Paul Ferroll (1856): a machine-readable transcription

Clive, Caroline Wigley (1801-1873)

Victorian Women Writers Project: an Electronic Collection

Paul Ferroll

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• 1996-04-02
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(illustration)

        

Paul Ferroll. A Tale.

By

The Author of "IX. Poems by V."

"How little we know of what passes in each other's minds." Sidney Smith's Letters.

PAUL FERROLL.

CHAPTER I.

riding. As he got on horseback, he met a labourer belonging to the gardens coming to his work, and inquired what he was going to do. The man showed a basket of annuals which he was about to plant in the flower-garden, and being a simple fellow, inquired whether his master could tell if missus meant the blue anagallis or the white to be on the outside of the bed.

        "Not I," said Mr. Ferroll; "whichever you will."

        "Missus will be tremendgious if I'm wrong," said the man, scratching his head.

        Mr. Ferroll frowned at this epithet applied to his young wife, and bidding the man go about his work, rode off.

        "It's well enough for you who have the whip hand," said Richard Franks, looking after his master; "but if ever a lady provoked the poor wretches under her......" and here his murmurs sank into inarticulate rumbling -- but Mr. Ferroll was out of hearing.

        He rode gently. The morning was delicious, and he occasionally spoke to a peasant going to his work, or saluted a whole family busy on their garden before the man went to his hired employment. Several of the peasants whom he met while he was still in his own immediate neighbourhood, had a word to speak with him about a job of work they wanted, or repair for a cottage, which they begged his honour to grant. He gave attention and discussed their matters with all, so that he made rather slow progress till he was at some little distance from home, but then he touched his horse with the spurs, and the gallant animal willingly indulged him in the pleasure of a gallop, which he seemed to enjoy with eager relish. He had taken

a circuit in his gallop, so that between loitering in his slow pace, and diverging in his quick, it was past six o'clock when he arrived at the village to which his course was directed.

        "I'm very early, Mr. Aston," said he to the farmer at whose house he stopped; "but I knew I must find you at home at this hour."

        "Not a bit too early for us, sir," said the farmer, "and I'm hugely obliged to you for taking the trouble. It's all over with me, I believe, sir; but if any can help me, it's you."

        "When is the day for examining the accounts?" asked Mr. Ferroll.

        "To-morrow week, sir, and I declare I'm as innocent as a babby; and yet there's a hundred of pounds as I cannot tell what's gone with him."

        "Did not you keep your accounts like other overseers?" said Ferroll.

        "Yes, I did just like the last two told me how; but there's a great difference now, I believe, sir, in the way the upper people add them up."

        "Maybe so," said Ferroll; "and do you know there was a great man once in the same plight as you, and Bacon was his name?"

        "Pickle, you might have said, sir. Bacon might well be in pickle," said farmer Aston, laughing heartily.

        "Come, that's well said; I love a man who can laugh under his troubles. I've good hope of you. Let's see these books, these accounts; let me try to add them up the right way for you."

        "Breakfast was just ready if you please, sir," said the farmer's wife; "won't you take a cup of tea and a bit of bread this morning, before you begin?"

        "Thank you, I will with pleasure;" and he cut the loaf standing as he was, and ate with appetite the good bread, but rather made less of the tea without milk, seemed the produce of dried grass.

        "I'm afraid you don't like our tea, sir," said the hostess, "though it's five-and-sixpence a pound at Dewson's shop."

        "That's Dewson's new way of adding up," said Mr. Ferroll, smiling; "but, thank you, I'm more hungry than thirsty, and you see what a gap I have made in your loaf. So now the books, Aston, and let us set to work."

        The books kept by the overseer were indeed in a state of confusion, which the better order of things in the management of the poor might well find fault with. Farmer Aston, however, had not the least intent of cheating, but he had followed his predecessors' example in taking the arithmetic of the thing for granted, and forcing a suitable conclusion, when it did not come naturally. Widow Grant appeared at every close where a shilling or a pound could not be accounted for. The things for which the parish was creditor on one side, it was debtor for on another, and at the end of all, to make the expenditure agree with the receipts, appeared his concluding item -- "Muddled away #9 4s. 61/2d."*

        Mr. Ferroll set to work to unravel as far as possible this confusion, and patiently listened to the recollection by which the farmer elucidated the written documents. The table was covered with little dirty bills, the summary of which Mr. Ferroll transferred to a fair sheet
___________________

* So Mr. Earle told me, the Poor-law Commissioner.

of paper, and among which he, with a clear head, was pursuing the almost hopeless clue, when the sound of a horse galloping furiously was heard, and a voice asking for God's sake whether Mr. Ferroll was there. He heard his name, and looked up startled, but finished the calculation he was that moment upon, before he followed the farmer's wife, who had rushed out of the room, and whom he found fallen on the bench before the door, while the messenger who had come for him stood trembling, and as white as a sheet before her.

        "Oh, Lord! here he comes," cried the matron, as he ran out. "Oh! poor gentleman, don't tell him, Thomas."

        "What's the matter?" said Mr. Ferroll, the colour mounting into his own face with expectation. "Speak out this instant."

        "My mistress, sir," said the fellow, dropping his hands to his side, and the bridle fell loose at the same time, but the panting horse had no inclination to stir.

        "Well, your mistress?"

        "Dead!" said the man.

        Mr. Ferroll's eyes fixed them on his face, his lips were squeezed together, he did not seem to take in the word.

        "She is dead, sir," said the man; "oh! is worse than dead -- they have killed her."

        "Killed your mistress!" he said; "you are mad yourself."

        "How quiet he takes it," said the woman.

        "He don't believe it," said the messenger. "Sir, she's been murdered in her bed."

        Mr. Ferroll said not a word more; he asked not another question; but he walked like a drunken man to the

stable, where his own horse was put up; and springing into the saddle, flew past the cottage almost like the speed of a bird, and vanished from their sight on the way home.

        Home! and what a home! It was all peace and stillness when he left it. It was a scene of distraction, now -- servants and villagers were about the door, and in the garden. Men were rushing for help, and only bringing more trembling spectators; the gate was wide open; the windows, some still barred, some thrown up; household employments all broken off -- the household hurriedly one on another, terrified out of their senses.

        They rushed to their master, when he arrived.

        "What is the matter?" he said again, as if his apprehension refused all belief of what he had heard.

        "It's all true, sir," said the constable, who had been secured among the rest. "Your lady has been murdered."

        Mr. Ferroll was a man of powerful will and habitual reserve; he seemed to force himself to an action he abhorred -- turned towards the room.

        "You had better not go in," said the constable, holding his arm.

        "Seeing it is not the worst part," said Mr. Ferroll, and went on.

        The surgeon was in the room; he was still bending over the body, and his feet were dabbled with the blood, which was in a pool about the bed. The husband was deadly pale, but he forced himself on.

        "Sir, were you here this morning?" said the surgeon.

        "Yes, as late as half-past four. Is there no life?"

        "Life has been extinct an hour or more," said the

surgeon. "Was the window open when you went away, sir?"

        "Yes, she bade me leave it open. Who? who? ......" he repeated, gasping, and forcing out the word.

        "There is no trace as yet -- no suspicion. Did you see anyone, sir?"

        "No one," said Mr. Ferroll.

        "Well, it don't matter asking him now," said the surgeon, looking at him compassionately. "For God's sake, sir, come out of the room;" but he still gazed on, though a shudder ran at times through his strong frame.

        "She was murdered in her sleep," said the surgeon; "it was some sharp, small instrument. The wound is not large, but deadly -- just here," and he pointed with his finger below the ear.

        "And no trace left?" asked the husband, looking over the floor.

        "None whatever, except there," said the surgeon, pointing to a tub of water, which stood ready for bathing, and which was deeply coloured with blood -- "the murderer washed off the traces there."

        Mr. Ferroll shuddered: the scene was growing too much even for his strung up mind. The surgeon led him out of the room unresistingly; and through the crowd, before whom he summoned up his strength, and passed them with a firm foot; but once in a room, away from all these curious eyes, he sunk upon a chair and hid his face.

        The constable had sent for the coroner, upon first hearing what had happened; and a jury was hastily assembled, who proceeded to investigate the mysterious affair. They visited the room, and the dead body, lying

all unanointed in the deep dishonour of death; the intense stillness of the room contrasting with the confusion; the soiled bedclothes, the polluted floor, all so unlike the usual extreme neatness which accompanies the silence of death.

        The chamber presented no appearance of having been robbed, until some one asked if there had been any watch in her possession. Mr. Ferroll said she was in the habit of putting hers under her pillow. They searched there but it was gone, and there was blood under the pillow as though the hand that had taken it thence was bloody: nothing else was missing, except a pocket handkerchief, which her maid said had been in the room when her mistress went to bed. They went into Mr. Ferroll's dressing-room next door, and here the things were lying about just as he had left them when he went out. His dressing-case was open on the table, and when one of the jury asked whether anything was missing from it, he said, as far as he recollected, it had contained a sharp-pointed knife, which was gone.

        But it was in vain the weapon was sought for all over the dismal chamber. When the jury retired to deliberate, some curious evidence was brought before them. It appeared that Mrs. Ferroll had been a woman of violent temper, and unpopular among her servants. The footman was eager to tell that her own maid had complained of the trouble she gave, and that only the day before she had wished either herself or her mistress were dead.

        Then the housemaid, sobbing and terrified, said, that the maid had got up that morning before five o'clock, being much out of temper, and had said, she was going to do something for her mistress, but it should be the

last time. Here was suspicion, and the maid was examined; but she cleared herself, by saying, that her mistress had charged her to provide the whole milk of one cow for her morning bath. She had done it once before, and master had so laughed at her, the maid said, that she was afraid of his knowing it; and had made her promise not to tell what she was about. It was a troublesome order, and obliged her to get up at an unwonted hour, and she had resolved to leave her place in consequence. This story was confirmed by the dairymaid, to whom she had gone for the milk, and whose evidence, together with that of the housemaid, accounted for the suspected woman's employment from the time she left her bed to that when her loud cries at entering the room had announced the event to the household.

        One of the jury, forgetting all the circumstances which showed the death to have been brought about by another hand, here conjectured, that since she was so violent, she might have committed suicide, supposing her to have been in a state of excitement. Had her husband and she had any quarrel? he asked; were they on bad terms?

