Mary Barton

Meanwhile, the power-loom weavers living in the more remote parts of Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, heard of the masters’ advertisements for workmen; and in their solitary dwellings grew weary of starvation, and resolved to come to Manchester. Footsore, wayworn, half-starved looking men they were, as they tried to steal into town in the early dawn, before people were astir, or in the dusk of the evening. And now began the real wrong-doing of the Trades’ Unions. As to their decision to work, or not, at such a particular rate of wages, that was either wise or unwise; all error of judgment at the worst. But they had no right to tyrannise over others, and tie them down to their own Procrustean bed. Abhorring what they considered oppression in the masters, why did they oppress others? Because, when men get excited, they know not what they do. Judge, then, with something of the mercy of the Holy One, whom we all love.

In spite of policemen set to watch over the safety of the poor country weavers—in spite of magistrates, and prisons, and severe punishments—the poor depressed men tramping in from Burnley, Padiham, and other places, to work at the condemned “Starvation Prices,” were waylaid, and beaten, and left by the roadside almost for dead. The police broke up every lounging knot of men:—they separated quietly, to reunite half-a-mile out of town.

Of course the feeling between the masters and workmen did not improve under these circumstances.

Combination is an awful power. It is like the equally mighty agency of steam; capable of almost unlimited good or evil. But to obtain a blessing on its labours, it must work under the direction of a high and intelligent will; incapable of being misled by passion or excitement. The will of the operatives had not been guided to the calmness of wisdom.

So much for generalities. Let us now return to individuals.

A note, respectfully worded, although its tone of determination was strong, had been sent by the power-loom weavers, requesting that a “deputation” of them might have a meeting with the masters, to state the conditions they must have fulfilled before they would end the turn-out. They thought they had attained a sufficiently commanding position to dictate. John Barton was appointed one of the deputation.

The masters agreed to this meeting, being anxious to end the strife, although undetermined among themselves how far they should yield, or whether they should yield at all. Some of the old, whose experience had taught them sympathy, were for concession. Others, white-headed men too, had only learnt hardness and obstinacy from the days of the years of their lives, and sneered at the more gentle and yielding. The younger men were one and all for an unflinching resistance to claims urged with so much violence. Of this party Harry Carson was the leader.

But like all energetic people, the more he had to do the more time he seemed to find. With all his letter-writing, his calling, his being present at the New Bailey, when investigations of any case of violence against knob-sticks were going on, he beset Mary more than ever. She was weary of her life for him. From blandishments he had even gone to threats—threats that whether she would or not she should be his; he showed an indifference that was most insulting to everything which might attract attention and injure her character.

Knob-sticks; those who consent to work at lower wages.

And still she never saw Jem. She knew he had returned home. She heard of him occasionally through his cousin, who roved gaily from house to house, finding and making friends everywhere. But she never saw him. What was she to think? Had he given her up? Were a few hasty words, spoken in a moment of irritation, to stamp her lot through life? At times she thought that she could bear this meekly, happy in her own constant power of loving. For of change or of forgetfulness she did not dream. Then at other times her state of impatience was such, that it required all her self-restraint to prevent her from going and seeking him out, and (as man would do to man, or woman to woman) begging him to forgive her hasty words, and allow her to retract them, and bidding him accept of the love that was filling her whole heart. She wished Margaret had not advised her against such a manner of proceeding; she believed it was her friend’s words that seemed to make such a simple action impossible, in spite of all the internal urgings. But a friend’s advice is only thus powerful, when it puts into language the secret oracle of our souls. It was the whisperings of her womanly nature that caused her to shrink from any unmaidenly action, not Margaret’s counsel.

All this time, this ten days or so, of Will’s visit to Manchester, there was something going on which interested Mary even now, and which, in former times, would have exceedingly amused and excited her. She saw as clearly as if told in words, that the merry, random, boisterous sailor had fallen deeply in love with the quiet, prim, somewhat plain Margaret: she doubted if Margaret was aware of it, and yet, as she watched more closely, she began to think some instinct made the blind girl feel whose eyes were so often fixed upon her pale face; that some inner feeling made the delicate and becoming rose-flush steal over her countenance. She did not speak so decidedly as before; there was a hesitation in her manner, that seemed to make her very attractive; as if something softer, more lovable than excellent sense, were coming in as a motive for speech; her eyes had always been soft, and were in no ways disfigured by her blindness, and now seemed to have a new charm, as they quivered under their white, downcast lids. She must be conscious, thought Mary—heart answering to heart.

Will’s love had no blushings, no downcast eyes, no weighing of words; it was as open and undisguised as his nature; yet he seemed afraid of the answer its acknowledgment might meet with. It was Margaret’s angelic voice that had entranced him, and which made him think of her as a being of some other sphere, that he feared to woo. So he tried to propitiate Job in all manner of ways. He went over to Liverpool to rummage in his great sea-chest for the flying-fish (no very odorous present, by the way). He hesitated over a child’s caul for some time, which was, in his eyes, a far greater treasure than any Exocetus. What use could it be of to a landsman? Then Margaret’s voice rang in his ears; and he determined to sacrifice it, his most precious possession, to one whom she loved as she did her grandfather.

It was rather a relief to him, when, having put it and the flying-fish together in a brown paper parcel, and sat upon them for security all the way in the railroad, he found that Job was so indifferent to the precious caul that he might easily claim it again. He hung about Margaret, till he had received many warnings and reproaches from his conscience in behalf of his dear aunt Alice’s claims upon his time. He went away, and then he bethought him of some other little word with Job. And he turned back, and stood talking once more in Margaret’s presence, door in hand, only waiting for some little speech of encouragement to come in and sit down again. But as the invitation was not given, he was forced to leave at last, and go and do his duty.

Four days had Jem Wilson watched for Mr. Harry Carson without success; his hours of going and returning to his home were so irregular, owing to the meetings and consultations among the masters, which were rendered necessary by the turn-out. On the fifth, without any purpose on Jem’s part, they met.

It was the workmen’s dinner-hour, the interval between twelve and one; when the streets of Manchester are comparatively quiet, for a few shopping ladies and lounging gentlemen count for nothing in that busy, bustling, living place. Jem had been on an errand for his master, instead of returning to his dinner; and in passing along a lane, a road (called, in compliment to the intentions of some future builder, a street), he encountered Harry Carson, the only person, as far as he saw, beside himself, treading the unfrequented path. Along one side ran a high broad fence, blackened over by coal-tar, and spiked and stuck with pointed nails at the top, to prevent any one from climbing over into the garden beyond. By this fence was the footpath. The carriage-road was such as no carriage, no, not even a cart, could possibly have passed along without Hercules to assist in lifting it out of the deep clay ruts. On the other side of the way was a dead brick wall; and a field after that, where there was a saw-pit and joiner’s shed.

Jem’s heart beat violently when he saw the gay, handsome young man approaching, with a light buoyant step. This, then, was he whom Mary loved. It was, perhaps, no wonder; for he seemed to the poor smith so elegant, so well appointed, that he felt the superiority in externals, strangely and painfully, for an instant. Then something uprose within him, and told him, that “a man’s a man for a’ that, for ‘a that, and twice as much as a’ that.” And he no longer felt troubled by the outward appearance of his rival.

Harry Carson came on, lightly bounding over the dirty places with almost a lad’s buoyancy. To his surprise the dark, sturdy-looking artisan stopped him by saying respectfully—

“May I speak a word wi’ you, sir?”

“Certainly, my good man,” looking his astonishment; then finding that the promised speech did not come very quickly, he added, “But make haste, for I’m in a hurry.”

Jem had cast about for some less abrupt way of broaching the subject uppermost in his mind than he now found himself obliged to use. With a husky voice that trembled as he spoke, he said—

“I think, sir, yo’re keeping company wi’ a young woman called Mary Barton?”

A light broke in upon Henry Carson’s mind, and he paused before he gave the answer for which the other waited.

Could this man be a lover of Mary’s? And (strange stinging thought) could he be beloved by her, and so have caused her obstinate rejection of himself? He looked at Jem from head to foot, a black, grimy mechanic, in dirty fustian clothes, strongly built, and awkward (according to the dancing-master); then he glanced at himself, and recalled the reflection he had so lately quitted in his bedroom. It was impossible. No woman with eyes could choose the one when the other wooed. It was Hyperion to a Satyr. That quotation came aptly; he forgot “That a man’s a man for a’ that.” And yet here was a clue, which he had often wanted, to her changed conduct towards him. If she loved this man—if—he hated the fellow, and longed to strike him. He would know all.

“Mary Barton! let me see. Ay, that is the name of the girl. An arrant flirt the little hussy is; but very pretty. Ay, Mary Barton is her name.”

Jem bit his lips. Was it then so; that Mary was a flirt; the giddy creature of whom he spoke? He would not believe it, and yet how he wished the suggestive words unspoken. That thought must keep now, though. Even if she were, the more reason for there being some one to protect her; poor faulty darling,

“She’s a good girl, sir, though maybe a bit set up with her beauty; but she’s her father’s only child, sir, and”—he stopped; he did not like to express suspicion, and yet he was determined he would be certain there was ground for none. What should he say?

“Well, my fine fellow, and what have I to do with that? It’s but loss of my time, and yours, too, if you’ve only stopped me to tell me Mary Barton is very pretty; I know that well enough.”

He seemed as though he would have gone on, but Jem put his black, working, right hand upon his arm to detain him. The haughty young man shook it off, and with his glove pretended to brush away the sooty contamination that might be left upon his light greatcoat sleeve. The little action aroused Jem.

“I will tell you in plain words, what I have got to say to you, young man. It’s been telled me by one as knows, and has seen, that you walk with this same Mary Barton, and are known to be courting her; and her as spoke to me about it, thinks as how Mary loves you. That may be or may not. But I’m an old friend of hers and her father’s; and I just wished to know if you mean to marry the girl. Spite of what you said of her lightness, I ha’ known her long enough to be sure she’ll make a noble wife for any one, let him be what he may; and I mean to stand by her like a brother; and if you mean rightly, you’ll not think the worse on me for what I’ve now said; and if—but no, I’ll not say what I’ll do to the man who wrongs a hair of her head. He shall rue it to the longest day he lives, that’s all. Now, sir, what I ask of you is this. If you mean fair and honourable by her, well and good: but if not, for your own sake as well as hers, leave her alone, and never speak to her more.” Jem’s voice quivered with the earnestness with which he spoke, and he eagerly waited for some answer.

Harry Carson, meanwhile, instead of attending very particularly to the purpose the man had in addressing him, was trying to gather from his speech what was the real state of the case. He succeeded so far as to comprehend that Jem inclined to believe that Mary loved his rival; and consequently, that if the speaker were attached to her himself, he was not a favoured admirer. The idea came into Mr. Carson’s mind, that perhaps, after all, Mary loved him in spite of her frequent and obstinate rejections; and that she had employed this person (whoever he was) to bully him into marrying her. He resolved to try and ascertain more correctly the man’s relation to her. Either he was a lover, and if so, not a favoured one (in which case Mr. Carson could not at all understand the man’s motives for interesting himself in securing her marriage); or he was a friend, an accomplice, whom she had employed to bully him. So little faith in goodness have the mean and selfish!

“Before I make you into my confidant, my good man,” said Mr. Carson, in a contemptuous tone, “I think it might be as well to inquire your right to meddle with our affairs. Neither Mary, nor I, as I conceive, called you in as a mediator.” He paused: he wanted a distinct answer to this last supposition. None came; so he began to imagine he was to be threatened into some engagement, and his angry spirit rose.

“And so, my fine fellow, you will have the kindness to leave us to ourselves, and not to meddle with what does not concern you. If you were a brother or father of hers, the case might have been different. As it is, I can only consider you an impertinent meddler.”

Again he would have passed on, but Jem stood in a determined way before him, saying—

“You say if I had been her brother, or her father, you’d have answered me what I ask. Now, neither father nor brother could love her as I have loved her—ay, and as I love her still; if love gives a right to satisfaction, it’s next to impossible any one breathing can come up to my right. Now, sir, tell me! do you mean fair by Mary or not? I’ve proved my claim to know, and, by G—, I will know.”

“Come, come, no impudence,” replied Mr. Carson, who, having discovered what he wanted to know (namely, that Jem was a lover of Mary’s, and that she was not encouraging his suit), wished to pass on. “Father, brother, or rejected lover” (with an emphasis on the word rejected) “no one has a right to interfere between my little girl and me. No one shall. Confound you, man! get out of my way, or I’ll make you,” as Jem still obstructed his path with dogged determination.

“I won’t, then, till you’ve given me your word about Mary,” replied the mechanic, grinding his words out between his teeth, and the livid paleness of the anger he could no longer keep down covering his face till he looked ghastly.

“Won’t you?” (with a taunting laugh), “then I’ll make you.” The young man raised his slight cane, and smote the artisan across the face with a stinging stroke. An instant afterwards he lay stretched in the muddy road, Jem standing over him, panting with rage. What he would have done next in his moment of ungovernable passion, no one knows; but a policeman from the main street, into which this road led, had been sauntering about for some time, unobserved by either of the parties, and expecting some kind of conclusion like the present to the violent discussion going on between the two young men. In a minute he had pinioned Jem, who sullenly yielded to the surprise.

Mr. Carson was on his feet directly, his face glowing with rage or shame.

“Shall I take him to the lock-ups for assault, sir?” said the policeman.

“No, no,” exclaimed Mr. Carson. “I struck him first. It was no assault on his side: though,” he continued, hissing out his words to Jem, who even hated freedom procured for him, however justly, at the intervention of his rival, “I will never forgive or forget insult. Trust me,” he gasped the words in excess of passion, “Mary shall fare no better for your insolent interference.” He laughed, as if with the consciousness of power.

Jem replied with equal excitement—

“And if you dare to injure her in the least, I will await you where no policeman can step in between. And God shall judge between us two.”

The policeman now interfered with persuasions and warnings. He locked his arm in Jem’s to lead him away in an opposite direction to that in which he saw Mr. Carson was going. Jem submitted gloomily, for a few steps, then wrenched himself free. The policeman shouted after him—

“Take care, my man! there’s no girl on earth worth what you’ll be bringing on yourself if you don’t mind.”

But Jem was out of hearing.

XVI. MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN.

“Not for a moment take the scorner’s chair; While seated there, thou know’st not how a word, A tone, a look, may gall thy brother’s heart, And make him turn in bitterness against thee.” —”LOVE-TRUTHS.”

The day arrived on which the masters were to have an interview with a deputation of the workpeople. The meeting was to take place in a public room, at an hotel; and there, about eleven o’clock, the millowners, who had received the foreign orders, began to collect.

Of course, the first subject, however full their minds might be of another, was the weather. Having done their duty by all the showers and sunshine which had occurred during the past week, they fell to talking about the business which brought them together. There might be about twenty gentlemen in the room, including some by courtesy, who were not immediately concerned in the settlement of the present question; but who, nevertheless, were sufficiently interested to attend. These were divided into little groups, who did not seem by any means unanimous. Some were for a slight concession, just a sugar-plum to quieten the naughty child, a sacrifice to peace and quietness. Some were steadily and vehemently opposed to the dangerous precedent of yielding one jot or one tittle to the outward force of a turn-out. It was teaching the workpeople how to become masters, said they. Did they want the wildest thing hereafter, they would know that the way to obtain their wishes would be to strike work. Besides, one or two of those present had only just returned from the New Bailey, where one of the turn-outs had been tried for a cruel assault on a poor north-country weaver, who had attempted to work at the low price. They were indignant, and justly so, at the merciless manner in which the poor fellow had been treated; and their indignation at wrong, took (as it often does) the extreme form of revenge. They felt as if, rather than yield to the body of men who were resorting to such cruel measures towards their fellow-workmen, they, the masters, would sooner relinquish all the benefits to be derived from the fulfilment of the commission, in order that the workmen might suffer keenly. They forgot that the strike was in this instance the consequence of want and need, suffered unjustly, as the endurers believed; for, however insane, and without ground of reason, such was their belief, and such was the cause of their violence. It is a great truth that you cannot extinguish violence by violence. You may put it down for a time; but while you are crowing over your imaginary success, see if it does not return with seven devils worse than its former self!

No one thought of treating the workmen as brethren and friends, and openly, clearly, as appealing to reasonable men, stating exactly and fully the circumstances which led the masters to think it was the wise policy of the time to make sacrifices themselves, and to hope for them from the operatives.

In going from group to group in the room, you caught such a medley of sentences as the following—

“Poor devils! they’re near enough to starving, I’m afraid. Mrs. Aldred makes two cows’ heads into soup every week, and people come many miles to fetch it; and if these times last, we must try and do more. But we must not be bullied into anything!”

“A rise of a shilling or so won’t make much difference, and they will go away thinking they’ve gained their point.”

“That’s the very thing I object to. They’ll think so, and whenever they’ve a point to gain, no matter how unreasonable, they’ll strike work.”

“It really injures them more than us.”

“I don’t see how our interests can be separated.”

“The d—d brute had thrown vitriol on the poor fellow’s ankles, and you know what a bad part that is to heal. He had to stand still with the pain, and that left him at the mercy of the cruel wretch, who beat him about the head till you’d hardly have known he was a man. They doubt if he’ll live.”

“If it were only for that, I’ll stand out against them, even if it is the cause of my ruin.”

“Ay, I for one won’t yield one farthing to the cruel brutes; they’re more like wild beasts than human beings.”

(Well, who might have made them different?)

“I say, Carson, just go and tell Duncombe of this fresh instance of their abominable conduct. He’s wavering, but I think this will decide him.”

The door was now opened, and the waiter announced that the men were below, and asked if it were the pleasure of the gentlemen that they should be shown up.

They assented, and rapidly took their places round the official table; looking, as like as they could, to the Roman senators who awaited the irruption of Brennus and his Gauls.

Tramp, tramp, came the heavy clogged feet up the stairs; and in a minute five wild, earnest-looking men stood in the room. John Barton, from some mistake as to time, was not among them. Had they been larger-boned men, you would have called them gaunt; as it was, they were little of stature, and their fustian clothes hung loosely upon their shrunk limbs. In choosing their delegates, too, the operatives had had more regard to their brains, and power of speech, than to their wardrobes; they might have read the opinions of that worthy Professor Teufelsdreck, in Sartor Resartus, to judge from the dilapidated coats and trousers, which yet clothed men of parts and of power. It was long since many of them had known the luxury of a new article of dress; and air-gaps were to be seen in their garments. Some of the masters were rather affronted at such a ragged detachment coming between the wind and their nobility; but what cared they.

At the request of a gentleman hastily chosen to officiate as chairman, the leader of the delegates read, in a high-pitched, psalm-singing voice, a paper, containing the operatives’ statement of the case at issue, their complaints, and their demands, which last were not remarkable for moderation.

He was then desired to withdraw for a few minutes, with his fellow-delegates, to another room, while the masters considered what should be their definite answer.

When the men had left the room, a whispered earnest consultation took place, every one re-urging his former arguments. The conceders carried the day, but only by a majority of one. The minority haughtily and audibly expressed their dissent from the measures to be adopted, even after the delegates re-entered the room; their words and looks did not pass unheeded by the quick-eyed operatives; their names were registered in bitter hearts.

