The Trial

At first he had rushed off into the melancholy meadows, among the sodden hay-cocks still standing among the green growth of grass; but a shower, increasing the damp forlornness of the ungenial day, made him turn homewards. When, late in the afternoon, Ethel came into the schoolroom for some Cocksmoor stores, she found him leaning over his books on the table. This was his usual place for study; and she did not at once perceive that the attitude was only assumed on her entrance, so kneeling in front of her cupboard, she asked, ‘What success?’

‘I have not seen him.’

‘Oh! I thought I saw you going—’

‘Never mind! I mean,’ he added with some confusion, ‘I wish for a little peace. I have a horrid headache.’

‘You!’ exclaimed Ethel; and turning round, she saw him leaning back in his chair, a defenceless animal without his spectacles, his eyes small and purpled ringed, his hair tossed about, his spruceness gone. ‘I am sure you are not well,’ she said.

‘Quite well. Nonsense, I only want quiet.’

‘Let me give you some of Aubrey’s camphor liniment.’

‘Thank you,’ submitting to a burning application to his brow; but as she lingered in anxiety, ‘I really want nothing but quiet.’

How like Norman he looks! thought Ethel, as she cast her last glance and departed. Can he be going to be ill? If he would only tell when anything is the matter! I know papa says that some of us feel with our bodies, and some with our minds; but then I never knew Tom much affected any way, and what is all this to him? And a sigh betrayed the suppressed heartache that underlaid all her sensations. I am afraid it must be illness; but any way, he will neither tell nor bear to have it noticed, so I can only watch.

Enter the two little Wards, with a message that Ave was sorry, but that she was too much tired to come that evening; and when Mary regretted not having been able to come and help her, Ella answered that ‘Mr. Tom had come and helped her for a long time.’

‘Yes,’ said Minna; ‘but I think he must have done it all wrong, for, do you know, I found the list he had made torn up into little bits.

Ethel almost visibly started, almost audibly exclaimed. At tea-time Tom appeared, his trimness restored, but not his usual colouring; and Ella hailed him with reproaches for having gone away without telling her. The soft attention of which the child had a monopoly did not fail, though he bent down, trying to keep her to himself, and prevent their colloquy from attracting notice; but they were so close behind Ethel’s chair, that she could not help hearing: ‘We were only gone to dig up the violets that you are to have, and if you had only stayed you would have seen Henry, for he came in by the little gate, and when I went to tell you, you were gone.’

Ethel wondered whether the blushes she felt burning all over her face and neck would be remarked by those before her, or would reveal to Tom, behind her, that the child was giving her the key to his mystery. Marvelling at the exemplary gentleness and patience of his replies to his little coquettish tormentor, she next set herself to relieve him by a summons to Ella to tea and cherries. Fortunately the fruit suggested Dr. May’s reminiscences of old raids on cherry orchards now a mere name, and he thus engrossed all the younger audience not entirely preoccupied. He set himself to make the little guests forget all their sorrows, as if he could not help warming them for the last time in the magic of his own sunshine; but Ethel heard and saw little but one figure in the quietest corner of the room, a figure at which she scarcely dared to look.

‘And there you are!’ so went her thoughts. ‘It is true then! Fairly caught! Your lofty crest vailed at last—and at such a time! O, Tom, generous and true-hearted, in spite of all your nonsense! How could she help being touched? In the net and against his will! Oh, triumph of womanhood! I am so glad! No, I’m not, it is best this way, for what an awkward mess it would have been! She is dear Leonard’s sister, to be sure, and there is stuff in her, but papa does not take to her, and I don’t know whether she would fit in with Tom himself! But oh! the fun it would have been to see Flora’s horror at finding her one prudent brother no better than the rest of us! Dear old Tom! The May heart has been too strong for the old Professor nature! What a retribution for his high mightiness! Harry and Richard to be guarded from making fools of themselves! What a nice cloak for jealousy! But it is no laughing matter! How miserable, how thoroughly upset, he is! Poor dear Tom! If I could only go and kiss you, and tell you that I never loved you half so well; but you would rather die than let out one word, I know! Why, any one of the others would have had it all out long ago! And I don’t know whether it is quite safe to screen the lamp from those aching eyes that are bearing it like a martyr! There! Well, maybe he will just stand the knowing that I know, provided I don’t say a word; but I wish people would not be so “self-contained!”’

Self-contained Tom still continued in the morning, though looking sallow and wan; but, in a political argument with his father, he was snappish and overbearing, and in the course of the day gave another indication of being thrown off his balance, which was even harder for Ethel to endure.

Throughout the suspense on Leonard’s account, Aubrey had been a source of anxiety to all, especially to Tom. The boy’s sensitive frame had been so much affected, that tender dealings with him were needful, and all compulsion had been avoided. His father had caused him to be put on the sick-list of the volunteers; and as for his studies, though the books were daily brought out, it was only to prevent the vacuum of idleness; and Tom had made it his business to nurse his brother’s powers, avoid all strain on the attention, and occupy without exciting, bearing with his fitful moods of despondence or of hope, whether they took the form of talking or of dreaming.

But now that all was over, every one knew that it was time to turn over a new leaf; and Tom, with his sore heart, did it with a vengeance, and on the first instance of carelessness, fell on the poor family pet, as a younger brother and legitimate souffre douleur, with vehemence proportioned to his own annoyance. It was a fierce lecture upon general listlessness, want of manliness, spirit, and perseverance, indifference to duties he had assumed. Nonsense about feelings—a fellow was not worth the snap of a finger who could not subdue his feelings—trash.

The sisters heard the storm from the drawing-room, and Gertrude grew hotly indignant, and wanted Ethel to rush in to the rescue; but Ethel, though greatly moved, knew that female interposition only aggravated such matters, and restrained herself and her sister till she heard Tom stride off. Then creeping in on tiptoe, she found the boy sitting stunned and confounded by the novelty of the thing.

‘What can it be all about, Ethel? I never had such a slanging in my life?’

‘I don’t think Tom is quite well. He had a bad headache last night.’

Then I hope—I mean, I think—he must have made it worse! I know mine aches, as if I had been next door to the great bell;’ and he leant against his sister.

‘I am afraid you really were inattentive.’

‘No worse than since the heart has gone out of everything. But that was not all! Ethel, can it really be a disgrace, and desertion, and all that, if I don’t go on with those volunteers, when it makes me sick to think of touching my rifle?’ and his eyes filled with tears.

‘It would be a great effort, I know,’ said Ethel, smoothing his hair; ‘but after all, you volunteered not for pleasure, but because your country wanted defence.’

‘The country? I don’t care for it, since it condemned him, when he was serving it.’

‘He would not say that, Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what he was connected with.’

Aubrey tried to answer her sweet high-spirited smile, but he had been greatly hurt and distressed, and the late reproach to his manhood embittered his tears without making it easier to repress them; and pushing away his chair, he darted up-stairs.

‘Poor dear fellow! I’ve been very hard on him, and only blamed instead of comforting,’ thought Ethel sadly, as she slowly entered the passage, ‘what shall I think of, to make a break for both of those two?’

‘So you have been cockering your infant,’ said Tom, meeting her. ‘You mean to keep him a baby all his life.’

‘Tom, I want to talk to you,’ said she.

In expectation of her displeasure, he met it half way, setting his back against the passage wall, and dogmatically declaring, ‘You’ll be the ruin of him if you go on in this way! How is he ever to go through the world if you are to be always wiping his tears with an embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and cossetting him up like a blessed little sucking lamb?’

‘Of course he must rough it,’ said Ethel, setting her back against the opposite wall; ‘I only want him to be hardened; but after a shock like this, one cannot go on as if one was a stock or stake. Even a machine would have its wheels out of order—’

‘Well, well, but it is time that should be over.’

‘So it is;’ and as the sudden thought flashed on her, ‘Tom, I want you to reconsider your journey, that you gave up in the spring, and take him—’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere,’ he wearily said.

‘Only it would be so good for him,’ said Ethel earnestly; ‘he really ought to see something taller than the Minster tower, and you are the only right person to take him, you are so kind to him.’

‘For instance?’ he said, smiling.

‘Accidents will happen in the best regulated families; besides, he did want shaking up. I dare say he will be the better for it. There’s the dinner-bell.’

To her surprise, she found his arm round her waist, and a kiss on her brow. ‘I thought I should have caught it,’ he said; ‘you are not half a fool of a sister after all.’

Aubrey was not in the dining-room; and after having carved, Tom, in some compunction, was going to look for him, when he made his appearance in his uniform.

‘Oho!’ said the Doctor, surprised.

‘There’s to be a grand parade with the Whitford division,’ he answered; and no more was said.

Not till the eight o’clock twilight of the dripping August evening did the family reassemble. Ethel had been preparing for a journey that Mary and Gertrude were to make to Maplewood; and she did not come down till her father had returned, when following him into the drawing-room, she heard his exclamation, ‘Winter again!’

For the fire was burning, Tom was sitting crumpled over it, with his feet on the fender, and his elbows on his knees, and Aubrey in his father’s arm-chair, his feet over the side, so fast asleep that neither entrance nor exclamation roused him; the room was pervaded with an odour of nutmeg and port wine, and a kettle, a decanter, and empty tumblers told tales. Now the Doctor was a hardy and abstemious man, of a water-drinking generation; and his wife’s influence had further tended to make him—indulgent as he was—scornful of whatever savoured of effeminacy or dissipation, so his look and tone were sharp, and disregardful of Aubrey’s slumbers.

‘We got wet through,’ said Tom; ‘he was done up, had a shivering fit, and I tried to prevent mischief.’

‘Hm! said the Doctor, not mollified. ‘Cold is always the excuse. But another time don’t teach your brother to make this place like a fast man’s rooms.’

Ethel was amazed at Tom’s bearing this so well. With the slightest possible wrinkle of the skin of his forehead, he took up the decanter and carried it off to the cellaret.

‘How that boy sleeps!’ said his father, looking at him.

‘He has had such bad nights!’ said Ethel. ‘Don’t be hard on Tom, he is very good about such things, and would not have done it without need. He is so careful of Aubrey!’

‘Too careful by half,’ said the Doctor, smiling placably as his son returned. ‘You are all in a league to spoil that youngster. He would be better if you would not try your hand on his ailments, but would knock him about.’

‘I never do that without repenting it,’ said Tom; then, after a pause, ‘It is not spirit that is wanting, but you would have been frightened yourself at his state of exhaustion.’

‘Of collapse, don’t you mean?’ said the Doctor, with a little lurking smile. ‘However, it is vexatious enough; he had been gaining ground all the year, and now he is regularly beaten down again.’

‘Suppose I was to take him for a run on the Continent?’

‘What, tired of the hospital?’

‘A run now and then is duty, not pleasure,’ replied Tom, quietly; while Ethel burnt to avert from him these consequences of his peculiar preference for appearing selfish.

‘So much for railway days! That will be a new doctrine at Stoneborough. Well, where do you want to go?’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’

Ethel would not have wondered to see him more sullen than he looked at that moment. It was lamentable that those two never could understand each other, and that either from Tom’s childish faults, his resemblance to his grandfather, or his habitual reserve, Dr. May was never free from a certain suspicion of ulterior motives on his part. She was relieved at the influx of the rest of the party, including Richard; and Aubrey wakening, was hailed with congratulations on the soundness of his sleep, whilst she looked at Tom with a meaning smile as she saw her father quietly feel the boy’s hand and brow. The whole family were always nursing the lad, and scolding one another for it.

Tom had put himself beside Ethel, under the shade of her urn, and she perceived that he was ill at ease, probably uncertain whether any confidences had been bestowed on her or Mary from the other side. There was no hope that the topic would be avoided, for Richard began with inquiries for Averil.

‘She is working herself to death,’ said Mary, sadly; ‘but she says it suits her.’

‘And it does,’ said the Doctor; ‘she is stronger every day. There is nothing really the matter with her.’

‘Contrary blasts keep a ship upright,’ said Gertrude, ‘and she has them in abundance. We found her in the midst of six people, all giving diametrically opposite advice.’

‘Dr. Spencer was really helping, and Mr. Wright was there about his own affairs,’ said Ethel, in a tone of repression.

‘And Mrs. Ledwich wanted her to settle on the Ohio to assist the runaway slaves,’ continued Gertrude.

‘It does not tease her as if she heard it,’ said Mary.

‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘she moves about like one in a dream, and has no instinct but to obey her brother.’

‘Well, I am glad to be going,’ said Daisy; ‘it will be flat when all the excitement is over, and we have not the fun of seeing Tom getting rises out of Ave Ward.’

This time Tom could not repress a sudden jerk, and Ethel silenced her sister by a hint that such references were not nice when people were in trouble.

‘By the bye,’ said Aubrey, ‘speaking of going away, what were you saying while I was asleep? or was it a dream that I was looking through Tom’s microscope at a rifle bullet in the Tyrol?’

‘An inspiration from Tom’s brew,’ said the Doctor.

‘Weren’t you saying anything?’ said Aubrey, eagerly. ‘I’m sure there was something about duty and pleasure. Were you really talking of it?’

‘Tom was, and if it is to put some substance into those long useless legs, I don’t care if you do start off.’

Aubrey flashed into a fresh being. He had just been reading a book about the Tyrol, and Tom not caring at all where they were to go, this gave the direction. Aubrey rushed to borrow a continental Bradshaw from Dr. Spencer, and the plan rapidly took form; with eager suggestions thrown in by every one, ending with the determination to start on the next Monday morning.

‘That’s settled,’ said Tom, wearily, when he and Ethel, as often happened, had lingered behind the rest; ‘only, Ethel, there’s one thing. You must keep your eye on the Vintry Mill, and fire off a letter to me if the fellow shows any disposition to bolt.’

‘If I can possibly find out—’

‘Keep your eyes open; and then Hazlitt has promised to let me know if that cheque of Bilson’s is cashed. If I am away, telegraph, and meantime set my father on the scent. It may not hang that dog himself, but it may save Leonard.’

‘Oh, if it would come!’

‘And meantime—silence, you know—’

‘Very well;’ then lingering, ‘Tom, I am sure you did the right thing by Aubrey, and so was papa afterwards.’

His brow darkened for a moment, but shaking it off he said, ‘I’ll do my best for your cosset lamb, and bring him back in condition.’

‘Thank you; I had rather trust him with you than any one.’

‘And how is it that no one proposes a lark for you, old Ethel?’ said Tom, holding her so as to study her face. ‘You look awfully elderly and ragged.’

‘Oh, I’m going to be left alone with the Doctor, and that will be the greatest holiday I ever had.’

‘I suppose it is to you,’ said Tom, with a deep heavy sigh, perhaps glad to have some ostensible cause for sighing.

‘Dear Tom, when you are living here, and working with him—’

‘Ah—h!’ he said almost with disgust, ‘don’t talk of slavery to me before my time. How I hate it, and everything else! Good night!’

‘Poor Tom!’ thought Ethel. ‘I wish papa knew him better and would not goad him. Will Averil ever wake to see what she has done, and feel for him? Though I don’t know why I should wish two people to be unhappy instead of one, and there is weight enough already. O, Leonard, I wonder if your one bitter affliction will shield you from the others that may be as trying, and more tempting!’

CHAPTER XVIII

All bright hopes and hues of day Have faded into twilight gray.—Christian Year

‘No fear of Aubrey’s failing,’ said Tom; ‘he has a better foundation than nine-tenths of the lads that go up, and he is working like a man.’

‘He always did work heartily,’ said Ethel, ‘and with pleasure in his work.’

‘Ay, like a woman.’

‘Like a scholar.’

‘A scholar is a kind of woman. A man, when he’s a boy, only works because he can’t help it, and afterwards for what he can get by it.’

‘For what he can do with it would have a worthier sound.’

‘Sound or sense, it is all the same.’

‘Scaffolding granted, what is the building?’

Tom apparently thought it would be working like a woman to give himself the trouble of answering; and Ethel went on in her own mind, ‘For the work’s own sake—for what can be got by it—for what can be done with it—because it can’t be helped—are—these all the springs of labour here? Then how is work done in that solitary cell? Is it because it can’t be helped, or is it ‘as the Lord’s freeman’? And when he can hear of Aubrey’s change, will he take it as out of his love, or grieve for having been the cause?’

For the change had been working in Aubrey ever since Leonard had altered his career. The boy was at a sentimental age, and had the susceptibility inseparable from home breeding; his desire to become a clergyman had been closely connected with the bright visions of the happy days at Coombe, and had begun to wane with the first thwarting of Leonard’s plans; and when the terrible catastrophe of the one friend’s life occurred, the other became alienated from all that they had hoped to share together. Nor could even Dr. May’s household be so wholly exempt from the spirit of the age, that Aubrey was not aware of the strivings and trials of faith at the University. He saw what Harvey Anderson was, and knew what was passing in the world; and while free from all doubts, shrank boyishly from the investigations that he fancied might excite them. Or perhaps these fears of possible scruples were merely his self-justification for gratifying his reluctance.

At any rate, he came home from his two months’ tour, brown, robust, with revived spirits, but bent on standing an examination for the academy at Woolwich. He had written about it several times before his return, and his letters were, as his father said, ‘so appallingly sensible that perhaps he would change his mind.’ But it was not changed when he came home; and Ethel, though sorely disappointed, was convinced by her own sense as well as by Richard’s prudence, that interference was dangerous. No one in Israel was to go forth to the wars of the Lord save those who ‘willingly offered themselves;’ and though grieved that her own young knight should be one of the many champions unwilling to come forth in the Church’s cause, she remembered the ordeal to Norman’s faith, and felt that the exertion of her influence was too great a responsibility.

‘You don’t like this,’ said Tom, after a pause. ‘It is not my doing, you know.’

‘No, I did not suppose it was,’ said Ethel. ‘You would not withhold any one in these days of exceeding want of able clergymen.’

‘I told him it would be a grief at home,’ added Tom, ‘but when a lad gets into that desperate mood, he always may be a worse grief if you thwart him; and I give you credit, Ethel, you have not pulled the curb.’

‘Richard told me not.’

‘Richard represents the common sense of the family when I am not at home.’

Tom was going the next day to his course of study at the London hospitals, and this—the late afternoon—was the first time that he and his sister had been alone together. He had been for some little time having these short jerks of conversation, beginning and breaking off rather absently. At last he said, ‘Do those people ever write?’

‘Prisoners, do you mean? Not for three months.’

‘No—exiles.’

‘Mary has heard twice.’

He held out Mary’s little leathern writing-case to her.

‘O, Tom!’

‘It is only Mary.’

Ethel accepted the plea, aware that there could be no treason between herself and Mary, and moreover that the letters had been read by all the family. She turned the key, looked them out, and standing by the window to catch the light, began to read—

‘You need not be afraid, kind Mary,’ wrote Averil, on the first days of her voyage; ‘I am quite well, as well as a thing can be whose heart is dried up. I am hardened past all feeling, and seem to be made of India-rubber. Even my colour has returned—how I hate to see it, and to hear people say my roses will surprise the delicate Americans. Fancy, in a shop in London I met an old school-fellow, who was delighted to see me, talked like old times, and insisted on knowing where we were staying. I used to be very fond of her, but it was as if I had been dead and was afraid she would find out I was a ghost, yet I talked quite indifferently, and never faltered in my excuses. When we embarked, it was no use to know it was the last of England, where he and you and home and life were left. How I envied the poor girl, who was crying as if her heart would break!’

On those very words, broke the announcement of Mr. Cheviot. Tom coolly held out his hand for the letters, so much as a matter of course, that Ethel complied with his gesture, and he composedly pocketed them, while she felt desperately guilty. Mary’s own entrance would have excited no compunction, Ethel would have said that Tom wanted to hear of the voyage; but in the present case, she could only blush, conscious that the guest recognized her sister’s property, and was wondering what business she had with it, and she was unwilling to explain, not only on Tom’s account, but because she knew that Mr. Cheviot greatly disapproved of petitioning against the remission of capital sentences, and thought her father under a delusion.