        "No, they never quarrelled; master was resolute not to quarrel."

        An explanation of this was asked, and it seemed that one and another had heard very hasty expressions on her part, but that they were always silenced by Mr. Ferroll, who knew better than anybody how to manage her. They began to tell what she had said against him, but with this the jury had nothing to do, and stopped all such details.

        A minute search was made in the house for the missing watch, and there was one woman also who had been in fits ever since the discovery of the murder, who

showed the greatest reluctance to submit to the investigation. This was the wife of the labourer Franks, who lived in the house in quality of kitchen-maid. She refused to give up her keys, saying, she knew they would pretend to have found something which would hang her. The law had once found her son guilty of horse-stealing, though he never saw the horse in his life; and she saw they only wished to find her or her husband guilty of murder, to ruin them all one with the other. Upon mention of her husband, further inquiry was made about him, and he was brought before the jury for examination. He was nearly as much terrified as his wife, and kept his head averted from the room of death as they brought him into the house. He tried to prevent all questions, by conjuring them not to think he had done it. It was true his mistress had been very hard to him, but he would not have done such a thing for the world: his master, perhaps, thought much of what he said that morning, but, indeed, he meant no more than he said; and as to killing her, he did not like for his own part to kill his very pig.

        On this mention of his master, Mr. Ferroll was questioned as to what he could tell of the man that morning. One of the jury remarked, that Mr. Ferroll said, he had seen no one when he went out. He answered, that he had indeed spoken to this man, but the idea of connecting so innocent and well-known a fellow with this horrible deed had not occurred to him.

        "But where had he left him when he himself quitted the house?"

        "In the stable-yard."

        "What was he going to do?"

        "To work in the flower-garden."

        And it proved upon inquiry, that he had been there alone, that he had quitted it some time before the murder was discovered. One of the maids had seen him washing his hands, and, on being questioned, said, the colour of the water afterwards was as red as blood.

        Mr. Ferroll remarked, that the soil of the garden was mixed with clay, and might give that appearance; but the jury was moved by the expression used by the maid. They closely questioned Mr. Ferroll as to what had passed between him and the labourer about the murdered lady, and he reluctantly related the expression used, for he saw the circumstances were making against the man, whom, from his previous knowledge of him, he could not but believe innocent. The distracted behaviour of the wife, and the terror of the accused added to the impression; and when they forcibly took their key, and went to search their box, everyone expected both the watch and the handkerchief would be found. They were not; but the suspicion was strong enough with regard to him, and absent enough from everybody else, to cause his committal to prison.

        When this noisy and bustling scene was over, the silence of death settled in all its depth over the house. Then came the rites of the dead, and the body was composed as it best might, and the clean spotless linen laid over it. The chamber was set in order, the watchers took their place in the room adjoining, and between one day and another the house had passed from the peaceable domestic scene of life and employment, to the solemn, yet frightful inactivity of the death-place of its chief inhabitant.

        Mr. Ferroll kept aloof from the eyes of his servants as much as possible. They could hear his restless step;

and when night came, observed that he went out of doors, and paced hurriedly about the garden, as if unable to rest, but he did not come into the terrible room. It must have been very strong affection which could have brought any one to look upon that sight; and it was well known that although they had lived together with unbroken unity, both had soon ceased to love the other.

        Mr. Ferroll was a man of profound passions, and powerful will. He had been disappointed in the affection he had fixed on a young girl; and the woman whom he afterwards married had been in some way mixed up with the story. The latter was young and handsome, and at one time passionately in love with her husband; and after the disappointment of his first attachment, he had hastily married her, but her character was one it was difficult to remain attached to; and when she found him far from returning the zeal of her adoration, and that her hold upon him grew less and less, she gave way to all her unamiability, and would have proved the bane of the life of any one less strong in character than her husband. But he resolutely avoided all quarrel, and maintained the decent and even friendly intercourse which became their position. A man more anxious about appearance would probably have constrained himself to visit the room where the body of his wife lay; but Mr. Ferroll was perfectly indifferent in this, and all other instances, as to what was said of him.

        It was, therefore, with surprise, that the undertakers employed in making the last arrangements previously to closing the lid, saw him enter the room, and approach the coffin.

        "My wife," he said, "has left directions, which I am about to obey;" and, with these words, he placed upon

the body a small parcel which he had held in his hand. He then drew away the covering from the face, which he had not seen since the day of the murder. It was composed as decently as possible, but after so many days of death, and after a death so violent, looked indeed different from the fine face, the healthy glowing countenance of his young wife. He said not a word, moved not a muscle; but gazed at it, as deadly pale himself as the rigid corpse, and turned away at last with the effort of one struggling against a paralysis, but recollected himself before he had gone half across the room, and returning, said, "I must see the lid closed on that packet;" and taking hold of the back of a chair, stood resolvedly while the cloth was replaced, the sheet drawn together, and the lid put on and fastened upon the withered form within. Before it was done he had recovered his self-possession, and walked firmly from the room; and after that time, till the day of the funeral, more than once came into the chamber, and gazed for a few minutes on the coffin. He never wept, and never prayed beside it, nor pretended to do either; and the watchers, accustomed to see the mourners express their feelings in both ways, found fault in whispers with Mr. Ferroll for doing differently from other men; but it was plain that he was as careless of that as of all other blame or praise of his conduct.

        It was not without hesitation that the magistrates before whom Franks was brought committed him to prison. The evidence against him was entirely presumptive. Even the bucket in which his hands had discoloured the water was in his favour rather than against him; for the murderer had plainly cleansed himself from the blood in the room itself where he com-

mitted the act; and had Franks been that person, it was most unlikely he should have left his hands still so deeply dyed, as to discolour water in the court-yard. Mr. Ferroll's conjecture, therefore, that it was the garden soil which he had washed off, seemed the most probable.

        But one of the magistrates, Mr. Bartlett, the owner of the Hall, as Mr. Ferroll was of the Tower, upon whom the bucket had made a great but rather an obscure impression, remarked, that it was improbable water should he stained with blood, unless there was blood in the water; and observed, that Franks had washed his hands in the bucket, and therefore it was plain that his hands had been bloody. "And if you want my opinion," said he, "I say I can't think it's right to murder anybody, especially a lady; nor do I see the justice of letting a murderer go loose on the country to cut all our throats."

        A light curl of contempt passed over Mr. Ferroll's lip. "Nor that of hanging an innocent man," said he, in a low tone; but the wife of Franks heard him, and flinging herself on her knees, blessed him for the word, and whispered to him, "Only save him from being hanged, and I will tell all, Mr. Ferroll."

        "Tell all!" he exclaimed, starting back, and repeating her words aloud for all to hear. "Tell then."

        The room was silent in a moment; only Mr. Bartlett rubbed his hands, and whispered, "I told you so."

        But the woman, when she found what she had done, shrank back, denied she had anything to say, and declared that it was only a way she had; the neighbours knew she was not quite right at all times, and that her poor head was quite wandering ever since she had seen

her dear lady in that dreadful room; and, in fact, when she thus strengthened the picture by putting it into words, she yielded to the impression, and fell into hysterics, which obliged them to carry her away.

        But all this gave an impression unfavourable to the accused man, who stood trembling and pale as death, listening to one proof after another, almost as one might listen at a tragedy, not distinguishing the fiction from the truth. His dislike to his mistress was proved by many witnesses; that he knew she was alone that morning was proved by Mr. Ferroll's conversation with him. He was the only person, as it seemed, who had been in the garden to which her window opened, and he was known to have been there alone; no other door or window was opened in the house; he had some marks on his hands of scratches, which he said first, were given by a cat from whom he had taken its kittens; and then, being asked where the kittens had been put, produced a new story, and said, they were scratches from a bramble he was taking up from the garden.

        All this confirmed suspicion, though Mr. Ferroll remarked that the man (who had been in his service for years) was noted for his confused manner if anything unusual happened, and for the excuses he would make and abandon the next moment.

        Mr. Bartlett fidgetted and whispered to his neighbour, that if any one wished for his opinion, it was, that it little became a husband to make excuses for the man who had murdered his wife.

        Mr. Ferroll heard something of this, and desired that it should be spoken aloud; and when the old magistrate was forced to repeat what he had said, the blood mounted in his face, and more moved than he had yet been, he

said that the man whom he believed innocent, he would protect at any risk, in spite of any imputation, and then turning to Franks, he said, "I swear to you, Franks, you shall not be harmed -- if you are innocent," he added, in a different tone of voice.

        The man looked at him with a hopeful eye, but he drew back from the thanks he began to utter, as if he had done too much, and too publicly, and the magistrates, before whom all this was indeed somewhat irregular, proceeded, on their own belief, to commit him.

        Mr. Ferroll was naturally anxious to get away from the scene of so much misery, but he had resolved to wait till the assizes should be over, and the fate of Franks decided. In the meantime he proceeded with the arrangements consequent on the death of his wife. She had brought him a considerable fortune, which by her settlement had been secured to him for his life, but he declined keeping any part of it. He instructed his lawyer to make it over entirely to her brother, who was her only surviving near relation, and even the ornaments which had belonged to her, he locked up without examination, in the case where they were usually kept, and delivered them the day after the funeral to the same person.

        In all this there was more of sorrow at her fate, than of love for her person, for who parts willingly with every memorial of one they have pleasure in thinking of? But what shocked the feelings of the poor people, and of the common people, Mr. Bartlett at the head of the latter, was the tombstone he caused to be placed over her grave. Any one dead should be called according to them a good wife at least, but a murdered woman ought to be the best of wives; however, that she

was not, nor did Mr. Ferroll's epitaph say she had been. It merely said,

        "Anne, the daughter of Robert Gordon, and wife of Paul Ferroll, of the Tower -- she died, murdered, the 4th day of July, 18--."

        By whom, was not destined to be found out; or at the trial, Franks defended by Mr. Harrowby, a friend of Mr. Ferroll's, was, after the longest and most nicely balanced deliberation, acquitted. Still, people could not forget that he had been suspected. At his earnest request, Mr. Ferroll gave him and his wife the means of emigrating to Canada. Very great scandal was elicited by his protection of this man, but he was a person to whom public opinion was more indifferent than he could find words to express; and immediately after the trial he arranged his affairs for a long absence, and set off a widowed and a comparatively impoverished man, no one knew whither.

CHAPTER II.

