The Trial

Before long, all eyes turned one way, as a closed fly, with a policeman on the box, drove in at the gateway, stopped, and between the two men on guard appeared a tall young figure.

The Doctor’s first glance showed him a flushed and weary set of features, shocked and appalled; but the eyes, looking straight up in their anxiety, encountered his with an earnest grateful appeal for sympathy, answered at once by a step forward with outstretched hand. The grip of the fingers was heated, agitated, convulsive, but not tremulous; and there was feeling, not fear, in the low husky voice that said, ‘Thank you. Is Henry here?’

‘No, he is too—too much overcome; but he hopes to see you at home to-night; and here is Edward Anderson, whom he has sent to watch the proceedings for you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Leonard, acknowledging Edward’s greeting. ‘As far as I am concerned, I can explain all in a minute; but my poor uncle—I little thought—’

There was no opportunity for further speech in private, for the coroner had already arrived, and the inquiry had been only deferred until Leonard should have come. The jury had been viewing the body, and the proceedings were to take place in the large low dining-room, where the southern windows poured in a flood of light on the faces of the persons crowded together, and the reflections from the rippling water danced on the ceiling. Dr. May had a chair given him near the coroner, and keenly watched the two nephews—one seated next to him, the other at some distance, nearly opposite. Both young men looked haggard, shocked, and oppressed: the eye of Axworthy was unceasingly fixed on an inkstand upon the table, and never lifted, his expression never varied; and Leonard’s glance flashed inquiringly from one speaker to another, and his countenance altered with every phase of the evidence.

The first witness was Anne Ellis, the young maid-servant, who told of her coming down at ten minutes after five that morning, the 6th of July, and on going in to clean the rooms, finding her master sunk forward on the table. Supposing him to have had a fit, she had run to the window and screamed for help, when Master Hardy, the foreman, and Mrs. Giles, the housekeeper, had come in.

James Hardy deposed to having heard the girl’s cry while he was unlocking the mill door. Coming in by the low sash-window, which stood open, he had gone up to his master, and had seen the wound on the head, and found the body quite cold, Mrs. Giles coming in, they had carried it to the bed in the next room; and he had gone to call the young gentlemen, but neither was in his room. He knew that it had been left uncertain whether Mr. Samuel would return to sleep at home between the two days of the county races, but he did not expect Mr. Ward to be out; and had then observed that his bed had not been slept in, and that the passage window outside his room was partly open. He had then thought it best to go into Stoneborough to inform the family.

Rebecca Giles, the housekeeper, an elderly woman, crying violently, repeated the evidence as to the discovery of the body. The last time she had seen her master alive, was when she had carried in his supper at nine o’clock, when he had desired her to send Mr. Ward to him; and had seemed much vexed to hear that the young man had not returned from rifle practice, little thinking, poor old gentleman!—but here the housekeeper was recalled to her subject. The window was then open, as it was a sultry night, but the blind down. Her master was a good deal crippled by gout, and could not at that time move actively nor write, but could dress himself, and close a window. He disliked being assisted; and the servants were not in the habit of seeing him from the time his supper was brought in till breakfast next morning. She had seen Mr. Ward come home at twenty minutes or half after nine, in uniform, carrying his rifle; she had given the message, and he had gone into the sitting-room without putting down the rifle. She believed it to be the one on the table, but could not say so on oath; he never let any one touch it; and she never looked at such horrid murderous things. And some remarks highly adverse to the volunteer movement were cut short.

William Andrews, groom, had been called by Anne Ellis, had seen the wound, and the blood on the desk, and had gone to fetch a surgeon and the police from Whitford. On his return, saw the rifle leaning against the shutter; believed it to be Mr. Ward’s rifle.

Charles Rankin, surgeon, had been called in to see Mr. Axworthy, and arrived at seven o’clock A. M. Found him dead, from a fracture of the skull over the left temple, he should imagine, from a blow from a heavy blunt instrument, such as the stock of a gun. Death must have been instantaneous, and had probably taken place seven or eight hours before he was called in. The marks upon the rifle before him were probably blood; but he could not say so upon oath, till he had subjected them to microscopic examination. The hair was human, and corresponded with that of the deceased.

Samuel Axworthy had slept at the Three Goblets, in consequence of finding himself too late for admission at home. He had been wakened at half-past five, and found all as had been stated by the previous witnesses; and he corroborated the housekeeper’s account of his uncle’s habits. The rifle he believed to belong to his cousin, Leonard Ward. He could not account for Leonard Ward’s absence on that morning. No permission, as far as he was aware, had been given him to leave home; and he had never known his uncle give him any commission at that hour.

The different policemen gave their narrations of the state of things—the open window, the position of the boat, &c. And the ticket-clerk at the small Blewer Station stated that at about 12.15 at night, Mr. Ward had walked in without baggage, and asked for a second-class ticket to London.

Leonard here interposed an inquiry whether he had not said a day ticket, and the clerk recollected that he had done so, and had spoken of returning by four o’clock; but the train, being reckoned as belonging to the previous day, no return tickets were issued for it, and he had therefore taken an ordinary one, and started by the mail train.

The London policeman, who had come down with Leonard, stated that, in consequence of a telegraphic message, he had been at the Paddington Station at 6.30 that morning; had seen a young gentleman answering to the description sent to him, asked if his name were Leonard Ward, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, had informed him of the charge, and taken him into custody. The bag that he placed on the table he had found on the young man’s person.

Every one was startled at this unexpected corroboration of the suspicion. It was a heavy-looking bag, of reddish canvas, marked with a black circle, containing the letters F. A. Gold; the neck tied with a string; the contents were sovereigns, and a note or two.

Dr. May looked piteously, despairingly, at Leonard; but the brow was still open and unclouded, the eye glanced back reassurance and confidence.

The policeman added that he had cautioned the young man to take care what he said, but that he had declared at once that his uncle had sent him to lodge the sum in Drummond’s Bank, and that he would show a receipt for it on his return.

The coroner then proceeded to examine Leonard, but still as a witness. Edward Anderson spoke to him in an undertone, advising him to be cautious, and not commit himself, but Leonard, rather impatiently thanking him, shook him off, and spoke with freedom and openness.

‘I have nothing to keep back,’ he said. ‘Of course I know nothing of this frightful murder, nor what villain could have got hold of the rifle, which, I am sorry to say, is really mine. Last evening I used it at drill and practice on Blewer Heath, and came home when it grew dusk, getting in at about half-past nine. I was then told by Mrs. Giles that my uncle wished to speak to me, and was displeased at my staying out so late. I went into his room as I was, and put my rifle down in a corner by the window, when he desired me to sit down and listen to him. He then told me that he wished to send me to town by the mail train, to take some cash to Drummond’s Bank, and to return by to-day’s four o’clock train. He said he had reasons for wishing no one to be aware of his opening an account there, and he undertook to explain my absence. He took the sum from the private drawer of his desk, and made me count it before him, L124 12s. in sovereigns and bank-notes. The odd money he gave me for my expenses, the rest I put in the bag that I fetched out of the office. He could not hold a pen, and could therefore give me no letter to Messrs. Drummond, but he made me write a receipt for the amount in his memorandum book. I wished him good night, and left him still sitting in his easy-chair, with the window open and the blind down. I found that I had forgotten my rifle, but I did not go back for it, because he disliked the disturbance of opening and shutting doors. While I was changing my dress, I saw from the window that some one was still about in the court, and knowing that my uncle wished me to avoid notice, I thought it best to let myself out by the passage window, as I had sometimes done in early mornings to bathe or fish, and go across the fields to Blewer Station. I got down into the garden, crossed in the punt, and went slowly by Barnard’s hatch; I believe I stopped a good many times, as it was too soon, and a beautiful moonlight night, but I came to Blewer soon after twelve, and took my ticket. At Paddington I met this terrible news.’

As the boy spoke, his bright eyes turned from one listener to another, as though expecting to read satisfaction on their faces; but as doubt and disbelief clouded all, his looks became almost constantly directed to Dr. May, and his voice unconsciously passed from a sound of justification to one of pleading. When he ceased, he glanced round as if feeling his innocence established.

‘You gave a receipt, Mr. Ward,’ said the coroner. ‘Will you tell us where it is likely to be?’

‘It must be either on or in my uncle’s desk, or in his pocket. Will some one look for it? I wrote it in his memorandum book—a curious old black shagreen book, with a silver clasp. I left it open on the desk to dry.’

A policeman went to search for it; and the coroner asked what the entry had been.

‘July 5th, 1860. Received, L120. L. A. Ward,’—was the answer. ‘You will find it about the middle of the book, or rather past it.’

‘At what time did this take place?’

‘It must have been towards ten. I cannot tell exactly, but it was later than half-past nine when I came in, and he was a good while bringing out the money.’

The policeman returned, saying he could not find the book; and Leonard begging to show where he had left it, the coroner and jury accompanied him to the room. At the sight of the red stain on the desk, a shuddering came over the boy, and a whiteness on his heated brow, nor could he at once recover himself so as to proceed with the search, which was still in vain; though with a voice lowered by the sickness of horror, he pointed out the place where he had laid it, and the pen he had used; and desk, table, drawer, and the dead man’s dress were carefully examined.

‘You must know it, Sam,’ said Leonard. ‘Don’t you remember his putting in the cheque—old Bilson’s cheque for his year’s rent—twenty-five pounds? I brought it in, and he put it away one day last week. You were sitting there.’

Sam stammered something of ‘Yes, he did recollect something of it.’

Inquiries were made of the other persons concerned with Mr. Axworthy. Hardy thought his master used such a book, but had never seen it near; Mrs. Giles altogether disbelieved its existence; and Sam could not be positive—his uncle never allowed any one to touch his private memorandums.

As, with deepened anxiety, Dr. May returned to the dining-room, he caught a glimpse of Henry Ward’s desponding face, but received a sign not to disclose his presence. Edward Anderson wrote, and considered; and the coroner, looking at his notes again, recurred to Leonard’s statement that he had seen some one in the yard.

‘I thought it was one of the men waiting to take my cousin Axworthy’s horse. I did not know whether he had ridden or gone by train; and I supposed that some one would be looking out for him.’

Questions were asked whether any of the servants had been in the yard, but it was denied by all; and on a more particular description of the person being demanded, Leonard replied that the figure had been in the dark shade of the stables, and that he only knew that it was a young man—whether a stranger or not he did not know; he supposed now that it must have been the—the murderer, but at the time he had thought it one of the stable-men; and as his uncle had particularly wished that his journey should be a secret, the sight had only made him hasten to put out his light, and depart unseen. It was most unfortunate that he had done so.

Others ironically whispered, ‘Most unfortunate.’

The coroner asked Mr. Anderson whether he had anything to ask or observe, and on his reply in the negative, proceeded to sum up the evidence for the consideration of the jury.

It seemed as if it were only here that Leonard perceived the real gist of the evidence. His brow grew hotter, his eyes indignant, his hands clenched, as if he with difficulty restrained himself from breaking in on the coroner’s speech; and when at length the question was put to the jury, he stood, the colour fading from his cheek, his eyes set and glassy, his lip fallen, the dew breaking out on his brow, every limb as it were petrified by the shock of what was thus first fully revealed to him.

So he stood, while the jury deliberated in low gruff sorrowful murmurs, and after a few minutes, turned round to announce with much sadness that they could do no otherwise than return a verdict of wilful murder against Leonard Ward.

‘Mr. Leonard Ward,’ said the coroner, a gentleman who had well known his father, and who spoke with scarcely concealed emotion, ‘it becomes my painful duty to commit you to Whitford Gaol for trial at the next assizes.’

Dr. May eagerly offered bail, rather as the readiest form of kindness than in the hope of its acceptance, and it was of course refused; but he made his way to the prisoner, and wrung his chill hand with all his might. The pressure seemed to waken the poor lad from his frozen rigidity; the warmth came flowing back into his fingers as his friend held them; he raised his head, shut and re-opened his eyes, and pushed back his hair, as though trying to shake himself loose from a too horrible dream. His face softened and quivered as he met the Doctor’s kind eyes; but bracing himself again, he looked up, answered the coroner’s question—that his Christian name was Leonard Axworthy, his age within a few weeks of eighteen; and asked permission to fetch what he should want from his room.

The policeman, in whose charge he was, consented both to this, and to Dr. May being there alone with him for a short time.

Then it was that the boy relaxed the strain on his features, and said in a low and strangled voice, ‘O, Dr. May, if you had only let me die with them last year!’

‘It was not I who saved you. He who sent that ordeal, will bring you through—this,’ said Dr. May, with a great sob in his throat that belied his words of cheer.

‘I thank Him at least for having taken her,’ said Leonard, resting his head on the mantelshelf beneath his mother’s picture, while his little dog sat at his foot, looking up at him, cowed and wistful.

Dr. May strove for words of comfort, but broke utterly down; and could only cover his face with his hands, and struggle with his emotion, unable to utter a word.

Yet perhaps none would have been so comforting as his genuine sympathy, although it was in a voice of extreme distress that Leonard exclaimed, ‘Dr. May, Dr. May, pray don’t! you ought not to grieve for me!’

‘I’m a fool,’ said Dr. May, after some space, fighting hard with himself. ‘Nonsense! we shall see you out of this! We have only to keep up a good heart, and we shall see it explained.’

‘I don’t know; I can’t understand,’ said Leonard, passing his hand over his weary forehead. ‘Why could they not believe when I told them just how it was?’

At that moment the policeman opened the door, saying, ‘Here, sir;’ and Henry hurried in, pale and breathless, not looking in his brother’s face, as he spoke fast and low.

‘Ned Anderson says there’s nothing at all to be made of this defence of yours; it is of no use to try it. The only thing is to own that he found fault with you, and in one of your rages—you know—’

‘You too, Henry!’ said Leonard, in dejected reproach.

‘Why—why, it is impossible it could have been otherwise—open window, absconding, and all. We all know you never meant it; but your story won’t stand; and the only chance, Anderson says, is to go in for manslaughter. If you could only tell anything that would give him a clue to pick up evidence while the people are on the spot.’

Leonard’s face was convulsed for a moment while his brother was speaking; but he recovered calmness of voice, as he mournfully answered, ‘I have no right to wonder at your suspicion of me.’

Henry for the first time really looked at him, and instinctively faltered, ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Indeed,’ said Leonard, with the same subdued manner, ‘I cannot believe that any provocation could make me strike a person like that old man; and here there was none at all. Except that he was vexed at first at my being late, he had never been so near kindness.’

‘Then is this extraordinary story the truth?’

‘Why should I not tell the truth?’ was the answer, too mournful for indignation.

Henry again cast down his eyes, Leonard moved about making preparations, Dr. May leant against the wall—all too much oppressed for speech; till, as Leonard stooped, poor little Mab, thrusting her black head into his hand, drew from him the words, ‘My doggie, what is to become of you?’

A sort of hoarse explosion of ‘Ave’ from Henry was simultaneous with the Doctor’s ‘I tried to get her home with me in the morning, but she waited your orders.’

‘Miss May would not have her now. After all, prussic acid would be the truest mercy’ said Leonard, holding the little creature up to his face, and laying his cheek against her silken coat with almost passionate affection.

‘Not while there are those who trust your word, Leonard; as Ethel said this morning.’

He raised the face which he had hidden against the dog, and looked earnestly at the Doctor as if hardly venturing to understand him; then a ray of real gladness and comfort darted into his eyes, which so enlivened Dr. May, that he was able to say cheerfully, ‘We will take good care of her till you come for her.’

‘Then, Henry,’ said Leonard, ‘it is not unkindness, nor that I remember things, but indeed I think it will be better for you all, since Dr. May is so—so—’ The word kind was so inadequate, that it stuck in his throat. ‘Take this to Ave,’ putting his mother’s likeness in his hand, ‘and tell her I will write,’

‘Poor Ave!’

Leonard imploringly shook his head; the mention of his sister shook him more than he could bear; and he asked the time.

‘Nearly six.’

‘Only six! What an endless day! There, I am ready. There is no use in delaying. I suppose I must show what I am taking with me.’

‘Wait,’ said his brother. ‘Cannot you say anything to put us on the track of the man in the yard?’

‘I did not see him plain.’

‘You’ve no notion?’ said Henry, with a movement of annoyance.

‘No. I only looked for a moment; for I was much more anxious to get off quietly, than to make any one out. If I had only waited ten minutes, it might have been the saving of his life, but my commission was so like fun, and so important too, that I thought of nothing else. Can it be not twenty-four hours ago?’

‘And why don’t you explain why he sent you?’

‘I cannot say it so certainly as to be of the slightest use,’ said Leonard.

‘He never expressed it either; and I have no right to talk of my suspicions.’

‘Eh! was it to put it out of Sam’s way?’

‘So I suppose. Sam used to get all he chose out of the poor old man; and I believe he thought this the only chance of keeping anything for himself, but he never told me so. Stay! Bilson’s cheque might be tracked. I took it myself, and gave the receipt; you will find it entered in the books—paid on either the twenty-third or fourth.’

‘Then there’s something to do, at any rate,’ cried Henry, invigorated. ‘Anderson shall hunt out the balance and Sam’s draughts on it. I’ll spare no expense, Leonard, if it is to my last farthing; and you shall have the best counsel that can be retained.’

Leonard signed thanks with some heartiness, and was going to the door, when Henry detained him. ‘Tell me, Leonard, have you no suspicion?’

‘It must have been the person I saw in the court, and, like a fool, did not watch. The window was open, and he could have easily got in and come out. Can’t they see that if it had been me, I should have made off at once that way?’

‘If you could only tell what the fellow was like!’

‘I told you he was in the dark,’ said Leonard, and without giving time for more, he called in the man outside, showed the clothes and, books he had selected, put them into his bag, and declared himself ready, giving his hand to the Doctor, who drew him near and kissed his brow, as if he had been Harry setting forth on a voyage.

‘Good-bye, my dear fellow; God bless you; I’ll soon come to see you.’

‘And I,’ said Henry, ‘will bring Bramshaw to see what is to be done.’

Leonard wrung his brother’s hand, murmuring something of love to his sisters; then put Mab into Dr. May’s arms, with injunctions that the little creature understood and obeyed, for though trembling and whining under her breath, she was not resisting.

It might be to shorten her distress as well as his own that Leonard passed quickly down-stairs, and entered the carriage that was to take him to the county gaol.

CHAPTER XIII

Tears are not always fruitful; their hot drops Sometimes but scorch the cheek and dim the eye; Despairing murmurs over blackened hopes, Not the meek spirit’s calm and chastened cry. Oh, better not to weep, than weep amiss! For hard it is to learn to weep aright; To weep wise tears, the tears that heal and bless, The tears which their own bitterness requite.—H. BONAR

To one of the most tender-hearted of human beings had the office of conveying ill tidings been most often committed, and again Dr. May found himself compelled to precede Henry Ward into the sister’s presence, and to break to her the result of the inquest.

He was no believer in the efficacy of broken news, but he could not refuse when Henry in his wretchedness entreated not to be the first in the infliction of such agony; so he left the carriage outside, and walked up to the door; and there stood Averil, with Ethel a few steps behind her. His presence was enough revelation. Had things gone well, he would not have been the forerunner; and Averil, meaning perhaps to speak, gave a hoarse hysterical shriek, so frightful as to drive away other anxieties, and summon Henry in from his watch outside.

All day the poor girl had kept up an unnatural strain on her powers, vehemently talking of other things, and, with burning cheeks and shining eyes, moving incessantly from one employment to another; now her needle, now her pencil—roaming round the garden gathering flowers, or playing rattling polkas that half stunned Ethel in her intense listening for tidings. Ethel, who had relieved guard and sent Mary home in the afternoon, had vainly striven to make Ave rest or take food; the attempt had brought on such choking, that she could only desist, and wait for the crisis. The attack was worse than any ordinary hysterics, almost amounting to convulsions; and all that could be done was to prevent her from hurting herself, and try to believe Dr. May’s assurance that there was no real cause for alarm, and that the paroxysms would exhaust themselves.