After Tom’s departure the next day, she found the letters in her work-basket, and restored them to Mary, laughing over Mr. Cheviot’s evident resentment at the detection of her doings.

‘I think it looked rather funny,’ said Mary.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Ethel, much astonished; ‘but I thought, as every one else had seen them—’

‘Tom always laughed at poor Ave.’

‘He is very different now; but indeed, Mary, I am sorry, since you did not like it.’

‘Oh!’ cried Mary, discomfited by Ethel’s apology, ‘indeed I did not mean that, I wish I had not said anything. You know you are welcome to do what you please with all I have. Only,’ she recurred, ‘you can’t wonder that Mr. Cheviot thought it funny.’

‘If he had any call to think at all,’ said Ethel, who was one of those who thought that Charles Cheviot had put a liberal interpretation on Dr. May’s welcome to Stoneborough. He had arrived after the summer holidays as second master of the school, and at Christmas was to succeed Dr. Hoxton, who had been absolutely frightened from his chair by the commissions of inquiry that had beset the Whichcote foundation; and in compensation was at present perched on the highest niche sacred to conservative martyrdom in Dr. May’s loyal heart.

Charles Cheviot was a very superior man, who had great influence with young boys, and was admirably fitted to bring about the much required reformation in the school. He came frequently to discuss his intentions with Dr. May, and his conversation was well worth being listened to; but even the Doctor found three evenings in a week a large allowance for good sense and good behaviour—the evenings treated as inviolable even by old friends like Dr. Spencer and Mr. Wilmot, the fast waning evenings of Aubrey’s home life.

The rest were reduced to silence, chess, books, and mischief, except when a treat of facetious small talk was got up for their benefit. Any attempt of the ladies to join in the conversation was replied to with a condescending levity that reduced Ethel to her girlhood’s awkward sense of forwardness and presumption; Mary was less disconcerted, because her remarks were never so aspiring, and Harry’s wristbands sufficed her; but the never-daunted Daisy rebelled openly, related the day’s events to her papa, fearless of any presence, and when she had grown tired of the guest’s regular formula of expecting to meet Richard, she told him that the adult school always kept Richard away in the winter evenings; ‘But if you want to see him, he is always to be found at Cocksmoor, and he would be very glad of help.’

‘Did he express any such wish?’ said Mr. Cheviot, looking rather puzzled.

‘Oh dear, no; only I thought you had so much time on your hands.’

‘Oh no—oh no!’ exclaimed Mary, in great confusion, ‘Gertrude did not mean—I am sure I don’t know what she was thinking of.’

And at the first opportunity, Mary, for once in her life, administered to Gertrude a richly-deserved reproof for sauciness and contempt of improving conversation; but the consequence was a fancy of the idle younglings to make Mary accountable for the ‘infesting of their evenings,’ and as she was always ready to afford sport to the household, they thus obtained a happy outlet for their drollery and discontent, and the imputation was the more comical from his apparent indifference and her serene composure; until one evening when, as the bell rung, and mutterings passed between Aubrey and Gertrude, of ‘Day set,’ and ‘Cheviot’s mountains lone,’ the head of the family, for the first time, showed cognizance of the joke, and wearily taking down his slippered feet from their repose, said, ‘Lone! yes, there’s the rub! I shall have to fix days of reception if Mary will insist on being so attractive.’

Mary, with an instinct that she was blamed, began to be very sorry, but broke off amid peals of merriment, and blushes that were less easily extinguished; and which caused Ethel to tell each of the young ones privately, that their sport was becoming boy and frog work, and she would have no more of it. The Daisy was inclined to be restive; but Ethel told her that many people thought this kind of fun could never be safe or delicate. ‘I have always said that it might be quite harmless, if people knew where to stop—now show me that I am right.’

And to Aubrey she put the question, whether he would like to encourage Daisy in being a nineteenth-century young lady without reticence?

However, as Mary heard no more of their mischievous wit, Ethel was quite willing to let them impute to herself a delusion that the schoolmaster was smitten with Mary, and to laugh with them in private over all the ridiculous things they chose to say.

At last Flora insisted on Ethel’s coming with her to make a distant call, and, as soon as they were in the carriage, said, ‘It was not only for the sake of Mrs. Copeland, though it is highly necessary you should go, but it is the only way of ever speaking to you, and I want to know what all this is about Mary?’

‘The children have not been talking their nonsense to you!’

‘No one ever talks nonsense to me—intentionally, I mean—not even you, Ethel; I wish you did. But I hear it is all over the town. George has been congratulated, and so have I, and one does not like contradicting only to eat it up again.’

‘You always did hear everything before it was true, Flora.’

‘Then is it going to be true?’

‘O, Flora, can it be possible?’ said Ethel, with a startled, astonished look.

‘Possible! Highly obvious and proper, as it seems to me. The only doubt in my mind was whether it were not too obvious to happen.’

‘He is always coming in,’ said Ethel, ‘but I never thought it was really for that mischief! The children only laugh about it as the most preposterous thing they can think of, for he never speaks to a woman if he can help it.’

‘That may not prevent him from wanting a good wife.’

‘Wanting a wife—ay, as he would want a housekeeper, just because he has got to the proper position for it; but is he to go and get our bonny Mary in that way, just for an appendage to the mastership?’

‘Well done, old Ethel! I’m glad to see you so like yourself. I remember when we thought Mrs. Hoxton’s position very sublime.’

‘I never thought of positions!’

‘Never! I know that very well; and I am not thinking of it now, except as an adjunct to a very worthy man, whom Mary will admire to the depths of her honest heart, and who will make her very happy.’

‘Yes, I suppose if she once begins to like him, that he will,’ said Ethel, slowly; ‘but I can’t bring myself to swallow it yet. She has never given in to his being a bore, but I thought that was her universal benevolence; and he says less to her than to any one.’

‘Depend upon it, he thinks he is proceeding selon les regles.’

‘Then he ought to be flogged! Has he any business to think of my Mary, without falling red-hot in love with her? Why, Hector was regularly crazy that last half-year; and dear old Polly is worth ever so much more than Blanche.’

‘I must say you have fulfilled my desire of hearing you talk nonsense, Ethel. Mary would never think of those transports.’

‘She deserves them all the more.’

‘Well, she is the party most concerned, though she will be a cruel loss to all of us.’

‘She will not go far, if—’

‘Yes, but she will be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don’t think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we have always made of her?’

‘Oh no—that always was wrong.’

‘And living close by, she will not come on a visit, all festal, to resume home habits. No, you must make up your mind, Ethel—_if,_ as you say, if—he will be a man for monopolies, and he will resent anything that he thinks management from you. I suspect it is a real sign of the love that you deny, that he has ventured on the sister of a clever woman, living close by, and a good deal looked up to.’

‘Flora, Flora, you should not make one wicked. If she is to be happy, why can’t you let me rejoice freely, and only have her drawn off from me bit by bit, in the right way of nature?’

‘I did not tell you to make you dislike it—of course not. Only I thought that a little tact, a little dexterity, might prevent Charles Cheviot from being so much afraid of you, as if he saw at once how really the head of the family you are.’

‘Nonsense, Flora, I am no such thing. If I am domineering, the sooner any one sees it and takes me down the better. If this does come, I will try to behave as I ought, and not to mind so Mary is happy; but I can’t act, except just as the moment leads me. I hope it will soon be over, now you have made me begin to believe in it. I am afraid it will spoil Harry’s pleasure at home! Poor dear Harry, what will he do?’

‘When does he come?’

‘Any day now; he could not quite tell when he could get away.

When they came back, and Dr. May ran out to say, ‘Can you come in. Flora? we want you,’ the sisters doubted whether his excitement were due to the crisis, or to the arrival. He hurried them into the study, and shut the door, exulting and perplexed. ‘You girls leave one no rest,’ he said. ‘Here I have had this young Cheviot telling me that the object of his attentions has been apparent. I’m sure I did not know if it were Mab or one of you. I thought he avoided all alike; and poor Mary was so taken by surprise that she will do nothing but cry, and say, “No, never;” and when I tell her she shall do as she pleases, she cries the more; or if I ask her if I am to say Yes, she goes into ecstasies of crying! I wish one of you would go up, and see if you can do anything with her.’

‘Is he about the house?’ asked Flora, preparing to obey.

‘No—I was obliged to tell him that she must have time, and he is gone home. I am glad he should have a little suspense—he seemed to make so certain of her. Did he think he was making love all the time he was boring me with his gas in the dormitories? I hope she will serve him out!’

‘He will not be the worse for not being a lady’s man,’ said Flora, at the door.

But in ten minutes, Flora returned with the same report of nothing but tears; and she was obliged to leave the party to their perplexity, and drive home; while Ethel went in her turn to use all manner of pleas to her sister to cheer up, know her own mind, and be sure that they only wished to guess what would make her happiest. To console or to scold were equally unsuccessful, and after attempting all varieties of treatment, bracing or tender, Ethel found that the only approach to calm was produced by the promise that she should be teased no more that evening, but be left quite alone to recover, and cool her burning eyes and aching head. So, lighting her fire, shaking up a much-neglected easy-chair, bathing her eves, desiring her not to come down to tea, and engaging both that Gertrude should not behold her, and that papa would not be angry, provided that she tried to know what she really wished, and be wiser on the morrow, Ethel left her. The present concern was absolutely more to persuade her to give an answer of some sort, than what that answer should be. Ethel would not wish; Dr. May had very little doubt; and Gertrude, from whom there was no concealing the state of affairs, observed, ‘If she cries so much the first time she has to know her own mind, it shows she can’t do without some one to do it for her.’

The evening passed in expeditions of Ethel’s to look after her patient, and in desultory talk on all that was probable and improbable between Dr. May and the younger ones, until just as Ethel was coming down at nine o’clock with the report that she had persuaded Mary to go to bed, she was startled by the street door being opened as far as the chain would allow, and a voice calling, ‘I say, is any one there to let me in?’

‘Harry! O, Harry! I’m coming;’ and she had scarcely had time to shut the door previous to taking down the chain, before the three others were in the hall, the tumult of greetings breaking forth.

‘But where’s Polly?’ he asked, as soon as he was free to look round them all.

‘Going to bed with a bad headache,’ was the answer, with which Daisy had sense enough not to interfere; and the sailor had been brought into the drawing-room, examined on his journey, and offered supper, before he returned to the charge.

‘Nothing really the matter with Mary, I hope?’

‘Oh! no—nothing.’

‘Can’t I go up and see her?’

‘Not just at present,’ said Ethel. ‘I will see how she is when she is in bed, but if she is going to sleep, we had better not disturb her.’

‘Harry thinks she must sleep better for the sight of him,’ said the Doctor; ‘but it is a melancholy business.—Harry, your nose is out of joint.’

‘Who is it?’ said Harry, gravely.

‘Ah! you have chosen a bad time to come home. We shall know no comfort till it is over.’

‘Who?’ cried Harry; ‘no nonsense, Gertrude, I can’t stand guessing.’

This was directed to Gertrude, who was only offending by pursed lips and twinkling eyes, because he could not fall foul of his father. Dr. May took pity, and answered at once.

‘Cheviot!’ cried Harry. ‘Excellent! He always did know how to get the best of everything. Polly turning into a Mrs. Hoxton. Ha! ha! Well, that is a relief to my mind.’

‘You did look rather dismayed, certainly. What were you afraid of?’

‘Why, when that poor young Leonard Ward’s business was in the papers, a messmate of mine was asked if we were not all very much interested, because of some attachment between some of us. I thought he must mean me or Tom, for I was tremendously smitten with that sweet pretty girl, and I used to be awfully jealous of Tom, but when I heard of Mary going to bed with a headache, and that style of thing, I began to doubt, and I couldn’t stand her taking up with such a dirty little nigger as Henry Ward was at school.’

‘I think you might have known Mary better!’ exclaimed Gertrude.

‘And it’s not Tom either?’ he asked.

‘Exactly the reverse,’ laughed his father.

‘Well, Tom is a sly fellow, and he had a knack of turning up whenever one wanted to do a civil thing by that poor girl. Where is she now?’

‘At New York.’

‘They’d better take care how they send me to watch the Yankees, then.’

‘Your passion does not alarm me greatly,’ laughed the Doctor. ‘I don’t think it ever equalled that for the reigning ship. I hope there’s a vacancy in that department for the present, and that we may have you at home a little.’

‘Indeed, sir, I’m afraid not,’ said Harry. ‘I saw Captain Gordon at Portsmouth this morning, and he tells me he is to go out in the Clio to the Pacific station, and would apply for me as his first lieutenant, if I liked to look up the islands again. So, if you have any commissions for Norman, I’m your man.

‘And how soon?’

‘Uncertain—but Cheviot and Mary must settle their affairs in good time; I’ve missed all the weddings in the family hitherto, and won’t be balked of Polly’s. I say, Ethel, you can’t mean me not to go and wish her joy.’

‘We are by no means come to joy yet,’ said Ethel; ‘poor Mary is overset by the suddenness of the thing.’

‘Why, I thought it was all fixed.’

‘Nothing less so,’ said the Doctor. ‘One would think it was a naiad that had had an offer from the mountains next, for she has been shedding a perfect river of tears ever since; and all that the united discernment of the family has yet gathered is, that she cries rather more when we tell her she is right to say No than when we tell her she is right to say Yes.’

‘I declare, Ethel, you must let me go up to her.’

‘But, Harry, I promised she should hear no more about it to-night. You must say nothing unless she begins.’

And thinking a quiet night’s rest, free from further excitement, the best chance of a rational day, Ethel was glad that her mission resulted in the report, ‘Far too nearly asleep to be disturbed;’ but on the way up to bed, soft as Harry’s footfalls always were, a voice came down the stairs, ‘That’s Harry! Oh, come!’ and with a face of triumph turned back to meet Ethel’s glance of discomfited warning, he bounded up, to be met by Mary in her dressing-gown. ‘O, Harry, why didn’t you come?’ as she threw her arms round his neck.

‘They wouldn’t let me.’

‘I did think I heard you; but when no one came I thought it was only Richard, till I heard the dear old step, and then I knew. O, Harry!’ and still she gasped, with her head on his shoulder.

‘They said you must be quiet.’

‘O Harry! did you hear?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ holding her closer, ‘and heartily glad I am; I know him as well as if I had sailed with him, and I could not wish you in better hands.’

‘But—O, Harry dear—’ and there was a struggle with a sob between each word, ‘indeed—I won’t—mind if you had rather not.’

‘Do you mean that you don’t like him?’

‘I should see him, you know, and perhaps he would not mind—he could always come and talk to papa in the evenings.’

‘And is that what you want to put a poor man off with, Mary?’

‘Only—only—if you don’t want me to—’

‘I not want you to—? Why, Mary, isn’t it the very best thing I could want for you? What are you thinking about?’

‘Don’t you remember, when you came home after your wound, you said I—I mustn’t—’ and she fell into such a paroxysm of crying that he had quite to hold her up in his arms, and though his voice was merry, there was a moisture on his eyelashes. ‘Oh, you Polly! You’re a caution against deluding the infant mind! Was that all? Was that what made you distract them all? Why not have said so?’

‘Oh, never! They would have said you were foolish.’

‘As I was for not knowing that you wouldn’t understand that I only meant you were to wait till the right one turned up. Why, if I had been at Auckland, would you have cried till I came home?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry I was silly! But I’m glad you didn’t mean it, dear Harry!’ squeezing him convulsively.

‘There! And now you’ll sleep sound, and meet them as fresh as a fair wind tomorrow. Eh?’

‘Only please tell papa I’m sorry I worried him.’

‘And how about somebody else, Mary, whom you’ve kept on tenter-hooks ever so long? Are you sure he is not walking up and down under the limes on the brink of despair?’

‘Oh, do you think—? But he would not be so foolish!’

‘There now, go to sleep. I’ll settle it all for you, and I shan’t let any one say you are a goose but myself. Only sleep, and get those horrid red spots away from under your eyes, or perhaps he’ll repent his bargain, said Harry, kissing each red spot. ‘Promise you’ll go to bed the instant I’m gone.’

‘Well,’ said Dr. May, looking out of his room, ‘I augur that the spirit of the flood has something to say to the spirit of the fell.’

‘I should think so! Genuine article—no mistake.’

‘Then what was all this about?’

‘All my fault. Some rhodomontade of mine about not letting her marry had cast anchor in her dear little ridiculous heart, and it is well I turned up before she had quite dissolved herself away.’

‘Is that really all?’

‘The sum total of the whole, as sure as—’ said Harry, pausing for an asseveration, and ending with ‘as sure as your name is Dick May;’ whereat they both fell a-laughing, though they were hardly drops of laughter that Harry brushed from the weather-marked pucker in the comer of his eyes; and Dr. May gave a sigh of relief, and said, ‘Well, that’s right!’

‘Where’s the latch-key? I must run down and put Cheviot out of his misery.’

‘It is eleven o’clock, he’ll be gone to bed.’

‘Then I would forbid the banns. Where does he hang out? Has he got into old Hoxton’s?’

‘No, it is being revivified. He is at Davis’s lodgings. But I advise you not, a little suspense will do him good.’

‘One would think you had never been in love,’ said Harry, indignantly. ‘At least, I can’t sleep till I’ve shaken hands with the old fellow. Good night, father. I’ll not be long.’

He kept his word, and the same voice greeted him out of the dressing-room: ‘How was the spirit of the fell? Sleep’st thou, brother?’

‘Brother, nay,’ answered Harry, ‘he was only looking over Latin verses! He always was a cool hand.’

‘The spirit of the Fell—Dr. Fell, with a vengeance,’ said Dr. May. ‘I say, Harry, is this going to be a mere business transaction on his part? Young folks have not a bit of romance in these days, and one does not know where to have them; but if I thought—’

‘You may be sure of him, sir,’ said Harry, speaking the more eagerly because he suspected the impression his own manner had made; ‘he is thoroughly worthy, and feels Mary’s merits pretty nearly as much as I do. More, perhaps, I ought to say. There’s more warmth in him than shows. I don’t know that Norman ever could have gone through that terrible time after the accident, but for the care he took of him. And that little brother of his that sailed with me in the Eurydice, and died at Singapore—I know how he looked to his brother Charles, and I do assure you, father, you could not put the dear Mary into safer, sounder hands, or where she could be more prized or happier. He is coming up tomorrow morning, and you’ll see he is in earnest in spite of all his set speeches. Good night, father; I am glad to be in time for the last of my Polly.’

This was almost the only moment at which Harry betrayed a consciousness that his Polly was less completely his own. And yet it seemed as if it must have been borne in on him again and again, for Mary awoke the next morning as thoroughly, foolishly, deeply in love as woman could be, and went about comporting herself in the most comically commonplace style, forgetting and neglecting everything, not hearing nor seeing, making absurd mistakes, restless whenever Mr. Cheviot was not present, and then perfectly content if he came to sit by her, as he always did; for his courtship—now it had fairly begun—was equally exclusive and determined. Every day they walked or rode together, almost every evening he came and sat by her, and on each holiday they engrossed the drawing-room, Mary looking prettier than she had ever been seen before; Aubrey and Gertrude both bored and critical; Harry treating the whole as a pantomime got up for his special delectation, and never betokening any sense that Mary was neglecting him. It was the greatest help to Ethel in keeping up the like spirit, under the same innocent unconscious neglect from the hitherto devoted Mary, who was only helpful in an occasional revival of mechanical instinct in lucid intervals, and then could not be depended on. To laugh good-naturedly and not bitterly, to think the love-making pretty and not foolish, to repress Gertrude’s saucy scorn, instead of encouraging it, would have been far harder without the bright face of the brother who generously surrendered instead of repining.