The masters could not consent to the advance demanded by the workmen. They would agree to give one shilling per week more than they had previously offered. Were the delegates empowered to accept such offer?

They were empowered to accept or decline any offer made that day by the masters.

Then it might be as well for them to consult among themselves as to what should be their decision. They again withdrew.

It was not for long. They came back, and positively declined any compromise of their demands.

Then up sprang Mr. Henry Carson, the head and voice of the violent party among the masters, and addressing the chairman, even before the scowling operatives, he proposed some resolutions, which he, and those who agreed with him, had been concocting during this last absence of the deputation.

They were, firstly, withdrawing the proposal just made, and declaring all communication between the masters and that particular Trades’ Union at an end; secondly, declaring that no master would employ any workman in future, unless he signed a declaration that he did not belong to any Trades’ Union, and pledged himself not to assist or subscribe to any society, having for its object interference with the masters’ powers; and, thirdly, that the masters should pledge themselves to protect and encourage all workmen willing to accept employment on those conditions, and at the rate of wages first offered. Considering that the men who now stood listening with lowering brows of defiance were all of them leading members of the Union, such resolutions were in themselves sufficiently provocative of animosity: but not content with simply stating them, Harry Carson went on to characterise the conduct of the workmen in no measured terms; every word he spoke rendering their looks more livid, their glaring eyes more fierce. One among them would have spoken, but checked himself, in obedience to the stern glance and pressure on his arm, received from the leader. Mr. Carson sat down, and a friend instantly got up to second the motion. It was carried, but far from unanimously. The chairman announced it to the delegates (who had been once more turned out of the room for a division). They received it with deep brooding silence, but spake never a word, and left the room without even a bow.

Now there had been some by-play at this meeting, not recorded in the Manchester newspapers, which gave an account of the more regular part of the transaction.

While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr. Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them—lank, ragged, dispirited, and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight’s well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who acknowledged the likeness instantly, and by him it was sent round to others, who all smiled and nodded their heads. When it came back to its owner he tore the back of the letter on which it was drawn in two, twisted them up, and flung them into the fireplace; but, careless whether they reached their aim or not, he did not look to see that they fell just short of any consuming cinders.

This proceeding was closely observed by one of the men.

He watched the masters as they left the hotel (laughing, some of them were, at passing jokes), and when all had gone, he re-entered. He went to the waiter, who recognised him.

“There’s a bit on a picture up yonder, as one o’ the gentlemen threw away; I’ve a little lad at home as dearly loves a picture; by your leave I’ll go up for it.”

The waiter, good-natured and sympathetic, accompanied him upstairs; saw the paper picked up and untwisted, and then being convinced, by a hasty glance at its contents, that it was only what the man had called it, “a bit of a picture,” he allowed him to bear away his prize.

Towards seven o’clock that evening, many operatives began to assemble in a room in the Weavers’ Arms public-house, a room appropriated for “festive occasions,” as the landlord, in his circular, on opening the premises, had described it. But, alas! it was on no festive occasion that they met there this night. Starved, irritated, despairing men, they were assembling to hear the answer that morning given by the masters to their delegates; after which, as was stated in the notice, a gentleman from London would have the honour of addressing the meeting on the present state of affairs between the employers and the employed, or (as he chose to term them) the idle and the industrious classes. The room was not large, but its bareness of furniture made it appear so. Unshaded gas flared down upon the lean and unwashed artisans as they entered, their eyes blinking at the excess of light.

They took their seats on benches, and awaited the deputation. The latter, gloomily and ferociously, delivered the masters’ ultimatum, adding thereto not one word of their own; and it sank all the deeper into the sore hearts of the listeners for their forbearance.

Then the “gentleman from London” (who had been previously informed of the masters’ decision) entered. You would have been puzzled to define his exact position, or what was the state of his mind as regarded education. He looked so self-conscious, so far from earnest, among the group of eager, fierce, absorbed men, among whom he now stood. He might have been a disgraced medical student of the Bob Sawyer class, or an unsuccessful actor, or a flashy shopman. The impression he would have given you would have been unfavourable, and yet there was much about him that could only be characterised as doubtful.

He smirked in acknowledgment of their uncouth greetings, and sat down; then glancing round, he inquired whether it would not be agreeable to the gentlemen present to have pipes and liquor handed round, adding, that he would stand treat.

As the man who has had his taste educated to love reading, falls devouringly upon books after a long abstinence, so these poor fellows, whose tastes had been left to educate themselves into a liking for tobacco, beer, and similar gratifications, gleamed up at the proposal of the London delegate. Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future.

They were now ready to listen to him with approbation. He felt it; and rising like a great orator, with his right arm outstretched, his left in the breast of his waistcoat, he began to declaim, with a forced theatrical voice.

After a burst of eloquence, in which he blended the deeds of the elder and the younger Brutus, and magnified the resistless might of the “millions of Manchester,” the Londoner descended to matter-of-fact business, and in his capacity this way he did not belie the good judgment of those who had sent him as a delegate. Masses of people, when left to their own free choice, seem to have discretion in distinguishing men of natural talent: it is a pity they so little regard temper and principles. He rapidly dictated resolutions, and suggested measures. He wrote out a stirring placard for the walls. He proposed sending delegates to entreat the assistance of other Trades’ Unions in other towns. He headed the list of subscribing Unions, by a liberal donation from that with which he was especially connected in London; and what was more, and more uncommon, he paid down the money in real, clinking, blinking, golden sovereigns! The money, alas! was cravingly required; but before alleviating any private necessities on the morrow, small sums were handed to each of the delegates, who were in a day or two to set out on their expeditions to Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, etc. These men were most of them members of the deputation who had that morning waited upon the masters. After he had drawn up some letters, and spoken a few more stirring words, the gentleman from London withdrew, previously shaking hands all round; and many speedily followed him out of the room, and out of the house.

The newly-appointed delegates, and one or two others, remained behind to talk over their respective missions, and to give and exchange opinions in more homely and natural language than they dared to use before the London orator.

“He’s a rare chap, yon,” began one, indicating the departed delegate by a jerk of his thumb towards the door. “He’s getten the gift of the gab, anyhow!”

“Ay! ay! he knows what he’s about. See how he poured it into us about that there Brutus. He were pretty hard, too, to kill his own son!”

“I could kill mine if he took part with the masters; to be sure, he’s but a step-son, but that makes no odds,” said another.

But now tongues were hushed, and all eyes were directed towards the member of the deputation who had that morning returned to the hotel to obtain possession of Harry Carson’s clever caricature of the operatives.

The heads clustered together, to gaze at and detect the likenesses.

“That’s John Slater! I’d ha’ known him anywhere, by his big nose. Lord! how like; that’s me, by G-d, it’s the very way I’m obligated to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I’ve getten no shirt. That IS a shame, and I’ll not stand it.”

“Well!” said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; “I could laugh at a jest as well as e’er the best on ‘em, though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming” (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), “and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear ‘em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th’ bottom o’ th’ canal, there—why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they’ve never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within ‘em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us.”

John Barton began to speak; they turned to him with great attention. “It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of striving men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o’ fire for th’ old granny, as shivers i’ th’ cold; for a bit o’ bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife who lies in labour on th’ damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi’ hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes; and so that we get ‘em, we’d not quarrel wi’ what they’re made on. We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm; ay, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind, and ask us with their eyes why we brought ‘em into th’ world to suffer?”

He lowered his deep voice almost to a whisper—

“I’ve seen a father who had killed his child rather than let it clem before his eyes; and he were a tender-hearted man.”

He began again in his usual tone. “We come to th’ masters wi’ full hearts, to ask for them things I named afore. We know that they’ve getten money, as we’ve earned for ‘em; we know trade is mending, and they’ve large orders, for which they’ll be well paid; we ask for our share o’ th’ payment; for, say we, if th’ masters get our share of payment it will only go to keep servants and horses—to more dress and pomp. Well and good, if yo choose to be fools we’ll not hinder you, so long as you’re just; but our share we must and will have; we’ll not be cheated. We want it for daily bread, for life itself; and not for our own lives neither (for there’s many a one here, I know by mysel, as would be glad and thankful to lie down and die out o’ this weary world), but for the lives of them little ones, who don’t yet know what life is, and are afeard of death. Well, we come before th’ masters to state what we want, and what we must have, afore we’ll set shoulder to their work; and they say, ‘No.’ One would think that would be enough of hard-heartedness, but it isn’t. They go and make jesting pictures on us! I could laugh at mysel, as well as poor John Slater there; but then I must be easy in my mind to laugh. Now I only know that I would give the last drop of my blood to avenge us on yon chap, who had so little feeling in him as to make game on earnest, suffering men!”

A low angry murmur was heard among the men, but it did not yet take form or words. John continued—

“You’ll wonder, chaps, how I came to miss the time this morning; I’ll just tell you what I was a-doing. Th’ chaplain at the New Bailey sent and gived me an order to see Jonas Higginbotham; him as was taken up last week for throwing vitriol in a knob-stick’s face. Well, I couldn’t help but go; and I didn’t reckon it would ha’ kept me so late. Jonas were like one crazy when I got to him; he said he could na get rest night or day for th’ face of the poor fellow he had damaged; then he thought on his weak, clemmed look, as he tramped, footsore, into town; and Jonas thought, maybe, he had left them at home as would look for news, and hope and get none, but, haply, tidings of his death. Well, Jonas had thought on these things till he could not rest, but walked up and down continually like a wild beast in his cage. At last he bethought him on a way to help a bit, and he got the chaplain to send for me; and he telled me this; and that th’ man were lying in the Infirmary, and he bade me go (to-day’s the day as folk may be admitted into th’ Infirmary) and get his silver watch, as was his mother’s, and sell it as well as I could, and take the money, and bid the poor knob-stick send it to his friends beyond Burnley; and I were to take him Jonas’s kind regards, and he humbly axed him to forgive him. So I did what Jonas wished. But, bless your life, none on us would ever throw vitriol again (at least at a knob-stick) if they could see the sight I saw to-day. The man lay, his face all wrapped in cloths, so I didn’t see that: but not a limb, nor a bit of a limb, could keep from quivering with pain. He would ha’ bitten his hand to keep down his moans, but couldn’t, his face hurt him so if he moved it e’er so little. He could scarce mind me when I telled him about Jonas; he did squeeze my hand when I jingled the money, but when I axed his wife’s name, he shrieked out, ‘Mary, Mary, shall I never see you again? Mary, my darling, they’ve made me blind because I wanted to work for you and our own baby; O Mary, Mary!’ Then the nurse came, and said he were raving, and that I had made him worse. And I’m afeard it was true; yet I were loth to go without knowing where to send the money… . . So that kept me beyond my time, chaps.”

“Did you hear where the wife lived at last?” asked many anxious voices.

“No! he went on talking to her, till his words cut my heart like a knife. I axed th’ nurse to find out who she was, and where she lived. But what I’m more especial naming it now for is this,—for one thing I wanted you all to know why I weren’t at my post this morning; for another, I wish to say, that I, for one, ha’ seen enough of what comes of attacking knob-sticks, and I’ll ha’ nought to do with it no more.”

There were some expressions of disapprobation, but John did not mind them.

“Nay! I’m no coward,” he replied, “and I’m true to th’ backbone. What I would like, and what I would do, would be to fight the masters. There’s one among yo called me a coward. Well! every man has a right to his opinion; but since I’ve thought on th’ matter to-day I’ve thought we han all on us been more like cowards in attacking the poor like ourselves; them as has none to help, but mun choose between vitriol and starvation. I say we’re more cowardly in doing that than in leaving them alone. No! what I would do is this. Have at the masters!” Again he shouted, “Have at the masters!” He spoke lower; all listened with hushed breath—

“It’s the masters as has wrought this woe; it’s the masters as should pay for it. Him as called me coward just now, may try if I am one or not. Set me to serve out the masters, and see if there’s aught I’ll stick at.”

“It would give the masters a bit on a fright if one of them were beaten within an inch of his life,” said one.

“Ay! or beaten till no life were left in him,” growled another.

And so with words, or looks that told more than words, they built up a deadly plan. Deeper and darker grew the import of their speeches, as they stood hoarsely muttering their meaning out, and glaring with eyes that told the terror their own thoughts were to them, upon their neighbours. Their clenched fists, their set teeth, their livid looks, all told the suffering which their minds were voluntarily undergoing in the contemplation of crime, and in familiarising themselves with its details.

Then came one of those fierce terrible oaths which bind members of Trades’ Unions to any given purpose. Then under the flaring gaslight, they met together to consult further. With the distrust of guilt, each was suspicious of his neighbour; each dreaded the treachery of another. A number of pieces of paper (the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and one was marked. Then all were folded up again, looking exactly alike. They were shuffled together in a hat. The gas was extinguished; each drew out a paper. The gas was relighted. Then each went as far as he could from his fellows, and examined the paper he had drawn without saying a word, and with a countenance as stony and immovable as he could make it.

Then, still rigidly silent, they each took up their hats and went every one his own way.

He who had drawn the marked paper had drawn the lot of the assassin! and he had sworn to act according to his drawing! But no one, save God and his own conscience, knew who was the appointed murderer.

XVII. BARTON’S NIGHT-ERRAND,

“Mournful is’t to say Farewell, Though for few brief hours we part; In that absence, who can tell What may come to wring the heart!” —ANONYMOUS.

The events recorded in the last chapter took place on a Tuesday. On Thursday afternoon Mary was surprised, in the midst of some little bustle in which she was engaged, by the entrance of Will Wilson. He looked strange, at least it was strange to see any different expression on his face to his usual joyous beaming appearance. He had a paper parcel in his hand. He came in, and sat down, more quietly than usual.

“Why, Will! what’s the matter with you? You seem quite cut up about something!”

“And I am, Mary! I’m come to say goodbye; and few folk like to say goodbye to them they love.”

“Goodbye! Bless me, Will, that’s sudden, isn’t it?”

Mary left off ironing, and came and stood near the fireplace. She had always liked Will; but now it seemed as if a sudden spring of sisterly love had gushed up in her heart, so sorry did she feel to hear of his approaching departure.

“It’s very sudden, isn’t it?” said she, repeating the question.

“Yes, it’s very sudden,” said he dreamily. “No, it isn’t”; rousing himself to think of what he was saying. “The captain told me in a fortnight he would be ready to sail again; but it comes very sudden on me, I had got so fond of you all.”

Mary understood the particular fondness that was thus generalised. She spoke again.

“But it’s not a fortnight since you came. Not a fortnight since you knocked at Jane Wilson’s door, and I was there, you remember. Nothing like a fortnight!”

“No; I know it’s not. But, you see, I got a letter this afternoon from Jack Harris, to tell me our ship sails on Tuesday next; and it’s long since I promised my uncle (my mother’s brother, him that lives at Kirk-Christ, beyond Ramsay, in the Isle of Man) that I’d go and see him and his, this time of coming ashore. I must go. I’m sorry enough; but I mustn’t slight poor mother’s friends. I must go. Don’t try to keep me,” said he, evidently fearing the strength of his own resolution, if hard pressed by entreaty.

“I’m not a-going, Will. I dare say you’re right; only I can’t help feeling sorry you’re going away. It seems so flat to be left behind. When do you go?”

“Tonight. I shan’t see you again.”

“Tonight! and you go to Liverpool! Maybe you and father will go together. He’s going to Glasgow, by way of Liverpool.”

“No! I’m walking; and I don’t think your father will be up to walking.”

“Well! and why on earth are you walking? You can get by railway for three-and-sixpence.”

“Ay, but Mary! (thou mustn’t let out what I’m going to tell thee) I haven’t got three shillings, no, nor even a sixpence left, at least, not here; before I came I gave my landlady enough to carry me to the island and back, and maybe a trifle for presents, and I brought the rest here; and it’s all gone but this,” jingling a few coppers in his hand.

“Nay, never fret over my walking a matter of thirty mile,” added he, as he saw she looked grave and sorry. “It’s a fine clear night, and I shall set off betimes, and get in afore the Manx packet sails. Where’s your father going? To Glasgow did you say? Perhaps he and I may have a bit of a trip together then, for, if the Manx boat has sailed when I get into Liverpool, I shall go by a Scotch packet. What’s he going to do in Glasgow?—Seek for work? Trade is as bad there as here, folk say.”

“No; he knows that,” answered Mary sadly. “I sometimes think he’ll never get work again, and that trade will never mend. It’s very hard to keep up one’s heart. I wish I were a boy, I’d go to sea with you. It would be getting away from bad news at any rate; and now, there’s hardly a creature that crosses the doorstep, but has something sad and unhappy to tell one. Father is going as a delegate from his Union, to ask help from the Glasgow folk. He’s starting this evening.”

Mary sighed, for the feeling again came over her that it was very flat to be left alone.

“You say no one crosses the threshold but has something sad to say; you don’t mean that Margaret Jennings has any trouble?” asked the young sailor anxiously.

“No!” replied Mary, smiling a little; “she’s the only one I know, I believe, who seems free from care. Her blindness almost appears a blessing sometimes; she was so down-hearted when she dreaded it, and now she seems so calm and happy when it’s downright come. No! Margaret’s happy, I do think.”

“I could almost wish it had been otherwise,” said Will thoughtfully. “I could have been so glad to comfort her, and cherish her, if she had been in trouble.”

“And why can’t you cherish her, even though she is happy?” asked Mary.

“Oh! I don’t know. She seems so much better than I am! And her voice! When I hear it, and think of the wishes that are in my heart, it seems as much out of place to ask her to be my wife, as it would be to ask an angel from heaven.”

Mary could not help laughing outright, in spite of her depression, at the idea of Margaret as an angel; it was so difficult (even to her dressmaking imagination) to fancy where, and how, the wings would be fastened to the brown stuff gown, or the blue and yellow print.

Will laughed, too, a little, out of sympathy with Mary’s pretty merry laugh. Then he said—

“Ay, you may laugh, Mary: it only shows you’ve never been in love.”

In an instant Mary was carnation colour, and the tears sprang to her soft grey eyes. She that was suffering so much from the doubts arising from love! It was unkind of him. He did not notice her change of look and of complexion. He only noticed that she was silent, so he continued—

“I thought—I think, that when I come back from this voyage, I will speak. It’s my fourth voyage in the same ship and with the same captain, and he’s promised he’ll make me a second mate after this trip; then I shall have something to offer Margaret; and her grandfather, and Aunt Alice, shall live with her, and keep her from being lonesome while I’m at sea. I’m speaking as if she cared for me, and would marry me; d’ye think she does care at all for me, Mary?” asked he anxiously.

Mary had a very decided opinion of her own on the subject, but she did not feel as if she had any right to give it. So she said—

“You must ask Margaret, not me, Will; she’s never named your name to me.” His countenance fell. “But I should say that was a good sign from a girl like her. I’ve no right to say what I think; but, if I was you, I would not leave her now without speaking.”

“No! I cannot speak! I have tried. I’ve been in to wish them goodbye, and my voice stuck in my throat. I could say nought of what I’d planned to say; and I never thought of being so bold as to offer her marriage till I’d been my next trip, and been made mate. I could not even offer her this box,” said he, undoing his paper parcel and displaying a gaudily ornamented accordion; “I longed to buy her something, and I thought, if it were something in the music line, she would maybe fancy it more. So, will you give it to her, Mary, when I’m gone? and, if you can slip in something tender,- -something, you know, of what I feel—maybe she would listen to you, Mary.”