        A considerable time had elapsed after the murder of his first wife, when he wrote to say that his house must be got ready for his return, and that he was married. Not a word more did he add, and the simple-minded villagers were put out of heart by such repulsiveness of the sympathies which they would have gone before to offer. However, unassisted by any of the circumstances which usually attend a wedding, they did dimly perceive the propriety of a gala to receive the new lady, and were talking languidly of an arch across the road, with "Welcome," done in dahlias, when they were informed one morning that Mr. Ferroll and his new wife had arrived the evening before.

        The pair walked out that day in the village, and to all the places which an old inhabitant introduces to a new one. It was a pastoral place, containing the Park and house of the Bartlett family, and the Tower; and besides these two great houses, there were the scattered village and the farms belonging either to the Park or the Tower. The former was much the greater estate, but Mr. Ferroll was perhaps the richer man, having fewer claims and more unencumbered means.

        Mr. Bartlett, the old magistrate, whose sagacity had displayed itself on the inquest, had died since that time, and his widow, with a large family, inhabited the great house, and attended as well as she could to the interest of her eldest son's estate. She was an honest, simple-minded woman as ever lived, but she belonged to one of the principal families of the county, and had her own consequent notions of what was to be done, and left undone. She had said, and others had said to her, that it was very odd for Mr. Ferroll to go and marry somebody whom nobody knew in the neighbourhood, and never say a word about it till he was married; nay, as it seemed now, till he had been married some time, for a nurse and a little toddling child arrived with them -- and his marriage must have been so soon after the horrible death of his first wife, poor thing! &c.

        So that Lady Lucy Bartlett did not go directly, no, nor after the first Sunday, when she saw that Mrs. Ferroll was at church, to call at the Tower, as she naturally would have done. Mr. Ferroll observed it, and took his measures accordingly. He knew what conveniences would be gained, and what unpleasantnesses would be avoided by a natural state of things between his wife and Lady Lucy, and gave up an hour to obtaining them. With this view he took his hat before luncheon, and telling his wife Lady Lucy Bartlett was coming to call about three o'clock, went his way to the great house. Lady Lucy Bartlett was a little embarrassed, but he relieved her, by his friendly inquiries into the health of her children, and by giving her some advice concerning one of her son's tenants, who was worrying her and her steward. He then allowed some seconds' pause, and began on his own matters.

        "You've got nobody to ask about my wife, Lady Lucy. Nobody hereabouts knows anything, so I'll tell you; and then there will be no need of picking it up by bits, which would not be true after all. My wife was Miss Shaledon."

        "What, one of the Warwickshire Shaledons?" said Lady Lucy.

        "Yes, that family."

        "That's a very old family," said Lady Lucy.

        "Oh, very; they were given as serfs or slaves by William the Conqueror to his Glovers, the Ganters; but that's so long ago, that their servitude is grown to be quite a credit to them. Well, Mrs. Ferroll is one of the daughters of Johnson Shaledon, the son of John, of Abororchards, who died soon after she was born."

        "I know all about him," said Lady Lucy.

        "I loved her very much before I married my first wife," said Mr. Ferroll: "but we were parted, and I did two things in consequence -- I half broke her heart, and I married my first wife."

        "Aye, indeed, poor thing -- shocking! you must ... ha! indeed ..." murmured Lady Lucy.

        "Yes, very true, shocking indeed! and there it is," said Mr. Ferroll, (imitating her manner, but so that she did not perceive it;) "and then, you know, she died, as you say, poor soul! and I went away. I met with Miss Shaledon -- no, I went to look for her. She was ill; we had found out the inhuman stratagem that had parted us long ago, and we married. She is a woman whom I adore," he said, passionately, and went on directly; "that's her story, and she has not one shilling. Now you know all from the fountain head."

        Lady Lucy did not know what to say; she did not

feel quite sure that knowing all mended the matter entirely; but Mr. Ferroll did not want her comments.

        "Are you going to walk this fine morning?" said he, rising from his chair.

        "Yes," said she; "I'll show you the Green..."

        "Then come and call on Mrs. Ferroll; I'll give you my arm."

        Lady Lucy Bartlett went and got her bonnet, and never said a word to the contrary.

        Here Mr. Ferroll was willing to have stopped, but his neighbour once set going, was sociably inclined. She was charmed by Mrs. Ferroll, who was a person to make an impression on any one; and her grace, her agreeableness, and the pretty pursuits with which she was surrounded, were not lost on Lady Lucy. She felt how invaluable such a neighbour would be, if the neighbour could be led into sociableness; and according to her skill, she dug round and cultivated her. Mr. Ferroll had been a frequent guest at her house in the year before the late disaster; and half afraid, half fond of him, she knew how clever he was, how able to talk to everybody, and how valuable at her table, and in her affairs. So first she sent a present of venison -- for the Park had venison, and the Tower had not; and as soon as her visit had been returned, despatched an invitation to dinner. This was declined very civilly; but Lady Lucy thought the reason assigned, was rather one which had been sought for, than one which really existed. She was afraid that the refusal was in resentment at her own delay in calling. She wished with all her heart that she had been more eager to secure the advantages which had been within, and now were escaped from, her grasp.

        At the dinner, where Mr. and Mrs. Ferroll were not, she talked very much about them, particularly about the last; and gave her cousins and neighbours, Lord and Lady Ewyas, a desire to know her. Next morning accordingly, they called from the Park -- they and their hostess, and the children, and a man or two, all walking through the Park to the Tower. They entered through the garden; and as they came near the open window, they heard her sweet voice singing.

        "How useful for one's dinner-parties in the country," said Lady Ewyas. Nearer, they saw her through the open windows, in a plain dress, made according to the best fashion of the day, her brown hair uncovered, her fair, pale face most lady-like.

        "Oh, a woman to meet anybody," said Lord Ewyas.

        They went in. She was alone, and received them beautifully -- one woman against a host, she was enough for all; yet never too entertaining, never odd, never perplexed. She had drawings for them to see of a place which was mentioned; and the circle being broken, asked them to look at the garden, and give their opinion about an alteration, and found other ways of getting happily through the morning visit.

        Mr. Ferroll came in before it was over; he was as well-mannered as his wife, in a stouter fashion, and had not to draw on his resources so largely, because he already knew all the party, more or less, and had subjects in common. Nothing could go smoother than he the host, and they the guests. But when a week after, before the call had been returned, Lord and Lady Ewyas sent to beg him and his wife to visit them for a few days, another excuse went forth from the Tower, again more civil than well-founded.

        Lord and Lady Ewyas were vexed; for in the country it does not do to lose acquaintance who are better than common; and attributed the refusal to their own haste in dispensing with a return of their call, regretting that the game which was in their own hands they had thrown up by trying to secure it too soon.

        Then what did they do if they would not visit their neighbours? Lived alone, in perfect contentment, and employed themselves at home.

        A great deal of Mr. Ferroll's time was given up to literary employment; his name and fame as an author were some of the best parts of his existence, and made him necessary, as well as acceptable, in certain circles. He had written a few things which gave him fame, and from time to time there issued from the Tower a brilliant article, a few exquisite verses, or a fine fiction, which kept the attention of the reading public upon him. He was at the same time a man of that practical quality of mind which made him the most useful among those who carried on the business of life; and with these gifts, and the enjoyment of a well-ordered competency, he was in as good a position in life as it was possible to be. Lady Lucy soon found it would not do to send him presents with any view to keep up the relative position of the great and lesser house. She could only send him carnal gifts of pheasants and carp; but he, the second week in January, could make her a present of a bunch of roses from his hot-house, and had always the newest book to lend her when he and Mrs. Ferroll had read it. So much he did for her; but he never dined at the Hall, nor encouraged an extreme intimacy; and for his part, it might have gone on so to the end of time, but things happened

at the Hall, which broke through his habit or plan of conduct.

        The heir of Basall was a fine young lad, very much altered for the worse since his father's death; he was so headstrong, that the women were all afraid of him, and they could get no peace except by flattering and courting him. Accordingly, they were under the tyranny of caprices, such as should have been whipped away at school, and the boy himself was running to ruin by his own guidance. His poor mother was his guardian, and felt the helpless responsibility of her situation in the most painful manner. One day she sent in despair to Mr. Ferroll, to beg the favour of him to come to her immediately, and when he complied, he found her in agonies lest he should not arrive before the end of the half hour which had to elapse before her son should return from his walk.

        The case was this: -- Hugh Bartlett had been pleased to declare he should that day ride out upon a horse which was fit for anything rather than to carry a boy; he had declared his mother's objections to be bosh, and having so disposed of them, had ordered the horse.

        Mr. Ferroll laughed when the case was stated to him. "You won't act for yourself, I know," said he, "but in your name I will at once desire that the horse be unprepared -- the child must not break his neck," and he got up to ring the bell.

        "Oh, no," said the mother, "he can't bear that -- if you only would persuade him."

        "Persuade is not the word for a boy," said Mr. Ferroll, ringing, and giving the necessary orders; "you have called me in, and I will act for you -- what re-

proach would you have a right to make me if I were to fail in preventing the ride, and he were to be brought home with broken bones."

        "Oh, me! oh, heaven!" cried the mother; "but you don't know how angry he will be."

        "He angry -- who ought to care for that?"

        "It's very true,". she answered, melting into tears; "but he is so changed since his poor father's death, and I have such trouble with him."

        "You must send him to school," said Mr. Ferroll.

        "I know it would be better," answered the mother, "but his dear father, the last thing almost, said I was never to do that; he took my hand and made me promise I would never send him to school."

        "Oh, that's bosh, as your son says; how could Mr. Bartlett how what would be good for the boy, years to come?"

        Lady Lucy was quite shocked.

        "What! disregard my dear husband's last words?" she cried.

        "Well, but let us see what sort of boy was he at that time."

        "Oh, very different from what he is now, you know; he was very mild, almost timid; his dear father knew how to manage him, and I think he thought, perhaps, he had managed him almost too well, so when he felt was so ill, he said, 'Be kind to him, keep him at home -- promise he shall never go to school.'"

        "But you can't say he is timid now."

        "No."

        "Therefore this promise does not apply."

        "That makes no difference as to the promise having been given."

        "But it does as to keeping it."

        "Oh, Mr. Ferroll, you to say so; such a learned man as you."