She never told herself that there was no proportion between the trials, not only because her spirits still suffered from the ever-present load of pity at her heart, nor because the loss would be hourly to her, but also because Charles Cheviot drew Harry towards him, but kept her at a distance, or more truly laughed her down. She was used to be laughed at; her ways had always been a matter of amusement to her brothers, and perhaps it was the natural assumption of brotherhood to reply to any suggestion or remark of hers with something intended for drollery, and followed with a laugh, which, instead of as usual stirring her up to good-humoured repartee, suppressed her, and made her feel foolish and awkward. As to Flora’s advice, to behave with tact, she could not if she would, she would not if she could; in principle she tried to acquiesce in a man’s desire to show that he meant to have his wife to himself, and in practice she accepted his extinguisher because she could not help it.

Mr. Cheviot was uneasy about the chances of Aubrey’s success in the examination at Woolwich, and offered assistance in the final preparation; but though Aubrey willingly accepted the proposal, two or three violent headaches from over-study and anxiety made Dr. May insist on his old regimen of entire holiday and absence of work for the last week; to secure which repose, Aubrey was sent to London with Harry for a week’s idleness and the society of Tom, who professed to be too busy to come home even for Christmas. Mr. Cheviot’s opinion transpired through Mary, that it was throwing away Aubrey’s only chance.

In due time came the tidings that Aubrey had the second largest number of marks, and had been highly commended for the thoroughness of his knowledge, so different from what had been only crammed for the occasion. He had been asked who had been his tutor, and had answered, ‘His brother,’ fully meaning to spare Ethel publicity; and she was genuinely thankful for having been shielded under Tom’s six months of teaching. She heartily wished the same shield would have availed at home, when Charles Cheviot gave that horrible laugh, and asked her if she meant to stand for a professor’s chair. She faltered something about Tom and mathematics. ‘Ay, ay,’ said Charles; ‘and these military examinations are in nothing but foreign languages and trash;’ and again he laughed his laugh, and Mary followed his example. Ethel would fain have seen the fun.

‘Eh, Cheviot, what two of a trade never agree?’ asked Dr. May, in high glory and glee.

‘Not my trade, papa,’ said Ethel, restored by his face and voice, ‘only the peculiarity of examiners, so long ago remarked by Norman, of only setting questions that one can answer.’

‘Not your trade, but your amateur work!’ said Mr. Cheviot, again exploding, and leaving Ethel to feel demolished. Why, she wondered presently, had she not held up her knitting, and merrily owned it for her trade—why, but because those laughs took away all merriment, all presence of mind, all but the endeavour not to be as cross as she felt. Was this systematic, or was it only bad taste?

The wedding was fixed for Whitsuntide; the repairs and drainage necessitating early and long holidays; and the arrangements gave full occupation. Mary was the first daughter who had needed a portion, since Mr. Cheviot was one of a large family, and had little of his own. Dr. May had inherited a fair private competence, chiefly in land in and about the town, and his professional gains, under his wife’s prudent management, had been for the most part invested in the like property. The chief of his accumulation of ready money had been made over to establish Richard at Cocksmoor; and though living in an inexpensive style, such as that none of the family knew what it was to find means lacking for aught that was right or reasonable, there was no large amount of capital available. The May custom had always been that the physician should inherit the landed estate; and though this was disproportionately increased by the Doctor’s own acquisitions, yet the hold it gave over the town was so important, that he was unwilling it should be broken up at his death, and wished to provide for his other children by charges on the rents, instead of by sale and division. All this he caused Richard to write to Tom, for though there was no absolute need of the young man’s concurrence in arranging Mary’s settlements, it was a good opportunity for distinctly stating his prospects, and a compliment to consult him.

Feeling that Tom had thus been handsomely dealt with, his letter to his father was the greater shock, when, after saying that he doubted whether he could come home for the wedding, he expressed gratitude for the opening held out to him, but begged that precedents applicable to very different circumstances might not be regarded as binding. He was distressed at supplanting Richard, and would greatly prefer the property taking its natural course. It would be so many years, he trusted, before there would be room for his services, even as an assistant, at Stoneborough, that he thought it would be far more advisable to seek some other field; and his own desire would be at once to receive a younger son’s share, if it were but a few hundreds, and be free to cut out his own line.

‘What is he driving at, Ethel?’ asked the Doctor, much vexed. ‘I offer him what any lad should jump at; and he only says, “Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” What does that mean?’

‘Not prodigality,’ said Ethel. ‘Remember what Sir Matthew Fleet said to Dr. Spencer—”Dick’s ability and common sense besides.”’

‘Exactly what makes me suspicious of his coming the disinterested over me. There’s something behind! He is running into debt and destruction among that precious crew about the hospitals.’

‘Harry saw nothing wrong, and thought his friends in good style.’

‘Every one is in good style with Harry, happy fellow! He is no more a judge than a child of six years old—carries too much sunshine to see shades.’

‘A lieutenant in the navy can hardly be the capital officer that our Harry is without some knowledge of men and discipline.’

‘I grant you, on his own element; but on shore he goes about in his holiday spectacles, and sees a bird of paradise in every cock-sparrow.’

‘Isn’t there a glass house that can sometimes make a swan?’ said Ethel, slyly touching her father’s spectacles; ‘but with you both, there’s always a something to attract the embellishing process; and between Harry and Aubrey, Dr. Spencer and Sir Matthew, we could hardly fail to have heard of anything amiss.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Then it is hard,’ said Ethel, with spirit. ‘So steady as he has always been, he ought to have the benefit of a little trust.’

‘He was never like the others; I don’t know what to be at with him! I should not have minded but for that palaver about elder brothers.’

Defend as Ethel might, it was still with a misgiving lest disappointment should have taken a wrong course. It was hard to trust where correspondence was the merest business scrap, and neither Christmas nor the sister’s marriage availed to call Tom home; and though she had few fears as to dissipation, she did dread hardening and ambition, all the more since she had learnt that Sir Matthew Fleet was affording to him a patronage unprecedented from that quarter.

No year of Etheldred May’s life had been so trying as this last. It seemed like her first step away from the aspirations of youth, into the graver fears of womanhood. With all the self-restraint that she had striven to exercise at Coombe, it had been a time of glorious dreams over the two young spirits who seemed to be growing up by her side to be faithful workers, destined to carry out her highest visions; and the boyish devotion of the one, the fraternal reverence of the other, had made her very happy. And now? The first disappointment in Leonard had led—not indeed to less esteem for him, but to that pitying veneration that could only be yielded by a sharing in spirit of the like martyrdom; a continued thankfulness and admiration, but a continual wringing of the heart. And her own child and pupil, Aubrey, had turned aside from the highest path; and in the unavowed consciousness that he was failing in the course he had so often traced out with her, and that all her aid and ready participation in his present interests were but from her outward not her inward heart, he had never argued the point with her, never consulted her on his destination. He had talked only to his father of his alteration of purpose, and had at least paid her the compliment of not trying to make her profess that she was gratified by the change. In minor matters, he depended on her as much as ever; but Harry was naturally his chief companion, and the prime of his full and perfect confidence had departed, partly in the step from boy to man, but more from the sense that he was not fulfilling the soldiership he had dreamt of with her, and that he had once led her to think his talents otherwise dedicated. She had few fears for his steadiness, but she had some for his health, and he was something taken away from her—a brightness had faded from his image.

And this marriage—with every effort at rejoicing and certainty of Mary’s present bliss and probability of future happiness, it was the loss of a sister, and not the gain of a brother, and Mr. Cheviot did his utmost to render the absence of repining a great effort of unselfishness. And even with her father, her possession of Tom’s half-revealed secret seemed an impairing of absolute confidence; she could not but hope that her father did her brother injustice, and in her tenderness towards them both this was a new and painful sensation. Her manner was bright and quaint as ever, her sayings perhaps less edged than usual, because the pain at her heart made her guard her tongue; but she had begun to feel middle-aged, and strangely lonely. Richard, though always a comfort, would not have entered into her troubles; Harry, in his atmosphere of sailor on shore, had nothing of the confidant, and engrossed his father; Mary and Aubrey were both gone from her, and Gertrude was still a child. She had never so longed after Margaret or Norman. But at least her corner in the Minster, her table at home with her Bible and Prayer-Book, were still the same, and witnessed many an outpouring of her anxiety, many a confession of the words or gestures that she had felt to have been petulant, whether others had so viewed them or not.

CHAPTER XIX

Long among them was seen a maiden, who waited and wondered, Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things; Fair was she, and young, but alas! before her extended, Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life.—Evangeline. LONGFELLOW

‘Sister, sister! who is it? Going to be married! Oh, do tell us!’ cried Ella Warden—as she now was called—capering round her elder sister, who stood beneath a gas-burner, in a well-furnished bedroom, reading a letter, its enclosure clasped within a very trembling hand.

‘Mary May, dear Mary,’ answered Averil, still half absently.

‘And who?’

‘Mr. Cheviot,’ said Averil, thoroughly rousing herself, and, with a quick movement, concealing the enclosure in her bosom. ‘I remember him; he was very good, when—’

And there she paused; while Ella chattered on: ‘Oh, sister, if you were but at home, you would be a bridesmaid now, and perhaps we should. Little Miss Rivers was Mrs. Ernescliffe’s bridesmaid. Don’t you remember, Minna, how we saw her in her little cashmere cloak?’

‘Oh, don’t, Ella!’ escaped from Minna, like a cry of pain, as she leant back in a rocking-chair, and recollected who had held her up in his arms to watch Blanche May’s wedding procession.

‘And how soon will she be married, sister, and where will she live?’ asked the much-excited Ella.

‘She will be married in Whitsun week, and as he is headmaster, they will live in Dr. Hoxton’s house. Dear, good Mary, how glad I am that she is so full of happiness—her letter quite brims over with it! I wonder if I may work anything to send her.’

‘I should like to send her some very beautiful thing indeed,’ cried Ella, with emphasis, and eyes dilating at some visionary magnificence.

‘Ah, I have nothing to send her but my love! And I may send her that still,’ said Minna, looking up wistfully at Averil, who bent down and kissed her.

‘And Ave won’t let me send mine to Mr. Tom, though I’m sure I do love him the best of them all,’ said Ella.

‘That wasn’t—’ half whispered Minna, but turned her head away, with a sigh of oppression and look of resignation, sad in so young a child, though, indeed, the infantine form was fast shooting into tall, lank girlhood. Ella went on: ‘I shall send him the objects for his microscope, when I get into the country; for I promised, so sister can’t prevent me.’

‘Oh, the country!—when shall we go there?’ sighed Minna.

‘Your head aches to-night, my dear,’ said Averil, looking anxiously at her listless attitude, half-opened eyes, and the deep hollows above her collar-bones.

‘It always does after the gas is lighted,’ said the child, patiently, ‘it is always so hot here.’

‘It is just like being always in the conservatory at the Grange,’ added Ella. ‘I do hate this boarding-house. It is very unkind of Henry to keep us here—fifteen weeks now.’

‘Oh, Ella,’ remonstrated Minna, ‘you mustn’t say that!’

‘But I shall say it,’ retorted Ella. ‘Rosa Willis says what she pleases, and so shall I. I don’t see the sense of being made a baby of, when every one else of our age eats all they like, and is consulted about arrangements, and attends classes. And sister owns she does not know half so much as Cora!’

This regular declaration of American independence confounded the two sisters, and made Averil recall the thoughts that had been wandering: ‘No, Ella, in some things I have not learnt so much as Cora; but I believe I know enough to teach you, and it has been a comfort to me to keep my two little sisters with me, and not send them to be mixed up among strange girls. Besides, I have constantly hoped that our present way of life would soon be over, and that we should have a home of our own again.’

‘And why can’t we!’ asked Ella, in a much more humble and subdued voice.

‘Because Henry cannot hear of anything to do. He thought he should soon find an opening in this new country; but there seem to be so many medical men everywhere that no one will employ or take into partnership a man that nothing is known about; and he cannot produce any of his testimonials, because they are all made out in his old name, except one letter that Dr. May gave him. It is worse for Henry than for us, Ella, and all we can do for him is not to vex him with our grievances.

Poor Averil! her dejected, patient voice, sad soft eyes, and gentle persuasive manner, were greatly changed from those of the handsome, accomplished girl, who had come home to be the family pride and pet; still more, perhaps, from the wilful mistress of the house and the wayward sufferer of last summer.

‘And shan’t we go to live in the dear beautiful forest, as Cora Muller wishes?’

There was a tap at the door, and the children’s faces brightened, though a shade passed over Averil’s face, as if everything at that moment were oppressive; but she recovered a smile of greeting for the pretty creature who flew up to her with a fervent embrace—a girl a few years her junior, with a fair, delicate face and figure, in a hot-house rose style of beauty.

‘Father’s come!’ she cried.

‘How glad you must be!’

‘And now,’ whispered the children, ‘we shall know about going to Indiana.’

‘He says Mordaunt is as tall as he is, and that the house is quite fixed for me; but I told him I must have one more term, and then I will take you with me. Ah! I am glad to see the children in white. If you would only change that plain black silk, you would receive so much more consideration.’

‘I don’t want it, Cora, thank you,’ said Averil, indifferently; and, indeed, the simple mourning she still wore was a contrast to her friend’s delicate, expensive silk.

‘But I want it for you,’ pleaded Cora. ‘I don’t want to hear my Averil censured for English hauteur, and offend my country’s feelings, so that she keeps herself from seeing the best side.’

‘I see a very good, very dear side of one,’ said Averil, pressing the eager hand that was held out to her, ‘and that is enough for me. I was not a favourite in my own town, and I have not spirits to make friends here.’

‘Ah! you will have spirits in our woods,’ she said. ‘You shall show me how you go gipsying in England.’

‘The dear, dear woods! Oh, we must go!’ cried the little girls.

‘But it is going to be a town,’ said Minna, gravely.

Cora laughed. ‘Ah, there will be plenty of bush this many a day, Minna! No lack of butternuts and hickories, I promise you, nor of maples to paint the woods gloriously.’

‘You have never been there?’ said Averil, anxiously.

‘No; I have been boarding here these two years, since father and brothers located there, but we had such a good time when we lived at my grandfather’s farm, in Ohio, while father was off on the railway business.’

A gong resounded through the house, and Averil, suppressing a disappointed sigh, allowed Cora to take possession of her arm, and, followed by the two children, became parts of a cataract of people who descended the great staircase, and flowed into a saloon, where the dinner was prepared.

Henry, with a tall, thin, wiry-looking gentleman, was entering at the same time, and Averil found herself shaking hands with her brother’s companion, and hearing him say, ‘Good evening, Miss Warden; I’m glad to meet my daughter’s friend. I hope you feel at home in our great country.’

It was so exactly the ordinary second-rate American style, that Averil, who had expected something more in accordance with the refinement of everything about Cora, except a few of her tones, was a little disappointed, and responded with difficulty; then, while Mr. Muller greeted her sisters, she hastily laid her hand on Henry’s arm, and said, under her breath, ‘I’ve a letter from him.’

‘Hush!’ Henry looked about with a startled eye and repressing gesture. Averil drew back, and, one hand on her bosom, pressing the letter, and almost holding down a sob, she took her accustomed seat at the meal. Minna, too languid for the rapidity of the movements, hardly made the exertion of tasting food. Ella, alert and brisk, took care of herself as effectually as did Rosa Willis, on the opposite side of the table. Averil, all one throb of agitation, with the unread letter lying at her heart, directed all her efforts to look, eat, and drink, as usual; happily, talking was the last thing that was needed.

Averil had been greatly indebted to Miss Muller, who had taken pity on the helpless strangers—interested, partly by her own romance about England, partly by their mourning dresses, dark melancholy eyes, and retiring, bewildered manner. A beautiful motherless girl, under seventeen—left, to all intents and purposes, alone in New York—attending a great educational establishment, far more independent and irresponsible than a young man at an English University, yet perfectly trustworthy—never subject to the bevues of the ‘unprotected female,’ but self-reliant, modest, and graceful, in the heterogeneous society of the boarding-house—she was a constant marvel to Averil, and a warm friendship soon sprang up. The advances were, indeed, all on one side; for Ave was too sad, and oppressed with too heavy a secret, to be readily accessible; but there was an attraction to the younger, fresher, freer nature, even in the mystery of her mournful reserve; and the two drew nearer together from gratitude, and many congenial feelings, that rendered Cora the one element of comfort in the boarding-house life; while Henry in vain sought for occupation.

Cora had been left under the charge of the lady of the boarding-house, a distant connection, while her father, who had been engaged in more various professions than Averil could ever conceive of or remember, had been founding a new city in Indiana, at once as farmer and land-agent, and he had stolen a little time, in the dead season, to hurry up to New York, partly on business, and partly to see his daughter, who had communicated to him her earnest desire that her new friends might be induced to settle near their future abode.

American meals were too serious affairs for conversation; but such as there was, was political, in all the fervid heat of the first commencements of disunion and threatenings of civil war. After the ladies had repaired to their saloon, with its grand ottomans, sofas, rocking-chairs, and piano, the discussion continued among them; Cora talking with the utmost eagerness of the tariff and of slavery, and the other topics of the day, intensely interesting, and of terrible moment, to her country; but that country Averil had not yet learnt to feel her own, and to her all was one dreary whirl of words, in which she longed to escape to her room, and read her letter. Ella had joined Rosa Willis, and the other children; but Minna, as usual, kept under her sister’s wing, and Averil could not bear to shake herself free of the gentle child. The ladies of the boarding-house—some resident in order to avoid the arduous duties of housekeeping, others temporarily brought thither in an interregnum of servants, others spending a winter in the city—had grown tired of asking questions that met with the scantiest response, took melancholy for disdain, and were all neglectful, some uncivil, to the grave, silent English girl, and she was sitting alone, with Minna’s hand in hers, as she had sat for many a weary evening, when her brother and Mr. Muller came up together, and, sitting down on either side of her, began to talk of the rising city of Massissauga—admirably situated—excellent water privilege, communicating with Lake Michigan—glorious primeval forest—healthy situation—fertile land—where a colossal fortune might be realized in maize, eighties, sections, speculations. It was all addressed to her, and it was a hard task to give attention, so as to return a rational answer, while her soul would fain have been clairvoyante, to read the letter in her breast. She did perceive, at last, though not till long after the children had gone to bed, that the project was, that the family should become the purchasers of shares, which would give them a right to a portion of the soil, excellent at present for growing corn, and certain hereafter to be multiplied in value for building; that Henry might, in the meantime, find an opening for practice, but might speedily be independent of it. It sounded promising, and it was escape—escape from forced inaction, from an uncongenial life, from injury to the children, and it would be with Cora, her one friend. What was the demur, and why were they consulting her, who, as Henry knew, was ready to follow him wherever he chose to carry her? At last came a gleam of understanding: ‘Then, Doctor, you will talk it over with your sister, and give me your ultimatum;’ and therewith Mr. Muller walked away to mingle in other conversation, and Henry coming closer to his sister, she again eagerly said, ‘I have it here; you shall see it tomorrow, when I have read it.’

‘It—’

‘The letter.’

‘How can you be so unguarded? You have not let the children know? Take care then, I will not have the subject revived with them.’

‘But Minna—’

‘It is this heated stove atmosphere. She will soon forget if you don’t keep it up, and she will be herself when we leave this place, and it depends on you when we do that, Ave.’

‘On me!’ she said, with bewildered face.

And Henry, marvelling at her slowness of comprehension, made her understand that the advance of money, for the purchase at Massissauga, must come from her means. His own had been heavily drained by the removal, the long period of inaction, and moreover what remained had been embarked in shares in a company, absolutely certain to succeed, but where they were not at once available for sale. Averil was now of age, her property was in her own power, and could not, her brother assured her, be better invested, than on ground certain to increase in value. She looked at him, confused and distressed, aware that it was too important a step to be taken without consideration, yet unable to compose her thoughts, or recollect objections.