Mary promised that she would do all that he asked.

“I shall be thinking on her many and many a night, when I’m keeping my watch in mid-sea; I wonder if she will ever think on me when the wind is whistling, and the gale rising. You’ll often speak of me to her, Mary? And if I should meet with any mischance, tell her how dear, how very dear, she was to me, and bid her, for the sake of one who loved her well, try and comfort my poor aunt Alice. Dear old aunt! you and Margaret will often go and see her, won’t you? She’s sadly failed since I was last ashore. And so good as she has been! When I lived with her, a little wee chap, I used to be wakened by the neighbours knocking her up; this one was ill, and that body’s child was restless; and for as tired as ever she might be, she would be up and dressed in a twinkling, never thinking of the hard day’s wash afore her next morning. Them were happy times! How pleased I used to be when she would take me into the fields with her to gather herbs! I’ve tasted tea in China since then, but it wasn’t half so good as the herb tea she used to make for me o’ Sunday nights. And she knew such a deal about plants and birds, and their ways. She used to tell me long stories about her childhood, and we used to plan how we would go some time, please God (that was always her word), and live near her old home beyond Lancaster; in the very cottage where she was born, if we could get it. Dear! and how different it is! Here is she still in a back street o’ Manchester, never likely to see her own home again; and I, a sailor, off for America next week. I wish she had been able to go to Burton once afore she died.”

“She would maybe have found all sadly changed,” said Mary, though her heart echoed Will’s feeling.

“Ay! ay! I dare say it’s best. One thing I do wish though, and I have often wished it when out alone on the deep sea, when even the most thoughtless can’t choose but think on th’ past and th’ future; and that is, that I’d never grieved her. O Mary! many a hasty word comes sorely back on the heart when one thinks one shall never see the person whom one has grieved again!”

They both stood thinking. Suddenly Mary started.

“That’s father’s step. And his shirt’s not ready!”

She hurried to her irons, and tried to make up for lost time.

John Barton came in. Such a haggard and wildly anxious-looking man, Will thought he had never seen. He looked at Will, but spoke no word of greeting or welcome.

“I’m come to bid you goodbye,” said the sailor, and would in his sociable friendly humour have gone on speaking. But John answered abruptly—

“Goodbye to ye, then.”

There was that in his manner which left no doubt of his desire to get rid of the visitor, and Will accordingly shook hands with Mary, and looked at John, as if doubting how far to offer to shake hands with him. But he met with no answering glance or gesture, so he went his way, stopping for an instant at the door to say—

“You’ll think on me on Tuesday, Mary. That’s the day we shall hoist our blue Peter, Jack Harris says.”

Mary was heartily sorry when the door closed; it seemed like shutting out a friendly sunbeam. And her father! what could be the matter with him? He was so restless; not speaking (she wished he would), but starting up and then sitting down, and meddling with her irons; he seemed so fierce, too, to judge from his face. She wondered if he disliked Will being there; or if he were vexed to find that she had not got further on with her work. At last she could bear his nervous way no longer, it made her equally nervous and fidgety. She would speak.

“When are you going, father? I don’t know the time o’ the trains.”

“And why shouldst thou know?” replied he gruffly. “Meddle with thy ironing, but donnot be asking questions about what doesn’t concern thee.”

“I wanted to get you something to eat first,” answered she gently.

“Thou dost not know that I’m larning to do without food,” said he.

Mary looked at him to see if he spoke jestingly. No! he looked savagely grave.

She finished her bit of ironing, and began preparing the food she was sure her father needed; for by this time her experience in the degrees of hunger had taught her that his present irritability was increased, if not caused by want of food.

He had had a sovereign given him to pay his expenses as delegate to Glasgow, and out of this he had given Mary a few shillings in the morning; so she had been able to buy a sufficient meal, and now her care was to cook it so as to tempt him.

“If thou’rt doing that for me, Mary, thou mayst spare thy labour. I telled thee I were not for eating.”

“Just a little bit, father, before starting,” coaxed Mary perseveringly.

At that instant who should come in but Job Legh. It was not often he came, but when he did pay visits, Mary knew from past experience they were anything but short. Her father’s countenance fell back into the deep gloom from which it was but just emerging at the sound of Mary’s sweet voice, and pretty pleading. He became again restless and fidgety, scarcely giving Job Legh the greeting necessary for a host in his own house. Job, however, did not stand upon ceremony. He had come to pay a visit, and was not to be daunted from his purpose. He was interested in John Barton’s mission to Glasgow, and wanted to hear all about it; so he sat down, and made himself comfortable, in a manner that Mary saw was meant to be stationary.

“So thou’rt off to Glasgow, art thou?” he began his catechism.

“Ay.”

“When art starting?”

“Tonight.”

“That I knowed. But by what train?”

That was just what Mary wanted to know; but what apparently her father was in no mood to tell. He got up without speaking, and went upstairs. Mary knew from his step, and his way, how much he was put out, and feared Job would see it too! But no! Job seemed imperturbable. So much the better, and perhaps she could cover her father’s rudeness by her own civility to so kind a friend.

So, half-listening to her father’s movements upstairs (passionate, violent, restless motions they were), and half-attending to Job Legh, she tried to pay him all due regard.

“When does thy father start, Mary?”

That plaguing question again.

“Oh! very soon. I’m just getting him a bit of supper. Is Margaret very well?”

“Yes, she’s well enough. She’s meaning to go and keep Alice Wilson company for an hour or so this evening: as soon as she thinks her nephew will have started for Liverpool; for she fancies the old woman will feel a bit lonesome. Th’ Union is paying for your father, I suppose?”

“Yes, they’ve given him a sovereign. You’re one of th’ Union, Job?”

“Ay! I’m one, sure enough; but I’m but a sleeping partner in the concern. I were obliged to become a member for peace, else I don’t go along with ‘em. Yo see they think themselves wise, and me silly, for differing with them. Well! there’s no harm in that. But then they won’t let me be silly in peace and quietness, but will force me to be as wise as they are; now that’s not British liberty, I say. I’m forced to be wise according to their notions, else they parsecute me, and sarve me out.”

What could her father be doing upstairs? Tramping and banging about. Why did he not come down? Or why did not Job go? The supper would be spoilt.

But Job had no notion of going.

“You see my folly is this, Mary. I would take what I could get; I think half a loaf is better than no bread. I would work for low wages rather than sit idle and starve. But, comes the Trades’ Union, and says, ‘Well, if you take the half-loaf, we’ll worry you out of your life. Will you be clemmed, or will you be worried?’ Now clemming is a quiet death, and worrying isn’t, so I choose clemming, and come into th’ Union. But I’d wish they’d leave me free, if I am a fool.”

Creak, creak, went the stairs. Her father was coming down at last.

Yes, he came down, but more doggedly fierce than before, and made up for his journey, too; with his little bundle on his arm. He went up to Job, and, more civilly than Mary expected, wished him goodbye. He then turned to her, and in a short cold manner, bade her farewell.

“Oh! father, don’t go yet. Your supper is all ready. Stay one moment.”

But he pushed her away, and was gone. She followed him to the door, her eyes blinded by sudden tears; she stood there looking after him. He was so strange, so cold, so hard. Suddenly, at the end of the court, he turned, and saw her standing there; he came back quickly, and took her in his arms.

“God bless thee, Mary!—God in heaven bless thee, poor child!” She threw her arms round his neck.

“Don’t go yet, father; I can’t bear you to go yet. Come in, and eat some supper; you look so ghastly; dear father, do!”

“No,” he said, faintly and mournfully. “It’s best as it is. I couldn’t eat, and it’s best to be off. I cannot be still at home. I must be moving.”

So saying, he unlaced her soft twining arms, and kissing her once more, set off on his fierce errand.

And he was out of sight! She did not know why, but she had never before felt so depressed, so desolate. She turned in to Job, who sat there still. Her father, as soon as he was out of sight, slackened his pace, and fell into that heavy listless step which told, as well as words could do, of hopelessness and weakness. It was getting dark, but he loitered on, returning no greeting to any one.

A child’s cry caught his ear. His thoughts were running on little Tom; on the dead and buried child of happier years. He followed the sound of the wail, that might have been HIS, and found a poor little mortal, who had lost his way, and whose grief had choked up his thoughts to the single want, “Mammy, mammy.” With tender address, John Barton soothed the little laddie, and with beautiful patience he gathered fragments of meaning from the half-spoken words which came mingled with sobs from the terrified little heart. So, aided by inquiries here and there from a passer-by, he led and carried the little fellow home, where his mother had been too busy to miss him, but now received him with thankfulness, and with an eloquent Irish blessing. When John heard the words of blessing, he shook his head mournfully and turned away to retrace his steps.

Let us leave him.

Mary took her sewing after he had gone, and sat on, and sat on, trying to listen to Job, who was more inclined to talk than usual. She had conquered her feeling of impatience towards him so far as to be able to offer him her father’s rejected supper; and she even tried to eat herself. But her heart failed her. A leaden weight seemed to hang over her; a sort of presentiment of evil, or perhaps only an excess of low-spirited feeling in consequence of the two departures which had taken place that afternoon.

She wondered how long Job Legh would sit. She did not like putting down her work, and crying before him, and yet she had never in her life longed so much to be alone in order to indulge in a good hearty burst of tears.

“Well, Mary,” she suddenly caught him saying, “I thought you’d be a bit lonely tonight; and as Margaret were going to cheer th’ old woman, I said I’d go and keep th’ young un company; and a very pleasant chatty evening we’ve had; very. Only I wonder as Margaret is not come back.”

“But perhaps she is,” suggested Mary.

“No, no, I took care o’ that. Look ye here!” and he pulled out the great house-key. “She’ll have to stand waiting i’ th’ street, and that I’m sure she wouldn’t do, when she knew where to find me.”

“Will she come back by hersel?” asked Mary.

“Ay. At first I were afraid o’ trusting her, and I used to follow her a bit behind; never letting on, of course. But, bless you! she goes along as steadily as can be; rather slow to be sure, and her head a bit on one side, as if she were listening. And it’s real beautiful to see her cross the road. She’ll wait above a bit to hear that all is still; not that she’s so dark as not to see a coach or a cart like a big black thing, but she can’t rightly judge how far off it is by sight, so she listens. Hark! that’s her!”

Yes; in she came, with her usually calm face all tear-stained and sorrow-marked.

“What’s the matter, my wench?” said Job hastily.

“O grandfather! Alice Wilson’s so bad!” She could say no more for her breathless agitation. The afternoon, and the parting with Will, had weakened her nerves for any after-shock.

“What is it? Do tell us, Margaret!” said Mary, placing her in a chair, and loosening her bonnet-strings.

“I think it’s a stroke o’ the palsy. Any rate she has lost the use of one side.”

“Was it afore Will set off?” asked Mary.

“No, he were gone before I got there,” said Margaret; “and she were much about as well as she has been for many a day. She spoke a bit, but not much; but that were only natural, for Mrs. Wilson likes to have the talk to hersel, you know. She got up to go across the room, and then I heard a drag wi’ her leg, and presently a fall, and Mrs. Wilson came running, and set up such a cry! I stopped wi’ Alice, while she fetched a doctor; but she could not speak, to answer me, though she tried, I think.”

“Where was Jem? Why didn’t he go for the doctor?”

“He were out when I got there, and he never came home while I stopped.”

“Thou’st never left Mrs. Wilson alone wi’ poor Alice?” asked Job hastily.

“No, no,” said Margaret. “But oh! grandfather, it’s now I feel how hard it is to have lost my sight. I should have so loved to nurse her; and I did try, until I found I did more harm than good. O grandfather; if I could but see!”

She sobbed a little; and they let her give that ease to her heart. Then she went on—

“No! I went round by Mrs. Davenport’s, and she were hard at work; but, the minute I told my errand, she were ready and willing to go to Jane Wilson, and stop up all night with Alice.”

“And what does the doctor say?” asked Mary.

“Oh! much what all doctors say: he puts a fence on this side, and a fence on that, for fear he should be caught tripping in his judgment. One moment he does not think there’s much hope—but while there is life there is hope! th’ next he says he should think she might recover partial—but her age is again her. He’s ordered her leeches to her head.”

Margaret having told her tale, leant back with weariness, both of body and mind. Mary hastened to make her a cup of tea; while Job, lately so talkative, sat quiet and mournfully silent.

“I’ll go first thing tomorrow morning, and learn how she is; and I’ll bring word back before I go to work,” said Mary.

“It’s a bad job Will’s gone,” said Job.

“Jane does not think she knows any one,” replied Margaret. “It’s perhaps as well he shouldn’t see her now for they say her face is sadly drawn. He’ll remember her with her own face better, if he does not see her again.”

With a few more sorrowful remarks they separated for the night, and Mary was left alone in her house, to meditate on the heavy day that had passed over her head. Everything seemed going wrong. Will gone; her father gone—and so strangely too! And to a place so mysteriously distant as Glasgow seemed to be to her! She had felt his presence as a protection against Harry Carson and his threats; and now she dreaded lest he should learn she was alone. Her heart began to despair, too, about Jem. She feared he had ceased to love her; and she—she only loved him more and more for his seeming neglect. And, as if all this aggregate of sorrowful thoughts was not enough, here was this new woe, of poor Alice’s paralytic stroke.

XVIII. MURDER.

“But in his pulse there was no throb, Nor on his lips one dying sob; Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath Heralded his way to death.” —”SIEGE OF CORINTH.”

“My brain runs this way and that way; ‘t will not fix On aught but vengeance.” —”DUKE OF GUISE.”

I must now go back to an hour or two before Mary and her friends parted for the night. It might be about eight o’clock that evening, and the three Miss Carsons were sitting in their father’s drawing-room. He was asleep in the dining-room, in his own comfortable chair. Mrs. Carson was (as was usual with her, when no particular excitement was going on) very poorly, and sitting upstairs in her dressing-room, indulging in the luxury of a headache. She was not well, certainly. “Wind in the head,” the servants called it. But it was but the natural consequence of the state of mental and bodily idleness in which she was placed. Without education enough to value the resources of wealth and leisure, she was so circumstanced as to command both. It would have done her more good than all the ether and sal-volatile she was daily in the habit of swallowing, if she might have taken the work of one of her own housemaids for a week; made beds, rubbed tables, shaken carpets, and gone out into the fresh morning air, without all the paraphernalia of shawl, cloak, boa, fur boots, bonnet, and veil, in which she was equipped before setting out for an “airing,” in the closely shut-up carriage.

So the three girls were by themselves in the comfortable, elegant, well-lighted drawing-room; and, like many similarly situated young ladies, they did not exactly know what to do to while away the time until the tea-hour. The elder two had been at a dancing-party the night before, and were listless and sleepy in consequence. One tried to read “Emerson’s Essays,” and fell asleep in the attempt; the other was turning over a parcel of new songs, in order to select what she liked. Amy, the youngest, was copying some manuscript music. The air was heavy with the fragrance of strongly-scented flowers, which sent out their night odours from an adjoining conservatory.

The clock on the chimney-piece chimed eight. Sophy (the sleeping sister) started up at the sound.

“What o’clock is that?” she asked.

“Eight,” said Amy.

“O dear! how tired I am! Is Harry come in? Tea will rouse one up a little. Are you not worn out, Helen?”

“Yes; I am tired enough. One is good for nothing the day after a dance. Yet I don’t feel weary at the time; I suppose it is the lateness of the hours.”

“And yet, how could it be managed otherwise? So many don’t dine till five or six, that one cannot begin before eight or nine; and then it takes a long time to get into the spirit of the evening. It is always more pleasant after supper than before.”

“Well, I’m too tired tonight to reform the world in the matter of dances or balls. What are you copying, Amy?”

“Only that little Spanish air you sing, ‘Quien quiera.’”

“What are you copying it for?” asked Helen.

“Harry asked me to do it for him this morning at breakfast-time—for Miss Richardson, he said.”

“For Jane Richardson!” said Sophy, as if a new idea were receiving strength in her mind.

“Do you think Harry means anything by his attention to her?” asked Helen.

“Nay, I do not know anything more than you do; I can only observe and conjecture. What do you think, Helen?”

“Harry always likes to be of consequence to the belle of the room. If one girl is more admired than another, he likes to flutter about her, and seem to be on intimate terms with her. That is his way, and I have not noticed anything beyond that in his manner to Jane Richardson.”

“But I don’t think she knows it’s only his way. Just watch her the next time we meet her when Harry is there, and see how she crimsons, and looks another way when she feels he is coming up to her. I think he sees it, too, and I think he is pleased with it.”

“I dare say Harry would like well enough to turn the head of such a lovely girl as Jane Richardson. But I’m not convinced that he’s in love, whatever she may be.”

“Well, then!” said Sophy indignantly, “though it is our own brother, I do not think he is behaving very wrongly. The more I think of it, the more sure I am that she thinks he means something, and that he intends her to think so. And then, when he leaves off paying her attention”—

“Which will be as soon as a prettier girl makes her appearance,” interrupted Helen.

“As soon as he leaves off paying her attention,” resumed Sophy, “she will have many and many a heartache, and then she will harden herself into being a flirt, a feminine flirt, as he is a masculine flirt. Poor girl!”

“I don’t like to hear you speak so of Harry,” said Amy, looking up at Sophy.

“And I don’t like to have to speak so, Amy, for I love him dearly. He is a good, kind brother, but I do think him vain, and I think he hardly knows the misery, the crime, to which indulged vanity may lead him.”

Helen yawned.

“Oh! do you think we may ring for tea? Sleeping after dinner makes me so feverish.”

“Yes, surely. Why should not we?” said the more energetic Sophy, pulling the bell with some determination.

“Tea, directly, Parker,” said she authoritatively, as the man entered the room.

She was too little in the habit of reading expressions on the faces of others to notice Parker’s countenance,

Yet it was striking. It was blanched to a dead whiteness; the lips compressed as if to keep within some tale of horror; the eyes distended and unnatural. It was a terror-stricken face.

The girls began to put away their music and books, in preparation for tea. The door slowly opened again, and this time it was the nurse who entered. I call her nurse, for such had been her office in bygone days, though now she held rather an anomalous situation in the family. Seamstress, attendant on the young ladies, keeper of the stores; only “Nurse” was still her name. She had lived longer with them than any other servant, and to her their manner was far less haughty than to the other domestics. She occasionally came into the drawing-room to look for things belonging to their father or mother, so it did not excite any surprise when she advanced into the room. They went on arranging their various articles of employment.

She wanted them to look up. She wanted them to read something in her face—her face so full of woe, of horror. But they went on without taking any notice. She coughed; not a natural cough; but one of those coughs which asks so plainly for remark.

“Dear nurse, what is the matter?” asked Amy. “Are not you well?”

“Is mamma ill?” asked Sophy quickly.

“Speak, speak, nurse!” said they all, as they saw her efforts to articulate choked by the convulsive rising in her throat. They clustered round her with eager faces, catching a glimpse of some terrible truth to be revealed.

“My dear young ladies! my dear girls!” she gasped out at length, and then she burst into tears.

“Oh! do tell us what it is, nurse!” said one. “Anything is better than this. Speak!”

