich. She was dowered with a beauty so wonderful that 
 people in the world began to speak of it even now, before she was 
 out ; and to this beauty her father and mother looked, in part, 
 to restore the fallen fortunes of their house, for they were heirless, 
 and she was the last of the long old line. 
 
 She had been seen by few, but had been very much in the 
 company of her cousins. Inevitably, but with singular infelicity, 
 those two unhappy young men fell deeply in love with her, and 
 
340 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 more unfortunately still, she returned the love of the more gentle 
 Lionel. 
 
 It was in the autumn, at one of their dilapidated old country 
 houses, that this took place. Edward broke the fiercest horses 
 for her amusement ; swam the broad cold river in November 
 because she was on the other side, and that he might have the 
 happiness of walking home beside her in his dripping clothes in 
 the biting wind. But she did not care for him, she was far too 
 refined a woman to be won by mere exhibitions of brute strength 
 which any prize-fighter could surpass. When he did not frighten 
 her he displeased her ; she disliked him, and he saw it. 
 
 Lionel was a perfect gentleman, and though not a close scholar, 
 had read somewhat. And he had a gentle, playful manner, too, 
 and a pleasant, quiet way of saying humorous things, and alto- 
 gether was such a very charming person that she gave him the 
 preference from the first, and grew to love him deeply before 
 she had any idea that such was the case. He was only her 
 cousin. 
 
 She was at first very careful in her behaviour to the two to 
 show no marked preference for either. But each of them before 
 long saw perfectly well how the matter stood. 
 
 The old people of com-se guessed nothing of it ; if they had, it 
 would have given them only a temporary uneasiness. Her father 
 was so inexorably certain of her destiny that nothing could have 
 disturbed his certainty ; the car of Juggernaut is not to be 
 turned aside by a stick. And the poor young lady was well 
 aware of what awaited her, and but for this appearance of Lionel 
 in these autumn days, would have looked forward with extreme 
 pleasure to that destiny. 
 
 Lionel was roused from his lethargy of life by this newly-found 
 love, and he formed a scheme, a foolish lover's scheme. 
 
 " If she wiU be constant for a year or two, I will win a position 
 for her. There is, at all events, India." 
 
 Alas, poor youth ! he should have kno'^vn that he would get no 
 nearer to the moon by going to India than he would to his cousin 
 Alice. 
 
 As the autumn drew towards a close, she began to relax a 
 little in the extreme care with which she had kept the balance 
 beween them, and somewhat to unbend towards Lionel. Edward 
 hating with a deep and deadly hatred, watched them closely, and 
 saw the growing hope in Lionel's eyes. 
 
 " The fool will not be long before he speaks." 
 
 Lionel was not long before he spoke. One day she was distant 
 and cold to him, and in asking an explanation of this coldness 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 341 
 
 he determined to say tlie great word to her, to lay his life at her 
 feet, to pray her to wait. 
 
 He found her alone. Had he not been nervous, had he but 
 looked a little more at her face, he would have seen that she was 
 very angry, and would not have spoken. To his great astonish- 
 ment she repelled him with extreme anger. Before there was 
 any time to ask for an explanation, the father and mother 
 entered, the father livid with rage. 
 
 " Then my watching is rewarded," said the old gentleman, " I 
 was not deceived. Wretched Lionel, how have you abused my 
 confidence and violated my hospitality ! Lionel, you have traded 
 on your familiarity as a cousin in a base and cowardly way." 
 
 " My lord," said Lionel, " may I be allowed to teU you what 
 has just passed before I leave your house for ever ? I have just 
 proposed to my cousin." 
 
 " This is mighty well," said the old man, " wondrous well, my 
 young lady." 
 
 " Do hear me, my lord," said Lionel. " I wish you to blame 
 the right person. I am alone to blame. My cousin has rejected 
 me with scorn. For heaven's sake understand that in your 
 anger." 
 
 The old man's hand went round the daughter's waist as he 
 turned to Lionel. 
 
 " Nephew," he said, " you are a gentleman. No one is more 
 sorry than myself that this has happened through my carelessness. 
 But my daughter, you see, knows her duty." 
 
 Alice herself turned and spoke to him. 
 
 "I cannot believe you utterly lost to all honour. Bead this 
 letter and clear yourself. If you choose, you can write to me in 
 explanation. We have seen each other for the last time." 
 
 She tossed a letter towards him, but it fell close to where she 
 was standing. Her father made a dart to get it, but she put her 
 foot upon it and waved him imperiously off. My lord obeyed. 
 There were traditions in his family, and he, like many of his 
 order, was the slave of tradition. The women of his house had 
 the hereditaiy character of being easily managed and tractable 
 when led ; but fierce and desperately vindictive when driven. 
 There were unfortunately two or three ugly stories in the history 
 of the family to confirm this tradition ; and my lord let the letter 
 lie on the floor. 
 
 Edward picked the letter up and read it. The passage which 
 concerned him was this : — 
 
 " Your sweet cousin Lionel was dining at the mess of the 
 
342 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 140th last night, and used your name in a scandalously public 
 manner. He toasted you in the very coarsest terms, and spoke 
 of you as his fiancee. My brother told me this this morning. 
 I hoped that your cousin had been drunk, but Georgey says he 
 was perfectly sober. 
 
 " Yours ever lovingly, 
 
 " Claea Beabazon." 
 
 Clara Brabazon was an intimate friend of Alice's. Her brother, 
 the " Georgey " of this letter, was a pleasant, kind young comet 
 of dragoons. That the blow was Edward's Lionel was certain. 
 It was Edward who had got the foul lie viritten ; it was Edward 
 who had set the old people to watch. But the blow had come 
 through George Brabazon ; he must have an explanation from 
 him, and the whole thing would come out. He wrote a peremptory 
 letter to the cornet, stating that he had been making unfounded 
 assertions with regard to him, and demanding a public apology. 
 Alas ! the letter which he wrote in his indignation was a little 
 too peremptory for that regiment and for those times. George 
 Brabazon was advised, which meant ordered, by his brother 
 officers, directed, I fear, by the colonel, to send a man to Lionel 
 for an explanation. The fatal step was taken, no arrangement 
 was possible now. And so they met, the kindly Lionel and the 
 merry, popular young cornet. 
 
 Lionel said most solemnly to his dying day that he never 
 meant to hit the comet, but only fired nervously towards him, 
 with some vague instinct of self-defence. However that may be, 
 and I believe it, the instant after he fired the poor young man, 
 after staring round him for one moment, with a ghastly look of 
 horror, fell down in a heap upon the grass, dead I 
 
 Lionel's horror and remorse were terrible to witness. The 
 habits of reserve and repression in which people of his order were 
 then educated, gave way utterly. He lost the self-possession of 
 an English gentleman, and raved and imprecated curses upon 
 himself so fiercely that the ofiicers who stood around began to get 
 more scared at him than they were at the solemn and beautiful 
 corpse which lay at their feet. But there was the necessity of 
 flight, even in those days : and when Lionel appeared at midnight 
 beside the bed of his startled father, he was calm, though he 
 looked five or six years older. 
 
 His father had a plan for him, and they talked it over for 
 to-morrow. His father was poor, and he sincerely regretted that 
 he had no provision or career to offer his son, worthy of a gentle- 
 man, in this country. But many gentlemen were doing well in 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 313 
 
 New South Wales, at the wool-growing. Did he think that he 
 could bring his mind to entertain such an idea ? 
 
 " You tell me that England has grown hateful to you after 
 these miserable occurrences, my poor boy. Try to forget them in 
 business." 
 
 " I would gladly go," he said, " but we have no money." 
 
 " I wiU lend you five thousand pounds of your mother's, bear- 
 ing interest. If you succeed, you can pay her again ; if you lose 
 it all, why it will be gone, and you will have nothing left but our 
 love and our blessing. Those you will always have. You have 
 been a good son to us, and God bless you." 
 
 And so he sailed ; and the world went on and forgot him 
 utterly. His cousin Alice married a young nobleman of vast 
 wealth, the Marquis of Granton, in her first season, and became 
 one of the first ladies in the land. 
 
 In Australia, year glides into year, and one almost undistin- 
 guishable season fades into another, and time, divided and 
 unmarked by events, goes on with equal pace. The years are 
 not marked as with us, by the snows and frosts of Christmas, or 
 by leafless trees. In winter there the grass is greener than the 
 trees ; in summer the trees, though remaining the same colour, 
 are greener than the grey dried grass. That is all the change, 
 except some little in temperature. 
 
 Ten years had gone over Lionel's head, and he was a steady, 
 rich, sedate magistrate of thvee-and-thirty before he could believe 
 such a thing possible. 
 
 He was wealthy even for the wealthy community in which he 
 lived. Besides his vast flocks of sheep, he had made some 
 singularly bold and lucky investments in town lands. He had 
 no genius for commerce, but he was a steady, contemplative, 
 quiet man, who did not care about making money, and stiU his 
 money grew. He had no partner, but lived alone, about 250 
 miles from town. 
 
 A very pleasant place was this solitary station of his, ten miles 
 from the next neiglibours. A creek, overarched by vast white- 
 steihmed trees, running in a deep glen cut out of the table-land, 
 wandered on between the forest and the plain, and in one of the 
 pleasantest of its bends his house was placed overlooking it. 
 The house stood quite by itself, in the midst of a beautiful 
 garden, which grew everything, from gooseberi'ies to peaches. 
 The great outbuildings, which were necessary for his wool and 
 his men, were a quarter of a mile off. He had a quiet place. 
 
 The time did not go unpleasantly to him. He had his books, 
 carefully added to year after year ; and what is more, he read 
 
344 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 them. He had his newspapers and magazines in those days 
 three months after date. He had expeditions to Sydney, at that 
 time even growing to be a beautiful place ; and long rides over 
 plain and through forest, after his business. Last, and not least, 
 lie had his sporting. 
 
 He got to be the greatest sportsman of those parts. His 
 " run," as they call the gi'ound occupied under lease from Govern- 
 ment by a squatter, was a vast stretch of country, twenty-five 
 miles by twenty ; nearly all bare, rich, level plain, at a consider- 
 able elevation above the sea, almost entirely without wood, and 
 only marked here and there by two or three grass-grown extinct 
 volcanoes, which rose perhaps three or four hundred feet above 
 the level of the table -land. It was one of the richest " runs " in 
 those parts, keeping a sheep to every three acres, but it was a 
 very bad sporting run. There were many lakes upon it, swarm- 
 ing with waterfowl, from the gigantic pelican and black swan, 
 down to the tiny grey grebe ; but it was a bad country for sport. 
 He hardly ever fired a gun on his own run, save at the ducks, 
 and more particularly at one other species of game, which I shall 
 notice directly. 
 
 But his house stood at the very edge of his run, close to the 
 " plough line " which separated him from his neighbours. And 
 behind his house began the great forests of which his neighbours' 
 run consisted. These forests, at first open, that is to say, formed 
 by large trees without underwood, roUed up into a densely- 
 thicketed (scrubby) region of greater elevation — a wilderness of 
 flowers, a paradise of game ; at that time, merely a wild labyrinth 
 of rocky guUies, or little glens, where the virgin gold lay about 
 on the surface, shining, after each shower, out of the red clay 
 which fonned the soil, like the window of a jeweller's shop. 
 Afterwards this very hunting-ground of Lionel's held a population 
 of thirty thousand souls; now, like the "Fiery Creek," for 
 instance, it has nearly returned to its original solitude. Nobody 
 was more amused than himself when he heard of the vast trea- 
 sures which his old hunting-ground had yielded, from the surface 
 and from a few feet deep. 
 
 To show that one does not exaggerate, I myself knew well a 
 tract of low-lying forest ranges, at the foot of Mount Cole, in 
 Victoria, utterly desolate and uninhabited, a place to which our 
 lost sheep wandered and died of foot-rot. I saw that same tract 
 of country after it had supported a population of 50,000 souls, 
 and was still supporting about 10,000. With gold, however, we 
 have nothing to do, and only with hunting for a specific purpose. 
 
 For these upland gullies — all a-blossom in spring with 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 345 
 
 Orevilleas, Epacris, and innumerable other beautiful flowers (the 
 exquisite series of Australian orchids trampled under one's horse's 
 feet unnoticed) — these sparsely timbered flower-gardens became 
 his hunting-ground. They lay higher than the great forest, but 
 not high enough to get the fresh breeze from the mountain, which 
 stiU towered above and beyond them : and in spring and early 
 summer they were hot, bright, happy sorts of places, smelling not 
 unlike an old-fashioned walled garden in England. Nobody ever 
 went there ; there was nothing to attract the cattle or the sheep, 
 for the soil was bare of grass, showing the red clay everywhere 
 through the flowers, and the gold too, had any one had eyes to 
 see it : and " shikarees " (like the late Mr. Wheelwright, the 
 " old bushman " of the Field), did not exist in Australia in those 
 days. It was an utterly desolate region, and Lionel himself only 
 rode into it accidentally on one occasion, when he was steering 
 for his head-station by compass. 
 
 He often came again. Your horse could not go fast in conse- 
 quence of the abruptness of the guUies and the denseness of the 
 flowering shrubs, and you seldom rode far in a contemplative 
 mood, without becoming dimly aware of a presence, and an eye ; 
 and, on looking more carefully, finding that you were within a few 
 yards of a great grey (or sometimes red) kangaroo, sitting up like 
 a small donkey on its hind-legs, and going away, click, click, 
 fifteen miles an hour as soon as you noticed it. Then, again, 
 coming round the corner of a belt of shrubbery, you would come 
 on a knot of birds, standing from six to eight feet high, which, 
 after examining you, would get a panic, and race away twenty 
 miles an hour — Emus to wit. Parrots — why thicker than 
 sparrows and linnets in England ; cockatoos, lorekeets ; Scan- 
 sores innumerable, sulphur-crested, rose-crested, black and red, 
 black and yeUow, beyond telling ; eagles, larger than any Euro- 
 pean species, would come from the great blue overhead and 
 almost brush your ear with their wings ; and alighting on a bare 
 bough close by, would sit and watch you. Snakes ? why, unfor- 
 tunately, yes ; some almost steel-coloured, gliding softly among 
 the flowers ; others more deadly and more horrible, lying with 
 their soft bodies fitting to the ground as if they had grown there, 
 and only raising their flat unutterably wicked heads as you passed. 
 Monster lizards, five, ay, and seven feet long ; other lizards of 
 all colours ; one a mass of evil horns and wings (the " Moloch "). 
 For the rest — scorpions, centipedes, ridiculously fantastic beetles ; 
 ManlidcB, like straws and sticks and leaves, which crawled on 
 your blankets if you camped there ; and stinging ants, with a 
 grievance against the rest of animated nature, always promptly 
 
346 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 revenged. A "paradise," as I said, in the sense in which old 
 Xenophon * uses the word. In another sense of the word, it was 
 a "paradise " to Lionel. One of the specialiles of his order for 
 all time has been that of the destruction of wild animals. From 
 the hero of the Ter centum millia perdicum in " Sartor Kesartus," 
 
 up to K.G., statesman and sportsman, it has always been 
 
 the same. Lionel did not belong to the school who are shocked 
 at the killing of poor innocent dumb animals ; in fact, the school 
 scarcely existed then, certainly not in that part of the world ; for 
 I greatly fear that some animals by no means dumb had been 
 shot down in those parts ; and though Lionel's hands were clean, 
 he was an exception. Sport of some kind was one of the tradi- 
 tions of the order, and he found sport in these secondary gullies 
 which lay under the great dominating mountains, and followed 
 it. 
 
 In his own way. At first he took the usual course which is 
 followed in the colonies, and had dogs, half-bred greyhounds, for 
 the kangaroos, but he lost half of them ; then he tried on many 
 occasions to ride down emus on his best horses, but he lamed 
 his horses, lost his emus, and once had a serious accident against 
 a tree himself. He put his wits to work. Stalking was quite 
 impossible on account of the snakes, but in those early times 
 any kind of game would allow the close approach of a horse ; 
 while, in consequence of their being used to an attack by natives, 
 no kind of game in any way worth having would allow the 
 approach of a man on foot. He got himself a carbine, and 
 looked about for a horse who would stand the firing of this same 
 carbine from his back. 
 
 His stock horses, the horses employed in driving in his cattle, 
 being used to the stock-whip, which makes a report like a pistol, 
 could be got to stand it after a time. But stock horses do not 
 do for sporting purposes. One leg among four of them is a good 
 average. He took his youngest and best horse, and carefully 
 trained him to standing fire. He got some terrible falls, but the 
 British aristocracy, though, as some say, wanting in all the 
 cardinal virtues, have never been accused of having less pluck 
 than other folks, and he persevered. He got a high-bred young 
 horse to stand fire, after which he had splendid sport. He would 
 ride up to a kangaroo, and shoot it dead with a single bullet from 
 his carbine ; he would ride into a flock of turkeys (bustards) on 
 his own plains, and with the reins on his spirited young horse's 
 neck, would pick ofi' three or four before the foolish creatures 
 thought it time to move. 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 347 
 
 So far. He vegetated on here with his accumulating wealth, 
 with his books, his business, and his sport, and there was but 
 little to disturb him. Old memories were getting very dim ; and 
 the most painful parts of them, with the dark exception of his 
 most unhappy duel, were getting so mellowed by time as to be 
 almost pleasant. So when he, after five years' vegetation, got 
 the intelligence that his cousin, the Honourable Edward Hornby, 
 had come into the colony, and had been made inspector of police 
 for the southern district (Victoria was a mere district then, though 
 central now), he did not care very much. It was aU over and 
 done with so many years ago, and the sun had gone to sleep with 
 her last light upon the peaceful eastern hiUs so often. In that 
 land of unteUable melancholy peace called Australia, the setting 
 of the sun — a peaceful event everywhere — is more peaceful, more 
 calm, possibly more beautiful, than in any other country in the 
 world. Once see for yourself those dim, lonely, long-drawn plains 
 of grey grass, and see the sunlight die on the solitary wooded 
 peak which stands out from them twenty miles away, and then 
 you wiU know what I mean. Lionel had seen this awful sunset 
 spectacle every day for five years, and he said, " Who am I, that 
 the sun should go down on my wrath ? " 
 
 He had met Edward Hornby at sessions, with an open brow 
 and an open hand, two years after he had heard of his being in 
 the colony as police inspector, which was seven years after his 
 own arrival, when he was getting to be a wealthy and weU-to-do 
 man. The meeting on his part was cordial, and on that of his 
 cousin's apparently so. But he was very much struck by his 
 cousin's appearance. 
 