In time they were spent, and Ave lay on her bed half torpid, feebly moaning, but with an instinctive dread of being disturbed. Henry anxiously watched over her, and Dr. May thought it best to leave the brother and sister to one another. Absolute quiet was best for her, and he had skill and tenderness enough to deal with her, and was evidently somewhat relieved by the necessity of waiting on her. It was the best means, perhaps, of uniting them, that they should be thus left together; and Dr. May would have taken home little pale frightened Minna, who had been very helpful all the time.

‘Oh, please not, Dr. May,’ she said, earnestly. ‘Indeed I will not be troublesome, and I can give Henry his tea, and carry Ave’s cup. Please, Henry, don’t send me:’ and she took hold of his hand, and laid it against her cheek. He bent down over her, and fondled her; and there were tears that he could not hide as he tried both to thank Dr. May, and tell her that she need not leave him.

‘No,’ said Dr. May; ‘it would be cruel to both of you.—Good-bye, little Minna; I never wanted to carry away a little comforter.’

‘I believe you are right, papa,’ said Ethel, as she went out with him to the carriage; ‘but I long to stay, it is like doing something for that boy.’

‘The best you did for him, poor dear boy! was the saying you trusted his word. The moment I told him that, he took comfort and energy.’

Ethel’s lips moved into a strange half smile, and she took Mab on her lap, and fondled her. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I believe I stand for a good deal in his imagination. I was afraid he would have been wrecked upon that horrid place; but, after all, this may be the saving of him.’

‘Ah! if that story of his would only be more vraisemblable.’

There was only time briefly to narrate it before coming home, where the first person they met was Aubrey, exceeding pale, and in great distress. ‘Papa, I must tell you,’ he said, drawing him into the study. ‘I have done terrible harm, I am afraid.’ And he explained, that in the morning, when Mrs. Pugh had come down full of inquiries and conjectures, and had spoken of the possibility of Leonard’s having been drowned while bathing, he had unguardedly answered that it could be no such thing; Leonard had always meant to run away, and by that very window, if the Axworthys grew too bad.

Prudent Tom had silenced him at the time, but had since found that it had got abroad that the evasion had long been meditated with Aubrey’s privity, and had been asked by one of the constabulary force if his brother would not be an important witness. Tom had replied that he knew nothing about it; but Aubrey was in great misery, furious with Mrs. Pugh, and only wanting his father to set off at once to assure them it was all nonsense.

‘No, Aubrey, they neither would, nor ought to, take my word.’

‘Just hear, papa, and you would know the chaff it was.’

‘I cannot hear, Aubrey. If we were to discuss it, we might give it an unconscious colouring. You must calm your mind, and exactly recall what passed; but do not talk about it to me or to any one else. You must do nothing to impair the power of perfect truth and accuracy, which is a thing to be prayed for. If any one—even the lawyer who may have to get up the case against him—asks you about it, you must refuse to answer till the trial; and then—why, the issue is in the hands of Him that judgeth righteously.’

‘I shall never remember nor speak with his eyes on me, seeing me betray him!’

‘You will be no worse off than I, my boy, for I see I am in for identifying Hector’s rifle; the Mill people can’t swear to it, and my doing it will save his brother something.’

‘No, it is not like me. O! I wish I had stayed at Eton, even if I had died of it! Tom says it all comes of living with women that I can’t keep my mouth shut; and Leonard will be so hurt that I—’

‘Nay, any tolerable counsel will make a capital defence out of the mere fact of his rodomontading. What, is that no comfort to you?’

‘What! to be the means of making a fool of him before all the court—seeing him hear our talk by the river-side sifted by those horrid lawyers?’

The Doctor looked even graver, and his eye fixed as on a thought far away, as the boy’s grief brought to his mind the Great Assize, when all that is spoken in the ear shall indeed be proclaimed on the house-tops.

There was something almost childish in this despair of Aubrey, for he had not become alarmed for the result of the trial. His misery was chiefly shame at his supposed treason to friendship, and failure in manly reserve; and he could not hold up his head all the evening, but silently devoted himself to Mab, endeavouring to make her at home, and meeting with tolerable success.

Tom was no less devoted to Ella Ward. It was he who had brought her home, and he considered her therefore as his charge. It was curious to see the difference that a year had made between her and Minna. They had the last summer been like one child, and had taken the stroke that had orphaned them in the same childish manner; but whether the year from eight to nine had been of especial growth to Minna, or whether there had been a stimulus in her constant association with Averil, the present sorrow fell on her as on one able to enter into it, think and feel, and assume her sweet mission of comfort; whilst Ella, though neither hard nor insensible, was still child enough to close her mind to what she dreaded, and flee willingly from the pain and tedium of affliction. She had willingly accepted ‘Mr. Tom’s‘ invitation, and as willingly responded to his attentions. Gertrude did not like people in the ‘little girl’ stage, and the elder sisters had their hands and hearts full, and could only care for her in essentials; but Tom undertook her amusement, treated her to an exhibition of his microscope, and played at French billiards with her the rest of the evening, till she was carried off to bed in Mary’s room, when he pronounced her a very intelligent child.

‘I think her a very unfeeling little thing,’ said Gertrude. ‘Very unbecoming behaviour under the circumstances.’

‘What would you think becoming behaviour?’ asked Tom.

‘I won’t encourage it,’ returned Daisy, with dignified decision, that gave her father his first approach to a laugh on that day; but nobody was in spirits to desire Miss Daisy to define from what her important sanction was withdrawn.

Mary gave up her Sunday-school class to see how Averil was, and found Henry much perturbed. He had seen her fast asleep at night, and in the morning Minna had carried up her breakfast, and he was about to follow it, as soon as his own was finished, when he found that she had slipped out of the house, leaving a message that she was gone to practise on the harmonium.

He was of the mind that none of the family could or ought to be seen at church; and though Mary could not agree with him, she willingly consented to go to the chapel and try what she could do with his sister. She met Mrs. Ledwich on the way, coming to inquire and see whether she or dear Matilda could do anything for the ‘sweet sufferer.’ Even Mary could not help thinking that this was not the epithet most befitting poor Ave; and perhaps Mrs. Ledwich’s companionship made her the less regret that Ave had locked herself in, so that there was no making her hear, though the solemn chants, played with great fervour, reached them as they waited in the porch. They had their own seats in the Minster, and therefore could not wait till the sexton should come to open the church.

There was no time for another visit till after the second service, and then Dr. May and Mary, going to Bankside, found that instead of returning home, Ave had again locked herself up between the services, and that Minna, who had ventured on a mission of recall, had come home crying heartily both at the dreary disappointment of knocking in vain, and at the grand mournful sounds of funeral marches that had fallen on her ear. Every one who had been at the chapel that day was speaking of the wonderful music, the force and the melody of the voluntary at the dismissal of the congregation; no one had believed that such power resided in the harmonium. Mr. Scudamour had spoken to Miss Ward most kindly both before and after evening service, but his attempt to take her home had been unavailing; she had answered that she was going presently, and he was obliged to leave her.

Evening was coming on, and she had not come, so the other keys were fetched from the sexton’s, and Dr. May and his daughter set off to storm her fortress. Like Minna, the Doctor was almost overpowered by the wonderful plaintive sweetness of the notes that were floating through the atmosphere, like a wailing voice of supplication. They had almost unnerved him, as he waited while Mary unlocked the door.

The sound of its opening hushed the music; Averil turned her head, and recognizing them, came to them, very pale, and with sunken eyes. ‘You are coming home, dear Ave,’ said Mary; and she made no resistance or objection, only saying, ‘Yes. It has been so nice here!’

‘You must come now, though,’ said the Doctor. ‘Your brother is very much grieved at your leaving him.’

‘I did not mean to be unkind to him,’ said Averil, in a low subdued voice; ‘he was very good to me last night. Only—this is peace—this,’ pointing to her instrument, ‘is such a soothing friend. And surely this is the place to wait in!’

‘The place to wait in indeed, my poor child, if you are not increasing the distress of others by staying here. Besides, you must not exhaust yourself, or how are you to go and cheer Leonard!’

‘Oh! there is no fear but that I shall go tomorrow,’ said Averil; ‘I mean to do it!’ the last words being spoken in a resolute tone, unlike the weariness of her former replies.

And with this purpose before her, she consented to be taken back by Mary to rest on the sofa, and even to try to eat and drink. Her brother and sister hung over her, and waited on her with a tender assiduous attention that showed how they had missed her all day; and she received their kindness gratefully, as far as her broken wearied state permitted.

Several inquiries had come throughout the day from the neighbours; and while Mary was still with Ave, a message was brought in to ask whether Miss Ward would like to see Mrs. Pugh.

‘Oh no, no, thank her, but indeed I cannot,’ said Averil, shivering uncontrollably as she lay.

Mary felt herself blushing, in the wonder what would be kindest to do, and her dread of seeing Henry’s face. She was sure that he too shrank, and she ventured to ask, ‘Shall I go and speak to her?’

‘Oh, do, do,’ said Averil, shuddering with eagerness. ‘Thank you, Miss Mary,’ said Henry slowly. ‘She is most kind—but—under the circumstances—’

Mary went, finding that he only hesitated. She had little opportunity for saying anything; Mrs. Pugh was full of interest and eagerness, and poured out her sympathy and perfect understanding of dear Averil’s feelings; and in the midst Henry came out of the room, with a stronger version of their gratitude, but in terrible confusion. Mary would fain have retreated, but could not, and was witness to the lady’s urgent entreaties to take Minna home, and Henry’s thankfulness; but he feared—and retreated to ask the opinion of his sisters, while Mrs. Pugh told Mary that it was so very bad for the poor child to remain, and begged to have Ella if she were a moment’s inconvenience to the May family.

Henry came back with repeated thanks, but Minna could not bear to leave home; and in fact, he owned, with a half smile that gave sweetness to his face, she was too great a comfort to be parted with. So Mrs. Pugh departed, with doubled and trebled offers of service, and entreaties to be sent for at any hour of the day or night when she could be of use to Averil.

Mary could not but be pleased with her, officious as she was. It looked as if she had more genuine feeling for Henry than had been suspected, and the kindness was certain, though some of it might be the busy activity of a not very delicate nature, eager for the importance conferred by intimacy with the subjects of a great calamity. Probably she would have been gratified by the eclat of being the beloved of the brother of the youth whose name was in every mouth, and her real goodness and benevolent heart would have committed her affections and interest beyond recall to the Ward family, had Averil leant upon her, or had Henry exerted himself to take advantage of her advances.

But Henry’s attachment had probably not been love, for it seemed utterly crushed out of him by his shame and despair. Everything connected with his past life was hateful to him; he declared that he could never show his face at Stoneborough again, let the result be what it might—that he could never visit another patient, and that he should change his name and leave the country, beginning on that very Sunday afternoon to write a letter to his principal rival to negotiate the sale of his practice.

In fact, his first impression had returned on him, and though he never disclaimed belief in Leonard’s statement, the entire failure of all confirmation convinced him that the blow had been struck by his brother in sudden anger, and that, defend him as he might and would, the stain was on his house, and the guilt would be brought home.

Resolved, however, to do his utmost, he went with Mr. Bramshaw for a consultation with Leonard on the Monday. Averil could not go. She rose and dressed, and remained resolute till nearly the last minute, when her feverish faint giddiness overpowered her, and she was forced to submit to lie on the sofa, under Minna’s care; and there she lay, restless and wretched, till wise little Minna sent a message up to the High Street, which brought down Mary and Dr. Spencer. They found her in a state of nervous fever, that sentenced her to her bed, where Mary deposited her and watched over her, till her brother’s return, more desponding than ever.

Dr. May, with all Henry’s patients on his hands as well as his own, had been forced to devote this entire day to his profession; but on the next, leaving Henry to watch over Averil, who continued very feeble and feverish, he went to Whitford, almost infected by Henry’s forebodings and Mr. Bramshaw’s misgivings. ‘It is a bad case,’ the attorney had said to him, confidentially. ‘But that there is always a great reluctance to convict upon circumstantial evidence, I should have very little hope, that story of his is so utterly impracticable; and yet he looks so innocent and earnest all the time, and sticks to it so consistently, that I don’t know what to make of it. I can’t do anything with him, nor can his brother either; but perhaps you might make him understand that we could bring him clear off for manslaughter—youth, and character and all. I should not doubt of a verdict for a moment! It is awkward about the money, but the alarm would be considered in the sentence.’

‘You don’t attend to his account of the person he saw in the courtyard?’

‘The less said about that the better,’ returned Mr. Bramshaw. ‘It would only go for an awkward attempt to shift off the suspicion, unless he would give any description; and that he can’t, or won’t do. Or even if he did, the case would be all the stronger against his story—setting off, and leaving a stranger to maraud about the place. No, Dr. May; the only thing for it is to persuade the lad to own to having struck the old man in a passion; every one knows old Axworthy could be intolerably abusive, and the boy always was passionate. Don’t you remember his flying out at Mr. Rivers’s, the night of the party, and that affair which was the means of his going to the mill at all? I don’t mind saying so to you in confidence, because I know you won’t repeat it, and I see his brother thinks so too; but nothing is likely to turn out so well for him as that line of defence; as things stand now, the present one is good for nothing.’

Dr. May was almost as much grieved at the notion of the youth’s persistence in denying such a crime, as at the danger in which it involved him, and felt that if he were to be brought to confession, it should be from repentance, not expediency.

In this mood he drove to Whitford Gaol, made application at the gates, and was conducted up the stairs to the cell.

The three days of nearly entire solitude and of awful expectation had told like double the number of years; and there was a stamp of grave earnest collectedness on the young brow, and a calm resolution of aspect and movement, free from all excitement or embarrassment, as Leonard Ward stood up with a warm grateful greeting, so full of ingenuous reliance, that every doubt vanished at the same moment.

His first question was for Averil; and Dr. May made the best of her state. ‘She slept a little more last night, and her pulse is lower this morning; but we keep her in bed, half to hinder her from trying to come here before she is fit. I believe this ailment is the best thing for her and Henry both,’ added the Doctor, seeing how much pain his words were giving. ‘Henry is a very good nurse; it occupies him, and it is good for her to feel his kindness! Then Minna has come out in the prettiest way: she never fails in some sweet little tender word or caress just when it is wanted.’

Leonard tried to smile, but only succeeded in keeping back a sob; and the Doctor discharged his memory of the messages of love of which he had been the depositary. Leonard recovered his composure during these, and was able to return a smile on hearing of Ella’s conquest of Tom, of their Bible prints on Sunday, and their unwearied French billiards in the week. Then he asked after little Mab.

‘She is all a dog should be,’ said Dr. May. ‘Aubrey is her chief friend, except when she is lying at her ease on Ethel’s dress.’

The old test of dog-love perhaps occurred to Leonard, for his lips trembled, and his eyes were dewy, even while they beamed with gladness.

‘She is a great comfort to Aubrey,’ the Doctor added. ‘I must beg you to send that poor fellow your forgiveness, for he is exceedingly unhappy about something he repeated in the first unguarded moment.’

‘Mr. Bramshaw told me,’ said Leonard, with brow contracted.

‘I cannot believe,’ said Dr. May, ‘that it can do you any real harm. I do not think the prosecution ought to take notice of it; but if they do, it will be easy to sift it, and make it tell rather in your favour.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Leonard, still coldly.

‘Then you will cheer him with some kind message?’

‘To be sure. It is the time for me to be forgiving every one,’ he answered, with a long tightly-drawn breath.

Much distressed, the Doctor paused, in uncertainty whether Leonard were actuated by dread of the disclosure or resentment at the breach of confidence; but ere he spoke, the struggle had been fought out, and a sweet sad face was turned round to him, with the words, ‘Poor old Aubrey! Tell him not to mind. There will be worse to be told out than our romancings together, and he will feel it more than I shall! Don’t let him vex himself.’

‘Thank you,’ said the father, warmly. ‘I call that pardon.’

‘Not that there is anything to forgive,’ said Leonard, ‘only it is odd that one cares for it more than—No, no, don’t tell him that, but that I know it does not signify. It must not come between us, if this is to be the end; and it will make no difference. Nothing can do that but the finding my receipt. I see that book night and day before my eyes, with the very blot that I made in the top of my L.’

‘You know they are searching the garden and fields, and advertising a reward, in case of its having been thrown away when rifled, or found to contain no valuables.’

‘Yes!’ and he rested on the word as though much lay behind.

‘Do you think it contained anything worth keeping?’

‘Only by one person.’

‘Ha!’ said the Doctor, with a start.

Instead of answering, Leonard leant down on the narrow bed on which he was seated, and shut in his face between his hands.

The Doctor waited, guessed, and grew impatient. ‘You don’t mean that fellow, Sam? Do you think he has it? I should like to throttle him, as sure as my name’s Dick May!’ (this in soliloquy between his teeth). ‘Speak up, Leonard, if you have any suspicion.’

The lad lifted himself with grave resolution that gave him dignity. ‘Dr. May,’ he said, ‘I know that what I say is safe with you, and it seems disrespectful to ask your word and honour beforehand, but I think it will be better for us both if you will give them not to make use of what I tell you. It weighs on me so, that I shall be saying it to the wrong person, unless I have it out with you. You promise me?’

‘To make no use of it without your consent,’ repeated the Doctor, with rising hope, ‘but this is no case for scruples—too much is at stake.’

‘You need not tell me that,’ Leonard replied, with a shudder; ‘but I have no proof. I have thought again and again and again, but can find no possible witness. He was always cautious, and drink made him savage, but not noisy.’

‘Then you believe—’ The silence told the rest.

‘If I did not see how easy people find it to believe the same of me on the mere evidence of circumstances, I should have no doubt,’ said Leonard, deliberately.

‘Then it was he that you saw in the yard?’

‘Remember, all I saw was that a man was there. I concluded it was Andrews, waiting to take the horse; and as he is a great hanger-on of Sam, I wished to avoid him, and not keep my candle alight to attract his attention. That was the whole reason of my getting out of window, and starting so soon; as unlucky a thing as I could have done.’

‘You are sure it was not Andrews?’

‘Now I am. You see, Sam had sent home his horse from the station, though I did not know it; and, if you remember, Andrews was shown to have been at his father’s long before. If he had been the man, he could speak to the time my light was put out.’

‘The putting out of your light must have been the signal for the deed to be done.’

‘My poor uncle! Well might he stare round as if he thought the walls would betray him, and start at every chinking of that unhappy gold in his helpless hands! If we had only known who was near—perhaps behind the blinds—’ and Leonard gasped.

‘But this secrecy, Leonard, I cannot understand it. Do you mean that the poor old man durst not do what he would with his own?’

‘Just so. Whenever Sam knew that he had a sum of money, he laid hands on it. Nothing was safe from him that Mr. Axworthy had in the Whitford Bank.’

‘That can be proved from the accounts?’

‘You recollect the little parlour between the office and my uncle’s sitting-room? There I used to sit in the evening, and to feel, rather than hear, the way Sam used to bully the poor old man. Once—a fortnight ago, just after that talk with Aubrey—I knew he had been drinking, and watched, and came in upon them when there was no bearing it any longer. I was sworn at for my pains, and almost kicked out again; but after that Mr. Axworthy made me sit in the room, as if I were a protection; and I made up my mind to bear it as long as he lived.’

‘Surely the servants would bear witness to this state of things?’