        "What has my learning to do with it? but it does not matter reasoning; here is a fine lad ruining, and school is the only thing to make him find his level, to give him his place in the world. That is a positive fact -- let the rest alone, and the only question in my mind is, the school where you will put him."

        Mr. Ferroll kept to this point, passing over the conscientious and abstract part as if granted, and out of the way, and being once engaged in the certainty that it was desirable and useful, he now proceeded to carry it impetuously, treading down all barriers that opposed themselves. Lady Lucy was accustomed to yield obedience; and having nothing to answer, and her tears being disregarded, she came in a wonderfully short time to the point he had determined for her, and authorized him to write to an experienced friend on the subject. She was his only guardian, and all the time she felt internally that the thing would not be done after all; that it would be talked about, and threatened, and produce a good effect, and then, to be sure, if the threat should not produce a good effect, why it might really be done, still; but if she had these fors and againsts in her own mind, she little knew the man in whose hands she had placed herself.

        What a change had taken place in the destinies of young Bartlett, by the time he was pleased to come in again, expecting his horse. Mr. Ferroll undertook to

explain the matter to him, and that he must walk afoot, since his pony did not content him, and that he must go to school, since his mother could not manage him. He took the lad a walk, and like any other boy in the hands of a reasonable and a clever man, he was moulded like wax to the impression Mr. Ferroll chose to give. What sort of life he led his mother and the maids, I will not lift the veil to display; but certain it is, that one month afterwards saw him on his road to a private school of high repute, whence in a year and half he was to be removed to Eton.

        This very important service was not the only one of which Lady Lucy Bartlett stood in need. She was misled by the ignorance, and cheated by the iniquity of the people about her, and she felt herself in a hopeless entanglement, out of which she had no power to lift herself. At last things came to a crisis, and the steward said he had a remedy to propose; he said the bills presented to his lady might be right, and might be wrong, but he could not answer for it if her ladyship continued determined to pay them herself. Things came to the confusion of which she complained, in consequence of her ladyship paying for herself; he, for his part, did all he could to keep them straight, but as long as he had not the power in his own hands, his hands were tied, and while his hands were tied, it was evident he could do nothing.

        "Well, what was the remedy?" poor Lady Lucy asked.

        "Why, it was this -- let him have the power to draw her cheques in his own name, and then being always able to pay these bills alone, he should speedily bring her affairs into order. Her ladyship, he was sure,

could be certain that a servant employed by her honoured husband, would be as careful of her money as if it were his own," &c.

        Lady Lucy did as he wished. The steward loved power and credit, but did not mean to cheat her; nevertheless, he got into debt, and was tempted to set himself right by transferring a small sum from her account to his own, fully intending to repay it. That, however, soon became impossible, and it was at the moment that he found it impossible even to repay the small sum, that he began to help himself freely to large ones. When he was deeply her debtor, he suddenly doubled his debt in order to speculate on hops, which was to set all right; but the crop giving signs of failure, he gathered his money together, and went off to the United States, leaving a letter behind, in which he said he was sorry for the whole thing. Then it was Lady Lucy Bartlett appealed to Mr. Ferroll; and embarrassed, confused, and ignorant of business as she was, never did woman more need assistance. He gave it freely. Her world was out of joint, and he had to devote himself to her to set it right. Temporary retrenchment, a thorough reform of all her domestic staff; to cut off the cocks and hens from their barley, which came to a hundred a year; the neighbourhood to restrict of their ale, which they came from miles round to drink at Basall; to send away the gardener, who charged fifty pounds for seeds to crop the kitchen garden, yet begged the cook to be careful of parsley; these, and other reforms of greater and less extent, were the good work of Mr. Ferroll, in favour of his neighbour and her son. She felt saved, and as the crowning favour, besought him to share with her the office of guardian.

        Mr. Ferroll was silent for a minute considering the matter. Then, although he must have perceived how much for the advantage of the boy it would be, he decidedly refused.

CHAPTER III.

        Lady Lucy, who had all the instincts of a good woman, and only one way of exercising them, could not believe Janet was happy; so little fondled, so little made

of, as she was. Her own children were all important in her house, and when she knew Mr. and Mrs. Ferroll were out together in summer weather, and would not be at home till after Janet's bed-time, she would often walk to the Tower, and lead the little girl by the hand up to her own sociable and noisy garden or drawing-room. An extreme fondness naturally grew up between the little Ferroll and the rather larger Bartletts. Her father saw it with great indifference, not considering himself under obligations for services which he did not want. Only on one point did he suddenly and positively interfere -- and that was when the young heir of the Hall, sharing in the fondness of his mother and sister for the merry and most good-natured Janet, declared her, according to the fashion of children, his wife. Mr. Ferroll's brow clouded far more than the occasion required: his severe countenance put an end to all the mirth of the moment, as a shadow passing over young chickens is said to inspire them with instinctive trembling, as if hawks were between them and the sun; and taking occasion to call Janet's frightened governess into the room, he desired such vulgar jests might never again be indulged in, upon the penalty of an abrupt separation from her pupil. Little Janet, therefore, was no longer the wife of Hugh Bartlett, and the governesses and nurses felt they had done very wrong in suggesting the union. Except upon this subject, he was kind and neighbourly to the Bartlett family; the helplessness and goodness of the widow laid hold on him, as a climbing plant upon the strong oak; and he found himself her support and necessary prop, before he was aware how far he was engaged.

        Lord Ewyas was struck by the energy which Mr.

FerroIl had displayed in her affairs -- he himself was in need of aid, though of a different kind. He was Lord-Lieutenant of the County, and he found himself very ill-supported by the magistrates, who were an ordinary set of men, and who at this moment were wanted in circumstances somewhat out of the common order. The poor population had become exceedingly riotous, in consequence of reduced wages, and they had formed such strong combinations, and were guided by such efficient men, that a season of considerable danger seemed impending.

        Threatening letters had been received by many persons in the county, and in several instances these threats had been put in execution by the destruction of property, barns and ricks, for instance, which had been set on fire. The last person to be thus persecuted should have been the quiet and alms-giving Lady Lucy Bartlett; but so it was, that a strange-looking epistle was one morning brought to her by her butler, a servant who had long lived in the family, and who lingered in the room evidently curious about the contents. She opened it, and found these ominous words -- "In a day you don't look for it, fire will consume you." A shriek on her part, which was echoed by an exclamation on his, followed; and she failed to remark, in her terror, that the butler's alarm seemed to precede his knowledge of the fact, for he was wringing his hands and crying out they were all lost, before he had read the letter which contained the threat.

        Mr. Ferroll was consulted, of course; he recommended caution, but supposed it was the work of some one intending to extort money, and would be followed by an appeal for relief. However, such was not the

case; from week to week the ill-shaped letter continued to be delivered, and the words were still the same words -- "In a day you don't look for it, fire will consume you." These were brought up by her trembling butler, Didley, with a face as white as a sheet, and still he lingered to hear the contents, which at last produced such an effect upon his nerves that he became unable to continue his services, and was reduced to the confinement of the lower regions of the house, whence the answer to his mistress's inquiries came every day "Very poorly indeed, my lady."

        Under these public and private circumstances, a clear-headed and strong-willed man like Mr. Ferroll, was invaluable to all parties concerned in them; and Lord Ewyas, as well as his cousin, was very anxious personally to enlist his service.

        "He's a magistrate, is not he, your Mr. Ferroll?" said he to Lady Lucy.

        "Yes, a very useful one; he is constantly at the petty sessions, and the magistrates' meetings at Churchargent, and if by any chance he does not go, they stop all the business if they can."

        "He gets an influence wherever he goes," said Lord Ewyas; "he is the very man I want to be able to send to upon occasion. I wish the fellow was not so perverse. What keeps him at home, do you think?"

        "I don't know," said Lady Lucy; "unless, perhaps, it was that shocking thing about his first wife."

        "Yet he's not a man to suffer from nerves and fine feelings -- and the thing's so long past, now."

        "But then they never found out who did it," said Lady Lucy.

        "Ah, you think that would have eased his mind, do you. They suspected somebody, did not they?"

        "Yes; though I don't think it would have eased his mind, for he got him off you know; paid counsel for his own wife's murderer. When one thinks of it, it's most extraordinary -- it's carrying good nature quite too far."

        "Indeed it is," said Lord Ewyas; "only I suppose Mr. Ferroll thought the man innocent."

        "Oh dear no, he certainly did it -- I saw him myself going about quite free after the trial -- he making a hedge when I saw him."

        "But I suppose he was not the murderer," said Lord Ewyas. "If not it would have been hard to hang him."

        "But you know he certainly was; he was tried you know."

        "And acquitted."

        "Oh, that does not make any difference," said Lady Lucy.

        "No, no, to be sure," answered Lord Ewyas, laughing; "but, however, Mr. Ferroll -- let us talk of him -- can you bring us together, do you think?"

        "No, I don't think I can. Whenever I have anyone here, he keeps away; he only comes if I am alone -- even Mr. Ewbury, who is so clever, he would not meet."

        "He would not come to us, when I asked him," said Lord Ewyas; "but I want him, and will get at him. You shall invite him, as if you were alone, and I will be with you -- I am sure you will be so kind?"

        "Oh, certainly, only I'm afraid he will be angry -- besides poor Didley can't wait, he's so nervous about

those terrible letters, that sometimes in a morning he can scarcely stand."

        "But you don't mean that your Mr. Ferroll is a man to care whether a butler waits or not."

        "Oh dear no, it's the very last thing he would observe or care about. But it is meeting anyone, even you, that I'm afraid of."

        "Even me! but nonsense, you must do it, will you, coz, for me?"

        Lady Lucy hesitated; her cousin, however, persuaded her, and she despatched a letter of request to see Mr. and Mrs. Ferroll, as she did occasionally when needing their assistance. The pretence she took was the incendiary letter, and they complied with the summons, for Mr. Ferroll fancied he had traced them to their source, and was curious to ascertain it positively; for he thought he perceived more danger in them than Lady Lucy really believed, though less than she believed herself to believe.

        Lady Lucy came forward in some trepidation to receive her neighbours when they were announced. "How d'ye do -- it's so kind of you -- are you quite well, Mrs. Ferroll? I hope you won't object to not finding me ...... that is to say, to being with ...... the thing is, Lord Ewyas came only half an hour ago, and I could not, could I?"