 He did not look dissipated : all his nerve and vitality were left, 
 but there was a wild, fierce, bandit-look about the man for which 
 he could not in any way account. He asked the head stipendiary 
 magistrate about him in confidence. This officer was a very dear 
 friend of his, and they had a mutual respect for one another. 
 
 "It is an awful shame," said the stipendiary magistrate to 
 Lionel ; " the Home Government serves us shamefully.* This is a 
 home appointment. This man, this cousin of yours, my dear 
 Lionel, is a desperate man : he has been kicked out of every 
 biUiard-room from Brussels to Naples. But his cousin and your 
 
 cousin. Lady Alice , married Lord Granton ; and so, when 
 
 Europe is too hot to hold him, he is foisted on us as police 
 inspector. It is too monstrous. We are not strong enough to 
 cast the old country off, but the time will come when we shall be. 
 
 * " We have changed all that. " I am speakiug of old times — "Killing 
 extinct Satans." 
 
348 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 You arc making your fortune, you have your position, you will go 
 home and go into Parhamcut. Do for heaven's sake tell the 
 assembled British nation that we are sick already of having iU- 
 reputed cadets thrust upon us in responsible positions. Do for 
 heaven's sake, man, tell them that we are forced to stand it now, 
 but that the time will come when we will stand it no longer." 
 
 Lionel saw but little of his cousin after this. When Edward, 
 as inspector of police, came his way, he was always absent from 
 the bench. The last time — save two — he ever saw him was at a 
 fancy ball at Government House. Edward was dressed as a 
 bandit, and Lionel was obliged to agree that he looked the part 
 to perfection. 
 
 Now one has to explain again, for we fear that few of our readers 
 know the meaning of the word " bushranger." 
 
 The first bushrangers were escaped convicts from Sydney. 
 Bushranging began abnost as soon as the Blue Mountains were 
 crossed and the great interior opened ; making the strict police, 
 possible while the colony was confined to the eastward of that 
 mountain chain, now impossible. After this, bushranging spread 
 far and wide : more to the north, towards the Hunter and Clarence 
 at first ; but afterwards, as the flocks went south, into the most 
 outlying districts in that direction. The object of these bush- 
 rangers was to avenge themselves on the society which they had 
 once defied, by new crimes ; and if you will take the newest digest 
 of the criminal laws, and run your eye down the list of crimes, you 
 will find not one which they did not commit. Such were the first 
 generation of bushrangers. The second were hai'dly so brutal ; 
 but, strange to say, young men whose fathers had been convicts, 
 but who were refoimed and were doing well — getting rich indeed — 
 joined this second generation of bushrangers from mere love of 
 adventure and of old association. I date the second generation of 
 bushrangers at 1830; what shall we say of 1865 — of the thud 
 generation — when no road in New South Wales was safe, and when 
 the grandsons of the original convicts join the bushrangers and 
 defy the police ? On one occasion, in 1865, they actually held a 
 town for two days and gave a ball, at which the policemen v/ere 
 obhged to dance. If it is so in 1865, what must it have been in 
 1830 ? Is it at all surprising that the feeling of the respectable 
 colonists like Lionel Horton, with the dread of horrors to which 
 those of the sack of St. Sebastian are child's play, hanging over 
 them, should be one of intense wrath, bordering on ferocity. 
 
 In his quiet southern home, with his flocks grazing far across 
 the plains, and the stolus of old, quiet, good-humoured, contented 
 London pickpockets and forgers around him, he had troubled him- 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 349 
 
 self but little about these bushrangers. His people were all rogues 
 and convicts. He knew that very well ; but they were not men 
 who had been convicted of violent crimes, with the exception of 
 one, who had fired a loaded pistol at his colonel at Gibraltar, 
 because the colonel had refused to let him marry.* This would- 
 be murderer was a great friend of Lionel's. On the whole, he felt 
 perfectly safe about his people. 
 
 " I debauched my moral sense among these people, you know," 
 he said once to Lady Gran ton, whilom his cousin Alice. " They 
 didn't care anything for me, though I was a magistrate. I assure 
 you these people are much nicer than your people. Take yourself, 
 for instance : you are supposed to know everybody ; but you don't 
 know anybody who has robbed a goldsmith, and is perfectly ready 
 to teU you all about it. And you are supposed to know the world. 
 Oh ! my poor cousin." 
 
 It was about the eighth year of his calm sojourn in these quiet 
 sohtudes, that there came a noise or report from the north, dim 
 and vague at first, and clouded with a mist of incidents and anec- 
 dotes which the younger folks took to be original, but which the 
 older hands recognised as mere replicas of old istories. But, in 
 spite of the surrounding mist of old stories reproduced, the noise 
 or report began to shape itself into form, and at last crystallised 
 itself into certainty. There was a great gang of bushrangers 
 abroad ; by rumour more numerous, more bold, more cunning, and 
 more cruel than any which had appeared on the continent. One 
 had to go to the legends of the neighbouring island of Van 
 Diemen's Land to match them for strength and for ferocity. 
 
 There was little doubt about their leader : he had been seen 
 many times, and could be sworn to by a hundred mouths — no less 
 a person than Mike Howe, the baby-ldUer of Van Diemen's Land. 
 This was not true : Howe never went into the bush on the main- 
 land, as far as I can gather. But that awful name was sufficient 
 to cause a panic among the outlying settlers, and many of the out- 
 lying squatters (country gentlemen) removed their books and their 
 wives, and went to Sydney, leaving ex-convict overseers to make 
 the best bargain they could with the terrible bandit. 
 
 A fearful bandit he was. The foulest, fellest, and fiercest with 
 which the land had ever been plagued. The three types of bush- 
 
 * A fact. A difficult man, but not what I should call an awkward 
 man. You had to smooth him the right way. If he threw down his 
 pack or his tools, you must leave him alone. If you had gone about 
 further with him, I should suspect that he would become dangerous. 
 I never tried the experiment, and so the reader has the present 
 story. 
 
350 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 rangers which came most naturally to one's memory are those 
 represented by Mike Howe, Eocky Whelan, and Melville. Michael 
 Howe was a handsome devil — a man beside whom Nana Sahib 
 appears only as an enraged patriot with a personal grievance. He 
 took the child from the mother's breast, and beat its brains out 
 against a tree. Eocky Whelan was a feller devil even than this — 
 a murderer fr'om sheer love of seeing his victim die. Melville was 
 different to either of them, and by far the most remarkable. A 
 smaUish man, the son of a Scotch clergyman, of the most intense 
 vitality, with a courage of the most transcendent order. A man 
 utterly without fear ; not, as far as I know, either cruel or un- 
 clean, but a man whose whole soul was, for no reason what- 
 ever, in utter rebellion against order, law, society ; nay, I fear 
 against God Himself. The man could never have shed blood, or 
 he would have been hanged without mercy. He was never hanged, 
 for there never was anything against him worse than highway 
 robbeiy. He was under sentence for something like thirty years, 
 when, in one of his mad attempts to escape from the hulk, he 
 got dro^vned. 
 
 This last man is a puzzle to me still. I would give much to 
 have a talk to him. I had a chance once ; I might have got near 
 the man. But who can undertake to talk with a man mad in 
 two-thirds of his soul, in flat rebellion against society and her 
 ministers, tearing furiously at his iron bars like a hungry disap- 
 pointed tiger. 
 
 The three types of bushrangers which I have roughly sketched 
 out were all of them well represented in this new bandit leader. 
 As cmel as Howe, as brutal as "Whelan, as irrepressibly fierce and 
 restless as Melville. Marks was his name ; a very tall man, with 
 a large black beard. His whole history became perfectly well 
 known afterwards. He was a manufacturer's son at Bradford or 
 Leeds ; and, maddened by some disappointment in love, took to 
 every kind of evil course, and having ended in forgery, was trans- 
 ported. He had become for some time apparently respectable in 
 Van Diemen's Land, where he was free ; but the devil, which he 
 had originally invited, came for another visit, and stayed. The 
 man became Berserk, and went to the bush, with seven new devils 
 in his company. The history of the man, and the man's person 
 even, were, be it remembered, as well known to the criminal 
 population as that of Governor Gipps. 
 
 He was one of the " unoatchable " class of bushrangers. His 
 gang was " broken up " several times, and many of them captured 
 and hanged ; but no man ever laid hands on him. He exhibited 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 351 
 
 some of the qualities of a Garibaldi (if I dare use that sacred and 
 loved name on such an occasion) in his Guerilla warfare. Al- 
 though a big man, and " an expensive man to horse," he always 
 rode the finest cattle in the colony, far finer than it was possible 
 for any of his pursuers to ride. No fine weight- carrying horse 
 was safe fi-om him. Five hundred pounds' worth of horse-flesh, 
 in the person of one horse, might be neighing in your paddock at 
 sunset, and at sunrise the slip-rails would be down, and the horse 
 gone. And, again, the man was such a dead shot with a pistol, 
 that few policemen of any rank dared ride too near him. He held 
 the colony in terror, and got more audacious day after day. 
 
 TeiTor gave place to mad though powerless exasperation after 
 the following incidents : — Captain Thompson, of the 50th, one of 
 the most popular men in the whole colony, a man respected and 
 beloved by the Governor, the military, the colonists, and the 
 convicts alike, once more succeeded in breaking up this man's 
 gang ; but in hunting the well-mounted leader himself, he got 
 separated from his party. These two men had evidently met face 
 to face in the bush, and with the saddest consequences. Captain 
 Thompson, being followed by some of his victorious party, was 
 found dead in the bush beside his dead horse, shot through the 
 lungs. From this time that fierce and fearful buUy, the Honour- 
 able Edward Hornby, publicly devoted himself to the especial task 
 of riding down this bushranger and shooting him. 
 
 " A task well suited to him," dreamed Lionel, one wet night, 
 over his lonely fire. " He has done little good in the world as 
 yet, though as much as I, perhaps. God utilises aU His creatures, 
 sooner or later." 
 
 But the " sensation " in the colony about the death of Captain 
 Thompson was mild to the sensation which followed the capture 
 of Inspector the Honourable Edward Hornby, J. P., by the bush- 
 rangers. There was no doubt of the fact : the Honourable 
 Edward had ridden too far, and had been too bold ; and they had 
 got him, and, what is more, meant to keep him. They let their 
 intentions be known to Government by sending into the Goulburn 
 pohce-station a wicked-looking little old shepherd, with one eye, 
 and lame, who stated their terms as these : " iE500 down, and a 
 free pardon for all, or we'U do all to him as we meant to do to 
 ,* if we had caught him before he was dead." 
 
 • A most unpopular officer among the convicts. What is said to have 
 happened after his death is of course untellable here. It is, on the while, 
 as well that the laws of modern literatare make it possible to forget the 
 extent to which human ferocity and brutality can go. 
 
352 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 There was a general cackle and shriek throughout the colony, 
 The Sentinel, in its leader, pointed out that here was an active 
 police magistrate, a scion of the British aristocracy, in the fuH 
 possession of health and strength, set on by a gang of ruffians in 
 broad daylight, and held to ransom. It demanded whether or no 
 one had not better live in Spain or the south of Italy, than in a 
 country hke theirs, nominally fi-ee, and with aU the vast power of 
 the British empire at its back ; and then clearly traced the whole 
 accident to the levelling tendencies of the party who wished for 
 cheap land. The Mohawk replied by saying that he agreed with 
 the Sentinel that Spain, Italy, or even South Carolina was a better 
 country to Hve in than Australia as long as eight hundred men were 
 allowed to keep a million acres desolate for their own selfish 
 purposes, and that the thing never would have happened had the 
 lands been unlocked before, and a population of British hearts and 
 hands been allowed to fonn themselves into self-defensive com- 
 munities, at evei7 point where soil and communication offered an 
 opportunity. The Mohaick, after an intense and almost frantic 
 manifesto of loyalty to the British crown— and I do not think 
 that any one is more intensely loyal to the present dynasty than 
 your thorough-going colonial Radical — ^went on to say that he 
 could not see that the fact of this individual inspector being a 
 scion of the British aristocracy made much difference in the case. 
 The British aristocracy had a good notion of taking care of them- 
 selves. Let this man's aristocratic friends ransom him. The 
 Mohawk was never inclined to come down hard on a man who 
 had got in a mess ; but he could not help saying that, considering 
 what the Honourable Edward Hornby had done for the colony, 
 and looking at his private character, the figure set on his head by 
 the bushrangers was considerably over the market price. 
 
 So the Sentinel and Mohawk made political capital out of this 
 accident. But the Government were dreadfully puzzled. Lionel, 
 who, in spite of oblivion, strongly disliked his cousin, rode to town 
 and urged action on the Colonial Secretary and the Governor. He 
 told them at once that they need never ask the council for the 
 money ; that he would pay the sum five times over out of his own 
 pocket to release his cousin. He urged them to action on that 
 basis, but the Governor and the Colonial Secretary " hung in the 
 wind," and showed a great hesitation in "going about." "He 
 is perfectly safe," said his Excellency; "you yourself, my dear 
 Lionel, would never play out a solitary trump without a single 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 353 
 
 court card in your hand. The bushrangers have got a poor hand 
 and one trump; they will never play it until they are forced." 
 And the secretary said in the ante-room, " We will try to deal 
 with them for you, only the free-pardon business must be dropped. 
 I know how fond you are of your cousin, and how deeply attached 
 your cousin is to you. I have heard him speak of you. I per- 
 fectly well know the relations between you, and see how generously 
 and high-mindedly you are acting. But I wish your cousin was 
 a more respectable man. We may get him back, but the devil 
 himself will never put his accounts right. You really must 
 wait." 
 
 " Are his accounts seriously wi-ong ? " asked Lionel. 
 
 " Over four hundred pounds," answered the Secretary, sadly. 
 " He is a mauvaise sujet. He will lose his appointment, I fear ; 
 and he is so brutal, so wild, and so fierce, that he is getting unfit 
 for decent society. My dear Lionel, I am sorry to say so to you, 
 but your cousin is a ruffian." 
 
 " Now, I'U tell you what I will do with you," said Lionel to 
 the Colonial Secretary (Prime Minister), " if you wiU get him back 
 I wiU pay his ransom and set his accounts right. WiU you do 
 the other half for me, and give these pardons ? " 
 
 " I honestly don't think that we will. You heard the Governor 
 say that he was quite safe. Can his Excellency err ? Go along 1 
 go along I " 
 
 So they hesitated in action, and meanwhile noises and rumours 
 went on full swing. The Sentinel, " shut up " by the unanswer- 
 able Mohawk, was daily pathetic about the scion of the oldest and 
 most respectable aristocracy in Europe. The Mohawk aired the 
 British aristocracy also, denying, however, both their antiquity and 
 their respectability, and attributing the whole accident to the 
 want of cheap land (by no means a bad argument, mind), and to 
 the refusal of that universal suffrage, which they got a few years 
 after, and which, leaving- them nothing to fight for, reduced the 
 sale of their paper by one-half. On one point over this singular 
 accident they had, what their younger gentlemen would have 
 called " a mutual field of generous rivah-y " ; that is to say, in 
 "sensation" paragraphs. When the Sentinel was informed, by 
 one of our greatest stoclc-dealers, whom it was superfluous to 
 name, just arrived in the course of business from the Edwards 
 (meaning, I believe, little Goby), that "our missing inspector" 
 had been tied naked, hand and foot, and alive, on an ants' nest, 
 and had been then and there bitten and stung to death by those 
 ferocious crustaceans, with which we are all famihar on our 
 domestic hearths ; when the Sentinel came out with this piece of 
 
 24 
 
354 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 blac/m the Mohaivk was promptly down on them with another. 
 " ' The old lady of Castlereagh Street ' (we need not say that we 
 aUude to our respected contemporary the Sentinel) is, as usual, 
 entirely in error ahout the sad fate of ' our missing inspector.' 
 An intelligent native king (King Tapto, of Shepherd's Crossing) 
 has just come into our office, after having witnessed the expiring 
 agonies of the scion of British aristocracy. His majesty was 
 attired in his usual court costume of a blue coat and brass 
 buttons, and, with the exception of the Government brass plate 
 on the pit of his stomach, had no other clothing of any sort or 
 kind whatever. He says that he saw Inspector Hornby burnt 
 alive with iron bark chips on the fifth of last month ; in which case 
 the pismire story of the Sentinel falls to the ground utterly. And, 
 although we will not yield in loyalty to our dear old lady the 
 Sentinel, yet she is hardly in a position to deny aR due respect 
 to royal utterances. His Majesty King Tapto's demand for 
 tobacco was promptly answered by one of our young gentlemen. 
 His demand for brandy was referred to our editor, now out of 
 town." 
 
 Before all this " chaff" had died away, Edward Hornby came 
 back to town, ragged and footsore, in a red shirt and moleskin 
 trousers, and resumed his position as police-inspector. His 
 cousin Lionel, through the instrumentality of the Colonial Secre- 
 tary, had his affairs put right, and in such a way that Edward 
 never knew who had done it. All that Edward ever said about 
 the matter was that the bushrangers were kind to him, and that 
 he had escaped, but he was never safe until he got near town. 
 
 Lionel went back to his station. His people were glad to see 
 him again, and there seemed to be no arriere-pensee ahout any 
 of them, save one — the man he called the murderer ; the man 
 who had tried to shoot his colonel at Gibraltar. This man was 
 reserved. This man knew something. He would meet Lionel's 
 eye freely enough, hut in a very inquiring way. Lionel saw that 
 this man's expression was interrogatory, and that the interroga- 
 tion was, " How much do you know ? " 
 
 I am sorry to say that he liked this ruffian. If you have ever 
 tried the lonely hush for yourself for a few years, and would after- 
 wards honestly confess to us all about the uncommonly queer 
 people whom you have to like in that beautiful but unutterably 
 melancholy solitude, you would teU us a most interesting story. 
 I remember, for instance, a man called Wills — originally, I believe, 
 from Pentonville on his good behaviour — who was a very pleasant 
 companion, and taught me first how to crack a stock-whip. He 
 was a very pleasant companion. That gentleman has now, I am 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 355 
 
 given to understand, produced such an additional complication in 
 his dealings with civilised society that the only view he can get 
 of one of our noble colonial prisons is from the inside. But he 
 was not bad company. Lionel's friend, the would-be murderer, 
 was, I am sorry to say, the most trustworthy man about the 
 place. The others all lied ; this man, ruffian as he was, never 
 did that. 
 
