The Chimes..........................................................................................................................................................1

There are not many people and as it is desirable that a storyteller and a storyreader should establish a

mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to

young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet

growing up, or already growing down again there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a

church. I don't mean at sermontime in warm weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice),

but in the night, and alone. A great multi tude of persons will be violently astonished, I know, by this

position, in the broad bold Day. But it applies to Night. It must be argued by night, and I will undertake to

maintain it successfully on any gusty winter's night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent chosen

from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old churchyard, before an old church door; and will

previously empower me to lock him in, if needful to his satisfaction, until morning.

For the nightwind has a dismal trick of wander ing round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as

it goes; and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by

which to enter. And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and

howls to issue forth again: and not content with stalking through the aisles, and glid ing round and round the

pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself

despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and

creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it

breaks out shrilly, as with laughter; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a ghostly

sound too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done,

and false Gods worshipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are so

flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sit ting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind

But, high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to

come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and

twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the

belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper shrivelled by the changing

weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old

oaken joists and beams; and dust grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long

security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold upon their threadspun

castles in the air, or climb up sailorlike in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble

legs to save one life! High up in the steeple of an old church far above the light and murmur of the town and

far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of

They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many centuries

ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew their

names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would

rather incur the responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had their silver mugs no doubt,

besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and

Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and

wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure

of the wind, moreover; for fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their

cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor

mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known

to beat a blustering Nor' Wester, aye, 'all to fits,' as Toby Veck said; for though they chose to call him

Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could make it anything else either (except Tobias) without a

special act of parlia ment; he having been as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been in theirs,

For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck's belief, for I am sure he had opportunities enough of forming a

correct one. And whatever Tobv Veck said, I say. And I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he did stand

all day long (and weary work it was) just outside the churchdoor. In fact he was a ticketporter, Toby Veck,

And a breezy, gooseskinned, bluenosed redeyed, stonytoed, toothchattering place it was, to wait in, in

the wintertime, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind came tearing round the corner especially the east

wind as if it had sallied forth, express, from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And

oftentimes it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and

passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried 'Why, here he is!' Incontinently his little

white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would

be seen to wrestle and struggle un availingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation,

and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted,

and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree

removed from a posi tive miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails

or other very port able creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the

But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly, was, after all, a sort of holiday for Toby. That's the

fact. He didn't seem to wait so long for sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having to fight with that

boisterous element took off his attention, and quite freshened him up when he was getting hungry and

lowspirited. A hard frost too, or a fall of snow, was an Event; and it seemcd to do him good, somehow or

other it would have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind and frost and snow, and

Wet weather was the worst; the cold damp, clammy wet, that wrapped him up like a moist greatcoat the

only kind of greatcoat Toby owned, or could have added to his comfort by dispensing with. Wet days, when

the rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the streets's throat, like his own, was choked with mist;

when smoking umbrellas passed and repassed, spinning round and round like so many teetotums, as they

knocked against each other on the crowded footway, throwing off a little whirlpool of uncomfortable

sprinklings; when gutters brawled and waterspouts were full and noisy; when the wet from the projecting

stones and ledges of the church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp of straw on which he stood

mere mud in no time; those were the days that tried him. Then indeed, you might see Toby looking anxiously

out from his shelter in an angle of the church wall such a meagre shelter that in summer time it never cast

a shadow thicker than a goodsized walkingstick upon the sunny pavement with a disconsolate and

lengthened face. But coming out, a minute afterwards, to warm himself by exercise, and trotting up and down

some dozen times, he would brighten even then, and go back more brightly to his niche.

They called him Trotty from his pace, which meant speed if it didn't make it. He could have Walked faster

perhaps; most likely; but rob him of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and died. It bespattered

him with mud in dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble; he could have walked with infinitely greater

ease; but that was one reason for his clinging to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, he was a

very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money. He delighted to believe

Toby was very poor, and couldn't well afford to part with a delight that he was worth his salt. With a

shilling or an eighteen penny message or small parcel in hand, his courage, always hig, rose higher. As he

trotted on, he would call out to fast Postmen ahead of him, to get out of the way; devoutly believing that in

the natural course of things he must inevitably overtake and run them down; and he had perfect faith not

Thus, even when he came out of his nook to warm himself on a wet day, Toby trotted. Making, with his leaky

shoes, a crooked line of slushy footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly hands and rubbing them

against each other, poorly defended from the searching cold by threadbare mufflers of grey worsted, with a

private apartment only for the thumb, and a common room or tap for the rest of the fingers; Toby, with his

knees bent and his cane beneath his arm, still trotted. Falling out into the road to look up at the belfry when

He made this last excursion several times a day, for they were company to him; and when he heard their

voices, he had an interest in glancing at their lodgingplace, and thinking how they were moved, and what

hammers beat upon them. Perhaps he was the more curious about these Bells, because there were points of

resemblance between themselves and him They hung there, in all weathers, with the wind and rain driving in

upon them; facing only the outsides of all those houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires that

gleamed and shone upon the win dows, or came puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of

participation in any of the good things that were constantly being handed, through the street doors and the

area railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces came and went at many windows: sometimes pretty faces, youthful

faces, pleasant faces: some times the reverse: but Toby knew no more (though he often speculated on these

trifles, standing idle in the streets) whence they came, or where they went, or whether, when the lips moved,

Toby was not a casuist that he knew of, at least and I don't mean to say that when he began to take to

the Bells, and to knit up his first rough acquaint ance with them into something of a closer and more delicate

woof, he passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal review or great field day in his

thoughts. But what I mean to say, and do say is, that as the functions of Toby's body, his digestive organs for

example, did of their own cun ning, and by a great many operations of which he was altogether ignorant,

and the knowledge of which would have astonished him very much, arrive at a cer tain end; so his mental

faculties, without his privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in motion, with a thousand

And though I had said his love, I would not have recalled the word, though it would scarcely have ex

pressed his complicated feeling. For, being but a simple man, he invested them with a strange and solemn

character. They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep

strong melody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at the dark

arched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet

was what he had heard so often sounding in the Chimes. For all this. Toby scouted with indignation a certain

flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted, as implying the possibility of their being connected with any

Evil thing. In short, they were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his good

opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring with his mouth wide open, at the steeple

where they hung, that he was fain to take an extra trot or two, after wards, to cure it.

The very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, when the last drowsy sound of Twelve o'clock, just

struck, was humming like a melodious monster of a Bee, and not by any means a busy bee, all through the

Toby's nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, and he winked very much, and his shoulders were

very near his ears, and his legs were very stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long way upon the frosty

'Dinnertime, eh!' repeated Toby, using his right hand muffler like an infantine boxingglove, and

'There's nothing,' said Toby, breaking forth afresh but here he stopped short in his trot, and with a face of

great interest and some alarm, felt his nose carefully all the way up. It was but a little way (not being much of

'I thought it was gone,' said Toby, trotting off again. 'It's all right, however. I am sure I couldn't blame it if it

was to go. It has precious hard service of it in the bitter weather, and precious little to look forward to; for I

don't take snuff my self. It's a good deal tried, poor creetur, at the best of times; for when it does get hold of

a pleasant whiff or so (which an't too often), it's generally from somebody else's dinner, acoming home from

The reflection reminded him of that other reflec tion, which he had left unfinished

'There's nothing,' said Toby, 'more regular in its coming round than dinnertime, and nothing less regular in

its coming round than dinner. That's the great difference between 'em. It's took me a long time to find it out. I

wonder whether it would be worth any gentleman's while now, to buy that obser wation for the Papers; or

'Why! Lord!' said Toby. 'The Papers is full of obserwations as it is; and so's the Parliament. Here's last week's

paper, now'; taking a very dirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm's length; 'full of

obserwations! Full of obserwations! I like to know the news as well as any man,' said Toby, slowly; folding it

a little smaller, and putting it in his pocket again; 'but it almost goes against the grain with me to read a paper

now. It frightens me almost. I don't know what we poor people are com ing to. Lord send we may be

But Toby, not hearing it, continued to trot back wards and forwards; musing as he went, and talking to

'It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,' said Toby. 'I hadn't much schooling, my self,

when I was young; and I can't make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not.

Sometimes I think we must have a little; and some times I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled

sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we

are born bad. We seem to be dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being

complained of and guarded against. One way or other, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!' said Toby,

mournfully. 'I can bear up as well as another man at most times; better than a good many, for I am as strong

as a lion, and all men an't; but supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New Year

Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and shortening his sight, which had been directed a long way off as

seeking for enlightenment in the very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to face with his own

Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear a world of looking in, before their depth was fathomed. Dark

eyes, that reflected back the eyes which searched them; not flashingly, or at the owner's will, but with a clear,

calm, honest, patient radiance, claiming kin dred with that light which Heaven called into being Eyes that

were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so buoyant,

vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty years of work and poverty on which they had looked that they

became a voice to Trotty Veck, and said. 'I think we have some business here a littlel'

Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the blooming face between his hands.

'Neither did I expect to come, father,' cried the girl, nodding her head and smiling as she spoke. 'But here I

'Why you don't mean to say,' observed Trotty, looking curiously at a covered basket which she car ried in

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when she gaily interposed her hand.

'No, no, no,' said Meg, with the glee of a child. 'Lengthen it out a little. Let me just lift up the corner; just the

little tiny corner, vou know,' said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost gentleness, and

speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being overheard by something inside the basket; 'there. Now.

Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket, and cried out in a rapture:

'But what is it, father?' said Meg. 'Come. You haven't guessed what it is. And you must guess what it is. I

can't think of taking it out, till you guess what it is. Don't be in such a hurry! Wait a minute! A little bit more

Meg was in a perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket

towards him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stop ping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could

Meanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each knee, bent down his nose to the basket, and took a long inspiration

at the lid; the grin upon his withered face expanding in the process, as if he were inhaling laughing gas.

'No,' said Toby, after another sniff. 'It's it's mellower than Polonies. It's very nice. It improves every

Meg was in an ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of the mark than Trotters except Polonies.

'Liver?' said Toby, communing with himself. 'No. There's a mildness about it that don't answer to liver.

It wants the stringiness of Cock's heads. And I know it an't sausages. I'll tell you what it is. It's chitterlings!'

'Why, what am I athinking of!' said Toby, sud denly recovering a position as near the perpendicular as it

Tripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, in half a minute more, it was the best tripe ever

'And so,' said Meg, busying herself exultingly with the basket, 'I'll lay the cloth at once, father, for I have

brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin up in a pockethandkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once,

and spread that for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there's no law to prevent me; is there, father?'

'Not that I know of, my dear,' said Toby. 'But they're always abringing up some new law or other.'

'And according to what I was reading you in the paper the other day, father; what the Judge said, you know;

we poor people are supposed to know them all Ha, ha! What a mistale! My goodness me, how clever they

'Yes, my dear,' cried Trotty; 'and they'd be very fond of any one of us that did know 'em all. He'd grow fat

upon the work he'd get, that man, and be popular with the gentlefolks in his neighbourhood. Very much so!'

'He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt like this,' said Meg, cheerfully 'Make haste,

for there's a hot potato besides. and half a pint of freshdrawn beer in a bottle. Where will you dine, father?

On the Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear, how grand we are. Two places to choose from!' 'The steps today,

my Pct,' said Trotty. 'Steps in dry weather. Post in wet. There's a greater con veniency in the steps at all

'Then here,' said Meg, clapping her hands, after a moment's bustle; 'here it is, all ready! And beautiful it

Since his discovery of the contents of the basket, Trotty had been standing looking at her and had been

speaking too in an abstracted manner, which showed that though she was the object of his thoughts and

eyes, to the exclusion even of tripe, he neither saw nor thought about her as she was at that moment, but had

before him some imaginary rough sketch or drama of her future life. Roused, now, by her cheer ful

summons, he shook off a melancholy shake of the head which was just coming upon him, and trotted to her

'They broke in like a grace, my dear,' said Trotty, taking his seat. 'They'd say a good one, I am sure, if they

'The Bells do, father!' laughed Meg, as she set the basin, and a knife and fork before him. 'Well!'