‘Must I answer to-night?’ she said.

‘No, there is no need for that. But we must close tomorrow with Muller, for it is not a chance that will long go begging.’

‘Then let me go, please, Henry,’ she said, imploringly. ‘I will tell you tomorrow, but I can’t now. I don’t seem to understand anything.’

It was late, and he released her, with a kind good night, though still with a sign of caution. Cora, however, hastened to join her, and walk up the stairs with her, eagerly inquiring into the success of the negotiation, and detailing what she had gathered from her father as to the improvements he had been making. She would fain have made Averil come into her bedroom to build castles there; but this was more than could be borne, and breaking from her at last, Averil reached her own room, not to think of Mr. Muller’s project, but to cast an anxious glance at each of the little beds, to judge whether the moment had come when that famishing hunger might be appeased by the crumb which for these mortal hours had lain upon her craving heart—the very first since the one on the arrival at Milbank.

Each brown head was shrouded in the coverings, the long dark fringes rested safely on the cheeks, and Averil at length drew out the treasure, and laid it on her hand to dwell on its very sight. The address needed to be looked at with lingering earnestness, as if it had indeed been a missive from another world; she looked, and was tardy to unfold it, as though, now the moment was come, the sense of being in communication with her brother must be tasted to the utmost, ere entering on the utterances that must give pain; and when she did open the envelope, perhaps the first sensation was disappointment—the lines were not near enough together, the writing not small enough, to satisfy even the first glance of the yearning eye. It was cheerful, it spoke of good health, and full occupation, with the use of books, daily exercise, the chaplain’s visits, schooling and attendance at chapel, and of the great pleasure of having heard from her. ‘And that good Dr. May inclosed your letter in one written to me with his own hand, a kindness I never dared to think of as possible, but which he promises to repeat. Your letter and his are the continual food of my thoughts, and are valued beyond all power of words. I only hope you knew that I have not been allowed to write sooner, and have not expected letters.’ Then came a few brief comments on her last inquiries, and entreaties that she would give him full information of all details of their present life: ‘It will carry me along with you, and I shall live with you, both as I read, and as I dwell on it afterwards. Do not indulge in a moment’s uneasiness about me, for I am well, and busy; every one is as kind to me as duty permits, and Dr. May is always ready to do all in his power for me.’ There were a few affectionate words for Henry, and ‘I long to send a message to the children, but I know it is better for them to let me drop from their minds, only you must tell me all about them; I want to know that the dear little Minna is bright and happy again.’

No confidences, only generalities; not even any reference to the one unbroken bond of union, the one support, except in the three scanty final words, the simplest of blessings. It was not satisfying; but Averil recalled, with a start, that no wonder the letter was meagre, since it was necessarily subject to inspection; and how could the inner soul be expressed when all must pass under strangers’ eyes, who would think such feelings plausible hypocrisy in a convicted felon. Again she took it up, to suck to the utmost all that might be conveyed in the short commonplace sentences, and to gaze at them as if intensity of study could reveal whether the cheerfulness were real or only assumed. Be they what they might, the words had only three weeks back been formed by Leonard’s hand, and she pressed her lips upon them in a fervent agony of affection.

When she roused herself and turned her head, she perceived on Minna’s pillow two eyes above the bed-clothes, intently fixed on her. Should she see, or should she not see? She believed that the loving heart was suffering a cruel wrong, she yearned to share all with the child, but she was chained by the command of one brother, and by that acquiescence of the other which to her was more than a command. She would not see, she turned away, and made her preparations for the night without betraying that she knew that the little one was awake, resuming the tedious guard on the expression of her face. But when her long kneeling had ended, and with it that which was scarcely so much conscious intercession as the resting an intolerable load on One who alone knew its weight, just as she darkened the room for the night, the low voice whispered, ‘Ave, is it?’—

And Averil crept up to the little bed: ‘Yes, Minna; he is well! He hopes you are bright and happy, but he says it is best you should forget him.’ The brow was cold and clammy, the little frame chill and trembling, the arms clasped her neck convulsively. She lifted the child into her own bed, pressed tight to her own bosom, and though no other word passed between the sisters, that contact seemed to soothe away the worst bitterness; and Averil slept from the stillness enforced on her by the heed of not disturbing Minna’s sleep.

Little that night had she recked of the plan needing so much deliberation! When she awoke it was to the consciousness that besides the arrival of Leonard’s letter, something had happened—there was some perplexity—what was it? And when it came back she was bewildered. Her own fortune had always appeared to her something to fall back on in case of want of success, and to expend it thus was binding the whole family down at a perilous moment, to judge by the rumours of battle and resistance. And all she had ever heard at home, much that she daily heard at New York, inclined her to distrust and dislike of American speculations. It was Cora’s father! Her heart smote her for including him in English prejudice, when Henry liked and trusted him! And she had disobeyed and struggled against Henry too long. She had promised to be submissive and yielding. But was this the time? And the boarding-house life—proverbially the worst for children—was fast Americanizing Ella, while Minna drooped like a snowdrop in a hot-house, and idleness might be mischievous to Henry.

Oh, for some one to consult! for some one to tell her whether the risk was a foolish venture, or if the terms were safe! But not a creature did she know well enough to seek advice from! Even the clergyman, whose church she attended, was personally unknown to her; Cora Muller was her sole intimate; there was a mutual repulsion between her and the other ladies, and still more with the gentlemen. A boarding-house was not the scene in which to find such as would inspire confidence, and they had no introductions. There was no one to turn to; and in the dreary indifference that had grown over her, she did not even feel capable of exerting her own judgment to the utmost, even if she had been able to gather certain facts, or to know prudent caution from blind prejudice—often woman’s grievous difficulty. What could a helpless girl of one-and-twenty, in a land of strangers, do, but try to think that by laying aside the use of her own judgment she was trusting all to Providence, and that by leaving all to her brother she was proving her repentance for her former conduct.

There, too, were her sisters, clamorous with hopes of the forest life; and there was Cora, urging the scheme with all the fervour of girlish friendship, and in herself no small element in its favour, engaging for everything, adducing precedents for every kind of comfort and success, and making Ave’s consent a test of her love. One question Averil asked of her—whether they should be utterly out of reach of their Church? Cora herself had been bred up to liberal religious ways, and was ready to attend whatever denomination of public worship came first to hand, though that which had descended from the Pilgrim Fathers came most naturally. She had been at various Sunday schools, and was a good conscientious girl, but had never gone through the process of conversion, so that Rosa Willis had horrified Ella by pronouncing her ‘not a Christian.’ She had no objection to show her English friends the way to the favourite Episcopal Church, especially as it was esteemed fashionable; and her passion for Averil had retained her there, with growing interest, drawn on by Averil’s greater precision of religious knowledge, and the beauty of the Church system, displayed to her as the one joy and relief left to one evidently crushed with suffering. The use of Averil’s books, conversations with her, and the teaching she heard, disposed her more and more to profess herself a member of the Episcopal Church, and she was unable to enter into Averil’s scruples at leading her to so decided a step without her father’s sanction. ‘Father would be satisfied whatever profession she made. Did people in England try to force their children’s consciences?’ Cora, at Averil’s desire, ascertained that Massissauga had as yet no place of worship of its own; but there was a choice of chapels within a circuit of five miles, and an Episcopal Church seven miles off, at the chief town of the county. Moreover, her father declared that the city of Massissauga would soon be considerable enough to invite every variety of minister to please every denomination of inhabitant. Averil felt that the seven miles off church was all she could reasonably hope for, and her mind was clear on that score, when Henry came to take her out walking for the sake of being able to talk more freely.

No longer afraid of being overheard, he gave kind attention to Leonard’s letter; and though he turned away from the subject sooner than she wished, she was not exacting. Again he laid before her the advantages of their migration, and assured her that if there were the slightest risk he would be the last to make the proposal. She asked if it were safe to invest money in a country apparently on the eve of civil war?

He laughed the idea to scorn. How could the rebel states make war, with a population of negroes sure to rise against their masters? Where should their forces come from? Faction would soon be put down, and the union be stronger than ever. It was what Averil had been hearing morning, noon, and night, so no wonder she believed it, and was ashamed of a futile girlish fear.

And was Henry sure it was a healthy place? Had she not heard of feverish swamps in Indiana?

Oh yes, in new unsettled places; but there had hardly been an ailment in the Muller family since they had settled at Massissauga.

And Averil’s last murmur was—Could he find out anything about other people’s opinion of the speculation? did they know enough about Mr. Muller to trust themselves entirely in his hands?

Henry was almost angry—Could not his sister trust him to take all reasonable precaution? It was the old story of prejudice against whatever he took up.

Poor Averil was disarmed directly. The combats of will and their consequences rose up before her, and with them Leonard’s charges to devote herself to Henry. She could but avow herself willing to do whatever he pleased. She only hoped he would be careful.

All thenceforth was pleasant anticipation and hope. Averil’s property had to be transferred to America, and invested in shares of the land at Massissauga; but this was to cause no delay in arranging for the removal, they were only to wait until the winter had broken up, and the roads become passable after the melting of the snows; and meantime Mr. Muller was to have their house prepared. Cora would remain and accompany them, and in the intervening time promised to assist Averil with her judgment in making the necessary purchases for ‘stepping westward.’

When Averil wrote their plans to her English friends, she felt the difficulty of pleading for them. She was sensible that at Stoneborough the risking of her property would be regarded as folly on her part, and something worse on that of her brother; and she therefore wrote with every effort to make the whole appear her own voluntary act—though the very effort made her doubly conscious that the sole cause for her passive acquiescence was, that her past self-will in trifles had left her no power to contend for her own opinion in greater matters—the common retribution on an opinionative woman of principle.

Moreover, it was always with an effort that she wrote to Mary May. A rejected offer from a brother is a rock in a correspondence with a sister, and Averil had begun to feel greatly ashamed of the manner of her own response. Acceptance would have been impossible; but irritating as had been Tom May’s behaviour, insulting as had been his explanation, and provoking, his pertinacity, she had begun to feel that the impulse had been too generous and disinterested to deserve such treatment, and that bitterness and ill-temper had made her lose all softness and dignity, so that he must think that his pitying affection had been bestowed on an ungrateful vixen, and be as much disgusted with the interview as she was herself. She did not wish him to love her; but she regretted the form of the antidote, above all, since he was of the few who appreciated Leonard; and the more she heard of Ella’s narrations of his kindness, the more ashamed she grew. Every letter to or from Mary renewed the uncomfortable sense, and she would have dropped the correspondence had it not been her sole medium of communication with her imprisoned brother, since Henry would not permit letters to be posted with the Milbank address.

CHAPTER XX

A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breathing low, ‘I may not speak of what I know.’—TENNYSON

At the pace at which rapid people walk alone, when they wish to devour both the way and their own sensations, Ethel May was mounting the hill out of the town in the premature heat assumed by May in compliment to Whitsun week, when a prolonged shout made her turn. At first she thought it was her father, but her glass showed her that it was the brother so like him in figure that the London-made coat, and the hair partaking of the sand instead of the salt, were often said to be the chief distinction. Moreover, the dainty steps over the puddles were little like the strides of the Doctor, and left no doubt that it was the one wedding guest who had been despaired of.

‘O, Tom, I am glad you are come!’

‘What a rate you were running away at! I thought you had done with your hurricane pace.’

‘Hurricane because of desperate hurry. I’m afraid I can’t turn back with you.’

‘Where is all the world?’

‘Blanche is helping Mary arrange the Hoxton—I mean her own drawing-room. Hector has brought a dog-cart to drive papa about in; Daisy is gone with Harry and Aubrey to the Grange for some camellias.’

‘And Ethel rushing to Cocksmoor!’

‘I can’t help it, Tom,’ she said, humbly; ‘I wish I could.’

‘What’s this immense pannier you are carrying?’

‘It is quite light. It is twelve of the hats for the children tomorrow. Mary was bent on trimming them all as usual, and I was deluded enough to believe she would, till last evening I found just one and a half done! I did as many as I could at night, till papa heard me rustling about and thumped. Those went early this morning; and these are the rest, which I have just finished.’

‘Was there no one to send?’

‘My dear Tom, is your experience of weddings so slight as to suppose there is an available being in the family the day before?’

‘I’m sure I don’t desire such experience. Why could not they be content without ferreting me down?’

‘I am very glad you have come. It would have been a great mortification if you had stayed away. I never quite believed you would.’

‘I had much rather see the operation I shall miss tomorrow morning. I shall go back by the two o’clock train.’

‘To study their happiness all the way up to town?’

‘Then by the mail—’

‘I won’t torment you to stay; but I think papa will want a talk with you.’

‘The very thing I don’t want. Why can’t he dispose of his property like other people, and give Richard his rights?’

‘You know Richard would only be encumbered.’

‘No such thing; Richard is a reasonable being—he will marry some of these days—get the living after Wilmot, and—’

‘But you know how papa would be grieved to separate the practice from the house.’

‘Because he and his fathers were content to bury themselves in a hole, he expects me to do the same. Why, what should I do? The place is over-doctored already. Every third person is a pet patient sending for him for a gnat-bite, gratis, taking the bread out of Wright’s mouth. No wonder Henry Ward kicked! If I came here, I must practise on the lap-dogs! Here’s my father, stronger than any of us, with fifteen good years’ work in him at the least! He would be wretched at giving up to me a tenth part of his lambs, and that tenth would keep us always in hot water. His old-world practice would not go down with me, and he would think everything murder that was fresher than the year 1830.’

‘I thought he was remarkable for having gone on with the world,’ said Ethel, repressing some indignation.

‘So he has in a way, but always against the grain. He has a tough lot of prejudices; and you may depend upon it, they would be more obstinate against me than any one else, and I should be looked on as an undutiful dog for questioning them, besides getting the whole credit of every case that went wrong.’

‘I think you are unjust,’ said Ethel, flushing with displeasure.

‘I wish I were not, Ethel; but when there is one son in a family who can do nothing that is not taken amiss, it is hard that he should be the one picked out to be pinned down, and, maybe, goaded into doing something to be really sorry for.’

There was truth enough in this to seal Ethel’s lips from replying that it was Tom’s own fault, since his whole nature and constitution were far more the cause than his conduct, and she answered, ‘You might get some appointment for the present, till he really wants you.’

‘To be ordered home just as I am making something of it, and see as many cases in ten years as I could in a month in town. Things are altered since his time, if he could only see it. What was the use of giving me a first-rate education, if he meant to stick me down here?’

‘At least I hope you will think long before you inflict the cruel disappointment of knowing that not one of his five sons will succeed to the old practice.’

‘The throne, you mean, Ethel. Pish!’

The ‘Pish’ was as injurious to her hereditary love for ‘the old practice,’ and for the old town, as to her reverence for her father. One angry ‘Tom!’ burst from her lips, and only the experience that scolding made him worse, restrained her from desiring him to turn back if this was the best he had to say. Indeed she wondered to find him still by her side, holding the gate of the plantation open for her. He peered under her hat as she went through—

‘How hot you look!’ he said, laying hold of the handles of the basket.

‘Thank you; but it is more cumbrous than heavy,’ she said, not letting go; ‘it is not that—’

An elision which answered better than words, to show that his speech, rather than hill or load, had made her cheeks flame; but he only drew the great basket more decisively from her hand, put his stick into the handle, and threw it over his shoulder; and no doubt it was a much greater act of good-nature from him than it would have been from Richard or Harry.

‘This path always reminds me of this very matter,’ he said; ‘I talked it over with Meta here, on the way to lay the foundation-stone at Cocksmoor, till Norman overtook us and monopolized her for good, poor little thing. She was all in the high romantic strain, making a sort of knight hospitaller of my father. I wonder what she is like by this time, and how much of that she has left.’

‘Of the high romantic strain? I should think it was as much as ever the salt of life to her. Her last letter described her contrivances to make a knapsack for Norman on his visitation tour. Oh, fancy old June a venerable archdeacon!’

‘You don’t think a colonial archdeacon is like one of your great portly swells in a shovel hat.’

‘It must be something remarkable that made Norman portly. But as for the shovel hat, Mrs. Meta has insisted on having it sent out. I was going to tell you that she says, “I do like such a good tough bit of stitchery, to fit my knight out for the cause.”’

‘Marriage and distance have not frozen up her effusions.’

‘No; when people carry souls in their pens, they are worth a great deal more, if they are to go to a distance.’

Ah! by the bye, I suppose Cheviot has put a fresh lock on Mary’s writing-case.’

‘I suspect some of Mary’s correspondence will devolve on me. Harry has asked me already.’

‘I wished you had mentioned more about the letters of late. Leonard wanted to know more than I could tell him.’

‘You don’t mean that you have seen him? O, Tom, how kind of you! Papa has been trying hard to get a day now that these first six months are up; but there are two or three cases that wanted so much watching that he has not been able to stir.’

‘I know how he lets himself be made a prisoner, and that it was a chance whether any one saw the poor fellow at all.’

‘I am so glad’—and Ethel turned on him a face still flushed, but now with gratitude. ‘How was he looking?’

‘The costume is not becoming, and he has lost colour and grown hollow-eyed; but I saw no reason for being uneasy about him; he looked clear and in health, and has not got to slouch yet. It is shocking to see such a grand face and head behind a grating.’

‘Could he talk’?

‘Why, the presence of a warder is against conversation, and six months of shoemaking in a cell does not give much range of ideas. There was nothing to be done but to talk on right ahead and judge by his eyes if he liked it.’

‘I suppose you could find out nothing about himself?’

‘He said he got on very well; but one does not know that means. I asked if he got books; and he said there was a very good library, and he could get what gave him something to think of; and he says they give interesting lectures in school.’

‘You could not gather what is thought of him?’

‘No; I saw but a couple of officers of the place, and could only get out of them “good health and good conduct.” I do not expect even his conduct makes much impression as to his innocence, for I saw it stated the other day that the worst prisoners are those that are always getting convicted for petty offences; those that have committed one great crime are not so depraved, and are much more amenable. However, he has only three months more at Pentonville, and then he will go to Portland, Chatham, or Gibraltar.’

‘Oh, I hope it will not be Gibraltar! But at least that terrible solitude will be over.’

‘At any rate, his spirit is not broken. I could see his eye light up after I had talked a little while, and he fell into his natural tone again. He would not try to put out his hand to me when he came down; but when I went away, he put it through and we had a good hearty shake. Somehow it made one feel quite small.’

Ethel could have pledged herself for the soundness of Tom’s nature after those words; but all she did was in an unwonted tone to utter the unwonted exclamation—’Dear Tom.’

‘If my father does not come up, I shall see him once more before he leaves Pentonville,’ added Tom; ‘and so you must mind and let me know all about his people in America. I found he had no notion of the row that is beginning there, so I said not a word of it. But what is all this about going to Indiana?’

‘They are going at the end of April to settle in a place called Massissauga, where Henry is to farm till practice comes to him. It is towards the north of the State, in the county of Pulaski.’

‘Ay, in one of the pestilential swamps that run up out of Lake Michigan. All the fertile ground there breeds as many fevers and agues as it does stalks of corn.’

‘Indeed! how did you hear that?’

‘I looked up the place after Leonard told me of it. It is as unlucky a location as the ill luck of that fellow Henry could have pitched on. Some friend Leonard spoke of—a Yankee, I suppose, meaning to make a prey of them.’

‘The father of their young lady friend at the boarding-house.’

‘Oh! a Yankee edition of Mrs. Pugh!’

‘And the worst of it is that this is to be done with poor Averil’s fortune. She has written to Mr. Bramshaw to sell out for her, and send her the amount, and he is terribly vexed; but she is of age, and there are no trustees nor any one to stop it.’