 I should hesitate to say this .if I did not know that I was 
 speaking the truth. If I was generahsing I would not say what 
 I have said ; but having my man and my facts before me I am 
 safe. This man watched Lionel about everywhere, in the wool- 
 shed, in the sheep-yards, in the stable, and his look always said 
 one thing — " How much do you know ? " 
 
 At last they spoke. Some sheep were lost in the scrubby 
 ranges, the hunting-grounds of Lionel, after a gale from the 
 south-west, and Lionel took this man with him on horseback. 
 When they were alone together, Lionel said : 
 
 " You have something to say to me, Jordan. I have seen it in 
 your eyes for days." 
 
 And Jordan said, " I have nothing to ask of you save one 
 thing — how much do you know? " 
 "About what?" 
 
 " Well, you are a gentleman, and would not have me mur- 
 dered ; and there is no one to hear us but the pareots, and 
 ihey won't peach, though they can talk. About this bushranger 
 captain ? " 
 
 "He is alive and well. Beyond that I know nothing of 
 him." 
 
 " That wiU do. Don't say a word more. But mind this, 
 governor. I am the only real old hand you have round you ; 
 and I went near death for a girl once, and I would go near death 
 for you. If you know anything more than you have chose to 
 tell me, don't let it out among those twopenny clyfakers and 
 prigs up at home. There is orders among convicts, I tell you. 
 The bigger the sentence the higher the station. You haven't 
 got more than a seven-year man among the lot up except me, and 
 I'm a lifer. A man who has his seven penn'orth, or his fourteen 
 penn'orth, unless he accumulates in the colony, is only used by 
 such men as me as a ticket porter. We make 'em fetch and we 
 make 'em carry, but in a business like this we never trust 'em — 
 don't you." 
 
 "In a business like this?" said Lionel. "What do you 
 mean ? " 
 
 " That is no odds of yours. Only il you know anything, don't 
 
356 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 yon talk. We know. And you are free from us. So Marks i 
 alive and well, is he ? " 
 
 "As far as I know," said Lionel. "I wish you would spea] 
 out." 
 
 " Do you see that there ants' nest ? " said the convict. 
 
 "I see it." 
 
 " The day I want to be tied naked on that ants' nest, is thi 
 day I'll speak out," said the. convict. " Not before. But i 
 Marks comes near us, I'll foUow you. You are a queer lot, yoi 
 swells. You are queerer than us. What the dickens woul( 
 become of you with our temptations, I don't know." 
 
 It appeared, however, that the bushranger was either dead oi 
 most suddenly and unaccountably quiescent. For five months m 
 outrage of any kind was reported from any quarter. At the enc 
 of that time Inspector Hornby received intelligence of Marks beinj 
 in hiding in the mountains in the South ; and getting leave 
 started immediately in pursuit. 
 
 He was not, however, quick enough to catch him. He mad( 
 the vermin bolt, however ; for two days after his arrival in thos( 
 parts Marks reappeared, fifty miles to the south of him, anc 
 sacked a station. Inspector Hornby was almost immediately seei 
 on the spot, but Marks was again too quick for him. A very fev 
 days after, another station was sacked (" stuck up " as they callec 
 it), twenty miles fui'ther to the southj and within fifteen mUes o: 
 Lionel's. 
 
 He had no women about the place, and could easily have riddei 
 to town and let Jordan the convict make terms for him, but he 
 would not. He determined to stick to his post as a magistrate, 
 and do his duty firmly. 
 
 He rode always armed with his carbine, on his well-trained 
 young horse, and when armed and mounted thus he was a vei'j 
 foiTDiidable adversary for any two or three men. Jordan always 
 rode with him now, also aimed. 
 
 A week passed, and nothing more was heard. Inspectoi 
 Hornby arrived one night at his cousin's station. He was shaved 
 perfectly smooth, and showed every line in his powerful, coarse, 
 and violent face most unpleasantly. Not an agreeable-looking 
 man at aU. They had not met since his captivity, and he thanked 
 Lionel in a manly, straightforward way for his exertions towards 
 his release ; of other obligations to him he knew nothing. He 
 went away smooth shorn in the morning, in spite of Lionel's 
 remonstrances on his danger, entirely alone, and rode ofi' into the 
 bush towards the mountain. 
 
 At mid-day there came a young mounted policeman, a strangei 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 357 
 
 to that part of the country, asking to be guided in a certain 
 direction. The way lay through some very abrupt, remote, and 
 densely-timbered guUies, on the old hunting-ground, which had 
 struck Lionel as a very likely place for the haunt of the bush- 
 rangers. He communicated this to the trooper, and, having 
 dined him, set out with him on horseback, accompanied by 
 Jordan. Lionel had of course his carbine — Jordan pistols. 
 
 The ranges in which these gullies were situated were densely 
 wooded, except in one or two places, where, on a spur which 
 flanked one of the little glens, there would be an open, lofty place, 
 of a few acres, free from timber, and just now blazing with flowers. 
 With these exceptions, the forest was dense. 
 
 Coming to the most suspicious gully, and feeling themselves 
 tolerably strong, they determined to give it some sort of a cursory 
 examination. The trooper was to go on one side and they two 
 on the other. There was no sign of the enemy whatever. The 
 trooper rode round the upper end of the gully, with his sword 
 dangling and his carbine on his knee, and very soon was pushing 
 on through the dense scrub, on the opposite ridge, about three 
 hundred yards from them. 
 
 They had gone about a quarter of a mile in this order, when 
 something ^^ terrible, sudden, and unforeseen occurred. From 
 among some dense acacia bushes there came a little flame of 
 fire, and a puff' of smoke. By the time the report reached them, 
 even at that short distance, the poor trooper was lying motionless 
 on the ground, and his horse had started madly off homeward 
 with an empty saddle. 
 
 They were well concealed, and Lionel felt Jordan's hand on his 
 arm. 
 
 " Be perfectly still," he whispered, " and watch." 
 
 There appeared from behind the bushes the murderer of the 
 trooper. A very taU man with a great black beard, dressed in a 
 red shirt, a cabbage-tree hat (like a sailor's straw hat), breeched 
 and booted, most beautifully mounted, and carrying a pistol ready 
 for use in his hands. 
 
 " That is Marks," whispered Jordan, in an excited manner. 
 " Can't you cut him over ? " 
 
 " Not from here," said Lionel, in a whisper, " It is three 
 hundred yards off', and my carbine is not rifled." 
 
 " Watch him for a moment," said the convict, " and then foUow 
 me." 
 
 The bushranger came out into the sunlight, and pulled up his 
 horse to look for one instant at the body of the murdered trooper ; 
 then he turned his horse to the right, down the glen, and rode 
 
358 I'HE TWO CADETS. 
 
 on at a foot pace, througli the aromatic shrubbery, which brushed 
 as high as his knees, looking around him defiantly yet cautiously. 
 
 The other two turned their horses' heads the same way as his, 
 and kept parallel to him on the opposite ridge, but behind it, out 
 of sight, and trotting. At a particular point, among some thick 
 green scrub, Jordan laid his hand on Lionel's arm and turned his 
 horse's head. Lionel saw that this was the place to wait for 
 their man, now coming down the guUy on the opposite ridge. 
 The guUy narrowed here, and it was evident from the rocks that 
 the bushranger must come into the bottom, or even cross towards 
 them ; and on the opposite side was one of those bald, heathy, 
 flowery spaces which I have noticed before. Up all around the 
 forest rose sombre and silent. 
 
 They waited but a few minutes when he emerged from the 
 denser forest, riding at a foot pace and loading a pistol ; little 
 dreaming, poor wretch, of the fate before him. Lionel was 
 determined to arrest this man in one way or another. Five 
 minutes before, just after he had seen him murder the trooper, 
 he would have shot him down like a dog. But his temper had 
 a little cooled, even in that short time, and he was no assassin. 
 He got his carbine ready, his reins over his left arm, and 
 waited. 
 
 The bushranger came slowly on among the flowers, which 
 reached to his knee, gaudy with his red shirt under the blazing 
 sun in the open. His horse turned down a cattle track under 
 the rocks towards them. A vivid, gaudy figure, even among the 
 gaudy flowers — a figure never forgotten by Lionel to the day of 
 his death. 
 
 " He is near enough now," said the convict, in a fierce whisper. 
 " Fire." 
 
 " I cannot fire without challenging," said Lionel, quietly. 
 
 "Fool!" hissed out the convict; but Lionel did not mind. 
 He rode quietly into the open, and, with his reins over his left 
 arm, and his carbine at the "present," said, in a voice which 
 nmg through the peaceful summer forest — 
 
 " Stand, in the king's name ! " 
 
 The answer was only an ill-aimed pistol-shot. The bushranger 
 hurriedly spurred his horse onwards ; but Lionel had covered 
 him with his inexorable unerring carbine. Under these circum- 
 stances he felt it his duty to society to take human life ; and, 
 keeping his foresight moving to correspond with the undulations 
 of the horse, he fired, and raised a ghost which was never to bo 
 laid again. 
 
 The bushranger pitched heavily foi-ward on his horse's neck, 
 
The Two cadets. 3S9 
 
 and then fell off on the left side, the side nearest to Lionel, the 
 right leg hanging on the saddle for one moment, until the last 
 spasm had kicked the foot clear of the right stirrup : then the 
 man toppled headlong over, and lay perfectly still, as still as his 
 innocent victim had laid not ten minutes before, and was lying 
 even now. 
 
 Lionel's practice with turkeys and kangaroos had served him 
 in good stead. He had ridded the earth of a foul and cruel 
 fiend. It was mighty well. But the old unutterable horror which 
 he had felt after killing poor Coronet Brabazon in his unfortunate 
 duel was strong upon him now, and he shivered as though in an 
 ague fit. 
 
 " By G — ! " he said, turning to his companion, " I have killed 
 another man." 
 
 " You meant to, didn't you ? " said his convict friend. 
 
 " No ! no ! no ! a hundred thousand times ' No.' I call God 
 to witness that I would give my own life twenty times, and fifty 
 years of purgatory, to bring that poor corpse lying there to life 
 again. It was the hunting instinct. I never meant it. I will 
 swear " 
 
 " Swear at me, if you want to swear," said the convict ; " but 
 stop that particular kind of noise just now. You have just done 
 your duty to society and to law as a magistrate in a most 
 honourable manner. The law is with you, equity is with you, 
 and as for public opinion, that will crown you with roses. But 
 you have lost your nerve, and it is necessary that you should 
 keep it. You have done a thing a thousand times more awful 
 than you think it to be. If you lose your nerve now, you are 
 done for. Shake yourself together. You have shot Marks, the 
 bushranger, haven't you, and earned the thanks of both houses 
 of the legislature ? " 
 
 With white, dry lips, Lionel said, " Yes." 
 
 " Is your nerve sufiiciently good to go and look at him ? " 
 
 "I am not afraid of corpses," said Lionel. " I only fear the 
 ghosts which their memories raise around one." 
 
 "I ought to see plenty of ghosts, then," said the convict, " if 
 the memory of aU that I have seen, and all that I have heard, is 
 to return in the form of ghosts. But it don't." 
 
 " I speak of what you have done," said Lionel. " Have you 
 ever killed a man ? " 
 
 " Why, no. But stop this talk. We are in awful trouble. 
 Perhaps I am to blame. Confound you, you know you have done 
 right. What are you afraid of? You will find it necessary to 
 keep this business dark, for your own sake, for your own entirely. 
 
360 IHE iWO CAbETg. 
 
 I wish to point out to you that you want at this moment every bit 
 of intelligence and nerve of which you are possessed. Leave the 
 horses to graze, and follow me." 
 
 Nee coram, &c. — a good old rule. I had meant to describe 
 the scene which followed, but find that I am getting too close 
 to the edge of the unwritten canons which, very properly, confine 
 the licence of modern fictitious literature. Worse accidents than 
 this present one have happened ; but little is gained by speaking 
 of them. I have only to say this : When the convict had removed 
 the artificial black beard from the head of the corpse, the face 
 which Lionel saw staring with open eyes out from among the 
 orchids and Kennydas, was the face of his cousin Edward ! My 
 art might do more for you, but my muse holds up her fingers, as 
 though she were already angry at my licence. 
 
 There followed a long watch in the silent summer forest, by 
 one who strode up and down among the flowers, maddened with 
 remorse, interrupted only by the flapping of fierce foul eagles, who 
 perched on the trees near by, disappointed of their feast by a wild 
 man, who wallied to and fro, making hideous, foolish, and vain 
 imprecations on his o^vn head. Then, when his faithful convict 
 retm'ned from the station with a spade, there followed a burial ; 
 and the eagles, harshly screaming, wheeled aloft, disappointed, 
 into the higher regions of summer twihght, to seek for other prey, 
 and Edward Hornby was buried, and his memory among human 
 folks with him. 
 
 Then followed an interview at dead of night between Jordan the 
 convict and Lionel. 
 
 " There is no need for you to say nothing at all," said Jordan. 
 " It is done, and can't be undone. If I'd known how you were 
 going to take on about the doing of it, I'd have had it done by some 
 one else. I thought you had a grudge against the man. But it is 
 better kept quiet, and is easy enough kept quiet. Say nothing 
 whatsoever of any sort or kind to any human creature. Lord 
 bless you, things are so easily hushed up in this colony ! Your 
 report is that you and me saw a man with a black beard shoot 
 do^vn a trooper without provocation, and that you afterwards, 
 believing him to be the bushranger Marks, with whom you were 
 not personally acquainted, shot him down. Don't say a word 
 more than that. Remember the honour of your family, you 
 know." 
 
 " Then you knew it was my cousin disguised ? " asked Lionel. 
 
 " Bless the man, of course I did ! " answered Jordan. " Your 
 cousin was always a bushranger at heart. When he was took by 
 them he seej for the first time, the fun of it, and he and Marks 
 
THE TWO CADETS. S6l 
 
 fell out, and he shot Marks down. Then he got the gang with 
 him, and then he came sneaking into town, promising to come 
 back and lead them. And they wasn't likely to refuse the leader- 
 ship of a man who sat both sides of the hedge. And I couldn't 
 give you the office ; I only thought that you swells were as free 
 among one another as we were. When I found you knew nothing, 
 and thought that you had a grudge against tihe man, why then, 
 seeing things handy, I put you on the job, and you've done it. But 
 you needn't ride rusty with me, for all that." 
 
 " I wish I was dead. I wish I had never been bom," was 
 Lionel's answer. 
 
 The dear old Mohaivlt, originally started with the programme of 
 putting a spoke in every wheel, of whatever colour, which they saw 
 turning, put their spoke in here. [The Sentinel was so vague 
 and feeble over the matter that I only notice it in brackets. It 
 never knew anything more about the business than the Mohawk, 
 which was nothing ; but it made a washy attempt to generalise 
 from the utterly false facts of the Mohaivk, which was offensive.] 
 The Mohawk's account of the business was this : that a foolish 
 but perfectly harmless scion ot the British aristocracy had been 
 thrown accidentally against the poor bushranger, Marks, and had 
 shot him dead. The Mohawk had nothing to say against the per- 
 sonal character of the Honourable Lionel Horton, but had only to 
 remind him that private assassination was not exactly the same 
 thing as public justice. If the lands had been unlocked, the 
 Mohawk went on to say, such an event could never have occurred, 
 and went on to prove it, which the Mohaivk did, in a most satis- 
 factory manner to all those who allowed the Mohawk's postulates, 
 and so the story evaporated itself into politics. At another place 
 in the Mohawk's columns was this paragraph : — 
 
 " Inspector Hornby has made a smash of it at last. His latest 
 dodge was bushranger hunting ; and now, thank heaven, he seems 
 to have bolted for good, owing the Government a sum which is 
 stated at from £500 to £5,000. We have got rid of him cheaply 
 
 on the whole. We only hope that Inspectors , and 
 
 and " [names stated in full, if you please ; we don't mince 
 
 matters in Australia], "may go as cheap as our precious scion of 
 British nobility, Inspector Hornby. The sooner they bolt the 
 better." 
 
 So the whole thing went past. Only leaving a fresh horror and 
 a fresh remorse in the heart of a very noble and good man. Young 
 still, but getting grey. 
 
 Meanwhile, " Cousin Alice " has perfectly played her role as 
 Lady Granton. One supposes that in a marriage of arrangement 
 
362 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 like hers, the woman is not always over head and ears in love with 
 the man. In her case it was certainly so. She had heen veiy 
 lately fond of Lionel, and with all the assistance of a strong will 
 and a very careful training, could not always forget him even when 
 she had changed her name. Not that she loved him stiU, she only 
 kept a memory of him which grew dimmer day by day, and pre- 
 served a feeling of tender kindness for him to the end. 
 
 Lord Granton probably knew that their marriage was one of 
 arrangement, and that it was dimly possible that there might pos- 
 sibly be some one else who, under other circumstances, might 
 have been preferred to himself. He determined that his imaginary 
 rival, if such a person existed, should have no chance against him. 
 He was clever, handsome, and wealthy, even for England, and he 
 gave aU these things to her,, and to the task of winning her 
 wholly to himself. There was no resisting the frank, noble 
 generosity of the man. She got to love him better than all the 
 world besides. 
 
 She was one of the first leaders of society, and had been so foi' 
 some ten years — was in fact twenty-nine, in the full radiance of 
 her splendid beauty : caressed in England, courted and flattered 
 by the highest in Europe as wife of the English Extraneous 
 minister — when she gave a party more select and exclusive than 
 she had ever done before, a gold-plate ''' dinner party ; and when 
 everything was ready she sat in the drawing-room with her husband 
 looking a little anxious. 
 
 " It is a strange story," said he ; " you should certainly let him 
 know the truth. But why did you ask him to-night, of all nights ? 
 He will be the only person not in office in the room." 
 