'Seem to, my Pet,' said Trotty, falling to with great vigour. 'And where's the difference? If I hear 'em, what

does it matter whether they speak it or not? Why bless you, my dear,' said Toby, point ing at the tower with

his fork, and becoming more animated under the influence of dinner, 'how often have I heard them bells say

"Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!" A

'When things is very bad,' said Trotty; 'very bad indeed, I mean; almost at the worst; then it's "Toby Veck,

Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby! That way.'

'And it comes at last, father,' said Meg, with a touch of sadness in her pleasant voice.

While this discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savoury meat before him, but

cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot

potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the

street in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter his eyes, in coming

back again, encountered Meg; sit ting opposite to him, with her arms folded: and only busy in watching his

'Why, Lord forgive me!' said Trotty, dropping his knife and fork. 'My dove! Meg! Why didn't you tell me

'Sitting here,' said Trotty, in penitent explanation, 'cramming, and stuffing, and gorging myself; and you

before me there, never so much as breaking your precious fast, not wanting to, when '

'But I have broken it, father,' interposed his daughter, laughing, 'all to bits. I have had my dinner.'

'Nonsense,' said Trotty. 'Two dinners in one day! It an't possible! You might as well tell me that two New

Year's days will come together, or that I have had a gold head all my life, and never changed it.'

'I have had my dinner, father, for all that,' said Meg, coming nearer to him. 'And if you'll go on with yours, I'll

tell you how and where; and how your dinner came to be bought; and and something else besides.'

Toby still appeared incredulous I but she looked into his face with her clear eyes, and laying her hand upon

his shoulder, motioned him to go on while the meat was hot. So Trotty took up his knife and fork again, and

went to work. But much more slowly than before, and shaking his head, as if he were not at all pleased with

'I had my dinner, father,' said Meg, after a little hesitation, 'with with Richard. His dinnertime was early;

and as he brought his dinner with him when he came to see me, we we had it together, father.'

Trotty took a little beer, and smacked his lips. Then he said 'Oh!' because she waited.

'He says then, father,' Meg continued, lifting up her eyes at last, and speaking in a tremble, but quite plainly;

'another year is nearly gone, and where is the use of waiting on from year to year, when it is so unlikely we

shall ever be better off than we are now? He says we are poor now, father, and we shall be poor then, but we

are young now, and years will make us old before we know it. He says that if we wait: people in our

condition: until we see our way quite clearly, the way will be a narrow one indeed the common way. the

A bolder man than Trotty Veck must needs have drawn upon his boldness largely, to deny it. Trotty held his

'And how hard, father, to grow old, and die, and think we might have cheered and helped each other! How

hard in all our lives to love each other; and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing, growing old

and grey. Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him (which I never could), oh father dear, how hard to have

a heart so full as mine is now and live to have it slowly drained out every drop without the recollection of one

happy moment of a womans life, to stay behind and comfort me, and make me better!'

Trotty sat quite still. Meg dried her eyes, and said more gaily: that is to say, with here a laugh, and there a

'So Richard says, father; as his work was yesterday made certain for some time to come, and as I love him,

and have loved him full three years ah! longer than that, if he knew it! will I marry him on New Year's

Day; the best and happiest day, he says, in the whole year, and one that is almost sure to bring good fortune

with it. It's a short notice, father isn't it? but I haven't my fortune to be settled or my wedding dresses

to be made, like the great ladies, father, have I? And he said so much, and said it in his way; so strong and

earnest, and all the time so kind and gentle; that I said I'd come and talk to you, father. And as they paid the

money for that work of mine this morning (unexpectedly, I am sure!) and as you have fared very poorly for a

whole week, and as I couldn't help wishing there should be something to make this day a sort of holiday to

you as well as a dear and happy day to me, father, I made a little treat and brought it to surprise you.'

It was the voice of this same Richard. who had come upon them unobserved, and stood before the father and

daughter; looking down upon them with a face as glowing as the iron on which his stout sledgehammer

daily rung. A handsome, wellmade powerful youngster he was; with eyes that sparkled like the redhot

droppings from a furnace fire; black hair that curled about his swarthy temples rarely; and a smile a smile

'See how he leaves it cooling on the step!' said Richard. 'Meg don't know what he likes. Not she!'

Trotty, all action and enthusiasm, immediately reached up his hand to Richard, and was going to address him

in a great hurry, when the housedoor opened without any warning, and a footman very nearly put his foot

'Out of the vays here, will you! You must always go and be asettin' on our steps, must you! You can't go and

give a turn to none of the neighbours never can't you! Will you clear the road, or won't you?'

Strictly speaking, the last question was irrelevant, as they had already done it.

'What's the matter, what's the matter!' said the gentleman for whom the door was opened; coming out of the

house at that kind of lightheavy pace that peculiar compromise between a walk and a jogtrot with

which a gentleman upon the smooth downhill of life, wearing creaking boots, a watch chain, and clean

linen, may come out of his house: not only without any abatement of his dignity, but with an expression of

having important and wealthy engagements elsewhere. 'What's the matter! What's the matter!'

'You're always abeing begged, and prayed, upon your bended knees you are,' said the footman with great

emphasis to Trotty Veck, 'to let our doorsteps be. Why don't you let 'em be? CAN'T you let 'em be?'

'There! That'll do, that'll do!' said the gentle man. 'Halloa there! Porter!' beckoning with his head to Trotty

'Don't leave it there,' exclaimed the gentleman. 'Bring it here, bring it here. So! This is your dinner, is it?'

'Yes, sir,' repeated Trotty, looking with a fixed eye and a watery mouth, at the piece of tripe he had reserved

for a last delicious titbit; which the gentleman was now turning over and over on the end of the fork.

Two other gentlemen had come out with him. One was a lowspirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre

habit, and a disconsolate face who kept his hands continually in the pockets of his scanty pepperandsalt

trousers; very large and dog'seared from that custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The

other, a fullsized, sleek, wellconditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white cravat.

This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue proportion of the blood in his body were squeezed up into

his head; which perhaps accounted for his having also the ap pearance of being rather cold about the heart.

He who had Toby's meat upon the fork, called to the first one by the name of Filer; and they both drew near

together. Mr. Filer being exceedingly shortsighted, was obliged to go so close to the rem nant of Toby's

dinner before he could make out what it was, that Toby's heart leaped up into his mouth. But Mr. Filer didn't

'This is a description of animal food, Alderman,' said Filer, making little punches in it, with a pencil case,

'commonly known to the labouring population of this country, by the name of tripe.'

The Alderman laughed, and winked; for he was a merry fellow, Alderman Cute. Oh, and a sly fellow too! A

knowing fellow. Up to everything. Not to be imposed upon. Deep in the people's hearts! He knew them, Cute

'But who eats tripe?' said Mr. Filer, looking round. 'Tripe is without an exception the least economical, and

the most wasteful article of consumption that the markets of this country can by possibility pro duce. The

loss upon a pound of tripe has been found to be, in the boiling, seveneights of a fifth more than the loss

upon a pound of any other animal sub stance whatever. Tripe is more expensive, properly understood, than

the hothouse pineapple. Taking into account the number of animals slaughtered yearly within the bills of

mortality alone; and forming a low estimate of the quantity of tripe which the car casses of those animals,

reasonably well butchered, would yield; I find that the waste on that amount of tripe, if boiled, would victual

a garrison of five hun dred men for five months of thirtyone days each, and a February over. The Waste,

Trotty stood aghast, and his legs shook under him. He seemed to have starved a garrison of five hundred men

'You do, do you?' said Mr. Filer. 'Then I'll tell you something. You snatch your tripe, my friend, out of the

'Divide the amount of tripe before mentioned, Alderman,' said Mr. Filer, 'by the estimated number of existing

widows and orphans, and the result will be one pennyweight of tripe to each. Not a grain is left for that man.

Trotty was so shocked, that it gave him no concern to see the Alderman finish the tripe himself. It was a relief

'And what do you say?' asked the Alderman jocosely, of the redfaced gentleman in the blue coat. 'You have

'What's it possible to say?' returned the gentle man. 'What is to be said? Who can take any in terest in a

fellow like this,' meaning Trotty; 'in such degenerate times as these? Look at him! What an object! The good

old times, the grand old times, the great old times! Those were the times for a bold peasantry, and all that sort

of thing. Those were the times for every sort of thing, in fact. There's nothing nowadays. Ah!' sighed the

The gentleman didn't specify what particular times he alluded to; nor did he say whether he objected to the

present times; from a distinterested conscious ness that they had done nothing very remarkable in producing

'The good old times, the good old times,' repeated the gentleman. 'What times they were! They were the only

times. It's no use talking about any other times, or discussing what the people are in these times You don't

call these, times, do you? I don't. Look into Strutt's Costumes, and see what a Porter used to be, in any of the

'He hadn't, in his very best circumstances, a shirt to his back, or a stocking to his foot; and there was scarcely

a vegetable in all England for him to put into his mouth,' said Mr. Filer. 'I can prove it, by tables.'

But still the redfaced gentleman extolled the good old times, the grand old times, the great old times. No

matter what anybody else said, he still went turning round and round in one set form of words concerning

them; as a poor squirrel turns and turns in its revolving cage; touching the mechanism, and trick of which, it

has probably quite as distinct per ceptions, as ever this redfaced gentleman had of his deceased

It is possible that poor Trotty's faith in these very vague Old Times was not entirely destroyed, for he felt

vague enough, at that moment. One thing, how ever, was plain to him, in the midst of his distress; to wit,

that however these gentlemen might differ in details, his misgivings of that morning, and of many other

mornings, were well founded. 'No, no. We can't go right or do right,' thought Trotty in despair. 'There is no

But Trotty had a father's heart within him; which had somehow got into his breast in spite of this de cree;

and he could not bear that Meg, in the blush of her brief joy, should have her fortune read by these wise

He anxiously signed, therefore, to the young smith, to take her away. But he was so busy, talking to her softly

at a little distance, that he only became conscious of this desire, simultaneously with Alder man Cute. Now,

the Alderman had not yet had his say, but he was a philosopher, too practical, though! Oh, very practical

'Now, you know,' said the Alderman, addressing his two friends, with a selfcomplacent smile upon his face

which was habitual to him, 'I am a plain man, and a practical man; and I go to work in a plain practical way.

That's my way. There is not the least mystery or difficulty in dealing with this sort of people if you only

understand 'em, and can talk to 'em in their own manner. Now, you Porter! Don't you ever tell me, or

anybody else, my friend, that vou haven't always enough to eat, and of the best: because I know better. I have

tasted your tripe, you know, and you can't "chaff" me. You understand what "chaff" means, eh? That's the

right word, isn't it? Ha, ha, ha! Lord bless you,' said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, 'it's the easiest

Famous man for the common people, Alderman Cute! Never out of temper with them! Easy, af fable,

'You see, my friend,' pursued the Alderman, 'there's a great deal of nonsense talked about Want "hard up",

you know; that's the phrase, isn't it? ha! ha! ha! and I intend to Put It Down. There's a certain amount of cant

in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put It Down. That's all! Lord bless you', said the Alderman, turning

to his friends again, you may Put Down anything among this sort of people, if you only know the way to set

Trotty took Meg's hand and drew it through his arm. He didn't seem to know what he was doing though.

Always affable with the working classes, Alderman Cute! Knew what pleased them! Not a bit of pride.

'Dead,' said Toby. 'Her mother got up linen; and was called to Heaven when She was born.'

Toby might or might not have been able to sep arate his wife in Heaven from her old pursuits. But query: If

Mrs. Alderman Cute had gone to Heaven, would Mr. Alderman Cute have pictured her as hold ing any state

'Yes,' returned Richard quickly, for he was nettled by the question. 'And we are going to be married on New

'Why, yes, we're thinking of it, Master,' said Richard. 'We're rather in a hurry, you see, in case it should be

'Ah!' cried Filer, with a groan. 'Put that down indeed, Alderman, and you'll do something. Mar ried!