‘All of a piece,’ muttered Tom; then presently he swung the basket round on the ground with a vehement exclamation—’If any man on this earth deserved to be among the robbers and murderers, I know who it is.’ Then he shouldered his load again, and walked on in silence by his sister’s side to the school door.

Richard had been obliged to go to a benefit club entertainment; and Ethel, knowing the limited literary resources of the parsonage, was surprised to find Tom still waiting for her, when the distribution and fitting of the blue-ribboned hats was over, and matters arranged for the march of the children to see the wedding, and to dine afterwards at the Grammar-school hall.

‘O, Tom, I did not expect to find you here.’

‘It is not fit for you to be walking about alone on a Whit Monday.’

‘I am very glad to have you, but I am past that.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense; girls are girls till long past your age,’ said Tom.

‘It is not so much age, as living past things,’ said Ethel.

‘It was not only that, added Tom; ‘but I’ve more to say to you, while one can be sure of a quiet moment. Have you heard anything about that place?’ and he pointed in the direction of the Vintry Mill.

‘I heard something of an intention to part with it, and have been watching for an advertisement; but I can see none in the Courant, or on the walls.’

‘Mind he does not slip off unawares.’

‘I don’t know what to do now that old Hardy is cut off from us. I tried to stir up Dr. Spencer to go and investigate, but I could not tell him why, and he has not the same interest in going questing about as he used to have. People never will do the one thing one wants particularly!’

Tom’s look and gesture made her ask if he knew of anything wrong with their old friend; and in return, she was told that Dr. Spencer’s recent visit to London had been to consult Sir Matthew Fleet. The foundations of mortal disease had been laid in India, and though it might long remain in abeyance, there were from time to time symptoms of activity; and tedious lingering infirmity was likely to commence long before the end.

‘And what do you think the strange old fellow charged me as we walked away from dining at Fleet’s?’

‘Secrecy, of course,’ returned the much-shocked Ethel.

‘One does keep a secret by telling you. It was to have my eye on some lodging with a decent landlady, where, when it is coming to that, he can go up to be alone, out of the way of troubling Dick, and of all of you.’

‘Tom, how dreadful!’

‘I fancy it is something of the animal instinct of creeping away alone, and partly his law to himself not to trouble Dick.’

‘An odd idea of what would trouble Dick!’

‘So I told him; but he said, after seeing what it cost my father to watch dear Margaret’s long decay, he would never entail the like on him. It is queer, and it is beautiful, the tender way he has about my father, treating him like a pet to be shielded and guarded—a man that has five times the force and vigour of body and mind that he has now, whatever they may have been.’

‘Very beautiful, and I cannot help telling you how beautiful,’ said Ethel, greatly moved; ‘only remember, it is not to be mentioned.’

‘Ha! did he ever make you an offer? I have sometimes suspected it.’

‘No indeed! It was much—much more beautiful than that!’

‘Our mother then? I had thought of that too, and it accounts for his having always taken to you the most of us.’

‘Why, I’m the least like her of us all!’

‘So they say, I know, and I can’t recollect enough to judge, except that’—and Tom’s voice was less clear for a moment—’there was something in being with her that I’ve never found again, except now and then with you, Ethel. Well, he never got over it, I suppose.’

And Ethel briefly told of the rash resolution, the unsettled life, the neglect of the father’s wishes, the grievous remorse, the broken health, and restless aimless wanderings, ending at last in loving tendance of the bereaved rival. It had been a life never wanting in generosity or benevolence, yet falling far short of what it might have been—a gallant voyage made by a wreck—and yet the injury had been less from the disappointment than from the manner of bearing it. Suddenly it struck her that Tom might suspect her of intending a personal application of the history, and she faltered; but he kept her to it by his warm interest and many questions.

‘And oh, Tom, he must not be allowed to go away in this manner! Nothing would so cut papa to the heart!’

‘I don’t believe he ever will, Ethel. He may go on for years as he is; and he said in the midst that he meant to live to carry out the drainage. Besides, if it comes gradually on him, he may feel dependent and lose the energy to move.’

‘Oh! what a sorrow for papa! But I know that not to watch over him would make it all the worse.’

They walked on gravely till, on the top of the hill, Tom exclaimed, ‘They’ve mounted the flag on the Minster steeple already.’

‘It went up yesterday for Harvey Anderson and Mrs. Pugh. There was a proposal to join forces, and have a double wedding—so interesting, the two school-fellows and two young friends. The Cheviot girls much regretted it was not to be.’

‘Cheviot girls! Heavens and earth! At home?’

‘Not sleeping; but we shall have them all day tomorrow, for they cannot get home the same day by setting off after the wedding. There will be no one else, for even our own people are going, for Harry is to go to Maplewood with Blanche, and Aubrey has to be at Woolwich; but we shall all be at home to-night.’

‘Last time was in the volunteer days, two or three centuries ago.’

It was strange how, with this naturally least congenial of all the family, Ethel had a certain understanding and fellow-feeling that gave her a sense of rest and relief in his company, only impaired by the dread of rubs between him and his father. None, however, happened; Dr. May had been too much hurt to press the question of the inheritance, and took little notice of Tom, being much occupied with the final business about the wedding, and engrossed by Hector and Harry, who always absorbed him in their short intervals of his company. Tom went to see Dr. Spencer, and brought him in, so cheerful and full of life, that what Ethel had been hearing seemed like a dream, excepting when she recognized Tom’s unobtrusive gentleness and attention towards him.

She was surprised and touched through all the harass and hurry of that evening and morning, to find the ‘must be dones’ that had of late devolved on her alone, now lightened and aided by Tom, who appeared to have come for the sole purpose of being always ready to give a helping hand where she wanted it, with all Richard’s manual dexterity, and more resource and quickness. The refreshment of spirits was the more valuable as this was a very unexciting wedding. Even Gertrude, not yet fourteen, had been surfeited with weddings, and replied to Harry’s old wit of ‘three times a bridesmaid and never a bride,’ that she hoped so, her experience of married life was extremely flat; and a glance at Blanche’s monotonous dignity, and Flora’s worn face, showed what that experience was.

Harry was the only one to whom there was the freshness of novelty, and he was the great element of animation; but as the time came near, honest Harry had been seized with a mortal dread of the tears he imagined an indispensable adjunct of the ceremony, and went about privately consulting every one how much weeping was inevitable. Flora told him she saw no reason for any tears, and Ethel that when people felt very much they couldn’t cry; but on the other hand, Blanche said she felt extremely nervous, and knew she should be overcome; Gertrude assured him that on all former occasions Mary did all the crying herself; and Aubrey told him that each bridesmaid carried six handkerchiefs, half for herself and half for the bride.

The result was, that the last speech made by Harry to his favourite sister in her maiden days was thus:—’Well, Mary, you do look uncommonly nice and pretty; but now’—most persuasively—’you’ll be a good girl and not cry, will you?’ and as Mary fluttered, tried to smile, and looked out through very moist eyes, he continued, ‘I feel horribly soft-hearted to-day, and if you howl I must, you know; so mind, if I see you beginning, I shall come out with my father’s old story of the spirit of the flood and the spirit of the fell, and that will stop it, if anything can.’

The comicality of Harry’s alarm was nearly enough to ‘stop it,’ coupled with the great desire of Daisy that he should be betrayed into tears; and Mary did behave extremely well, and looked all that a bride should look. Admirable daughter and sister, she would be still more in her place as wife; hers was the truly feminine nature that, happily for mankind, is the most commonplace, and that she was a thoroughly generic bride is perhaps a testimony to her perfection in the part, as in all others where quiet unselfish womanhood was the essential. Never had she been so sweet in every tone, word, and caress; never had Ethel so fully felt how much she loved her, or how entirely they had been one, from a time almost too far back for memory. There had not been intellectual equality; but perhaps it was better, fuller affection, than if there had been; for Mary had filled up a part that had been in some measure wanting in Ethel. She had been a sort of wife to her sister, and thus was the better prepared for her new life, but was all the sorer loss at home.

The bridegroom! How many times had Ethel to remind herself of her esteem, and security of Mary’s happiness, besides frowning down Gertrude’s saucy comments, and trying to laugh away Tom’s low growl that good things always fell to the share of poor hearts and narrow minds. Mr. Cheviot did in fact cut a worse figure than George Rivers of old, having a great fund of natural bashfulness and self-consciousness, which did not much damage his dignity, but made his attempts at gaiety and ease extremely awkward, not to say sheepish. Perhaps the most trying moment was the last, when hearing a few words between Ethel and Mary about posting a mere scrap, if only an empty envelope, from the first resting-place, he turned round, with his laugh, to object to rash promises, and remind his dear sister Ethel that post-offices were not always near at hand! After that, when Mary in her bright tenderness hung round her sister, it was as if that was the last fond grasp from the substance—as if only the shadow would come back and live in Minster Street.

Perhaps it was because Ethel had tried to rule it otherwise, Mr. Cheviot had insisted that the Cocksmoor children’s share in the festivity should be a dinner in the Whichcote hall, early in the day, after which they had to be sent home, since no one chose to have the responsibility of turning them loose to play in the Grammar-school precincts, even in the absence of the boys. Richard was much afraid of their getting into mischief, and was off immediately after church to superintend the dinner, and marshal them home; and the rest of the world lost the resource that entertaining them generally afforded the survivors after a marriage, and which was specially needed with the two Cheviot sisters to be disposed of. By the time the Riverses were gone home, and the Ernescliffes and Harry off by the train, there were still four mortal hours of daylight, and oh! for Mary’s power of making every one happy!

Caroline and Annie Cheviot were ladylike, nice-looking girls; but when they found no croquet mallets in the garden, they seemed at a loss what life had to offer at Stoneborough! Gertrude pronounced that ‘she played at it sometimes at Maplewood, where she had nothing better to do,’ and then retreated to her own devices. Ethel’s heart sank both with dread of the afternoon, and with self-reproach at her spoilt child’s discourtesy, whence she knew there would be no rousing her without an incapacitating discussion; and on she wandered in the garden with the guests, receiving instruction where the hoops might be planted, and hearing how nice it would be for her sister to have such an object, such a pleasant opportunity of meeting one’s friends—an interest for every day. ‘No wonder they think I want an object in life,’ thought Ethel; ‘how awfully tiresome I must be! Poor things, what can I say to make it pleasanter?—Do you know this Dielytra? I think it is the prettiest of modern flowers, but I wish we might call it Japan fumitory, or by some English name.’

‘I used to garden once, but we have no flower-beds now, they spoilt the lawn for croquet.’

‘And here comes Tom,’ thought Ethel; ‘poor Tom, he will certainly be off to London this evening.’

Tom, however, joined the listless promenade; and the first time croquet was again mentioned, observed that he had seen the Andersons knocking about the balls in the new gardens by the river; and proposed to go down and try to get up a match. There was an instant brightening, and Tom stepped into the drawing-room, and told Daisy to come with them.

‘To play at croquet with the Andersons in the tea-gardens!’ she exclaimed. ‘No, I thank you, Thomas!’

He laid his hand on her shoulder—’Gertrude,’ he said, ‘it is time to have done being a spoilt baby. If you let Ethel fag herself ill, you will rue it all your life.’

Frightened, but without clear comprehension, she turned two scared eyes on him, and replaced the hat that she had thrown on the table, just as Ethel and the others came in.

‘Not you, Ethel,’ said Tom; ‘you don’t know the game.’

‘I can learn,’ said Ethel, desperately bent on her duty.

‘We would teach you,’ volunteered the Cheviots.

‘You would not undertake it if you knew better,’ said Tom, smiling. ‘Ethel’s hands are not her strong point.’

‘Ethel would just have to be croqued all through by her partner,’ said Gertrude.

‘Besides, my father will be coming in and wanting you,’ added Tom; ‘he is only at the hospital or somewhere about the town. I’ll look after this child.’

And the two sisters, delighted that poor little Gertrude should have such a holiday treat as croquet in the public gardens, away from her governess elder sister, walked off glorious; while Ethel, breathing forth a heavy sigh, let herself sink into a chair, feeling as if the silence were in itself invaluable, and as if Tom could not be enough thanked for having gained it for her.

She was first roused by the inquiry, ‘Shall I take in this letter, ma’am? it is charged four shillings over-weight. And it is for Mr. Thomas, ma’am,’ impressively concluded the parlour-maid, as one penetrated by Mr. Thomas’s regard to small economies.

Ethel beheld a letter bloated beyond the capacities of the two bewigged Washingtons that kept guard in its corner, and addressed in a cramped hand unknown to her; but while she hesitated, her eye fell on another American letter directed to Miss Mary May, in Averil Ward’s well-known writing, and turning both round, she found they had the same post-mark, and thereupon paid the extra charge, and placed the letter where Tom was most likely to light naturally on it without public comment. The other letter renewed the pang at common property being at an end. ‘No, Mab,’ she said, taking the little dog into her lap, ‘we shall none of us hear a bit of it! But at least it is a comfort that this business is over! You needn’t creep under sofas now, there’s nobody to tread upon your dainty little paws. What is to be done, Mab, to get out of a savage humour—except thinking how good-natured poor Tom is!’

There was not much sign of savage humour in the face that was lifted up as Dr. May came in from the hospital, and sitting down by his daughter, put his arm round her. ‘So there’s another bird flown,’ he said. ‘We shall soon have the old nest to ourselves, Ethel.’

‘The Daisy is not going just yet,’ said Ethel, stroking back the thin flying flakes over his temples. ‘If we may believe her, never!’

‘Ah! she will be off before we can look round,’ said the Doctor; ‘when once the trick of marrying gets among one’s girls, there’s no end to it, as long as they last out.’

‘Nor to one’s boys going out into the world,’ said Ethel: both of them talking as if she had been his wife, rather than one of these fly-away younglings herself.

‘Ah! well,’ he said, ‘it’s very pretty while it lasts, and one keeps the creatures; but after all, one doesn’t rear them for one’s own pleasure. That only comes by the way of their chance good-will to one.’

‘For shame, Doctor!’ said Ethel, pretending to shake him by the collar.

‘I was thinking,’ he added, ‘that we must not require too much. People must have their day, and in their own fashion; and I wish you would tell Tom—I’ve no patience to do it myself—that I don’t mean to hamper him. As long as it is a right line, he may take whichever he pleases, and I’ll do my best to set him forward in it; but it is a pity—’

‘Perhaps a few years of travelling, or of a professorship, might give him time to think differently,’ said Ethel.

‘Not he,’ said the Doctor; ‘the more a man lives in the world, the more he depends on it. Where is the boy? is he gone without vouchsafing a good-bye?’

‘Oh no, he has taken pity on Annie and Caroline Cheviot’s famine of croquet, and gone with them to the gardens.’

‘A spice of flirtation never comes amiss to him.’

‘There, that’s the way!’ said Ethel, half-saucily, half-caressingly; ‘that poor fellow never can do right! Isn’t it the very thing to keep him away from home, that we all may steal a horse, and he can’t look over the wall, no, not with a telescope?’

‘I can’t help it, Ethel. It may be very wrong and unkind of me—Heaven forgive me if it is, and prevent me from doing the boy any harm! but I never can rid myself of a feeling of there being something behind when he seems the most straightforward. If he had only not got his grandfather’s mouth and nose! And,’ smiling after all—’I don’t know what I said to be so scolded; all lads flirt, and you can’t deny that Master Tom divided his attentions pretty freely last year between Mrs. Pugh and poor Ave Ward.’

‘This time, I believe, it was out of pure kindness to me,’ said Ethel, ‘so I am bound to his defence. He dragged off poor Daisy to chaperon them, that I might have a little peace.’

‘Ah! he came down on us this morning,’ said the Doctor, ‘on Richard and Flora and me, and gave us a lecture on letting you grow old, Ethel—said you were getting over-tasked, and no one heeding it; and looking—let’s look’—and he took off his spectacles, put his hand on her shoulder, and studied her face.

‘Old enough to be a respectable lady of the house, I hope,’ said Ethel.

‘Wiry enough for most things,’ said the Doctor, patting her shoulder, reassured; ‘but we must take care, Ethel; if you don’t fatten yourself up, we shall have Flora coming and carrying you off to London for a change, and for Tom to practise on.

‘That is a threat! I expected he had been prescribing for me already, never to go near Cocksmoor, for that’s what people always begin by—’

‘Nothing worse than pale ale.’ At which Ethel made one of her faces. ‘And to make a Mary of that chit of a Daisy. Well, you may do as you please—only take care, or Flora will be down upon us.’

‘Tom has been very helpful and kind to me,’ said Ethel. ‘And, papa, he has seen Leonard, and he says he looked so noble that to shake hands with him made him feel quite small.’

‘I never heard anything so much to Tom’s credit! Well, and what did he say of the dear lad?’

The next step was to mention Averil’s letter to Mary, which could not be sent on till tidings had been permitted by Mr. Cheviot.

‘Let us see it,’ said the Doctor.

‘Do you think Charles Cheviot would like it?’

‘Cheviot is a man of sense,’ said the open-hearted Doctor, ‘and there may be something to authorize preventing this unlucky transfer of her fortune.’

Nothing could be further from it; but it was a long and interesting letter, written in evidently exhilarated spirits, and with a hopeful description of the new scenes. Ethel read it to her father, and he told every one about it when they came in. Tom manifested no particular interest; but he did not go by the mail train that night, and was not visible all the morning. He caught Ethel alone however at noon, and said, ‘Ethel, I owe you this,’ offering the amount she had paid for the letter.

‘Thank you,’ she said, wondering if this was to be all she should hear about it.

‘I am going by the afternoon train,’ he added; ‘I have been over to Blewer. It is true, Ethel, the fellow can’t stand it! he has sent down a manager, and is always in London! Most likely to dispose of it by private contract there, they say.’

‘And what has become of old Hardy?’

‘Poor old fellow, he has struck work, looks terribly shaky. He took me for my father at first sight, and began to apologize most plaintively—said no one else had ever done him any good. I advised him to come in and see my father, though he is too far gone to do much for him.’

‘Poor old man, can he afford to come in now?’

‘Why, I helped him with the cart hire. It is no use any way, he knows no more than we do, and his case is confirmed; but he thinks he has offended my father, and he’ll die more in peace for having had him again. Look here, what a place they have got to.’

And without further explanation of the ‘they,’ Tom placed a letter in Ethel’s hands.

‘My Dear Mr. Thomas,

‘I send you the objects I promised for your microscope; I could not get any before because we were in the city; but if you like these I can get plenty more at Massissauga, where we are now. We came here last week, and the journey was very nice, only we went bump bump so often, and once we stuck in a marsh, and were splashed all over. We are staying with Mr. Muller and Cora till our own house is quite ready; it was only begun a fortnight ago, and we are to get in next week. I thought this would have been a town, it looked so big and so square in the plan; but it is all trees still, and there are only thirteen houses built yet. Ours is all by itself in River Street, and all the trees near it have been killed, and stand up all dead and white, because nobody has time to cut them down. It looks very dismal, but Ave says it will be very nice by and by, and, Rufus Muller says it has mammoth privileges. I send you a bit of rattlesnake skin. They found fifteen of them asleep under a stone, just where our house is built, and sometimes they come into the kitchen. I do not know the names of the other things I send; and I could not ask Ave, for she said you would not want to be bothered with a little girl’s letter, and I was not to ask for an answer. Rosa Willis says no young lady of my age would ask her sister’s permission, and not even her mother’s, unless her mamma was very intellectual and highly educated, and always saw the justice of her arguments; but Minna and I do not mean to be like that. I would tell Ave if you did write to me, but she need not read it unless she liked.

‘I am, your affectionate little friend, ‘ELLA.’