 " He was in the Colonial Government. He is an Australian 
 statesman say. The Secretary for the Colonies will know him. 
 And, another thing, I wished to be very ostentatious and grand 
 before Mm." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 Never having dined with a select party of cabinet ministers and 
 ambassadors, I am unable to say what the thing is like. Lady 
 Granton, however, -was a little uneasy at every announcement. 
 
 At last. "Mr. Horton!" 
 
 TaU, as handsome as ever, very brown in complexion, and 
 slightly grey in hair, though in age only thirty-three ; a remark- 
 able man even among the remarkable men present. Such was 
 Lionel as she saw him again after so long. 
 
 Of course every one knew him and knew who he was. He was 
 only, after all, in his own order again. He was very charming. 
 * There are, however, only three sets of gold plate in England. 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 363 
 
 Australians were more so in those days than now, and he was a 
 little of a lion, even there. 
 
 It was late in the evening before Lady Granton got him to 
 herself. She began thus : 
 
 " Come and sit near me, we are quite alone here. Lord Granton 
 and myself have been talking over a very old matter to-day, and 
 he is of opinion that I should speak to you frankly and honestly 
 about it. We are older than we were, and possibly wiser. Do 
 you remember a certain painful parting which we had. Cousin 
 Lionel?" 
 
 He bowed his handsome grizzled head in reply. 
 
 " Also a letter, which I gave you as an excuse for a very rude 
 dismissal? " 
 
 Another bow. 
 
 " So far, then. Do you remember the writer of that letter, 
 Clara Brabazon ? " 
 
 " I remember her well." 
 
 " Forgive me for giving you pain, dear cousin. Believe me that 
 comfort got from believing untruths is not worth having. Do you 
 know what became of Clara Brabazon ? " 
 
 " No, cousin." 
 
 " Must I tell the whole sad story, then ? After — after " 
 
 " After I murdered her brother — yes." 
 
 " After that unhappy duel, the truth about which was carefvUi/ 
 concealed from me by my parents, she got into a state of morbid 
 despair, and soon went into a decline. She sent for me when she 
 was dying, and I went to her. She had a confession to make. 
 She told me she was her brother's murderer. She had loved our 
 mutual cousin Edward with all the fierceness of her nature and 
 her race, and he had discovered it, at the same time that she dis- 
 covered, or thought she had discovered, that his heart was set in 
 another quarter, You understand me, Cousin Lionel? " 
 
 " I do, perfectly." 
 
 " These two unhappy people maddened themselves, and one 
 another against you and me ; she aga,inst me, he against you. 
 He set my parents to watch us ; she, at his instigation, wrote that 
 letter about your use of my name in the mess-room, and she con- 
 fessed to me on her death-bed that it was a falsehood from 
 beginning to end." 
 
 " That was the letter which led to the duel," said Lionel, 
 calmly. 
 
 " It was. Edward, our cousin, was the cause of the death of 
 poor young Brabazon by his influence over that very foohsh and 
 unfortunate woman. According to the wicked laws of society as 
 
364 THE TWO CADETS. 
 
 they now exist, you had no other choice. I hold you blameless. 
 Edward, with his wicked machinations, was the cause of poor 
 Brabazon's death." 
 
 How Uttle did she dream that the hand which had shot down 
 poor Brabazon had also so terribly avenged his death. Lionel 
 saw it now for the first time ; but he sat perfectly mute. 
 
 "Here is Lord Granton," said she. " We need not drop our 
 conversation ; he has perhaps a moment to join us. No ; that 
 Neapolitan ambassador has caught him. My dear cousin, I gave 
 an answer on that unhappy morning, I fear, curtly and in anger. 
 I wish you to understand that under any circumstances that 
 answer could have been no other than it was. We, you know, 
 are not free agents. I knew that before I was fifteen. I never 
 could have given you any other answer but the one I did give 
 you ; only I gave it roughly and mdely, under the impression 
 that you had been playing with my name. Do you forgive me ? " 
 
 "What I have to forgive, my dear cousin, has been forgiven 
 years ago. If it were otherwise, it is not for a man like me, with 
 the mark of Cain upon my face, shut out from the pale of 
 humanity, and I dread the hope of mercy, to forgive. If I could 
 accept Rome and her doctrines, and buy masses for the dead, I 
 might be happy ; but then I cannot, and then, as Carlyle says, 
 ' Thou fool, who told thee that thou wert to be happy ? ' I'U 
 drag along my chain, cousin : I wiU try to get nearer to God." 
 
 Lady Granton was inexpressibly distressed. Her innocent hand 
 was red with this dreadful business about young Brabazon, for it 
 was she who had sho^vn Lionel the letter, and she knew it. Hers 
 was a rare and fine nature, and time, training, and the world had 
 never deadened her conscience to the fact that the laws of that 
 society which was her atmosphere, almost her religion, were, on 
 the subject of duelling, brutal, barbarous, and unchristian. With 
 the deadly remorse of a very noble nature, shown suddenly to her, 
 she felt it more keenly than ever. But what could she say ? It 
 is not de riyueur to show emotion in society, more particularly in 
 a room full of ambassadors. 
 
 "I am so sorry for you, cousin," was all she allowed herself to 
 say. " God has been so good to me. I am so happy with my 
 husband and my children, and my wealth and influence, that I can 
 only pray, as I do, dear Lionel, that I may be worthy of them." 
 
 "I pray much also," said Lionel, quietly; "sometimes for 
 death." 
 
 " We must change this conversation," said Lady Granton ; and 
 if vou please we wiU never resume it. Go to God, Lionel, go to 
 God." 
 
THE TWO CADETS. 365 
 
 " I have been ; but He has not heard me. 
 
 " Not answered you yet, I suppose you mean. Who are you 
 that you should be answered immediately ? Go again, and again, 
 and again. Now this conversation must be changed once more. 
 Let us talk of our mutual cousin, Edward. He is in Australia, is 
 he not ? How is he getting on ? " 
 
 " He is dead." 
 
 "Dead! How did he die ? " 
 
 " He was kiUed." 
 
 " Killed ! How dreadful. How was he killed ? " 
 
 " He was shot." 
 
 "Shot! Who shot him ? " 
 
 " I " said Lionel, calmly ; but the French ambassador was 
 
 bearing down on them, and there was a sudden bouleversement in 
 his judgment, so he went on with a sentence which he had never 
 thought of uttering — " am not prepared to say who shot him, but 
 I have the very best reasons for believing that he was shot." 
 
 And he carried the terrible secret, so nearly let slip, to his grave 
 with him. 
 
 Lady Granton was calmly smiling the next moment. 
 
 " My cousin Mr. Lionel Horton, Monsieur G . My cousin 
 
 is an Australian statesman. Monsieur Q . They are begin- 
 ning already, these audacious Australians, to talk of a state down 
 there, under our feet, more powerful than the original unex- 
 pandible mother country. Will you take this Australian in hand 
 and convert him from his audacity ? " 
 
 And looking at the Australian statesman, M. G found him- 
 self wondering what had caused that statesman to expatriate him- 
 self in the first instance, and whether that expatriation was 
 voluntary or involuntary. For Lionel looked so old, so worn, and 
 so strange, that he puzzled good, honest M. G completely. 
 
 Lionel's father died at last, and he came into such barren 
 honours as were left to that battered and worn-out old line. He 
 clung to his father, and his father to him, to the very last. His 
 magnificent and always accumulating Australian property put the 
 old house on its legs again for a time. He never married nor will 
 marry, and the title dies with him. Lord Poole will die with the 
 deep regrets of the poor, and of all his friends, but he will die 
 with his dread secret close locked in his heart, as mute as a 
 fox. 
 
OUB BROWN PASSENGEB. 
 
OUJR BKOWN PASSENGER. 
 
 DuEiNG the many wanderings and voyages which my brother 
 Edmund and myself have made up and down the earth in search 
 of wealth, we have become tolerably average judges of many 
 things. Furs, slop clothing, tallow, drosky horses, inns, wine, 
 bad money, are but a tithe of the things on which we should bo 
 competent to give some sort of opinion ; but there are two things 
 of which it is absolutely necessary that one should have a good 
 judgment — ships and ships' captains, and we consider that there 
 are very few landsmen in a position to give us advice on either of 
 these two subjects. 
 
 Therefore when it became necessary to choose a ship to make 
 what we determined to be our last voyage, the difi'erent ships 
 which were honoured with our notice underwent a very severe 
 scrutiny indeed. One or two of the ships would have done, but 
 then the skippers were not up to my brother Edmund's standard ; 
 and in cases where ho passed the captain I got fanciful about the 
 ship. We rejected them all save one we had yet to see, and I 
 was constrained to say, after an afternoon spent among the 
 shipping — 
 
 " My dear Ned, at this rate we shall not get to England at all. 
 We really must try to be less particular with the Typhoon. When 
 I come to think of the awfully queer craft we have sailed in, I 
 think we are carrying criticism a little too far." 
 
 " Not a bit, Thomas — not a bit ; " and he wagged his great 
 yellow beard. " I mean to be more particular with her than any 
 other. I have no idea of gaining experience and not using it. 
 To the Tijplioon," he said, as he tumbled into a boat ; " where is 
 she ? " 
 
 " Off the battery ; " and away we scudded down the harbour, 
 past the lighthouse, and past the berths of the men-of-war, just in 
 time to see a stream of fire shoot suddenly from the side of H.M.S. 
 
 25 369 
 
370 OUE BROWN PASSENGEB. 
 
 Sti/A-, and hear the dull heavy hoom of the sunset gun go ratthng 
 away among the quarries. 
 
 I sat looking at the infinitely peaceful sunlight dying out upon 
 the lonely, happy hiUs, whose summits I could see above the dark 
 quarries ; and at the black quarries close on the shore in the fore- 
 ground, which were beginning to send forth in strings, lines, 
 groups, or solitary figures, swarm after swarm of grey convicts, 
 dim, unearthly-looking under the growing gloom, crowding down 
 to their boats like souls to Charon's bark. It struck me that it 
 was like looking across hell to heaven, and the sight held me so 
 long that I was only aroused by Edmund's saying, " Here she is," 
 and my turning round and after a minute's contemplation saying, 
 "By Jove!" 
 
 We were imder the bows of a large ship, which lay the last of all 
 seaward, beyond the battery, quite alone. The sun had set upon 
 the water, but her vast tall masts penetrated into the lighter air 
 above, till her track almost seemed to pierce the fading sunlight, 
 and showed us that her spars were very nearly as large and as 
 heavy as those of that tremendous engine of war, the Styx frigate, 
 which was her nearest neighbour. Her bows were Hke those of a 
 yacht, and ran up, not into a figure-head, but into a dehcate 
 golden scroll. Such bows I have seldom seen on any ship, and I 
 noticed them closely. The rest of the long black huU was equally 
 satisfactory, and we were both aware that we were looking on one 
 of the noblest clipper ships we had ever set eyes ou. 
 
 "Now for the captaia," I thought. "I wonder if he will 
 do?" 
 
 Though the vast mass of the ship lay perfectly dead and motion- 
 less on the water, our little boat was leaping in so lively a manner 
 that it required a jump to get on the ladder ; but we were soon on 
 deck and looked around us. It was one of the finest decks we had 
 ever been on, flush, save one house aft, which took the place of a 
 poop, but which had a broad gangway round, and a large elliptical 
 monkey-poop astern. So that, do you see, reader, you could walk 
 from the forecastle, past it, to the wheel, and so round it back 
 again ; might walk, in short, when at sea, twenty miles without 
 turning. This struck us as being very charming, and we had 
 every opportunity of seeing it at its best, for not a soul was in 
 sight but one lanky, good-natured looking midshipman, to whom 
 we addressed ourselves. 
 
 " Can you tell us where the first officer is, sir, if you please ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " He is ashore, drunk. At least he was half an hour ago." 
 
 " Can you tell us where the steward is, sir, if you please ? " 
 
6tll BEOWN PASSENSeE. 371 
 
 " Well, I am afraid it won't be much good to tell you, for I am 
 afraid Yorky is drunk too." 
 
 This was very nice indeed. " Are the crew on board ? " I asked. 
 
 " No. They are in the hulk, doing their six weeks for running. 
 The police barge will bring them on board the night before we 
 sail." 
 
 I looked at Edmund, and saw that, like an inconsistent fellow 
 as he was, he had fallen so deeply in love with the ship's bows, 
 that nothing would turn him, if the captain looked anything like 
 business. I thought he was going to look for the captain, but he 
 did not. Ho said — 
 
 " Can you kindly inform me, sir, if the stewardess is drunk ? " 
 
 " No," said the midshipman, indignantly. " She is not. Polly 
 drunk, indeed ! She'd sue the man who dared say it. Perhaps 
 you would like to ask if the skipper is drunk ? Here he comes to 
 answer for himself." So our midshipman hitched himself off the 
 capstan and went away growling at Edmund's offensive inquiry 
 about the stewardess. 
 
 We turned and saw before us one of the finest, most sailorlike, 
 most gentieman-like, young feUows we had ever met in our 
 wanderings. Scarcely thirty, we guessed, with a clear brown 
 face, a bright eye, and as pleasant a smile, showing as fine a 
 range of teeth as you would wish to see. An upstanding feUow 
 too — a man every inch of him, whose crisp curly hair seemed ex- 
 pressly made to keep on his head, without derangement in any 
 cyclone or typhoon which ever blew. He would do, we said at 
 once, in spite of a drunken first oflScer and steward, and a crew 
 from the hulk. When he came to us and said pleasantly, " Ai'e 
 you going to sail with me, gentlemen ? " we answered, like a pair 
 of Siamese twins, " Certainly." 
 
 " You are a sailor, sir? " he said to my brother, which was so 
 far not complimentary to me. 
 
 " Why, no," said Edmund ; " but I know a sailor when I see 
 one. I am not long married, and am going to entrust a delicate 
 wife and a baby to your keeping for 14,000 miles. Can you con- 
 scientiously undertake the job ? " 
 
 "Yes," said the skipper, " I think I can. I am not fortunate 
 in my ship's company. I have come round from San Francisco, 
 and have picked the main of them up there ; a queer lot, with aU 
 the turbulence of American sailors, and not one of their good 
 qualities. They ran, and are in the hulk ; they are as good as 
 any I shall pick up just now. I have four good officers, a 
 carpenter, steward, stewardess, and one midshipman ; and I have 
 a noble lot of passengers, thank God. I'U pull you through." 
 
372 OUR BEOWN PASSENGEE. 
 
 " The steward is drunk, is lie not? " said I. 
 
 " AVell, yes," said the skipper, laughing, " but only on principle. 
 It ain't habitual. We have been three weeks in the bay in ballast, 
 trying to get cargo, and have got a little wool and gold ; but he 
 has not been ashore more than three hours. Last night he told 
 his wife and me that it was unsailorlike and unlucky to go to sea 
 without a burst, and so he has gone on shore to get drunk. He 
 is an excellent fellow, I assure you, and so is the carpenter." 
 
 We went into the saloon, and the stewardess, a hard-headed, 
 hard-handed Scotch woman, showed us the vacant berths. There 
 were now, she told us, near 100 passengers, but most of them in 
 the second cabin, between decks. The voyage would pay, slie 
 said, entirely through the passengers. It would pay well, and she 
 was glad of that, for the skipper had brought the ship round from 
 San Francisco on speculation, on his own responsibility, and she 
 wished him to stand well with the owners, as he, the skipper, was 
 going home to be married. She seemed a dear old body, and 
 made us more than ever in love with the ship. When she under- 
 stood that she was to be plagued to death aU the voyage by a 
 delicate young wife and a baby, her satisfaction knew no bounds. 
 She immediately asked my brother's Christian name, and has never 
 called him by any other since. Me she tolerated, and I thanked 
 her. 
 
 But as we looked round at the cabins (opening out of the saloon, 
 and on deck, please to understand) a hitch occurred. We came 
 to a cabin door on which there was a card, and on it was written 
 in a large hand, "Mrs. Dishmore." And Edmund said, in the 
 most peremptory manner — 
 
 " I am not going to sail in the same ship with that woman. 
 She is intolerable enough on shore, but to sea with that woman 
 I don't go." 
 
 " Nonsense, Ned," I said ; " you need not speak to her." 
 
 " She was the woman, as you know, that tried her hardest to 
 pi'event Maria from marrying me, and I hate the sight of her." 
 
 "She probably only repeated what she had heard," I said. 
 "You don't know anything against the woman except what we 
 all know, that she is the most tiresome, backbiting, meddlesome 
 Matty in the three republics. Don't be a fool." 
 
 " I'll not sail with that woman," he repeated, as we went over 
 the side. But he did nevertheless. 
 
 That evening, after having tea with his wife, we went away on 
 a little expedition. Certain custom-house officers had become 
 endeared to us in tl^e way of business, and we went to wish them 
 good-bye. The custom-house men used, in those pre-railway times, 
 
OUR BEOWN PASSENGER. 373 
 
 an inn on the shores of the hay, before you come to the light- 
 house. We knew that we should catch some of them there that 
 night, more particularly one ; so we took the last steamboat from 
 the pier, and went across, telling his wife that we should sleep 
 there, and that she must get ready to go on board in three days. 
 
 I suppose that that quaint little inn is levelled to the ground 
 now, or turned into a limited hotel. In those times it was a 
 queer little characteristic place. It was close, closer than any 
 other inn, to the place where the shipping lies, and as at that time 
 thirteen millions was annually passing outwards and eleven 
 millions inwards, it was a busy little inn, indeed. One room was 
 almost entirely used by the skippers of ships and custom-house 
 officers, and to this room we repaired. It was as full as usual, 
 but there was some cause for silence ; something had occurred 
 to stop the conversation, and when we had called for what we 
 wanted, and had sat down, we looked round for the cause. 
 
 It was evidently a tall man who was standing with his hack to 
 the fire. We had noticed that he had scowled insolently at us as 
 we came in, but we were too eager to look round and see who of 
 our acquaintances were there, to take much notice of him ; but 
 when we were settled, my brother Edmund looked at him again, 
 and to my great sui-prise his look became fixed ; he seemed to bo 
 partly interested and jjartly surprised at the man's appearance. 
 I, who am short-sighted, could not see the man's face, and 
 thought my brother had recognised him, so I very naturally asked 
 him in a whisper if he knew the man. 
 