‘I think not. Their rooms are too far off for overhearing, and my uncle saw as little of them as possible. Mrs. Giles was Sam’s nurse, and cares for him more than any other creature; she would not say a word against him even if she knew anything; and my uncle would never have complained. He was fond of Sam to the last, proud of his steeple-chases and his cleverness, and desperately afraid of him; in a sort of bondage, entirely past daring to speak.’

‘I know,’ said Dr. May, remembering how his own Tom had been fettered and tongue-tied by that same tyrant in boyhood. ‘But he spoke to you?’

‘No,’ said Leonard. ‘After that scene much was implied between us, but nothing mentioned. I cannot even tell whether he trusted me, or only made me serve as a protector. I believe that row was about this money, which he had got together in secret, and that Sam suspected, and wanted to extort; but it was exactly as I said at the inquest, he gave no reason for sending me up to town with it. He knew that I knew why, and so said no more than that it was to be private. It was pitiful to see that man, so fierce and bold as they say he once was, trembling as if doing something by stealth, and the great hard knotty hands so crumpled and shaky, that he had to leave all to me. And that they should fancy I could go and hurt him!’ said Leonard, stretching his broad chest and shoulders in conscious strength.

‘Yes, considering who it was, I do not wonder that you feel the passion-theory as insulting as the accusation.’

‘I ought not,’ said Leonard, reddening. ‘Every one knows what my temper can do. I do not think that a poor old feeble man like that could have provoked me to be so cowardly, but I see it is no wonder they think so. Only they might suppose I would not have been a robber, and go on lying now, when they take good care to tell me that it is ruinous!’

‘It is an intolerable shame that they can look you in the face and imagine it for a moment,’ said the Doctor, with all his native warmth.

‘After all,’ said Leonard, recalled by his sympathy, ‘it is my own fault from beginning to end that I am in this case. I see now that it was only God’s mercy that prevented my brother’s blood being on me, and it was my unrepenting obstinacy that brought me to the mill; so there will be no real injustice in my dying, and I expect nothing else.’

‘Hush, Leonard, depend upon it, while there is Justice in Heaven, the true criminal cannot go free,’ cried the Doctor, much agitated.

Leonard shook his head.

‘Boyish hastiness is not murder,’ added the Doctor.

‘So I thought. But it might have been, and I never repented. I brought all this on myself; and while I cannot feel guiltless in God’s sight, I cannot expect it to turn out well.’

‘Turn out well,’ repeated the Doctor. ‘We want Ethel to tell us that this very repentance and owning of the sin, is turning out well—better than going on in it.’

‘I can see that,’ said Leonard. ‘I do hope that if—if I can take this patiently, it may show I am sorry for the real thing—and I may be forgiven. Oh! I am glad prisoners are not cut off from church.’

Dr. May pressed his hand in much emotion: and there was a silence before another question—whether there were nothing that could be of service.

‘One chance there is, that Sam might relent enough to put that receipt where it could be found without implicating him. He must know what it would do for me.’

‘You are convinced that he has it?’

‘There must be papers in the book valuable to him; perhaps some that he had rather were not seen. Most likely he secured it in the morning. You remember he was there before the police.’

‘Ay! ay! ay! the scoundrel! But, Leonard, what possessed you not to speak out at the inquest, when we might have searched every soul on the premises?’

‘I did not see it then. I was stunned by the horror of the thing—the room where I had been so lately, and that blood on my own rifle too. It was all I could do at one time not to faint, and I had no notion they would not take my explanation; then, when I found it rejected, and everything closing in on me, I was in a complete maze. It was not till yesterday, when I was alone again, after having gone over my defence with Mr. Bramshaw, and shown what I could prove, that I saw exactly how it must have been, as clear as a somnambulist. I sometimes could fancy I had seen Sam listening at the window, and have to struggle not to think I knew him under the stable wall.’

‘And you are not such a—such a—so absurd as to sacrifice yourself to any scruple, and let the earth be cumbered with a rascal who, if he be withholding the receipt, is committing a second murder! It is not generosity, it is suicide.’

‘It is not generosity,’ said the boy, ‘for if there were any hope, that would not stop me; but no one heard nor saw but myself, and I neither recognized him—no, I did not—nor heard anything definite from my uncle. Even if I had, no one—no one but you, believes a word I speak; nay, even my own case shows what probabilities are worth, and that I may be doing him the same wrong that I am suffering. I should only bring on myself the shame and disgrace of accusing another.’

The steady low voice and unboyish language showed him to be speaking from reflection, not impulse. The only tremulous moment was when he spoke of the one friend who trusted him, and whom his words were filling with a tumult of hope and alarm, admiration, indignation, and perplexity.

‘Well, well,’ the Doctor said, almost stammering, ‘I am glad you have been open with me. It may be a clue. Can there be any excuse for overhauling his papers? Or can’t we pick a hole in that alibi of his? Now I recollect, he had it very pat, and unnecessarily prominent. I’ll find some way of going to work without compromising you. Yes, you may trust me! I’ll watch, but say not a word without your leave.’

‘Thank you,’ said Leonard. ‘I am glad it is you—you who would never think a vague hope of saving me better than disgrace and dishonour.’

‘We will save you,’ said the Doctor, becoming eager to escape to that favourite counsellor, the lining of his brougham, which had inspired him with the right theory of many a perplexing symptom, and he trusted would show him how to defend without betraying Leonard. ‘I must go and see about it. Is there anything I can do for you—books, or anything?’

No, thank you—except—I suppose there would be no objection to my having a few finer steel pens. ‘And to explain his wants, he took up his Prayer-Book, which his sister had decorated with several small devotional prints. Copying these minutely line by line in pen and ink, was the solace of his prison hours; and though the work was hardly after drawing-masters’ rules, the hand was not untaught, and there was talent and soul enough in the work to strike the Doctor.

‘It suits me best,’ said Leonard. ‘I should go distracted with nothing to do; and I can’t read much—at least, not common books. And my sisters may like to have them. Will you let me do one for you?’

The speaking expression of those hazel eyes almost overcame the Doctor, and his answer was by bending head and grasping hand. Leonard turned to the Collects, and mutely opened at the print of the Son of Consolation, which he had already outlined, looked up at his friend, and turned away, only saying, ‘Two or three of the sort with elastic nibs; they have them at the post-office.’

‘Yes, I’ll take care,’ said Dr. May, afraid to trust his self-command any longer. ‘Good-bye, Leonard. Tom says I adopt every one who gets through a bad enough fever, so what will you be to me after this second attack?’

The result of the Doctor’s consultation with his brougham was his stopping it at Mr. Bramshaw’s door, to ascertain whether the search for the receipt had extended to young Axworthy’s papers; but he found that they had been thoroughly examined, every facility having been given by their owner, who was his uncle’s executor, and residuary legatee, by a will dated five years back, leaving a thousand pounds to the late Mrs. Ward, and a few other legacies, but the mass of the property to the nephew.

Sam’s ‘facilities’ not satisfying the Doctor, it was further explained that every endeavour was being made to discover what other documents were likely to have been kept in the missing memorandum-book, so as to lead to the detection of any person who might present any such at a bank; and it was made evident that everything was being done, short of the impracticability of searching an unaccused man, but he could not but perceive that Mr. Bramshaw’s ‘ifs’ indicated great doubt of the existence of receipt and of pocket-book. Throwing out a hint that the time of Sam’s return should be investigated, he learnt that this had been Edward Anderson’s first measure, and that it was clear, from the independent testimony of the ostler at Whitford, the friend who had driven Sam, and the landlord of the Three Goblets, that there was not more than time for the return exactly as described at the inquest; and though the horse was swift and powerful, and might probably have been driven at drunken speed, this was too entirely conjectural for anything to be founded on it. Nor had the cheque by Bilson on the Whitford Bank come in.

‘Something must assuredly happen to exonerate the guiltless, it would be profane to doubt,’ said Dr. May continually to himself and to the Wards; but Leonard’s secret was a painful burthen that he could scarcely have borne without sharing it with that daughter who was his other self, and well proved to be a safe repository.

‘That’s my Leonard,’ said Ethel. ‘I know him much better now than any time since the elf-bolt affair! They have not managed to ruin him among them.’

‘What do you call this?’ said Dr. May, understanding her, indeed, but willing to hear her thought expressed.

‘Thankworthy,’ she answered, with a twitching of the corners of her mouth.

‘You will suffer for this exaltation,’ he said, sadly; ‘you know you have a tender heart, for all your flights.’

‘And you know you have a soul as well as a heart,’ said Ethel, as well as the swelling in her throat would allow.

‘To be sure, this world would be a poor place to live in, if admiration did not make pity bearable,’ said the Doctor; ‘but—but don’t ask me, Ethel: you have not had that fine fellow in his manly patience before your eyes. Talk of your knowing him! You knew a boy! I tell you, this has made him a man, and one of a thousand—so high-minded and so simple, so clearheaded and well-balanced, so entirely resigned and free from bitterness! What could he not be? It would be grievous to see him cut off by a direct dispensation—sickness, accident, battle; but for him to come to such an end, for the sake of a double murderer—Ethel—it would almost stagger one’s faith!’

‘Almost!’ repeated Ethel, with the smile of a conqueror.

‘I know, I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘If it be so, it will be right; one will try to believe it good for him. Nay, there’s proof enough in what it has done for him already. If you could only see him!’

‘I mean to see him, if it should go against him,’ said Ethel, ‘if you will let me. I would go to him as I would if he were in a decline, and with more reverence.’

‘Don’t talk of it,’ cried her father. ‘For truth’s sake, for justice’s sake, for the country’s sake, I can not, will not, believe it will go wrong. There is a Providence, after all, Ethel!’

And the Doctor went away, afraid alike of hope and despondency, and Ethel thought of the bright young face, of De Wilton, of Job, and of the martyrs; and when she was not encouraging Aubrey, or soothing Averil, her heart would sink, and the tears that would not come would have been very comfortable.

It was well for all that the assizes were so near that the suspense was not long protracted; for it told upon all concerned. Leonard, when the Doctor saw him again, was of the same way of thinking, but his manner was more agitated; he could not sleep, or if he slept, the anticipations chased away in the day-time revenged themselves in his dreams; and he was very unhappy, also, about his sister, whose illness continued day after day. She was not acutely ill, but in a constant state of low fever, every faculty in the most painful state of tension, convinced that she was quite able to get up and go to Leonard, and that her detention was mere cruelty; and then, on trying to rise, refused by fainting. Her searching questions and ardent eyes made it impossible to keep any feature in the case from her knowledge. Sleep was impossible to her; and once when Henry tried the effect of an anodyne, it produced a semi-delirium, which made him heartily repent of his independent measure. At all times she was talking—nothing but the being left with a very stolid maid-servant ever closed her lips, and she so greatly resented being thus treated, that the measure was seldom possible. Henry seldom left her. He was convinced that Leonard’s sentence would be hers likewise, and he watched over her with the utmost tenderness and patience with her fretfulness and waywardness, never quitting her except on their brother’s behalf, when Ethel or Mary would take his place. Little Minna was always to be found on her small chair by the bedside, or moving about like a mouse, sometimes whispering her one note, ‘They can’t hurt him, if he has not done it,’ and still quietly working at the pair of slippers that had been begun for his birthday present. Mary used to bring Ella, and take them out walking in the least-frequented path; but though the little sisters kissed eagerly, and went fondly hand in hand, they never were sorry to part: Ella’s spirits oppressed Minna, and Minna’s depression vexed the more volatile sister; moreover, Minna always dreaded Mary’s desire to carry her away—as, poor child, she looked paler, and her eyes heavier and darker, every day.

No one else, except, of course, Dr. May, was admitted. Henry would not let his sister see Mr. Scudamour or Mr. Wilmot, lest she should be excited; and Averil’s ‘No one’ was vehement as a defence against Mrs. Pugh or Mrs. Ledwich, whom she suspected of wanting to see her, though she never heard of more than their daily inquiries.

Mrs. Pugh was, in spite of her exclusion, the great authority with the neighbourhood for all the tidings of ‘the poor Wards,’ of whom she talked with the warmest commiseration, relating every touching detail of their previous and present history, and continually enduring the great shock of meeting people in shops or in the streets, whom she knew to be reporters or photographers. In fact, the catastrophe had taken a strong hold on the public mind; and ‘Murder of an Uncle by his Nephew,’ ‘The Blewer Tragedy,’ figured everywhere in the largest type; newsboys on the railway shouted, ‘To-day’s paper-account of inquest;’ and the illustrated press sent down artists, whose three-legged cameras stared in all directions, from the Vintry Mill to Bankside, and who aimed at the school, the Minster, the volunteers, and Dr. Hoxton himself. Tom advised Ethel to guard Mab carefully from appearing stuffed in the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud’s; and the furniture at the mill would have commanded any price. Nay, Mrs. Pugh was almost certain she had seen one of the ‘horrid men’ bargaining with the local photographer for her own portrait, in her weeds, and was resolved the interesting injury should never be forgiven!

She really had the ‘trying scenes’ of two interviews with both Mr. Bramshaw and the attorney from Whitford who was getting up the prosecution, each having been told that she was in possession of important intelligence. Mr. Bramshaw was not sanguine as to what he might obtain from her, but flattered her with the attempt, and ended by assuring her, like his opponent, that there was no need to expose her to the unpleasantness of appearing in court.

Aubrey was not to have the same relief, but was, like his father, subpoenaed as a witness for the prosecution. He had followed his father’s advice, and took care not to disclose his evidence to the enemy, as he regarded the Whitford lawyer. He was very miserable, and it was as much for his sake as that of the immediate family, that Ethel rejoiced that the suspense was to be short. Counsel of high reputation had been retained; but as the day came nearer, without bringing any of the disclosures on which the Doctor had so securely reckoned, more and more stress was laid on the dislike to convict on circumstantial evidence, and on the saying that the English law had rather acquit ten criminals than condemn one innocent man.

CHAPTER XIV

Ah! I mind me now of thronging faces, Mocking eyed, and eager, as for sport; Hundreds looking up, and in high places Men arrayed for judgment and a court.

And I heard, or seemed to hear, one seeking Answer back from one he doomed to die, Pitifully, sadly, sternly speaking Unto one—and oh! that one, twas I.—Rev. G. E. Monsell

The ‘Blewer Murder’ was the case of the Assize week; and the court was so crowded that, but for the favour of the sheriff, Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, with Tom and Gertrude, could hardly have obtained seats. No others of the family could endure to behold the scene, except from necessity; and indeed Ethel and Mary had taken charge of the sisters at home, for Henry could not remain at a distance from his brother, though unable to bear the sight of the proceedings; he remained in a house at hand.

Nearly the whole population of Stoneborough, Whitford, and Blewer was striving to press into court, but before the day’s work began, Edward Anderson had piloted Mrs. Pugh to a commodious place, under the escort of his brother Harvey, who was collecting materials for an article on criminal jurisprudence.

Some of those who, like the widow and little Gertrude, had been wild to be present, felt their hearts fail them when the last previous case had been disposed of; and there was a brief pause of grave and solemn suspense and silent breathless expectation within the court, unbroken, except by increased sounds of crowding in all the avenues without.

Every one, except the mere loungers, who craved nothing but excitement, looked awed and anxious; and the impression was deepened by the perception that the same feeling, though restrained, affected the judge himself, and was visible in the anxious attention with which he looked at the papers before him, and the stern sadness that had come over the features naturally full of kindness and benevolence.

The prisoner appeared in the dock. He had become paler, and perhaps thinner, for his square determined jaw, and the resolute mould of his lips, were more than usually remarkable, and were noted in the physiognomical brain of Harvey Anderson; as well as the keen light of his full dark hazel eye, the breadth of his brow, with his shining light brown hair brushed back from it; the strong build of his frame, and the determined force, apparent even in the perfect quiescence of his attitude.

Leonard Axworthy Ward was arraigned for the wilful murder of Francis Axworthy, and asked whether he pleaded Guilty or Not Guilty.

His voice was earnest, distinct, and firm, and his eyes were raised upwards, as though he were making the plea of ‘Not Guilty’ not to man alone, but to the Judge of all the earth.

The officer of the court informed him of his right to challenge any of the jury, as they were called over by name; and as each came to be sworn, he looked full and steadily at each face, more than one of which was known to him by sight, as if he were committing his cause into their hands. He declined to challenge; and then crossing his arms on his breast, cast down his eyes, and thus retained them through the greater part of the trial.

The jurymen were then sworn in, and charged with the issue; and the counsel for the prosecution opened the case, speaking more as if in pity than indignation, as he sketched the history, which it was his painful duty to establish. He described how Mr. Axworthy, having spent the more active years of his life in foreign trade, had finally returned to pass his old age among his relatives; and had taken to assist him in his business a great-nephew, and latterly another youth in the same degree of relation, the son of his late niece—the prisoner, who on leaving school had been taken into his uncle’s office, lodged in the house, and became one of the family. It would, however, be shown by witnesses that the situation had been extremely irksome to the young man; and that he had not been in it many months before he had expressed his intention of absconding, provided he could obtain the means of making his way in one of the colonies. Then followed a summary of the deductions resulting from the evidence about to be adduced, and which carried upon its face the inference that the absence of the cousin, the remoteness of the room, the sight of a large sum of money, and the helplessness of the old man, had proved temptations too strong for a fiery and impatient youth, long fretted by the restraints of his situation, and had conducted him to violence, robbery, and flight. It was a case that could not be regarded without great regret and compassion; but the gentlemen of the jury must bear in mind in their investigation, that pity must not be permitted to distort the facts, which he feared were only too obvious.

The speech was infinitely more telling from its fair and commiserating tone towards the prisoner; and the impression that it carried, not that he was to be persecuted by having the crime fastened on him, but that truth must be sought out at all hazards.

‘Even he is sorry for Leonard! I don’t hate him as I thought I should,’ whispered Gertrude May, to her elder sister. The first witness was, as before, the young maid-servant, Anne Ellis, who described her first discovery of the body; and on farther interrogation, the situation of the room, distant from those of the servants, and out of hearing—also her master’s ordinary condition of feebleness. She had observed nothing in the room, or on the table, but knew the window was open, since she had run to it, and screamed for help, upon which Master Hardy had come to her aid.

Leonard’s counsel then elicited from her how low the window was, and how easily it could be entered from without.

James Hardy corroborated all this, giving a more minute account of the state of the room; and telling of his going to call the young gentlemen, and finding the open passage window and empty bedroom. The passage window would naturally be closed at night; and there was no reason to suppose that Mr. Ward would be absent. The bag shown to him was one that had originally been made for the keeping of cash, but latterly had been used for samples of grain, and he had last seen it in the office.

The counsel for the prisoner inquired what had been on the table at Hardy’s first entrance; but to this the witness could not swear, except that the lamp was burning, and that there were no signs of disorder, nor was the dress of the deceased disarranged. He had seen his master put receipts, and make memorandums, in a large, black, silver-clasped pocket-book, but had never handled it, and could not swear to it; he had seen nothing like it since his master’s death. He was further asked how long the prisoner had been at the mill, his duties there, and the amount of trust reposed in him; to which last the answer was, that about a month since, Mr. Axworthy had exclaimed that if ever he wanted a thing to be done, he must set Ward about it. Saving this speech, made in irritation at some omission on Sam’s part, nothing was adduced to show that Leonard was likely to have been employed without his cousin’s knowledge; though Hardy volunteered the addition that Mr. Ward was always respectful and attentive, and that his uncle had lately thought much more of him than at first.