‘Well!’ said Tom, holding out his hand for more when she had restored this epistle. ‘You have heard all there was in it, except—’

‘Except what I want to see.’

And Ethel, as she had more or less intended all along, let him have Averil’s letter, since the exception was merely a few tender words of congratulation to Mary. The worst had been done already by her father; and it may here be mentioned that though nothing was said in answer to her explanation of the opening of the letter, the headmaster never recovered the fact, and always attributed it to his dear sister Ethel.

‘For the future,’ said Tom, as he gave back the thin sheets, ‘they will all be for the Cheviots’ private delectation.’

‘I shall begin on my own score,’ said Ethel. ‘You know if you answer this letter, you must not mention that visit of yours, or you will be prohibited, and one would not wish to excite a domestic secession.’

‘It would serve the unnatural scoundrel right,’ said Tom. ‘Well, I must go and put up my things. You’ll keep me up to what goes on at home, and if there’s anything out there to tell Leonard—’

‘Wait a moment, Tom!’—and she told him what the Doctor had said about his plans.

‘Highly educated and intellectual,’ was all the answer that Tom vouchsafed; and whether he were touched or not she could not gather.

Yet her spirit felt less weary and burdened, and more full of hope than it had been for a long time past. Averil’s letter showed the exhilaration of the change, and of increasing confidence and comfort in her friend Cora Muller. Cora’s Confirmation had brought the girls into contact with the New York clergy, and had procured them an introduction to the clergyman of Winiamac, the nearest church, so that there was much less sense of loneliness, moreover, the fuller and more systematic doctrine, and the development of the beauty and daily guidance of the Church, had softened the bright American girl, so as to render her infinitely dearer to her English friend, and they were as much united as they could be, where the great leading event of the life of one remained a mystery to the other. Yet perhaps it helped to begin a fresh life, that the intimate companion of that new course should be entirely disconnected with the past.

Averil threw herself into the present with as resolute a will as she could muster. With much spirit she described the arrival at the Winiamac station, and the unconcealed contempt with which the mass of luggage was regarded by the Western world, who ‘reckoned it would be fittest to make kindlings with.’ Heavy country wagons were to bring the furniture; the party themselves were provided for by a light wagon and a large cart, driven by Cora’s brother, Mordaunt, and by the farming-man, Philetus, a gentleman who took every occasion of asserting his equality, if not his superiority to the new-comers; demanded all the Christian names, and used them without prefix; and when Henry impressively mentioned his eldest sister as Miss Warden, stared and said, ‘Why, Doctor, I thought she was not your old woman!’—the Western epithet of a wife. But as Cora was quite content to leave Miss behind her in civilized society, and as they were assured that to stand upon ceremony would leave them without domestic assistance, the sisters had implored Henry to waive all preference for a polite address.

The loveliness of the way was enchanting—the roads running straight as an arrow through glorious forest lands of pine, beech, maple, and oak, in the full glory of spring, and the perspective before and behind making a long narrowing green bower of meeting branches; the whole of the borders of the road covered with lovely flowers—May-wings, a butterfly-like milkwort, pitcher-plant, convolvulus; new insects danced in the shade—golden orioles, blue birds, the great American robin, the field officer, with his orange epaulettes, glanced before them. Cora was in ecstasy at the return to forest scenery, the Wards at its novelty, and the escape from town. Too happy were they at first to care for the shaking and bumping of the road, and the first mud-hole into which they plunged was almost a joke, under Mordaunt Muller’s assurances that it was easy fording, though the splashes flew far and wide. Then there was what Philetus called ‘a mash with a real handsome bridge over it,’ i. e. a succession of tree trunks laid side by side for about a quarter of a mile. Here the female passengers insisted on walking—even Cora, though her brother and Philetus both laughed her to scorn; and more especially for her foot-gear, delicate kid boots, without which no city damsel stirred. Averil and her sisters, in the English boots scorned at New York, had their share in the laugh, while picking their way from log to log, hand in hand, and exciting Philetus’s further disdain by their rapture with the glorious flowers of the bog.

But where was Massissauga? Several settlements had been passed, the houses looking clean and white in forest openings, with fields where the lovely spring green of young maize charmed the eye.

At last the road grew desolate. There were a few patches of corn, a few squalid-looking log or frame houses, a tract of horrible dreary blackness; and still more horrible, beyond it was a region of spectres—trees white and stripped bare, lifting their dead arms like things blasted. Averil cried out in indignant horror, ‘Who has done this?’

‘We have,’ answered Mordaunt. ‘This is Maclellan Square, Miss Warden, and there’s River Street,’ pointing down an avenue of skeletons. ‘If you could go to sleep for a couple of years, you would wake up to find yourself in a city such as I would not fear to compare with any in Europe. Your exhausted civilization is not as energetic as ours, I calculate.’

The energetic young colonist turned his horse’s head up a slight rising ground, where something rather more like habitation appeared; a great brick-built hotel, and some log houses, with windows displaying the wares needed for daily consumption, and a few farm buildings. It was backed by corn-fields; and this was the great Maclellan Street, the chief ornament of Massissauga. Not one house had the semblance of a garden; the wilderness came up to the very door, except where cattle rendered some sort of enclosure necessary.

Cora exclaimed, ‘Oh, Mordaunt, I thought you would have had a garden for me!’

‘I can fix it any time you like,’ said he; ‘but you’ll be the laughing-stock of the place, and never keep a flower.’

The Mullers’ abode was a sound substantial log house, neatly whitened, and with green shutters, bearing a festal appearance, full of welcome, as Mr. Muller, his tall bearded son Rufus, and a thin but motherly-looking elderly woman, came forth to meet the travellers; and in the front, full stare, stood a trollopy-looking girl, every bar of her enormous hoop plainly visible through her washed-out flimsy muslin. This was Miss Ianthe, who condescended to favour the family with her assistance till she should have made up dollars enough to buy a new dress! The elder woman, who went by the name of Cousin Deborah, would have been a housekeeper in England—here she was one of the family—welcomed Cora with an exchange of kisses, and received the strangers with very substantial hospitality, though with pity at their unfitness for their new home, and utter incredulity as to their success.

Here the Wards had been since their arrival. Their frame-house, near the verdant bank of the river, was being finished for them; and a great brass plate, with Henry’s new name and his profession, had already adorned the door. The furniture was coming; Cousin Deborah had hunted up a Cleopatra Betsy, who might perhaps stay with them if she were treated on terms of equality, a field was to be brought into cultivation as soon as any labour could be had. Minna was looking infinitely better already, and Averil and Cora were full of designs for rival housewifery, Averil taking lessons meantime in ironing, dusting, and the arts of the kitchen, and trusting that in the two years’ time, the skeletons would have given place—if not indeed to houses, to well-kept fields. Such was her account.

How much was reserved for fear of causing anxiety? Who could guess?

CHAPTER XXI

Quanto si fende La rocca per dar via a chi va suso N’andai ‘nfino ove’l cerchiar si prende Com’io nel quinto giro fui dischiuso Vidi gente per esso che piangea Glacendo a terra tutta volta in giuso Adhaesit pavimento anima mia Sentia dir loro con si alti sospiri Che la parola appena s’intendea. ‘O eletti di Deo, i cui soffriri E giustizia e speranza fan men duri—’ DANTE. Purgatorio

Ah, sir, we have learnt the way to get your company,’ said Hector Ernescliffe, as he welcomed his father-in-law at Maplewood; ‘we have only to get under sentence.’

‘Sick or sorry, Hector; that’s the attraction to an old doctor.’

‘And,’ added Hector, with the importance of his youthful magisterial dignity, ‘I hope I have arranged matters for you to see him. I wrote about it; but I am afraid you will not be able to see him alone.’

Great was the satisfaction with which Hector took the conduct of the expedition to Portland Island; though he was inclined to encumber it with more lionizing than the good Doctor’s full heart was ready for. Few words could he obtain, as in the bright August sunshine they steamed out from the pier at Weymouth, and beheld the gray sides of the island, scarred with stone quarries, stretching its lengthening breakwater out on one side, and on the other connected with the land by the pale dim outline of the Chesill Bank. The water was dancing in golden light; white-sailed or red-sailed craft plied across it; a ship of the line lay under the lee of the island, practising gunnery, the three bounds of her balls marked by white columns of spray each time of touching the water, pleasure parties crowded the steamer; but to Dr. May the cheerfulness of the scene made a depressing contrast to the purpose of his visit, as he fixed his eyes on the squared outline of the crest of the island, and the precipitous slope from thence to the breakwater, where trains of loaded trucks rushed forth to the end, discharged themselves, and hurried back.

Landing at the quay, in the midst of confusion, Hector smiled at the Doctor’s innocent proposal of walking, and bestowed him in a little carriage, with a horse whose hard-worked patience was soon called out, as up and up they went, through the narrow, but lively street, past the old-fashioned inn, made memorable by a dinner of George III.; past the fossil tree, clamped against a house like a vine; past heaps of slabs ready for transport, a church perched up high on the slope, and a parsonage in a place that looked only accessible to goats. Lines of fortification began to reveal themselves, and the Doctor thought himself arrived, but he was to wind further on, and be more struck with the dreariness and inhospitality of the rugged rock, almost bare of vegetation, the very trees of stone, and older than our creation; the melancholy late ripening harvest within stone walls, the whole surface furrowed by stern rents and crevices riven by nature, or cut into greater harshness by the quarries hewn by man. The grave strangeness of the region almost marked it out for a place of expiation, like the mountain rising desolate from the sea, where Dante placed his prisoners of hope.

The walls of a vast enclosure became visible; and over them might be seen the tops of great cranes, looking like the denuded ribs of umbrellas. Buildings rose beyond, with deep arched gateways; and a small town was to be seen further off. Mr. Ernescliffe sent in his card at the governor’s house, and found that the facilities he had asked for had been granted. They were told that the prisoner they wished to see was at work at some distance; and while he was summoned, they were to see the buildings. Dr. May had little heart for making a sight of them, except so far as to judge of Leonard’s situation; and he was passively conducted across a gravelled court, turfed in the centre, and containing a few flower-beds, fenced in by Portland’s most natural productions, zamias and ammonites, together with a few stone coffins, which had once inclosed corpses of soldiers of the Roman garrison. Large piles of building inclosed the quadrangle; and passing into the first of these, the Doctor began to realize something of Leonard’s present existence. There lay before him the broad airy passage, and either side the empty cells of this strange hive, as closely packed, and as chary of space, as the compartments of the workers of the honeycomb.

‘Just twice as wide as a coffin,’ said Hector, doing the honours of one, where there was exactly width to stand up between the bed and the wall of corrugated iron; ‘though, happily, there is more liberality of height.’

There was a ground glass window opposite to the door, and a shelf, holding a Bible, Prayer and hymn book, and two others, one religious, and one secular, from the library. A rust-coloured jacket, with a black patch marked with white numbers, and a tarpaulin hat, crossed with two lines of red paint on the crown, hung on the wall. The Doctor asked for Leonard’s cell, but it was in a distant gallery, and he was told that when he had seen one, he had seen all. He asked if these were like those that Leonard had previously inhabited at Milbank and Pentonville, and hearing that they were on the same model, he almost gasped at the thought of the young enterprising spirit thus caged for nine weary months, and to whom this bare confined space was still the only resting-place. He could not look by any means delighted with the excellence of the arrangements, grant it though he might; and he was hurried on to the vast kitchens, their ranges of coppers full of savoury steaming contents, and their racks of loaves looking all that was substantial and wholesome; but his eyes were wandering after the figures engaged in cooking, to whom he was told such work was a reward; he was trying to judge how far they could still enjoy life; but he turned from their stolid low stamp of face with a sigh, thinking how little their condition could tell him of that of a cultivated nature.

He was shown the chapel, unfortunately serving likewise for a schoolroom; the centre space fitted for the officials and their families, the rest with plain wooden benches. But it was not an hour for schooling, and he went restlessly on to the library, to gather all the consolation he could from seeing that the privation did not extend to that of sound and interesting literature. He had yet to see the court, where the prisoners were mustered at half-past five in the morning, thence to be marched off in their various companies to work. He stood on the terrace from which the officials marshalled them, and he was called on to look at the wide and magnificent view of sea and land; but all he would observe to Hector was, ‘That boy’s throat has always been tender since the fever.’ He was next conducted to the great court, the quarry of the stones of the present St. Paul’s, and where the depression of the surface since work began there, was marked by the present height of what had become a steep conical edifice, surmounted by a sort of watch-tower. There he grew quite restive, and hearing a proposal of taking him to the Verne Hill works half a mile off, he declared that Hector was welcome to go; he should wait for his boy.

Just then the guide pointed out at some distance a convict approaching under charge of a warder; and in a few seconds more, the Doctor had stepped back to a small room, where, by special favour, he was allowed to be with the prisoner, instead of seeing him through a grating, but only in the presence of a warder, who was within hearing, though not obtrusively so. Looking, to recognize, not to examine, he drew the young man into his fatherly embrace.

‘You have hurt your hands,’ was his first word, at the touch of the bruised fingers and broken skin.

‘They are getting hardened,’ was the answer, in an alert tone, that gave the Doctor courage to look up and meet an unquenched glance; though there was the hollow look round the eyes that Tom had noticed, the face had grown older, the expression more concentrated, the shoulders had rounded; the coarse blue shirt and heavy boots were dusty with the morning’s toil, and the heat and labour of the day had left their tokens, but the brow was as open, the mouth as ingenuous as ever, the complexion had regained a hue of health, and the air of alacrity and exhilaration surprised as much as it gratified the visitor.

‘What is your work?’ he asked.

‘Filling barrows with stones, and wheeling them to the trucks for the breakwater,’ answered Leonard, in a tone like satisfaction. ‘But pray, if you are so kind, tell me,’ he continued, with anxiety that he could not suppress, ‘what is this about war in America?’

‘Not near Indiana; no fear of that, I trust. But how did you know, Leonard?’

‘I saw, for one moment at a time, in great letters on a placard of the contents of newspapers, at the stations as we came down here, the words, ‘Civil War in America;’ and it has seemed to be in the air here ever since. But Averil has said nothing in her letters. Will it affect them?’

The Doctor gave a brief sketch of what was passing, up to the battle of Bull Run; and his words were listened to with such exceeding avidity, that he was obliged to spend more minutes than he desired on the chances of the war, and the Massissauga tidings, which he wished to make sound more favourable than he could in conscience feel that they were; but when at last he had detailed all he knew from Averil’s letters, and it had been drunk in with glistening eyes, and manner growing constantly less constrained, he led back to Leonard himself: ‘Ethel will write at once to your sister when I get home; and I think I may tell her the work agrees with you.’

‘Yes; and this is man’s work; and it is for the defences,’ he added, with a sparkle of the eye.

‘Very hard and rough,’ returned the Doctor, looking again at the wounded hands and hard-worked air.

‘Oh, but to put out one’s strength again, and have room!’ cried the boy, eagerly.

‘Was it not rather a trying change at first?’

‘To be sure I was stiff, and didn’t know how to move in the morning, but that went off fast enough; and I fill as many barrows a day as any one in our gang.’

‘Then I may tell your sister you rejoice in the change?’

‘Why, it’s work one does not get deadly sick of, as if there was no making one’s self do it,’ said Leonard, eagerly; ‘it is work! and besides, here is sunshine and sea. I can get a sight of that every day; and now and then I can get a look into the bay, and Weymouth—looking like the old time.’ That was his first sorrowful intonation; but the next had the freshness of his age, ‘And there are thistles!’

‘Thistles?’

‘I thought you cared for thistles; for Miss May showed me one at Coombe; but it was not like what they are here—the spikes pointing out and pointing in along the edges of the leaves, and the scales lapping over so wonderfully in the bud.’

‘Picciola!’ said the Doctor to himself; and aloud, ‘Then you have time to enjoy them?’

‘When we are at work at a distance, dinner is brought out, and there is an hour and a half of rest; and on Sunday we may walk about the yards. You should have seen one of our gang, when I got him to look at the chevaux de frise round a bud, how he owned it was a regular patent invention; it just answered to Paley’s illustration.’

‘What, the watch?’ said the Doctor, seeing that the argument had been far from trite to his young friend. ‘So you read Paley?’

‘I read all such books as I could get up there,’ he answered; ‘they gave one something to think about.’

‘Have you no time for reading here?’

‘Oh, no! I am too sleepy to read except on school days and Sundays,’ he said, as if this were a great achievement.

‘And your acquaintance—is he a reader of Paley too?’

‘I believe the chaplain set him on it. He is a clerk, like me, and not much older. He is a regular Londoner, and can hardly stand the work; but he won’t give in if he can help it, or we might not be together.’

Much the Doctor longed to ask what sort of a friend this might be, but the warder’s presence forbade him; and he could only ask what they saw of each other.

‘We were near one another in school at Pentonville, and knew each other’s faces quite well, so that we were right glad to be put into the same gang. We may walk about the yard together on Sunday evening too.’

The Doctor had other questions on his lips that he again restrained, and only asked whether the Sundays were comfortable days.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Leonard, eagerly; but then he too recollected the official, and merely said something commonplace about excellent sermons, adding, ‘And the singing is admirable. Poor Averil would envy such a choir as we have! We sing so many of the old Bankside hymns.’

‘To make your resemblance to Dante’s hill of penitence complete, as Ethel says,’ returned the Doctor.

‘I should like it to be a hill of purification!’ said Leonard, understanding him better than he had expected.

‘It will, I think,’ said the Doctor, ‘to one at least. I am comforted to see you so brave. I longed to come sooner, but—’

‘I am glad you did not.’

‘How?’ But he did not pursue the question, catching from look and gesture, that Leonard could hardly have then met him with self-possession; and as the first bulletin of recovery is often the first disclosure of the severity of an illness, so the Doctor was more impressed by the prisoner’s evident satisfaction in his change of circumstances, than he would have been by mere patient resignation; and he let the conversation be led away to Aubrey’s prospects, in which Leonard took full and eager interest.

‘Tell Aubrey I am working at fortifications too,’ he said, smiling.

‘He could not go to Cambridge without you.’

‘I don’t like to believe that,’ said Leonard, gravely; ‘it is carrying the damage I have done further: but it can’t be. He always was fond of mathematics, and of soldiering. How is it at the old mill?’ he added, suddenly.

‘It is sold.’

‘Sold?’ and his eyes were intently fixed on the Doctor.

‘Yes, he is said to have been much in debt long before; but it was managed quietly—not advertised in the county papers. He went to London, and arranged it all. I saw great renovations going on at the mill, when I went to see old Hardy.’

‘Good old Hardy! how is he?’

‘Much broken. He never got over the shock; and as long as that fellow stayed at the mill, he would not let me attend him.’

‘Ha!’ exclaimed Leonard, but caught himself up.

A message came that Mr. Ernescliffe feared to miss the boat; and the Doctor could only give one tender grasp and murmured blessing, and hurry away, so much agitated that he could hardly join in Hector’s civilities to the officials, and all the evening seemed quite struck down and overwhelmed by the sight of the bright brave boy, and his patience in his dreary lot.