        "Just in time to dress?" said Mr. Ferroll. "I was not aware I was to meet Lord Ewyas, but you were aware, my dear lady, that he was to meet me; and I am happy to be made by you the acquaintance of your friends." And so saying, he bowed frankly to Lord Ewyas, and accepted the intercourse thus pressed upon him.

        "We were half afraid," said Lord Ewyas, addressing himself to Mrs. Ferroll, when after dinner conversation grew unrestrained, "that you would be angry with my cousin and me for obliging you to let some one beside herself share the advantage of her neighbourhood to you."

        "Nay," answered Mrs. Ferroll, "don't have so bad an opinion of us as that. It is only too flattering that you should think it worth while to take the least pains to meet us."

        "Any pains would be overpaid, if I could only, hear again the song which I heard some years ago -- yes, really years. It was too good to be kept for one fortunate pair of ears."

        "But, literally speaking, these ears of mine are not so fortunate," said Mr. Ferroll; "a brother author sometimes comes to consult, and a printer's devil very often haunts us, and by one means or other, I am very busy, my lord."

        "Oh, but," interposed Lady Lucy, "you have only one man or so to see you. One Mr. M-- was with you last week," she said, naming without knowing it, one of the most celebrated talkers of the day.

        "Humph!" said Lord Ewyas, "you had him, and all to yourselves?"

        "Yes, we had -- he and I are old friends, and now fellow workers."

        "What a charity it would be to invite your neighbours, who never hear or see such a big-wig."

        "To meet one Mr. M--?" said Mr. Ferroll, smiling.

        Lord Ewyas smiled too for half a moment. "True," he said.

        "What's true?" asked Lady Lucy.

        "Lady Lucy," said Mr. Ferroll, "is your butler better yet? I fear you will never have his services again."

        "Oh, I can't think anything so shocking; but it's all the fault of the radicals. These fires have put him half out of his wits. They tell me he goes out two or three times in the night to see that the well has water in it, and that he calls the housekeeper up more nights than not, fancying he smells fire."

        "He should consider," said Lord Ewyas, "that he is but a lodger; what is it to him if the house be burned?"

        "Nay," cried Lady Lucy, "that's a remark I don't understand. Are not lodgers burned as well as the owners?"

        "They say not," said her cousin; "but if he is of a different opinion, it's no wonder the letters you get frighten him."

        "Oh, he's horribly frightened; the first time he brought me one, I knew something was the matter, by the shaking of the door in his hand."

        "How did he know the contents?" asked Mr. Ferroll.

        "By the shape, I suppose, and the look, and the writing," said Lady Lucy.

        "Do you never have oddly shaped letters except from the incendiary?" asked Mr. Ferroll.

        "Yes, the butcher, and begging letters, to be sure."

        "But those never alarmed him?"

        "I never remarked; but I wish you would not frighten me with those kind of questions that I don't know the meaning of," said the widow.

        Mr. Ferroll laughed gaily; he caught his wife's eye, who said immediately,

"I am sure Ferroll thinks some evil is going to happen. Danger puts him in high spirits always." He, perhaps, would have parried the charge, had not Lady Lucy said, "It frightened her to see people so fearless," and signed to her guests to move to the drawing-room.

        "I think," said Mr. Ferroll, when he had shut the door, "that the butler himself writes the letters."

        "Why so?" said Lord Ewyas, startled.

        "It is borne in upon me," answered Mr. Ferroll, smiling. "More little circumstances than I can remember or detail, bring me to that conclusion."

        "And do you think that he means any harm by it?"

        "That I don't know; he either acts the alarm which he shows, in order to cover his design, or else he is going mad, and is haunted by the idea of mischief, and impelled to do it."

        "He looks ill," said Lord Ewyas.

        "Very; and much worse this evening than I have seen him at all. I am sure he must be watched tonight."

        Lord Ewyas grew uneasy, but Mr. Ferroll turned the conversation, and exerted his great social powers to engage his companion's interest and attention. They both became eager in discourse, and Lord Ewyas was impatient, when the door was opened, and Didley, the butler, entered the room without a summons, and advanced towards the table, as if expecting to be spoken to. "Did you ring, my lord?" he asked.

        "No, no, I did not ring," he said; "I thought the fellow was sick, and could disturb nobody," and then he continued the argument he was maintaining against Mr. Ferroll; but they had not long been engaged in

the animated and interesting controversy, before Didley again interrupted them, and making some trifling alteration in the table, evidently waited for an opportunity of speaking.

        "What is it you want?" said Lord Ewyas, impatiently.

        "Why, my lord, if you'll give me leave to speak, I have a matter I very much wish advice upon."

        "Can't you wait till to-morrow morning?"

        "Really, my lord, I can't very well. It's about these letters to my lady, these threatening letters -- so I hear they are at least."

        "Which you write yourself," said Mr. Ferroll.

        "Which I write!" said the butler, turning upon him eyes of the deepest perplexity. "Do I write them, do you think, sir?"

        "I know you do."

        "Who told you?" said Didley.

        "Oh, one told me who cannot be mistaken."

        "And did he tell you really that it was I?"

        "Yes, positively."

        "Well, that is what I never have been sure of myself, for when I see them, and take them up to my lady, they frighten me in a strange way for a man's own writing to do."

        "Why do you write then?" asked Lord Ewyas.

        "Why, my lord, it's partly all about that matter that I came to talk with you gentlemen. Do you know, that for months past there have been people coming into my room without any leave of mine. They used to be quiet enough, but of late they have grown troublesome."

        "Who are they?" said Lord Ewyas.

        "Why, there comes a good many. I know, and some

I don't know; my late master, my lady's husband, is foremost. He will come and sit down close by me, and tell me to write to my lady, always these same words -- 'In a day you don't look for it, fire will consume you.' I have conjured him a hundred times to tell me if he comes from heaven or from hell, but he always shakes his head."

        "That might give rise to unpleasant conjectures," said Mr. Ferroll. "Now you know who told me."

        "Aye, sir, I thought so; though I wonder he came to you. I never saw him, nor any of them, when other living people were in the room, before to-day. Was it to-day, sir?"

        Mr. Ferroll shook his head gravely; and, evading the question, inquired, "At what time was he with you?"

        "It was when John, and Henry, and I were laying the cloth for dinner."

        "Did they see him?"

        "No; I asked them, and they said 'No.'"

        "Nor hear him?"

        "No; he would not speak, only beckoned me with him."

        "But then he spoke?"

        "Yes, yes; and I think I must do it."

        "Well, I'm not clear that it is right."

        "That's what I sometimes think myself; and I've kneeled by my bedside hours and hours, asking God, and praying till I have not known my head from my heels. But it's all dark there."

        "Poor fellow!" said Lord Ewyas.

        "Yet it's a great thing, my lord, to have the company of spirits; and the last hour or two, I must say,

I've been easier than for a long time, and that I think is a sign that I've got leave to do it."

        "It may be so; but you came like a wise man to consult us on the subject," said Mr. Ferroll. "From what he said to me, I think you're mistaken. Did he say precisely these same old words?"

        "No, no; worse words -- worse."

        "Aye, indeed, I thought so. Sometimes I've known those spirits make very strange blunders; and with respect to what your old master orders, I advise ......"

        "I can't take it, if you advise against doing it," interrupted Didley.

        "Why not?"

        "Why, partly because it's already done."

        "What's done?" cried Lord Ewyas.

        "The house is on fire," said Didley.

        "Good heavens!" cried Lord Ewyas, starting up.

        But Didley, springing to the door before him, fastened it, and set his back against it. "Nobody shall hinder my work," he said. "I knew you would talk to me while my fires were burning; and if he had not gone and betrayed me to one of you ......"

        But before he could finish, Mr. Ferroll sprang upon him, and tried to force him from the door; but Didley was armed, and drew out suddenly a large knife, the sheath of which was just inside his coat. Mr. Ferroll just avoided a fatal thrust; and seizing his arm, said, "Is this the way you treat your master's friend?"

        "Nobody's his friend that hinders me doing his commands," said the madman, his malady breaking out at this sudden excitement, and struggling with the violent strength of madness, to regain command of the weapon.

        There was now a contest, which was plainly much

to the disadvantage of Mr. Ferroll, his antagonist being armed, and his mind beyond all the usual motive of control. It was not only strength that was needed, but there was the necessity to avoid even a faint stroke of the sharp gleaming knife; Mr. Ferroll saw the disadvantage.

        "Come," said he, "you're in the right. You must do as you will; loose me," and all the while half kept a powerful grasp of the maniac, "and I won't hinder you."

        "Swear that," cried Didley.

        "I swear."

        "Again -- again."

        "Well, well, I swear; but it's all right, you see. Don't you smell the smoke yourself -- you've done it."

        In fact, the burning smell became perceptible.

        "Ha! you say true, sir," said Didley, and turned his pale face towards the quarter whence it came, his iron grasp still held Mr. Ferroll; but Lord Ewyas perceived only the apparent relaxation in his purpose, and thinking the danger from him passed, rushed towards the door.

        "You've sworn falsely," cried Didley, brandishing his knife, and straining again his vigorous hold; "my master shall be obeyed;" and again he sought to make a plunge.

        "Good heavens! there he is," said Mr. Ferroll, suddenly relaxing all his resistance, and fixing his eyes on the door.

        "Where?" cried Didley, thrown off his guard for a moment. That moment was enough. Mr. Ferroll closed upon him, and threw him down; Lord Ewyas sprang to help. They snatched away the knife, and now, notwithstanding his struggles, he was soon overpowered.

        In another minute two of the servants who had heard the noise came rushing to their assistance. "So far, so good," cried Mr. Ferroll. "Come, my lord, there's the second act yet;" and they both ran to find the sources of the fire, whose smoke began to roll through the house.

        "Go to the drawing-room, pray, my dear lord," said Ferroll. "Get Lady Lucy and the children out into the garden. There is no danger, I think, but they will shriek so hideously. Will you whisper Mrs. Ferroll to come to me for a moment? Thank you."

        And without waiting for her, but sure that she find him, he gave directions what to do, and continued his search for any fresh spots in which the madman might have kindled the flame.

        "Elinor," he said, "you see I'm quite safe, but I've a story to tell you. Not now, however, most certainly; about, dear Elinor, with your keen womanly intelligence, for that poor fool Didley, who I told you was ill, has been setting the house on fire. We have put out one fire already, but there may be many more. As for himself, he's out of the way; he's a perfect maniac, and they've secured him. Never mind that now; don't think of that just now, only keep close to me, and tell me if you perceive fire."