Married!! The ignorance of the first prin ciples of political economy on the part of these people; their

improvidence; their wickedness; is, by Heavens enough to Now look at that couple, will you!'

Well? They were worth looking at. And mar riage seemed as reasonable and fair a deed as they need have in

'A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,' sald Mr. Filer, 'and may labour all his life for the benefit of such

people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry;

and he can no more hope to persuade 'em that they have no right or business to be mar ried, than he can

hope to persuade 'em that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And that we know they haven't.

Alderman Cute was mightily diverted, and laid his right forefinger on the side of his nose, as much as to say

to both his friends, 'Observe me, will you! Keep yohur eye on the practical man!' and called Meg to him.

The young blood of her lover had been mount ing, wrathfully, within the last few minutes; and he was

indisposed to let her come. But, setting a con straint upon himself, he came forward with a stride as Meg

approached, and stood beside her. Trotty kept her hand within his arm still, but looked from face to face as

'Now, I'm going to give you a word or two of good advice, my girl,' said the Alderman, in his nice easy way.

'It's my place to give advice, you know, because I'm a Justice. You know I'm a Justice, don't you?'

Meg timidly said, 'Yes.' But everybody knew Alderman Cute was a Justice! Oh dear, so active a Justice

'You are going to be married, you say,' pursued the Alderman. 'Very unbecoming and indelicate in one of

your sex! But never mind that. After you are married, you'll quarrel with your husband and come to be a

distressed wife. You may think not but you will, because I tell you so. Now, I give you fair warning, that I

have made up my mind to Put distressed wives Down. So, don't be brought be fore me. You'll have children

boys. Those boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in the streets, without shoes and stockings.

Mind my young friend! I'll convict 'em summarily, every one, for I am determined to Put boys without shoes

and stock ings, Down. Perhaps your husband will die young (most likely) and leave you with a baby. Then

you'll be turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets. Now, don't wander near me, my dear, for I

am resolved to Put all wandering mothers Down. All young mothers, of all sorts and kinds, it's my

determination to Put Down. Don't think to plead illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an excuse with

me; for all sick persons and young chil dren (I hope you know the churchservice, but I'm afraid not) I am

determined to Put Down. And if you attempt, desperately, and ungratefullv. and im piously, and

fraudulently attempt, to drown yourself, or hang yourself, I'll have no pity for you, for I have made up my

mind to Put all suicide Down! If there is one thing,' said the Alderman, with his selfsatisfied smile, 'on

which I can be said to have made up my mind more than on another, it is to Put suicide Down. So don't try it

Toby knew not whether to be agonised or glad, to see that Meg had turned a deadly white, and dropped her

'And as for you, you dull dog,' said the Alderman, turning with even increased cheerfulness and urbanity to

the young smith, 'what are you thinking of being married for? What do you want to be married for, you silly

fellow? If I was a fine, young, strapping chap like you, I should be ashamed of being milksop enough to pin

myself to a woman's apronstrings! Why, she'll be an old woman before you're a middle aged man! And a

pretty figure you'll cut then, with a draggletailed wife and a crowd of squalling chil dren crying after you

'There! Go along with you,' said the Alderman, 'and repent. Don't make such a fool of yourself as to get

married on New Year's Day. You'll think very differently of it, long before next New Year's Day; a trim

young fellow like you, with all the girls looking after you. There! Go along with you!'

They went along. Not arm in arm, or hand in hand, or interchanging bright glances; but, she in tears; he

gloomy and downlooking. Were these the hearts that had so lately made old Toby's leap up from its

'As you happen to be here,' said the Alderman to Toby, 'you shall carry a letter for me. Can you be quick?

Toby, who had been looking after Meg, quite stupidly, made shift to murmur out that he was very quick, and

'O! This man's a great deal past the average, you know,' cried Mr. Filer, breaking in as if his patience would

'I feel I'm intruding, sir,' said Toby. 'I I mis doubted it this morning. Oh dear me!'

The Alderman cut him short by giving him the letter from his pocket. Toby would have got a shilling too; but

Mr. Filer clearly showing that in that case he would rob a certain given number of persons of

ninepencehalfpenny apiece, he only got sixpence; and thought himself very well off to get that.

Then the Alderman gave an arm to each of his friends, and walked off in high feather; but, he im mediately

'Even her good looks are stolen from somebody or other I suppose,' thought Toby, looking at the six pence

in his hand, and thinking of the tripe. 'She's been and robbed five hundred ladies of a bloom a piece, I

'She's much too handsome, my man,' repeated the Alderman. 'The chances are, that she'll come to no good, I

clearly see. Observe what I say. Take care of her!' With which, he hurried off again.

'Wrong every way. Wrong every way!' said Trotty, clasping his hands. 'Born bad. No business here!'

The Chimes came clashing in upon him as he said the words. Full, loud, and sounding but with no

'The tune's changed,' cried the old man, as he listened. 'There's not a word of all that fancy in it. Why should

there be? I have no business with the New Year nor with the old one neither. Let me die!'

Still the Bells, pealing forth their changes, made the very air spin. Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Good old

Times, Good old Times! Facts and Fig ures, Facts and Figures! Put 'em down, Put 'em down. If they said

He pressed his bewildered head between his hands, as if to keep it from splitting asunder. A welltimed

action, as it happened; for finding the letter in one of them, and being by that means reminded of his charge,

The letter Toby had received from Alderman Cute, was addressed to a great man in the great district of the

town. The greatest district of the town. It must have been the greatest district of the town, because it was

The letter positively seemed heavier in Toby's hand, than another letter. Not because the Alderman had sealed

it with a very large coat of arms and no end of wax, but because of the weighty name on the superscription,

'How different from us!' thought Toby, in all sim plicity and earnestness, as he looked at the direction.

'Divide the lively turtles in the bills of mortality, by the number of gentlefolks able to buy 'em; and whose

share does he take but his own! As to snatching tripe from anybody's mouth he'd scorn it!'

With the involuntary homage due to such an ex alted character, Toby interposed a corner of his apron

'His children,' said Trotty, and a mist rose before his eyes; 'his daughters Gentlemen may win their hearts

and marry them; they may be happy wives and mothers; they may be handsome like my dar ling M e '

He couldn't finish the name. The final letter swelled in his throat, to the size of the whole alphabet.

'Never mind,' thought Trotty. 'I know what I mean. That's more than enough for me.' And with this

It was a hard frost, that day. The air was bracing, crisp, and clear. The wintry sun, though powerless for

warmth, looked brightly down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, and set a radiant glory there. At other

times, Trotty might have learned a poor man's lesson from the wintry sun; but he was past that, now.

The Year was Old, that day. The patient Year had lived through the reproaches and misuses of its slanderers,

and faithfully performed its work. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. It had laboured through the destined

round, and now laid down its weary head to die. Shut out from hope, high impulse, active happiness, itself,

but active messenger of many joys to others, it made appeal in its decline to have its toiling days and patient

hours remembered, and to die in peace. Trotty might have read a poor man's alle gory in the fading year; but

And only he? Or has the like appeal been ever made, by seventy years at once upon an English labourer's

The streets were full of motion, and the shops were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an Infant Heir to

the whole world, was waited for, with wel comes, presents, and rejoicings. There were books and toys for

the New Year, glittering trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New

Year; new inventions to beguile it. Its life was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket books; the coming of

its moons, and stars, and tides, was known beforehand to the moment; all the work ings of its seasons in

their days and nights, were calculated with as much precision as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and

The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere the New Year! The Old Year was already looked upon as dead;

and its effects were selling cheap, like some drowned mariner's aboard ship. Its patterns were Last Year's, and

going at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of its unborn

'Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Facts and Fig ures, Facts and Figures! Good old Times, Good old Times! Put

'em down, Put 'em down!' his trot went to that measure, and would fit itself to noth ing else.

But, even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in due time, to the end of his journey. To the mansion

The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby's order. Quite another thing. His place was the

This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having breathed himself by coming

incautiously out of his chair, without first taking time to think about it and compose his mind. When he had

found his voice which it took him a long time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load of

'You're to take it in, yourself,' said the Porter pointing to a room at the end of a long passage opening from the

hall. 'Everything goes straight in, on this day of the year. You're not a bit too soon: for, the carriage is at the

Toby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care, and took the way pointed out to him;

observing as he went that it was an awfully grand house, but hushed and covered up, as if the family were in

the country. Knocking at the room door, he was told to enter from within; and doing so found himself in a

spacious library, where, at a table strewn with files and papers, were a stately lady in a bonnet; and a not very

stately gentleman in black who wrote from her dictation; while another, and an older, and a much statelier

gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table, walked up and down, with one hand in his breast, and

looked complacently from time to time at his own picture a full length; a very full length hanging over

'What is this?' said the lastnamed gentleman. 'Mr. Fish, will you have the goodness to attend?'

Mr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby, handed it, with great respect.

'You have no bill or demand upon me my namo is Bowley, Sir Joseph Bowley of any kind from

anybody, have you?' said Sir Joseph. 'If you have, present it. There is a chequebook by the side of Mr. Fish.

I allow nothing to be carried into the New Year. Every description of account is settled in this house at the

'To sever, sir,' returned Sir Joseph, with great asper ity, 'the cord of existence my affairs would be found,

'My dear Sir Joseph!' said the lady, who was greatly younger than the gentleman. 'How shocking!'

'My lady Bowley,' returned Sir Joseph, flounder ing now and then, as in the great depth of his obser

vations, 'at this season of the year we should think of of ourselves. We should look into our our

accounts. We should feel that every return of so eventful a period in human transactions, involves a matter of

Sir Joseph delivered these words as if he felt the full morality of what he was saying; and desired that even

Trotty should have an opportunity of being improved by such discourse. Possibly he had this end before him

in still forbearing to break the seal of the letter, and in telling Trotty to wait where he was, a minute.

'Mr. Fish has said that, I believe,' returned his lady, glancing at the letter. 'But, upon my word, Sir Joseph, I

'That Charity, my love. They only allow two votes for a subscription of five pounds. Really monstrous!'

'My lady Bowley,' returned Sir Joseph, 'you sur prise me. Is the luxury of feeling in proportion to the

number of votes; or is it, to a rightly constituted mind, in proportion to the number of applicants, and the

wholesome state of mind to which their canvas sing reduces them? Is there no excitement of the purest kind

'Not to me, I acknowledge,' replied the lady. 'It bores one. Besides, one can't oblige one's acquaint ance. But

'I am the Poor Man's Friend,' observed Sir Joseph, glancing at the poor man present. 'As such I may be

'I don't agree with Cute here, for instance,' said Sir Joseph, holding out the letter. 'I don't agree with the Filer

party. I don't agree with any party. My friend the Poor Man, has no business with any thing of that sort, and

nothing of that sort has any business with him. My friend the Poor Man, in my district, is my business. No

man or body of men has any right to interfere between my friend and me. That is the ground I take. I assume

a a paternal character towards my friend. I say, "My good fellow, I will treat you paternally." '

'Your only business, my good fellow,' pursued Sir Joseph, looking abstractedly at Toby; 'your only business

in life is with me. You needn't trouble yourself to think about anything. I will think for you; I know what is

good for you; I am your per petual parent. Such is the dispensation of an allwise Providence! Now, the

design of your creation is not that you should swill, and guzzle, and associate your enjoyments, brutally,

with food'; Toby thought remorsefully of the tripe; 'but that you should feel the Dignity of Labour. Go forth

erect into the cheer ful morning air, and stop there. Live hard and tem perately, be respectful, exercise

your selfdenial, bring up your family on next to nothing, pay your rent as regularly as the clock strikes, be

punctual in your dealings (I set you a good example; you will find Mr. Fish, my confidential secretary, with a

cashbox before him at all times); and you may trust me to be your Friend and Father.'