After this, at all the three months’ intervals at which Leonard might be seen, a visit was contrived to him, either by Dr. May or Mr. Wilmot; and Aubrey devoted his first leave of absence to staying at Maplewood, that Hector might take him to his friend; but he came home expatiating so much on the red hair of the infant hope of Maplewood, and the fuss that Blanche made about this new possession, that Ethel detected an unavowed shade of disappointment. Light and whitewash, abundant fare, garments sufficient, but eminently unbecoming, were less impressive than dungeons, rags, and bread and water; when, moreover, the prisoner claimed no pity, but rather congratulation on his badge of merit, improved Sunday dinner, and promotion to the carpenter’s shop, so as absolutely to excite a sense of wasted commiseration and uninteresting prosperity. Conversation constrained both by the grating and the presence of the warder, and Aubrey, more tenderly sensitive than his brother, and devoid of his father’s experienced tact, was too much embarrassed to take the initiative, was afraid of giving pain by dwelling on his present occupations and future hopes, and confused Leonard by his embarrassment. Hector Ernescliffe discoursed about Charleston Harbour and New Orleans; and Aubrey stood with downcast eyes, afraid to seem to be scanning the convict garb, and thus rendering Leonard unusually conscious of wearing it. Then when in parting, Aubrey, a little less embarrassed, began eagerly and in much emotion to beg Leonard to say if there was anything he could get for him, anything he could do for him, anything he would like to have sent him, and began to promise a photograph of his father, Leonard checked him, by answering that it would be an irregularity—nothing of personal property was allowed to be retained by a prisoner.

Aubrey forgot all but the hardship, and began an outburst about the tyranny.

‘It is quite right,’ said Leonard, gravely; ‘there is nothing that might not be used for mischief if one chose.’

And the warder here interfered, and said he was quite right, and it always turned out best in the end for a prisoner to conform himself, and his friends did him no good by any other attempt, as Mr. Ernescliffe could tell the young gentleman. The man’s tone, though neither insolent nor tyrannical, but rather commendatory of his charge, contrasting with his natural deference to the two gentlemen, irritated poor Aubrey beyond measure, so that Hector was really glad to have him safe away, without his having said anything treasonable to the authorities. The meeting, so constrained and uncomfortable, had but made the friends more vividly conscious of the interval between the cadet and the convict, and, moreover, tended to remove the aureole of romance with which the unseen captive had been invested by youthful fancy.

To make the best of a prolonged misfortune does absolutely lessen sympathy, by diminishing the interest of the situation; and even the good Doctor himself was the less concerned at any hindrance to his visits to Portland, as he uniformly found his prisoner cheerful, approved by officials, and always making some small advance in the scale of his own world, and not, as his friends without expected of him, showing that he felt himself injured instead of elated by such rewards as improved diet, or increased gratuities to be set to his account against the time when, after eight years, he might hope for exportation with a ticket of leave to Western Australia.

The halo of approaching death no longer lighted him up, and after the effusion of the first meeting, his inner self had closed up, he was more ready to talk of American news than of his own feelings, and seemed to look little beyond the petty encouragements devised to suit the animal natures of ordinary prisoners, and his visitors sometimes feared lest his character were not resisting the deadening, hardening influence of the unvaried round of manual labour among such associates. He had been soon advanced from the quarry to the carpenter’s shop, and was in favour there from his activity and skill; but his very promotions were sad—and it was more sad, as some thought, for him to be gratified by them. But, as Dr. May always ended, what did they know about him?

CHAPTER XXII

Oh, Bessie Bell and Mary Grey, They were twa bonnie lasses; They bigged a bower on yon burn side, And theekt it over wi’ rashes.

The early glory of autumn was painting the woods of Indiana—crimson, orange, purple, as though a rainbow of intensified tints had been broken into fragments, and then scattered broadcast upon the forest. But though ripe nuts hung on many a bough, the gipsyings had not yet taken place, except at home—when Minna, in her desperate attempts at making the best of things, observed, ‘Now we have to make the fire ourselves, let us think it is all play, and such fun.’

But ‘such fun’ was hard when one or other of the inmates of the house was lying on the bed shaking with ague, and the others creeping wearily about, even on their intermediate days. They had been deluded into imprudent exposure in the lovely evenings of summer, and had never shaken off the results.

‘Come, Ella,’ said Minna, one afternoon, as she descended the bare rickety stairs, ‘Ave is getting better; and if we can get the fire up, and make some coffee and boil some eggs, it will be comfortable for her when she comes down and Henry comes in.’

Ella, with a book in her hand, was curled up in a corner of a sofa standing awry among various other articles of furniture that seemed to have tumbled together by chance within the barn-like room. Minna began moving first one and then the other, daintily wiping off the dust, and restoring an air of comfort.

‘Oh dear!’ said Ella, unfolding herself; ‘I am so tired. Where’s Hetta Mary?’

‘Oh, don’t you know, Hetta Mary went home this morning because Henry asked her where his boots were, and she thought he wanted her to clean them.’

‘Can’t Mrs. Shillabeer come in!’

‘Mrs. Shillabeer said she would never come in again, because Averil asked her not to hold the ham by the bone and cut it with her own knife when Henry was there! Come, Ella it is of no use. We had better do things ourselves, like Cora and Ave, and then we shall not hear people say disagreeable things.’

The once soft, round, kitten-like Minna, whom Leonard used to roll about on the floor, had become a lank, sallow girl, much too tall for her ten years, and with a care-stricken, thoughtful expression on her face, even more in advance of her age than was her height. She moved into the kitchen, a room with an iron stove, a rough table, and a few shelves, looking very desolate. The hands of both little girls had become expert in filling the stove with wood, and they had not far to seek before both it and the hearth in the sitting-room were replenished, and the flame beginning to glow.

‘Where’s the coffee-mill?’ said Minna, presently, looking round in blank despair.

‘Oh dear!’ said Ella, ‘I remember now; that dirty little Polly Mason came to borrow it this morning. I said we wanted it every day: but she guessed we could do without it, for they had got a tea-party, and her little brother had put in a stone and spoilt Cora Muller’s; and she snatched it up and carried it off.’

‘He will serve ours the same, I suppose,’ said Minna. ‘It is too far off to go for it; let us make some tea.’

‘There’s no tea,’ said Ella; ‘a week ago or more that great Irene Brown walked in and reckoned we could lend her ‘ma some tea and sugar, ‘cause we had plenty. And we have used up our own since; and if we did ask her to return the loan, hers is such nasty stuff that nobody could drink it. What shall we do, Minna?’ and she began to cry.

‘We must take some coffee up to the hotel,’ said Minna, after a moment’s reflection; ‘Black Joe is very good-natured, and he’ll grind it.’

‘But I don’t like to go ail by myself,’ said Ella; ‘into the kitchen too, and hear them say things about Britishers.’

‘I’ll go, dear,’ said Minna, gently, ‘if you will just keep the fire up, and boil the eggs, and make the toast, and listen if Ave calls.’

Poor Minna, her sensitive little heart trembled within her at the rough contemptuous words that the exclusive, refined tone of the family always provoked, and bodily languor and weariness made the walk trying; but she was thinking of Ave’s need, and resolutely took down her cloak and hat. But at that moment the latch was raised, and the bright graceful figure of Cora stood among them, her feathered hat and delicate muslin looking as fresh as at New York.

‘What, all alone!’ she said; ‘I know it is poor Ave’s sick day. Is she better?’

‘Yes, going to get up and come down; but—’ and all the troubles were poured out.

‘True enough, the little wretch did spoil our mill, but Rufus mended it; and as I thought Polly had been marauding on you, I brought some down.’

‘Ah! I thought I smelt it most deliciously as you came in, but I was afraid I only fancied it because I was thinking about it. Dear Cora, how good you are!’

‘And have you anything for her to eat?’

‘I was going to make some toast.’

‘Of that dry stuff! Come, we’ll manage something better:’ and off came the dainty embroidered cambric sleeves, up went the coloured ones, a white apron came out of a pocket, and the pretty hands were busy among the flour; the children assisting, learning, laughing a childlike laugh.

‘Ah!’ cried Cora, turning round, and making a comic threatening gesture with her floury fingers; ‘you ought not to have come till we were fixed. Go and sit in your chair by the fire.’

‘Dear Cora!’

But Cora ran at her, and the wan trembling creature put on a smile, and was very glad to comply; being totally unequal to resist or even to stand long enough to own her dread of Henry’s finding all desolate and nothing to eat.

Presently Cora tripped in, all besleeved and smartened, to set cushions behind the tired back and head, and caress the long thin fingers. ‘I’ve left Minna, like King Alfred, to watch the cakes,’ she said; ‘and Ella is getting the cups. So your fifth girl is gone.’

‘The fifth in five months! And we let her sit at table, and poor dear Minna has almost worn out her life in trying to hinder her from getting affronted.’

‘I’ve thought what to do for you, Ave. There’s the Irish woman, Katty Blake—her husband has been killed. She is rough enough, but tender in her way; and she must do something for herself and her child.’

‘Her husband killed!’

‘Yes, at Summerville. I thought you had heard it. Mordaunt wrote to me to tell her; and I shall never forget her wailing at his dying away from his country. It was not lamentation for herself, but that he should have died far away from his own people.’

‘She is not long from the old country; I should like to have her if—if we can afford it. For if the dividends don’t come soon from that building company, Cora, I don’t know where to turn—’

‘Oh, they must come. Father has been writing to Rufus about the arrangements. Besides, those Irish expect less, and understand old country manners better, if you can put up with their breakages.’

‘I could put up with anything to please Henry, and save Minna’s little hard-worked bones.’

‘I will send her tomorrow. Is it not Minna’s day of ague?’

‘Yes, poor dear. That is always the day we get into trouble.’

‘I never saw a child with such an instinct for preventing variance, or so full of tact and pretty ways; yet I have seen her tremble under her coaxing smile, that even Mis’ Shillabeer can’t resist.’

‘See, see!’ cried Ella, hurrying in, ‘surely our contingent is not coming home!’

‘No,’ said Cora, hastening to the door, ‘these must be a reinforcement marching to take the train at Winiamac.’

‘Marching?’ said Ella, looking up archly at her. ‘We didn’t let our volunteers march in that way.’

They were sturdy bearded backwoodsmen, rifle on shoulder, and with grave earnest faces; but walking rather than marching, irregularly keeping together, or straggling, as they chose.

‘Your volunteers!’ cried Cora, her eyes flashing; ‘theirs was toy work! These are bound for real patriotic war!’ and she clasped her hands together, then waved her handkerchief.

‘It is sad,’ said Averil, who had moved to the window, ‘to see so many elderly faces—men who must be the prop of their families.’

‘It is because ours is a fight of men, not of children; not one of your European wars of paltry ambition, but a war of principle!’ cried Cora, with that intensity of enthusiasm that has shed so much blood in the break-up of the Great Republic.

‘They do look as Cromwell’s Ironsides may have done,’ said Averil; ‘as full of stern purpose.’

And verily Averil noted the difference. Had a number of European soldiers been passing so near in an equally undisciplined manner, young women could not have stood forth as Cora was doing, unprotected, yet perfectly safe from rudeness or remark; making ready answer to the inquiry for the nearest inn—nay, only wishing she were in her own house, to evince her patriotism by setting refreshment before the defenders of her cause. Her ardour had dragged Averil up with her a little way, so as to feel personally every vicissitude that befell the North, and to be utterly unaware of any argument in favour of the Confederates; but still Averil was, in Cora’s words, ‘too English;’ she could not, for the life of her, feel as she did when equipping her brother against possible French invasions, and when Mordaunt Muller had been enrolled in the Federal army, she had almost offended the exultant sister by condolence instead of congratulation.

Five months had elapsed since the arrival of Averil in Massissauga—months of anxiety and disappointment, which had sickened Henry of plans of farming, and lessened his hopes of practice. The same causes that affected him at New York told in Indiana; and even if he had been employed, the fees would have been too small to support the expense of horses. As to farming, labour was scarce, and could only be obtained at the cost of a considerable outlay, and, moreover, of enduring rude self-assertions that were more intolerable to Henry than even to his sisters. The chief hope of the family lay in the speculation in which Averil’s means had been embarked, which gave them a right to their present domicile, and to a part of the uncleared waste around them; and would, when Massissauga should begin to flourish, place them in affluence. The interest of the portions of the two younger girls was all that was secure, since these were fortunately still invested at home. Inhabitants did not come, lots of land were not taken; and the Mullers evidently profited more by the magnificent harvest produced by their land than by the adventure of city founding. Still, plenty and comfort reigned in their house, and Cora had imported a good deal of refinement and elegance, which she could make respected where Averil’s attempts were only sneered down. Nor had sickness tried her household. Owing partly to situation—considerably above the level of River Street—partly to the freer, more cleared and cultivated surroundings—partly likewise to experience, and Cousin Deborah’s motherly watchfulness—the summer had passed without a visitation of ague, though it seemed to be regarded as an adjunct of spring, as inevitable as winter frost. Averil trembled at the thought, but there was no escape; there were absolutely no means of leaving the spot, or of finding maintenance elsewhere. Indeed, Cora’s constant kindness and sympathy were too precious to be parted with, even had it been possible to move. After the boarding-house, Massissauga was a kind of home; and the more spirits and energy failed, the more she clung to it.

Mr. Muller had lately left home to arrange for the sale of his corn, and had announced that he might perhaps pay a visit to his son Mordaunt in the camp at Lexington. Cora was expecting a letter from him, and the hope that ‘Dr. Warden’ might bring one from the post-office at Winiamac had been one cause of her visit on this afternoon; for the mammoth privileges of Massissauga did not include a post-office, nor the sight of letters more than once a week.

The table had just been covered with preparations for a meal, and the glow of the fire was beginning to brighten the twilight, when the sound of a horse’s feet came near, and Henry rode past the window, but did not appear for a considerable space, having of late been reduced to become his own groom. But even in the noise of the hoofs, even in the wave of the hand, the girls had detected gratified excitement.

‘Charleston has surrendered! The rebels have submitted!’ cried Cora.

And Averil’s heart throbbed with its one desperate hope. No! That would have brought him in at once.

After all, both were in a state to feel it a little flat when he came in presenting a letter to Miss Muller, and announcing, ‘I have had a proposal, ladies; what would you say to seeing me a surgeon to the Federal forces?—Do you bid me go, Miss Muller?’

‘I bid every one go who can be useful to my country,’ said Cora.

‘Don’t look alarmed, Averil,’ said Henry, affectionately, as he met her startled eyes; ‘there is no danger. A surgeon need never expose himself.’

‘But how—what has made you think of it?’ asked Averil, faintly.

‘A letter from Mr. Muller—a very kind letter. He tells me that medical men are much wanted, and that an examination by a Board is all that is required, the remuneration is good, and it will be an introduction that will avail me after the termination of the war, which will end with the winter at latest.’

‘And father has accepted an office in the commissariat department!’ exclaimed Cora, from her letter.

‘Yes,’ answered Henry; ‘he tells me that, pending more progression here, it is wiser for us both to launch into the current of public events, and be floated upwards by the stream.’

‘Does he want you to come to him, Cora?’ was all that Averil contrived to say.

‘Oh no, he will be in constant locomotion,’ said Cora. ‘I shall stay to keep house for Rufus. And here are some directions for him that I must carry home. Don’t come, Dr. Warden; I shall never cure you of thinking we cannot stir without an escort. You will want to put a little public spirit into this dear Ave. That’s her one defect; and when you are one of us, she will be forced to give us her heart.’

And away ran the bright girl, giving her caresses to each sister as she went.

The little ones broke out, ‘O, Henry, Henry, you must not go away to the wars!’ and Averil’s pleading eyes spoke the same.

Then Henry sat down and betook himself to argument. It would be folly to lose the first opening to employment that had presented itself. He grieved indeed to leave his sisters in this desolate, unhealthy place; but they were as essentially safe as at Stoneborough; their living alone for a few weeks, or at most months, would be far less remarkable here than there; and he would be likely to be able to improve or to alter their present situation, whereas they were now sinking deeper and more hopelessly into poverty every day. Then, too, he read aloud piteous accounts of the want of medical attendance, showing that it was absolutely a cruelty to detain such assistance from the sick and wounded. This argument was the one most appreciated by Averil and Minna. The rest were but questions of prudence; this touched their hearts. Men lying in close tents, or in crowded holds of ships, with festering wounds and fevered lips, without a hand to help them—some, too, whom they had seen at New York, and whose exulting departure they had witnessed—sufferers among whom their own Cora’s favourite brother might at any moment be numbered—the thought brought a glow of indignation against themselves for having wished to withhold him.

‘Yes, go, Henry; it is right, and you shall hear not another word of objection,’ said Averil.

‘You can write or telegraph the instant you want me. And it will be for a short time,’ said Henry, half repenting when the opposition had given way.

‘Oh, we shall get on very well,’ said Minna, cheerfully; ‘better, perhaps for you know we don’t mind Far West manners; and I’ll have learnt to do all sorts of things as well as Cora when you come home!’

And Henry, after a year’s famine of practice, was in better spirits than since that fatal summer morning. Averil felt how different a man is in his vocation, and deprived of it.

‘Oh yes,’ she said to herself, ‘if I had let ourselves be a drag on him when he is so much needed, I could never have had the face to write to our dear sufferer at home in his noble patience. It is better that we should be desolate than that he should be a wreck, or than that mass of sickness should be left untended! And the more desolate, the more sure of One Protector.’

There was true heroism in the spirit in which this young girl braced herself to uncomplaining acceptance of desertion in this unwholesome swamp, with her two little ailing sisters, beside the sluggish stream, amid the skeleton trees—heroism the greater because there was no enthusiastic patriotism to uphold her—it was only the land of her captivity, whence she looked towards home like Judah to Jerusalem.

CHAPTER XXIII

Prisoner of hope thou art; look up and sing, In hope of promised spring. Christian Year

In the summer of 1862, Tom May was to go up for his examination at the College of Physicians, but only a day or two before it he made his appearance at home, in as much excitement as it was in him to betray. Hazlitt, the banker’s clerk at Whitford, had written to him tidings of the presentation of the missing cheque for L25, which Bilson had paid to old Axworthy shortly before the murder, and which Leonard had mentioned as in the pocket-book containing his receipt for the sum that had been found upon him. Tom had made a halt at Whitford, and seen the cheque, which had been backed by the word Axworthy, with an initial that, like all such signatures of the nephew, might stand either for S. or F., and the stiff office hand of both the elder and younger Axworthy was so much alike, that no one could feel certain whose writing it was. The long concealment, after the prisoner’s pointed reference to it, was, however, so remarkable, that the home conclave regarded the cause as won; and the father and son hastened triumphantly to the attorneys’ office.

Messrs. Bramshaw and Anderson were greatly struck, and owned that their own minds were satisfied as to the truth of their client’s assertion; but they demurred as to the possibility of further steps. An action for forgery, Tom’s first hope, he saw to be clearly impossible; Samuel Axworthy appeared to have signed the cheque in his own name, and he had every right to it as his uncle’s heir; and though the long withholding of it, as well as his own departure, were both suspicious circumstances, they were not evidence. Where was there any certainty that the cheque had ever been in the pocket-book or even if it had, how did it prove the existence of young Ward’s acknowledgment? Might it not have been in some receptacle of papers hitherto not opened? There was no sufficient case to carry to the police, after a conviction like Leonard’s, to set them on tracing the cheque either to an unknown robber, or to Sam Axworthy, its rightful owner.

Mr. Bramshaw likewise dissuaded Dr. May from laying the case before the Secretary of State, as importunity without due grounds would only tell against him if any really important discovery should be made: and the Doctor walked away, with blood boiling at people’s coolness to other folk’s tribulations, and greatly annoyed with Tom for having acceded to the representations of the men of law, and declining all co-operation in drawing up a representation for the Home Office, on the plea that he had no time to lose in preparing for his own examination, and must return to town by the next train, which he did without a syllable of real converse with any one at home.

The Doctor set to work with his home helpers, assisted by Dr. Spencer; but the work of composition seemed to make the ground give way under their feet, and a few adroit remarks from Dr. Spencer finally showed him and Ethel that they had not yet attained the prop for the lever that was to move the world. He gave it up, but still he did not quite forgive Tom for having been so easily convinced, and ready to be dismissed to his own affairs.