 " No," he said, " and don't want to. But did you ever in your 
 experience see such an evil, truculent face before ? Coward and 
 bully in every line of it. He has been buUying these good folks. 
 I must have a word with him. Halloa, you sir ! " 
 
 The man was aware in a moment that my brother was address- 
 ing him. My brother had what may be called a forcible delivery. 
 When he addressed any one, they were instantly aware of the fact. 
 This man was. He turned to my brother with a scowl, and. said 
 nothing. Edmund continued — 
 
 " And how do you get along, sir? " 
 
 And in merely saying those words, and in merely wagging his 
 great beard, Edmund said, plain for aU the folks to hear, "You 
 are a buUy, my good gentleman, and I know it. Would you be 
 so exceedingly kind as to try to bully me?" The spell was 
 broken, and the conversation of the different groups was resumed 
 all round the room. The bully growled something inaudible, and 
 in a very few minutes sat down. 
 
 A greater contrast to this fellow could scarcely be conceived. 
 
374 OUB BEOWN PASSENGEE. 
 
 than such as appeared in the person of our friend who now 
 appeared. A handsome young Highlander, in a -pretty neat blue 
 uniform, young enough to be nearly beardless, and with the titles 
 of " gentleman " and "good fellow " written in every dimple of 
 his handsome face, and every twinkle of his laughing hazel eyes. 
 His eyes grew brighter when he saw us, and he came towards us 
 somewhat eagerly. 
 
 " I have heard that you two renegades were come here to look 
 me up, and were going to secede from the sucking repubhc, and 
 were going back to the hag-ridden old step-mother Britain. Kiss 
 the sacred ground when you land for me ; and tell the dear old 
 mother that I will come back some day, if it is only to lay my 
 bones in her dear old bosom. Ah, happy men 1 and oh, most 
 unhappy me ! If I had not unluckily been bom a gentleman, I 
 might at this moment have been a gillie of Lord Breadalbane, to 
 be a keeper in time ; and might have even now been bathing my 
 bare legs in the silver mists of divine SchiehaUion. But luck is 
 against me. I am no Lowland man that I can trade ; so I must 
 even sit here with my four hundred a year, biding my time. 
 ' This way lies madness,' as our great Cockney poet says. My 
 dear old boys, what ship are you going by ? " 
 
 " The Typhoon." 
 
 "Ah ! you don't happen to remember the name of the ship 
 in which Jonah took passage from Joppa to Tarshish, do 
 you?" 
 
 " Do you ? " I said. " Why do you ask ? " 
 
 "It was not the L'yphoon, for instance, was it? " our friend 
 answered. " No, by the by, it wasn't. In fact, now I come to 
 remember, neither the name, the register, nor even the name of 
 the master of that ship, are recorded in holy writ. Ah, well ! So 
 you are going by the Typhoon ? " 
 
 My brother answered decidedly, " Yes. We have sailed in 
 queerer craft than she is. Is there anything against her ? " 
 
 " The finest ship which ever came into the bay," our friend 
 answered. " But she has a queer crew." 
 
 "We know all about that," said Edmund. "We have sailed 
 with Lascars before now. How about the captain ? ' ' 
 
 " A gentleman and a sailor, every inch of him. God send him 
 always as good a ship, and always a better crew." 
 
 " Well," said Edmund, "we will chance the crew ; how about 
 the oflficers ? " 
 
 " Let me introduce you to the first mate," said our friend, and 
 forthwith took us across the room, and presented us to the man 
 we had noticed on entering. Now I got near to him, I was 
 
OUE BBOWN PASSENGEE. 375 
 
 obliged to confess to myself that he was one of the most ill-looking 
 dogs I had ever seen. We shall see more of him directly. 
 
 As for the rest, we could only gather that the ship was a 
 splendid ship, and that the captain was a jewel. That contented 
 us on the whole. On the third day from that, we were on board, 
 waiting for the mail bag. I was standing on the house on deck 
 by the captain, watching for the last time the swarms of grey con- 
 victs in the black c[uarries, and the pleasant, sunny, peaceful hills 
 which lay beyond, thinking that, after all, it was a very dear old 
 country, and getting pathetic about leaving it, when I heard a 
 quiet voice behind us say — 
 
 " Are you going to take steam, sir ? " 
 
 The captain turned immediately. " I think this suck from the 
 north will do, sir, if it holds." 
 
 I turned when the skipper turned, and saw for the first time 
 our Brown Passenger. 
 
 He was very brown indeed. A scrupulously dressed, middle- 
 sized man, with a very brown face, and iron-grey close-cropped 
 hair. No appearance of beard or whiskers. Say an old man, if 
 you like ; yet so singularly handsome, with such intelligence, 
 vitality, and determination in his face, that one felt glad that he 
 was not a suitor for the hand of any young lady whom one pro- 
 posed to make one's own. I liked the looks of him exceedingly. 
 I5ut unfortunately, he, at first, could not admire the looks, even 
 the presence, of either my brother or myself. I found out after- 
 wards the reason of this. It was our beards. He told Mrs. 
 Dishmore, during an interval of squabbling, that he despised any 
 man who was too lazy to shave himself, and of course Mrs. Dish- 
 more, who sparred with us (or to speak more properly me) worse 
 than she did with him, told us. I was never anything but very 
 civil to the man, even before this, and always tried to make peace 
 between him and my brother, who never submitted to him for one 
 instant. But through it all I think he liked Edmund better than 
 he did me. 
 
 On this occasion, when the captain had walked forward, I was 
 gushingly polite to him. I said, to open the conversation, " This 
 wind will take us through the Heads in ten hours, sir. Our crew 
 are a rough lot, but they seem smart." 
 
 " I don't profess to know much of this sort of business, sir," 
 he growled; "but if I may be allowed an opinion, I should say 
 that a more turbulent, drimken set of vagabonds never had charge 
 of a ship before." And then he walked aft, as if I was utterly 
 below contempt. 
 
 I said to myself, " You are a cool hand, and somewhat imperii- 
 
376 OUR BROWN PASSENGER. 
 
 nent. You have been living in Queer Street, and have got a 
 history. I should like to know it. But you must not be imperti- 
 nent to me, young gentleman. I have lived in Queer Street, too, 
 though I don't know your number. Folks who have once lived 
 in Queer Street are never impertinent to me. You must be won 
 over. You are worth it." 
 
 But meanwhile our rascally crew, Lascars, whitewashed 
 Americans, and " sundry," had got the anchor up and some 
 sails spread, and we began to travel down the harbour before 
 the north wind. Our skipper knew the harbour weU enough to 
 drop his pilot and take her out through the Heads on his own 
 responsibility. All down the long harbour the ship was as steady 
 as a rock, but when we had passed those Heads, and came on the 
 great swell of the Indian Ocean, the yards were braced up, the 
 great ship seemed to give a sigh, and bent over to her sixteen 
 thousand miles' battle with the elements. My last recollection of 
 the beautiful melancholy country which we shall never see again 
 is this : as our ship made her first sickening plunge in the ocean, 
 and showed us that she was not a mere inert mass of iron, but a 
 glorious, almost living, creation of the human brain, I, standing 
 on the quarter-deck, and feeling as if the bottom of my stomach 
 was coming out at each mad dive (I am never sea-sick, this is 
 quite another thing), noticed that we were passing H.M.S. Styx, 
 which was thundering on in the teeth of the wind, at one moment 
 showing us, in beautiful contrast, her gleaming bright deck, at 
 another her long black hull, in which the volcano slept. Sixty- 
 four pounders are but pop-guns in these days, of course, but 
 nevertheless she looked about as ill-tempered and dangerous a bit 
 of goods as ever floated on the high seas. 
 
 Meanwhile wo had got the westerly wind, and with it the great 
 westerly swell. The ship began to roll heavily as she flew before 
 it, burying her lee bulwarks continually. For a few days I stayed 
 much on deck enjoying the wild scene, but it soon got too cold. 
 The ship's head was southward, and the days grew shorter, and 
 the whirling snowstorms more frequent as she went howling down 
 towards the weltering seas of the Antartic Ocean. 
 
 So now I had leisure to examine our fellow-passengers more 
 closely. The first one I naturally studied was the one who gives 
 a title to this little story — the man known to us on the first half 
 of the voyage as " the Brown Passenger." 
 
 I liked him, but he was very queer and reserved ; and he for the 
 first few days did not seem to like me. His great objection, as 
 he told me after, was my beard ; but even after he passed that 
 over, and we became more familiar, I could not find out who he 
 
OUE BROWN PASSENGEB. 377 
 
 was, what was his rank in life, where he had heen, or what his 
 opinions were. He was the closest man I ever met. He agreed 
 with me in a qualified manner, till, like the late Mrs. Shandy, he 
 nearly drove one mad. He was so exasperatingly negative and 
 reticent, and what made the matter more exasperating was, that 
 there was force and decision on every line of his brown face. He 
 was a man of action, and a man of strong convictions, yet I never 
 could strike a spark out of him. I used to try. I felt sure that 
 the man had corns somewhere on his feet, and I used to stamp 
 about vaguely to try and punch one of them. I never got any 
 acknowledgment of feeling out of him, however, but a slow, amused 
 smile. I saw that he liked me the better for my efforts to 
 irritate him into some expression of opinion, but the only visible 
 result was that same quiet, bright smile — and that only appeared 
 when I had contradicted myself in trying to irritate him, and he 
 had in a few clear words showed that I was contradicting myself. 
 I gave him up after a week, for I made the not very flattering 
 discovery that he was amusing himself with me. He was Some- 
 body, I said to myself ; a man who had been knocked about the 
 world a good deal, had heard many opinions expressed, and would 
 not commit himself. The captain, on inquiry, told me that he 
 had been knocked about the world considerably, and that his name 
 was Hatterton ; that was all I ever got out of the skipper. 
 
 I said that his qualities were entirely negative. Why, no ; for 
 one thing, he smoked more Bengal cheroots than I ever remember 
 another man doing ; and for another, bis extreme dislike and 
 opposition to Mrs. Dishmore was by no means negative, but 
 positive. This naturally leads us to Mrs. Dishmore. 
 
 Mrs. Dishmore was originally a Miss Polk. She first burst 
 on the gaze of a somewhat startled world as a most advanced 
 lecturer upon the rights of women. That she ever was a Bloomer 
 is entirely untrue ; but she went further in her notions even in 
 dress than her friends chose to follow her. Age, however, brought 
 experience. She' receded from her extremer views, and contented 
 herself with contradicting and setting right every one with whom 
 she came in contact, without any regard to age, sex, or degree of 
 experience. Hearing that an excellent Roman Catholic lady was 
 doing some excellent work among homeless girls in the city we 
 had just left, she thought — knowing nothing about the matter, 
 and having nothing to do — that she could go out and show 
 
 Mrs. the proper way of doing her work. Now began our 
 
 acquaintance with her, and my brother's intense dislike to her. 
 She came in the same ship with my sister-in-law, who was coming 
 out to be married to my brother; and poor Maria poured her 
 
378 OUR BROWN PASSENGER. 
 
 pretty little secret into the unsympatliising and flinty bosom of the 
 Miss Pollc, who devoted the whole voyage to trying to persuade 
 my -sister-in-law to break off the match, and to join her in the 
 joys and independence of a single life, bonded together against the 
 tyi'anny of man. What with Edmund's wife insisting on marrying 
 
 Edmund, and what with Mrs. affinning that she knew her 
 
 own business best, and refusing to be assisted on any terms. Miss 
 Polk grew disgusted with things in general, some of her own 
 opinions included, and in a mood of lofty and self-denying scorn, 
 proposed to Dishmore, a meek but wealthy little ironmonger, who 
 was flattered by her notice of him, and accepted her proposal with 
 groat pleasure. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Dishmore was-, I must allow, a terribly contradictory 
 and bumptious woman, always setting her hands to do man's work 
 instead of woman's ; but there was something more than that 
 merely, which made our Bro-rni Passenger, Hatterton, take such 
 an intense dislike to her. The fact was, that she offended him, 
 and jarred upon his senses by every word and gesture ; he hated 
 her way of going on, and she, of a far coarser texture of nei-ve, 
 was utterly unable to see that she repelled him. She took a great 
 fancy to him, and followed him everywhere, until he was driven to 
 the forecastle, and sometimes even to the masthead. 
 
 I never shall forget his face the first day at noon, when Mrs. 
 Dishmore took out her sextant and took her observation at noon. 
 She had a chart of her own, and always marked the ship's place 
 on it, never making her reckoning the same as the skipper's, and 
 always maintaining she was right. However, as I once marked 
 the place from her reckoning, and made the discovery that the 
 ship was in the centre of the Brazils, forty miles north of the city 
 of Goyaz, I was less anxious about the captain's incompetency 
 than I should have been. 
 
 The first and almost the only piece of confidence I ever got 
 from Mr. Hatterton was late one wild night, when I met him 
 coming into the saloon, with an expression of face, which was 
 partly astonishment, and partly exasperation. He had never 
 spoken familiarly to me before, but he must speak to some one, 
 and he spoke to me. "Sir," he said, "I am blessed if that 
 woman ain't on deck in the steward's mackintosh, taking a 
 lunar." 
 
 The captain turned out to be a most charming and gaUant 
 sailor, and the first officer did not belie his character cither. 
 He was a headlong, ill-conditioned ruffian. He never forgave my 
 brother's hoity-toity treatment of him in the cofi'ee-room of the 
 tavern, but he was afraid of my brother, and tried whctlier or no 
 
OUR BEOWN PASSENGER. 379 
 
 he could avenge himself on me by a variety of petty insults. I 
 had to stop it. 
 
 The crew were a great study. I wish there was room in this 
 story for a full description of them. Such few of them as had not 
 been picked up at San Francisco, had been got, drunk, out of the 
 crimp-houses in the port from which we had sailed. I should say 
 there were twenty-five of them ; one or two Lascars, one or two 
 Portuguese, one American (U.S.), and one Baltic German. All 
 the rest called themselves citizens of the United States, and were 
 oi the class commonly called whitewashed Yankees, and who seem 
 to be as cordially detested by the real American sailors, as they 
 are by British captains. I have carefully separated the one real 
 American sailor, as fine a fellow as ever stepped [" run "] from a 
 Pacific whaler, from them, as you see. We disliked the slangy, 
 turbulent, quarrelsome rowdies enough, but his unutterable con- 
 tempt for them was too deep for words. He was a great, blonde, 
 handsome giant, with a beard : hailing from Nantucket, as he 
 said. He used to put all the rest of the crew out of his way like 
 dirt, and I expected to see a knife in his ribs every day ; but he 
 ruled them like a lord, nevertheless, and they looked up to him 
 as a demi-god. He was one of the great new race, and their dog- 
 instinct told them so. They were always brutally fighting among 
 one another, but no one, though some of them were as big as he, 
 ever dared to offer to fight him. He was famihar with no one 
 except my brother, and our Brown Passenger, Hatterton, who 
 seemed to appreciate him. He, although with a deep belief in the 
 glory of the United States, wanted to see England. And it is 
 strange, but perfectly true, that the place of all others he wanted 
 to see in England was — ^what ? — Stratford-on-Avon ! He didn't 
 know his Shakspeare to any degree worth mentioning, but he was 
 very angry with me because I laughed at him about this whim of 
 his. But a whim it was, and he gratified it. 
 
 Hatterton, my brother, the good-natured and soUtary midship- 
 man, the American sailor, and myself, were one night smoking 
 together in the waist, in the interval of a snowstoi-m, when he 
 said this : — 
 
 " I suppose, squire," addressing himself to Mr. Hatterton, 
 " ever since Noah's ark sailed from the port of Babylon, crew 
 eight souls, all told, and an amount of live stock, which could only 
 be excused under the circumstances, that a queerer lot never put 
 to sea than this present ship's company." 
 
 " We are a devilish queer lot," answered Hatterton. " I have 
 seen some queer things myself, and some queer crews, but never 
 anything like this. What "the deuce prevents the crew, headed by 
 
380 OUB BROWN PASSENGER. 
 
 the mate, from walking aft some fine night, cutting our throats, 
 and taking the ship northward and running her on shore on the 
 coast of Peru to spend the eight thousand ounces of gold on hoard, 
 is past my comprehension." 
 
 " The passengers, squire ! — the passengers ! " 
 
 ' ' The passengers ! ' ' said our Brown Passenger, with the 
 deepest contempt; "the passengers!" 
 
 " Ay, squire ; there's passengers, and there's passengers. As 
 for eiiiii/raiits, you might slaughter a shipful of 'em hke sheep ; 
 but such fellows as this one, and this one (he pointed to my 
 brother and to me), have had their lives in their hands before -now. 
 They would fight ; and there are fifty more men aboard like 
 them, or better. They know it. They'll never come aft. If 
 they do, God help 'em." 
 
 They never did, and they never will. The passengers dis- 
 trusted the crew, and the crew knew it, and insulted the passengers. 
 There was no communication, and no collision between us, until 
 the very last. There were six people berthed aft who dared go 
 forward, and these were — the first mate (the worst rufiian of the 
 lot), the carpenter, the steward and his wife, and, strange to say, 
 Hatterton, the Brown Passenger, who went forward and sent 
 tliem right and left like unruly dogs ; and, stranger stiU, Eliza_ 
 Dishmore. She, as they would say in their barbarous slang, 
 " slewed " them. They could not make her out at all. Whether 
 she was a woman, or a man in disguise ; whether she was sailing 
 the ship, or whether the captain was {nhe had a deal more to say 
 about it than ever he had), they could not make out; but she 
 cleared them out of her way in a rOyal matter-of-fact style, which 
 had the proper effect. She was on the forecastle once, in half a 
 gale, when the ship was going about three-quarters free (I must 
 mind being too nautical), when the man at the wheel drove the 
 ship's nose into it ; that is to say, shortly, laid the ship iinder 
 water. Ehza Dishmore, having rescued herself from the lee 
 scuppers, walked aft, and gave it to that man. What she said 
 to him, how she contrived to hurt his feelings to the extent she 
 did, we shall never know. But he and the rest of our very 
 piratical crew fought very shy of her afterwards. I am glad I 
 was not the man at the wheel, however. 
 