“My children! I don’t know how to break it to you. My dears, poor Mr. Harry is brought home”—

“Brought home—BROUGHT home—how?” Instinctively they sank their voices to a whisper; but a fearful whisper it was. In the same low tone, as if afraid lest the walls, the furniture, the inanimate things which told of preparation for life and comfort, should hear, she answered—

“Dead!”

Amy clutched her nurse’s arm, and fixed her eyes on her as if to know if such a tale could be true; and when she read its confirmation in those sad, mournful, unflinching eyes, she sank, without word or sound, down in a faint upon the floor. One sister sat down on an ottoman, and covered her face, to try and realise it. That was Sophy. Helen threw herself on the sofa, and burying her head in the pillows, tried to stifle the screams and moans which shook her frame.

The nurse stood silent. She had not told ALL.

“Tell me,” said Sophy, looking up, and speaking in a hoarse voice, which told of the inward pain, “tell me, nurse! Is he DEAD, did you say? Have you sent for a doctor? Oh! send for one, send for one,” continued she, her voice rising to shrillness, and starting to her feet. Helen lifted herself up, and looked, with breathless waiting, towards nurse.

“My dears, he is dead! But I have sent for a doctor. I have done all I could.”

“When did he—when did they bring him home?” asked Sophy.

“Perhaps ten minutes ago. Before you rang for Parker.”

“How did he die? Where did they find him? He looked so well. He always seemed so strong. Oh! are you sure he is dead?”

She went towards the door. Nurse laid her hand on her arm.

“Miss Sophy, I have not told you all. Can you bear to hear it? Remember, master is in the next room, and he knows nothing yet. Come, you must help me to tell him. Now, be quiet, dear! It was no common death he died!” She looked in her face as if trying to convey her meaning by her eyes.

Sophy’s lips moved, but nurse could hear no sound.

“He has been shot as he was coming home along Turner Street, tonight.”

Sophy went on with the motion of her lips, twitching them almost convulsively.

“My dear, you must rouse yourself, and remember your father and mother have yet to be told. Speak! Miss Sophy!”

But she could not; her whole face worked involuntarily. The nurse left the room, and almost immediately brought back some sal-volatile and water. Sophy drank it eagerly, and gave one or two deep gasps. Then she spoke in a calm, unnatural voice.

“What do you want me to do, nurse? Go to Helen and poor Amy. See, they want help.”

“Poor creatures! we must let them alone for a bit. You must go to master; that’s what I want you to do, Miss Sophy. You must break it to him, poor old gentleman! Come, he’s asleep in the dining-room, and the men are waiting to speak to him.”

Sophy went mechanically to the dining-room door.

“Oh! I cannot go in. I cannot tell him. What must I say?”

“I’ll come with you, Miss Sophy. Break it to him by degrees.”

“I can’t, nurse. My head throbs so, I shall be sure to say the wrong thing.”

However, she opened the door. There sat her father, the shaded light of the candle-lamp falling upon, and softening his marked features, while his snowy hair contrasted well with the deep crimson morocco of the chair. The newspaper he had been reading had dropped on the carpet by his side. He breathed regularly and deeply.

At that instant the words of Mrs. Hemans’s song came full in Sophy’s mind—

“Ye know not what ye do, That call the slumberer back From the realms unseen by you, To life’s dim weary track.”

But this life’s track would be to the bereaved father something more than dim and weary, hereafter.

“Papa,” said she softly. He did not stir.

“Papa!” she exclaimed, somewhat louder.

He started up, half awake.

“Tea is ready, is it?” and he yawned.

“No! papa, but something very dreadful—very sad, has happened!”

He was gaping so loud that he did not catch the words she uttered, and did not see the expression of her face.

“Master Henry has not come back,” said nurse. Her voice, heard in unusual speech to him, arrested his attention, and rubbing his eyes, he looked at the servant.

“Harry! oh, no! he had to attend a meeting of the masters about these cursed turn-outs. I don’t expect him yet. What are you looking at me so strangely for, Sophy?”

“O papa, Harry is come back,” said she, bursting into tears.

“What do you mean?” said he, startled into an impatient consciousness that something was wrong. “One of you says he is not come home, and the other says he is. Now, that’s nonsense! Tell me at once what’s the matter. Did he go on horseback to town? Is he thrown? Speak, child, can’t you?”

“No! he’s not been thrown, papa,” said Sophy sadly.

“But he’s badly hurt,” put in the nurse, desirous to be drawing his anxiety to a point.

“Hurt? Where? How? Have you sent for a doctor?” said he, hastily rising, as if to leave the room.

“Yes, papa, we’ve sent for a doctor—but I’m afraid–I believe it’s of no use.”

He looked at her for a moment, and in her face he read the truth. His son, his only son, was dead.

He sank back in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, and bowed his head upon the table. The strong mahogany dining-table shook and rattled under his agony.

Sophy went and put her arms round his bowed neck.

“Go! you are not Harry,” said he; but the action roused him.

“Where is he? where is the”—said he, with his strong face set into the lines of anguish, by two minutes of such intense woe.

“In the servants’ hall,” said nurse. “Two policemen and another man brought him home. They would be glad to speak to you when you are able, sir.”

“I am now able,” replied he. At first when he stood up he tottered. But steadying himself, he walked, as firmly as a soldier on drill, to the door. Then he turned back and poured out a glass of wine from the decanter which yet remained on the table. His eye caught the wine-glass which Harry had used but two or three hours before. He sighed a long quivering sigh, and then mastering himself again, he left the room.

“You had better go back to your sisters, Miss Sophy,” said nurse.

Miss Carson went. She could not face death yet.

The nurse followed Mr. Carson to the servants’ hall. There on their dinner-table lay the poor dead body. The men who had brought it were sitting near the fire, while several of the servants stood round the table, gazing at the remains.

THE REMAINS!

One or two were crying; one or two were whispering; awed into a strange stillness of voice and action by the presence of the dead. When Mr. Carson came in they all drew back and looked at him with the reverence due to sorrow.

He went forward and gazed long and fondly on the calm, dead face; then he bent down and kissed the lips yet crimson with life. The policemen had advanced, and stood ready to be questioned. But at first the old man’s mind could only take in the idea of death; slowly, slowly came the conception of violence, of murder. “How did he die?” he groaned forth.

The policemen looked at each other. Then one began, and stated that having heard the report of a gun in Turner Street, he had turned down that way (a lonely, unfrequented way Mr. Carson knew, but a short cut to his garden door, of which Harry had a key); that as he (the policeman) came nearer, he had heard footsteps as of a man running away; but the evening was so dark (the moon not having yet risen) that he could see no one twenty yards off. That he had even been startled when close to the body by seeing it lying across the path at his feet. That he had sprung his rattle; and when another policeman came up, by the light of the lantern they had discovered who it was that had been killed. That they believed him to be dead when they first took him up, as he had never moved, spoken, or breathed. That intelligence of the murder had been sent to the superintendent, who would probably soon be here. That two or three policemen were still about the place where the murder was committed, seeking out for some trace of the murderer. Having said this, they stopped speaking.

Mr. Carson had listened attentively, never taking his eyes off the dead body. When they had ended, he said—

“Where was he shot?”

They lifted up some of the thick chestnut curls, and showed a blue spot (you could hardly call it a hole, the flesh had closed so much over it) in the left temple. A deadly aim! And yet it was so dark a night!

“He must have been close upon him,” said one policeman.

“And have had him between him and the sky,” added the other.

There was a little commotion at the door of the room, and there stood poor Mrs. Carson, the mother.

She had heard unusual noises in the house, and had sent down her maid (much more a companion to her than her highly-educated daughters) to discover what was going on. But the maid either forgot, or dreaded, to return; and with nervous impatience Mrs. Carson came down herself, and had traced the hum and buzz of voices to the servants’ hall.

Mr. Carson turned round. But he could not leave the dead for any one living.

“Take her away, nurse. It is no sight for her. Tell Miss Sophy to go to her mother.” His eyes were again fixed on the dead face of his son.

Presently Mrs. Carson’s hysterical cries were heard all over the house. Her husband shuddered at the outward expression of the agony which was rending his heart.

Then the police superintendent came, and after him the doctor. The latter went through all the forms of ascertaining death, without uttering a word, and when at the conclusion of the operation of opening a vein, from which no blood flowed, he shook his head, all present understood the confirmation of their previous belief. The superintendent asked to speak to Mr. Carson in private.

“It was just what I was going to request of you,” answered he; so he led the way into the dining-room, with the wine-glass still on the table.

The door was carefully shut, and both sat down, each apparently waiting for the other to begin.

At last Mr. Carson spoke.

“You probably have heard that I am a rich man.”

The superintendent bowed in assent.

“Well, sir, half—nay, if necessary, the whole of my fortune I will give to have the murderer brought to the gallows.”

“Every exertion, you may be sure, sir, shall be used on our part; but probably offering a handsome reward might accelerate the discovery of the murderer. But what I wanted particularly to tell you, sir, is that one of my men has already got some clue, and that another (who accompanied me here) has within this quarter of an hour found a gun in the field which the murderer crossed, and which he probably threw away when pursued, as encumbering his flight. I have not the smallest doubt of discovering the murderer.”

“What do you call a handsome reward?” said Mr. Carson.

“Well, sir, three, or five hundred pounds is a munificent reward: more than will probably be required as a temptation to any accomplice.”

“Make it a thousand,” said Mr. Carson decisively. “It’s the doing of those damned turn-outs.”

“I imagine not,” said the superintendent. “Some days ago the man I was naming to you before, reported to the inspector when he came on his beat, that he had to separate your son from a young man, who by his dress he believed to be employed in a foundry; that the man had thrown Mr. Carson down, and seemed inclined to proceed to more violence, when the policeman came up and interfered. Indeed, my man wished to give him in charge for an assault, but Mr. Carson would not allow that to be done.”

“Just like him!—noble fellow!” murmured the father.

“But after your son had left, the man made use of some pretty strong threats. And it’s rather a curious coincidence that this scuffle took place in the very same spot where the murder was committed; in Turner Street.”

There was some one knocking at the door of the room. It was Sophy, who beckoned her father out, and then asked him, in an awestruck whisper, to come upstairs and speak to her mother.

“She will not leave Harry, and talks so strangely. Indeed—indeed— papa, I think she has lost her senses.”

And the poor girl sobbed bitterly.

“Where is she?” asked Mr. Carson.

“In his room.”

They went upstairs rapidly and silently. It was a large comfortable bedroom; too large to be well lighted by the flaring, flickering kitchen-candle which had been hastily snatched up, and now stood on the dressing-table.

On the bed, surrounded by its heavy, pall-like green curtains, lay the dead son. They had carried him up, and laid him down, as tenderly as though they feared to waken him; and, indeed, it looked more like sleep than death, so very calm and full of repose was the face. You saw, too, the chiselled beauty of the features much more perfectly than when the brilliant colouring of life had distracted your attention. There was a peace about him which told that death had come too instantaneously to give any previous pain.

In a chair, at the head of the bed, sat the mother—smiling. She held one of the hands (rapidly stiffening, even in her warm grasp), and gently stroked the back of it, with the endearing caress she had used to all her children when young.

“I am glad you are come,” said she, looking up at her husband, and still smiling. “Harry is so full of fun, he always has something new to amuse us with; and now he pretends he is asleep, and that we can’t waken him. Look! he is smiling now; he hears I have found him out. Look!”

And, in truth, the lips, in the rest of death, did look as though they wore a smile, and the waving light of the unsnuffed candle almost made them seem to move.

“Look, Amy,” said she to her youngest child, who knelt at her feet, trying to soothe her, by kissing her garments.

“Oh, he was always a rogue! You remember, don’t you, love? how full of play he was as a baby; hiding his face under my arm, when you wanted to play with him. Always a rogue, Harry!”

“We must get her away, sir,” said nurse; “you know there is much to be done before”—

“I understand, nurse.” said the father, hastily interrupting her in dread of the distinct words which would tell of the changes of mortality.

“Come, love,” said he to his wife. “I want you to come with me. I want to speak to you downstairs.”

“I’m coming,” said she, rising; “perhaps, after all, nurse, he’s really tired, and would be glad to sleep. Don’t let him get cold, though,—he feels rather chilly,” continued she, after she had bent down, and kissed the pale lips.

Her husband put his arm around her waist, and they left the room. Then the three sisters burst into unrestrained wailings. They were startled into the reality of life and death. And yet in the midst of shrieks and moans, of shivering and chattering of teeth, Sophy’s eye caught the calm beauty of the dead; so calm amidst such violence, and she hushed her emotion.

“Come,” said she to her sisters, “nurse wants us to go; and besides, we ought to be with mamma. Papa told the man he was talking to, when I went for him, to wait, and she must not be left.”

Meanwhile, the superintendent had taken a candle, and was examining the engravings that hung round the dining-room. It was so common to him to be acquainted with crime, that he was far from feeling all his interest absorbed in the present case of violence, although he could not help having much anxiety to detect the murderer. He was busy looking at the only oil-painting in the room (a youth of eighteen or so, in a fancy dress), and conjecturing its identity with the young man so mysteriously dead, when the door opened, and Mr. Carson returned. Stern as he had looked before leaving the room, he looked far sterner now. His face was hardened into deep-purposed wrath.

“I beg your pardon, sir, for leaving you.” The superintendent bowed. They sat down, and spoke long together. One by one the policemen were called in, and questioned.

All through the night there was bustle and commotion in the house. Nobody thought of going to bed. It seemed strange to Sophy to hear nurse summoned from her mother’s side to supper, in the middle of the night, and still stranger that she could go. The necessity of eating and drinking seemed out of place in the house of death.

When night was passing into morning, the dining-room door opened, and two persons’ steps were heard along the hall. The superintendent was leaving at last. Mr. Carson stood on the front-door step, feeling the refreshment of the caller morning air, and seeing the starlight fade away into dawn.

“You will not forget,” said he. “I trust to you.” The policeman bowed.

“Spare no money. The only purpose for which I now value wealth is to have the murderer arrested, and brought to justice. My hope in life now is to see him sentenced to death. Offer any rewards. Name a thousand pounds in the placards. Come to me at any hour, night or day, if that be required. All I ask of you is, to get the murderer hanged. Next week, if possible—to-day is Friday. Surely with the clues you already possess, you can muster up evidence sufficient to have him tried next week.”

“He may easily request an adjournment of his trial, on the ground of the shortness of the notice,” said the superintendent.

“Oppose it, if possible. I will see that the first lawyers are employed. I shall know no rest while he lives.”

“Everything shall be done, sir.”

“You will arrange with the coroner. Ten o’clock if convenient.”

The superintendent took leave.

Mr. Carson stood on the step, dreading to shut out the light and air, and return into the haunted, gloomy house.

“My son! my son!” he said at last. “But you shall be avenged, my poor murdered boy.”

Ay! to avenge his wrongs the murderer had singled out his victim, and with one fell action had taken away the life that God had given. To avenge his child’s death, the old man lived on; with the single purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge?

Are ye worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto?

Oh! Orestes, you would have made a very tolerable Christian of the nineteenth century!

XIX. JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION,

“Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which, all confused, I could not know, Whether I suffered or I did, For all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe.” —COLERIDGE.

I left Mary, on that same Thursday night which left its burden of woe at Mr. Carson’s threshold, haunted with depressing thoughts. All through the night she tossed restlessly about, trying to get quit of the ideas that harassed her, and longing for the light when she could rise, and find some employment. But just as dawn began to appear, she became more quiet, and fell into a sound heavy sleep, which lasted till she was sure it was late in the morning, by the full light that shone in.

She dressed hastily, and heard the neighbouring church clock strike eight. It was far too late to do as she had planned (after inquiring how Alice was, to return and tell Margaret), and she accordingly went in to inform the latter of her change of purpose, and the cause of it; but on entering the house she found Job sitting alone, looking sad enough. She told him what she came for.

“Margaret, wench! why, she’s been gone to Wilson’s these two hours. Ay! sure, you did say last night you would go; but she could na rest in her bed, so was off betimes this morning.”

Mary could do nothing but feel guilty of her long morning nap, and hasten to follow Margaret’s steps; for late as it was, she felt she could not settle well to her work, unless she learnt how kind good Alice Wilson was going on.

So, eating her crust-of-bread breakfast, she passed rapidly along the street. She remembered afterwards the little groups of people she had seen, eagerly hearing, and imparting news; but at the time her only care was to hasten on her way, in dread of a reprimand from Miss Simmonds.

She went into the house at Jane Wilson’s, her heart at the instant giving a strange knock, and sending the rosy flush into her face, at the thought that Jem might possibly be inside the door. But I do assure you, she had not thought of it before. Impatient and loving as she was, her solicitude about Alice on that hurried morning had not been mingled with any thought of him.

Her heart need not have leaped, her colour need not have rushed so painfully to her cheeks, for he was not there. There was the round table, with a cup and saucer, which had evidently been used, and there was Jane Wilson sitting on the other side, crying quietly, while she ate her breakfast with a sort of unconscious appetite. And there was Mrs. Davenport washing away at a nightcap or so, which, by their simple, old-world make, Mary knew at a glance were Alice’s. But nothing—no one else.

Alice was much the same, or rather better of the two, they told her: at any rate she could speak, though it was sad rambling talk. Would Mary like to see her?

Of course she would. Many are interested by seeing their friends under the new aspect of illness; and among the poor there is no wholesome fear of injury or excitement to restrain this wish.

So Mary went upstairs, accompanied by Mrs. Davenport, wringing the suds off her hands, and speaking in a loud whisper far more audible than her usual voice.

“I mun be hastening home, but I’ll come again tonight, time enough to iron her cap; ‘twould be a sin and a shame if we let her go dirty now she’s ill, when she’s been so rare and clean all her life long. But she’s sadly forsaken, poor thing! She’ll not know you, Mary; she knows none of us.”

The room upstairs held two beds, one superior in the grandeur of four posts and checked curtains to the other, which had been occupied by the twins in their brief lifetime. The smaller had been Alice’s bed since she had lived there; but with the natural reverence to one “stricken of God and afflicted,” she had been installed, since her paralytic stroke the evening before, in the larger and grander bed; while Jane Wilson had taken her short broken rest on the little pallet.

Margaret came forwards to meet her friend, whom she half expected, and whose step she knew. Mrs. Davenport returned to her washing.

The two girls did not speak; the presence of Alice awed them into silence. There she lay with the rosy colour, absent from her face since the days of childhood, flushed once more into it by her sickness nigh unto death. She lay on the affected side, and with her other arm she was constantly sawing the air, not exactly in a restless manner, but in a monotonous, incessant way, very trying to a watcher. She was talking away, too, almost as constantly, in a low indistinct tone. But her face, her profiled countenance, looked calm and smiling, even interested by the ideas that were passing through her clouded mind.

“Listen!” said Margaret, as she stooped her head down to catch the muttered words more distinctly.

“What will mother say? The bees are turning homeward for th’ last time, and we’ve a terrible long bit to go yet. See! here’s a linnet’s nest in this gorse-bush. Th’ hen bird is on it. Look at her bright eyes, she won’t stir. Ay! we mun hurry home. Won’t mother be pleased with the bonny lot of heather we’ve got! Make haste, Sally, maybe we shall have cockles for supper. I saw th’ cockleman’s donkey turn up our way fra’ Arnside.”