Rebekah Giles gave her account of the scene in the sitting-room. She had been in the service of the deceased for the last four years, and before in that of his sister-in-law, Mr. Samuel’s mother. She had herself closed the passage window at seven o’clock in the evening, as usual. She had several times previously found it partly open in the morning, after having thus shut it over-night; but never before, Mr. Ward’s bed unslept in. Her last interview with Mr. Axworthy was then narrated, with his words—an imprecation against rifle practice, as an excuse for idle young rascals to be always out of the way. Then followed her communication to the prisoner at half-past nine, when she saw him go into the parlour, in his volunteer uniform, rifle in hand, heard him turn the lock of the sitting-room door, and then herself retired to bed.

Cross-examination did not do much with her, only showing that, when she brought in the supper, one window had been open, and the blinds, common calico ones, drawn down, thus rendering it possible for a person to lurk unseen in the court, and enter by the window. Her master had assigned no reason for sending for Mr. Ward. She did not know whether Mr. Axworthy had any memorandum-book; she had seen none on the table, nor found any when she undressed the body, though his purse, watch, and seals were on his person.

Mr. Rankin’s medical evidence came next, both as to the cause of death, the probable instrument, and the nature of the stains on the desk and rifle.

When cross-examined, he declared that he had looked at the volunteer uniform without finding any mark of blood, but from the nature of the injury it was not likely that there would be any. He had attended Mr. Axworthy for several years, and had been visiting him professionally during a fit of the gout in the last fortnight of June, when he had observed that the prisoner was very attentive to his uncle. Mr. Axworthy was always unwilling to be waited on, but was unusually tolerant of this nephew’s exertions on his behalf, and had seemed of late to place much reliance on him.

Doctor Richard May was the next witness called. The sound of that name caused the first visible change in the prisoner’s demeanour, if that could be called change, which was only a slight relaxation of the firm closing of the lips, and one sparkle of the dark eyes, ere they were again bent down as before, though not without a quiver of the lids.

Dr. May had brought tone, look, and manner to the grave impartiality which even the most sensitive man is drilled into assuming in public; but he durst not cast one glance in the direction of the prisoner.

In answer to the counsel for the prosecution, he stated that he was at the Vintry Mill at seven o’clock on the morning of the 6th of July, not professionally, but as taking interest in the Ward family. He had seen the body of the deceased, and considered death to have been occasioned by fracture of the skull, from a blow with a blunt heavy instrument. The superintendent had shown him a rifle, which he considered, from the marks on it, as well as from the appearance of the body, to have produced the injury. The rifle was the one shown to him; it was the property of Leonard Ward. He recognized it by the crest and cipher H. E. It had belonged to his son-in-law, Hector Ernescliffe, by whom it had been given to Leonard Ward.

Poor Doctor! That was a cruel piece of evidence; and his son and daughters opposite wondered how he could utter it in that steady matter-of-fact way; but they knew him to be sustained by hopes of the cross-examination; and he soon had the opportunity of declaring that he had known Leonard Ward from infancy, without being aware of any imputation against him; but had always seen him highly principled and trustworthy, truthful and honourable, kind-hearted and humane—the last person to injure the infirm or aged.

Perhaps the good Doctor, less afraid of the sound of his own voice, and not so much in awe as some of the other witnesses, here in his eagerness overstepped the bounds of prudence. His words indeed brought a tremulous flicker of grateful emotion over the prisoner’s face; but by carrying the inquiry into the region of character and opinion, he opened the door to a dangerous re-examination by the Crown lawyer, who required the exact meaning of his unqualified commendation, especially in the matter of humanity, demanding whether he had never known of any act of violence on the prisoner’s part. The colour flushed suddenly into Leonard’s face, though he moved neither eye nor lip; but his counsel appealed to the judge, and the pursuit of this branch of the subject was quashed as irrelevant; but the Doctor went down in very low spirits, feeling that his evidence had been damaging, and his hopes of any ray of light becoming fainter.

After this, the village policeman repeated the former statements, as to the state of the various rooms, the desk, locked and untouched, the rifle, boat, &c., further explaining that the distance from the mill to Blewer Station, by the road was an hour and half’s walk, by the fields, not more than half an hour’s.

The station-master proved the prisoner’s arrival at midnight, his demand of a day-ticket, his being without luggage, and in a black suit; and the London policeman proved the finding of the money on his person, and repeated his own explanation of it.

The money was all in sovereigns, except one five and one ten-pound note, and Edward Hazlitt, the clerk of the Whitford Bank, was called to prove the having given the latter in change to Mr. Axworthy for a fifty-pound cheque, on the 10th of May last.

This same clerk had been at the volunteer drill on the evening of the 5th of July, had there seen the prisoner, had parted with him at dusk, towards nine o’clock, making an engagement with him to meet on Blewer Heath for some private practice at seven o’clock on Monday evening. Thought Mr. Axworthy did sometimes employ young Ward on his commissions; Mr. Axworthy had once sent him into Whitford to pay in a large sum, and another time with an order to be cashed. The dates of these transactions were shown in the books; and Hazlitt added, on further interrogation, that Samuel Axworthy could not have been aware of the sum being sent to the bank, since he had shortly after come and desired to see the account, which had been laid before him as confidential manager, when he had shown surprise and annoyance at the recent deposit, asking through whom it had been made. Not ten days subsequently, an order for nearly the entire amount had been cashed, signed by the deceased, but filled up in Samuel’s handwriting.

This had taken place in April; and another witness, a baker, proved the having paid the five-pound note to old Mr. Axworthy himself on the 2nd of May.

Samuel Axworthy himself was next called. His florid face wore something of the puffed, stupefied look it had had at the inquest, but his words were ready, and always to the point. He identified the bag in which the money had been found, giving an account of it similar to Hardy’s, and adding that he had last seen it lying by his cousin’s desk. His uncle had no account with any London bank, all transactions had of late passed through his own hands, and he had never known the prisoner employed in any business of importance—he could not have been kept in ignorance of it if it had previously been the case. The deceased had a black shagreen pocket-book, with a silver clasp, which he occasionally used, but the witness had never known him give it out of his own hand, nor take a receipt in it. Had not seen it on the morning of the 6th, nor subsequently. Could not account for the sum found on the person of the prisoner, whose salary was L50 per annum, and who had no private resources, except the interest of L2000, which, he being a minor, was not in his own hands. Deceased was fond of amassing sovereigns, and would often keep them for a longtime in the drawer of his desk, as much as from L50 to L100. There was none there when the desk was opened on the 6th of July, though there had certainly been gold there two days previously. It was kept locked. It had a small Bramah key, which his uncle wore on his watch-chain, in his waistcoat pocket. The drawer was locked when he saw it on the morning of the 6th.

The Doctor, who had joined his children, gave a deep respiration, and relaxed the clenching of his hand, as this witness went down.

Then it came to the turn of Aubrey Spencer May. The long waiting, after his nerves had been wound up, had been a severe ordeal, and his delicacy of constitution and home breeding had rendered him peculiarly susceptible. With his resemblance to his father in form and expression, it was like seeing the Doctor denuded of that shell of endurance with which he had contrived to conceal his feelings. The boy was indeed braced to resolution, bat the resolution was equally visible with the agitation in the awe-stricken brow, varying colour, tightened breath, and involuntary shiver, as he took the oath. Again Leonard looked up with one of his clear bright glances, and perhaps a shade of anxiety; but Aubrey, for his own comfort, was too short-sighted for meeting of eyes from that distance.

Seeing his agitation, and reckoning on his evidence, the counsel gave him time, by minutely asking if his double Christian name were correctly given, his age, and if he were not the son of Dr. May.

‘You were the prisoner’s school-fellow, I believe?’

‘No,’ faltered Aubrey.

‘But you live near him?’

‘We are friends,’ said Aubrey, with sudden firmness and precision; and from the utterance of that emphatic are, his spirit returned.

‘Did you often see him?’

‘On most Sundays, after church.’

‘Did you ever hear him say he had any thoughts of the means of leaving the mill privately?’

‘Something like it,’ said Aubrey, turning very red.

‘Can you tell me the words?’

‘He said if things went on, that I was not to be surprised if I heard non est inventus,’ said Aubrey, speaking as if rapidity would conceal the meaning of the words, but taken aback by being made to repeat and translate them to the jury.

‘And did he mention any way of escaping?’

‘He said the window and cedar-tree were made for it, and that he often went out that way to bathe,’ said Aubrey.

‘When did this conversation take place?’

‘On Sunday, the 22nd of June,’ said Aubrey, in despair, as the Crown lawyer thanked him, and sat down.

He felt himself betrayed into having made their talk wear the air of deliberate purpose, and having said not one word of what Mr. Bramshaw had hailed as hopeful. However, the defending barrister rose up to ask him what he meant by having answered ‘Something like it.’

‘Because,’ said Aubrey, promptly, ‘though we did make the scheme, we were neither of us in earnest.’

‘How do you know the prisoner was not in earnest?’

‘We often made plans of what we should like to do.’

‘And had you any reason for thinking this one of such plans!’

‘Yes,’ said Aubrey; ‘for he talked of getting gold enough to build up the market-cross, or else of going to see the Feejee Islands.

‘Then you understood the prisoner not to express a deliberate purpose, so much as a vague design.’

‘Just so,’ said Aubrey. ‘A design that depended on how things went on at the mill.’ And being desired to explain his words, he added, that Leonard had said he could not bear the sight of Sam Axworthy’s tyranny over the old man, and was resolved not to stay, if he were made a party to any of the dishonest tricks of the trade.

‘In that case, did he say where he would have gone?’

‘First to New Zealand, to my brother, the Reverend Norman May.’

Leonard’s counsel was satisfied with the colour the conversation had now assumed; but the perils of re-examination were not over yet, for the adverse lawyer requested to know whence the funds were to have come for this adventurous voyage.

‘We laughed a little about that, and he said he should have to try how far his quarter’s salary would go towards a passage in the steerage.’

‘If your friend expressed so strong a distaste to his employers and their business, what induced him to enter it?’

Leonard’s counsel again objected to this inquiry, and it was not permitted. Aubrey was dismissed, and, flushed and giddy, was met by his brother Tom, who almost took him in his arms as he emerged from the passage.

‘O, Tom! what have I done?’

‘Famously, provided there’s no miller in the jury. Come,’ as he felt the weight on his arm, ‘Flora says I am to take you down and make you take something.’

‘No, no, no, I can’t! I must go back.’

‘I tell you there’s nothing going on. Every one is breathing and baiting.’ And he got him safe to a pastrycook’s, and administered brandy cherries, which Aubrey bolted whole like pills, only entreating to return, and wanting to know how he thought the case going.

‘Excellently. Hazlitt’s evidence and yours ought to carry him through. And Anderson says they have made so much out of the witnesses for the prosecution, that they need call none for the defence; and so the enemy will be balked of their reply, and we shall have the last word. I vow I have missed my vocation. I know I was born for a barrister!’

‘Now may we come back?’ said the boy, overwhelmed by his brother’s cheeriness; and they squeezed into court again, Tom inserting Aubrey into his own former seat, and standing behind him on half a foot at the angle of the passage. They were in time for the opening of the defence, and to hear Leonard described as a youth of spirit and promise, of a disposition that had won him general affection and esteem, and recommended to universal sympathy by the bereavement which was recent in the memory of his fellow-townsmen; and there was a glance at the mourning which the boy still wore.

‘They had heard indeed that he was quick-tempered and impulsive; but the gentlemen of the jury were some of them fathers, and he put it to them whether a ready and generous spirit of indignation in a lad were compatible with cowardly designs against helpless old age; whether one whose recreations were natural science and manly exercise, showed tokens of vicious tendencies; above all, whether a youth, whose friendship they had seen so touchingly claimed by a son of one of the most highly respected gentlemen in the county, were evincing the propensities that lead to the perpetration of deeds of darkness.’

Tom patted Aubrey on the shoulder; and Aubrey, though muttering ‘humbug,’ was by some degrees less wretched.

‘Men did not change their nature on a sudden,’ the counsel continued; ‘and where was the probability that a youth of character entirely unblemished, and of a disposition particularly humane and generous, should at once rush into a crime of the deep and deadly description, to which a long course of dissipation, leading to perplexity, distress, and despair, would be the only inducement?’

He then went on to speak of Leonard’s position at the mill, as junior clerk. He had been there for six months, without a flaw being detected, either in his integrity, his diligence, or his regularity; indeed, it was evident that he had been gradually acquiring a greater degree of esteem and confidence than he had at first enjoyed, and had been latterly more employed by his uncle. That a young man of superior education should find the daily drudgery tedious and distasteful, and that one of sensitive honour should be startled at the ordinary, he might almost say proverbial, customs of the miller’s trade, was surprising to no one; and that he should unbosom himself to a friend of his own age, and indulge together with him in romantic visions of adventure, was, to all who remembered their own boyhood, an illustration of the freshness and ingenuousness of the character that thus unfolded itself. Where there were day-dreams, there was no room for plots of crime.

Then ensued a species of apology for the necessity of entering into particulars that did not redound to the credit of a gentleman, who had appeared before the court under such distressing circumstances as Mr. Samuel Axworthy; but it was needful that the condition of the family should be well understood, in order to comprehend the unhappy train of events which had conducted the prisoner into his present situation. He then went through what had been traceable through the evidence—that Samuel Axworthy was a man of expensive habits, and accustomed to drain his uncle’s resources to supply his own needs; showing how the sum, which had been intrusted to the prisoner, to be paid into the local bank, had been drawn out by the elder nephew as soon as he became aware of the deposit; and how, shortly after, the prisoner had expressed to Aubrey May his indignation at the tyranny exercised on his uncle.

‘By and by, another sum is amassed,’ continued Leonard’s advocate. ‘How dispose of it? The local bank is evidently no security from the rapacity of the elder nephew. Once aware of its existence, he knows how to use means for compelling its surrender; and the feeble old man can no longer call his hard-earned gains his own except on sufferance. The only means of guarding it is to lodge it secretly in a distant bank, without the suspicion of his nephew Samuel; but the invalid is too infirm to leave his apartment; his fingers, crippled by gout, refuse even to guide the pen. He can only watch for an opportunity, and this is at length afforded by the absence of the elder nephew for two days at the county races. This will afford time for a trustworthy and intelligent messenger to convey the sum to town, deposit it in Messrs, Drummond’s bank, and return unobserved. When, therefore, supper is brought in, Mr. Axworthy sends for the lad on whom he has learnt to depend, and shows much disappointment at his absence. Where is he? Is he engaged with low companions in the haunts of vice, that are the declivity towards crime? Is he gaming, or betting, or drinking? No. He has obeyed the summons of his country; he is a zealous volunteer, and is eagerly using a weapon presented to him by a highly respected gentleman of large fortune in a neighbouring county; nay, so far is he from any sinister purpose, that he is making an appointment with a fellow-rifleman for the ensuing Monday. On his return at dark, he receives a pressing summons to his uncle’s room, and hastens to obey it without pausing to lay aside his rifle. The commission is explained, and well understanding the painfulness of the cause, he discreetly asks no questions, but prepares to execute it. The sum of L124 12s. is taken from the drawer of the desk, the odd money assigned to travelling expenses, the L120 placed in a bag brought in from the office for the purpose, bearing the initials of the owner, and a receipt in a private pocket-book was signed by him for the amount, and left open on the table for the ink to dry.

‘Who that has ever been young, can doubt the zest and elevation of receiving for the first time a confidential mission? Who can doubt that even the favourite weapon would be forgotten where it stood, and that it would only be accordant to accredited rules that the window should be preferable to the door? Had it not already figured in the visions of adventure in the Sunday evening’s walk? was it not a favourite mode of exit in the mornings, when bathing and fishing were more attractive than the pillow! Moreover, the moonlight disclosed what appeared like a figure in the courtyard, and there was reason at the time to suppose it a person likely to observe and report upon the expedition. The opening of the front door might likewise attract notice; and if the cousin should, as was possible, return that night, the direct road was the way to meet him. The hour was too early for the train which was to be met, but a lighted candle would reveal the vigil, and moonlight on the meadows was attractive at eighteen. Gentlemen of soberer and maturer years might be incredulous, but surely it was not so strange or unusual for a lad, who indulged in visions of adventure, to find a moonlight walk by the river-side more inviting than a bedroom.

‘Shortly after, perhaps as soon as the light was extinguished, the murder must have been committed. The very presence of that light had been guardianship to the helpless old man below. When it was quenched, nothing remained astir, the way from without was open, the weapon stood only too ready to hand, the memorandum-book gave promise of booty and was secured, though nothing else was apparently touched. It was this very book that contained the signature that would have exonerated the prisoner, and to which he fearlessly appealed upon his arrest at the Paddington Station, before, for his additional misfortune, he had time to discharge himself of his commission, and establish his innocence by the deposit of the money at the bank. He has thus for a while become the victim of a web of suspicious circumstances. But look at these very circumstances more closely, and they will be found perfectly consistent with the prisoner’s statement, never varying, be it remembered, from the explanation given to the policeman in first surprise and horror of the tidings of the crime.

‘It might have been perhaps thought that there was another alternative between entire innocence and a deliberate purpose of robbery and murder-namely, that reproof from the old man had provoked a blow, and that the means of flight had been hastily seized upon in the moment of confusion and alarm. This might have been a plausible line of defence, and secure of a favourable hearing; but I beg to state that the prisoner has distinctly refused any such defence, and my instructions are to contend for his perfect innocence. A nature such as we have already traced is, as we cannot but perceive, revolted by the bare idea of violence to the aged and infirm, and recoils as strongly from the one accusation as from the other.

‘The prisoner made his statement at the first moment, and has adhered to it in every detail, without confusion or self-contradiction. It does not attempt to explain all the circumstances, but they all tally exactly with his story; he is unable to show by whom the crime could have been committed, nor is he bound in law or justice so to do; nay, his own story shows the absolute impossibility of his being able to explain what took place in his absence. But mark how completely the established facts corroborate his narrative. Observe first the position in which the body was found, the head on the desk, the stain of blood corresponding with the wound, the dress undisturbed, all manifestly untouched since the fatal stroke was dealt. Could this have been the case, had the key of the drawer of gold been taken from the waistcoat pocket, the chain from about the neck of the deceased, and both replaced after the removal of the money and relocking the drawer! Can any one doubt that the drawer was opened, the money taken out, and the lock secured, while Mr. Axworthy was alive and consenting? Again, what robber would convey away the spoil in a bag bearing the initials of the owner, and that not caught up in haste, but fetched in for the purpose from the office? Or would so tell-tale a weapon as the rifle have been left conspicuously close at hand? There was no guilty precipitation, for the uniform had been taken off and folded up, and with a whole night before him, it would have been easy to reach a more distant station, where his person would not have been recognized. Why, too, if this were the beginning of a flight and exile, should no preparation have been made for passing a single night from home? why should a day-ticket have been asked for? No, the prisoner’s own straightforward, unvarnished statement is the only consistent interpretation of the facts, otherwise conflicting and incomprehensible.

‘That a murder has been committed is unhappily too certain. I make no attempt to unravel the mystery. I confine myself to the far more grateful task of demonstrating, that to fasten the imputation on the accused, would be to overlook a complication of inconsistencies, all explained by his own account of himself, but utterly inexplicable on the hypothesis of his guilt.

‘Circumstantial evidence is universally acknowledged to be perilous ground for a conviction; and I never saw a case in which it was more manifestly delusive than in the present, bearing at first an imposing and formidable aspect, but on examination, confuted in every detail. Most assuredly,’ continued the counsel, his voice becoming doubly earnest, ‘while there is even the possibility of innocence, it becomes incumbent on you, gentlemen of the jury, to consider well the fearful consequences of a decision in a matter of life or death—a decision for which there can be no reversal. The facts that have come to light are manifestly incomplete. Another link in the chain has yet to be added; and when it shall come forth, how will it be if it should establish the guiltlessness of the prisoner too late? Too late, when a young life of high promise, and linked by close family ties, and by bonds of ardent friendship with so many, has been quenched in shame and disgrace, for a crime to which he may be an utter stranger.