 You have gone with me so far. It seems to me that I have 
 nothing more to tell you about the ship, and the different relations 
 of those who were sailing in her. Now comes an incident which 
 altered the most of those relations, and which makes this little 
 story worth telling. 
 
 When you get lower down than 53° south, a great westerly 
 
OUR BEOWN PASSENGEE. 381 
 
 wind, always strong, and sometimes, nay, more than sometimes, 
 breezing up into a gale, blows round the world : the wind against 
 which Lord Anson fought, and in his noble ignorance did almost 
 the noblest deed of British seamanship. We were going before 
 that wind now, but southing on it, to make, as near as is possible, 
 the great circle of the Eebel Maury. Sometimes this wind has a 
 few degrees north in it, sometimes a few degrees south. One 
 evening it was so nearly north-west, that the ship, still heading 
 southward, was laid over, with the water tearing in cascades over 
 her lee bulwarks. 
 
 That day we had had champagne. Three days before it had 
 blown up into a gale, and the skipper had put the ship before it, 
 and we had run a thousand miles in ninety-six hours — a most 
 splendid run for any ship in such a heavy sea ; that was the 
 reason of the champagne. 
 
 That same evening the skipper, the Brown Passenger, and 
 myself were smoking on the quarter-deck. The gale had mode- 
 rated, but the sea was getting heavier and heavier. The wind, 
 as I said, was north-west, and very warm (please to remember 
 that we were in the southern hemisphere, and that the wind was 
 from the equator), but as the evening dropped, it grew colder 
 and colder, until it got deadly chill. Then, as darkness settled 
 down on the face of the wild heaving waters, a snowstorm came 
 drifting on the wind, and made the ship look, to us on the 
 quarter-deck, like the ghost of a ship driving through a sea of 
 pitch. 
 
 Our good skipper had been talking to our Brown Passenger, 
 Hatterton, and they both seemed dissatisfied with something. I 
 heard the skipper say, "I must turn in. I cannot stand five-and- 
 twenty hours of it. Keep on deck as long as you can. Here he 
 is." And then the first officer came up to relieve him. 
 
 "Mr. Hicks," were his last words, "if it comes on any 
 thicker, lay the ship to immediately. Be sure of this. I miuit 
 turn in." 
 
 Hatterton and I stayed on deck a little while, and the weather 
 seemed mending ; the intervals between the snowstorms were 
 longer, and we thought the night would lift, so we went and 
 turned in too, and I tried to sleep. 
 
 But I could not. Three thousand miles from land, in those 
 awful, desolate latitudes, a ghastly danger all around, unseen, 
 and yet near enough to lay its hand upon one's heart, and freeze 
 one's blood, and the ship dashing along under the charge of a 
 reckless drunken villain. Sleep— not I ! I once more got out 
 of my warm bed (it was freezing cold, now, and I shook with fear 
 
382 OUE BBOWN PASSENGEH. 
 
 as well), and went on deck. My worst fears were realised ; we 
 were in the midst of a blinding snowstorm, and the ship was flying 
 through it at her best pace. To remonstrate with the drunken 
 madman. Hicks, was to be told to mind my own business. I 
 turned to arouse the captain. 
 
 Oh, that ghastly yell ! — that hideous cry of despair and terror 
 which went to my heart like a dagger, and told me the end had 
 come. It was the horrified shriek of the watch forward. It was 
 inarticulate, but if the words for which that cry was intended had 
 been spoken never so slowly or so loudly, they could not have 
 told the disaster more plainly. We were lost. 
 
 Ahnost at the bowsprit end the snow seemed to thicken and to 
 sohdify, forming a white wall across her course. I doubt if there 
 was time to put the helm dovm. I had time to see one hideous 
 white ice crystal, just to the right of the fore-royal yard, and then 
 I crouched against the bulwarks, expecting the shock. For we 
 had run at full speed on aa iceberg. 
 
 It came in an instant. The ship stopped so suddenly that I 
 was thrown along the deck, bruised and hurt ; and then one 
 heard the crash. There was a ripping,- tearing, and cracking of 
 wood all around, and last of aU the sound of heavy bodies faUiug 
 through the air as the masts came headlong down, one on deck 
 and two partly overboard. Then ruin and confusion unutterable, 
 indescribable. 
 
 I suppose my courage is about the same as that of common- 
 place people, but it would be worse than absurd to conceal the 
 fact that I was dazed and stunned by the hideous disaster, and 
 did not, for a certain, very short time, know what to do. This 
 may partly have arisen from the fact that I instinctively knew, or 
 thought I knew, that nothing could be done — that death was a 
 matter of minutes. But this was not the case with the crew. 
 Their sailor instincts taught them better. The first thing I 
 became aware of, the first thing with any kind of arrangement in 
 it which happened after the ruin was this : the crew was crowd- 
 ing into the two larboard boats, which still hung in the davits 
 (the starboard boats had been crushed to atoms by the fall of the 
 foremast), and were leaving the ship. 
 
 The first boat, lowered with Clifford's apparatus, was in the 
 water in a moment, and in another was stove, and sunk among 
 the floating wreck. Not a soul in her came on board again. 
 The other hung in the davits longer ; their complement was made 
 up all but two — the carpenter, and the American sailor, who 
 stood before me. The carpenter was not to be found, and the 
 American stood lool^ng at them. 
 
OUE BEOWN PASSENGEB. 38a 
 
 A young man had forced his way up from the second cabin, 
 and came to them. I heard what he said. 
 
 " There's room for a dozen more souls in that boat, mates. 
 Take my wife with you ; for the love of God, take her." 
 
 No answer to him but curses. 
 
 " Where is the carpenter ? We must have Chips. We want 
 Chips," they cried. "Jump in, Yankee. Gome on, or you'll 
 be too late." 
 
 I cannot give the American's answer. It was too rough. The 
 words in which he expressed his unutterable contempt for them 
 would not do to reproduce here. Yet, coarse as they were, they 
 were so wondrous witty that even while I am dwelling on the 
 horrors of that night, I cannot forbear to laugh while I recall 
 them. 
 
 The first mate, who commanded this boat, gave the word to 
 lower away, and they went down the ship's side into night and 
 darkness, never to be heard of again. It is impossible to guess 
 at their fate. They may have been swamped soon, or they may 
 have been tossed on that bitter, weltering sea till they ate one 
 another. Who can tell ? May God forgive them ! No one ever 
 heard of them again. 
 
 It was a full moon, and the night was light. I saw that the 
 ship was settling down by the head, and moreover had swung 
 clear of the iceberg, and was going to settle herself down decently, 
 without any more breakage. There was a great deal of noise and 
 confusion. The second-cabin passengers had broken up from 
 below, preferring, for some reason, the having a wild, desperate 
 struggle for life, to being drowned en masse. So there were some 
 five-and-twenty tragedies taking place around me, which I hardly 
 noticed, for between you and I, reader, hfe happened to be very 
 precious to me just at that time, and I was selfish and loth to 
 die. But some one laid a hand on my shoulder, and I looked 
 round and saw who it was. 
 
 Eliza Dishmore. She said, " The ship is sinking, is it not ? " 
 
 I said " Yes. Have you seen my brother ? I should like to 
 see him again." 
 
 " He is with his wife and child. Better leave them alone. 
 Even a brother would be de trop. Stay, and die with me." 
 
 " I will heartily consent to die with so brave a woman." 
 
 " I always liked you," she said. " You never believed in me, 
 but you were always good-natured when you laughed at me. You 
 will teU me, I know, when the time comes to say good-bye." 
 
 "It win not be long," I said. "Look at the angle of the 
 deck now." 
 
384 OUB BEOWN PASSENGER. 
 
 " It has beon like that this ten minutes," she said. "There 
 must be some liitch in the performance." 
 
 I might have thought she was taking things rather coolly, and 
 I do now. ]!ut at this moment I was nearly knocked down by. 
 the carpenter, who appeared at lull speed from forward, and who 
 seemed to be mail. The American sailor turned round and joined 
 us at tliis moment ; and we either did say something, or were 
 going to say souicthing, to one another, when we were interrupted 
 by a voice — a voice from the quarter-deck, which seemed to divide 
 the dark night of death like a flame of fire, and send despair like 
 a howling ghost to wander over the desolate ice-ridden sea, which 
 was ready to engulf us. A voice loud, shriU, and clear, audible 
 in every syllable, even in expression, though so loud that every 
 one heard it plainly above the wash of the waves, and the beating 
 of tlic floating wreck upon the iron sides of the ship. It was 
 heard by every man and woman upon that deck ; for at the hear- 
 ing of it, the parting, wailing groups broke up, and the men came 
 staggering aft toward the quarter-deck, pushing one another aside 
 in their contest to get ni'arer to it. 
 
 The voice shrilled out this upon the night and ruin, " The ship 
 is not sinking ; the fore compartment has beon stove, but the next 
 is perfectly dry. Men ! if you ever want to see England again, 
 get to work and cut away the wreck of the masts." 
 
 A\'hosc voice was it ? I had never heard it before. I looked 
 up at a light which was burning at the binnacle, on the fore part 
 of the quarter-deck, and saw the face of our Brown Passenger, 
 Hatterton, peering down into the darkness. The voice was his. 
 The American sailor, Eliza Dishmore, and myself immediately 
 adjourned to that same binnacle for orders ; and I well remember 
 that the Amce ican sailor bowed precedence to both of us, as we 
 went up the ladder. 
 
 " Carpenter," he said, as we approached him, "go forward and 
 give the young men their orders. Have the wreck of the foremast 
 and mizenmast cut away ; that wiU do tiH daylight. The mainmast 
 must lie on deck at present ; that wiU do for to-night. Be sharp, 
 now, or we shall have another hole knocked in the ship's side. 
 We are to the leeward of ice now, but we shall drift into the swell 
 again directly, and then I wouldn't give twopence-halfpenny for us 
 AN'ith that wreck hanging overboard." 
 
 I went towards him, and I said, " What shall I do, sir? " 
 
 " You ! Let me see ? Who the devil is it ? Ah ! I see. You 
 are a very popular fellow, with a gift of the gab. Avery good gift, 
 mind you ; I wish I had it. You ; let me see : you go and animate 
 them. Tell them I am going to take the ship to Valparaiso, and 
 
OUE BROWN PASSENGER. 385 
 
 that there is not the least fear of my not doing so. Have you seen 
 the skipper? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Did he go off in one of the boats ? " 
 
 " Of course he did not," I said, indignantly. 
 
 ' ' Oi course not, ' ' answered the Bro-svn Passenger. ' ' Now, sir ? ' ' 
 
 This was to the American sailor : who repHed that he wished to 
 be "told off" to something special. 
 
 "Go to the helm, sir, for the present. I shall want you when 
 we rig a jury mast. You are a noble fellow, and the only seaman 
 I have left ; go forward, sir." 
 
 He went forward. There remained Eliza Dishmore, who said : 
 
 " And what am I to do, sir ? " 
 
 " Go to your berth, madam, and thank God for your safety." 
 
 " I can do more than that. Come, use me fairly, sir, or you 
 and I shall quarrel. TeU me off for something." 
 
 "Can you keep those women quiet? Can you organise a 
 hospital ? For when day dawns we shall find a long list of killed 
 and wounded, I fear. There were many on deck." 
 
 " There were very few," she answered. " But I can do what 
 you want. If I could not, who could ? ' ' 
 
 " Were you on deck, madam, when this happened ? " 
 
 "I was." 
 
 " Did you see the skipper — the master, madam ? " 
 
 " I did not. But I saw the boats put off, and he was in neither 
 of them. He is lying dead somewhere ; under the wreck of the 
 mainmast. How utterly mean you must be to suspect that man ! ' ' 
 
 "Mean, madam?" 
 
 " Yes, mean. And why do you suspect and dislike me so, that 
 your gentle breeding hardly keeps you civil ? You are a gentleman, 
 but you have gone near the edge of your gentility in your treatment 
 of me. What have I done that you should treat me as you have 
 done ? " 
 
 " Madam, I humbly beg your pardon. May I beg that you 
 would be kind enough to proceed about what you undertook ? " 
 
 I believe that this was the only explanation ever entered into 
 by this queer pair. Eut the next time I saw them together they 
 seemed perfectly devoted to one another, and remained so for the 
 whole voyage. He not only had got really to respect her, from 
 seeing all her noble qualities shine out, in spite of her fantastic 
 appearance and odd manners, but his delicate conscience told 
 him he had been more brusque with her on some occasions than 
 he should have been. He made the most perfect amends. 
 
 Meanwhile day crept over the busy scene, and the snowstorm 
 
 26 
 
386 OUE BROWN PASSENGER. 
 
 ceased, giving way to a glorious, clear, sparlding mom. Engaged 
 as I was, I could not \ie\p looking round with the most eager 
 curiosity to catch sight of the iceherg — that hideous grey mass 
 on which we had stmok in the dead of the wild night. It was 
 close to us still, scarce five miles off at sunrise, and of all the 
 beautiful objects I have ever seen I think that was the most 
 beautiful. It lay floating upon a bright blue sea, flecked with 
 flying purple shadows, and every crystal and pinnacle was blazing 
 like the brightest silver against an intensely blue sky, while the 
 shadows on the berg itself were of the palest, most delicate green. 
 It was the only one near us, but to the south we could see a long 
 line of them, stretching across the horizon, much like another 
 Bernese Oberland. 
 
 We found the poor captain, struck down on deck, with both his 
 legs broken, entirely helpless. But we had no need of his services, 
 poor fellow, for our brown friend turned out to be the finest sailor 
 we had ever sailed with ; a master of his profession in every branch, 
 apparently knowing as much of details as the carpenter. A surgeon 
 too, and no bad one, for he set the captain's legs, and the Scotch 
 stewardess and Edmund's wife nursed him into convalescence. A 
 man of resource, for he and the carpenter got a sail over the bows, 
 and so far stopped the leak as to get the fore compartment pumped 
 out, which made her sail better. A man perfectly accustomed to 
 command, and before we had been four days on our new voyage 
 we saw that we should have been lost after all without him. 
 
 To say that Mrs. Dishmore turned out a thorough trump may 
 be familiar, but it is certainly true. She discovered next day that 
 the cook was drOT^'ned, so she instantly established herself at the 
 coppers, and worked there and among the wounded like a slave. 
 The instant it was possible to do so, she suggested the propriety 
 of offering up a thanksgiving. And this led me to the conclusion, 
 judging from his splendid intonation, that our wonderful brown 
 friend had been accustomed to read prayers in public. Another 
 person who turned out a real hero was the solitary young midship- 
 man whom we had first seen. His fortune is made. He has a 
 ship of his own now. 
 
 We were two long months getting to Valparaiso, and the perfect 
 accord there was among us all, the perfect good temper and mutual 
 kindness which was shown by every one in the ship, made it the 
 happiest voyage I ever made. Out of the hundred people 
 assembled in that ship, there are no two, I am certain, who 
 would not meet now as friends. 
 
 It was only when I was passing in a boat, with my brother and 
 sister, under the bows of the ship at Valparaiso, that I fully 
 
OUE BEOWN PASSENGER. 387 
 
 understood what had happened. Those beautiful, delicate hows 
 were ripped and hulged into a hideous, shapeless mass, half veiled 
 by a puckered sail, which hid fi-om our view the still more awful 
 gaps it shrouded. The injuries had been mainly above water, 
 and thus had helped to save us. 
 
 The brown gentleman had left the ship in care of the captain, 
 who was now well enough to attend to duty, that very morning. 
 We learnt from the shore boats that her Majesty's frigate Diana 
 was in the harbour, and would sail for England that day. As 
 we passed up the harbour we saw her get under weigh : the six 
 hundred men were stiU swarming on her rigging as she passed us : 
 on the quarter-deck we saw Hatterton. 
 
 Yes, he indeed, for he saw us, and cried out to us, " God bless 
 you ! God bless you ! Good-bye I " and we answered in a similar 
 manner, and then all sat silent, having found out, now we had 
 lost him, how well we had got to love him. 
 
 We found at the hotel on shore a packet directed to my brother 
 in his handwriting. It was an address to the passengers, and ran 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Bear- Admiral Sir Charles Hatterton presents his compliments 
 to the passengers of the ship Typhoon, and congratulates them 
 on the successful termination of a very perilous voyage. 
 
 " During his long experience in Arctic discovery, he has never 
 seen more courage, more patience, and more good humour displayed 
 than he has lately witnessed among the passengers of the Typhoon, 
 the whole of whom, with four exceptions, were landsmen. 
 
 " With the heartiest good wishes to every one of them, he bids 
 them heartily farewell." 
 
SEEKING YOUR FORTUNE 
 
SEEKING YOUE EOBTUNE, 
 
 The Scotch habitually seek their fortunes, and nearly always, 
 most deservedly, find them. Englishmen generally wait for their 
 fortunes to he brought to them, and somehow or another their 
 expectations are generally fulfilled, which is very lucky for the 
 EngHshman, because he is by far the worst fortune-hunter of the 
 three united nations. The Scotchman hunts his fortune in a cool, 
 masterful way, which conniuinds success. The world takes a man 
 generally (so they say) at his own valuation. The Scotchman's 
 valuation of himself is very high, and, moreover, it is a correct 
 valuation. Englishmen who have to get things done in strange 
 countries, sleep sound when they have got a cool Scotchman as 
 their subordinate or coadjutor. You are perfectly certain of him. 
 He knows his own immense value, and makes you and the world 
 also know it. The Irishman hunts fortune in a very different 
 way. He is not cosmopolitan, Hke the Scotchman. He can, like 
 him, be all things to all men, but in a very different way. The 
 Scotchman has the genius to be actually one of the community in 
 which he is thrown. The Irishman has not. He only learns in 
 a superficial manner the talk of the community, and offends that 
 community continually by showing it that it is all skin deep, and 
 that he is an Irishman still. The Scotchman will actually become 
 and be, in England, a most admirable factor, manager, or game- 
 keeper ; in China, a most excellent blue-buttoned mandarin. 
 Scotchmen, where Scotchmen are few, are a little apt to be jealous 
 of one another, not liking a divided empire. Irishmen herd 
 together like sheep, and form a community utterly apart from all 
 the other nations of the world, and win their way to salaried places 
 by sheer dint of " log rolling," and holding by his own countrymen. 
 In new countries an Irishman seldom goes long without a situation. 
 It is very rare to find a Scotchman in the receipt of a salary for 
 long. He soon exchanges a salary for a share in the business. 
 