Margaret touched Mary’s hand, and the pressure in return told her that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing: she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as many years slept in a grassy grave in the little churchyard beyond Burton.

Alice’s face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent.

“O Sally! I wish we’d told her. She thinks we were in church all morning, and we’ve gone on deceiving her. If we’d told her at first how it was—how sweet th’ hawthorn smelt through the open church door, and how we were on th’ last bench in the aisle, and how it were the first butterfly we’d seen this spring, and how it flew into th’ very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish we’d told her. I’ll go to her next time she comes in sight, and say, ‘Mother, we were naughty last Sabbath.’”

She stopped, and a few tears came stealing down the old withered cheek, at the thought of the temptation and deceit of her childhood. Surely many sins could not have darkened that innocent childlike spirit since. Mary found a red-spotted pocket-handkerchief, and put it into the hand which sought about for something to wipe away the trickling tears. She took it with a gentle murmur.

“Thank you, mother.”

Mary pulled Margaret away from the bed.

“Don’t you think she’s happy, Margaret?”

“Ay! that I do, bless her. She feels no pain, and knows nought of her present state. Oh! that I could see, Mary! I try and be patient with her afore me, but I’d give aught I have to see her, and see what she wants. I am so useless! I mean to stay here as long as Jane Wilson is alone; and I would fain be here all tonight, but”—

“I’ll come,” said Mary decidedly.

“Mrs. Davenport said she’d come again, but she’s hardworked all day”—

“I’ll come,” repeated Mary.

“Do!” said Margaret, “and I’ll be here till you come. Maybe, Jem and you could take th’ night between you, and Jane Wilson might get a bit of sound sleep in his bed; for she were up and down the better part of last night, and just when she were in a sound sleep this morning, between two and three, Jem came home, and th’ sound o’ his voice roused her in a minute.”

“Where had he been till that time o’ night?” asked Mary.

“Nay! it were none of my business; and, indeed, I never saw him till he came in here to see Alice. He were in again this morning, and seemed sadly downcast. But you’ll, maybe, manage to comfort him tonight, Mary,” said Margaret, smiling, while a ray of hope glimmered in Mary’s heart, and she almost felt glad, for an instant, of the occasion which would at last bring them together. Oh! happy night! when would it come? Many hours had yet to pass.

Then she saw Alice, and repented, with a bitter self-reproach. But she could not help having gladness in the depths of her heart, blame herself as she would. So she tried not to think, as she hurried along to Miss Simmonds’, with a dancing step of lightness.

She was late—that she knew she should be. Miss Simmonds was vexed and cross. That also she had anticipated, and had intended to smooth her raven down by extraordinary diligence and attention. But there was something about the girls she did not understand—had not anticipated. They stopped talking when she came in; or rather, I should say, stopped listening, for Sally Leadbitter was the talker to whom they were hearkening with deepest attention. At first they eyed Mary, as if she had acquired some new interest to them since the day before. Then they began to whisper; and, absorbed as Mary had been in her own thoughts, she could not help becoming aware that it was of her they spoke.

At last Sally Leadbitter asked Mary if she had heard the news?

“No! What news?” answered she.

The girls looked at each other with gloomy mystery. Sally went on.

“Have you not heard that young Mr. Carson was murdered last night?”

Mary’s lips could not utter a negative, but no one who looked at her pale and terror-stricken face could have doubted that she had not heard before of the fearful occurrence.

Oh, it is terrible, that sudden information, that one you have known has met with a bloody death! You seem to shrink from the world where such deeds can be committed, and to grow sick with the idea of the violent and wicked men of earth. Much as Mary had learned to dread him lately, now he was dead (and dead in such a manner) her feeling was that of oppressive sorrow for him.

The room went round and round, and she felt as though she should faint; but Miss Simmonds came in, bringing a waft of fresher air as she opened the door, to refresh the body, and the certainty of a scolding for inattention to brace the sinking mind. She, too, was full of the morning’s news.

“Have you heard any more of this horrid affair, Miss Barton?” asked she, as she settled to her work.

Mary tried to speak; at first she could not, and when she succeeded in uttering a sentence, it seemed as though it were not her own voice that spoke.

“No, ma’am, I never heard of it till this minute.”

“Dear! that’s strange, for every one is up about it. I hope the murderer will be found out, that I do. Such a handsome young man to be killed as he was. I hope the wretch that did it may be hanged as high as Haman.”

One of the girls reminded them that the assizes came on next week.

“Ay,” replied Miss Simmonds, “and the milkman told me they will catch the wretch, and have him tried and hung in less than a week. Serve him right, whoever he is. Such a handsome young man as he was.”

Then each began to communicate to Miss Simmonds the various reports they had heard.

Suddenly she burst out—

“Miss Barton! as I live, dropping tears on that new silk gown of Mrs. Hawkes’! Don’t you know they will stain, and make it shabby for ever? Crying like a baby, because a handsome young man meets with an untimely end. For shame of yourself, miss! Mind your character and your work, if you please. Or if you must cry” (seeing her scolding rather increased the flow of Mary’s tears, than otherwise), “take this print to cry over. That won’t be marked like this beautiful silk,” rubbing it, as if she loved it, with a clean pocket-handkerchief, in order to soften the edges of the hard round drops.

Mary took the print, and, naturally enough, having had leave given her to cry over it, rather checked the inclination to weep.

Everybody was full of the one subject. The girl sent out to match silk, came back with the account gathered at the shop, of the coroner’s inquest then sitting; the ladies who called to speak about gowns first began about the murder, and mingled details of that, with directions for their dresses. Mary felt as though the haunting horror were a nightmare, a fearful dream, from which awakening would relieve her. The picture of the murdered body, far more ghastly than the reality, seemed to swim in the air before her eyes. Sally Leadbitter looked and spoke of her, almost accusingly, and made no secret now of Mary’s conduct, more blamable to her fellow-workwomen for its latter changeableness, than for its former giddy flirting.

“Poor young gentleman,” said one, as Sally recounted Mary’s last interview with Mr. Carson.

“What a shame!” exclaimed another, looking indignantly at Mary.

“That’s what I call regular jilting,” said a third. “And he lying cold and bloody in his coffin now!”

Mary was more thankful than she could express, when Miss Simmonds returned, to put a stop to Sally’s communications, and to check the remarks of the girls.

She longed for the peace of Alice’s sick-room. No more thinking with infinite delight of her anticipated meeting with Jem; she felt too much shocked for that now; but longing for peace and kindness, for the images of rest and beauty, and sinless times long ago, which the poor old woman’s rambling presented, she wished to be as near death as Alice; and to have struggled through this world, whose sufferings she had early learnt, and whose crimes now seemed pressing close upon her. Old texts from the Bible, that her mother used to read (or rather spell out) aloud in the days of childhood, came up to her memory. “Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,” etc. And it was to that world Alice was hastening! Oh! that she were Alice!

I must return to the Wilsons’ house, which was far from being the abode of peace that Mary was picturing it to herself. You remember the reward Mr. Carson offered for the apprehension of the murderer of his son? It was in itself a temptation, and to aid its efficacy came the natural sympathy for the aged parents mourning for their child, for the young man cut off in the flower of his days; and besides this, there is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty. This feeling, I am sure, gives much impetus to the police. Their senses are ever and always on the quivive, and they enjoy the collecting and collating evidence, and the life of adventure they experience: a continual unwinding of Jack Sheppard romances, always interesting to the vulgar and uneducated mind, to which the outward signs and tokens of crime are ever exciting.

There was no lack of clue or evidence at the coroner’s inquest that morning. The shot, the finding of the body, the subsequent discovery of the gun, were rapidly deposed to; and then the policeman who had interrupted the quarrel between Jem Wilson and the murdered young man was brought forward, and gave his evidence, clear, simple, and straightforward. The coroner had no hesitation, the jury had none, but the verdict was cautiously worded. “Wilful murder against some person unknown.”

This very cautiousness, when he deemed the thing so sure as to require no caution, irritated Mr. Carson. It did not soothe him that the superintendent called the verdict a mere form,—exhibited a warrant empowering him to seize the body of Jem Wilson committed on suspicion,—declared his intention of employing a well-known officer in the Detective Service to ascertain the ownership of the gun, and to collect other evidence, especially as regarded the young woman, about whom the policeman deposed that the quarrel had taken place; Mr. Carson was still excited and irritable; restless in body and mind. He made every preparation for the accusation of Jem the following morning before the magistrates: he engaged attorneys skilled in criminal practice to watch the case and prepare briefs; he wrote to celebrated barristers coming the Northern Circuit, to bespeak their services. A speedy conviction, a speedy execution, seemed to be the only things that would satisfy his craving thirst for blood. He would have fain been policeman, magistrate, accusing speaker, all; but most of all, the judge, rising with full sentence of death on his lips.

That afternoon, as Jane Wilson had begun to feel the effect of a night’s disturbed rest, evinced in frequent droppings off to sleep, while she sat by her sister-in-law’s bedside, lulled by the incessant crooning of the invalid’s feeble voice, she was startled by a man speaking in the house-place below, who, wearied of knocking at the door, without obtaining any answer, had entered and was calling lustily for—

“Missis! missis!”

When Mrs. Wilson caught a glimpse of the intruder through the stair-rails, she at once saw he was a stranger, a working-man, it might be a fellow-labourer with her son, for his dress was grimy enough for the supposition. He held a gun in his hand.

“May I make bold to ask if this gun belongs to your son?”

She first looked at the man, and then, weary and half asleep, not seeing any reason for refusing to answer the inquiry, she moved forward to examine it, talking while she looked for certain old-fashioned ornaments on the stock. “It looks like his; ay, it is his, sure enough. I could speak to it anywhere by these marks. You see it were his grandfather’s as were gamekeeper to some one up in th’ north; and they don’t make guns so smart nowadays. But, how comed you by it? He sets great store on it. Is he bound for th’ shooting-gallery? He is not, for sure, now his aunt is so ill, and me left all alone”; and the immediate cause of her anxiety being thus recalled to her mind, she entered on a long story of Alice’s illness, interspersed with recollections of her husband’s and her children’s deaths.

The disguised policeman listened for a minute or two, to glean any further information he could; and then, saying he was in a hurry, he turned to go away. She followed him to the door, still telling him her troubles, and was never struck, until it was too late to ask the reason, with the unaccountableness of his conduct, in carrying the gun away with him. Then, as she heavily climbed the stairs, she put away the wonder and the thought about his conduct, by determining to believe he was some workman with whom her son had made some arrangement about shooting at the gallery; or mending the old weapon; or something or other. She had enough to fret her, without moidering herself about old guns. Jem had given it to him to bring it to her; so it was safe enough; or, if it was not, why she should be glad never to set eyes on it again, for she could not abide firearms, they were so apt to shoot people.

So, comforting herself for the want of thought in not making further inquiry, she fell off into another dose, feverish, dream-haunted, and unrefreshing.

Meanwhile, the policeman walked off with his prize, with an odd mixture of feelings; a little contempt, a little disappointment, and a good deal of pity. The contempt and the disappointment were caused by the widow’s easy admission of the gun being her son’s property, and her manner of identifying it by the ornaments. He liked an attempt to baffle him; he was accustomed to it; it gave some exercise to his wits and his shrewdness. There would be no fun in fox-hunting, if Reynard yielded himself up without any effort to escape. Then, again, his mother’s milk was yet in him, policeman, officer of the Detective Service though he was; and he felt sorry for the old woman, whose “softness” had given such material assistance in identifying her son as the murderer. However, he conveyed the gun, and the intelligence he had gained, to the superintendent; and the result was, that, in a short time afterwards, three policemen went to the works at which Jem was foreman, and announced their errand to the astonished overseer, who directed them to the part of the foundry where Jem was then superintending a casting.

Dark, black were the walls, the ground, the faces around them, as they crossed the yard. But, in the furnace-house, a deep and lurid red glared over all; the furnace roared with mighty flame. The men, like demons, in their fire-and-soot colouring, stood swart around, awaiting the moment when the tons of solid iron should have melted down into fiery liquid, fit to be poured, with still, heavy sound, into the delicate moulding of fine black sand, prepared to receive it. The heat was intense, and the red glare grew every instant more fierce; the policemen stood awed with the novel sight. Then, black figures, holding strange-shaped bucket-shovels, came athwart the deep-red furnace light, and clear and brilliant flowed forth the iron into the appropriate mould. The buzz of voices rose again; there was time to speak, and gasp, and wipe the brows; and then one by one, the men dispersed to some other branch of their employment.

No. B72 pointed out Jem as the man he had seen engaged in a scuffle with Mr. Carson, and then the other two stepped forward and arrested him, stating of what he was accused, and the grounds of the accusation. He offered no resistance, though he seemed surprised; but calling a fellow-workman to him, he briefly requested him to tell his mother he had got into trouble, and could not return home at present. He did not wish her to hear more at first.

So Mrs. Wilson’s sleep was next interrupted in almost an exactly similar way to the last, like a recurring nightmare.

“Missis! missis!” some one called out from below.

Again it was a workman, but this time a blacker-looking one than before.

“What don ye want?” said she peevishly.

“Only nothing but”—stammered the man, a kind-hearted matter-of-fact person, with no invention, but a great deal of sympathy.

“Well, speak out, can’t ye, and ha’ done with it?”

“Jem’s in trouble,” said he, repeating Jem’s very words, as he could think of no others.

“Trouble?” said the mother, in a high-pitched voice of distress. “Trouble! God help me, trouble will never end, I think. What d’ye mean by trouble? Speak out, man, can’t ye? Is he ill? My boy! tell me, is he ill?” in a hurried voice of terror.

“Na, na, that’s not it. He’s well enough. All he bade me say was, ‘Tell mother I’m in trouble, and can’t come home tonight.’”

“Not come home tonight! And what am I to do with Alice? I can’t go on, wearing my life out wi’ watching. He might come and help me.”

“I tell you he can’t,” said the man.

“Can’t, and he is well, you say? Stuff! It’s just that he’s getten like other young men, and wants to go a-larking. But I’ll give it him when he comes back.”

The man turned to go; he durst not trust himself to speak in Jem’s justification. But she would not let him off.

She stood between him and the door, as she said—

“Yo shall not go till yo’ve told me what he’s after. I can see plain enough you know, and I’ll know too, before I’ve done.”

“You’ll know soon enough, missis!”

“I’ll know now, I tell ye. What’s up that he can’t come home and help me nurse? Me, as never got a wink o’ sleep last night wi’ watching.”

“Well, if you will have it out,” said the poor badgered man, “the police have got hold on him.”

“On my Jem!” said the enraged mother. “You’re a downright liar, and that’s what you are. My Jem, as never did harm to any one in his life. You’re a liar, that’s what you are.”

“He’s done harm enough now,” said the man, angry in his turn, “for there’s good evidence he murdered young Carson, as was shot last night.”

She staggered forward to strike the man for telling the terrible truth; but the weakness of old age, of motherly agony, overcame her, and she sank down on a chair, and covered her face. He could not leave her.

When next she spoke, it was in an imploring, feeble, childlike voice.

“O master, say you’re only joking. I ax your pardon if I have vexed ye, but please say you’re only joking. You don’t know what Jem is to me.”

She looked humbly, anxiously up to him.

“I wish I were only joking, missis; but it’s true as I say. They’ve taken him up on charge of murder. It were his gun as were found near th’ place; and one o’ the police heard him quarrelling with Mr. Carson a few days back, about a girl.”

“About a girl!” broke in the mother, once more indignant, though too feeble to show it as before. “My Jem was as steady as”—she hesitated for a comparison wherewith to finish, and then repeated, “as steady as Lucifer, and he were an angel, you know. My Jem was not one to quarrel about a girl.”

“Ay, but it was that, though. They’d got her name quite pat. The man had heard all they said. Mary Barton was her name, whoever she may be.”

“Mary Barton! the dirty hussy! to bring my Jem into trouble of this kind. I’ll give it her well when I see her: that I will. Oh! my poor Jem!” rocking herself to and fro. “And what about the gun? What did ye say about that?”

“His gun were found on th’ spot where the murder were done.”

“That’s a lie for one, then. A man has got the gun now, safe and sound. I saw it not an hour ago.”

The man shook his head.

“Yes, he has indeed. A friend o’ Jem’s, as he’d lent it to.”

“Did you know the chap?” asked the man, who was really anxious for Jem’s exculpation, and caught a gleam of hope from her last speech.

“No! I can’t say as I did. But he were put on as a workman.”

“It’s maybe only one of them policemen, disguised.”

“Nay; they’d never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on my own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother’s milk; and that th’ Bible forbids.”

“I don’t know,” replied the man.

Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him, but go he would. And she was alone.

She never for an instant believed Jem guilty: she would have doubted if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and at times anger, took possession of her mind. She told the unconscious Alice, hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was disappointed, because, still smiling and calm, she murmured of her mother, and the happy days of infancy.

XX. MARY’S DREAM—AND THE AWAKENING.

“I saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ”Twas there he died for thee!’

Oh! weeping heart! Oh! bleeding heart! What boots thy pity now? Bid from his eyes that shade depart, That death-damp from his brow!” —”THE BIRTLE TRAGEDY.”

So there was no more peace in the house of sickness except to Alice, the dying Alice.

But Mary knew nothing of the afternoon’s occurrences; and gladly did she breathe in the fresh air, as she left Miss Simmonds’ house, to hasten to the Wilsons’. The very change, from the indoor to the outdoor atmosphere, seemed to alter the current of her thoughts. She thought less of the dreadful subject which had so haunted her all day; she cared less for the upbraiding speeches of her fellow-workwomen; the old association of comfort and sympathy received from Alice gave her the idea that, even now, her bodily presence would soothe and compose those who were in trouble, changed, unconscious, and absent though her spirit might be.

Then, again, she reproached herself a little for the feeling of pleasure she experienced, in thinking that he whom she dreaded could never more beset her path; in the security with which she could pass each street corner—each shop, where he used to lie in ambush. Oh! beating heart! was there no other little thought of joy lurking within, to gladden the very air without! Was she not going to meet, to see, to hear Jem; and could they fail at last to understand each other’s loving hearts!

She softly lifted the latch, with the privilege of friendship. HE was not there, but his mother was standing by the fire, stirring some little mess or other. Never mind! he would come soon: and with an unmixed desire to do her graceful duty to all belonging to him, she stepped lightly forwards, unheard by the old lady, who was partly occupied by the simmering, bubbling sound of her bit of cookery; but more with her own sad thoughts, and wailing, half-uttered murmurings.

Mary took off bonnet and shawl with speed, and advancing, made Mrs. Wilson conscious of her presence, by saying—

“Let me do that for you. I’m sure you mun be tired.”

Mrs. Wilson slowly turned round, and her eyes gleamed like those of a pent-up wild beast, as she recognised her visitor.

“And is it thee that dares set foot in this house, after what has come to pass? Is it not enough to have robbed me of my boy with thy arts and thy profligacy, but thou must come here to crow over me—me—his mother? Dost thou know where he is, thou bad hussy, with thy great blue eyes and yellow hair, to lead men on to ruin? Out upon thee with thy angel’s face, thou whited sepulchre! Dost thou know where Jem is, all through thee?”

“No!” quivered out poor Mary, scarcely conscious that she spoke, so daunted, so terrified was she by the indignant mother’s greeting.