'Nice children, indeed, Sir Joseph!' said the lady, with a shudder. 'Rheumatisms, and fevers, and crooked legs,

'My lady,' returned Sir Joseph, with solemnity, 'not the less am I the Poor Man's Friend and Father. Not the

less shall he receive encouragement at my hands. Every quarterday he will be put in com munication with

Mr. Fish. Every New Year's Day, myself and friends will drink his health. Once every year, myself and

friends will address him with the deepest feeling. Once in his life, he may even per haps receive; in public,

in the presence of the gentry; a Trifle from a Friend. And when, upheld no more by these stimulants, and the

Dignity of Labour, he sinks into his comfortable grave, then my lady' here Sir Joseph blew his nose 'I

'My lady,' said Sir Joseph, quite majestically, 'In gratitude is known to be the sin of that class. I expect no

'What man can do, I do,' pursued Sir Joseph. 'I do my duty as the Poor Man's Friend and Father; and I

endeavour to educate his mind, by inculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that class

requires. That is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with with themselves. If

wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and dis contented, and are

guilty of insubordinate conduct and blackhearted ingratitude; which is undoubtedly the case; I am their

'Very polite and attentive, I am sure!' exclaimed Sir Joseph. 'My lady, the Alderman is so obliging as to

remind me that he has had "the distinguished honour" he is very good of meeting me at the house of

our mutual friend Deedles, the banker; and he does me the favour to inquire whether it will be agreeable to

'Most agreeable!' replied my Lady Bowley. 'The worst man among them! He has been committing a robbery,

'Why no,' said Sir Joseph, referring to the letter. 'Not quite. Very near. Not quite. He came up to London, it

seems, to look for employment (try ing to better himself that's his story), and being found at night asleep

in a shed, was taken into cus tody, and carried next morning before the Alderman. The Alderman observes

(very properly) that he is determined to put this sort of thing down; and that if it will be agreeable to me to

'Let him be made an example of, by all means, returned the lady. 'Last winter, when I introduced pinking and

eyeletholing among the men and boys in the village, as a nice evening employment, and had the lines,

And always know our proper stations, set to music on the new system, for them to sing the while; this very

Fern I see him now touched that hat of his, and said, "I humbly ask your pardon, my lady, but an't I

something different from a great girl?" I expected it, of course; who can expect any thing but insolence and

ingratitude from that class of people! That is not to the purpose, however. Sir Joseph! Make an example of

'Private. My dear Sir. I am very much indebted to you for your courtesy in the matter of the man William

Fern, of whom, I regret to add, I can say nothing favourable. I have uniformly considered myself in the light

of his Friend and Father, but have been repaid (a common case I grieve to say) with ingratitude, and constant

opposition to my plans. He is a turbulent and rebellious spirit. His character will not bear investigation.

Nothing will persuade him to be happy when he might. Under these cir cumstances, it appears to me, I own,

that when he comes before you again (as you informed me he prom ised to do tomorrow, pending your

inquiries, and I think he may be so far relied upon), his commital for some short term as a Vagabond, would

be a service to society, and would be a salutary example in a country where for the sake of those who are,

through good and evil report, the Friends and Fathers of the Poor, as well as with a view to that, generally

speaking misguided class themselves examples are greatly needed. And I am,' and so forth.

'It appears,' remarked Sir Joseph when he had signed this letter, and Mr. Fish was sealing it, 'as if this were

Ordained: really. At the close of the year, I wind up my account and strike my balance, even with William

Trotty, who had long ago relapsed, and was very lowspirited, stepped forward with a rueful face to take the

'You have heard, perhaps,' said Sir Joseph, oracu larly, 'certain remarks into which I have been led

respecting the solemn period of time at which we have arrived, and the duty imposed upon us of settling our

affairs, and being prepared. You have observed that I don't shelter myself behind my superior stand ing in

society, but that Mr. Fishi that gentleman has a chequebook at his elbow, and is in fact here, to enable

me to turn over a perfectly new leaf. and enter on the epoch before us with a clean account. Now, my friend,

can you lay your hand upon your heart, and say, that you also have made praparations for a New Year?'

'I am afraid, sir,' stammered Trotty, looking meekly at him, 'that I am a a little behindhand with the

'Behindhand with the world!' repeated Sir Joseph Bowley, in a tone of terrible distinctness.

'I am afraid, sir,' faltered Trotty, 'that there's a matter of ten or twelve shillings owing to Mrs. Chickenstalker.'

'A shop, sir,' exclaimed Toby, 'in the general line. Also a a little money on account of rent. A very little,

Sir Joseph looked at his lady, and at Mr. Fish, and at Trotty, one after another, twice all round. He then made

a despondent gesture with both hands at once, as if he gave the thing up altogether.

'How a man, even among this improvident and impracticable race; an old man; a man grown grey; can look a

New Year in the face, with his affairs in this condition; how he can lie down on his bed at night, and get up

again in the morning, and There!' he said, turning his back on Trotty. 'Take the letter. Take the letter!'

'I heartily wish it was otherwise, sir,' said Trotty, anxious to excuse himself. 'We have been tried very hard.'

Sir Joseph still repeating 'Take the letter, take the letter!' and Mr. Fish not only saying the same thing, but

giving additional force to the request by motioning the bearer to the door, he had nothing for it but to make

his bow and leave the house. And in the street, poor Trotty pulled his worn old hat down on his head, to hide

He didn't even lift his hat to look up at the Bell tower when he came to the old church on his return. He halted

there a moment, from habit: and knew that it was growing dark, and that the steeple rose above him,

indistinct and faint, in the murky air. He knew, too, that the Chimes would ring immediately; and that they

sounded to his fancy, at such a time, like voices in the clouds. But he only made the more haste to deliver the

Alderman's letter, and get out of the way before they began; for he dreaded to hear them tagging 'Friends and

Toby discharged himself of his commission, there fore, with all possible speed, and set off trotting home

ward. But what with his pace, which was at best an awkward one, in the street; and what with his hat, which

didn't improve it; he trotted against somebody in less than no time, and was sent staggering out into the road.

'I beg your pardon, I'm sure!' said Trotty, pulling up his hat in great confusion, and between the hat and the

torn lining, fixing his head into a kind of beehive. 'I hope I haven't hurt you.'

As to hurting anybody, Toby was not such an absolute Samson, but that he was much more likely to be hurt

himself: and indeed, he had flown out into the road, like a shuttlecock. He had such an opinion of his own

strength, however, that he was in real concern for the other party: and said again,

The man against whom he had run; a sun browned, sinewy, countrylooking man, with grizzled hair, and a

rough chin; stared at him for a moment, as if he suspected him to be in jest. But, satisfied of his good faith, he

As he said so, he glanced at a little girl he carried in his arms, asleep: and shading her face with the long end

The tone in which he said 'I thank you kindly,' penetrated Trotty's heart. He was so jaded and footsore, and

so soiled with travel, and looked about him so forlorn and strange, that it was a comfort to him to be able to

thank any one: no matter for how little. Toby stood gazing after him as he plodded wearily away, with the

At the figure in the worn shoes now the very shade and ghost of shoes rough leather leggings, common

frock, and broad slouched hat, Trotty stood gazing, blind to the whole street. And at the child's arm, clinging

Before he merged into the darkness the traveller stopped; and looking round, and seeing Trotty stand ing

there yet, seemed undecided whether to return or go on. After doing first the one and then the other, he came

'You can tell me, perhaps,' said the man with a faint smile, 'and if you can I am sure you will, and I'd rather

'I was to have gone to him elsewhere tomorrow,' said the man, accompanying Toby, 'but I'm uneasy under

suspicion, and want to clear myself, and to be free to go and seek my bread I don't know where. So,

'Why then,' cried Trotty, seizing him by the arm, and looking cautiously round, 'for Heaven's sake don't go to

him! Don't go to him! He'll put you down as sure as ever you were born. Here! come up this alley, and I'll tell

His new acquaintance looked as if he thought him mad; but he bore him company nevertheless. When they

were shrouded from observation, Trotty told him what he knew, and what character he had received, and all

The subject of his history listened to it with a calmness that surprised him. He did not contradict or interrupt

it, once. He nodded his head now and then more in corroboration of an old and wornout story, it

appeared, than in refutation of it; and once or twice threw back his hat, and passed his freckled hand over a

brow, where every furrow he had ploughed seemed to have set its image in little. But he did no more.

'It's true enough in the main,' he said, 'master, I could sift grain from husk here and there, but let it be as 'tis.

What odds? I have gone against his plans; to my misfortun'. I can't help it; I should do the like tomorrow. As

to character, them gentlefolks will search and search, and pry and pry, and have it as free from spot or speck

in us, afore they'll help us to a dry good word! Well! I hope they don't lose good opinion as easy as we do,

or their lives is strict indeed, and hardly worth the keeping. For myself, master, I never took with that hand'

holding it be fore him 'what wasn't my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, or

poorly paid. Who ever can deny it, let him chop it off! But when work won't maintain me like a human

creetur; when my living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of doors and in; when I see a whole working life

begin that way, go on that way, and end that way, without a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks

"Keep away from me! Let my cottage be. My doors is dark enough without your darkening of 'em more.

Don't look for me to come up into the Park to help the show when there's a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking,

or what not. Act your Plays and Games without me, and be welcome to 'em, and enjoy 'em. We've nowt to do

Seeing that the child in his arms had opened her eyes, and was looking about her in wonder, he checked

himself to say a word or two of foolish prattle in her ear, and stand her on the ground beside him. Then

slowly winding one of her long tresses round and round his rough forefinger like a ring, while she hung about

'I'm not a crossgrained man by natur', I believe; and easy satisfied, I'm sure. I bear no illwill against none

of 'em. I only want to live like one of the Almighty's creeturs. I can't I don't and so there's a pit dug

between me, and them that can and do. There's others like me. You might tell 'em off by hundreds and by

'I've got a bad name this way,' said Fern; 'and I'm not likely, I'm afeared, to get a better. 'Tan't lawful to be out

of sorts, and I AM out of sorts, though God knows I'd sooner bear a cheerful spirit if I could. Well! I don't

know as this Alderman could hurt me much by sending me to gaol; but without a friend to speak a word for

me, he might do it; and you see !' pointing downward with his finger, at the child.

'Why yes!' replied the other in a low voice, as he gently turned it up with both his hands towards his own, and

looked upon it steadfastly. 'I've thought so, many times. I've thought so, when my hearth was very cold, and

cupboard very bare. I thought so t' other night, when we were taken like two thieves. But they they

shouldn't try the little face too often, should they, Lilian? That's hardly fair upon a man!'

He sunk his voice so low, and gazed upon her with an air so stern and strange, that Toby, to divert the current

'I never had one,' he returned, shaking his head. 'She's my brother's child: a orphan. Nine year old, though

you'd hardly think it; but she's tired and worn out now. They'd have taken care on her, the Union

eightandtwenty mile away from where we live between four walls (as they took care of my old father

when he couldn't work no more, though he didn't trouble 'em long); but I took her instead, and she's lived

with me ever since. Her mother had a friend once, in London here. We are trying to find her, and to find work

too; but it's a large place. Never mind. More room for us to walk about in Lilly!'

Meeting the child's eyes with a smile which melted Toby more than tears, he shook him by the hand.