 391 
 
392 SEEKING YOUR EOETUNE. 
 
 Your Irishman will be contented with wages to the day of his death. 
 Of course there are exceptions. There are many Irishmen who 
 are as shrewd, as keen, and as independent as any Scotchman ; 
 yet the rule is, I think, as I have stated it. 
 
 The young men of these two nations succeed, in their different 
 ways, in the battle of life : the Scotch in England, in Europe, and 
 in the colonies ; the Irish, in the United States, and the Southern 
 colonies. Now of the English. 
 
 The average well-educated young Englishmen possesses the 
 good qualities of both the sister nations in the highest degree. He 
 is as well made, as well educated, as well trained morally (perhaps 
 better). As for physical traiuing, he is ridiculously overdone in 
 that matter. He is truthful, kindly, brave, and only too generous ; 
 yet when this fellow-countryman of mind is put on his own legs, 
 without interest or help, to find his own fortunes, he turns out to 
 be the most ridiculously helpless animal on the face of the globe. 
 Put the work ready to his hand, and he will do it, as few besides 
 Frenchmen and Prussians can do it. Set him to find the work, 
 and he will miss it. An Englishman must have the work brought 
 to him in a spoon, and put to his mouth. Then — 
 
 Enough of generalising. Let me tell my story. Draw nearer 
 the fire, for I mean to make you feel cold before we part. 
 
 In times, very old now, in the times when our fathers were very 
 young, there was a certain Captain Blackeston, of the 112th regi- 
 ment of the British line, who was very highly distinguished in the 
 service. 
 
 He was a very well-known man indeed, deeply respected and 
 liked by his wild comrades of those times, though they pretended 
 to laugh at him as a bookworm and a Methodist. The more 
 intelligent generals of those times were beginning to get used to 
 his name. The Duke of Wellington, in alluding to some pamphlets 
 of his, had said that to all appearance he had more knowledge of 
 militai-y history than any man of his day. He was a man marked 
 for promotion. 
 
 His regiment was ordered to America in 1815, but General 
 Oakfield begged him, as a personal favour, to accept the appoint- 
 ment of aide-de-camp. Oakfield was one of the few men who saw 
 that there would certainly be another struggle, and that Napoleon 
 must be sent further than Elba before Europe would be quiet. 
 He put such reasons before Blackeston as made him stay, to the 
 wonder of his regiment. He got leave to accept the appointment, 
 and took the opportunity of the pause to marry a beautiful young 
 wife. 
 
 Oakfield was a splendid soldier and a brave man, but he was 
 
SEEKING YOUR FORTUNE. 393 
 
 very rude and wild in his life. I must only say that Oakfield, 
 considering Blaokeston to be under oHigations to him, almost 
 patronised Mrs. Blackeston. It is to be said in excuse for Oak- 
 field that he took quite as much to drink as was allowable in those 
 liberal old times, and that when the scandal took place he was half 
 drunk. 
 
 He, so the story goes, came to Mrs. Blackeston' s apartments in 
 the Kue St. Hubert later than he should have done, having ascer- 
 tained, so said Blackeston's defence on the court-martial, that 
 Captain Blackeston was out. He offered some verbal rudeness to 
 her, which made her raise her voice and scold him. Blackeston 
 came in from the next room, and seized General Oakfield by the 
 throat. In the scandalous struggle which followed, the general 
 fell downstairs. 
 
 Not one word was said on either side. Had it not been that 
 General Oakfield did not appear at the Duchess of Eichmond's 
 ball, and that he took his regiment into action at Quatre Bras 
 with a black eye, nothing would ever have been said. But people 
 will cackle and gossip as long as the world lasts. 
 
 I believe that the thing might have been finished between these 
 two men, had it not been lor the cackling of their comrades. The 
 porter of the house had told the truth to every one he met. So 
 General Oakfield's friends taunted him with having been beaten, 
 and Blackeston's friends sneered at him for not having called the 
 general out. Blackeston, a studious and sensitive man, felt the 
 taunts of his friends as only a student can. 
 
 Yet this quarrel between the two men would have died into 
 stillness if it had been left alone. Blackeston thought that Oak- 
 field was drunk, and did not know what he was about ; and 
 Oakfield confessed to himself that he was half drunk, had made a 
 fool of himself, and had been properly served. The two men went 
 into action together at Waterloo ; and in that ghastly pushing 
 crush up the hiU at half-past six, with the world at stake, when 
 Oakfield's horse, killed by a cannon shot, came headlong down 
 dead, and cast Oakfield prone on the ground among the legs of his 
 men, Blackeston " set him on his own beast," and said, "Heavens ! 
 general, I feared you were hit yourself." 
 
 But they would not leave them alone to settle their quarrel. 
 Blackeston's friends sneered him into madness — sneered him into 
 the miserable foUy of sending a challenge to General Oakfield. 
 
 Oakfield very properly did not wish to fight. Since his half- 
 tipsy escapade he had been very near the gates of death, and had 
 seeii veiy serious things : Quatre Bras and Mont St. Jean, for 
 instance. I think that the man behaved well. He consulted 
 
394 SEEKING YOUR FORTUNE. 
 
 his friend General Lennox. He confessed himself in the wrong 
 entirely ; pointed out that, after his conduct at Waterloo, his 
 courage was heyond suspicion ; and asked his brother general 
 whether he might not be allowed to apologise and refuse to fight. 
 His brother general agreed with him, but unfortunately allowed 
 the matter to reach the ears of the Duke. 
 
 The Duke's heart was hot and furious within him. They were 
 advancing on the country of the French, one of the most irritable, 
 vahant, and sensitive people in the world. The Prussians were 
 showing already signs of Vandalism. His own personal prestige 
 was sufficiently great to keep aU things in order, and to prevent a 
 quarrel with the French which time could never heal — a quarrel 
 which would make the name of Englishmen loathed in France for 
 ever. The first necessary thing was to keep his own raw troops, 
 few of whom had ever seen war, in order. The prestige which 
 he had acquired by beating the starved French out of Spain, with 
 command of the sea, and the lines of Torres Vedras for a basis of 
 operations, would avail him to keep Blucher in order, who had 
 nothing to show per contra but Jena and Ligny. But he must 
 keep his o'wn army in order. If lie allowed one officer to fight 
 one duel, where would he be ? After an enmity of twenty-five 
 years, there were twenty thousand high-spirited officers in France, 
 who would shoot an Englishman as they would shoot a dog. This 
 habit of duelling must be checked in one way or another. An 
 example must be made : and the example was Blackeston. He 
 was brought to court-martial for challenging his superior officer — 
 was cashiered, disgraced, and mined. 
 
 Blackeston was a rare man in the British army in those days, 
 but the type of man is getting commoner now, as the Staff CoUjge 
 can witness. He was a student soldier — a man of the Havelock 
 type, of whom let our enemies beware. But he was a man of 
 extreme sensibility ; he thought himself disgraced, and went away 
 to hide himself from the ken of man. He hid his head in Wales, 
 at a jslace called Plas G^vynant, under Snowdou, as you go from 
 Capol Curig to Bethgelert, fronting the lake which is called Llyn 
 y Dinas. Here his poor bride, worried nearly to death by the 
 details of the court-martial, and killed by the verdict of it, gave 
 birth to a son, and died. 
 
 I cannot in this space go in a business-like manner into Blackes- 
 ton's difficulties. They grew greater, and at last irremediable. 
 But he declined to be ruined, to beg, and to whine. He was never 
 in debt. The time came when even the rent of Plas Givynant was 
 beyond his means. He passed out of that house a free man, with 
 some fifty pounds a year, and went into a cottage, in that narrow 
 
SEEKING YOUR FORTUNE. 395 
 
 gorge under Snowdon, which thoy call, I think, or ought to call, 
 Glyn y Ilan. But he took with him his boy and his books. 
 
 His books. He refused to part with them. I am at this moment 
 puzzled to say whether or not the hooks make the boy. 
 
 It would be wearisome were it even possible to give an account 
 of these books. They comprised the best scientific and mathe- 
 matical books, and a sufficiency of history ; but the sjiecialitS of 
 the library was that it contained probably the finest collection of 
 military books in any one private hand in England. Blackeston, 
 ageing rapidly, hearing only dim rumours of the world, was left 
 alone with his books, his boy, and his God, under the solemn 
 shadows of the soaring Wydffa. 
 
 To shape the human soul which was in his keeping as near to 
 perfection as he might, was now his care, his pleasure, and his 
 labour. As for the boy's prosperity in life, for his profession, for 
 his friends, Blackeston was profoundly indifferent. " I will make 
 the boy fit," he said, " and God will find the work." His mind 
 was getting unhealthy in his disappointment, and this fatalism 
 went near to ruining the youth, in spite of aU his excellences. 
 
 There was scarcely enough to eat in this little cottage of theirs, 
 and yet lie gave the lad the education of a German prince. As 
 the son grew up, the father was astonished at his own handy- 
 work. Lionel Blackeston at eighteen was not only a weU-grown 
 and finely-framed youth, but also was a highly-informed man, a 
 splendid theoretical soldier, and a perfect gentleman ; a gentleman, 
 however, who had scarcely twice in his life interchanged words 
 with one of his own order. 
 
 In those days there were a considerable number of grouse on 
 the hills to the south of Llyn y Dinas. Shooting was one of the 
 accomplishments which Captain Blackeston had given to Lionel ; 
 and the moor being free, he used to ramble many miles, the con- 
 tributions which his gun brought to their limited larder being 
 extremely welcome. His father, now rapidly ageing, ceased to 
 accompany him in these rambles. 
 
 One August day, when getting good sport among that innumer- 
 able maze of tiny lakes which lie under and around the pretty, 
 needle-like peak, Cnicht, he heard the double report of a gun, and 
 instantly afterwards three birds came over the slight knoU in front 
 of him, of which he knocked down two, one of which fell in the 
 little lake, or rather pond, on the shore of which he stood. The 
 next minute another sportsman, attended by a gamekeeper and a 
 brace of dogs, came over the hill and approached him. 
 
 He watched the new-comer. He was a splendid-looking young 
 man, with a very refined face, dressed very beautifully, in black 
 
396 SEEKING YOUK FORTUNE. 
 
 velvet, with yellowish cord troixsers ; a dandy, with a watch-chain 
 and rings, the first dandy Lionel Blackeston had ever seen in his 
 life. The young dandy also looked at Lionel — a strange contrast 
 to himself, for he was clothed all in grey Welsh flannel, wearing 
 breeches, common grey stockings, and very thick boots ; yet a fine 
 figure notwithstanding, and the word "gentleman" so plainly 
 written in his handsome face, and bold upstanding carriage, that 
 the young dandy came straight towards him with a smile and 
 a bow. 
 
 " One of us is, I think, trespassing, and I greatly fear that I 
 am the culprit. My father, Lord Hawkestone, has only lately 
 bought this property, and we are not at aU sure of our marches, 
 nor indeed of whom we march with ; and this keeper is a stranger 
 and a Scotchman. I have been principally used to shooting in 
 Scotland. AUow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Overbury." 
 
 " You are certainly over your march, my lord ; but all the moor 
 is as free as air. I should decidedly advise you to shoot among 
 these bracken fells as often as possible. You will find that the 
 grouse lie here thicker than on any part of your father's estate, 
 except Grlyn Edno. Now we are on the subject, allow me to say 
 that I have to apologise for having frequently trespassed across 
 your marches. I was unaware that you were going to preserve, 
 although I heard that j'ou were going to purchase ttlyn Edno." 
 
 "I hope that you will repeat your trespass as often as you 
 wish," said Lord Overbury. "I see that you.r bird has fallen 
 into the loch. Allow me to send my dog after him." 
 
 This little civility paved the way for others. Lord Overbury 
 said — 
 
 " You mentioned just now a part of our estate in which the 
 grouse lie as thick as they do hero. We are utterly unacquainted 
 with our new estate, and are ignorant of its capacities for game. 
 If you would kindly consent to walk with me to the part you speak 
 of, you would confer a great favour on me ; a favour which will 
 not be half repaid by my requesting you to shoot our moor when- 
 ever yon feel inclined." 
 
 The invitation was too tempting to be resisted, and Lionel went 
 south with him, pointed out his march, shot over the best part of 
 the moor with him, and ended by accepting an invitation to enter 
 Lord Hawkestone's house. 
 
 There was a little discussion before he accepted this invitation. 
 The two young men had been walking for five hours together 
 among the mountains, with no one but a sedate Scotch game- 
 keeper for company, and felt as if they had known one another 
 for at least five years. They were perfectly confident and per- 
 
SEEKING YOUR FORTUNE. 397 
 
 fectly familiar with one another. Lord Overbury said, " You 
 must come and spend the evening with us." Lionel said, " My 
 father is at home alone." Lord Overbury said, "You have con- 
 fessed to me that you often lie out on the hill-side, and so that 
 goes for nothing." Lionel said, " I have never been into society." 
 Lord Overbury said, " It is time, then, that you begun." " I have 
 no clothes," said Lionel. " Once in a way you can wear mine," 
 said Lord Overbury. 
 
 It was done, and he was saved. 
 
 At eight o'clock that evening Lord Hawkestone, getting petu- 
 lant for his dinner, had rung up the butler for the third time, and 
 had said — 
 
 " I shall wait for Lord Overbury no longer." 
 
 " His lordship is dressing, sir," said the butler. 
 
 " It matters nothing to me. If Overbury chooses cold soup, he 
 must choose it." 
 
 The very next moment he came face to face with a young man, 
 whom he took for Lord Overbury, but who was, of course, our 
 friend Lionel. He did not see his mistake at first, but merely 
 said, " George, you are incorrigibly unpunctual about dinner. 
 Give me your arm. When you have done as I have done, when 
 you have lived out politics, love, military glory, and friendship, as 
 I have done, and have nothing left to look forward to but your 
 dinner and your death, you will be more punctual about your 
 dinner. Your death will keep." 
 
 Lord Hawkestone, who put his hand on Lionel's arm, not 
 recognising him, never dreamed that he was speaking to any one 
 but his own son until they were seated at dinner. Then Lord 
 Overbury said to his father, "You seem to have taken to my new 
 friend, father." 
 
 Lord Hawkestone, who was eating his fish, looked up, and his 
 eyes got fixed on Lionel. " I thought it was you, George," he 
 said ; " why did you bring him of all men here ? " 
 
 " I met him on the moors," said Lord Overbury. 
 
 "But you need not have brought him home," said Lord 
 Hawkestone. " Take away this fish, it is stale. Is your father 
 dead?" 
 
 Lionel said, No, that his father was ahve. 
 
 " I was not to blame. I really was not in any way to blame. 
 It was merely a parcel of quidnuncs and idiots who were to blame ; 
 and I was not so very wrong in the first instance. I was only 
 tipsy. Take warning by the faults of your fathers, you young 
 men, and avoid drink. What I said to her was quite harmless. 
 Still, he was right." 
 
398 SEEKING YOUE FORTUNE. 
 
 Lord Overbury interposed. 
 
 "Father, you are wandering. You are really confusing 
 matters. This young gentleman is merely an acquaintance I 
 have picked up on the moors. I do not even Imow his name." 
 
 "lean tell it you, then," said Lord Hawkestone, " though I 
 have never set eyes on him before : his name is Blackeston." 
 
 Both the young men stared with astonishment as the old man 
 went on, " What need to ask him his name ? is it not written on 
 his face ? Young gentleman, ask your father if he remembers 
 and forgives General Oaktield, who has since become Lord 
 Hawkestone." 
 
 Nothing very particular passed further on this occasion. Lionel 
 went home, and reported what had passed to his father, who only 
 said — 
 
 " Yes, yes ; that is aU very well. So you acted ghost at his 
 dinner, eh ? Forgive him ? I forgave him at Waterloo." 
 
 Neither of the young men ever received one word of explanation 
 from either of their fathers. Lord Hawkestone died soon after, 
 and Lionel heard of his friend afar off, in all the splendour of 
 his new inheritance. He was to come into his own heritage 
 soon. 
 
 He spoke to his father about Lord Hawkestone once, and once 
 only, after the first time, because he saw that there was some 
 painful remembrance. " I think it fine in Lord Hawkestone," 
 he said, " sticking to the army after having come into such a fine 
 fortune." And his father said, " It is creditable. His father was 
 not a bad man, and his mother came of a good stock." 
 
 It was wild early winter, and the mountain lowered overhead 
 like a vast and dim white ghost ; day was falling, night approach- 
 ing, when he turned into their glen, after a long day's walk, look- 
 ing foiTvard eagerly to the firelight in his father's mean window, 
 and anticipating one more evening of happy study and happy con- 
 versation with his beloved one over the fire. Alas ! never, never 
 more ! There was no light in the house, and it was silent and 
 empty. 
 
 Uneasiness gave way to alarm, alarm to terror, terror to despair, 
 for the night was wild and terrible — a night in which nature was so 
 fierce and fell, that it would take the strongest young body, and the 
 bravest young heart, to contend with her. Certainly the enfeebled 
 frame of his father would succumb. Unknowing where to go, he 
 spent a maddening night among the winds and the waters, which 
 grew madder as the night went on. When the winter's sun rose, 
 and Kmote upon the peak of Snowdon, the land was loud with the 
 roar of raging waters ; and above all the sound and confusion, 
 
SEEKING YODE FORTUNE. 399 
 
 M'ose the mountain — solitary, calm, cruel, with its secret folded 
 in its bosom. 
 
 That secret never was read, for the mountain kept it to itself. 
 When the snow went they searched, hut much had come and gone 
 with the snow. Whether the poor gentleman had fallen from 
 some dizzy height, or whether he was whelmed in an avalanche, 
 or drowned in a torrent, they never knew. The debris from the 
 winter's ruin on the mountain was the only burial he ever had. 
 
 He had trusted the mountain, and loved it. It had been a 
 familiar thing to him, and he had been warned more than once 
 by his neighbours that he was too rash with it. This was the 
 end. 
 