‘The extinction of the light in that upper window was the sign for darkness and horror to descend on the mill! Here is the light of life still burning, but a breath of yours can extinguish it in utter gloom, and then who may rekindle it! Nay, the revelation of events that would make the transactions of that fatal night clear as the noonday, would never avail to rekindle the lamp, that may yet, I trust, shine forth to the world—the clearer, it may be, from the unmerited imputations, which it has been my part to combat, and of which his entire life is a confutation.’

Mrs. Pugh was sobbing under her veil; Gertrude felt the cause won. Tom noiselessly clapped the orator behind his brother’s back, and nodded his approval to his father. Even Leonard lifted up his face, and shot across a look, as if he felt deliverance near after the weary day, that seemed to have been a lifetime already, though the sunbeams were only beginning to fall high and yellow on the ceiling, through the heated stifling atmosphere, heavy with anxiety and suspense. Doctor May was thinking of the meeting after the acquittal, of the telegram to Stoneborough, of the sister’s revival, and of Ethel’s greeting.

Still the judge had to sum up; and all eyes turned on him, knowing that the fate of the accused would probably depend on the colouring that the facts adduced would assume in his hands. Flora, who met him in society, was struck by the grave and melancholy bracing, as it were, of the countenance, that she had seen as kindly and bright as her father’s; and the deep, full voice, sad rather than stern, the very tone of which conveyed to every mind how heavy was the responsibility of justice and impartiality. In effect, the very force of the persuasions made for the defence, unanswered by the prosecution, rendered it needful for him to give full weight to the evidence for the other side; namely, the prisoner’s evident impatience of his position, and premeditated flight, the coincidence of the times, the being the last person seen to enter the room, and with the very weapon that had been the instrument of the crime; the probability that the deceased had himself opened the drawer, the open window, the flight, and the missing sum being found on his person, the allegation that the receipt would be found in the pocket-book, unsupported by any testimony as to the practice of the deceased; the strangeness of leaving the premises so much too early for the train, and, by his own account, leaving a person prowling in the court, close to his uncle’s window. No opinion was given; but there was something that gave a sense that the judge felt it a crushing weight of evidence. Yet so minutely was every point examined, so carefully was every indication weighed which could tend to establish the prisoner’s innocence, that to those among his audience who believed that innocence indubitable, it seemed as if his arguments proved it, even more triumphantly than the pleading of the counsel, as, vibrating between hope and fear, anxiety and gratitude, they followed him from point to point of the unhappy incident, hanging upon every word, as though each were decisive.

When at length he ceased, and the jury retired, the breathless stillness continued. With some, indeed, there was the relaxation of long-strained attention, eyes unbent, and heads turned, but Flora had to pass her arm round her little sister, to steady the child’s nervous trembling; Aubrey sat rigid and upright, the throbs of his heart well-nigh audible; and Dr. May leant forward, and covered his eyes with his hand; Tom, who alone dared glance to the dock, saw that Leonard too had retired. Those were the most terrible minutes they had ever spent in their lives; but they were minutes of hope—of hope of relief from a burthen, becoming more intolerable with every second’s delay ere the rebound.

Long as it seemed to them, it was not in reality more than a quarter of an hour before the jury returned, and with slow grave movements, and serious countenances, resumed their places. Leonard was already in his; his cheek paler, his fingers locked together, and his eyes scanning each as they came forward, and one by one their names were called over. His head was erect, and his bearing had something undaunted, though intensely anxious.

The question was put by the clerk of the court, ‘How find you? Guilty or Not guilty?’

Firmly, though sadly, the foreman rose, and his answer was, ‘We find the prisoner guilty; but we earnestly recommend him to mercy.’

Whether Tom felt or not that Aubrey was in a dead faint, and rested against him as a senseless weight, he paid no visible attention to aught but one face, on which his eyes were riveted as though nothing would ever detach them—and that face was not the prisoner’s.

Others saw Leonard’s face raised upwards, and a deep red flush spread over brow and cheek, though neither lip nor eye wavered.

Then came the question whether the prisoner had anything to say, wherefore judgment should not be passed upon him.

Leonard made a step forward, and his clear steady tone did not shake for a moment as he spoke. ‘No. I see that appearances are so much against me, that man can hardly decide otherwise. I have known from the first that nothing could show my innocence but the finding of the receipt. In the absence of that one testimony, I feel that I have had a fair trial, and that all has been done for me that could be done; and I thank you for it, my Lord, and you, Gentlemen,’ as he bent his head; then added, ‘I should like to say one thing more. My Lord, you would not let the question be asked, how I brought all this upon myself. I wish to say it myself, for it is that which makes my sentence just in the sight of God. It is true that, though I never lifted my hand against my poor uncle, I did in a moment of passion fling a stone at my brother, which, but for God’s mercy, might indeed have made me a murderer. It was for this, and other like outbreaks, that I was sent to the mill; and it may be just that for it I should die—though indeed I never hurt my uncle.’

Perhaps there was something in the tone of that one word, indeed, which, by recalling his extreme youth, touched all hearts more than even the manly tone of his answer, and his confession. There was a universal weeping and sobbing throughout the court; Mrs. Pugh was on the verge of hysterics, and obliged to be supported away; and Gertrude was choking between the agony of contagious feeling and dread of Flora’s displeasure; and all the time Leonard stood calm, with his brave head and lofty bearing, wound up for the awful moment of the sentence.

The weeping was hushed, when the crier of the court made proclamation, commanding all persons on pain of imprisonment to be silent. Then the judge placed on his head the black cap, and it was with trembling hands that he did so; the blood had entirely left his face, and his lips were purple with the struggle to contend with and suppress his emotion. He paused, as though he were girding himself up to the most terrible of duties, and when he spoke his voice was hollow, as he began:

‘Leonard Axworthy Ward, you have been found guilty of a crime that would have appeared impossible in one removed from temptation by birth and education such as yours have been. What the steps may have been that led to such guilt, must lie between your own conscience and that God whose justice you have acknowledged. To Him you have evidently been taught to look; and may you use the short time that still remains to you, in seeking His forgiveness by sincere repentance. I will forward the recommendation to mercy, but it is my duty to warn you that there are no such palliating circumstances in the evidence, as to warrant any expectation of a remission of the sentence.

And therewith followed the customary form of sentence, ending with the solemn ‘And may God Almighty have mercy on your soul!’

Full and open, and never quailing, had the dark eyes been fixed upon the judge all the time; and at those last words, the head bent low, and the lips moved for ‘Amen.’

Then Tom, relieved to find instant occupation for his father, drew his attention to Aubrey’s state; and the boy between Tom and George Rivers was, as best they could, carried through the narrow outlets, and laid down in a room, opened to them by the sheriff, where his father and Flora attended him, while Tom flew for remedies; and Gertrude sobbed and wept as she had never done in her life.

It was some time before the swoon yielded, or Dr. May could leave his son, and then he was bent on at once going to the prisoner; but he was so shaken and tremulous, that Tom insisted on giving him his arm, and held an umbrella over him in the driving rain.

‘Father,’ he said, as soon as they were in the street, ‘I can swear who did it.’

Dr. May just hindered himself from uttering the name, but Tom answered as if it had been spoken.

‘Yes. I saw the face of fiendish barbarity that once was over me, when I was a miserable little schoolboy! He did it; and he has the receipt.’

Dr. May squeezed his arm. ‘I have not betrayed the secret, have I!’

‘You knew that he knew it!’

‘Not knew—suspected—generosity.’

‘I saw him! I saw him cast those imploring earnest eyes of his on the scoundrel as he spoke of the receipt—and the villain try to make himself of stone. Well, if I have one wish in life, it is to see that fellow come to the fate he deserves. I’ll never lose sight of him; I’ll dog him like a bloodhound!’

And what good will that do, when—Tom, Tom, we must move Heaven and earth for petitions. I’ll take them up myself, and get George Rivers to take me to the Home Secretary. Never fear, while there’s justice in Heaven.’

‘Here’s Henry!’ exclaimed Tom, withholding his father, who had almost ran against the brother, as they encountered round a corner.

He was pale and bewildered, and hardly seemed to hear the Doctor’s hasty asseverations that he would get a reprieve.

‘He sent me to meet you,’ said Henry. ‘He wants you to go home—to Ave I mean. He says that is what he wants most—for you to go to her now, and to come to him tomorrow, or when you can; and he wants to hear how Aubrey is,’ continued Henry, as if dreamily repeating a lesson.

‘He saw then—?’

‘Yes, and that seems to trouble him most.’

Dr. May was past speaking, and Tom was obliged to answer for him—that Aubrey was pretty well again, and had desired his dearest, dearest love; then asked how Leonard was.

‘Calm and firm as ever,’ said Henry, half choked. ‘Nothing seems to upset him, but speaking of—of you and Aubrey, Dr. May—and poor Ave. But—but they’ll be together before long.’

‘No such thing,’ said Dr. May. ‘You will see that certainty cures, when suspense kills; and for him, I’ll never believe but that all will be right yet. Are you going home?’

‘I shall try to be with—with the dear unhappy boy as long as I can, and then I’ll come home.’

Dr. May grasped Henry’s hand, gave a promise of coming, and a message of love to the prisoner, tried to say something more, but broke down, and let Tom lead him away.

CHAPTER XV

Under the shroud Of His thunder-cloud Lie we still when His voice is loud, And our hearts shall feel The love notes steal, As a bird sings after the thunder peal—C. F. A.

Not till dusk could Dr. May get back to Stoneborough, and then, in an evening gleam of that stormy day, he was met at the gate of Bankside by Richard and Ethel.

‘You need not come in, papa,’ said Ethel. ‘She is asleep. She knows.’

Dr. May sighed with unspeakable relief.

‘Mr. Bramshaw telegraphed, and his clerk came down. It was not so very bad! She saw it in our faces, and she was so worn out with talking and watching, that—that the very turning her face to the wall with hope over, became sleep almost directly.’

‘That is well,’ murmured the Doctor. ‘And can you be spared, my dear? If you could come I should be glad, for poor Aubrey is quite done up.’

‘I can come. Mary is with her, and Richard will stay to meet Henry, if he is coming home, or to send up if they want you; but I think she will not wake for many hours; and then—oh! what can any one do!’

So Richard turned back to the sorrowful house; and Dr. May, tenderly drawing Ethel’s arm into his own, told her, as they walked back, the few incidents that she most wanted to hear, as best he could narrate them. ‘You have had a heart-rending day, my dear,’ he said; ‘you and Mary, as well as the rest of us.’

‘There was one comfort!’ said Ethel, ‘and that was his own notes. Ave has all that he has written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna’s constant little robin-chirp of faith, “God will not let them hurt him.” One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that they might be done and out of sight when he came home this evening. The last stitch was done as Richard came in; and now I thought I could only take them out of every one’s sight.’

‘Poor things! poor things! And how was it with the child when she heard?’

‘The old sweet note,’ said Ethel, less steadily than she had yet spoken, ‘“nothing could hurt him for what he had not done.” I don’t know whether she knows what—what is in store. At least she is not shaken yet, dear child.’

‘And Ave—how did you manage with her through all the day?’

‘Oh! we did as we could. We tried reading the things Mr. Wilmot had marked, but she was too restless; her hands would wander off to the letters, caressing them, and she would go back to talk of him—all his ways from a baby upwards. I hope there was no harm in letting her do it, for if there is anything to do one good, it is his noble spirit.’

‘If you had only seen his face to-day,’ exclaimed the Doctor, half angrily, ‘you would not feel much comfort in the cutting off such a fellow. No, no, it won’t be. We’ll petition—petition—petition—and save him, we will! Minna will be right yet! They shall not hurt him!’

‘Is there really hope in that way?’ said Ethel, and a quiver of relief agitated her whole frame.

‘Every hope! Every one I have seen, or Tom either, says so. We have only to draw up a strong enough representation of the facts, his character, and all that; and there’s his whole conduct before and since to speak for itself. Why, when it was all over, George heard every one saying, either he was a consummate hypocrite, or he must be innocent. Harvey Anderson declares the press will take it up. We shall certainly get him off.’

‘You don’t mean pardoned!’

‘Commutation of the penalty. Come on,’ said the Doctor, hurrying at his headlong pace, ‘there’s no time to be lost in getting it drawn up.’

Ethel was dragged on so fast, that she could not speak; but it was with willing haste, for this was the sort of suspense in which motion and purpose were a great relief after the day’s weary waiting. Gertrude, quite spent with excitement and tears, had wisely betaken herself to bed; and it would have been well had Aubrey followed her example, instead of wandering up and down the room in his misery, flushed though wan, impetuously talking treason against trial by jury, and abusing dignitaries. They let him have it out, in all its fury and violence, till he had tired out his first vehemence, and could be persuaded to lie on the sofa while the rough draught of the petition was drawn up, Tom writing, and every one suggesting or discussing, till the Doctor, getting thorough mastery over the subject, dictated so fluently and admirably, that even Tom had not a word to gainsay, but observed to Ethel, when his father had gone up to bed, and carried Aubrey off, ‘What an exceedingly able man my father is!’

‘Is this the first time you have found that out?’ said Ethel.

‘Why, you know it is not his nature to make the most of himself! But studying under him brings it out more; and there’s a readiness about him that I wish was catching. But I say, Ethel, what’s this? I no more doubt who did the deed, than I do who killed Abel; but I had once seen Cain’s face, and I knew it again. Is it true that the boy was aware, and told my father?’

‘Did he tell you so?’

‘Only asked if he had betrayed the secret. If they both know it—why, if it be Leonard’s taste, I suppose I must say nothing to the contrary, but he might as well consider his sister.’

‘What do you know, Tom?’ said she, perplexed.

‘Only that there’s some secret; and if it be as I am given to understand, then it is a frenzy that no lucid person should permit.’

‘No, Tom,’ said Ethel, feeling that the whole must be told, ‘it is no certainty—only unsupported suspicion, which he could not help telling papa after binding him on honour to make no use of it. Putting things together, he was sure who the man in the yard was; but it was not recognition, and he could not have proved it.’

‘What Quixotry moved my father not to put the lawyers on the scent?’

Ethel explained; and for her pains Tom fell upon her for her folly in not having told him all, when he could have gone to Blewer and gathered information as no professional person could do; then lamented that he had let Aubrey keep him from the inquest, when the fellow’s hang-dog look would have been sure to suggest to him to set Anderson to get him searched. Even now he would go to the mill, and try to hunt up something.

‘Tom, remember papa’s promise!’

‘Do you think a man can do nothing without committing himself, like poor Aubrey? No, Ethel, the Doctor may be clever, but that’s no use if a man is soft, and he is uncommonly soft; and you should not encourage him in it.’

Ethel was prevented from expressing useless indignation by the arrival of Mary, asking where papa was.

‘Gone to bed. He said he must go off at six tomorrow, there are so many patients to see. Ave does not want him, I hope?’

No, she is still asleep; I was only waiting for Richard, and he had dreadful work with that poor Henry.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘Oh, I believe it has all come on him now that it was his fault—driving Leonard to that place; and he was in such misery, that Richard could not leave him.’

‘I am glad he has the grace to feel it at last,’ said Tom.

‘It must be very terrible!’ said Mary. ‘He says he cannot stay in that house, for every room reproaches him; and he groaned as if he was in tremendous bodily pain.’

‘What, you assisted at this scene?’ said Tom, looking at her rather sharply.

‘No; but Richard told me; and I heard the groans as I sat on the stairs.’

‘Sat on the stairs?’

‘Yes. I could not go back to Ave’s room for fear of waking her.’

‘And how long?’

‘Towards an hour, I believe. I did all that piece,’ said Mary, displaying a couple of inches of a stocking leg, ‘and I think it was pretty well in the dark.’

‘Sitting on the stairs for an hour in the dark,’ said Tom, as he gave Mary the candle he had been lighting for her. ‘That may be called unappreciated devotion.’

‘I never can tell what Tom means,’ said Mary, as she went up-stairs with Ethel. ‘It was a very comfortable rest. I wish you had had the same, dear Ethel, you look so tired and worn out. Let me stay and help you. It has been such a sad long day; and oh! how terrible this is! And you know him better than any of us, except Aubrey.’

Mary stopped almost in dismay, for her sister, usually so firm, broke down entirely, and sitting down on a low chair, threw an arm round her, and resting her weary brow against her, gave way to long tearless sobs, or rather catches of breath. ‘Oh! Mary! Mary!’ she said, between her gasps, ‘to think of last year—and Coombe—and the two bright boys—and the visions—and the light in those glorious eyes—and that this should be the end!’

‘Dear, dear Ethel,’ said Mary, with fast-flowing tears and tender caresses, ‘you have kept us all up; you have always shown us it was for the best.’

‘It is! it is!’ cried Ethel. ‘I do, I will believe it! If I had only seen his face as papa tells of it, I could keep hold of the glory of it and the martyr spirit. Now I only see his earnest, shy, confiding look—and—and I don’t know how to bear it.’ And Ethel’s grasp of Mary in both arms was tightened, as if to support herself under her deep labouring sobs of anguish. Ah! he was very fond of you.’

‘There never was any one beyond our own selves that loved me so well. I always knew it would not last—that it ought not; but oh! it was endearing; and I did think to have seen him a shining light!’

‘And don’t you tell us he is a shining light now?’ said Mary, among the tears that really almost seemed to be a relief, as if her sister herself had shed them; and as she knelt down, Ethel laid her head on her shoulder, and spoke more calmly.

‘He is,’ she said, ‘and I ought to be thankful for it! I think I am generally—but now—it makes it the more piteous—the hopes—the spirit—the determination—all to be quenched, and so quenched—and to have nothing—nothing to do for him.

‘But, Ethel, papa says your messages do him more good than anything; and papa will let you go and see him, and that will comfort him.’

Ethel’s lips gave a strange sort of smile; she thought it was at simple Mary’s trust in her power, but it would hardly have been there but for the species of hope thus excited, and the sense of sympathy. Mary was not one to place any misconstruction on what had passed; she well knew that Leonard had almost taken a brother’s place in Ethel’s heart, and she prized him at the rate of her sister’s esteem. Perhaps her prominent thought was how cruel were those who fancied that Ethel’s lofty faith was unfeeling, and how very good Leonard must be to be thus mourned. At any rate, she was an excellent comforter, in the sympathy that was neither too acute nor too obtuse; and purely to oblige her, Ethel for the first time submitted to her favourite panacea of hair brushing, and found that in very truth those soft and steady manipulations were almost mesmeric in soothing away the hard oppressive excitement, and bringing on a gentle and slumberous resignation.

The sisters were early astir next morning, to inflict on their father a cup of cocoa, which he rebelled against, but swallowed, and to receive his last orders, chiefly consisting of messages to Tom about taking the petition to be approved of by Dr. Spencer and others, and then having it properly drawn out. Mary asked if women might sign it, and was answered with an impatient ‘Pshaw!’

‘But ladies do have petitions of their own,’ said Mary, with some diffidence. ‘Could not we have one?’

His lips were compressed for another ‘Pshaw,’ when he bethought himself. ‘Well, I don’t know—the more the better. Only it won’t do for you to set it going. Flora must be the woman for that.’

‘Oh, then,’ cried Mary, eagerly, ‘might not I walk over to breakfast at the Grange, and talk to Flora? Ethel, you would not mind going to Ave instead? Or will you go to Flora?’

‘You had better,’ said Ethel. ‘I must stay on Aubrey’s account; and this is your doing, Mary,’ she added, looking at her warmly.