'I don't so much as know your name,' he said, 'but I've opened my heart free to you, for I'm thankful to you;

'Ah!' he said. 'If that's the name they give him. This Justice. And tomorrow will try whether there's better

'Stay!' cried Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed his grip. 'Stay! The New Year never can be happy to

me, if we part like this. The New Year never can be happy to me, if I see the child and you, go wandering

away, you don't know where, without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me! I'm a poor man, living in

a poor place; but I can give you lodging for one night and never miss it. Come home with me! Here! I'll take

her!' cried Trotty, lifting un the child. 'A pretty one! I'd carry twenty times her weight, and never know I'd got

it. Tell me if I go too quick for you. I'm very fast. I always was!' Trotty said this, taking about six of his

trotting paces to one stride of his fatigued companion, and with his thin legs quivering again, beneath the load

'Why, she's as light,' said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as in his gait; for he couldn't bear to be

thanked. and dreaded a moment's pause; 'as light as a feather. Lighter than a Peacock's feather a great.

deal lighter. Here we are, and here we go! Round this first turning to the right, Uncle Will, and past the pump,

and sharp off up the passage to the left, right opposite the publichouse. Here we are and here we go! Cross

over, Uncle Will, and mind the kidney pieman at the corner! Here we are and here we go! Down the Mews

here, Uncle Will, and stop at the black door, with "T. Veck, Ticket Porter" wrote upon a board; and here we

With which words Trotty, in a breathless state, set the child down before his daughter in the middle of the

floor. The little visitor looked once at Meg; and doubting nothing in that face, but trusting every thing she

'Here we are and here we go!' cried Trotty, run ning round the room, and choking audibly. 'Here, Uncle

Will, here's a fire you know! Why don't you come to the fire? Oh here we are and here we go! Meg, my

precious darling, where's the kettle? Here it is and here it goes, and it'll bile in no time! '

Trotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other in the course of his wild career, and now put it on

the fire; while Meg, seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on the ground before her, and pulled off

her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a cloth. Ay, and she laughed at Trotty too so pleasantly, so cheerfully,

that Trotty could have blessed her where she kneeled; for he had seen that, when they entered, she was sitting

'Why, father!' said Meg. 'You're crazy tonight, I think. I don't know what the Bells would say to that. Poor

'No, no, no,' said Meg. 'We haven't rubbed 'em half enough. We're so busy. So busy! And when they're done,

we'll brush out the damp hair; and when that's done, we'll bring some colour to the poor pale face with fresh

The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck; caressed her fair cheek with its hand; and said,

'Good Gracious me!' cried Meg. 'He's crazy! He's put the dear child's bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid

'I didn't go for to do it, my love,' said Trotty, hastily repairing this mistake. 'Meg, my dear?'

Meg looked towards him and saw that he had elab orately stationed himself behind the chair of their male

visitor, where with many mysterious gestures he was holding up the sixpence he had earned.

'I see, my dear,' said Trotty, 'as I was coming in, half an ounce of tea lying somewhere on the stairs; and I'm

pretty sure there was a bit of bacon too. As I don't remember where it was exactly, I'll go myself and try to

With this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to purchase the viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at

Mrs. Chickenstalker's; and presently came back, pretending he had not been able to find them, at first, in the

'But here they are at last,' said Trotty, setting out the tea things, 'all correct! I was pretty sure it was tea, and a

rasher. So it is, Meg, my pet, if you'll just make the tea, while your unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall

be ready, immediate. It's a curi ous circumstance,' said Trotty, proceeding in his cookery, with the assistance

of the toastingfork, 'curious, but well known to my friends, that I never care, myself, for rashers, nor for tea.

I like to see other people enjoy 'em,' said Trotty, speaking very loud, to impress the fact upon his guest, 'but to

Yet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon ah! as if he liked it; and when he poured the boil

ing water in the teapot, looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug cauldron, and suffered the fragrant

steam to curl about his nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he neither

ate nor drank, except at the very be ginning, a mere morsel for form's sake, which he ap peared to eat with

No. Trotty's occupation was, to see Will Fern and Lilian eat and drink; and so was Meg's. And never did

spectators at a city dinner or court banquet find such high delight in seeing others feast: although it were a

monarch or a pope: as those two did, in look ing on that night. Meg smiled at Trotty, Trotty laughed at Meg.

Meg shook her head, and made be lieve to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in

dumbshow, unintelligible narratives of how and when and where he had found their visitors, to Meg; and

'Although,' thought Trotty, sorrowfully, as he watched Meg's face; 'that match is broken off, I see!'

'Now, I'll tell you what,' said Trotty after tea. 'The little one, she sleeps with Meg, I know.'

'That's right,' said Trotty. 'And I shouldn't won der if she kiss Meg's father, won't she? I'm Meg's father.'

Mightily delighted Troty was, when the child went timidly towards him and having kissed him, fell back

'She's as sensible as Solomon,' said Trotty. 'Here we come and here we no, we don't I don't mean that

Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with his face turned from her, fondled the

'To be sure,' said Toby. 'To be sure! I don't know what I'm rambling on about, tonight. My wits are

woolgathering, I think. Will Fern, you come along with me. You're tired to death, and broken down for want

The man still played with the child's curls, still leaned upon Meg's chair, still turned away his face. He didn't

speak, but in his rough coarse fingers, clenching and expanding in the fair hair of the child, there was an

'Yes, yes,' said Trotty, answering unconsciously what he saw expressed in his daughter's face. 'Take her with

you, Meg. Get her to bed. There! Now, Will. I'll show vou where you lie. It's not much of a place: only a loft;

but, having a loft, I always say, is one of the great conveniences of living in a mews; and till this

coachhouse and stable gets a better let, we live here cheap. There's plenty of sweet hay up there, belonging

to a neighbour; and it's as clean as hands, and Meg, can make it. Cheer up! Don't give way. A new heart for a

The hand released from the child's hair, had fallen, trembling, into Trotty's hand. So Trotty, talking without

intermission, led him out as tenderly and easily as if he had been a child himself.

Returning before Meg, he listened for an instant at the door of her little chamber; an adjoining room. The

child was murmuring a simple Prayer before lying down to sleep; and when she had remembered Meg's

It was some short time before the foolish little old fellow could compose himself to mend the fire, and draw

his chair to the warm hearth. But, when he had done so, and had trimmed the light, he took his news paper

from his pocket, and began to read. Carelessly at first, and skimming up and down the columns; but with an

For this same dreaded paper redirected Trotty's thoughts into the channel they had taken all that day, and

which the days' events had so marked out and shaped. His interest in the two wanderers had set him on

another course of thinking, and a happier one, for the time; but being alone again, and reading of the crimes

In this mood, he came to an account (and it was not the first he had ever read) of a woman who had laid her

desperate hands not only on her own life but on that of her young child. A crime so terrible, and so revolting;

to his soul, dilated with the love of Meg, that he let the journal drop, and fell back in his chair, appalled!

'Unnatural and cruel!' Toby cried. 'Unnatural and cruel! None but people who were bad at heart, born bad,

who had no business on the earth, could do such deeds. It's too true, all I've heard today; too just, too full of

The Chimes took up the words so suddenly burst out so loud, and clear, and sonorous that the Bells

'Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby! Come and see

us, come and see us, Drag him to us, drag him to us, Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Break his

slumbers, break his slumbers! Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby, Toby Veck Toby Veck, door

open wide Toby ' then fiercely back to their impetuous strain again, and ringing in the very bricks and

Toby listened. Fancy, fancy! His remorse for having run away from them that afternoon! No, no. Nothing of

the kind. Again, again, and yet a dozen times again. 'Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Drag him to

'So peacefully and happily! I can't leave her yet though, father. Look how she holds my hand!'

She listened, with her face towards him all the time. But it underwent no change. She didn't under stand

Trotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire, and once more listened by himself. He remained here a little

'If the towerdoor is really open,' said Toby, hastily laying aside his apron, but never thinking of his hat,

'what's to hinder me from going up into the steeple and satisfying myself? If it's shut, I don't want any other

He was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the street that he should find it shut and locked, for he

knew the door well, and had so rarely seen it open, that he couldn't reckon above three times in all. It was a

low arched portaI, outside the church, in a dark nook behind a column; and had such great iron hinges, and

But what was his astonishment when, coming bare headed to the church; and putting his hand into this dark

nook, with a certain misgiving that it might be unexpectedly seized, and a shivering propensity to draw it

He thought, on the first surprise, of going back; or of getting a light, or a companion; but his courage aided

'What have I to fear?' said Trotty. 'It's a church! Besides, the ringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut

So he went in, feeling his way as he went, like a blind man; for it was very dark. And very quiet, for the

The dust from the street had blown into the recess; and lying there, heaped up, made it so soft and velvet

like to the foot, that there was sometifing startling, even in that. The narrow stair was so close to the door,

too, that he stumbled at the very first; and shutting the door upon himself, by striking it with his foot, and

This was another reason, however, for going on. Trotty groped his way, and went on. Up, up, up, and round,

It was a disagreeable staircase for that groping work; so low and narrow, that his gropig hand was always

touching something; and it often felt so like a man or ghostly figure standing up erect and making room for

him to pass without discovery, that he would rub the smooth wall upward searching for its face, and

downward searching for its feet, while a chill tingling crept all over him. Twice or thrice, a door or niche

broke the monotonous surface; and then it seemed a gap as wide as the whole church; and he felt on the brink

Still up, up, up; and round and round, and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up!

At length, the dull and stifling atmosphere began to freshen: presently to feel quite windy; presently it blew

so strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got to an arched window in the toewr, breast high, and

holding tight, looked down upon the house tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blurr and blotch of lights

(towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up,

This was the belfry, where the ringers came. He had caught hold of one of the frayed ropes which hung down

through apertures in the oaken roof. At first he started, thinking it was hair; then trembled at the very thought

of waking the deep Bell. The Bells themselves were higher. Higher, Trotty, in his fascination, or in working

out the spell upon him, groped his way. By ladders now, and toilsomely, for it was steep, and not too certain

Until, ascending through the floor, and pausing with his head just raised above its beams, he came among the

Bells. It was barely possible to make out their great shapes in the gloom; but there they were. Shadowy, and

A heavy sense of dread and loneliness fell instantly upon him, as he climbed into this airy nest of stone and

metal. His head went round and round. He listened, and then raised a wild 'Holloa!'

Holloa! was mournfully protracted by the echoes. Giddy, confused, and out of breath, and frightened, Toby

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a

calm, gives up its Dead. Monsters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect resurrection, the several

parts and shapes of different things are joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by what

wonderful degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and object of the mind resumes its usual form

and lives again, no man though every man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery can

So, when and how the darkness of the nightblack steeple changed to shining light; when and how the

solitary tower was peopled with a myriad figures; when and how the whispered 'Haunt and hunt him,'

breathing monotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty,

'Break his slumbers'; when and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such things were,

companioning a host of others that were not; there are no dates or means to tell. But, awake and standing on

He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him, swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits,

elfin creatures of the Bells. He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring from the Bells wlthout a pause.

He saw them, round him on the ground; above him, in the air, clambering from him, by the ropes below;

looking down upon him, from the massive irongirded beams; peeping in upon him, through the chinks and

loopholes in the walls, spread ing away and away from him in enlarging clrcles, as the water ripples give

way to a huge stone that sud denly comes plashing in among them. He saw them, of all aspects and all

shapes. He saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw them young, he saw them old, he

saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them merry, he saw them grim; he saw them dance, and heard

them sing; he saw them tear their hair, and heard them howl. He saw the air thick with them. He saw them

come and go, inces santly. He saw them riding downward, soaring up ward, sailing off afar, perching near

at hand, all rest less and all violently active. Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became transparent to him

as to them. He saw them in the houses, busy at the sleepers' beds. He saw them soothing people in their

dreams; he saw them beating them with knotted whips; he saw them yelling in their ears; he saw them

playing softest music on their pillows; he saw them cheering some with the songs of birds and the perfume of

flowers; he saw them flashing awful faces on the troubled rest of others, from enchanted mirrors which they

He saw these creatures, not only among sleeping men but waking also, active in pursuits irreconcilable with

one another, and possessing or assuming natures the most opposite. He saw one buckling on innu merable

wings to increase his speed; another loading himself with chains and weights, to retard his. He saw some

putting the hands of clocks forward, some putting the hands of clocks backward, some endeav ouring to

stop the clock entirely. He saw them rep resenting, here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral; in this

chamber an election, in that a ball; he saw, everywhere, restless and untiring motion.

Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraor dinary figures, as well as by the uproar of the Bells, which all

this while were ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned his white face here and there,

As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole swarm fainted! their forms col lapsed,

their speed deserted them; they sought to fly but in the act of falling died and melted into air. No fresh supply

succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on

his feet, but he was dead and gone before he could turn round. Some few of the late company who had

gambolled in the tower, re mained there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these became at every

turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went the way of the rest. The last of all was one small

hunchback, who had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by himself a long

time; showing such perse verance, that at last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally

Then and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded figure of the bulk and stature of the Bell

incomprehensibly, a figure and the Bell itself. Gi gantic, grave, and darkly watchful of him, as he stood

Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the night air of the tower, with their draped and

hooded heads merged in the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by

some light belonging to themselves none else was there each with its muffled hand upon its goblin

He could not plunge down wildly through the open ing in the floor; for all power of motion had deserted

him. Otherwise he would have done so aye, would have thrown himself, headforemost, from the steeple

top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched although the

Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and of the wild and fearful night that reigned there,

touched him like a spectral hand. His dlstance from all help; the long, dark, winding, ghostbe leaguered

way that lay between him and the earth on which men lived; his being high, high, high, up there, where it had

made him dizzy to see the birds fly in the day; cut off from all good people, who at such an hour were safe at

home and sleeping in their beds; all this struck coldly through him, not as a reflection but a bodily sensation.