 Not only the end of him, but the end of much more. Lionel's 
 situation was an almost inconceivable one. He had never had 
 the handling of any money, but now he found himself utterly 
 penniless. 
 
 I do not suppose that he had ever had more than a shilling or 
 two at one time ; but here now, in the midst of this ghastly afflic- 
 tion, he found himself without any shillings at all. If he had ever 
 wanted a shilling, which was seldom — for what could he have 
 done with it among the mountains ? — his father had given it to 
 him, warning him that there were not many. Suddenly the 
 mountain, which they both had loved, had devoured his father, 
 and was holding aloft its silver crystal in silent triumph over its 
 victim — and there was no more money. 
 
 He knew absolutely nothing of his father's affairs, save that 
 they were very poor. When the necessity was forced upon him, 
 he hunted in places into which he had never thought of looking in 
 the old times, for money. But he found none. He found in his 
 father's bureau, and elsewhere, a lock of hair (only one, done up 
 with a blue riband), a pair of spurs, a sword or two, and a French 
 eagle ; but of money none, and of jewellery none. Of manuscripts 
 many ; but merely, as Lionel saw, the cast-aside rubbish of a man 
 who had been so long dissociated from the world that he had run 
 into foolish, senseless dreams. Lionel looked into the titles of 
 one or two of them, and saw that they were all rubbish. "An 
 Inquiry into the powers of notation, addressed to my Lords of 
 the Admiralty : inquiring as to whether or no my Lords are pre- 
 pared to build a frigate — 1st, which carries a scantling of six inches 
 of iron, backed by eleven inches of teak or oak ; 2nd, which is 
 sufficiently short for naval manoeuvring ; 3rd, which possesses a 
 speed of not under eleven knots. With other considerations, 
 calling their Lordship's attention to the fact that there is nothing 
 in the present state of science, to prevent their Lordship's, under 
 
400 SEEKING YOUE FORTUNE. 
 
 better advice, building a gun which will throw a rifled shot of 
 600 lbs. weight, and smash the whole of the above arrangement 
 into the middle of next week." Lionel found such manuscripts 
 as these, and remembered his father's admiration for Defoe's 
 titles ; but he found no money. 
 
 Few people were ever harder put about than this poor Lionel. He 
 had never asked for money, and never wanted for money, until 
 now. Others began to ask him for money, the very neighbours 
 who had been searching for his father's body. He had actually 
 none. There was no discoverable property, except the books, and 
 his own watch. His books were not convertible, but the watch 
 was. He walked to Bangor, and sold the watch, leaving the 
 books and manuscripts alone. 
 
 It became absolutely necessary that he should do something. 
 The money he had raised on the watch was soon gone, with the 
 exception of a very few pounds : absolute want was staring him in 
 the face. His father's affairs did not seem to be in disorder ; his 
 father seemed to have had no affairs whatever. He had no lawyer, 
 no banker, and seemed to have no creditors. The man's affairs, 
 such as they were, appeared to have come to an end with the man 
 himself. Lionel knew absolutely nothing about them. He only 
 knew this, that he, with an education, which in those times would 
 have cost two thousand poimds or so, was in close and imminent 
 danger of turning groom or working on the roads. He had not 
 sufficient linowledge to take a place as under gardener ; and even 
 if he applied for a groom's place, class prejudices would prevent 
 his getting it. His father had made him a finished horseman on 
 one of their tough Welsh ponies ; but who knew this, save him- 
 self? and who was likely to take a highly- educated and very hand- 
 some yoimg man for their groom without a character ? 
 
 With the grief and horror of his father's death still strongly on 
 him, he found himself at the bottom of the well of despair, 
 without one single friend in the world. He know nobody, except 
 Welsh lads below him in rank, whose language he could certainly 
 speak, but which language his father had taught him to despise. 
 His education had been scientifically military. There was the 
 making of a great soldier about him, he knew that ; but how was 
 he to become a soldier ? 
 
 " I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground; 
 When the ranks are rolled in vapour, and the winds are layed in sound." 
 
 Sitting desperate and penniless before the desolate hearth, he 
 sometimes thought, young, strong, clever as he was, that that 
 
SEEKING YOUE POETUNE. 401 
 
 would be the best solution. And as the devil is always ready, the 
 devil came to him , and night after night he saw the recruiting 
 sergeant rise out of the black ashes and stand with his gaudy 
 ribands in his shako on the now desolate hearth. 
 
 But he said, sturdily, "No. God could not have meant that. 
 If I enlist I can never get my commission." 
 
 But in sjDite of his saying, " Apage, Satanas I " to the recruit- 
 ing sergeant day by day, the devil in that singular form continued 
 to tempt him. And then he began to say, " After all one gets a 
 certain prestige ; one would soon be sergeant-major ; and at times 
 they give commissions." So the recruiting sergeant grew more 
 prominent day by day, until he looked upon enlisting — until he 
 became a possibility, nay, a probability in the dark. 
 
 In dayhght it was different. The sheeted mountain over his 
 head would give up his father's corpse to rebuke and revile him 
 if he ventured on such a sacrilege. He a common soldier I He 
 who could point out the weak points in the lines of Torres Vedras, 
 to herd with ploughmen ! It was absolutely intolerable. But he 
 had only four pounds in the world, and no friend. 
 
 Lord Overbury, now Lord Hawkestone — it flashed across him 
 like lightning. He was all alone before the cold fireplace when 
 he thought of it, and it was midnight, and the snow was falling 
 fast, and was being hurled into deep drifts by the westerly wind. 
 The thought of Lord Hawkestone was very sudden, but he saw 
 in one second of time that it was his only hope. He opened 
 the door and passed out, shutting it behind him ; and in the 
 next instant was up to his waist in a snow-drift. 
 
 How one wonders at the fierce health of one's youth ! at the 
 things one used to do ! To a middle-aged reader this frantic 
 expedition of Lionel must appear almost incredible. Yet let 
 that reader remember what tilings he could do, on river and 
 alp, at eighteen. This young man, with his fancy strong upon 
 him, amidst drifting snow, on a furious winter's night, crossed 
 the half-frozen stream below Llyn y Dinas, climbed the hill 
 beyond, passed through the labyrinth of the half-frozen little 
 lakes, among which he had first met Lord Hawkestone, crossed 
 the Shoulder of Cnicht in the darkness, and by nine o'clock in 
 the morning was before the door of Lord Hawkestone's house, 
 having had only two guides, and those phantoms, Lord Hawke- 
 stone, his friend, and the recruiting sergeant. 
 
 The old, well-studied English order was here stiU, although the 
 soul which moved the machine was far away. A butler opened 
 the door to him, and, wild as he looked, recognised him as his 
 lord's friend. Lionel asked for Lord Hawkestone. Lord Hawke- 
 
 27 
 
402 SEEKING YOXJB FOBTUNE. 
 
 stone was, the butler said, at Southampton, helping to see his 
 regiment aboard for India. " It was a strange resolution," said 
 the butler, "for his lordship, with his great wealth, to stick to 
 the army ; but his lordship ivcis strange. Perfectly mad about 
 the dratted soldiering," said the old man. " But, however, 
 there it was. Lords must do as they chose, and the ship sailed 
 from Southampton to-morrow, at latest." 
 
 Despair upon despair. Lionel saw in one instant that unless 
 he acted this man would be lost to him, and that he was the 
 only person who stood between him and the recruiting sergeant. 
 He left the butler at the door, and started madly for South- 
 ampton. 
 
 When a man is in utter despair it is difficult for him to do 
 anything foolish. When a man has got so low as Lionel Blackes- 
 ton, it seems utterly impossible for him to get any lower. Yet it 
 was quite possible. I have seen high-spirited men in Australia 
 brought lower than you would fancy ; but there is a certain kind 
 of man whom you cannot beat. Lionel Blackeston was one. He 
 got on his fantastic journey as far as Shrewsbury, when his shoes 
 were gone, and his money weU-nigh spent. He saw now that he 
 was desperate, and that it was all over with him, and he turned — 
 turned back to utter desperation. 
 
 Why did he turn back ? Was it because his shoes were gone 
 and his money spent ? Was it because he went into a tavern, and 
 the reciTiiting sergeant followed him, and tempted him ? Not at 
 all. It was because he read the newspaper while the sergeant was 
 talking to him ; saw that he was ruined ; and so quietly said to 
 himself, like a true general — " I am now entirely desperate, and 
 consequently not in a fit state to judge of my own affairs. I shall 
 go back into contemplation." To the sergeant he said — " There 
 is news here which concerns me, and prevents my enlisting. You 
 need not kick my dog " — for the sergeant had done so in his anger 
 at losing such a splendid recruit. 
 
 The paragraph in the newspaper which turned him back home 
 was this : — 
 
 " Southampton. — The Orontes, for India, sailed yesterday, 
 carrying the first company of the second battalion of the Welsh 
 Fusiliers, under command of Captain the Earl of Hawkestone. 
 She passed the Needles at 1 p.m., and was spoken ofi" Port- 
 land by pilot-boat No. 65, at 6 p.m. Wind fresh, from the 
 east." 
 
 Lord Hawkestone, his only hope, was bowling down Channel 
 
SEEKING YOUE FORTUNE. 403 
 
 before the easterly wind. Now it came to be a question between 
 working on the roads and enlisting. It required, he thought, a 
 little consideration ; and there were his father's books, and his 
 father's swords, and what not, which would bring money, if he 
 could only get them to market, and so avoid the evil day. 
 
 But there was no chance of getting them to market at all. He 
 had no money. His father's books — a splendid collection — would 
 have to be sold in London. They were worth money, but were not 
 worth twopence apiece in Wales ; and he had absolutely no money 
 whatever. 
 
 The snow was deep on the morning he got home. He got the 
 key of his house from the old Welshwoman at the chapel, who had 
 so long acted as his father's housekeeper. He had a few shillings 
 left, and as there was no shop nearer than Bethgelert, he got 
 her, in defiance of the excise duty, to sell him some oatmeal. 
 She let him have it unwillingly, and he thought that she was 
 ungrateful. 
 
 With this he made porridge, and ate it all up himself. When 
 he had satisfied his own hunger he noticed that his dog was 
 whining for some, and he had none to give the poor brute, 
 who had followed him so faithfully and so trustingly, but had 
 eaten it all himself. So he had got as low as this, that he 
 could not feed his own dog I 
 
 This was the very worst thing of all. It would have driven 
 one sort of high-spirited man into furious imprecation ; another 
 sort of high-spirited man into tears. In the case of Lionel 
 Blackeston it did neither : it set his brain to work to see how 
 he was to get himself out of his position. He felt as much 
 for his dumb, starving dog as the most outre of sentimentalist ; 
 but the man was a born general, and utilised his very senti- 
 mentalism. He said, " This won't do. If a man has got so 
 low as to eat his dog's share of the dinner, it won't do, and 
 must be mended. I will get over to Carnarvon to-morrow and 
 enhst." 
 
 AU his dreams of rising in the world were gone hopelessly 
 now. He gave it all up ; he would be a common soldier, and 
 herd with the vanmen and ploughboys. All done. A life ended 
 at nineteen. He lit some fire again, and sat pondering over it ; 
 and in the warmth of the fire, the dog forgot his hunger and left 
 whining. 
 
 But only for a time — for a very short time. Soon after he had 
 left whining, he began to growl — but feebly, and with very little 
 energy. 
 
 Lionel said once or twice, " Lie down, Kover, my poor dog ; lie 
 
404 SEEKING YOUR FORTUNE. 
 
 down." But the dog still growled, though he wagged his tail the 
 while. 
 
 Lionel had left noticing him for a very short time, thinking only 
 that the dog heard a prowling fox, when he growled louder, just 
 turning himself towards the door. The door was opened suddenly, 
 and a clear, sharp voice said, " Heavens, Blackeston ! what on 
 earth is all this ? " 
 
 Lionel turned and saw Lord Hawkestone before him. Then he 
 broke down utterly. He had not the slightest business to do any- 
 thing of the kind ; but he did it notwithstanding. He had stood 
 ill-fortune well enough ; but this wonderful piece of providence 
 sent him a Httle off his balance. 
 
 When he got his voice he said, " I thought you were half way 
 to India." 
 
 " My company is," said Lord Hawkestone. " / am going 
 overland, with this splendid Wagbom, and shall be there long 
 before them. He has particularly asked me, in my capacity as 
 Earl, to do so, and give the new route a prestige. I am, of 
 course, delighted. But about yourself. You are rather a solemn 
 subject with me. I fell in love with you the very first time I saw 
 you, and I am sure I would do anything in the world to serve 
 you. But my poor father left you as a sort of legacy to me, 
 saying that he had ruined your father unintentionally, and that 
 it was left to me to make amends. I cannot venture to offer 
 money directly to a gentleman like you ; but I think there is no 
 harm in this arrangement : Will you mortgage your lather's books 
 to me for the price of your commission ? " 
 
 Why go on ? Is not the story told ! Do you want to know 
 the future of Lionel Blackeston before he developed into General 
 Blackeston ? Ask the Affghans ; ask the Sikhs ; ask the glorious 
 Kussians who came swarming up the hillside at Inkermann ; ask 
 the rebel Sepoys ; nay, ask the House of Commons, to whom they 
 appeal in case of difficulty, when there is no question of party. 
 Their answer will be " Blackeston." 
 
 The ladies want to know what became of the dog. I don't 
 know what became of the dog. I suppose that he died. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 UNWIH SBOTHEKS, THE 0RE5HAM PRESS, OHIL^'ORTH AND LONDON. 
 
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 "Very beautiful and touching. ... It is a heroic 
 book, and also a most pathetic one.'' — The Guardian. 
 
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NOVELS BY POPULAR AUTHORS 
 
 MAY KENDALL 
 
 White Poppies. By May Kendall, 
 
 Author of "Dreams to Sell," etc. With Illustrations 
 by R. Anning Bell. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 "A striking novel. It has power, it has originality. . . . 
 Miss Kendall's reputation will be greatly enhanced by the 
 production of this very skilful and eminently sympathetic 
 story." — The Sun. 
 
 HAMILTON ROWAN 
 
 The Story of Sylvia. By Hamilton 
 Rowan. With Frontispiece by Walter S, Stagey. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 "An unusually lively novel. ... It is apparently 
 Hamilton Rowan's first essay in fiction, and it ought not to 
 be the last ; for we do not get many stories equal in merit 
 to this one." — Bristol Times. 
 
 MARY TENNYSON 
 
 The Fool of Fate. By Mary H. Tenny- 
 son, Author of " Friend Perditus." Cr. 8vo, cloth, 6s. 
 
 "Although sad in tone, this book is exceedingly clever 
 and well written. . . . The book is not loaded with 
 psychological analysis, but the incidents are mainly allowed 
 to speak for themselves, and the work is a clever, clear and 
 consistent character study." — Bristol Mercury. 
 
 CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 
 
 In the Clouds. By Charles Egbert 
 
 Craddock, Author of " The Prophet of the Great 
 Smoky Mountain," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " It is full of strong personal human interest, and it has 
 in addition a vein of tragedy which is none the less striking 
 because of the general humour of the piece. It is a capital 
 story." — The Scotsman. 
 
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Popular iHRBE-AND-sixPENNy novels 
 F. MARION CRAWFORD 
 
 To Leeward. A Novel. By F. Marion 
 
 Crawford, Author of "A Roman Singer," "Mr. 
 Isaacs," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 "Mr. Marion Crawford, in his new novel, 'To Leeward,' 
 has achieved his greatest success ; indeed, it is not too 
 much to say that this work takes a high place in the ranks 
 of modern fiction." — Vanity Fair. 
 
 By the same Author 
 
 An American Politician. A Novel. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " An entertaining study of phases of life and types of 
 character, and of present political aspects and tendencies, 
 by a keen and thoughtful observer,' whose every new book 
 is sure to be welcomed and read." — Review. 
 
 JANE G. AUSTIN 
 
 Standish of Standish : A Story of the 
 
 Pilgrims. By Jane G. Austin, Author of " Nantucket 
 Scraps," etc. With Two Illustrations by George 
 Hutchinson. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " Miss Austin writes their (the Pilgrims') story as one 
 inspired. ... A most satisfying story, and a valuable 
 addition to historical fi.c[.\on."— Sheffield Telegraph. 
 
 Joel 
 
 AVERY MACALPINE 
 Marsh : an American ; and Other 
 Stories. By Avery Macalpine, Author of "A Man's 
 Conscience," etc. Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " ' Joel Marsh ' tells the old tale of the Good Samaritan 
 in a new guise— related with much humour, touched with 
 sympathetic humanity. Of the other stories, 'A Sacrifice 
 to Faith ' is the strongest, is powerfully depicted, and nn- 
 presses the hall-mark of distinction upon the volume."— 7Vi£ 
 Speaker. 
 
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POPULAR THREE-AND-SIXPEKNY NOVELS 
 
 JULIEN GORDON 
 
 Vampires, and Mademoiselle Rdsdda. 
 
 By JuLiEN Gordon, Author of " A Diplomat's Diary." 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " A clever sketch of contemporary manners . . . full 
 of charming touches." — Morning Post. 
 
 " ' Mademoiselle Rese'da ' is a charming love story."— 
 Sheffield Telegraph. 
 
 MRS. A. BLITZ 
 
 An Australian Millionaire. By Mrs. 
 
 A. Blitz, Author of " Digger Dick's Darling." With 
 Frontispiece and Vignette by George Hutchinson. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " Its plot displays remarkable originality of conception as 
 well as ingenuity of construction. . . . The story in 
 question has conspicuous merits of its own, which entitle it 
 to honourable mention, and its author to cordial encourage- 
 ment."^Z?az/j/ Telegraph. 
 
 " 'An Australian Millionaire' is a novel of considerable 
 ability. . . . It is a book with brains in it." — Bookman. 
 
 ''A novel of exceptional power and originality. . . . 
 The story is a fascinating one, and will hold the reader from 
 the first page to the last." — Liverpool Mercicry. 
 
 E. DONNISON 
 
 IVinning a Wife in Australia. With 
 
 Frontispiece and Vignette by George Hutchinson. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " Written in a spirited fashion, and one gets the impression 
 that the ' local colouring' is as accurate as it is vivid. The 
 story has plenty of 'go,' and on the whole gives a pleasing 
 picture of Colonial Life." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
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