        Luckily the discovery had followed so closely on the act, that although fired in several places, the house had not become dangerously inflamed; and under calm and prompt treatment, the peril subsided before long; and with the sacrifice of some silk curtains, and the destruction of some plaster ceilings, through which the water poured, safety was restored, so far as could be ascertained; but men were set to watch all night, lest any

hidden danger should yet remain. The party got together again, when all was done that was possible, in the drawing-room, and then Mr. Ferroll talked seriously with his hostess, and gaily with his wife, of what had passed. His companion in peril shuddered still at the remembrance of their danger. He was full of natural pity for the maniac, whose ravings penetrated occasionally to the drawing-room from the room where he was confined and guarded. Mr. Ferroll tried his very best to look grave also, and to compose his sensations to a due harmony with the nerves of Lady Lucy, and the overpowered state of mind of Lord Ewyas; but he was like a man slightly intoxicated, who even while acting rationally, does so with a consciousness to himself, and evidence to others that he is doing it by an effort of self-command. The excitement had roused up every power of life; and his wit, his knowledge, his force of character, were all in activity. He enjoyed life, and no nervousness about himself, or sensibility to the sufferings of another, disturbed him.

        "I should so much like to walk home, instead of the carriage," he said at last to his wife. "You don't mind it, do you?"

        "Oh, I should enjoy it also very much," she answered, quite ready to go.

        "What, after a shock like that?" cried their hostess; "all in the dark too!"

        "Can my carriage be of any use?" said Lord Ewyas.

        Mrs. Ferroll civilly declined; her husband said something like pshaw! but it would have passed had not Lady Lucy whispered "Hush," which was quite too late, as the thing was not going to be said again; "they have plenty of horses and carriages."

        Lord Ewyas let it pass, and shaking hands with both, begged them to continue the acquaintance thus recommenced, and said to Mr. Ferroll, "We have been in danger of death together -- an irresistible reason for trying to enjoy life in one another's company."

        Mr. Ferroll smiled, and said, "The campaign had been a brilliant one;" and so they parted, without any promises made on the Ferroll side to cultivate the acquaintance; and Lady Lucy, as soon as they were gone, said, "He won't come and see you now; you have offended him about the carriage."

        But her cousin answered, "Pooh, pooh! he has too much sense; he's too well bred for that."

CHAPTER IV.

        Under these circumstances Mr. Ferroll was willing to do everything that was wanted, and what other people were afraid to do. But on the first intimation of danger, Lady Lucy went to him, as on all other occasions of distress, and was overcome at hearing that he did not intend to isolate house and family, as she herself was taking measures to do.

        "I dare say you are very right, Lady Lucy," he said; "but I can't be right in the same way. I am wanted; and to tell the truth, I should have no pleasure in keeping safe at home."

        "But it is not only for pleasure I do this," answered Lady Lucy. "You know it has killed a great many people, even of one's own acquaintance. Poor Mr. Waylett even died -- a man I have known all my life -- how very shocking!"

        "Certainly you have known me a long time, and it might kill me," said Mr. Ferroll, reflectingly.

        "Did you think of that before?" asked Lady Lucy.

        "Well, I don't know if I did."

        "And Mrs. Ferroll and little Janet?" said the lady, pursuing her discoveries.

        "Yes, all run their chance indeed, as you say. As for Janet, her mother did talk of sending her somewhere or other."

        "Oh, send her to me; I shall keep the park shut up, and nobody shall get in or out; only you must all three come, you must indeed; and come at once, to-morrow." Mr. Ferroll shook his head. "Then at least Mrs. Ferroll," said the good-hearted lady.

        "Oh no. What, without me!"

        "Why, you can't be so selfish as to wish to put her in danger, in order to keep you company?"

        "Indeed I am, though; there would be no enjoyment of the thing without her."

        "What thing? What are you talking about?"

        "Oh, why -- she and I must stay together; but it really is very good-natured of you, Lady Lucy, to offer to receive the little girl -- she'll be so safe and so near, and off our hands. Upon my word, you lay me under great obligation."

        "I only repay one out of ten thousand you have heaped on me," said Lady Lucy; "so you'll let her come?"

        And thus it was settled. Mr. Ferroll announced it at home as a most convenient arrangement, and was surprised at himself for not having thought of it as a painful one, when he saw his wife's eyes fill with tears as she went with Janet to the carriage, which was to take her away.

        "Good bye, Janet," he said, following hastily, and stopping her to kiss her; and then as the carriage drove away, he took his wife's arm in his, and walked out with her into the garden. "It is like the first days of our marriage," he said, "to be so completely alone."

        Here the Author gives extracts from the Journal kept in common by Mr. Ferroll and Elinor: --

        "The twelfth day of my superintendence. Cholera goes on increasing. I was in the town early this morning, and found the nurses frightened away from the close alleys. I went over every house to see what could be done. Money in such moderate doses as counties and committees can give, would not tempt them yet to brave the infection, though in a few weeks one shall get hired services as cheap as blackberries; but mothers nurse their children, servants their masters. There seems an instinct

in common between mothers and servants. They can't help being faithful. Ally Bean, No. 3, close alleys, was without shoes; she had sold them to buy what she called salamanca, which a neighbour said would cure her child. In the state it is in, no doubt salammoniac will kill it, but I did not tell her so. I said she had done very wisely, for the evil was beyond remedy, and she will think she should have saved it if anything could.

        "Old Miss Felton, 5, Cheap Street, daughter of the Bishop Felton whom my grandfather bullied, is on the highway to death. She looks like a squeezed orange. She is the first in her street, and the neighbours have slunk away. The old water-carrier and his old donkey won't leave water at her door. There is a gray-haired man, her father's footman, living a mile out of the town, and I actually found him in her miserable room, making gruel for her over the fire. Neither of them seemed to think it anything out of the way that he should give his help thus gratuitously, only she lamented he was not a woman, and he seemed much vexed at himself for the fault. She will die.

        "Family of Jones, at 42, first turn in the close alleys. Three of them ill; one just dead as I came in; nobody seemed to mind the dead boy -- too miserable. The father who was nearly gone, fancied he should recover --he alone spoke of the dead. 'He'll be in heaven soon,' the father said, looking at him. -- 'When?' I asked.- The father seemed puzzled. 'As soon as he's buried, sir, I suppose.'-- 'And the parish must bury him,' said the mother. They had in the house one dead rabbit, poached or stolen: no water, no plate, no salt, no fire. I gave money to a naked boy in the street to act as their page, and as he seemed not to know

what cholera meant, I suppose he will. I must see them to-morrow.

        "All day among the lanes and alleys -- all day among the frightened and dying; the starving, fevered, tortured. It is a curious scene -- a tragedy being acted all day long; and human nature naked and sincere as in the time of great passions. I, the well and strong man, have my stall at this opera, and see it all at my ease -- the more at my ease because I have something to do in it. At seven o'clock I got away; mounted my horse, and galloped home. What pleasure there is in galloping home. The object is before one, at which to arrive quickly; the still air becomes a wind, marking the swiftness of one's pace -- the fleet horse is his own master, yet my slave; the bodily employment leaves care, thought, and time behind; one feels the pleasure of danger, because there might be danger, and there is none. And I, when I get home, see the being than whom nobody in the world loves another as I love her. And after all that dirt, misery, and ugliness, I find her in her pure white muslin, the sleeves hanging about her fair arms, with gold chains under the muslin, her delicate hair so delicately dressed, her little feet in their silk shoes; her pure pale complexion, and the indescribable odour of beauty breathing in the room. She kissed me twenty times to-day, as if to make sure that if I had caught the cholera, she must catch it too. And if I had, I should like to give it her, and die; but I am well. I enjoy life -- we both enjoy it. We dined, and sat down in the library for the blessed evening; and here I am finishing my journal, and then I will listen to her divine voice singing; and when we have had enough of that, read our book for an hour, and go to bed.

        "Thirteenth day. I took a circuit of twenty miles before going to Wallcester. Cholera has inoculated the country, and the spots spread. I met High, the Ouston apothecary, as I rode along. He looked very blank indeed. 'It's getting very serious, sir,' he said; 'two medical men have died.' -- 'But none of the visiting committee, have they?' I asked. -- 'Not yet, sir,' he answered, and went on in a very bad temper. Men don't seem so much to mind death as the pain of dying. Aymos, the old man of ninety, at Front Lane, who used to say he was afraid God Almighty had forgotten him, has left his cottage by help of a neighbour's cart, and gone to Wisley, because cholera broke out at a house a quarter of a mile off. As I passed through Wisley I called on him. 'They tell me, sir,' he said, 'that William died three hours after he was taken ill. It's awful sudden.' -- 'But you can't die suddenly, my good old Aymos,' I said; 'how many years have you been getting worse I wonder?' -- 'Aye, aye, sir, but they die all before they are aware, and folks are afraid to bury them.'

        "I saw a case which would have frightened him. A young man, I don't know who he was, was sitting on some steps in King Street; he had that paleness in his face which looks like something that is not a man -- a ghost, as people used to call it. I bade a man stay near him, and ran to the hospital for a stretcher. On this we laid him, helpless as a man of rag, and carried him to the cholera ward. Here, as we could not let him die like a more happy dog, the doctors began to torment him, and by wasting a good deal of flannel and brandy, succeeded in making him conscious of his agony. And I don't suppose the rack was ever worse. Those artifi-

cial spasms of the rack which jerk the joints in and out of their places, were here natural. There was one Anne, whom he constantly apostrophized; and he seemed to shrink from and put back imaginary kisses which Anne was giving him. No Anne was there -- no human being who thought of him otherwise than as a cholera patient; yet the poor lad's distress arose from overkindness, and the danger to the life of this shadowy Anne. I said to him at last, 'she won't catch it,' and he unglazed his eyes to hear me; but pain was too strong for him, and I having no more time for this one among the hundreds, left him, and went my way. I believe he is in too much pain to die yet; for when the end is coming, these poor souls are quite at ease.