Meantime his eyes and thoughts and fears, were fixed upon the watchful figures; which, rendered unlike any

figures of this world by the deep gloom and shade enwrapping and enfolding them, as well as by their looks

and forms and supernatural hovering above the floor, were never theless as plainly to be seen as were the

stalwart oaken frames, crosspieces, bars and beams, set up there to support the Bells. These hemmed them

in a very forest of hewn timber; from the entanglements, intricacies, and depths of which, as from among the

boughs of a dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their darksome and unwinking watch.

A blast of air how cold and shrill! came moan ing through the tower. As it died away, the Great Bell,

'What visitor is this?' it said. The voice was low and deep, and Trotty fancied that it sounded in the other

'I thought my name was called by the Chimes!' said Trotty, raising his hands in an attitude of sup plication.

'I hardly know why I am here, or how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many years. Thev have

'And always so?' inquired the Goblin of the Bell. 'Have you never done us wrong in words?'

'Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?' pursued the Goblin of the Bell.

'The voice of Time,' said the Phantom, 'cries to man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and

improvement; for his greater worth, his greater hap piness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal

within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He began. Ages of darkness,

wickedness, and violence, have come and gone millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died to

point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine

which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its mo mentary check!'

'I never did so to my knowledge, sir,' said Trotty. 'It was quite by accident if I did. I wouldn't go to do it, I'm

'Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its serv ants,' said the Goblin of the Bell, 'a cry of lamenta tion for

days which have had their trial and their fail ure, and have left deep traces of it which the blind may see

a cry that only serves the present time, by showing men how much it needs their help when any ears can

listen to regrets for such a past, who does this, does a wrong. And you have done that wrong, to us, the

Trotty's first excess of fear was gone. But he had felt tenderly and gratefully towards the Bells, as you have

seen; and when he heard himself arraigned as one who had offended them so weightily, his heart was touched

'If you knew,' said Trotty, clasping his hands ear nestly 'or perhaps you do know if you know how

often you have kept me company; how often you have cheered me up when I've been low; how you were

quite the plaything of my little daughter Meg (al most the only one she ever had) when first her mother died,

'Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking disregard, or stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or

sorrow, of the manysorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that gauges human passions

and affections, as it gauges the amount of miserable food on which humanity may pine and wither; does us

'Who hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters Down of crushed and broken natures, formed to

be raised up higher than such maggots of the time can crawl or can conceive,' pursued the Gob lin of the

'Lastly, and most of all,' pursued the Bell. 'Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind;

abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they

fell from good grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when

bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity. And you have

'Listen!' said a clear and childlike voice, which Trotty thought he recognised as having heard before

The organ sounded faintly in the church below. Swelling by degrees, the melody ascended to the roof and

filled the choir and nave. Expanding more and more, it rose up, up; up, up; higher, higher, higher up;

awakening agitated hearts within the burly piles of oak, the hollow bells, the ironbound doors, the stairs of

solid stone; until the tower walls were in sufficient to contain it, and it soared into the sky

No wonder that, an old man's breast could not con tain a sound so vast and mighty. It broke from that weak

It was a very low and mournful strain a Dirge and as he listened, Trotty heard his child among the

'She is dead!' exclaimed the old man. 'Meg is dead! Her spirit calls to me. I hear it!'

'The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and mingles with the dead dead hopes, dead fancies dead

imaginings of youth,' returned the Bell, 'but she is living. Learn from her life, a living truth. Learn from the

creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off

the rarest stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To despera tion!'

Each of the shadowy figures stretched its right arm forth, and pointed downward.

'The Spirit of the Chimes is your companion, said the figure. 'Go! It staads behind you!'

Trotty turned, and saw the child! The child Will Fern had carried in the street; the child whom Meg had

The tower opened at his feet. He looked down, and beheld his own form , lying at the bottom, on the outside:

'What!' he cried, shuddering. "I missed my way, and coming on the outside of this tower in the dark, fell

As they gave the answer, they recalled their out stretched hands; and where their figures had been, there the

And they rung; their time being come again. And once again, vast multitudes of phantoms sprung into

existence; once again, were incoherently engaged, as they had been before; once again, faded on the stop

'Spirits of the Bells. Their sound upon the air,' returned the child. 'They take such shapes and oc cupations as

the hopes and thoughts of mortals, and the recollections they have stored up, give them.'

In a poor, mean room: working at the same kind of embroidery which he had often seen before her; Meg, his

own dear daughter, was presented to his view. He made no effort to imprint his kisses on her face; he did not

strive to clasp her to his loving heart; he knew that such endearments were, for him, no more. But, he held his

trembling breath, and brushed away the blinding tears, that he might look upon her; that he might only see

Ah! Changed. Changed. The light of the clear eye, how dimmed. The bloom, how faded from the cheek.

Beautiful she was, as she had ever been, but Hope, Hope, Hope, oh where was the fresh Hope that had spoken

She looked up from her work, at a companion. Fol lowing her eyes, the old man started back.

In the woman grown, he recognised her at a glance. In the long silken hair, he saw the selfsame curls;

around the lips, the child's expression lingering still. See! In the eyes, now turned inquiringly on Meg, there

Looking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning there: a lofty something, undefined and in

distinct, which made it hardly more than a remem brance of that child as yonder figure might be yet

'Meg,' said Lilian, hesitating. 'How often you raise your head from your work to look at me!' .

'Nay, dear! But you smile at that, yourself! Why not smile, when you look at me, Meg?'

'Now you do,' said Lilian, 'but not usually. When you think I'm busy, and don't see you, you look so anxious

and so doubtful, that I hardly like to raise my eyes. There is little cause for smiling in this hard and toilsome

'Am I not now!' cried Meg, speaking in a tone of strange alarm, and rising to embrace her. 'Do I make our

'You have been the only thing that made it life,' said Lilian, fervently kissing her; 'sometimes the only thing

that made me care to live so, Meg. Such work, such work! So many hours, so many days, so many long, long

nights of hopeless, cheerless, neverending work not to heap up riches, not to live grandly or gaily, not to

live upon enough, however coarse; but to earn bare bread: to scrape together just enough to toil upon, and

want upon, and keep alive in us the consciousness of our hard fate! Oh Meg, Meg!' she raised her voice and

twined her arms about her as she spoke, like one in pain. 'How can the cruel world go round, and bear to look

'Lilly!' said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from her wet face. 'Why Lilly! You! So pretty and

'Oh Meg!' she interrupted, holding her at arm's length, and looking in her face imploringly. 'The worst of all,

the worst of all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that

Trotty turned to look upon his guide. But, the Spirit of the child had taken flight. Was gone. Neither did he

himself remain in the same place; for, Sir Joseph Bowley, Friend and Father of the Poor, held a great festivity

at Bowley Hall, in hon our of the natal day of Lady Bowley. And as Lady Bowley had been born on New

Year's Day (which the local newspapers considered an especial pointing of the finger of Providence to

number One. as Lady Bowley's destined figure in Creation). it was on a New Year's Day that this festivity

Bowley Hall was full of visitors. The redfaced gentleman was there, Mr. Filer was there, the great Alderman

Cute was there Alderman Cute had a sympathetic feeling with grat people, and had con siderably

improved his acquaintance with Sir Joseph Bowley on the strength of his attentive letter: indeed had become

quite a friend of the family since then and many guests were there. Trotty's ghost was there, wandering

There was to be a great dinner in the Great Hall. At which Sir Joseph Bowley, in his celebrated char acter of

Friend and Father, of the Poor, was to make his great speech. Certain plumpuddings were to be eaten by his

Friends and Children in another Hall first; and, at a given signal, Friends and Children flocking in among

their Friends and Fathers, were to form a family assemblage, with not one manly eye therein unmoistened by

But, there was more than this to happen. Even more than this. Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of

'Which quite reminds me,' said Alderman Cute, 'of the days of old King Hal, stout King Hal, bluff King Hal.

'Very,' said Mr. Filer, dryly. 'For marrying women and murdering 'em. Considerably more than the av erage

'You'll marry the beautiful ladies, and not murder 'em, eh?' said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged

twelve. 'Sweet boy! We shall have this little gentleman in Parliament now,' said the Alderman, holding him

by the shoulders, and looking as re flective as he could, 'before we know where we are. We shall hear of his

successes at the poll; his speeches in the House; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant achievements

of all kinds; ah! we shall make our little orations about him in the Common Council, I'll be bound; before we

'Oh, the difference of shoes and stockings!' Trotty thought. But his heart yearned towards the child, for the

love of those same shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn out bad, who might

'Richard,' moaned Trotty, roaming among the com pany, to and fro; 'where is he? I can't find Richard!

Not likely to be there, if still alive! But Trotty's grief and solitude confused him; and he still went wandering

among the gallant company, looking for his guide, and saying, 'Where is Richard? Show me Richard!'

He was wandering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, the confidential Secretary: in great agitation.

'Bless my heart and soul!~ cried Mr. Fish. 'Where's Alderman Cute? Has anybody seen the Alderman?'

Seen the Alderman? Oh dear! Who could ever help seeing the Alderman? He was so considerate, so affable,

he bore so much in mind the natural desires of folks to see him, that if he had a fault, it was the being

constantly On View. And wherever the great people were, there, to be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy

Several voices cried that he was in the circle round Sir Joseph. Mr. Fish made way there; found him; and took

him secretly into a window near at hand. Trotty joined them. Not of his own accord. He felt that his steps

'My dear Alderman Cute,' said Mr. Fish. 'A little more this way. The most dreadful circumstance has

occurred. I have this moment received the intelli gence. I think it will be best not to acquaint Sir Joseph with

it till the day is over. You understand Sir Joseph, and will give me your opinion. The most frightful and

'Fish!' returned the Alderman. 'Fish! My good fellow what is the matter? Nothing revolutionary, I hope! No

'Deedles, the banker,' gasped the Secretary. 'Deedles Brothers who was to have been here to day high

'Put a doublebarrelled pistol to his mouth, in his own countinghouse,' said Mr. Fish, 'and blew his brains

'Circumstances!' exclaimed the Alderman. 'A man of noble fortune. One of the most respectable of men.

'Oh the brain, the brain!' exclaimed the pious Alder man, lifting up his hands. 'Oh the nerves, the nerves; the

mysteries of this machine called Man! Oh the little that unhinges it: poor creatures that we are! Perhaps a

dinner, Mr. Fish. Perhaps the conduct of his son, who, I have heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of

drawing bills upon him without the least authority! A most respectable man. One of the most respectable men

I ever knew! A lamentable instance, Mr. Fish. A public calamity! I shall make a point of wearing the deepest

mourning. A most respectable man! But there is One above. We must submit, Mr. Fish. We must submit!'

What, Alderman! No word of Putting Down? Remember, Justice, your high moral boast and pride. Come,

Alderman! Balance those scales. Throw me into this, the empty one, no dinner, and Nature's founts in some

poor woman, dried by starving misery and rendered obdurate to claims for which her off spring has

authority in holy mother Eve. Weigh me the two, you Daniel, going to judgement, when your day shall come!