“He’s lying in th’ New Bailey,” slowly and distinctly spoke the mother, watching the effect of her words, as if believing in their infinite power to pain. “There he lies, waiting to take his trial for murdering young Mr. Carson.”

There was no answer; but such a blanched face, such wild, distended eyes, such trembling limbs, instinctively seeking support!

“Did you know Mr. Carson as now lies dead?” continued the merciless woman. “Folk say you did, and knew him but too well. And that for the sake of such as you, my precious child shot yon chap. But he did not. I know he did not. They may hang him, but his mother will speak to his innocence with her last dying breath.”

She stopped more from exhaustion than want of words. Mary spoke, but in so changed and choked a voice that the old woman almost started. It seemed as if some third person must be in the room, the voice was so hoarse and strange.

“Please say it again. I don’t quite understand you. What has Jem done? Please to tell me.”

“I never said he had done it. I said, and I’ll swear, that he never did do it. I don’t care who heard ‘em quarrel, or if it is his gun as were found near the body. It’s not my own Jem as would go for to kill any man, choose how a girl had jilted him. My own good Jem, as was a blessing sent upon the house where he was born.” Tears came into the mother’s burning eyes as her heart recurred to the days when she had rocked the cradle of her “first-born”; and then, rapidly passing over events, till the full consciousness of his present situation came upon her, and perhaps annoyed at having shown any softness of character in the presence of the Delilah who had lured him to his danger, she spoke again, and in a sharp tone.

“I told him, and told him to leave off thinking on thee; but he wouldn’t be led by me. Thee! wench! thou wert not good enough to wipe the dust off his feet. A vile, flirting quean as thou art. It’s well thy mother does not know (poor body) what a good-for-nothing thou art.”

“Mother! O mother!” said Mary, as if appealing to the merciful dead. “But I was not good enough for him! I know I was not,” added she, in a voice of touching humility.

For through her heart went tolling the ominous, prophetic words he had used when he had last spoken to her—

“Mary! you’ll maybe hear of me as a drunkard, and maybe as a thief, and maybe as a murderer. Remember! when all are speaking ill of me, yo will have no right to blame me, for it’s your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become.”

And she did not blame him, though she doubted not his guilt; she felt how madly she might act if once jealous of him, and how much cause had she not given him for jealousy, miserable guilty wretch that she was! Speak on, desolate mother. Abuse her as you will. Her broken spirit feels to have merited all.

But her last humble, self-abased words had touched Mrs. Wilson’s heart, sore as it was; and she looked at the snow-pale girl with those piteous eyes, so hopeless of comfort, and she relented in spite of herself.

“Thou seest what comes of light conduct, Mary! It’s thy doing that suspicion has lighted on him, who is as innocent as the babe unborn. Thou’lt have much to answer for if he’s hung. Thou’lt have my death too at thy door!”

Harsh as these words seem, she spoke them in a milder tone of voice than she had yet used. But the idea of Jem on the gallows, Jem dead, took possession of Mary, and she covered her eyes with her wan hands, as if indeed to shut out the fearful sight.

She murmured some words, which, though spoken low, as if choked up from the depths of agony, Jane Wilson caught. “My heart is breaking,” said she feebly. “My heart is breaking.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Wilson. “Don’t talk in that silly way. My heart has a better right to break than yours, and yet I hold up, you see. But, oh dear! oh dear!” with a sudden revulsion of feeling, as the reality of the danger in which her son was placed pressed upon her. “What am I saying? How could I hold up if thou wert gone, Jem? Though I’m as sure as I stand here of thy innocence, if they hang thee, my lad, I will lie down and die!”

She wept aloud with bitter consciousness of the fearful chance awaiting her child. She cried more passionately still.

Mary roused herself up.

“Oh, let me stay with you, at any rate, till we know the end. Dearest Mrs. Wilson, mayn’t I stay?”

The more obstinately and upbraidingly Mrs. Wilson refused, the more Mary pleaded, with ever the same soft entreating cry, “Let me stay with you.” Her stunned soul seem to bound its wishes, for the hour at least, to remaining with one who loved and sorrowed for the same human being that she did.

But no. Mrs. Wilson was inflexible.

“I’ve, maybe, been a bit hard on you, Mary, I’ll own that. But I cannot abide you yet with me. I cannot but remember it’s your giddiness as has wrought this woe. I’ll stay with Alice, and perhaps Mrs. Davenport may come help a bit. I cannot put up with you about me. Goodnight. Tomorrow I may look on you different, maybe. Goodnight.”

And Mary turned out of the house, which had been HIS home, where HE was loved, and mourned for, into the busy, desolate, crowded street, where they were crying halfpenny broadsides, giving an account of the bloody murder, the coroner’s inquest, and a raw-head-and-bloody-bones picture of the suspected murderer, James Wilson.

But Mary heard not; she heeded not. She staggered on like one in a dream. With hung head and tottering steps, she instinctively chose the shortest cut to that home which was to her, in her present state of mind, only the hiding-place of four walls, where she might vent her agony, unseen and unnoticed by the keen unkind world without, but where no welcome, no love, no sympathising tears awaited her.

As she neared that home, within two minutes’ walk of it, her impetuous course was arrested by a light touch on her arm, and turning hastily she saw a little Italian boy with his humble show-box, a white mouse, or some such thing. The setting sun cast its red glow on his face, otherwise the olive complexion would have been very pale; and the glittering tear-drops hung on the long-curled eye-lashes. With his soft voice and pleading looks, he uttered, in his pretty broken English, the words—

“Hungry! so hungry.”

And as if to aid by gesture the effect of the solitary word, he pointed to his mouth, with its white quivering lips.

Mary answered him impatiently, “O lad, hunger is nothing—nothing!”

And she rapidly passed on. But her heart upbraided her the next minute with her unrelenting speech, and she hastily entered her door and seized the scanty remnant of food which the cupboard contained, and she retraced her steps to the place where the little hopeless stranger had sunk down by his mute companion in loneliness and starvation, and was raining down tears as he spoke in some foreign tongue, with low cries for the far distant “Mamma mia!”

With the elasticity of heart belonging to childhood he sprang up as he saw the food the girl brought; she whose face, lovely in its woe, had tempted him first to address her; and, with the graceful courtesy of his country, he looked up and smiled while he kissed her hand, and then poured forth his thanks, and shared her bounty with his little pet companion. She stood an instant, diverted from the thought of her own grief by the sight of his infantine gladness; and then bending down and kissing his smooth forehead, she left him, and sought to be alone with her agony once more.

She re-entered the house, locked the door, and tore off her bonnet, as if greedy of every moment which took her from the full indulgence of painful, despairing thought.

Then she threw herself on the ground, yes, on the hard flags she threw her soft limbs down; and the comb fell out of her hair, and those bright tresses swept the 4dusty floor, while she pillowed and hid her face on her arms, and burst forth into loud, suffocating sobs.

O earth! thou didst seem but a dreary dwelling-place for thy poor child that night. None to comfort, none to pity! And self-reproach gnawing at her heart.

Oh, why did she ever listen to the tempter? Why did she ever give ear to her own suggestions, and cravings after wealth and grandeur? Why had she thought it a fine thing to have a rich lover?

She—she had deserved it all: but he was the victim,—he, the beloved. She could not conjecture, she could not even pause to think who had revealed, or how he had discovered her acquaintance with Harry Carson. It was but too clear, some way or another, he had learnt all; and what would he think of her? No hope of his love,—oh, that she would give up, and be content: it was his life, his precious life, that was threatened! Then she tried to recall the particulars, which, when Mrs. Wilson had given them, had fallen but upon a deafened ear,—something about a gun, a quarrel, which she could not remember clearly. Oh, how terrible to think of his crime, his blood-guiltiness; he who had hitherto been so good, so noble, and now an assassin! And then she shrank from him in thought; and then, with bitter remorse, clung more closely to his image with passionate self-upbraiding. Was it not she who had led him to the pit into which he had fallen? Was she to blame him? She to judge him? Who could tell how maddened he might have been by jealousy; how one moment’s uncontrollable passion might have led him to become a murderer! And she had blamed him in her heart after his last deprecating, imploring, prophetic speech!

Then she burst out crying afresh; and when weary of crying, fell to thinking again. The gallows! The gallows! Black it stood against the burning light which dazzled her shut eyes, press on them as she would. Oh! she was going mad; and for awhile she lay outwardly still, but with the pulses careering through her head with wild vehemence.

And then came a strange forgetfulness of the present, in thought of the long-past times;—of those days when she hid her face on her mother’s pitying, loving bosom, and heard tender words of comfort, be her grief or her error what it might;—of those days when she had felt as if her mother’s love was too mighty not to last for ever;—of those days when hunger had been to her (as to the little stranger she had that evening relieved) something to be thought about, and mourned over;—when Jem and she had played together; he, with the condescension of an older child, and she, with unconscious earnestness, believing that he was as much gratified with important trifles as she was;—when her father was a cheery-hearted man, rich in the love of his wife, and the companionship of his friend;—when (for it still worked round to that), when mother was alive, and HE was not a murderer.

And then Heaven blessed her unaware, and she sank from remembering, to wandering, unconnected thought, and thence to sleep. Yes! it was sleep, though in that strange posture, on that hard cold bed; and she dreamt of the happy times of long ago, and her mother came to her, and kissed her as she lay, and once more the dead were alive again in that happy world of dreams. All was restored to the gladness of childhood, even to the little kitten which had been her playmate and bosom friend then, and which had been long forgotten in her waking hours. All the loved ones were there!

She suddenly wakened! Clear and wide awake! Some noise had startled her from sleep. She sat up, and put her hair (still wet with tears) back from her flushed cheeks, and listened. At first she could only hear her beating heart. All was still without, for it was after midnight, such hours of agony had passed away; but the moon shone clearly in at the unshuttered window, making the room almost as light as day, in its cold ghastly radiance. There was a low knock at the door! A strange feeling crept over Mary’s heart, as if something spiritual were near; as if the dead, so lately present in her dreams, were yet gliding and hovering round her, with their dim, dread forms. And yet, why dread? Had they not loved her?—and who loved her now? Was she not lonely enough to welcome the spirits of the dead, who had loved her while here? If her mother had conscious being, her love for her child endured. So she quieted her fears, and listened—listened still.

“Mary! Mary! open the door!” as a little movement on her part seemed to tell the being outside of her wakeful, watchful state. They were the accents of her mother’s voice; the very south-country pronunciation, that Mary so well remembered; and which she had sometimes tried to imitate when alone, with the fond mimicry of affection.

So, without fear, without hesitation, she rose and unbarred the door. There, against the moonlight, stood a form, so closely resembling her dead mother, that Mary never doubted the identity, but exclaiming (as if she were a terrified child, secure of safety when near the protecting care of its parent)—

“O mother! mother! you are come at last?” she threw herself, or rather fell, into the trembling arms of her long-lost, unrecognised aunt, Esther.

XXI. ESTHER’S MOTIVE IN SEEKING MARY.

“My rest is gone, My heart is sore, Peace find I never, And never more.” —MARGARET’S SONG IN “FAUST.”

I must go back a little to explain the motives which caused Esther to seek an interview with her niece.

The murder had been committed early on Thursday night, and between then and the dawn of the following day there was ample time for the news to spread far and wide among all those whose duty, or whose want, or whose errors, caused them to be abroad in the streets of Manchester.

Among those who listened to the tale of violence was Esther.

A craving desire to know more took possession of her mind. Far away as she was from Turner Street, she immediately set off to the scene of the murder, which was faintly lighted by the grey dawn as she reached the spot. It was so quiet and still that she could hardly believe it to be the place. The only vestige of any scuffle or violence was a trail on the dust, as if somebody had been lying there, and then been raised by extraneous force. The little birds were beginning to hop and twitter in the leafless hedge, making the only sound that was near and distinct. She crossed into the field where she guessed the murderer to have stood; it was easy of access, for the worn, stunted hawthorn-hedge had many gaps in it. The night-smell of bruised grass came up from under her feet, as she went towards the saw-pit and carpenter’s shed which, as I have said before, were in a corner of the field near the road, and where one of her informants had told her it was supposed by the police that the murderer had lurked while waiting for his victim. There was no sign, however, that any one had been about the place. If the grass had been bruised or bent where he had trod, it had had enough of the elasticity of life to raise itself under the dewy influences of night. She hushed her breath in involuntary awe, but nothing else told of the violent deed by which a fellow-creature had passed away. She stood still for a minute, imagining to herself the position of the parties, guided by the only circumstance which afforded any evidence, the trailing mark on the dust in the road.

Suddenly (it was before the sun had risen above the horizon) she became aware of something white in the hedge. All other colours wore the same murky hue, though the forms of objects were perfectly distinct. What was it? It could not be a flower;—that, the time of year made clear. A frozen lump of snow, lingering late in one of the gnarled tufts of the hedge? She stepped forward to examine. It proved to be a little piece of stiff writing-paper compressed into a round shape. She understood it instantly; it was the paper that had served as wadding for the murderer’s gun. Then she had been standing just where the murderer must have been but a few hours before; probably (as the rumour had spread through the town, reaching her ears) one of the poor maddened turn-outs, who hung about everywhere, with black, fierce looks, as if contemplating some deed of violence. Her sympathy was all with them, for she had known what they suffered; and besides this, there was her own individual dislike of Mr. Carson, and dread of him for Mary’s sake. Yet, poor Mary! Death was a terrible, though sure, remedy for the evil Esther had dreaded for her; and how would she stand the shock, loving as her aunt believed her to do? Poor Mary! who would comfort her? Esther’s thoughts began to picture her sorrow, her despair, when the news of her lover’s death should reach her; and she longed to tell her there might have been a keener grief yet had he lived.

Bright, beautiful came the slanting rays of the morning sun. It was time for such as she to hide themselves, with the other obscene things of night, from the glorious light of day, which was only for the happy. So she turned her steps towards town, still holding the paper. But in getting over the hedge it encumbered her to hold it in her clasped hand, and she threw it down. She passed on a few steps, her thoughts still of Mary, till the idea crossed her mind, could it (blank as it appeared to be) give any clue to the murderer? As I said before, her sympathies were all on that side, so she turned back and picked it up; and then feeling as if in some measure an accessory, she hid it unexamined in her hand, and hastily passed out of the street at the opposite end to that by which she had entered it.

And what do you think she felt, when having walked some distance from the spot, she dared to open the crushed paper, and saw written on it Mary Barton’s name, and not only that, but the street in which she lived! True, a letter or two was torn off, but, nevertheless, there was the name clear to be recognised. And oh! what terrible thought flashed into her mind; or was it only fancy? But it looked very like the writing which she had once known well—the writing of Jem Wilson, who, when she lived at her brother-in-law’s, and he was a near neighbour, had often been employed by her to write her letters to people, to whom she was ashamed of sending her own misspelt scrawl. She remembered the wonderful flourishes she had so much admired in those days, while she sat by dictating, and Jem, in all the pride of newly-acquired penmanship, used to dazzle her eyes by extraordinary graces and twirls.

If it were his!

Oh! perhaps it was merely that her head was running so on Mary, that she was associating every trifle with her. As if only one person wrote in that flourishing, meandering style!

It was enough to fill her mind to think from what she might have saved Mary by securing the paper. She would look at it just once more, and see if some very dense and stupid policeman could have mistaken the name, or if Mary would certainly have been dragged into notice in the affair.

No! no one could have mistaken the “ry Barton,” and it WAS Jem’s handwriting!

Oh! if it was so, she understood it all, and she had been the cause! With her violent and unregulated nature, rendered morbid by the course of life she led, and her consciousness of her degradation, she cursed herself for the interference which she believed had led to this; for the information and the warning she had given to Jem, which had roused him to this murderous action. How could she, the abandoned and polluted outcast, ever have dared to hope for a blessing, even on her efforts to do good. The black curse of Heaven rested on all her doings, were they for good or for evil.

Poor, diseased mind! and there were none to minister to thee!

So she wandered about, too restless to take her usual heavy morning’s sleep, up and down the streets, greedily listening to every word of the passers-by, and loitering near each group of talkers, anxious to scrape together every morsel of information, or conjecture, or suspicion, though without possessing any definite purpose in all this. And ever and always she clenched the scrap of paper which might betray so much, until her nails had deeply indented the palm of her hand; so fearful was she in her nervous dread, lest unawares she should let it drop.

Towards the middle of the day she could no longer evade the body’s craving want of rest and refreshment; but the rest was taken in a spirit vault, and the refreshment was a glass of gin.

Then she started up from the stupor she had taken for repose; and suddenly driven before the gusty impulses of her mind, she pushed her way to the place where at that very time the police were bringing the information they had gathered with regard to the all-engrossing murder.

She listened with painful acuteness of comprehension to dropped words, and unconnected sentences, the meaning of which became clearer, and yet more clear to her. Jem was suspected. Jem was ascertained to be the murderer.

She saw him (although he, absorbed in deep sad thought, saw her not), she saw him brought handcuffed and guarded out of the coach. She saw him enter the station—she gasped for breath till he came out, still handcuffed, and still guarded, to be conveyed to the New Bailey.

He was the only one who had spoken to her with hope that she might win her way back to virtue. His words had lingered in her heart with a sort of call to heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not, and would not dwell: all that was present in her mind was Jem’s danger, and his kindness.

Then Mary came to remembrance. Esther wondered till she was sick of wondering, in what way she was taking the affair. In some manner it would be a terrible blow for the poor, motherless girl; with her dreadful father, too, who was to Esther a sort of accusing angel.

She set off towards the court where Mary lived, to pick up what she could there of information. But she was ashamed to enter in where once she had been innocent, and hung about the neighbouring streets, not daring to question, so she learnt but little; nothing, in fact, but the knowledge of John Barton’s absence from home.

She went up a dark entry to rest her weary limbs on a doorstep and think. Her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in her hands, she tried to gather together and arrange her thoughts. But still every now and then she opened her hand to see if the paper were yet there.

She got up at last. She had formed a plan, and had a course of action to look forward to that would satisfy one craving desire at least. The time was long gone by when there was much wisdom or consistency in her projects.

It was getting late, and that was so much the better. She went to a pawnshop, and took off her finery in a back room. She was known by the people, and had a character for honesty, so she had no very great difficulty in inducing them to let her have a suit of outer clothes, befitting the wife of a working-man, a black silk bonnet, a printed gown, a plaid shawl, dirty and rather worn to be sure, but which had a sort of sanctity to the eyes of the street-walker as being the appropriate garb of that happy class to which she could never, never more belong.

She looked at herself in the little glass which hung against the wall, and sadly shaking her head thought how easy were the duties of that Eden of innocence from which she was shut out; how she would work, and toil, and starve, and die, if necessary, for a husband, a home—for children—but that thought she could not bear; a little form rose up, stern in its innocence, from the witches’ caldron of her imagination, and she rushed into action again.

You know now how she came to stand by the threshold of Mary’s door, waiting, trembling, until the latch was lifted, and her niece, with words that spoke of such desolation among the living, fell into her arms.

She had felt as if some holy spell would prevent her (even as the unholy Lady Geraldine was prevented, in the abode of Christabel) from crossing the threshold of that home of her early innocence; and she had meant to wait for an invitation. But Mary’s helpless action did away with all reluctant feeling, and she bore or dragged her to her seat, and looked on her bewildered eyes, as, puzzled with the likeness, which was not identity, she gazed on her aunt’s features.