        "I ran from lane to lane, for the work to do was enough for twenty men, and most of the committee were frightened, and passed a vote that everything would be best done by me. Amusement at their simple artifice, which deceived them, and made them quite happy, and the excitement of rushing about with a human spectacle everywhere, so kindled my spirits, that I stopped at the end of a by-way, and indulged in one quiet laugh. A window opposite was open, admitting the sound I fear, for a head came out -- a pale head, with a black coat close up to the face, and a narrow white collar over it; a thin, white, large hand was laid on the window sill. 'Who laughs?' said the voice of the head. -- I was rather ashamed; but I answered boldly, 'Mr. Ferroll.' -- 'Sinner,' said the pale head, making the sign of the cross over me; 'death will take you with the fool's scoff in your mouth.' I knew him then. It was the Roman Catholic priest from Allerby, and I was grieved to have shocked his sincere prejudices. I said, 'Let me come in,

brother, and you will teach me better.' He answered, 'No; the living scoffer may not interrupt the last moments of the repentant dying.' -- 'But,' I said, 'will you reject me -- will you fail to profit by your opportunity of converting the sinner?' -- 'The door is open,' said the priest, drawing in his head. He was easily gulled by my flattering words, so I pushed at it, and ran up stairs, resolved to see all that men were doing in this trying hour. He affected not to pay the least attention to my entrance, or rather he acted a part without confessing to himself that he was acting. His patient was dying -- the most absorbing and interesting spectacle that we can see. The priest was engaged in the act, which to a man of his faith is the most important in the world -- the act by which the soul is saved, and without which it is not saved. I was deeply interested in watching both -- the poor mortal insensible, but labouring still with his heaving chest -- the living man touching him with the mystical oil, which in his faithful persuasion was a communion with supreme spirits, a fiat made out by his own hand, that this dead man was to live with higher beings. Still even in those moments he was not proof against the pleasure of making or feeling himself valued by a man of better rank and education than his ordinary subjects. I could see he gloried in being a god before me; in having the command even of this obscure tragic garret -- his gestures as much as said, 'See, I have no regard to you. Observe; I go on as if you were not here. I do not hasten or retard my speech for you. You must be quiet, and note in silence, and waiting upon me, all I do.' And so I did; touched more than he, by the ceremony which was compara-

tively new to me, but a matter of every-day occurrence to him.

        "When it was over, he turned to me, and said a few words in dog-Latin, the meaning of which I did not catch -- and then tried to pass. 'Are you going to more patients?' I said. 'You look very ill, brother; you should take rest yourself.' -- 'That's the advice,' he answered, 'which one of your archbishops gave to his own clergy; he said they had better not put themselves into danger by confessing their flocks, for the doctor, not the priest, was wanted.' -- 'According to his belief that's true," said I. -- 'Fatal belief, which sets the soul below the body,' he answered. 'Think, sir, which religion does that prove to be true?' -- 'Or does it prove,' I asked, very modestly, 'that he thinks the soul is not put into danger by omitting to confess?' -- 'But we know it is,' said the priest. I looked very much struck by this argument, and then I offered him some money for the use of the bodies of his people, or if he would keep it to pay himself for saying masses, he is very welcome. When we got to the subject of money he lost his dignity; and thanked me with the scrape of his foot, so unlike the character we had relatively borne to each other during the above scene, that I thought the tragedy wanted dignity at its close.

        "When I came home this evening, Elinor looked pale. I thought instantly, 'Am I ill too?' -- dying together, and now, would be such a pleasure; we are so happy, and at this moment so useful; and the inanimate body laid in its last rest, always looks to me an enviable thing, free as it is from every storm that can blow.

        "Fifteenth day. -- When I got to -- to-day, I found a messenger waiting to call me, before I went anywhere else, to the committee. I found them round the table, taken up with a new man who had been brought over by Solly, who had an infallible remedy for the cholera. If the district was given entirely into his management, he undertook to cure them all. He had already done so in the district round Cape Matapan. Solly was wholly on the side of humanity he said, and of curing everybody. He said he longed for cholera in his own person, that he might show his reliance on his friend's remedy. I begged to hear what was the treatment. The empiric would not tell exactly, but said it was a particular application of cold water. Cholera he informed us was identical with hemorrhage; and then went off at length to show the absurdity of treating hemorrhage with stimulants. I gave a few reasons for doubting the first premise, but was not much listened to. Some of the committee thought it wrong in a body intrusted with the health of the district, to let the people die, when a remedy was at hand; and some said they had had bleeding at the nose, and had always used cold water successfully. I went to talk privately to the few rational, and found a party who could use their common sense, and having agreed to stand by each other, I got up and made my speech. I told them time was short; the East Indies was the native place of cholera, certain remedies were the authenticated remedies there; and that I, and those about me, should resign our superintendence if any other treatment were adopted. Solly said he would resign if another treatment were not adopted; but they did not believe him; and after a little

blustering he gave in, and all things resumed their old course."

        Journal continued by Mrs. Ferroll. -- "Paul went away this morning at seven o'clock. We were so late last night singing, and then falling into talk, and talking till near two o'clock, that neither of us had a mind to get up. To be at the end of time would be a great pleasure, so that one might go on doing pleasant things as long as one liked, and find when done it was no later o'clock than at the beginning. I do not love growing older. We are young now; but there are not a great many years to pass before we shall be at the end of our youth, and I begin not to wish that a future day was come, whatever pleasure it is to bring. It is only when one is almost a child, that life seems long enough to wish one could skip over one of its weeks or months, in order to reach a given day. But then to be sure, in extreme youth one is not happy as one is (or can be) at our age. This time, which is dismal as far as the neighbourhood is concerned, is very, very happy to us. Paul enjoys life intensely; and when he comes home so do I. What a delightful companion he is -- everything he has seen and done is reproduced for me, so that I and he become one as to the events and feelings of the day he has passed. All I have done, and am doing, is equally interesting to him. What I write, and what I read, what I sing, and whom I see; what I think, will all come before us two again this happy evening. It is like passing a hot summer noon in the shade on the Loire, as we did when we were first married -- life flowing over with abundance, but as still as it was bright.

        "I have been looking out the passages about great national plagues and sicknesses. The cholera is brooding in his head into an article, and those passages will contribute to it. Now I will read till I hear his step in the hall, then the thing longed for will be come. I shall want and wish nothing more; but whether silent or talking, reading, eating, sleeping, shall be happy from then till to-morrow morning."

        Mr. Ferroll continues. -- "I came home later than usual. Elinor had to pay for expecting me so confidently by two hours of doubt. 'Has anything happened; what can have happened; what can keep him so late?' I meantime, happy and easy, knew that nothing was the matter, that waiting for the doctor kept me; and while my pretty Elinor, my delicate, my fair, my dear, dear wife, was in the fever of vain fears, I was trotting home at the full pace of my horse, whistling and gazing from side to side on the eastern shadow and the western glow. But then came that clump, clump that she loves so well to hear in the hall, and that self-reproach it is so easy to make, when suspense is ended -- 'How foolish I was to fancy any harm.' After pain, to be at the end of pain, to be enjoying the hours instead of suffering the hours -- that is the bliss of human nature, which the mind finds it hard to believe.

        "Thus it is with me -- me, who have suffered in this very house pain so inconceivable! I know well that I have really lived here, in this house, with that woman; fancied myself tied to her for my life; known what you, Elinor, were going through, and how I had had my fortune in my hand, and at the voice of a very devil thrown it away -- all that is as true and real in my imagination as it once was in fact; and often it comes in

the place of the blessed present time, making the exquisite now give way to the hated past. In my dreams I go back again into that horrible past; I become what I was, though the last waking thought has been the blessed thing I am. With you beside me, I dream you are not my wife; I dream you are divided from me for ever; the habitual misery of those two years resumes its presence in sleep. It never yet has come into my dreams how death delivered me from that woman, though it was a strange and tragical way that he took. Dame Partlett asked me one day (to ease her own doubts on the subject, I suppose), 'Ar'nt you very sorry for her?' ...... I sorry? No, I was very, VERY, VERY glad! ......But I told her I was sorry ....... I dreamed nothing bad last night; I dreamed nothing at all, I think. Malthus speaks prettily of married life -- 'So much innocence, and so much happiness,' he says. That sentence worked in my head as I rode away from home, and seemed to keep a sort of chime to every variety of pace of my horse. Certainly the cholera increases; the more we do, the fiercer it rises. But the people who suffer most from it, being the inhabitants of miserable alleys, or of squalid huts, die at least better off through our attentions than ever they lived. When it attacks those who are a little more at ease in their circumstances, it is borne least patiently.

        "I went on the accustomed round, and found all the houses I visited the first week had had, or had now got, a death in them. I came into James Bean's house just as the thread of his child's life was spun out. It is charming to see how poetical human nature is in its extremities. The expressions sometimes have a touch of ludicrousness; but the sentiment is that which a poet

could best make use of. This girl of fourteen has always been sickly. Her mother weeping by her, the girl said feebly, for she was almost gone, 'Don't cry for me,' mother; I was always a poor body, and could not have bustled for myself in the world. I'm glad I'm going.' The pretty selfishness, too, pleased me. The dying are doing such an important thing, they are such foremost characters in the scene, that they feel a right to think of themselves, and to be thought of, first and foremost of all who bear a part in it."

        Mrs. Ferroll. -- "Paul set off in high spirits. He was delightful all breakfast time, reading passages here and there from the article he is writing, and bringing out his imagination and memory, one picture after another, ludicrous and pathetic, of what men do in the course of their great excitements. Nobody but me knows the perfection of his conversation; he must love as he loves me, to be so one with his hearer; to listen as he does, to talk all that is in his heart as he does, to be equally desirous of expressing his whole meaning and conception in words, as to work it out clearly in his own mind. This profoundly quiet life which I have led since I married him, is the perfection of society. His chosen friends, or rather I should say, his fellow workers come to us, with all their bright wits out of harness; quite at ease, yet in full exercise in our society, and excited by him. We have none of the trammels of neighbours, except good Lady Lucy, Dame Partlett, as he calls her, who is very useful, and very dependant upon us. Paul has avoided visiting all the others.