Weigh them, in the eyes of suffering thousands, audience (not unmindful) of the grim farce you play. Or

supposing that you strayed from your five wits it's not so far to go, but that it might be and laid hands

upon that throat of yours, warn ing your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they croak their comfortable

The words rose up in Trotty's breast, as if they had been spoken by some other voice within him. Alder man

Cute pledged himself to Mr. Fish that he would assist him in breaking the melancholy catastrophe to Sir

Joseph when the day was over. Then, before they parted, wringing Mr. Fish's hand in bitterness of soul, he

said, 'The most respectable of men!' And added that he hardly knew (not even he), why such afflictions were

'It's almost enough to make one think, if one didn't know better,' said Alderman Cute, 'that at times some

motion of a capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the general economy of the social fab

The skittleplaying came off which immense suc cess. Sir Joseph knocked the pins about quite skil fully;

Master Bowley took an innings at a shorter distance also; and everybody said that now, when a Baronet and

the Son of a Baronet played at skittles, the country was coming round again, as fast as it could come.

At its proper time, the Banquet was served up. Trotty involuntarily repaired to the Hall with the rest, for he

felt himself conducted thither by some stronger impulse than his own free will. The sight was gay in the

extreme; the ladies were very hand some; the visitors delighted, cheerful, and goodtem pered. When the

lower doors were opened, and the people flockcd in, in their rustic dresses, the beauty of the spectacle was at

its height; but Trotty only murmured more and more, 'Where is Richard! He should help and comfort her! I

There had been some speeches made; and Lady Bowley's health had been proposed; and Sir Joseph Bowley

had returned thanks, and had made his great speech, showing by various pieces of evidence that he was the

born Friend and Father, and so forth; and had given as a Toast, his Friends and Children, and the Dignity of

Labour; when a slight disturbance at the bottom of the Hall attracted Toby's notice. After some confusion,

noise, and opposition, one man broke through the rest, and stood forward by himself.

Not Richard. No. But one whom he had thought of, and had looked for, many times. In a scantier supply of

light, he might have doubted the identity of that worn man, so old, and grey, and bent; but with a blaze of

lamps upon his gnarled and knotted head, he knew Will Fern as soon as he stepped forth.

'What is this!' exclaimed Sir Joseph, rising. 'Who gave this man admittance? This is a criminal from prison!

'A minute!' said Will Fern. 'A minute! My Lady, you was born on this day along with a New Year. Get me a

She made some intercession for him. Sir Joseph took his seat again, with native dignity.

The ragged visitor for he was miserably dressed looked round upon the company, and made his

'Just come from jail,' said Will. 'And neither for the first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor yet the

Mr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was over the average; and he ought to be ashamed of

'Gentlefolks!' repeated Will Fern. 'Look at me! You see I'm at the worst. Beyond all hurt or harm; beyond

your help; for the time when your kind words or kind actions could have done ME good,' he struck his hand

upon his breast, and shook his head, 'is gone, with the scent of last year's beans or clover on the air. Let me

say a word for these,' pointing to the labouring people in the Hall; 'and when you're met together, hear the

'Like enough, Sir Joseph. I believe it. Not the less true, perhaps, is what I say. Perhaps that's a proof on it.

Gentlefolks, I've lived many a year in this place. You may see the cottage from the sunk fence over yonder.

I've seen the ladies draw it in their books, a hundred times. It looks well in a picter, I've heerd say; but there

an't weather in pic ters, and maybe 'tis fitter for that, than for a place to live in. Well! I lived there. How hard

how bitter hard, I lived there, I won't say. Any day in the year, and every day, you can judge for your own

He spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found him in the street. His voice was deeper and more

husky, and had a trembling in it now and then; but he never raised it passionately, and seldom lifted it above

' 'Tis harder than you think for, gentlefolks, to grow up decent, commonly decent, in such a place. That I

growed up a man and not a brute, says some thing for me as I was then. As I am now, there's nothing can

'I am glad this man has entered,' observed Sir Joseph, looking round serenely. 'Don't disturb him. It appears to

be Ordained. He is an example: a living example. I hope and trust. and confidently expect, that it will not be

'I dragged on,' said Fern, after a moment's silence, 'somehow. Neither me nor any other man knows how; but

so heavy, that I couldn't put a cheerful face upon it, or make believe that I was anything but what I was. Now,

gentlemen you gentlemen that sits at Sessions when you see a man with discontent writ on his face,

you says to one another, "He's suspicious. I has my doubts," says you, "about Will Fern Watch that fellow!" I

don't say, gentlemen, it an't quite nat'ral, but I say 'tis so; and from that hour, whatever Will Fern does, or lets

Alderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and leaning back in his chair, and smiling winked

at a neighbouring chandelier. As much as to say, 'Of course! I told you so. The common cry! Lord bless you,

'Now, gentlemen,' said Will Fern, holding out his hands, and flushing for an instant in his haggard face, 'see

how your laws are made to trap and hunt us when we're brought to this. I tries to live elsewhere. And I'm a

vagabond. To jail with him! I comes back here. I goes anutting in your woods, and breaks who don't?

a limber branch or two. To jail with him! One of your keepers sees me in the broad day, near my own patch

of garden, with a gun. To jail with him! I has a nat'ral angry word with that man, when I'm free again! To jail

with him! I cuts a stick. To jail with him! I eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with him! It's twenty mile

away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him! At last, the constable, the keeper any

body finds me anywhere, adoing anything. To jail with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jailbird known;

'Do I say this to serve MY cause!' cried Fcrn. 'Who can give me back my liberty, who can give me back my

good name, who can give me back my in nocent niece? Not all the Lords and Ladies in wide England. But

gentlemen, gentlemen, dealing with other men like me, begin at the right end. Give us, in mercy, better

homes when we're alying in our cradles; give us better food when we're aworking for our lives; give us

kinder laws to bring us back where we're agoing wrong; and don't set Jail, Jail, Jail, afore us, everywhere we

turn. There an't a con descension you can show the Labourer then, that he won't take, as ready and as

grateful as a man can be; for, he has a patient, peaceful, willing heart. But you must put his rightful spirit in

him first; for, whether he's a wreck and ruin such as me, or is like one of them that stand here now, his spirit

is divided from you at this time. Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it back! Bring it back, afore the day comes

when even his Bible changes in his altered mind, and the words seem to him to read, as they have some

times read in my own eyes in Jail: "Whither thou goest, I can Not go; where thou lodgest, I do Not lodge;

A sudden stir and agitation took place in the Hall. Trotty though at first, that several had risen to eject the

man; and hence this change in its appearance. But, another moment showed him that the room and all the

company had vanished from his sight, and that his daughter was again before him, seated at her work. But in

The frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a shelf and covered up. The chair in which she had

sat, was turned against the wall. A history was Written in these little things, and in Meg's grief worn face.

Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to see the threads; and when the night closed in,

she lighted her feeble candle and worked on. Still her old father was invisible about her; looking down upon

her; loving her how dearly loving her! and talking to her in a tender voice about the old times, and the

A great part of the evening had worn away, when a knock came at her door. She opened it. A man was on the

threshold. A slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his matted hair

and unshorn beard in wild disorder; but, with some traces on him, too, of having been a man of good

He stopped until he had her leave to enter; and she, retiring a pace or two from the open door, silently and

It was well that Trotty knew him before he spoke; for with any doubt remaining on his mind, the harsh

discordant voice would have persuaded him that it was not Richard but some other man.

There were but two chairs in the room. She gave him hers, and stood at some short distance from him,

He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep

degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she put her hands before her face

Roused by the rustling of her dress, or some such trifling sound, he lifted his head, and began to speak as if

'So she said. She said you never tired; or never owned that you tired. Not all the time you lived together. Not

even when you fainted, between work and fasting. But I told you that, the last time I came.'

'You did,' she answered. 'And I implored you to tell me nothing more; and you made me a solemn promise,

'A solemn promise,' he repeated, with a drivelling laugh and vacant stare. 'A solemn promise. To be sure. A

solemn promise!' Awakening, as it were, after a time; in the same manner as before; he said with sudden

'Again!' cried Meg, clasping her hands. '0, does she think of me so often! Has she been again!'

'Twenty times again,' said Richard. 'Margaret, she haunts me. She comes behind me in the street, and thrusts

it in my hand. I hear her foot upon the ashes when I'm at my work (ha, ha! that an't often), and before I can

turn my head, her voice is in my ear, saying, "Richard, don't look round. For Heaven's love, give her this!"

She brings it where I live; she ends it in letters; she taps at the window and lays it on the sill. What can I do?

'Hide it,' said Meg. 'Hide it! When she comes again, tell her, Richard, that I love her in my soul. That I never

lie down to sleep, but I bless her, and pray for her. That, in my solitary work, I never cease to have her in my

thoughts. That she is with me, night and day. That if I died tomorrow, I would remember her with my last

He slowly recalled his hand, and crushing the purse together, said with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness:

'I told her so. I told her so, as plain as words could speak. I've taken this gift back and left it at her door, a

dozen times since then. But when she came at last, and stood before me, face to face, what could I do?'

'You saw her!' exclaimed Meg. 'You saw her! O Lilian, my sweet girl! 0, Lilian, Lilian!'

'I saw her,' he went on to say, not answering, but engaged in the same slow pursuit of his own thoughts.

'There she stood: trembling! "How does she look, Richard? Does she ever speak of me? Is she thinner? My

old place at the table: what's in my old place? And the frame she taught me our old work on has she burnt

Meg checked her sobs, and with the tears stream ing from her eyes, bent over him to listen. Not to lose a

With his arms resting on his knees; and stooping forward in his chair, as if what he said were written on the

ground in some half legible character, which it was his occupation to decipher and connect; he went on.

' "Richard, I have fallen very low; and you may guess how much I have suffered in having this sent back,

when I can bear to bring it in my hand to you. But you loved her once, even in my memory, dearly. Others

stepped in between you; fears, and jealousies, and doubts, and vanities, estranged you from her; but you did

love her, even in my memory!" I suppose I did,' he said, interrupting himself for a moment. 'I did! That's

neither here nor there. "O Richard, if you ever did: if you have any memory for what is gone and lost, take it

to her once more. Once more! Tell her how I laid my head upon your shoulder, where her own head might

have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw the beauty

which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep

to see. Tell her everything, and take it back and she will not refuse again. She will not have the heart!

He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her

voice. It was a quick and rapid action; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing kindled in his form.

In the next he went as he had come. Nor did this glimmer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker

In any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body, Meg's work must be done. She sat down to her

She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at intervals to mend it. The Chimes rang halfpast

twelve while she was thus engaged; and when they ceased she heard a gentle knocking at the door. Before

O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this. O Youth and Beauty, blest and blessing all within

'Never more, Meg; never more! Here! Here! Close to you, holding to you, feeling your dear breath upon my

'Sweet Lilian! Darling Lilian! Child of my heart no mother's love can be more tender lay your head

'Never more, Meg. Never more! When I first looked into your face, you knelt before me. On my knees before

'You have come back. My Treasure! We will live together, work together, hope together, die to gether!'

'Ah! Kiss my lips, Meg; fold your arms about me; press me to your bosom; look kindly on me; but don't raise

O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! O Youth and Beauty, working out the ends of your

'Forgive me, Meg! So dear, so dear! Forgivo me! I know you do, I see you do, but say so, Meg!'

She said so, with her lips on Lilian's cheek. And with her arms twined round she knew it now a broken

'His blessing on you, dearest love. Kiss me once more! He suffered her to sit beside His feet, and dry them

As she died, the Spirit of the child returning, inno cent and radiant, touched the old man with its hand, and

Some new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bell; some faint impression of the ringing of the

Chimes; some giddy consciousness of having seen the swarm of phantoms reproduced and reproduced until

the recollection of them lost itself in the con fusion of their numbers; some hurried knowledge, how

conveyed to him he knew not, that more years had passed; and Trotty, with the Spirit of the child attending

Fat company, rosycheeked company, comfortable company. They were but two, but they were red enough

for ten. They sat before a bright fire, with a small low table between them; and unless the fra grance of hot

tea and muffins lingered longer in that room than in most others, the table had seen service very lately. But all

the cups and saucers being clean, and in their proper places in the cornercupboard; and the brass

toastingfork hanging in its usual nook and spreading its four idle fingers out as if it wanted to be measured

for a glove; there remained no other visible tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred and washed

their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and glistened in the gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of

This cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair division of the fire between them, and sat looking at the

glowing sparks that dropped into the grate; now nodding off into a doze; now waking up again when some

hot fragment, larger than the rest, came rattling down, as if the fire were coming with it.