In pursuance of her plan, Esther meant to assume the manners and character, as she had done the dress, of a mechanic’s wife; but then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she over-acted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly reappeared on the scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have known how her little darling of former days was feeling towards her.

“You don’t remember me, I see, Mary!” she began. “It’s a long while since I left you all, to be sure; and I, many a time, thought of coming to see you, and—and your father. But I live so far off, and am always so busy, I cannot do just what I wish. You recollect aunt Esther, don’t you, Mary?”

“Are you Aunt Hetty?” asked Mary faintly, still looking at the face which was so different from the old recollections of her aunt’s fresh dazzling beauty.

“Yes! I am Aunt Hetty. Oh! it’s so long since I heard that name,” sighing forth the thoughts it suggested; then, recovering herself, and striving after the hard character she wished to assume, she continued: “And to-day I heard a friend of yours, and of mine too, long ago, was in trouble, and I guessed you would be in sorrow, so I thought I would just step this far and see you.”

Mary’s tears flowed afresh, but she had no desire to open her heart to her strangely-found aunt, who had, by her own confession, kept aloof from and neglected them for so many years. Yet she tried to feel grateful for kindness (however late) from any one, and wished to be civil. Moreover, she had a strong disinclination to speak on the terrible subject uppermost in her mind.

So, after a pause, she said—

“Thank you. I dare say you mean very kind. Have you had a long walk? I’m so sorry,” said she, rising with a sudden thought, which was as suddenly checked by recollection, “but I’ve nothing to eat in the house, and I’m sure you must be hungry, after your walk.”

For Mary concluded that certainly her aunt’s residence must be far away on the other side of the town, out of sight or hearing. But, after all, she did not think much about her; her heart was so aching-full of other things, that all besides seemed like a dream. She received feelings and impressions from her conversation with her aunt, but did not, could not, put them together, or think or argue about them.

And Esther! How scanty had been her food for days and weeks, her thinly-covered bones and pale lips might tell, but her words should never reveal!

So, with a little unreal laugh, she replied—

“Oh! Mary, my dear! don’t talk about eating. We’ve the best of everything, and plenty of it, for my husband is in good work. I’d such a supper before I came out. I couldn’t touch a morsel if you had it.”

Her words shot a strange pang through Mary’s heart. She had always remembered her aunt’s loving and unselfish disposition; how was it changed, if, living in plenty, she had never thought it worth while to ask after her relations who were all but starving! She shut up her heart instinctively against her aunt.

And all the time poor Esther was swallowing her sobs, and over-acting her part, and controlling herself more than she had done for many a long day, in order that her niece might not be shocked and revolted, by the knowledge of what her aunt had become—a prostitute; an outcast.

She had longed to open her wretched, wretched heart, so hopeless, so abandoned by all living things, to one who had loved her once; and yet she refrained, from dread of the averted eye, the altered voice, the internal loathing, which she feared such disclosure might create. She would go straight to the subject of the day. She could not tarry long, for she felt unable to support the character she had assumed for any length of time.

They sat by the little round table, facing each other. The candle was placed right between them, and Esther moved it in order to have a clearer view of Mary’s face, so that she might read her emotions, and ascertain her interests.

Then she began—

“It’s a bad business, I’m afraid, this of Mr. Carson’s murder.”

Mary winced a little.

“I hear Jem Wilson is taken up for it.”

Mary covered her eyes with her hands, as if to shade them from the light, and Esther herself, less accustomed to self-command, was getting too much agitated for calm observation of another.

“I was taking a walk near Turner Street, and I went to see the spot,” continued Esther, “and, as luck would have it, I spied this bit of paper in the hedge,” producing the precious piece still folded in her hand. “It has been used as wadding for the gun, I reckon; indeed, that’s clear enough, from the shape it’s crammed into. I was sorry for the murderer, whoever he might be (I didn’t then know of Jem’s being suspected), and I thought I would never leave a thing about as might help, ever so little, to convict him; the police are so ‘cute about straws. So I carried it a little way, and then I opened it and saw your name, Mary.”

Mary took her hands away from her eyes, and looked with surprise at her aunt’s face, as she uttered these words. She WAS kind after all, for was she not saving her from being summoned, and from being questioned and examined; a thing to be dreaded above all others: as she felt sure that her unwilling answers, frame them how she might, would add to the suspicions against Jem; her aunt was indeed kind, to think of what would spare her this.

Esther went on, without noticing Mary’s look. The very action of speaking was so painful to her, and so much interrupted by the hard, raking little cough, which had been her constant annoyance for months, that she was too much engrossed by the physical difficulty of utterance, to be a very close observer.

“There could be no mistake if they had found it. Look at your name, together with the very name of this court! And in Jem’s handwriting too, or I’m much mistaken. Look, Mary!”

And now she did watch her.

Mary took the paper and flattened it; then suddenly stood stiff up, with irrepressible movement, as if petrified by some horror abruptly disclosed; her face, strung and rigid; her lips compressed tight, to keep down some rising exclamation. She dropped on her seat, as suddenly as if the braced muscles had in an instant given way. But she spoke no word.

“It is his handwriting—isn’t it?” asked Esther, though Mary’s manner was almost confirmation enough.

“You will not tell. You never will tell?” demanded Mary, in a tone so sternly earnest, as almost to be threatening.

“Nay, Mary,” said Esther, rather reproachfully, “I am not so bad as that. O Mary, you cannot think I would do that, whatever I may be.”

The tears sprang to her eyes at the idea that she was suspected of being one who would help to inform against an old friend.

Mary caught her sad and upbraiding look.

“No! I know you would not tell, aunt. I don’t know what I say, I am so shocked. But say you will not tell. Do.”

“No, indeed I willn’t tell, come what may.”

Mary sat still looking at the writing, and turning the paper round with careful examination, trying to hope, but her very fears belying her hopes.

“I thought you cared for the young man that’s murdered,” observed Esther, half-aloud; but feeling that she could not mistake this strange interest in the suspected murderer, implied by Mary’s eagerness to screen him from anything which might strengthen suspicion against him. She had come, desirous to know the extent of Mary’s grief for Mr. Carson, and glad of the excuse afforded her by the important scrap of paper. Her remark about its being Jem’s handwriting, she had, with this view of ascertaining Mary’s state of feeling, felt to be most imprudent the instant after she had uttered it; but Mary’s anxiety that she should not tell was too great, and too decided, to leave a doubt as to her interest for Jem. She grew more and more bewildered, and her dizzy head refused to reason. Mary never spoke. She held the bit of paper firmly, determined to retain possession of it, come what might; and anxious, and impatient, for her aunt to go. As she sat, her face bore a likeness to Esther’s dead child.

“You are so like my little girl, Mary!” said Esther, weary of the one subject on which she could get no satisfaction, and recurring, with full heart, to the thought of the dead.

Mary looked up. Her aunt had children, then. That was all the idea she received. No faint imagination of the love and the woe of that poor creature crossed her mind, or she would have taken her, all guilty and erring, to her bosom, and tried to bind up the broken heart. No! it was not to be. Her aunt had children, then; and she was on the point of putting some question about them, but before it could be spoken another thought turned it aside, and she went back to her task of unravelling the mystery of the paper, and the handwriting. Oh! how she wished her aunt would go!

As if, according to the believers in mesmerism, the intenseness of her wish gave her power over another, although the wish was unexpressed, Esther felt herself unwelcome, and that her absence was desired.

She felt this some time before she could summon up resolution to go. She was so much disappointed in this longed-for, dreaded interview with Mary; she had wished to impose upon her with her tale of married respectability, and yet she had yearned and craved for sympathy in her real lot. And she had imposed upon her well. She should perhaps be glad of it afterwards; but her desolation of hope seemed for the time redoubled. And she must leave the old dwelling-place, whose very walls, and flags, dingy and sordid as they were, had a charm for her. Must leave the abode of poverty, for the more terrible abodes of vice. She must—she would go.

“Well, good-night, Mary. That bit of paper is safe enough with you, I see. But you made me promise I would not tell about it, and you must promise me to destroy it before you sleep.”

“I promise,” said Mary hoarsely, but firmly. “Then you are going?”

“Yes. Not if you wish me to stay. Not if I could be of any comfort to you, Mary”; catching at some glimmering hope.

“Oh no,” said Mary, anxious to be alone. “Your husband will be wondering where you are. Some day you must tell me all about yourself. I forget what your name is?”

“Fergusson,” said Esther sadly.

“Mrs. Fergusson,” repeated Mary half unconsciously. “And where did you say you lived?”

“I never did say,” muttered Esther; then aloud, “In Angel’s Meadow, 145, Nicholas Street.”

“145, Nicholas Street, Angel Meadow. I shall remember.”

As Esther drew her shawl around her, and prepared to depart, a thought crossed Mary’s mind that she had been cold and hard in her manner towards one, who had certainly meant to act kindly in bringing her the paper (that dread, terrible piece of paper!) and thus saving her from—she could not rightly think how much, or how little she was spared. So desirous of making up for her previous indifferent manner, she advanced to kiss her aunt before her departure.

But, to her surprise, her aunt pushed her off with a frantic kind of gesture, and saying the words—

“Not me. You must never kiss me. You!”

She rushed into the outer darkness of the street, and there wept long and bitterly.

XXII. MARY’S EFFORTS TO PROVE AN ALIBI.

“There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear Was, with its stored thunder, labouring up.” —KEATS’ Hyperion.

No sooner was Mary alone than she fastened the door, and put the shutters up against the window, which had all this time remained shaded only by the curtains hastily drawn together on Esther’s entrance, and the lighting of the candle.

She did all this with the same compressed lips, and the same stony look that her face had assumed on the first examination of the paper. Then she sat down for an instant to think; and rising directly, went, with a step rendered firm by inward resolution of purpose, up the stairs; passed her own door, two steps, into her father’s room. What did she want there?

I must tell you; I must put into words the dreadful secret which she believed that bit of paper had revealed to her.

Her father was the murderer.

That corner of stiff, shining, thick, writing paper, she recognised as a part of the sheet on which she had copied Samuel Bamford’s beautiful lines so many months ago—copied (as you perhaps remember) on the blank part of a valentine sent to her by Jem Wilson, in those days when she did not treasure and hoard up everything he had touched, as she would do now.

That copy had been given to her father, for whom it was made, and she had occasionally seen him reading it over, not a fortnight ago she was sure. But she resolved to ascertain if the other part still remained in his possession. He might—it was just possible he MIGHT, have given it away to some friend; and if so, that person was the guilty one, for she could swear to the paper anywhere.

First of all she pulled out every article from the little old chest of drawers. Amongst them were some things which had belonged to her mother, but she had no time now to examine and try and remember them. All the reverence she could pay them was to carry them and lay them on the bed carefully, while the other things were tossed impatiently out upon the floor.

The copy of Bamford’s lines was not there. Oh! perhaps he might have given it away; but then must it not have been to Jem? It was his gun.

And she set to with redoubled vigour to examine the deal box which served as chair, and which had once contained her father’s Sunday clothes, in the days when he could afford to have Sunday clothes.

He had redeemed his better coat from the pawnshop before he left, that she had noticed. Here was his old one. What rustled under her hand in the pocket?

The paper! “O father!”

Yes, it fitted; jagged end to jagged end, letter to letter, and even the part which Esther had considered blank had its tallying mark with the larger piece, its tails of ys and gs. And then, as if that were not damning evidence enough, she felt again, and found some little bullets or shot (I don’t know which you would call them) in that same pocket, along with a small paper parcel of gunpowder. As she was going to replace the jacket, having abstracted the paper, and bullets, etc., she saw a woollen gun-case made of that sort of striped horse-cloth you must have seen a thousand times appropriated to such a purpose. The sight of it made her examine still further, but there was nothing else that could afford any evidence, so she locked the box, and sat down on the floor to contemplate the articles; now with a sickening despair, now with a kind of wondering curiosity, how her father had managed to evade observation. After all it was easy enough. He had evidently got possession of some gun (was it really Jem’s? was he an accomplice? No! she did not believe it; he never, never would deliberately plan a murder with another, however he might be wrought up to it by passionate feeling at the time. Least of all would he accuse her to her father, without previously warning her; it was out of his nature).

Then having obtained possession of the gun, her father had loaded it at home, and might have carried it away with him some time when the neighbours were not noticing, and she was out, or asleep; and then he might have hidden it somewhere to be in readiness when he should want it. She was sure he had no such thing with him when he went away the last time.

She felt it was of no use to conjecture his motives. His actions had become so wild and irregular of late, that she could not reason upon them. Besides, was it not enough to know that he was guilty of this terrible offence? Her love for her father seemed to return with painful force, mixed up as it was with horror at his crime. That dear father who was once so kind, so warm-hearted, so ready to help either man or beast in distress, to murder! But in the desert of misery with which these thoughts surrounded her, the arid depths of whose gloom she dared not venture to contemplate, a little spring of comfort was gushing up at her feet, unnoticed at first, but soon to give her strength and hope.

And THAT was the necessity for exertion on her part which this discovery enforced.

Oh! I do think that the necessity for exertion, for some kind of action (bodily or mental) in time of distress, is a most infinite blessing, although the first efforts at such seasons are painful. Something to be done implies that there is yet hope of some good thing to be accomplished, or some additional evil that may be avoided; and by degrees the hope absorbs much of the sorrow.

It is the woes that cannot in any earthly way be escaped that admit least earthly comforting. Of all trite, worn-out, hollow mockeries of comfort that were ever uttered by people who will not take the trouble of sympathising with others, the one I dislike the most is the exhortation not to grieve over an event, “for it cannot be helped.” Do you think if I could help it, I would sit still with folded hands, content to mourn? Do you not believe that as long as hope remained I would be up and doing? I mourn because what has occurred cannot be helped. The reason you give me for not grieving, is the very sole reason of my grief. Give me nobler and higher reasons for enduring meekly what my Father sees fit to send, and I will try earnestly and faithfully to be patient; but mock me not, or any other mourner, with the speech, “Do not grieve, for it cannot be helped. It is past remedy.”

But some remedy to Mary’s sorrow came with thinking. If her father was guilty, Jem was innocent. If innocent, there was a possibility of saving him. He must be saved. And she must do it; for, was not she the sole depository of the terrible secret? Her father was not suspected; and never should be, if by any foresight or any exertions of her own she could prevent it.

She did not know how Jem was to be saved, while her father was also to be considered innocent. It would require much thought and much prudence. But with the call upon her exertions, and her various qualities of judgment and discretion, came the answering consciousness of innate power to meet the emergency. Every step now, nay, the employment of every minute was of consequence; for you must remember she had learnt at Miss Simmonds’ the probability that the murderer would be brought to trial the next week. And you must remember, too, that never was so young a girl so friendless, or so penniless, as Mary was at this time. But the lion accompanied Una through the wilderness and the danger; and so will a high, resolved purpose of right-doing ever guard and accompany the helpless.

It struck two; deep, mirk night.

It was of no use bewildering herself with plans this weary, endless night. Nothing could be done before morning; and, at first in her impatience, she began to long for day; but then she felt in how unfit a state her body was for any plan of exertion, and she resolutely made up her mind to husband her physical strength.

First of all she must burn the tell-tale paper. The powder, bullets, and gun-case, she tied into a bundle, and hid in the sacking of the bed for the present, although there was no likelihood of their affording evidence against any one. Then she carried the paper downstairs, and burned it on the hearth, powdering the very ashes with her fingers, and dispersing the fragments of fluttering black films among the cinders of the grate. Then she breathed again.

Her head ached with dizzying violence; she must get quit of the pain or it would incapacitate her for thinking and planning. She looked for food, but there was nothing but a little raw oatmeal in the house: still, although it almost choked her, she ate some of this, knowing from experience, how often headaches were caused by long fasting. Then she sought for some water to bathe her throbbing temples, and quench her feverish thirst. There was none in the house, so she took the jug and went out to the pump at the other end of the court, whose echoes resounded her light footsteps in the quiet stillness of the night. The hard, square outlines of the houses cut sharply against the cold bright sky, from which myriads of stars were shining down in eternal repose. There was little sympathy in the outward scene, with the internal trouble. All was so still, so motionless, so hard! Very different to this lovely night in the country in which I am now writing, where the distant horizon is soft and undulating in the moonlight, and the nearer trees sway gently to and fro in the night-wind with something of almost human motion; and the rustling air makes music among their branches, as if speaking soothingly to the weary ones who lie awake in heaviness of heart. The sights and sounds of such a night lull pain and grief to rest.

But Mary re-entered her home after she had filled her pitcher, with a still stronger sense of anxiety, and a still clearer conviction of how much rested upon her unassisted and friendless self, alone with her terrible knowledge, in the hard, cold, populous world.

She bathed her forehead, and quenched her thirst, and then, with wise deliberation of purpose, went upstairs, and undressed herself, as if for a long night’s slumber, although so few hours intervened before day-dawn. She believed she never could sleep, but she lay down, and shut her eyes; and before many minutes she was in as deep and sound a slumber as if there was no sin or sorrow in the world.

She woke up, as it was natural, much refreshed in body; but with a consciousness of some great impending calamity. She sat up in bed to recollect, and when she did remember, she sank down again with all the helplessness of despair. But it was only the weakness of an instant; for were not the very minutes precious, for deliberation if not for action?

Before she had finished the necessary morning business of dressing, and setting her house in some kind of order, she had disentangled her ravelled ideas, and arranged some kind of a plan for action. If Jem was innocent (and now of his guilt, even his slightest participation in, or knowledge of, the murder, she acquitted him with all her heart and soul), he must have been somewhere else when the crime was committed; probably with some others, who might bear witness to the fact, if she only knew where to find them. Everything rested on her. She had heard of an alibi, and believed it might mean the deliverance she wished to accomplish; but she was not quite sure, and determined to apply to Job, as one of the few among her acquaintance gifted with the knowledge of hard words, for to her, all terms of law, or natural history, were alike many-syllabled mysteries.

No time was to be lost. She went straight to Job Legh’s house, and found the old man and his grand-daughter sitting at breakfast; as she opened the door she heard their voices speaking in a grave, hushed, subdued tone, as if something grieved their hearts. They stopped talking on her entrance, and then she knew they had been conversing about the murder; about Jem’s probable guilt; and (it flashed upon her for the first time) on the new light they would have obtained regarding herself: for until now they had never heard of her giddy flirting with Mr. Carson; not in all her confidential talk with Margaret had she ever spoken of him. And now, Margaret would hear her conduct talked of by all, as that of a bold, bad girl; and even if she did not believe everything that was said, she could hardly help feeling wounded, and disappointed in Mary.

So it was in a timid voice that Mary wished her usual good-morrow, and her heart sunk within her a little, when Job, with a form of civility, bade her welcome in that dwelling, where, until now, she had been too well assured to require to be asked to sit down.

She took a chair. Margaret continued silent.

“I’m come to speak to you about this—about Jem Wilson.”

“It’s a bad business, I’m afeard,” replied Job sadly.

“Ay, it’s bad enough anyhow. But Jem’s innocent. Indeed he is; I’m as sure as sure can be.”

“How can you know, wench? Facts bear strong again him, poor fellow, though he’d a deal to put him up, and aggravate him, they say. Ay, poor lad, he’s done for himself, I’m afeard.”