        "While I wrote this the post came in. I saw Lady Lucy's hand, but waited to finish my sentence before I opened her letter; but it is far too interesting now I have

read it. My pretty Janet is ill; they hope it is the measles; but they don't know yet what it is. The out-of-the-way place they are gone to can't furnish a good doctor. I wish I could go to her at once; but without bidding Paul good bye, I can't do that. I can't have him come home, and find me gone, without his saying go, to my going; and will you let me go, Paul? he always tells me that a nurse and a governess are better for a child than a mother, and perhaps it is so in general; but then she is ill, and they don't know what it is. Shall I go ? I went up stairs, and rang for Preston to get ready for a journey, but I could not do it. If I were away, at this time to-morrow I should be so wishing myself back. I never left him for pleasure in my life, because it was more pleasant to be with him than any other thing could be. This would not be for pleasure indeed, except the pleasure to myself of being with my poor little darling, and I could not be of use to her -- yet I long to go. The miserable time when I thought it impossible ever to belong to him, when all hope was over, after I heard the fatal news of his marriage -- that time often comes over me, and I don't like to lose a single day of his society. I feel afraid, lest there should be the same time again; a time when I shall not be with him; when I should think how mad I must have been to waste one day away that we might have passed together. I must wait till he comes home, before deciding about the journey."

        Mr. Ferroll's hand-writing. -- "Elinor is gone to little Janet. There was the prettiest strife about it in her mind; but when the post came this morning with no letter from Dame Partlett, her uneasiness got the better of her desire to remain, and here I am alone for

the first time at home, for though I have left her sometimes, she never before left me. What am I without her? something, something like that horrible thing I was when I had lost her for mine. I have just returned from a most interesting day, and have no one to tell it to; no Elinor, I ought to say, for she is the companion to whom to think aloud. I can't enjoy anything without her to talk to about it.

        "I went into Key's district to-day, because he is ill and gone away; how can he have the leisure to be sick, in such a stirring time?

        "There is a cottage on the Moor, which the occupier had got by right of possession, and which had always kept him from applying to the parish. They are accustomed therefore to intense poverty. The name is Skenfrith. I went to it, and found all ill except the mother and one big boy. She said the neighbours had deserted her, and the doctor did not know of her. She knew the doctor must be paid if he came, and for her part she had no money to waste on doctors. The sick child lay by its father and was crying. I bade it be quiet, but it said it was hungry. The father was far worse, apparently sinking under the disease; he motioned me to come near him, at a moment when I had sent the mother to my horse, which I heard pawing outside. 'Sir,' he said, 'make her give this little one a potatoe, she has plenty there under the measure, but she keeps them for her and Jem, who are both stout and likely to live, she thinks it waste on us who must die; but the little one here breaks my heart to be so hungry.' This was a new trait in human nature to me -- yet I remember the mother in the retreat from Moscow, who threw out her child repeatedly on the snow, saying, 'Let

me be saved -- he does not know what Paris is.' I went to the measure and lifted it, and true enough there was a store of provisions, which the parent with stern calculation kept for those whom it could profit. She came in at the moment, and suffered all the pain of detection -- doing it had seemed right enough; but she knew how it would look to other people, and was ashamed. I did not reproach her. What right had I? I merely gave food to the child and money to the mother; but I told her I would have a nurse here, from whom I should ask account of what was sent for the sick; she was more womanly than her acts, for she began to cry. The big lubberly boy got on one side and grinned.

        "At the next house I went to, John Parry's, the news, which they told me at once, and without any thought of John Parry's state, was, that Lord Ewyas had been attacked by cholera. 'They say my lord will die,' said Mrs. Parry; 'Lord a' mercy on us, to think of such a thing!' I asked why friend John was without medicine. Why, John's son was Boy's boy at the great house, and had been sent on the Boy's boy's pony to Whitchurch, to get mustard for my lord's plaster -- the housekeeper being 'out of mustard.' All the family seemed so perfectly satisfied with these reasons, that I expressed my hearty concurrence in them also.

        "I called at Harold's Castle, and found he really was ill. Lady Ewyas was frightened, and was kept in agitation by the apothecary, who was very happy in frightening the great lady. Lord Ewyas lay in bed, thinking he should die, and also, that it was the most serious calamity that could befall the whole country. How unobservant flattered men are! how came he not to know that the accession of the next Lord Ewyas

would be the 'auspicious event' of the newspapers? I told him my sincere opinion, which was, that he would not die. He did not look like a squeezed orange; and the physician had left judicious directions. In the midst of his pain, Lord Ewyas kept in mind his desire to have me one of his private lieutenants -- one of his habitués. He made a tolerably well-turned speech about the Rubicon and his threshold, and thought I should come here on a gaudy-day, a month hence -- but I will not. They shall not say I have ever been their companion, any of them; they can't help being obliged to me, but I can help their saying I was intimate in their houses.

        "Elinor's letter -- dear, well-written, well-folded letter -- so carefully directed, because she loves me best of all things, and keeps up all her superiority in my eyes now, as much, or more, than when she wrote me her first dear letter. Little Janet has nothing but measles; I want Elinor most. I will fall ill to get Elinor. Suppose I should catch this cholera, in the midst of which I live, and die before she could get back, how she would regret being away for that childish complaint. Thinking of dying, we always fancy we should live among the regrets for our death; should enjoy all the vain regrets; should be the object, enjoying being the object of their sympathy for our insensibility. We see the pomp of the dead; and when we are to play the first character in a funeral, feel as if we should be there as well as our body. Elinor tells me nothing about the pills or draughts they give poor Janet -- how right she is. If Elinor had been like other mothers, bidding her child after dinner drink port wine to do it good, or telling the man-father about its stomach, I must have hated it. Children give me an unpleasant feeling na-

turally; they are slimy; the water is apt to run out of their months; their noses are out of order; one fancies the nurses pawing them all over to wash them. Without such a mother, and such conduct, Janet would have disgusted me, though she is a picture of beauty. In a frame there is nothing I should admire so much. She is far more lovely than her darling mother, and will be a beautiful woman. Then it will be her turn to be loved, to be adored by some young fellow now growing up behind some wall or mountain out of sight; or, indeed, no farther off than the park-gate perhaps; for that lad is in calf-love now; but that shall never, never be.

        "This is four in the morning, and I am just come in, yet I can't go to bed -- why should I, when that lace border is not there, that forehead fleshy-white under the muslin whiteness; that frail, pliant hand, which seems to squeeze altogether in mine. When I had written my Journal, I had nothing to do, for there was no Elinor. I got a fresh horse, and set out galloping quite away from home. I rode on till every cottage light was out. During that time I watched how the lower room ceased to hold the candle, and how it climbed to the upper chamber. I heard, when I stopped my horse near one of those on the moor, a man's voice in the bedroom, which was but a little way above my head, repeating, during two minutes, a prayer. I could easily perceive the monotonous sound of repetition, then a steadfast 'Good night,' and the candle went out.

        "The moor was in a white mist. On the little eminences I was above the mist, and the moon made it thinner and more full of light than can be expressed by words. Passing through the mist it was piercingly cold.

It was a kind of cruelty of nature, careless of the human being who came out at an undue time, and in disregard of whom, nature went on doing as she was in the habit of doing. I rode straight into the Meer by mistake, for water and the misty land seemed all one; and once in, I took a great delight in swimming my horse across; he liked it, too, brave brute, tossing his crest, and ploughing along. I had great difficulty in getting out, for the bank broke away under his feet, and he grew impatient and alarmed. I was obliged to force him out at the first place he could hold at all, and he nearly fell backwards as he climbed the rock above the Trout's pool. You would never have seen me again, Elinor, if he had. Once out, we galloped wildly for half an hour up the scaurs and down the brakes, the frantic wind tearing past the other way. At last I came to the waterfall, the devil's milk-pail; and I put my horse's bridle round a young tree, so that he could eat the delicate short grass, pulled off my clothes, and went in to bathe. The water plunging heavily into the basin, and I had a strong, unceasing contest -- it to push me out, and I to swim up against it. I came out, and dressed in the moonlight, and then ran with my horse's bridle over my arm down Stoney-pitch, and into the common-place high-road below. It was growing light, so I hastened home, made Rampage comfortable in his stall, got in at the window, and have lighted a blazing fire, by which I will now lie down and sleep for two or three hours, till it is time to go to the cholera again.

        "Evening. -- I could not sleep though the fire was excellent, and it came into my head that if I went to Bewdy post-office before the mail-cart left it, I could get Elinor's letter two hours before the time due here, so I

got Fidget out of the stable, and let him take his own pace to the town. The postmaster believed I expected some important cholera communication from the Prime Minister, so sorted me out my letters -- looked them over to the last, and there was none from Elinor. Now the time is a blank till next post. When I have read her words and got her hand-writing in my pocket, common things can get their due observance, but without it I care for nothing. And what can be the reason she does not write? While I galloped up to the post-office my bosom's lord sate lightly on his throne, and that always means evil. Yet the others, the Bartletts, would have written -- she would have made them -- evil, no! it's only some accursed pill or draught to be given to the child, and the letter was forgotten; so I did not put mine into the post for her, yet it was worth having, Elinor; a soul's adoration like that is preciously valuable. What, forgot, delayed to write to your husband, for thinking of a child? I'm a child though, half; I know that thou dost love me. Nevertheless, I turned back in a black temper, repassed my house, and went on to Cholera Town without stopping.

        "The committee asked me to dine with them; but I could not eat, nor bear the thought of eating. If I had had a letter, food would have had its taste, wine its aroma, but not without. I went into Lad Lane, and did not leave a house without a visit; the atmosphere of horrible smells gave me pleasure. It was so like poison, that it took off my thoughts from the constant feeling of the want of a letter. I got people together, being so cross and peremptory to-day, who would not have come otherwise, and had drains opened, filth removed, patients changed from bed to bed. One dying girl had got a

rose in a pot, and conjured me to give it water; her reason was half gone, half hovering still about her. I came home late -- drank a river of tea -- I shall go to bed.

        "Eighteenth day. -- I am a child and not a man -- here axe two letters, yesterday's and to-day's, both sent in their due time; but one delayed by some d--d bag or postman. Now that the waiting is over, it seems as if it would be easy to wait. Oh, absurd prosperity, who givest lessons to those in trouble. Janet is round the comer of her complaint, and Elinor will be at home tomorrow evening. I am ill. I passed a miserable night. Horrid dreams -- dreams that lasted when I was awake. I suppose the night ride, and the want of sleep, &c., did not agree with me; I'll set about getting well -- go to bed and cure myself. They will all say it's the cholera; and I choose they should, rather than say I did too much