‘Then put on your hat, Mary, and take a biscuit,’ said the Doctor, ‘and you shall have a lift as far as the cross roads.’

Thus the morning began with action and with hope. Mary found herself very welcome at the Grange, where there was much anxiety to hear of Aubrey, as well as the more immediate sufferers. The Riverses had dined at Drydale, and had met the judges, as well as a good many of the county gentlemen who had been on the grand jury and attended on the trial. They had found every one most deeply touched by the conduct of the prisoner. The judge had talked to Flora about her young brother, and the friendship so bravely avouched; had asked the particulars of the action to which Leonard had alluded, and shown himself much interested in all that she related.

She said that the universal impression was that the evidence was dead against Leonard, and taken apart, led to such conviction of his guilt, that no one could wonder at the verdict; but that his appearance and manner were such, that it was almost impossible, under their influence, not to credit his innocence. She had reason to believe that petitions were already in hand both from the county and the assize town, and she eagerly caught at Mary’s proposal of one from the ladies of Stoneborough.

‘I’ll drive in at once before luncheon, and take you home, Mary,’ she said. ‘And, first of all, we will begin with the two widows, and half the battle will be won.’

Nay, more than half the battle proved to be already gained in that quarter. The writing-table was covered with sheets of foolscap, and Mrs. Pugh was hard at work copying the petition which Mr. Harvey Anderson had kindly assisted in composing, and which the aunt and niece had intended to have brought to the Grange for Mrs. Rivers’s approval that very day. Harvey Anderson had spent the evening at Mrs. Ledwich’s in drawing it up, and giving his advice; and Flora, going over it word for word with Mrs. Pugh, felt that it could hardly have been better worded.

‘He is a very clever, a very rising young man, and so feeling, said Mrs. Ledwich to Mary while this was going on. ‘In fact, he is a perfect knight-errant on this subject. He is gone to London this morning to see what can be done by means of the press. I tell Matilda it is quite a romance of modern life; and indeed, the sweet girl is very romantic still—very young, even after all she has gone through.’

Not understanding this, Mary let it pass in calculations on the number of possible signatures, which the two ladies undertook to collect.

‘That is well,’ said Flora, as they went away. ‘It could not be in better hands. It will thrive the better for our doing nothing but writing our names.’

They met Tom on the like errand, but not very sanguine, for he said there had of late been an outcry against the number of reprieves granted, and the public had begun to think itself not sufficiently protected. He thought the best chance was the discovery of some additional fact that might tell in favour of Leonard, and confident in his own sagacity, was going to make perquisitions at the mill. Every one had been visiting of late, and now that he knew more, if he and his microscope could detect one drop of human blood in an unexpected place, they would do better service to the prisoner than all the petitions that could be signed.

Averil was somewhat better; the feverishness had been removed by her long sleep of despair, and her energy revived under the bodily relief, and the fixed purpose of recovering in time to see her brother again; but the improvement was not yet trusted by Henry, who feared her doing too much unless he was himself watching over her, and therefore only paid Leonard a short visit in the forenoon, going and returning by early trains.

He reported that Leonard was very pale, and owned to want of sleep, adding, however, ‘It does not matter. Why should I wish to lose any time?’ Calm and brave as ever, he had conversed as cheerfully as Henry’s misery would permit, inquiring into the plans of the family, which he knew were to depend on his fate, and acquiescing in his brother’s intention of quitting the country; nay, even suggesting that it might be better for his sisters to be taken away before all was over, though he, as well as Henry, knew that to this Averil would never have consented. He had always been a great reader of travels, and he became absolutely eager in planning their life in the wild, as if where they were he must be, till the casual mention of the word ‘rifle’ brought him to sudden silence, and the consciousness of the condemned cell; but even then it was only to be urgent in consoling his brother, and crowding message on message for his sisters; begging Henry not to stay, not to consider him for a moment, but only whatever might be best for Ave.

In this frame Henry had left him, and late in the afternoon, Dr. May had contrived to despatch his work and make his way to the jail, where, as he entered, he encountered the chaplain, Mr. Reeve, a very worthy, but not a very acute man. Pausing to inquire for the prisoner, he was met by a look of oppression and perplexity. The chaplain had been with young Ward yesterday evening, and was only just leaving him; but then, instead of the admiring words the Doctor expected, there only came a complaint of the difficulty of dealing with him; so well instructed, so respectful in manner, and yet there was a coldness, a hardness about him, amounting to sullenness, rejecting all attempts to gain his confidence, or bring him to confession.

Dr. May had almost been angry, but he bethought himself in time that the chaplain was bound to believe the verdict of the court; and besides, the good man looked so grieved and pitiful, that it was impossible to be displeased with him, especially when he began to hope that the poor youth might be less reserved with a person who knew him better, and to consult Dr. May which of the Stoneborough clergy had better be written to as likely to be influential with him. Dr. May recommended Mr. Wilmot, as having visited the boy in his illness, as well as prepared him for Confirmation; and then, with a heavier load of sadness on his heart, followed the turnkey on his melancholy way.

When the door was opened, he saw Leonard sitting listlessly on the side of his bed, resting his head on his hand, entirely unoccupied; but at the first perception who his visitor was, he sprang to his feet, and coming within the arms held out to him, rested his head on the kind shoulder.

‘My dear boy—my brave fellow,’ said Dr. May, ‘you got through yesterday nobly.’

There was none either of the calmness or the reserve of which Dr. May had been told, in the hot hands that were wringing his own, nor in the choking struggling voice that tried to make the words clear—’Thank you for what you said—And dear Aubrey—how is he?’

‘I came away at six, before he was awake,’ said the Doctor; ‘but he will not be the worse for it, never fear! I hope his evidence was less trying than you and he expected.’

Leonard half smiled. ‘I had forgotten that,’ he said, ‘it was so long ago! No, indeed—the dear fellow was—like a bright spot in that day—only—only it brought back all we were—all that is gone for ever.’

The tenderness of one whom he did not feel bound to uphold like his brother had produced the outbreak that could not fail to come to so warm, open, and sensitive a nature, and at such an age. He was bold and full of fortitude in the front of the ordeal, and solitude pent up his feelings, but the fatherly sympathy and perfect confidence drew forth expression, and a vent once opened, the rush of emotion and anguish long repressed was utterly overpowering. His youthful manhood struggled hard, but the strangled sobs only shook his frame the more convulsively, and the tears burnt like drops of fire, as they fell among the fingers that he spread over his face in the agony of weeping for his young vigorous life, his blasted hopes, the wretchedness he caused, the disgrace of his name.

‘Don’t, don’t fight against it,’ said Dr. May, affectionately drawing him to his seat on the bed, as, indeed, the violence of the paroxysm made him scarcely able to stand. ‘Let it have its way; you will be all the better for it. It ought to be so—it must.’

And in tears himself, the Doctor turned his back, and went as far away as the cell would permit, turning towards the books that lay on a narrow ledge that served for a table. ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ were the words that caught his eye in the open Psalms; and, startled as if at unauthorized prying, he looked up at the dull screened and spiked window above his head, till he knew by the sounds that the worst of the uncontrollable passion had spent itself, and then he came back with the towel dipped in water, and cooled the flushed heated face as a sister might have done.

‘Oh—thank you—I am ashamed,’ gasped the still sobbing boy.

‘Ashamed! No; I like you the better for it,’ said the Doctor, earnestly. ‘There is no need that we should not grieve together in this great affliction, and say out all that is in our hearts.’

‘All!’ exclaimed Leonard. ‘No—no words can say that! Oh! was it for such as this that my poor mother made so much of me—and I got through the fever—and I hoped—and I strove—Why—why should I be cut off—for a disgrace and a misery to all! and again came the heartbroken sobs, though less violently.

‘Not to those who look within, and honour you, Leonard.’

‘Within! Why, how bad I have been, since this is the reckoning! I deserve it, I know—but—’ and his voice again sank in tears.

‘Ethel says that your so feeling comforts her the most; to know that you have not the terrible struggle of faith disturbed by injustice.’

‘If—I have not,’ said Leonard, ‘it is her doing. In those happy days when we read Marmion, and could not believe that God would not always show the right, she showed me how we only see bits and scraps of His Justice here, and it works round in the end! Nay, if I had not done that thing to Henry, I should not be here now! It is right! It is right!’ he exclaimed between the heaving sobs that still recurred. ‘I do try to keep before me what she said about Job—when it comes burning before me, why should that man be at large, and I here? or when I think how his serpent-eye fell under mine when I tried that one word about the receipt, that would save my life. Oh! that receipt!’

‘Better to be here than in his place, after all!’

‘I’d rather be a street-sweeper!’ bitterly began Leonard.—’Oh, Dr. May, do let me have that!’ he cried, suddenly changing his tone, and holding out his hand, as he perceived in the Doctor’s button-hole a dove-pink, presented at a cottage door by a grateful patient. For a space he was entirely occupied with gazing into its crimson depths, inhaling the fragrance, and caressingly spreading the cool damask petals against his hot cheeks and eyelids. ‘It is so long since I saw anything but walls!’ he said.

‘Three weeks,’ sadly replied the Doctor.

‘There was a gleam of sunshine when I got out of the van yesterday. I never knew before what sunshine was. I hope it will be a sunny day when I go out for the last time!’

‘My dear boy, I have good hopes of saving you. There’s not a creature in Stoneborough, or round it, that is not going to petition for you—and at your age—’

Leonard shook his head in dejection. ‘It has all gone against me,’ he said. ‘They all say there’s no chance. The chaplain says it is of no use unsettling my mind.’

‘The chaplain is an old—’ began Dr. May, catching himself up only just in time, and asking, ‘How do you get on with him!’

‘I can hear him read,’ said Leonard, with the look that had been thought sullen.

‘But you cannot talk to him?’

‘Not while he thinks me guilty.’ Then, at a sound of warm sympathy from his friend, he added, ‘I suppose it is his duty; but I wish he would keep away. I can’t stand his aiming at making me confess, and I don’t want to be disrespectful.’

‘I see, I see. It cannot be otherwise. But how would it be if Wilmot came to you?’

‘Would Mr. May?’ said Leonard, with a beseeching look.

‘Richard? He would with all his heart; but I think you would find more support and comfort in a man of Mr. Wilmot’s age and experience, and that Mr. Reeve would have more trust in him; but it shall be exactly as will be most comforting to you.’

‘If Mr. Wilmot would be so good, then’ said Leonard, meekly. ‘Indeed, I want help to bear it patiently! I don’t know how to die; and yet it seemed not near so hard a year ago, when they thought I did not notice, and I heard Ave go away crying, and my mother murmuring, again and again, “Thy will be done!”—the last time I heard her voice. Oh, well that she has not to say it now!’

‘Well that her son can say it!’

‘I want to be able to say it,’ said the boy, fervently; ‘but this seems so hard—life is so sweet.’ Then, after a minute’s thought: ‘Dr. May, that morning, when I awoke, and asked you for them—papa and mamma—you knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer. Won’t you now?’

And when those words had been said, and they both stood up again, Leonard added: ‘It always seems to mean more and more! But oh, Dr. May! that forgiving—I can’t ask any one but you if—’ and he paused.

‘If you forgive, my poor boy! Nay, are not your very silence and forbearance signs of practical forgiveness? Besides, I have always observed that you have never used one of the epithets that I can’t think of him without.’

‘Some feelings are too strong for common words of abuse,’ said Leonard, almost smiling; ‘but I hope I may be helped to put away what is wrong.—Oh, must you go?’

‘I fear I must, my dear; I have a patient to see again, on my way back, and one that will be the worse for waiting.’

‘Henry has not been able to practise. I want to ask one thing, Dr. May, before you go. Could not you persuade them, since home is poisoned to them, at any rate to go at once? It would be better for my sisters than being here—when—and they would only remember that last Sunday at home.’

‘Do you shrink from another meeting with Averil?’

His face was forced into calmness. ‘I will do without it, if it would hurt her.’

‘It may for the time, but to be withheld would give her a worse heartache through life.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ cried Leonard, his face lighting up; ‘it is something still to hope for.’

‘Nay, I’ve not given you up yet,’ said the Doctor, trying for a cheerful smile. ‘I’ve got a prescription that will bring you through yet—London advice, you know. I’ve great faith in the consulting surgeon at the Home Office.’

By the help of that smile and augury, the Doctor got away, terribly beaten down, but living on his fragment of hope; though obliged to perceive that every one who merely saw the newspaper report in black and white, without coming into personal contact with the prisoner, could not understand how the slightest question of the justice of the verdict could arise. Even Mr. Wilmot was so convinced by the papers, that the Doctor almost repented of the mission to which he had invited him, and would, if he could, have revoked what had been said. But the vicar of Stoneborough, painful as was the duty, felt his post to be by the side of his unhappy young parishioner, equally whether the gaol chaplain or Dr. May were right, and if he had to bring him to confession, or to strengthen him to ‘endure grief, suffering wrongfully.’

And after the first interview, no more doubts on that score were expressed; but the vicar’s tone of pitying reverence in speaking of the prisoner was like that of his friends in the High Street.

Tom May spared neither time nor pains in beating up for signatures for the petition, but he had a more defined hope, namely, that of detecting something that might throw the suspicion into the right quarter. The least contradiction of the evidence might raise a doubt that would save Leonard’s life, and bring the true criminal in peril of the fate he so richly deserved. The Vintry Mill was the lion of the neighbourhood, and the crowds of visitors had been a reason for its new master’s vacating it, and going into lodgings in Whitford; so that Tom, when he found it convenient to forget his contempt of the gazers and curiosity hunters who thronged there, and to march off on a secret expedition of investigation, found no obstacle in his way, and at the cost of a fee to Mrs. Giles, who was making a fortune, was free to roam and search wherever he pleased. Even his careful examination of the cotton blind, and his scraping of the window-sill with a knife, were not remarked; for had not the great chair been hacked into fragmentary relics, and the loose paper of the walls of Leonard’s room been made mincemeat of, as memorials of ‘the murderer, Ward’?

One long white hair picked out of a mat below the window, and these scrapings of the window-sill, Tom carried off, and also the scrapings of the top bar of a stile between the mill and the Three Goblets. That evening, all were submitted to the microscope. Dr. May was waked from a doze by a very deferential ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ and a sudden tweak, which abstracted a silver thread from his head; and Mab showed somewhat greater displeasure at a similar act of plunder upon her white chemisette. But the spying was followed by a sigh; and, in dumb show, Ethel was made to perceive that the Vintry hair had more affinity with the canine than the human. As to the scrapings of the window, nothing but vegetable fibre could there be detected; but on the stile, there was undoubtedly a mark containing human blood-disks; Tom proved that both by comparison with his books, and by pricking his own finger, and kept Ethel to see it after every one else was gone up to bed. But as one person’s blood was like another’s, who could tell whether some one with a cut finger had not been through the stile? Tom shook his head, there was not yet enough on which to commit himself. ‘But I’ll have him!—I’ll have him yet!’ said he. ‘I’ll never rest while that villain walks the earth unpunished!’

Meantime, Harvey Anderson did yeoman’s service by a really powerful article in a leading paper, written from the very heart of an able man, who had been strongly affected himself, and was well practised in feeling in pen and ink. Every word rang home to the soul, and all the more because there was no defence nor declamation against the justice of the verdict, which was acknowledged to be unavoidable; it was merely a pathetic delineation of a terrible mystery, with a little meditative philosophy upon it, the moral of which was, that nothing is more delusive than fact, more untrue than truth. However, it was copied everywhere, and had the great effect of making it the cue of more than half the press to mourn over, rather than condemn, ‘the unfortunate young gentleman.’

Mrs. Pugh showed every one the article, and confided to most that she had absolutely ventured to suggest two or three of the sentences. But a great deal might be borne from Mrs. Pugh, in consideration of her indefatigable exertions with the ladies’ petition, and it was a decided success. The last census had rated Market Stoneborough at 7561 inhabitants, and Mrs. Pugh’s petition bore no less than 3024 female names, in which she fairly beat that of the mayor; but then she had been less scrupulous as to the age at which people should be asked to sign; as long as the name could be written at all, she was not particular whose it was.

Dr. May made his patients agree to accept as his substitute Dr. Spencer or Mr. Wright, to whom Henry Ward intended to resign practice and house. He himself was to go to London for a couple of nights with George Rivers, who was exceedingly gratified at having the charge of him all to himself, and considered that the united influence of member and mayor must prevail. Dr. Spencer, on the contrary, probably by way of warning, represented Mr. Mayor as ruining everything by his headlong way of setting about it, declaring that he would abuse everybody all round, and assure the Home Secretary, that, as sure as his name was Dick May, it was quite impossible the boy could have hurt a fly; though a strict sense of truth would lead him to add the next moment, that he was terribly passionate, and had nearly demolished his brother.

Dr. May talked of his caution and good behaviour, which, maybe, were somewhat increased by this caricature, but he ended by very hearty wishes that these were the times of Jeanie Deans; if the pardon depended on our own good Queen, he should not doubt of it a moment. Why, was not the boy just the age of her own son?

And verily there was no one in the whole world whom poor Averil envied like Jeanie Deans.

So member and mayor went to London together, and intense were the prayers that speeded them and followed them. The case was laid before the Home Secretary, the petitions presented, and Dr. May said all that man might say on ground where he felt as if over-partisanship might be perilous. The matter was to have due consideration: nothing more definite or hopeful could be obtained; but there could be no doubt that this meant a real and calm re-weighing of the evidence, with a consideration of all the circumstances. It was something for the Doctor that a second dispassionate study should be given to the case, but his heart sank as he thought of that cold, hard statement of evidence, without the counter testimony of the honest, tearless eyes and simple good faith of the voice and tone.

And when he entered the railway carriage on his road home, the newspaper that George Rivers attentively pressed upon him bore the information that Wednesday, the 21st, would be the day, according to usage, for the execution of the condemned criminal, Leonard Axworthy Ward. If it had been for the execution of Richard May, the Doctor could hardly have given a deeper groan.

He left the train at the county town. He had so arranged, that he might see the prisoner on his way home; but he had hardly the heart to go, except that he knew he was expected, and no disappointment that he could help must add to the pangs of these last days.

Leonard was alone, but was not, as before, sitting unemployed; he carefully laid down his etching work ere he came forward to meet his friend; and there was not the bowed and broken look about him, but a fixed calmness and resolution, as he claimed the fatherly embrace and blessing with which the Doctor now always met him.

‘I bring you no certainty, Leonard. It is under consideration.’

‘Thank you. You have done everything,’ returned Leonard, quietly; ‘and—’ then pausing, he added, ‘I know the day now—the day after my birthday.’

‘Let us—let us hope,’ said the Doctor, greatly agitated.

‘Thank you,’ again said Leonard; and there was a pause, during which Dr. May anxiously studied the face, which had become as pale and almost as thin as when the lad had been sent off to Coombe, and infinitely older in the calm steadfastness of every feature.

‘You do not look well, Leonard.’

‘No; I am not quite well; but it matters very little,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I am well enough to make it hard to believe how soon all sense and motion will be gone out of these fingers!’ and he held up his hand, and studied the minutiae of its movements with a strange grave sort of curiosity.

‘Don’t—don’t, Leonard!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘You may be able to bear it, but I cannot.’

‘I thought you would not mind, you have so often watched death.’

‘Yes; but—’ and he covered his face with his hands.

‘I wish it did not pain you all so much,’ said Leonard, quietly. ‘But for that, I can feel it to be better than if I had gone in the fever, when I had no sense to think or repent; or if I had—I hardly knew my own faults.’

‘You seem much happier now, my boy.’