However, Dr. May was gratified by the great credit with which his son passed his examination, and took his degree; and Sir Matthew Fleet himself wrote in high terms of his talent, diligence, and steadiness, volunteering hopes of being able to put him forward in town in his own line, for which Tom had always had a preference; and adding, that it was in concurrence with his own recommendation that the young man wished to pursue his studies at Paris—he had given him introductions that would enable him to do so to the greatest advantage, and he hoped his father would consent. The letter was followed up by one from Tom himself, as usual too reasonable and authoritative to be gainsaid, with the same representation of advantages to be derived from a course of the Parisian hospitals.

‘Ah, well! he is after old Fleet’s own heart,’ said Dr. May, between pride and mortification. ‘I should not grudge poor Fleet some one to take interest in his old age, and I did not look to see him so warm about anything. He has not forgotten Calton Hill! But the boy must have done very well! I say, shall we see him Sir Thomas some of these days, Ethel, and laugh at ourselves for having wanted, to make him go round in a mill after our old fashion?’

‘You were contented to run round in your mill,’ said Ethel, fondly, ‘and maybe he will too.’

‘No, no, Ethel, I’ll not have him persuaded. Easy-going folk, too lazy for ambition, have no right to prescribe for others. Ambition turned sour is a very dangerous dose! Much better let it fly off! I mean to look out of my mill yet, and see Sir Thomas win the stakes. Only I wish he would come and see us; tell him he shall not hear a word to bother him about the old practice. People have lived and died at Stoneborough without a May to help them, and so they will again, I suppose.’

Ethel was very glad to see how her father had made up his mind to what was perhaps the most real disappointment of his life, but she was grieved that Tom did not respond to the invitation, and next wrote from Paris. It was one of his hurried notes, great contrasts to such elaborate performances as his recent letter. ‘Thanks, many thanks to my father,’ he said; ‘I knew you would make him see reason, and he always yields generously. I was too much hurried to come home; could not afford to miss the trail. I had not time to say before that the Bank that sent the cheque to Whitford had it from a lodging-house in town. Landlord had a writ served on S. A.; as he was embarking at Folkestone, he took out the draft and paid. He knew its import, if Bramshaw did not. I hope my father was not vexed at my not staying. There are things I cannot stand, namely, discussions and Gertrude.’

Gertrude was one of the chief cares upon Ethel’s mind. She spent many thoughts upon the child, and even talked her over with Flora.

‘What is it, Flora? is it my bad management? She is a good girl, and a dear girl; but there is such a want of softness about her.’

‘There is a want of softness about all the young ladies of the day,’ returned Flora.

‘I have heard you say so, but—’

‘We have made girls sensible and clearheaded, till they have grown hard. They have been taught to despise little fears and illusions, and it is certainly not becoming.’

‘We had not fears, we were taught to be sensible.’

‘Yes, but it is in the influence of the time! It all tends to make girls independent.’

‘That’s very well for the fine folks you meet in your visits, but it does not account for my Daisy—always at home, under papa’s eye—having turned nineteenth century—What is it, Flora? She is reverent in great things, but not respectful except to papa, and that would not have been respect in one of us—only he likes her sauciness.’

‘That is it, partly.’

‘No, I won’t have that said,’ exclaimed Ethel. ‘Papa is the only softening influence in the house—the only one that is tender. You see it is unlucky that Gertrude has so few that she really does love, with anything either reverend or softening about them. She is always at war with Charles Cheviot, and he has not fun enough, is too lumbering altogether, to understand her, or set her down in the right way; and she domineers over Hector like the rest of us. I did hope the babies might have found out her heart, but, unluckily, she does not take to them. She is only bored by the fuss that Mary and Blanche make about them.

‘You know we are all jealous of both Charles Cheviots, elder and younger.’

‘I often question whether I should not have taken her down and made her ashamed of all the quizzing and teasing at the time of Mary’s marriage. But one cannot be always spoiling bright merry mischief, and I am only elder sister after all. It is a wonder she is as good to me as she is.’

‘She never remembered our mother, poor dear.’

‘Ah! that is the real mischief,’ said Ethel. ‘Mamma would have given the atmosphere of gentleness and discretion, and so would Margaret. How often I have been made, by the merest pained look, to know when what I said was saucy or in bad taste, and I—I can only look forbidding, or else blurt out a reproof that will not come softly.’

‘The youngest must be spoilt,’ said Flora, ‘that’s an ordinance of nature. It ends when a boy goes to school, and when a girl—’

‘When?’

‘When she marries—or when she finds out what trouble is,’ said Flora.

‘Is that all you can hold out to my poor Daisy?’

‘Well, it is the way of the world. There is just now a reaction from sentiment, and it is the less feminine variety. The softness will come when there is a call for it. Never mind when the foundation is safe.’

‘If I could only see that child heartily admiring and looking up! I don’t mean love—there used to be a higher, nobler reverence!’

‘Such as you and Norman used to bestow on Shakespeare and Scott, and—the vision of Cocksmoor.’

‘Not only used,’ said Ethel.

‘Yes, it is your soft side,’ said Flora; ‘it is what answers the purpose of sentiment in people like you. It is what I should have thought living with you would have put into any girl; but Gertrude has a satirical side, and she follows the age.’

‘I wish you would tell her so—it is what she especially wants not to do! But the spirit of opposition is not the thing to cause tenderness.’

‘No, you must wait for something to bring it out. She is very kind to my poor little Margaret, and I won’t ask how she talks of her.’

‘Tenderly; oh yes, that she always would do.’

‘There, then, Ethel, if she can talk tenderly of Margaret, there can’t be much amiss at the root.’

‘No; and you don’t overwhelm the naughty girl with baby talk.’

‘Like our happy, proud young mothers,’ sighed Flora; and then letting herself out—’but indeed, Ethel, Margaret is very much improved. She has really begun to wish to be good. I think she is struggling with herself.’

‘Something to love tenderly, something to reverence highly.’ So meditated Ethel, as she watched her sunny-haired, open-faced Daisy, so unconquerably gay and joyous that she gave the impression of sunshine without shade. There are stages of youth that are in themselves unpleasing, and yet that are nobody’s fault, nay, which may have within them seeds of strength. Tom’s satire had fostered Daisy’s too congenial spirit, and he reaped the consequence in the want of repose and sympathy that were driving him from home, and shutting him up within himself. Would he ever forgive that flippant saying, which Ethel had recollected with shame ever since—shame more for herself than for the child, who probably had forgotten, long ago, her ‘shaft at random sent’?

Then Ethel would wonder whether, after all, her discontent with Gertrude’s speeches was only from feeling older and graver, and perhaps from a certain resentment at finding how the course of time was wearing down the sharp edge of compassion towards Leonard.

A little more about Leonard was gathered when the time came of release for his friend the clerk Brown. This young man had an uncle at Paris, engaged in one of the many departments connected with steam that carry Englishmen all over the world, and Leonard obtained permission to write to Dr. Thomas May, begging him to call upon the uncle, and try if he could be induced to employ the penitent and reformed nephew under his own eye. It had been wise in Leonard to write direct, for if the request had been made through any one at home, Tom would have considered it as impossible; but he could not resist the entreaty, and his mission was successful. The uncle was ready to be merciful, and undertook all the necessary arrangements for, and even the responsibility of, bringing the ticket-of-leave man to Paris, where he found him a desk in his office. One of Tom’s few detailed epistles was sent to Ethel after this arrival, when the uncle had told him how the nephew had spoken of his fellow-prisoner. It was to Leonard Ward that the young man had owed the inclination to open his heart to religious instruction, hitherto merely endured as a portion of the general infliction of the penalty, a supposed engine for dealing with the superstitious, but entirely beneath his attention. The sight of the educated face had at first attracted him, but when he observed the reverential manner in chapel, he thought it mere acting the ”umble prisoner,’ till he observed how unobtrusive, unconscious, and retiring was every token of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or softened in praise or in prayer, till he owned the genuineness and guessed the depth of both, then perceived in school how far removed his unknown comrade was from the mere superstitious boor. This was the beginning. The rest had been worked out by the instruction and discipline of the place, enforced by the example, and latterly by the conversation, of his fellow-prisoner, until he had come forth sincerely repenting, and with the better hope for the future that his sins had not been against full light.

He declared himself convinced that Ward far better merited to be at large than he did, and told of the regard that uniform good conduct was obtaining at last, though not till after considerable persecution, almost amounting to personal danger from the worse sort of convicts, who regarded him as a spy, because he would not connive at the introduction of forbidden indulgences, and always stood by the authorities. Once his fearless interposition had saved the life of a warder, and this had procured him trust, and promotion to a class where his companions were better conducted, and more susceptible to good influences, and among them Brown was sure that his ready submission and constant resolution to do his work were producing an effect. As to his spirits, Brown had never known him break down but once, and that was when he had come upon a curious fossil in the stone. Otherwise he was grave and contented, but never laughed or joked as even some gentlemen prisoners of more rank and age had been known to do. The music in the chapel was his greatest pleasure, and he had come to be regarded as an important element in the singing.

Very grateful was Dr. May to Tom for having learnt, and still more for having transmitted, all these details, and Ethel was not the less touched, because she knew they were to travel beyond Minster Street. Those words of Mr. Wilmot’s seemed to be working out their accomplishment; and she thought so the more, when in early spring one of Leonard’s severe throat attacks led to his being sent after his recovery to assist the schoolmaster, instead of returning to the carpenter’s shed; and he was found so valuable in the school that the master begged to retain his services.

That spring was a grievous one in Indiana. The war, which eighteen months previously was to have come to an immediate end, was still raging, and the successes that had once buoyed up the Northern States with hope had long since been chequered by terrible reverses. On, on, still fought either side, as though nothing could close the strife but exhaustion or extinction; and still ardent, still constant, through bereavement and privation, were either party to their blood-stained flag. Mordaunt Muller had fallen in one of the terrible battles on the Rappahannock; and Cora, while, sobbing in Averil’s arms, had still confessed herself thankful that it had been a glorious death for his country’s cause! And even in her fresh grief, she had not endeavoured to withhold her other brother, when, at the urgent summons of Government, he too had gone forth to join the army.

Cora was advised to return to her friends at New York, but she declared her intention of remaining to keep house with Cousin Deborah. Unless Averil would come with her, nothing should induce her to leave Massissauga, certainly not while Ella and Averil were alternately laid low by the spring intermittent fever. Perhaps the fact was that, besides her strong affection for Averil, she felt that in her ignorance she had assisted her father in unscrupulously involving them in a hazardous and unsuccessful speculation, and that she was the more bound, in justice as well as in love and pity, to do her best for their assistance. At any rate, Rufus had no sooner left home, than she insisted on the three sisters coming to relieve her loneliness—in other words, in removing them from the thin ill-built frame house, gaping in every seam with the effects of weather, and with damp oozing up between every board of the floor, the pestiferous river-fog, the close air of the forest, and the view of the phantom trees, now decaying and falling one against another.

Cousin Deborah, who had learnt to love and pity the forlorn English girls, heartily concurred; and Averil consented, knowing that the dry house and pure air were the best hope of restoring Ella’s health.

Averil and Ella quickly improved, grew stronger in the intervals, and suffered less during the attacks; but Minna, who in their own house had been less ill, had waited on both, and supplied the endless deficiencies of the kindly and faithful, but two-fisted Katty; Minna, whose wise and simple little head had never failed in sensible counsels, or tender comfort; Minna, whom the rudest and most self-important far-wester never disobliged, Minna, the peace-maker, the comfort and blessing—was laid low by fever, and fever that, as the experienced eyes of Cousin Deborah at once perceived, ‘meant mischief.’ Then it was that the real kindliness of heart of the rough people of the West showed itself. The five wild young ladies, whose successive domestic services had been such trouble, and whose answer to a summons from the parlour had been, ‘Did yer holler, Avy? I thort I heerd a scritch,’ each, from Cleopatra Betsy to Hetta Mary, were constantly rushing in to inquire, or to present questionable dainties and nostrums from their respective ‘Mas’; the charwomen, whom Minna had coaxed in her blandest manner to save trouble to Averil and disgust to Henry, were officious in volunteers of nursing and sitting up, the black cook at the hotel sent choice fabrics of jelly and fragrant ice; and even Henry’s rival, who had been so strong against the insolence of a practitioner showing no testimonials, no sooner came under the influence of the yearning, entreating, but ever-patient eyes, than his attendance became assiduous, his interest in the case ardent.

Henry himself was in the camp, before Vicksburg, with his hands too full of piteous cases of wounds and fever to attempt the most hurried visit.

‘Sister, dear,’ said the soft slow voice, one day when Averil had been hoping her patient was asleep, ‘are you writing to Henry?’

‘Yes, my darling. Do you want to say anything?’

‘Oh yes! so much;’ and the eyes grew bright, and the breath gasping; ‘please beg Henry—tell Henry—that I must—I can’t bear it any longer if I don’t—’

‘You must what, dear child? Henry would let you do anything he could.’

‘Oh, then, would he let me speak about dear Leonard?’ and the child grew deadly white when the words were spoken; but her eyes still sought Averil’s face, and grew terrified at the sight of the gush of tears. ‘O, Ave, Ave, tell me only—he is not dead!’ and as Averil could only make a sign, ‘I do have such dreadful fancies about him, and I think I could sleep if I only knew what was really true.’

‘You shall, dear child, you shall, without waiting to hear from Henry; I know he would let you.’

And only then did Averil know the full misery that Henry’s decision had inflicted on the gentle little heart, in childish ignorance, imagining fetters and dungeons, even in her sober waking moods, and a prey to untold horrors in every dream, exaggerated by feverishness and ailment—horrors that, for aught she knew, might be veritable, and made more awful by the treatment of his name as that of one dead.

To hear of him as enjoying the open air and light of day, going to church, singing their own favourite hymn tunes, and often visited by Dr. May, was to her almost as great a joy as if she had heard of him at liberty. And Averil had a more than usually cheerful letter to read to her, one written in the infirmary during his recovery. His letters to her were always cheerful, but this one was particularly so, having been written while exhilarated by the relaxations permitted to convalescents, and by enjoying an unwonted amount of conversation with the chaplain and the doctor.

‘So glad, so glad,’ Minna was heard murmuring to herself again and again; her rest was calmer than it had been for weeks, and the doctor found her so much better that he trusted that a favourable change had begun.

But it was only a gleam of hope. The weary fever held its prey, and many as were the fluctuations, they always resulted in greater weakness; and the wandering mind was not always able to keep fast hold of the new comfort. Sometimes she would piteously clasp her sister’s hand, and entreat, ‘Tell me again;’ and sometimes the haunting delirious fancies of chains and bars would drop forth from the tongue that had lost its self-control; yet even at the worst came the dear old recurring note, ‘God will not let them hurt him, for he has not done it!’ Sometimes, more trying to Averil than all, she would live over again the happy games with him, or sing their favourite hymns and chants, or she would be heard pleading, ‘O, Henry, don’t be cross to Leonard.’

Cora could not fail to remark the new name that mingled in the unconscious talk; but she had learnt to respect Averil’s reserve, and she forbore from all questioning, trying even to warn Cousin Deborah, who, with the experience of an elderly woman, remarked, ‘That she had too much to do to mind what a sick child rambled about. When Cora had lived to her age, she would know how unaccountably they talked.’

But Averil felt the more impelled to an outpouring by this delicate forbearance, and the next time she and Cora were sent out together to breathe the air, while Cousin Deborah watched the patient, she told the history, and to a sympathizing listener, without a moment’s doubt of Leonard’s innocence, nor that American law would have managed matters better.

‘And now, Cora, you know why I told you there were bitterer sorrows than yours.’

‘Ah! Averil, I could have believed you once; but to know that he never can come again! Now you always have hope.’

‘My hope has all but gone,’ said Averil. ‘There is only one thing left to look to. If I only can live till he is sent out to a colony, then nothing shall keep me back from him!’

‘And what would I give for even such a hope?’

‘We have a better hope, both of us,’ murmured Averil.

‘It won’t seem so long when it is over.’

Well was it for Averil that this fresh link of sympathy was riveted, for day by day she saw the little patient wasting more hopelessly away, and the fever only burning lower for want of strength to feed on. Utterly exhausted and half torpid, there was not life or power enough left in the child for them to know whether she was aware of her condition. When they read Prayers, her lips always moved for the Lord’s Prayer and Doxology; and when the clergyman came out from Winiamac, prayed by her and blessed her, she opened her eyes with a look of comprehension; and if, according to the custom from the beginning of her illness, the Psalms and Lessons were not read in her room, she was uneasy, though she could hardly listen. So came Easter Eve; and towards evening she was a little revived, and asked Averil what day it was, then answered, ‘I thought it would have been nice to have died yesterday,’—it was the first time she mentioned death. Averil told her she was better, but half repented, as the child sank into torpor again; and Averil, no longer the bewildered girl who had been so easily led from the death scene, knew the fitful breath and fluttering pulse, and felt the blank dread stealing over her heart.

Again, however, the child looked up, and murmured, ‘You have not read to-day.’ Cora, who had the Bible on her knee, gently obeyed, and read on, where she was, the morning First Lesson, the same in the American Church as in our own. Averil, dull with watching and suffering, sat on dreamily, with the scent of primroses wafted to her, as it were, by the association of the words, though her power to attend to them was gone. Before the chapter was over, the doze had overshadowed the little girl again; and yet, more than once, as the night drew on, they heard her muttering what seemed like the echo of one of its verses, ‘Turn you, turn you—’

At last, after hours of watching, and more than one vain endeavour of good Cousin Deborah to lead away the worn but absorbed nurses, the dread messenger came. Minna turned suddenly in her sister’s arms, with more strength than Averil had thought was left in her, and eagerly stretched out her arms, while the words so long trembling on her lips found utterance. ‘Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope! O, Leonard dear! it does not hurt!’ But that last word was almost lost in the gasp—the last gasp. What ‘did not hurt’ was death without his sting.

‘O, Cora! Was he with her? Is he gone too?’ was Averil’s cry at the first moment, as she strained the form of her little comforter for the last time in her arms.

‘And if he is, they are in joy together,’ said Cousin Deborah, tenderly but firmly unloosing Averil’s arms, though with the tears running down her cheeks. ‘Take her away, Cora, and both of you sleep. This dear lamb is in better keeping than yours.’

Heavy, grievous, was the loss, crushing the grief; but it was such as to be at its softest and sweetest at Easter, amid the Resurrection joys, and the budding flowers, though Ella’s bitterest fit of weeping was excited by there being no primroses—the primroses that Minna loved so much; and her first pleasurable thought was to sit down and write to her dear ‘Mr. Tom’ to send her some primrose seed, for Minna’s grave.

Minna’s grave! Alas! Massissauga had but an untidy desolate-looking region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to choose a shaded corner in her father’s ground, where they might daily tend the child’s earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this with horror; and finally, on one of the Easter holidays, the little wasted form in its coffin was reverently driven by Philetus to Winiamac, while the sisters and Cora slowly followed, thinking—the one of the nameless blood-stained graves of a battle-field; the other whether an equally nameless grave-yard, but one looked on with a shudder unmixed with exultation, had opened for the other being she loved best. ‘The Resurrection and the Life.—Yes, had not He made His grave with the wicked, and been numbered with the transgressors!’

Somehow, the present sorrow was more abundant in such comforts as these than all the pangs which her heart, grown old in sorrow, had yet endured.

Yet if her soul had bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the time of her brother’s trial recurred, and grew on her with every occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived—with one brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, the other in his convict prison—wore her down, and made every passing effect of climate or fatigue seize on her frame like a serious disorder; and the more she resigned her spirit, the more her body gave way. Yet she was infinitely happier. The repentance and submission were bearing fruit, and the ceasing to struggle had brought a strange calm and acceptance of all that might be sent; nay, her own decay was perhaps the sweetest solace and healing of the wearied spirit; and as to Ella, she would trust, and she did trust, that in some way or other all would be well.