“Job,” said Mary, rising from her chair in her eagerness, “you must not say he did it. He didn’t; I’m sure and certain he didn’t. Oh! why do you shake your head? Who is to believe me,—who is to think him innocent, if you, who know’d him so well, stick to it he’s guilty?”

“I’m loth enough to do it, lass,” replied Job; “but I think he’s been illused, and—jilted (that’s plain truth, Mary, bare as it may seem), and his blood has been up—many a man has done the like afore, from like causes.”

“O God! Then you won’t help me, Job, to prove him innocent? O Job, Job! believe me, Jem never did harm to no one.”

“Not afore;—and mind, wench! I don’t over-blame him for this.” Job relapsed into silence.

Mary thought a moment.

“Well, Job, you’ll not refuse me this, I know. I won’t mind what you think, if you’ll help me as if he was innocent. Now suppose I know—I knew, he was innocent,—it’s only supposing, Job,—what must I do to prove it? Tell me, Job! Isn’t it called an alibi, the getting folk to swear to where he really was at the time?”

“Best way, if you know’d him innocent, would be to find out the real murderer. Some one did it, that’s clear enough. If it wasn’t Jem who was it?”

“How can I tell?” answered Mary, in agony of terror, lest Job’s question was prompted by any suspicion of the truth.

But he was far enough from any such thought. Indeed, he had no doubt in his own mind that Jem had, in some passionate moment, urged on by slighted love and jealousy, been the murderer. And he was strongly inclined to believe, that Mary was aware of this, only that, too late repentant of her light conduct which had led to such fatal consequences, she was now most anxious to save her old playfellow, her early friend, from the doom awaiting the shedder of blood.

“If Jem’s not done it, I don’t see as any on us can tell who did it. We might find out something if we’d time; but they say he’s to be tried on Tuesday. It’s no use hiding it, Mary; things looks strong against him.”

“I know they do! I know they do! But, O Job! isn’t an alibi a proving where he really was at th’ time of the murder; and how must I set about an alibi?”

“An alibi is that, sure enough.” He thought a little. “You mun ask his mother his doings, and his whereabouts that night; the knowledge of that will guide you a bit.”

For he was anxious that on another should fall the task of enlightening Mary on the hopelessness of the case, and he felt that her own sense would be more convinced by inquiry and examination than any mere assertion of his.

Margaret had sat silent and grave all this time. To tell the truth, she was surprised and disappointed by the disclosure of Mary’s conduct, with regard to Mr. Henry Carson. Gentle, reserved, and prudent herself, never exposed to the trial of being admired for her personal appearance, and unsusceptible enough to be in doubt even yet, whether the fluttering, tender, infinitely joyous feeling she was for the first time experiencing, at sight or sound, or thought of Will Wilson, was love or not,—Margaret had no sympathy with the temptations to which loveliness, vanity, ambition, or the desire of being admired, exposes so many; no sympathy with flirting girls, in short. Then, she had no idea of the strength of the conflict between will and principle in some who were differently constituted from herself. With her, to be convinced that an action was wrong, was tantamount to a determination not to do so again; and she had little or no difficulty in carrying out her determination. So she could not understand how it was that Mary had acted wrongly, and had felt too much ashamed, in spite of internal sophistry, to speak of her actions. Margaret considered herself deceived; felt aggrieved; and, at the time of which I am now telling you, was strongly inclined to give Mary up altogether, as a girl devoid of the modest proprieties of her sex, and capable of gross duplicity, in speaking of one lover as she had done of Jem, while she was encouraging another in attentions, at best of a very doubtful character.

But now Margaret was drawn into the conversation. Suddenly it flashed across Mary’s mind, that the night of the murder was the very night, or rather the same early morning, that Margaret had been with Alice. She turned sharp round, with—

“O Margaret, you can tell me; you were there when he came back that night; were you not? No! you were not; but you were there not many hours after. Did not you hear where he’d been? He was away the night before, too, when Alice was first taken; when you were there for your tea. Oh! where was he, Margaret?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Stay! I do remember something about his keeping Will company, in his walk to Liverpool. I can’t justly say what it was, so much happened that night.”

“I’ll go to his mother’s,” said Mary resolutely.

They neither of them spoke, either to advise or dissuade. Mary felt she had no sympathy from them, and braced up her soul to act without such loving aid of friendship. She knew that their advice would be willingly given at her demand, and that was all she really required for Jem’s sake. Still her courage failed a little as she walked to Jane Wilson’s, alone in the world with her secret.

Jane Wilson’s eyes were swelled with crying; and it was sad to see the ravages which intense anxiety and sorrow had made on her appearance in four-and-twenty hours. All night long she and Mrs. Davenport had crooned over their sorrows, always recurring, like the burden of an old song, to the dreadest sorrow of all, which was now impending over Mrs. Wilson. She had grown—I hardly know what word to use—but, something like proud of her martyrdom; she had grown to hug her grief; to feel an excitement in her agony of anxiety about her boy.

“So, Mary, you’re here! O Mary, lass! He’s to be tried on Tuesday.”

She fell to sobbing, in the convulsive breath-catching manner which tells of so much previous weeping.

“O Mrs. Wilson, don’t take on so! We’ll get him off, you’ll see. Don’t fret; they can’t prove him guilty!”

“But I tell thee they will,” interrupted Mrs. Wilson, half-irritated at the light way, as she considered it, in which Mary spoke; and a little displeased that another could hope when she had almost brought herself to find pleasure in despair.

“It may suit thee well,” continued she, “to make light o’ the misery thou hast caused; but I shall lay his death at thy door, as long as I live, and die I know he will; and all for what he never did—no, he never did; my own blessed boy!”

She was too weak to be angry long; her wrath sank away to feeble sobbing and worn-out moans.

Mary was most anxious to soothe her from any violence of either grief or anger; she did so want her to be clear in her recollection; and, besides, her tenderness was great towards Jem’s mother. So she spoke in a low gentle tone the loving sentences, which sound so broken and powerless in repetition, and which yet have so much power when accompanied with caressing looks and actions, fresh from the heart; and the old woman insensibly gave herself up to the influence of those sweet, loving blue eyes, those tears of sympathy, those words of love and hope, and was lulled into a less morbid state of mind.

“And now, dear Mrs. Wilson, can you remember where he said he was going on Thursday night? He was out when Alice was taken ill; and he did not come home till early in the morning, or, to speak true, in the night: did he?”

“Ay! he went out near upon five; he went out with Will; he said he were going to set* him a part of the way, for Will were hot upon walking to Liverpool, and wouldn’t hearken to Jem’s offer of lending him five shillings for his fare. So the two lads set off together. I mind it all now: but, thou seest, Alice’s illness, and this business of poor Jem’s, drove it out of my head; they went off together, to walk to Liverpool; that’s to say, Jem were to go a part o’ th’ way. But, who knows” (falling back into the old desponding tone) “if he really went? He might be led off on the road. O Mary, wench! they’ll hang him for what he’s never done.”

“To set,” to accompany.

“No they won’t, they shan’t! I see my way a bit now. We mun get Will to help; there’ll be time. He can swear that Jem were with him. Where is Jem?”

“Folk said he were taken to Kirkdale, i’ th’ prison van this morning, without my seeing him, poor chap! O wench! but they’ve hurried on the business at a cruel rate.”

“Ay! they’ve not let grass grow under their feet, in hunting out the man that did it,” said Mary sorrowfully and bitterly. “But keep up your heart. They got on the wrong scent when they took to suspecting Jem. Don’t be afeard. You’ll see it will end right for Jem.”

“I should mind it less if I could do aught,” said Jane Wilson; “but I’m such a poor weak old body, and my head’s so gone, and I’m so dazed like, what with Alice and all, that I think and think, and can do nought to help my child. I might ha’ gone and seen him last night, they tell me now, and then I missed it. O Mary, I missed it; and I may never see the lad again.”

She looked so piteously in Mary’s face with her miserable eyes, that Mary felt her heart giving way, and, dreading the weakness of her powers, which the burst of crying she longed for would occasion, hastily changed the subject to Alice; and Jane, in her heart, feeling that there was no sorrow like a mother’s sorrow, replied—

“She keeps on much the same, thank you. She’s happy, for she knows nothing of what’s going on; but th’ doctor says she grows weaker and weaker. Thou’lt maybe like to see her?”

Mary went upstairs; partly because it is the etiquette in humble life to offer to friends a last opportunity of seeing the dying or the dead, while the same etiquette forbids a refusal of the invitation; and partly because she longed to breathe, for an instant, the atmosphere of holy calm, which seemed ever to surround the pious, good old woman. Alice lay, as before, without pain, or at least any outward expression of it; but totally unconscious of all present circumstances, and absorbed in recollections of the days of her girlhood, which were vivid enough to take the place of reality to her. Still she talked of green fields, and still she spoke to the long-dead mother and sister, lowlying in their graves this many a year, as if they were with her and about her, in the pleasant places where her youth had passed.

But the voice was fainter, the motions were more languid; she was evidently passing away; but HOW happily!

Mary stood for a time in silence, watching and listening. Then she bent down and reverently kissed Alice’s cheek; and drawing Jane Wilson away from the bed, as if the spirit of her who lay there were yet cognisant of present realities, she whispered a few words of hope to the poor mother, and kissing her over and over again in a warm, loving manner, she bade her goodbye, went a few steps, and then once more came back to bid her keep up her heart.

And when she had fairly left the house, Jane Wilson felt as if a sunbeam had ceased shining into the room.

Yet oh! how sorely Mary’s heart ached; for more and more the fell certainty came on her that her father was the murderer! She struggled hard not to dwell on this conviction; to think alone on the means of proving Jem’s innocence; that was her first duty, and that should be done.

XXIII. THE SUB-POENA.

“And must it then depend on this poor eye And this unsteady hand, whether the bark, That bears my all of treasured hope and love, Shall find a passage through these frowning rocks To some fair port where peace and safety smile,— Or whether it shall blindly dash against them, And miserably sink? Heaven be my help; And clear my eye and nerve my trembling hand!” —”THE CONSTANT WOMAN.”

Her heart beating, her head full of ideas, which required time and solitude to be reduced into order, Mary hurried home. She was like one who finds a jewel of which he cannot all at once ascertain the value, but who hides his treasure until some quiet hour when he may ponder over the capabilities its possession unfolds. She was like one who discovers the silken clue which guides to some bower of bliss, and secure of the power within his grasp, has to wait for a time before he may thread the labyrinth.

But no jewel, no bower of bliss was ever so precious to miser or lover as was the belief which now pervaded Mary’s mind that Jem’s innocence might be proved, without involving any suspicion of that other—that dear one, so dear, although so criminal—on whose part in this cruel business she dared not dwell even in thought. For if she did there arose the awful question,—if all went against Jem the innocent, if judge and jury gave the verdict forth which had the looming gallows in the rear, what ought she to do, possessed of her terrible knowledge? Surely not to inculpate her father—and yet— and yet—she almost prayed for the blessed unconsciousness of death or madness, rather than that awful question should have to be answered by her.

But now a way seemed opening, opening yet more clear. She was thankful she had thought of the alibi, and yet more thankful to have so easily obtained the clue to Jem’s whereabouts that miserable night. The bright light that her new hope threw over all seemed also to make her thankful for the early time appointed for the trial. It would be easy to catch Will Wilson on his return from the Isle of Man, which he had planned should be on the Monday; and on the Tuesday all would be made clear—all that she dared to wish to be made clear.

She had still to collect her thoughts and freshen her memory enough to arrange how to meet with Will—for to the chances of a letter she would not trust; to find out his lodgings when in Liverpool; to try and remember the name of the ship in which he was to sail: and the more she considered these points, the more difficulty she found there would be in ascertaining these minor but important facts. For you are aware that Alice, whose memory was clear and strong on all points in which her heart was interested, was lying in a manner senseless: that Jane Wilson was (to use her own word, so expressive to a Lancashire ear) “dazed”; that is to say, bewildered, lost in the confusion of terrifying and distressing thoughts; incapable of concentrating her mind; and at the best of times Will’s proceedings were a matter of little importance to her (or so she pretended), she was so jealous of aught which distracted attention from her pearl of price, her only son Jem. So Mary felt hopeless of obtaining any intelligence of the sailor’s arrangements from her.

Then, should she apply to Jem himself? No! she knew him too well. She felt how thoroughly he must ere now have had it in his power to exculpate himself at another’s expense. And his tacit refusal so to do, had assured her of what she had never doubted, that the murderer was safe from any impeachment of his. But then neither would he consent, she feared, to any steps which might tend to prove himself innocent. At any rate, she could not consult him. He was removed to Kirkdale, and time pressed. Already it was Saturday at noon. And even if she could have gone to him, I believe she would not. She longed to do all herself; to be his liberator, his deliverer; to win him life, though she might never regain his lost love by her own exertions! And oh! how could she see him to discuss a subject in which both knew who was the bloodstained man; and yet whose name might not be breathed by either, so dearly with all his faults, his sins, was he loved by both.

All at once, when she had ceased to try and remember, the name of Will’s ship flashed across her mind. The John Cropper.

He had named it, she had been sure, all along. He had named it in his conversation with her that last, that fatal Thursday evening. She repeated it over and over again, through a nervous dread of again forgetting it. The John Cropper.

And then, as if she were rousing herself out of some strange stupor, she bethought her of Margaret. Who so likely as Margaret to treasure every little particular respecting Will, now Alice was dead to all the stirring purposes of life?

She had gone thus far in her process of thought, when a neighbour stepped in; she with whom they had usually deposited the house-key, when both Mary and her father were absent from home, and who consequently took upon herself to answer all inquiries, and receive all messages which any friends might make, or leave, on finding the house shut up.

“Here’s somewhat for you, Mary! A policeman left it.”

A bit of parchment.

Many people have a dread of those mysterious pieces of parchment. I am one. Mary was another. Her heart misgave her as she took it, and looked at the unusual appearance of the writing, which, though legible enough, conveyed no idea to her, or rather her mind shut itself up against receiving any idea, which after all was rather a proof she had some suspicion of the meaning that awaited her.

“What is it?” asked she, in a voice from which all the pith and marrow seemed extracted.

“Nay! how should I know? Policeman said he’d call again towards evening, and see if you’d getten it. He were loth to leave it, though I telled him who I was, and all about my keeping th’ key, and taking messages.”

“What is it about?” asked Mary again, in the same hoarse, feeble voice, and turning it over in her fingers, as if she dreaded to inform herself of its meaning.

“Well! yo can read word of writing and I cannot, so it’s queer I should have to tell you. But my master says it’s a summons for yo to bear witness again Jem Wilson, at th’ trial at Liverpool Assize.”

“God pity me!” said Mary faintly, as white as a sheet.

“Nay, wench, never take on so. What yo can say will go little way either to help or to hinder, for folk say he’s certain to be hung; and sure enough, it was t’other one as was your sweetheart.”

Mary was beyond any pang this speech would have given at another time. Her thoughts were all busy picturing to herself the terrible occasion of their next meeting—not as lovers meet should they meet!

“Well!” said the neighbour, seeing no use in remaining with one who noticed her words or her presence so little, “thou’lt tell policeman thou’st getten his precious bit of paper. He seemed to think I should be keeping it for mysel; he’s the first as has ever misdoubted me about giving messages, or notes. Good-day.”

She left the house, but Mary did not know it. She sat still with the parchment in her hand.

All at once she started up. She would take it to Job Legh and ask him to tell her the true meaning, for it could not be THAT.

So she went, and choked out her words of inquiry.

“It’s a sub-poena,” he replied, turning the parchment over with the air of a connoisseur; for Job loved hard words, and lawyer-like forms, and even esteemed himself slightly qualified for a lawyer, from the smattering of knowledge he had picked up from an odd volume of Blackstone that he had once purchased at a bookstall.

“A sub-poena—what is that?” gasped Mary, still in suspense.

Job was struck with her voice, her changed miserable voice, and peered at her countenance from over his spectacles.

“A sub-poena is neither more nor less than this, my dear. It’s a summonsing you to attend, and answer such questions as may be asked of you regarding the trial of James Wilson, for the murder of Henry Carson; that’s the long and short of it, only more elegantly put, for the benefit of them who knows how to value the gift of language. I’ve been a witness beforetime myself; there’s nothing much to be afeard on; if they are impudent, why, just you be impudent, and give ‘em tit for tat.”

“Nothing much to be afeard on!” echoed Mary, but in such a different tone.

“Ay, poor wench, I see how it is. It’ll go hard with thee a bit, I dare say; but keep up thy heart. Yo cannot have much to tell ‘em, that can go either one way or th’ other. Nay! maybe thou may do him a bit o’ good, for when they set eyes on thee, they’ll see fast enough how he came to be so led away by jealousy; for thou’rt a pretty creature, Mary, and one look at thy face will let ‘em into th’ secret of a young man’s madness, and make ‘em more ready to pass it over.”

“O Job, and won’t you ever believe me when I tell you he’s innocent? Indeed, and indeed I can prove it; he was with Will all that night; he was, indeed, Job!”

“My wench! whose word hast thou for that?” said Job pityingly.

“Why! his mother told me, and I’ll get Will to bear witness to it. But, oh! Job” (bursting into tears), “it is hard if you won’t believe me. How shall I clear him to strangers, when those who know him, and ought to love him, are so set against his being innocent?”

“God knows, I’m not against his being innocent,” said Job solemnly. “I’d give half my remaining days on earth—I’d give them all, Mary (and but for the love I bear to my poor blind girl, they’d be no great gift), if I could save him. You’ve thought me hard, Mary, but I’m not hard at bottom, and I’ll help you if I can; that I will, right or wrong,” he added; but in a low voice, and coughed the uncertain words away the moment afterwards.

“O Job! if you will help me,” exclaimed Mary, brightening up (though it was but a wintry gleam after all), “tell me what to say, when they question me; I shall be so gloppened, I shan’t know what to answer.”

Gloppened; terrified.

“Thou canst do nought better than tell the truth. Truth’s best at all times, they say; and for sure it is when folk have to do with lawyers; for they’re ‘cute and cunning enough to get it out sooner or later, and it makes folk look like Tom Noddies, when truth follows falsehood, against their will.”

“But I don’t know the truth; I mean—I can’t say rightly what I mean; but I’m sure, if I were pent up, and stared at by hundreds of folk, and asked ever so simple a question, I should be for answering it wrong; if they asked me if I had seen you on a Saturday, or a Tuesday, or any day, I should have clean forgotten all about it, and say the very thing I should not.”

“Well, well, don’t go for to get such notions into your head; they’re what they call ‘narvous,’ and talking on ‘em does no good. Here’s Margaret! bless the wench! Look, Mary, how well she guides hersel.”

Job fell to watching his grand-daughter, as with balancing, measured steps, timed almost as if to music, she made her way across the street.

Mary shrank as if from a cold blast—shrank from Margaret! The blind girl, with her reserve, her silence, seemed to be a severe judge; she, listening, would be such a check to the trusting earnestness of confidence, which was beginning to unlock the sympathy of Job. Mary knew herself to blame; felt her errors in every fibre of her heart; but yet she would rather have had them spoken about, even in terms of severest censure, than have been treated in the icy manner in which Margaret had received her that morning.