‘Yes,’ said Leonard. ‘I am more used to the notion, and Mr. Wilmot has been so kind. Then I am to see Ave tomorrow, if she is well enough. Henry has promised to bring her, and leave her alone with me; and I do hope—that I shall be able to convince her that it is not so very bad for me—and then she may be able to take comfort. You know she would, if she were nursing me now in my bed at Bankside; so why should she not when she sees that I don’t think this any worse, but rather better?’

The Doctor was in no mood to think any comfort possible in thus losing one like Leonard, and he did not commit himself to an untruth. There was a silence again, and Leonard opened his book, and took out his etchings, one which he had already promised the Doctor, another for Aubrey, and at the third the Doctor exclaimed inarticulately with surprise and admiration.

It was a copy of the well-known Cross-bearing Form in the Magdalen College Chapel Altar-piece, drawn in pen and ink on a half-sheet of thick note-paper; but somehow, into the entire Face and Figure there was infused such an expression as now and then comes direct from the soul of the draughtsman—an inspiration entirely independent of manual dexterity, and that copies, however exact, fail to render, nay, which the artist himself fails to renew. The beauty, the meekness, the hidden Majesty of the Countenance, were conveyed in a marvellous manner, and were such as would bring a tear to the eye of the gazer, even had the drawing been there alone to speak for itself.

‘This is your doing, Leonard?’

‘I have just finished it. It has been one of my greatest comforts—’

‘Ah!’

‘Doing those lines;’ and he pointed to the thorny Crown, ‘I seem to get ashamed of thinking this hardness. Only think, Dr. May, from the very first moment the policeman took me in charge, nobody has said a rough word to me. I have never felt otherwise than that they meant justice to have its way as far as they knew, but they were all consideration for me. To think of that, and then go over the scoffs and scourgings!’—there was a bright glistening tear in Leonard’s eye now—’it seems like child’s play to go through such a trial as mine.’

‘Yes! you have found the secret of willingness.’

‘And,’ added the boy, hesitating between the words, but feeling that he must speak them, as the best balm for the sorrow he was causing, ‘even my little touch of the shame and scorn of this does make me know better what it must have been, and yet—so thankful when I remember why it was—that I think I could gladly bear a great deal more than this is likely to be.’

‘Oh! my boy, I have no fears for you now.’

‘Yes, yes—have fears,’ cried Leonard, hastily. ‘Pray for me! You don’t know what it is to wake up at night, and know something is coming nearer and nearer—and then this—before one can remember all that blesses it—or the Night of that Agony—and that He knows what it is—’

‘Do we not pray for you?’ said Dr. May, fervently, ‘in church and at home? and is not this an answer? Am I to take this drawing, Leonard, that speaks so much?’

‘If—if you think Miss May—would let me send it to her? Thank you, it will be very kind of her. And please tell her, if it had not been for that time at Coombe, I don’t know how I could ever have felt the ground under my feet. If I have one wish that never can be—’

‘What wish, my dear, dear boy? Don’t be afraid to say. Is it to see her?’

‘It was,’ said Leonard, ‘but I did not mean to say it. I know it cannot be.’

‘But, Leonard, she has said that if you wished it, she would come as if you were lying on your bed at home, and with more reverence.’

Large tears of gratitude were swelling in Leonard’s eyes, and he pressed the Doctor’s hand, but still said, almost inarticulately, ‘Ought she?’

‘I will bring her, my boy. It will do her good to see how—how her pupil, as they have always called you in joke, Leonard, can be willing to bear the Cross after his Master. She has never let go for a moment the trust that it was well with you.’

‘Oh! Dr. May, it was the one thing—and when I had gone against all her wishes. It is so good of her! It is the one thing—’ and there was no doubt from his face that he was indeed happy.

And Dr. May went home that day softened and almost cheered, well-nigh as though he had had a promise of Leonard’s life, and convinced that in the region to which the spirits of Ethel and her pupil could mount, resignation would silence the wailings of grief and sorrow; the things invisible were more than a remedy for the things visible.

That Ethel should see Leonard before the last, he was quite resolved; and Ethel, finding that so it was, left the when in his hands, knowing the concession to be so great, that it must be met by grateful patience on her own side, treasuring the drawing meanwhile with feelings beyond speech. Dr. May did not wish the meeting to take place till he was really sure that all hope was at an end; he knew it would be a strong measure, and though he did not greatly care for the world in general, he did not want to offend Flora unnecessarily; in matters of propriety she was a little bit of a conscience to him, and though he would brave her or any one else when a thing was right, especially if it were to give one last moment of joy to Leonard, she was not to be set at naught till the utmost extremity.

And for one day, the sight of Averil would be enough. She had struggled into something sufficiently like recovery to be able to maintain her fitness for the exertion; and Henry had recognized that the unsatisfied pining was so preying on her as to hurt her more than the meeting and parting could do, since, little as he could understand how it was, he perceived that Leonard could be depended on for support and comfort. With him, indeed, Leonard had ever shown himself cheerful and resolute, speaking of anything rather than of himself and never grieving him with the sight of those failings of flesh and heart that would break forth where there was more congenial sympathy, yet where they were not a reproach.

So Averil, with many a promise to be ‘good,’ and strongly impressed with warnings that the chance of another meeting depended on the effects of this one, was laid back in the carriage, leaving poor little Minna to Mary’s consolation. Minna was longing to go too, but Henry had forbidden it, and not even an appeal to Dr. May had prevailed; so she was taken home by Mary, and with a child’s touching patience, was helped through the weary hours, giving wandering though gentle attention to Ella’s eager display of the curiosities of the place, and explanations of the curious games and puzzles taught by ‘Mr. Tom.’ Ethel, watching the sweet wistful face, and hearing the subdued voice, felt a reverence towards the child, as though somewhat of the shadow of her brother’s cross had fallen on her.

The elder brother and sister meanwhile arrived at the building now only too familiar to one of them, and, under her thick veil, unconscious of the pitying looks of the officials, Averil was led, leaning on Henry’s arm, along the whitewashed passages, with their slate floors, and up the iron stairs, the clear, hard, light coldness chilling her heart with a sense of the stern, relentless, inevitable grasp in which the victim was held. The narrow iron door flew open at the touch of the turnkey; a hand was on her arm, but all swam round with her, and she only knew it was the well-known voice; she did not follow the words between her brothers and the turnkey about the time she was to be left there, but she gave a start and shudder when the door sprung fast again behind her, and at the same instant she felt herself upheld by an arm round her waist.

‘Take off your bonnet, Ave; let me see you,’ he said, himself undoing the strings, and removing it, then bending his face to hers for a long, almost insatiable kiss, as they stood strained in one intense embrace, all in perfect silence on the sister’s part.

‘I have been making ready for you,’ he said at length, partly releasing her; ‘you are to sit here;’ and he deposited her, still perfectly passive in his hands, upon his bed, her back against the wall. ‘Put up your feet! There!’ And having settled her to his satisfaction, he knelt down on the floor, one arm round her waist, one hand in hers, looking earnestly up into her face, with his soul in his eyes, her other hand resting on his shoulder.

‘How are the little ones, Ave?’

‘Very well. Minna so longed to come.’

‘Better not,’ said Leonard; ‘she is so little, and these white walls might distress her fancy. They will remember our singing on the last Sunday evening instead. Do you remember, Ave, how they begged to stay on and on till it grew so dark that we could not see a word or a note, and went on from memory?’ and he very softly hummed the restful cadence, dying away into

‘Till in the ocean of Thy love We lose ourselves in Heaven above.’

‘How can you bear to think of those dear happy days!’

‘Because you will be glad of them by and by, said Leonard; ‘and I am very glad of them now, though they might have been so much better, if only we had known.’

‘They were the only happy days of all my life!’

‘I hope not—I trust not, dearest. You may and ought to have much better and happier days to come.’

She shook her head, with a look of inexpressible anguish, almost of reproach.

‘Indeed I mean it, Ave,’ he said; ‘I have thought it over many times, and I see that the discomfort and evil of our home was in the spirit of pride and rebellion that I helped you to nurse. It was like a wedge, driving us farther and farther apart; and now that it is gone, and you will close up again, when you are kind and yielding to Henry—what a happy peaceful home you may make out in the prairie land!’

‘As if we could ever—’

‘Nay, Averil, could not you recover it if I were dying now of sickness? I know you would, though you might not think so at the time. Believe me, then, when I say that I am quite willing to have it as it is—to be my own man to the last—to meet with such precious inestimable kindness from so many. Of course I should like to live longer, and do something worth doing; but if I am to die young, there is so much blessing even in this way, that nothing really grieves me but the thought of you and Henry; and if it makes you one together, even that is made up.’

Awe-struck, and as if dreaming, she did not answer, only smoothing caressingly the long waves of bright brown hair on his forehead. She was surprised by his next question.

‘Ave! how has Mrs. Pugh behaved?’

‘Oh! the woman! I have hardly thought of her! She has been very active about the petition, somebody said; but I don’t believe Henry can bear to hear of her any more than I can. What made you think of her?’

‘Because I wanted to know how it was with Henry, and I could not ask him. Poor fellow! Well, Ave, you see he will depend on you entirely for comfort, and you must promise me that shall be your great business and care.’

‘How you do think of Henry!’ she said, half jealously.

‘Of course, Ave. You and I have no past to grieve over together, but poor Henry will never feel free of having left me to my self-willed obstinacy, and let me go to that place. Besides, the disgrace in the sight of the world touches him more, and you can tread that down more easily than he.’ Then, in answer to a wondering look, ‘Yes, you can, when you recollect that it is crime, not the appearance of it, that is shame. I do not mean that I do not deserve all this—but—but—’ and his eye glistened, ‘Ave, dear, if I could only bring out the words to tell you how much peace and joy there is in knowing that—with that vast difference—it is like in some degree what was borne to save us, I really don’t think you could go on grieving over me any more; at least not more than for the loss,’ he added, tenderly; ‘and you’ll not miss me so much in a new country, you know, with Henry and the children to take care of. Only promise me to be kind to Henry.’

And having drawn forth a faint promise, that he knew would have more force by and by, Leonard went on, in his low quiet voice, into reminiscences that sounded like random, of the happy days of childhood and early youth, sometimes almost laughing over them, sometimes linking his memory as it were to tune or flower, sport or study, but always for joy, and never for pain; and thus passed the time, with long intervals of silent thought and recollection on his part, and of a sort of dreamy stupor on his sister’s, during which the strange peaceful hush seemed to have taken away her power of recalling the bitter complaints of cruel injustice, and the broken-hearted lamentations she had imagined herself pouring out in sympathy with her victim brother. Instead of being wrung with anguish, her heart was lulled and quelled by wondering reverence; and she seemed to herself scarcely awake, and only dimly conscious of the pale-cheeked bright-eyed face upturned to her, so calm and undaunted, yet so full of awe and love, the low steady tender voice, and the warm upholding arm.

A great clock struck, and Leonard said, ‘There! they were to come at four, and then the chaplain is coming. He is grown so very kind now! Ave, if they would let you be with me at my last Communion! Will you? Could you bear it? I think then you would know all the peace of it!’

‘Oh, yes! make them let me come.’

‘Then it is not good-bye,’ he said, as he fetched her bonnet and cloak, and put them on with tender hands, as if she were a child, in readiness as steps approached, and her escort reappeared.

‘Here she is, Henry,’ he said, with a smile. ‘She has been very good; she may come again.’ And then, holding her in his arms once more, he resigned her to Henry, saying, ‘Not good-bye, Ave; we will keep my birthday together.’

CHAPTER XVI

The captives went To their own places, to their separate glooms, Uncheered by glance, or hand, or hope, to brood On those impossible glories of the past, When they might touch the grass, and see the sky, And do the works of men. But manly work Is sometimes in a prison.—S. M. Queen Isabel

‘Commutation of punishment, to penal servitude for life.’

Such were the tidings that ran through Stoneborough on Sunday morning, making all feel as if a heavy oppression had been taken from the air. In gratitude to the merciful authorities, and thankfulness for the exemption from death, the first impressions were that Justice was at last speaking, that innocence could not suffer, and that right was reasserting itself. Even when the more sober and sad remembered that leniency was not pardon, nor life liberty, they were hastily answered that life was everything—life was hope, life was time, and time would show truth.

Averil’s first tears dropped freely, as she laid her head on Mary’s shoulder, and with her hand in Dr. May’s, essayed to utter the words, ‘It is your doing—you have twice saved him for me,’ and Minna stood calmly glad, but without surprise. ‘I knew they could not hurt him; God would not let them.’

The joy and relief were so great as to absorb all thought or realization of what this mercy was to the prisoner himself, until Dr. May was able to pay him a visit on Monday afternoon. It was at a moment when the first effects of the tidings of life had subsided, and there had been time to look forth on the future with a spirit more steadfast than buoyant. The strain of the previous weeks was reacting on the bodily frame, and indisposition unhinged the spirits; so that, when Dr. May entered, beaming with congratulations, he was met with the same patient glance of endurance, endeavouring at resignation, that he knew so well, but without the victorious peace that had of late gained the ascendant expression. There was instead an almost painful endeavour to manifest gratitude by cheerfulness, and the smile was far less natural than those of the last interview, as fervently returning the pressure of the hand, he said, ‘You were right, Dr. May, you have brought me past the crisis.’

‘A sure sign of ultimate recovery, my boy. Remember, dum spiro spero.’

Leonard attempted a responsive smile, but it was a hopeless business. From the moment when at the inquest he found himself entangled in the meshes of circumstance, his mind had braced itself to endure rather than hope, and his present depressed state, both mental and bodily, rendered even that endurance almost beyond his powers. He could only say, ‘You have been very good to me.’

‘My dear fellow, you are sadly knocked down; I wish—’ and the Doctor looked at him anxiously.

‘I wish you had been here yesterday,’ said Leonard; ‘then you would not have found me so. No, not thankless, indeed!’

‘No, indeed; but—yes, I see it was folly—nay, harshness, to expect you to be glad of what lies before you, my poor boy.’

‘I am—am thankful,’ said Leonard, struggling to make the words truth. ‘Wednesday is off my mind—yes, it is more than I deserve—I knew I was not fit to die, and those at home are spared. But I am as much cut off from them—perhaps more—than by death. And it is the same disgrace to them, the same exile. I suppose Henry still goes—’

‘Yes, he does.’

‘Ah! then one thing, Dr. May—if you had a knife or scissors—I do not know how soon they may cut my hair, and I want to secure a bit for poor Ave.’

Dr. May was too handless to have implements of the first order, but a knife he had, and was rather dismayed at Leonard’s reckless hacking at his bright shining wavy hair, pulling out more than he cut, with perfect indifference to the pain. The Doctor stroked the chestnut head as tenderly as if it had been Gertrude’s sunny curls, but Leonard started aside, and dashing away the tears that were overflowing his eyes under the influence of the gentle action, asked vigorously, ‘Have you heard what they will do with me?’

‘I do not know thoroughly. A year or six months maybe at one of the great model establishments, then probably you will be sent to some of the public works,’ said the Doctor, sadly. ‘Yes, it is a small boon to give you life, and take away all that makes life happy.’

‘If it were only transportation!’

‘Yes. In a new world you could live it down, and begin afresh. And even here, Leonard, I look to finding you like Joseph in his prison.’

‘The iron entering into his soul!’ said Leonard, with a mournful smile.

‘No; in the trustworthiness that made him honoured and blessed even there. Leonard, Leonard, conduct will tell. Even there, you can live this down, and will!’

‘Eighteen tomorrow,’ replied the boy. ‘Fifty years of it, perhaps! I know God can help me through with it, but it is a long time to be patient!’

By way of answer, the Doctor launched into brilliant auguries of the impression the prisoner’s conduct would produce, uttering assurances, highly extravagant in his Worship the Mayor, of the charms of the modern system of prison discipline, but they fell flat; there could be no disguising that penal servitude for life was penal servitude for life, and might well be bitterer than death itself. Sympathy might indeed be balm to the captive, but the good Doctor pierced his own breast to afford it, so that his heart sank even more than when he had left the young man under sentence of death. His least unavailing consolations were his own promises of frequent visits, and Aubrey’s of correspondence, but they produced more of dejected gratitude than of exhilaration. Yet it was not in the way of murmur or repining, but rather of ‘suffering and being strong,’ and only to this one friend was the suffering permitted to be apparent. To all the officials he was simply submissive and gravely resolute; impassive if he encountered sharpness or sternness, but alert and grateful towards kindliness, of which he met more and more as the difference between dealing with him and the ordinary prisoners made itself felt.

To Dr. May alone was the depth of pain betrayed; but another comforter proved more efficient in cheering the prisoner, namely, Mr. Wilmot, who, learning from the Doctor the depression of their young friend, hastened to endeavour at imparting a new spring of life on this melancholy birthday. Physically, the boy was better, and perhaps the new day had worn off somewhat of the burthen of anticipation, for Mr. Wilmot found him already less downcast, and open to consolation. It might be, too, that the sense that the present was to have been his last day upon earth, had made him more conscious of the relief from the immediate shadow of death, for he expressed his thankfulness far more freely and without the effort of the previous day.

‘And, depend on it,’ said Mr. Wilmot, ‘you are spared because there is something for you to do.’

‘To bear,’ said Leonard.

‘No, to do. Perhaps not immediately; but try to look on whatever you have to bear, not only as carrying the cross, as I think you already feel it—’

‘Or there would be no standing it at all.’

‘True,’ said Mr. Wilmot; ‘and your so feeling it convinces me the more that whatever may follow is likewise to be looked upon as discipline to train you for something beyond. Who knows what work may be in store, for which this fiery trial may be meant to prepare you?’

The head was raised, and the eyes brightened with something like hope in their fixed interrogative glance.

‘Even as things are now, who knows what good may be done by the presence of a man educated, religious, unstained by crime, yet in the same case as those around him? I do not mean by quitting your natural place, but by merely living as you must live. You were willing to have followed your Master in His death. You now have to follow Him by living as one under punishment; and be sure it is for some purpose for others as well as yourself.’

‘If there is any work to be done for Him, it is all right,’ said Leonard, cheerily; and as Mr. Wilmot paused, he added, ‘It would be like working for a friend—if I may dare say so—after the hours when this place has been made happy to me. I should not mind anything if I might only feel it working for Him.’

‘Feel it. Be certain of it. As you have realized the support of that Friend in a way that is hardly granted, save in great troubles, so now realize that every task is for Him. Do not look on the labour as hardship inflicted by mistaken authority—’

‘Oh, I only want to get to that! I have been so long with nothing to do!’

‘And your hearty doing of it, be it what it may, as unto the Lord, can be as acceptable as Dr. May’s labours of love among the poor—as entirely a note in the great concord in Heaven and earth as the work of the ministry itself—as completely in unison. Nay, further, such obedient and hearty work will form you for whatever may yet be awaiting you, and what that may be will show itself in good time, when you are ready for it.

‘The right chord was touched, the spirit of energy was roused, and Leonard was content to be a prisoner of hope, not the restless hope of liberation, but the restful hope that he might yet render faithful service even in his present circumstances.

Not much passed his lips in this interview, but its effect was apparent when Dr. May again saw him, and this time in company with Aubrey. Most urgent had been the boy’s entreaties to be taken to see his friend, and Dr. May had only hesitated because Leonard’s depression had made himself so unhappy that he feared its effect on his susceptible son; whose health had already suffered from the long course of grief and suspense. But it was plain that if Aubrey were to go at all, it must be at once, since the day was fixed for the prisoner’s removal, and the still nearer and dearer claims must not clash with those of the friend. Flora shook her head, and reminded her father that Leonard would not be out of reach in future, and that the meeting now might seriously damage Aubrey’s already uncertain health.

‘I cannot help it, Flora,’ said the Doctor; ‘it may do him some temporary harm, but I had rather see him knocked down for a day or two, than breed him up to be such a poor creature as to sacrifice his friendship to his health.’

And Mrs. Rivers, who knew what the neighbourhood thought of the good Doctor’s infatuation, felt that there was not much use in suggesting how shocked the world would be at his encouragement of the intimacy between the convict and his young son.

People did look surprised when the Doctor asked admission to the cell for his son as well as himself; and truly Aubrey, who in silence had worked himself into an agony of nervous agitation, looked far from fit for anything trying. Dr. May saw that he must not ask to leave the young friends alone together, but in his reverence for the rights of their friendship, he withdrew himself as far as the limits of the cell would allow, turned his back, and endeavoured to read the Thirty-nine Articles in Leonard’s Prayer-Book; but in spite of all his abstraction, he could not avoid a complete consciousness that the two lads sat on the bed, clinging with arms round one another like young children, and that it was Leonard’s that was the upright sustaining figure, his own Aubrey’s the prone and leaning one. And of the low whispering murmurs that reached his would-be deafened ear, the gasping almost sobbing tones were Aubrey’s. The first distinct words that he could not help hearing were, ‘No such thing! There can’t be slavery where one works with a will!’ and again, in reply to something unheard, ‘Yes, one can! Why, how did one do one’s Greek?’—’Very different!’—’How?’—’Oh!’—’Yes; but you are a clever chap, and had her to teach you, but I only liked it because I’d got it to do. Just the same with the desk-work down at the mill; so it may be the same now.’

Then came fragments of what poor Aubrey had expressed more than once at home—that his interest in life, in study, in sport, was all gone with his friend.

‘Come, Aubrey, that’s stuff. You’d have had to go to Cambridge, you know, without me, after I doggedly put myself at that place. There’s just as much for you to do as ever there was.’

‘How you keep on with your do!’ cried Ethel’s spoilt child, with a touch of petulance.

‘Why, what are we come here for—into this world, I mean—but to do!’ returned Leonard; ‘and I take it, if we do it right, it does not much matter what or where it is.’

‘I shan’t have any heart for it!’ sighed Aubrey.

‘Nonsense! Not with all your people at home? and though the voice fell again, the Doctor’s ears distinguished the murmur, ‘Why, just the little things she let drop are the greatest help to me here, and you always have her—’

Then ensued much that was quite inaudible, and at last Leonard said, ‘No, old fellow; as long as you don’t get ashamed of me, thinking about you, and knowing what you are about, will be one of the best pleasures I shall have. And look here, Aubrey, if we only consider it right, you and I will be just as really working together, when you are at your books, and I am making mats, as if we were both at Cambridge side by side! It is quite true, is it not, Dr. May?’ he added, since the Doctor, finding it time to depart, had turned round to close the interview.

‘Quite true, my boy,’ said the Doctor; ‘and I hope Aubrey will try to take comfort and spirit from it.’

‘As if I could!’ said Aubrey, impatiently, ‘when it only makes me more mad to see what a fellow they have shut up in here!’

‘Not mad, I hope,’ said Dr. May; ‘but I’ll tell you what it should do for both of us, Aubrey. It should make us very careful to be worthy to remain his friends.’

‘O, Dr. May!’ broke in Leonard, distressed.

‘Yes,’ returned Dr. May, ‘I mean what I say, however you break in, Master Leonard. As long as this boy of mine is doing his best for the right motives, he will care for you as he does now—not quite in the same despairing way, of course, for holes in one’s daily life do close themselves up with time—but if he slacks off in his respect or affection for you, then I shall begin to have fears of him. Now come away, Aubrey, and remember for your comfort it is not the good-bye it might have been,’ he added, as he watched the mute intensity of the boys’ farewell clasp of the hands; but even then had some difficulty in getting Aubrey away from the friend so much stronger as the consoler than as the consoled, and unconsciously showing how in the last twenty-four hours his mind had acted on the topics presented to him by Mr. Wilmot.

Changed as he was from the impetuous boyish lad of a few weeks since, a change even more noticeable when with his contemporary than in intercourse with elder men, yet the nature was the same. Obstinacy had softened into constancy, pride into resolution, generosity made pardon less difficult, and elevation of temper bore him through many a humiliation that, through him, bitterly galled his brother.

Whatever he might feel, prison regulations were accepted by him as matters of course, not worth being treated as separate grievances. He never showed any shrinking from the assumption of the convict dress, whilst Henry was fretting and wincing over the very notion of his wearing it, and trying to arrange that the farewell interview should precede its adoption.

CHAPTER XVII

Scorn of me recoils on you. E. B. BROWNING

After the first relief, the relaxation of his brother’s sentence had by no means mitigated Henry Ward’s sense of disgrace, but had rather deepened it by keeping poor Leonard a living, not a dead, sorrow.

He was determined to leave England as soon as possible, that his sisters might never feel that they were the relative of a convict; and bringing Ella home, he promulgated a decree that Leonard was never to be mentioned; hoping that his existence might be forgotten by the little ones.

To hurry from old scenes, and sever former connections, was his sole thought, as if he could thus break the tie of brotherhood. There was a half-formed link that had more easily snapped. His courtship had been one of prudence and convenience, and in the overwhelming period of horror and suspense had been almost forgotten. The lady’s attempts at sympathy had been rejected by Averil without obstruction from him, for he had no such love as could have prevented her good offices from becoming oppressive to his wounded spirit, and he had not sufficient energy or inclination to rouse himself to a response.

And when the grant of life enabled him to raise his head and look around him, he felt the failure of his plans an aggravation of his calamity, though he did not perceive that his impatience to rid himself of an encumbrance, and clear the way for his marriage, had been the real origin of the misfortune. Still he was glad that matters had gone no further, and that there was no involvement beyond what could be handsomely disposed of by a letter, resigning his pretensions, and rejoicing that innate delicacy and prudence had prevented what might have involved the lady’s feelings more deeply in the misfortune of his family: representing himself in all good faith as having retreated from her proffered sympathy out of devoted consideration for her, and closing with elaborate thanks for her exertions on behalf of ‘his unhappy brother.’

The letter had the honour of being infinitely lauded by Mrs. Ledwich, who dwelt on its nobleness and tenderness in many a tete-a-tete, and declared her surprise and thankfulness at the immunity of her dear Matilda’s heart. In strict confidence, too, Dr. Spencer (among others) learnt that—though it was not to be breathed till the year was out, above all till the poor Wards were gone—the dear romantic girl had made her hand the guerdon for obtaining Leonard’s life.

‘So there’s your fate, Dick,’ concluded his friend.

‘You forget the influence of the press,’ returned Dr. May. ‘People don’t propose such guerdons without knowing who is to earn them.’

‘Yes, she has long believed in King John,’ said Ethel.

Meantime Averil Ward was acquiescing in all Henry’s projects with calm desperate passiveness. She told Mary that she had resolved that she would never again contend with Henry, but would let him do what he would with herself and her sisters. Nor had his tenderness during her illness been in vain; it had inspired reliance and affection, such as to give her the instinct of adherence to him as the one stay left to her. With Leonard shut up, all places were the same to her, except that she was in haste to escape from the scenes connected with her lost brother; and she looked forward with dull despairing acquiescence to the new life with which Henry hoped to shake off the past.

A colony was not change enough for Henry’s wishes; even there he made sure of being recognized as the convict’s brother, and was resolved to seek his new home in the wide field of America, disguising his very name, as Warden, and keeping up no communication with the prisoner except under cover to Dr. May.

To this unfailing friend was committed the charge of the brother. He undertook to watch over the boy, visit him from time to time, take care of his health, and obtain for him any alleviations permitted by the prison rules; and as Henry reiterated to Averil, it was absolutely certain that everything possible from external kindness was thus secured. What more could they themselves have done, but show him their faces at the permitted intervals? which would be mere wear and tear of feeling, very bad for both parties.

Averil drooped, and disputed not—guessing, though not yet understanding, the heart hunger she should feel even for such a dreary glimpse.

Every hour seemed to be another turn of the wheel that hurried on the departure. The successor wished to take house and furniture as they stood, and to enter into possession as soon as possible, as he already had taken the practice. This coincided with Henry’s burning impatience to be quit of everything, and to try to drown the sense of his own identity in the crowds of London. He was his sisters’ only guardian, their property was entirely in his hands, and no one had the power of offering any obstacle, so that no delay could be interposed; and the vague design passed with startling suddenness to a fixed decision, to be carried into execution immediately. It came in one burst upon the May household that Averil and her sisters were coming to spend a last evening before their absolute packing to go on the Saturday to London, where they would provide their outfit, and start in a month for America.

The tidings were brought by Mary, who had, as usual, been spending part of the morning with Averil. No one seemed to be so much taken by surprise as Tom, whose first movement was to fall on his sisters for not having made him aware of such a preposterous scheme. They thought he knew. He knew that all the five quarters of the world had been talked of in a wild sort of a way; but how could he suppose that any man could be crazed enough to prefer to be an American citizen, when he might remain a British subject?

Repugnance to America was naturally strong in Tom, and had of late been enhanced by conversations with an Eton friend, who, while quartered in Canada, had made excursions into the States, and acquired such impressions as high-bred young officers were apt to bring home from a superficial view of them. Thus fortified, he demanded whether any reasonable person had tried to bring Henry Ward to his senses.

Ethel believed that papa had advised otherwise.

‘Advised! It should have been enforced! If he is fool enough to alter his name, and throw up all his certificates what is to become of him? He will get no practice in any civilized place, and will have to betake himself to some pestilential swamp, will slave his sisters to death, spend their money, and destroy them with ague. How can you sit still and look on, Ethel?’

‘But what could I do?’

‘Stir up my father to interfere.’

‘I thought you always warned us against interfering with Henry Ward.’

He treated this speech as maliciously designed to enrage him. ‘Ethel!’ he stammered, ‘in a case like this—where the welfare—the very life—of one—of your dearest friend—of Mary’s, I mean—I did think you would have been above—’

‘But, Tom, I would do my utmost, and so would papa, if it were possible to do anything; but it is quite in vain. Henry is resolved against remaining under British rule, and America seems to be the only field for him.’

‘Much you know or care!’ cried Tom. ‘Well, if no one else will, I must!’

With which words he departed, leaving his sister surprised at his solicitude, and dubious of the efficacy of his remonstrance, though she knew by experience that Tom was very different in a great matter from what he was in a small one.

Tom betook himself to Bankside, and the first person he encountered there was his little friend Ella, who ran up to him at once.

‘Oh, Mr. Tom, we are going to America! Shall you be sorry?’

‘Very sorry,’ said Tom, as the little hand was confidingly thrust into his.

‘I should not mind it, if you were coming too, Mr. Tom!’

‘What, to play at French billiards?’

‘No, indeed! To find objects for the microscope. I shall save all the objects I meet, and send them home in a letter.’

‘An alligator or two, or a branch of the Mississippi,’ said Tom, in a young man’s absent way of half-answering a pet child; but the reply so struck Ella’s fancy, that, springing through the open French window, she cried, ‘Oh, Ave, Ave, here is Mr. Tom saying I am to send him a branch of the Mississippi in a letter, as an object for his microscope!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Tom, shocked at Averil’s nervous start, and still more shocked at her appearance. She looked like one shattered by long and severe illness; her eyes were restless and distressed, her hair thrust back as if it oppressed her temples, her manner startled and over-wrought, her hand hot and unsteady—her whole air that of one totally unequal to the task before her. He apologized for having taken her by surprise, and asked for her brother. She answered, that he was busy at Mr. Bramshaw’s, and she did not know when he would come in. But still Tom lingered; he could not bear to leave her to exertions beyond her strength. ‘You are tiring yourself,’ he said; ‘can I do nothing to help you?’

‘No, no, thank you; I am only looking over things. Minna is helping me, and I am making an inventory.’

‘Then you must let me be of use to you. You must be as quiet as possible. You need rest.’

‘I can’t rest; I’m better busy!’ she said hastily, with quick, aimless, bustling movements.

But Tom had his father’s tone, as he gently arrested the trembling hand that was pulling open a drawer, and with his father’s sweet, convincing smile, said, ‘What’s that for?’ then drew up a large arm-chair, placed her in it, and, taking pen and list, began to write—sometimes at her suggestion, sometimes at his own—giving business-like and efficient aid.

The work was so grave and regular, that Ella soon found the room tedious, and crept out, calling Minna to aid in some of their own personal matters.

Slowly enumerating the articles they came to the piano. Averil went up to it, leant fondly against it, and softly touched the keys. ‘My own,’ she said, ‘bought for a surprise to me when I came home from school! And oh, how he loved it!’

‘Every one had reason to love it,’ said Tom, in a low voice; but she did not heed or hear.

‘I cannot—cannot part with it! When I sit here, I can almost feel him leaning over me! You must go—I will pay your expenses myself! I wonder if we should have such rough roads as would hurt you,’ she added, caressingly toying with the notes, and bringing soft replies from them, as if she were conversing with a living thing.

‘Ah!’ said Tom, coming nearer, ‘you will, I hope, take care to what your brother’s impetuosity might expose either this, or yourself.’

‘We shall all fare alike,’ she said, carelessly.

‘But how?’ said Tom.

‘Henry will take care of that.’

‘Do you know, Miss Ward, I came down here with the purpose of setting some matters before your brother that might dissuade him from making the United States his home. You have justly more influence than I. Will you object to hear them from me?’

Ave could not imagine why Tom May, of all people in the world, should thrust himself into the discussion of her plans; but she could only submit to listen, or more truly to lean back with wandering thoughts and mechanical signs of assent, as he urged his numerous objections. Finally, she uttered a meek ‘Thank you,’ in the trust that it was over.

‘And will you try to make your brother consider these things?’

Poor Ave could not have stood an examination on ‘these things,’ and feeling inadequate to undertake the subject, merely said something of ‘very kind, but she feared it would be of no use.’

‘I assure you, if you would persuade him to talk it over with me, that I could show him that he would involve you all in what would be most distasteful.’

‘Thank you, but his mind is made up. No other course is open.’

‘Could he not, at least, go and see what he thinks of it, before taking you and your sisters?’

‘Impossible!’ said Averil. ‘We must all keep together; we have no one else.’

‘No, indeed, you must not say that,’ cried Tom, with a fire that startled Averil in the midst of her languid, dreary indifference.

‘I did not mean,’ she said, ‘to be ungrateful for the kindness of your family—the Doctor and dear Mary, above all; but you must know-‘

‘I know,’ he interrupted, ‘that I cannot see you exiling yourself with your brother, because you think you have no one else to turn to—you, who are so infinitely dear—’

‘This is no time for satire,’ she said, drawing aside with offence, but still wearily, and as if she had not given attention enough to understand him.

‘You mistake me,’ he exclaimed; ‘I mean that no words can tell how strong the feeling is that—that—No, I never knew its force till now; but, Averil, I cannot part with you—you who are all the world to me.’

Lifting her heavy eyelids for a moment, she looked bewildered, and then, moving towards the door, said, ‘I don’t know whether this is jest or earnest—any way, it is equally unsuitable.’

‘What do you see in me,’ cried Tom, throwing himself before her, ‘that you should suppose me capable of jesting on such a subject, at such a moment?’

‘I never saw anything but supercilious irony,’ she answered, in the same dreamy, indifferent way, as if hardly aware what she was saying, and still moving on.

‘I cannot let you go thus. You must hear me,’ he cried, and he wheeled round an easy-chair, with a gesture of entreaty; which she obeyed, partly because she was hardly alive to understand his drift, partly because she could scarcely stand; and there she sat, in the same drowsy resignation with which she had listened to his former expostulation.

Calm collected Tom was almost beside himself. ‘Averil! Averil!’ he cried, as he sat down opposite and bent as close to her as possible, ‘if I could only make you listen or believe me! What shall I say? It is only the honest truth that you are the dearest thing in the whole world to me! The very things that have given you most offence arose from my struggles with my own feelings. I tried to crush what would have its way in spite of me, and now you see its force.’ He saw greater life and comprehension in her eye as he spoke, but the look was not encouraging; and he continued: ‘How can I make you understand! Oh! if I had but more time!—but—but it was only the misery of those moments that showed me why it was that I was always irresistibly drawn to you, and yet made instinctive efforts to break the spell; and now you will not understand.’

‘I do understand,’ said Averil, at length entirely roused, but chiefly by resentment. ‘I understand how much a country surgeon’s daughter is beneath an M. D.’s attention, and how needful it was to preserve the distance by marks of contempt. As a convict’s sister, the distance is so much widened, that it is well for both that we shall never meet again.’

Therewith she had risen, and moved to the door. ‘Nay, nay,’ he cried; ‘it is for that very reason that all my past absurdity is trampled on! I should glory in a connection with such as Leonard! Yes, Averil,’ as he fancied he saw her touched, ‘you have never known me yet; but trust yourself and him to me, and you will give him a true brother, proud of his nobleness. You shall see him constantly—you shall keep your sisters with you. Only put yourself in my hands, and you shall know what devotion is.’

He would have said more, but Averil recalled herself, and said: ‘This is mere folly; you would be very sorry, were I to take you at your word. It would be unworthy in me towards your father, towards Henry, towards you, for me to listen to you, even if I liked you, and that you have taken good care to prevent me from doing.’ And she opened the door, and made her way into the hall.

‘But, Averil!—Miss Ward!’ he continued, pursuing her, ‘if, as I swear I will, I track out the real offender, bring him to justice, proclaim Leonard’s innocence? Then—’

She was half-way up the stairs. He had no alternative but to take his hat and stride off in a tumult of dismay, first of all at the rejection, and next at his own betrayal of himself. Had he guessed what it would come to, would he ever have trusted himself in that drawing-room? This was the meaning of it all, was it? He, the sensible man of the family, not only to be such an egregious ass, but to have made such a fool of himself! For he was as furious at having committed himself to himself, as he was at his avowal to Averil—he, who had always been certain of loving so wisely and so well, choosing an example of the true feminine balance of excellence, well born, but not too grand for the May pretensions; soundly religious, but not philanthropically pious; of good sense and ability enough for his comfort, but not of overgrown genius for his discomfort; of good looks enough for satisfaction, but not for dangerous admiration; of useful, but not overwhelming wealth; of creditable and not troublesome kindred—that he should find himself plunged headlong into love by those brown eyes and straight features, by the musical genius, talents anything but domestic, ill-regulated enthusiasm, nay, dislike to himself, in the very girl whose station and family he contemned at the best, and at the very time when her brother was a convict, and her sisters dependent! Was he crazed? Was he transformed? What frenzy had come over him to endear her the more for being the reverse of his ideal? And, through all, his very heart was bursting at the thought of the wounds he had given her in his struggles against the net of fascination. He had never imagined the extent of the provocation he gave; and in truth, his habitual manner was such, that it was hard to distinguish between irony and genuine interest. And now it was too late! What should he be henceforth to her? What would Stoneborough and his future be to him? He would, he believed, have taught himself to acquiesce, had he seen any chance of happiness before her; but the picture he drew of her prospects justified his misery, at being only able to goad her on, instead of drawing her back. He was absolutely amazed at himself. He had spoken only the literal truth, when he said that he had been unconscious of the true nature of the feelings that always drew him towards her, though only to assert his independence, and make experiments by teasing in his ironically courteous way. Not until the desolate indifference of her tone had incited him to show her that Henry was not all that remained to her, had he arrived at the perception that, in the late weeks of anxiety, she had grown into his heart, and that it was of no use to argue the point with himself, or think what he would do, the fact was accomplished—his first love was a direct contradiction to his fixed opinions, he had offended her irrevocably and made a fool of himself, and she was going away to dreariness!