It was in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it gleamed not only in the little room, and on the panes

of windowglass in the door, and on the cur tain half drawn across them, but in the little shop beyond. A

little shop, quite crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with

a maw as accommodating and full aa any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles matches, bacon,

tablebeer, pegtops, sweetmeats boys' kites, birdseed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth_ stones, salt,

vinegar, blacking, redherrings, station ery, lard, mushroomketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread,

shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all

articles were in its net. How many other kinds of petty merchandise were there, it would be difficult to say;

but balls of packthread, ropes of onions, pounds of candles, cabbagenets, and brushes, hung in bunches from

the ceiling, like extraordinary fruit; while various odd canisters emitting aromatic smells, established the

veracity of the inscription over the outer door, which informed the public that the keeper of this little shop

Glancing at such of these articles as were visible in the shining of the blaze, and the less cheerful radiance of

two smoky lamps which burnt but dimly in the shop itself, as though its plethora sat heavy on their lungs; and

glancing, then, at one of the two faces by the parlourfire; Trotty had small difficulty in recognising in the

stout old lady, Mrs. Chicken stalker: always inclined to corpulency, even in the days when he had known

her as established in the general line, and having a small balance against him in her books.

The features of her companion were less easy to him. The great broad chin, with creases in it large enough to

hide a finger in; the astonished eyes, that seemed to expostulate with themselves for sinking deeper and

deeper into the yielding fat of the soft face; the nose afflicted with that disordered action of its functions

which is generally termed The Snuffles; the short thick throat and labouring chest, with other beauties of the

like description; though calculated to impress the memory, Trotty could at first allot to nobody he had ever

known: and yet he had some recollection of them too. At length, in Mrs. Chicken stalker's partner in the

general line, and in the crooked and eccentric line of life, he recognised the former porter of Sir Joseph

Bowley; an apoplectic innocent, who had connected himself in Trotty's mind with Mrs. Chickenstalker years

ago, by giving him admis sion to the mansion where he had confessed his obli gations to that lady, and

Trotty had little interest in a change like this, after the changes he had seen; but association is very strong

sometimes; and he looked involuntarily be hind the parlourdoor, where the accounts of credit customers

were usually kept in chalk. There was no record of his name. Some names were there, but they were strange

to him, and infinitely fewer than of old; from which he argued that the porter was an advo cate of ready

money transactions, and on coming into the business had looked pretty sharp after the Chick enstalker

So desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth and promise of his blighted child, that it was a sorrow

'What sort of a night is it, Anne?' inquired the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretching out his legs

before the fire, and rubbing as much of them as his short arms could reach; with an air that added, 'Here I am

'Blowing and sleeting hard,' returned his wife; 'and threatening snow. Dark. And very cold.'

'I'm glad to think we had muffins,' said the former porter, in the tone of one who had set his conscience at

rest. 'It's a sort of night that's meant for muf fins. Likewise crumpets. Also Sally Lunns.'

The former porter mentioned each successive kind of eatable, as if he were musingly summing up his good

actions. After which he rubbed his fat legs as before, and jerking them at the knees to get the fire upon the yet

'No,' said Tugby. 'No. Not particular. I'm a little elewated. The muffins came so pat!'

With that he chuckled until he was black in the face; and had so much ado to become any other colour, that

his fat legs took the strangest excursions into the air. Nor were they reduced to anything like decorum until

Mrs. Tugby had thumped him vio lently on the back, and shaken him as if he were a great bottle.

'Good gracious, goodness, lordamercy bless and save the man!' cried Mrs. Tugby, in great terror. 'What's

Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and faintly repeated, that he found himself a little elewated.

'Then don't be so again, that's a dear good soul,' said Mrs. Tugby, 'if you don't want to frighten me to death,

Mr. Tugby said he wouldn't; but his whole exist ence was a fight, in which, if any judgment might be

founded on the constantlyincreasing shortness of his breath, and the deepening purple of his face, he was

'So it's blowing, and sleeting, and threatening snow; and it's dark, and very cold, is it, my dear? said Mr.

Tugby, looking at the fire, and reverting to the cream and marrow of his temporary elevation.

'Aye, aye! Years,' said Mr. Tugby, 'are like Chris tians in that respect. Some of 'em die hard; some of 'em die

easy. This one hasn't many days to run, and is making a fight for it. I like him all the better. There's a

'Now then!' said that lady, passing out into the little shop. 'What's wanted? Oh! I beg your pardon, sir, I'm

She made this apology to a gentleman in black, who with his wristbands tucked up, and his hat cocked

loungingly on one side, and his hands in his pockets, sat down astride on the tablebeer barrel, and nodded in

'This is a bad business upstairs, Mrs. Tugby,' said the gentleman. 'The man can't live.'

'Not the backattic can't!' cried Tugby, coming out into the shop to join the conference.

'The backattic, Mr. Tugby,' said the gentleman, 'is coming downstairs fast, and will be below the basement

Looking by turns at Tugby and his wife, he sounded the barrel with his knuckles for the depth of beer, and

'The backattic, Mr. Tugby,' said the gentleman: Tugby having stood in silent consternation for some time: 'is

'Then,' said Tugby, turning to his wife, 'he must Go, you know, before he's Gone.'

'I don't think you can move him,' said the gentle man, shaking his head. 'I wouldn't take the respon sibility

of saying it could be done, myself. You had better leave him where he is. He can't live long.'

'It's the only subject,' said Tugby, bringing the butterscale down upon the counter with a crash, by weighing

his fist on it, 'that we've ever had a word upon; she and me; and look what it comes to! He's going to die here,

'Not for that,' said Mrs. Tugby, with great energy. 'Not for that! Neither did I marry you for that, Don't think

it, Tugby. I won't have it. I won't. allow it. I'd be separated first, and never see your face again. When my

widow's name stood over that door, as it did for many years: this house being known as Mrs. Chickenstalker's

far and wide, and never known but to its honest credit and its good report: when my widow's name stood over

that door, Tugby, I knew him as a handsome, steady, manly, independent youth; I knew her as the

sweetestlook ing, sweetesttempered girl, eyes ever saw; I knew her father (poor old creetur, he fell down

from the steeple walking in his sleep, and killed himself), for the simplest, hardestworking, childesthearted

man, that ever drew the breath of life; and when I turn them out of house and home, may angels turn me out

Her old face, which had been a plump and dimpled one before the changes which had come to pass, seemed

to shine out of her as she said these words; and when she dried her eyes, and shook her head and her

handkerchief at Tugby, with an expression of firmness which it was quite clear was not to be easily resisted,

Then he listened, with a panting heart, for what should follow. Knowing nothing yet, but that they spoke of

If Tugby had been a little elevated in the parlour, he more than balanced that account by being not a little

depressed in the shop, where he now stood star ing at his wife, without attempting a reply; secretly

conveying, however either in a fit of abstraction or as a precautionary measure all the money from the

The gentleman upon the tablebeer cask, who ap peared to be some authorised medical attendant upon the

poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to

interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap

upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head, and said to Mrs. Tugby, late

'There's something interesting about the woman, even now. How did she come to marry him?'

'Why that,' said Mrs. Tugby, taking a seat near him, 'is not the least cruel part of her story, sir. You see they

kept company, she and Richard, many years ago. When they were a young and beautiful couple, everything

was settled, and they were to have been married on a New Year's Day. But, somehow, Rich ard got it into

his head, through what the gentlemen told him, that he might do better, and that he'd soon repent it, and that

she wasn't good enough for him, and that a young man of spirit had no business to be married. And the

gentlemen frightened her, and made her melancholy, and timid of his deserting her, and of her children

coming to the gallows, and of its being wicked to be man and wife, and a good deal more of it. And in short,

they lingered and lingered, and their trust in one another was broken, and so at last was the match. But the

fault was his. She would have married him, sir, joyfully. I've seen her heart swell, many times afterwards,

when he passed her in a proud and careless way; and never did a woman grieve more truly for a man, that she

'Oh! he went wrong, did he?' said the gentleman pulling out the ventpeg of the tablebeer, and trying to

'Well, sir, I don't know that he rightly understood himself, you see. I think his mind was troubled by their

having broke with one another; and that but for being ashamed before the gentlemen, and perhaps for being

uncertain too, how she might take it, he'd have gone through any suffering or trial to have had Meg's promise

and Meg's hand again. That's my belief. He never said so; more's the pity! He took to drinking, idling, bad

companions: all the fine re sources that were to be so much better for him than the Home he might have had.

He lost his looks, his character, his health, his strength, his friends, his work: everything!'

'He didn't lose everything, Mrs. Tugby,' returned the gentleman, 'because he gained a wife; and I want to

'I'm coming to it, sir, in a moment. This went on for years and years; he sinking lower and lower; she

enduring, poor thing, miseries enough to wear her life away. At last, he was so cast down, and cast out, that

no one would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he would. Ap plying from

place to place, and door to door; and coming for the hundredth time to one gentleman who had often and

often tried him (he was a good work man to the very end); that gentleman, who knew his history, said, "I

believe you are incorrigible; there is only one person in the world who has a chance of re claiming you; ask

me to trust you no more, until she tries to do it." Something like that, in his anger and vexation.'

'Well, sir, he went to her, and kneeled to her; said it was so: said it ever had been so; and made a prayer to her

'She came to me that night to ask me about living here. "What he was once to me," she said, "is buried in a

grave, side by side, with what I was to him. But I have thought of this; and I will make the trial in the hope of

saving him; for the love of the light hearted girl (you remember her) who was to have been married on a

New Year's Day; and for the love of her Richard." And she said he had come to her from Lilian, and Lilian

had trusted to him, and she never could forget that. So they were married; and when they came home here,

and I saw them, I hoped that such prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not often fulfil

themselves as they did in this case, or I wouldn't be the makers of them for a Mine of Gold.'

'I suppose he used her ill, as soon as they were married?' 'I don't think he ever did that,' said Mrs. Tugby,

shaking her head, and wiping her eyes. 'He went on better for a short time; but, his habits were too old and

strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast back, when his illness came so strong

upon him. I think he has always felt for her. I am sure he has. I have seen him, in his crying fits and

tremblings, try to kiss her hand; and I have heard him call her "Meg," and say it was her nineteenth birthday.

There he has been lying, now, these weeks and months. Between him and her baby, she had not been able to

do her own work; and by not being able to be regular, she has lost it, even if she could have done it. How they

'I know,' muttered Mr. Tugby; looking at the till, and round the shop, and at his wife; and rolling his head

He was interrupted by a cry a sound of lamenta tion from the upper story of the house. The gentle

'My friend,' he said, looking back, 'you needn't discuss whether he shall be removed or not. He has spared you

Saying so, he ran upstairs, followed by Mrs. Tugby; while Mr. Tugby panted and grumbled after them at

leisure: being rendered more than commonly short winded by the weight of the till, in which there had been

an inconvenient quantity of copper. Trotty with the child beside him, floated up the staircase like mere air.

'Follow her! Follow her! Follow her! ' He heard the ghostly voices in the Bells repeat their words as he

It was over. It was over. And this was she, her fathers pride and joy! This haggard, wretched woman,

weeping by the bed, if it deserved that name, and pressing to her breast, and hanging down her head upon, an

infant. Who can tell how spare, how sickly, and how poor an infant! Who can tell how dear!

'Thank God!' cried Trotty, holding up his folded hands. '0, God be thanked! She loves her child!'

The gentleman, not otherwise hardhearted or in different to such scenes, than that he saw them every day,

and knew that they were figures of no moment in the Filer sums mere scratches in the working of these

calculations laid his hand upon the heart that beat no more, and listened for the breath, and said, 'His pain

is over. It's better as it is!' Mrs. Tugby tried to comfort her with kindness. Mr. Tugby tried philosophy.

'Come, come!' he said, with his hands in his pockets, You mustn't give way, you know. That won't do. You

must fight up. What would have become of me if I had given way when I was porter, and we had as many as

six runaway carriagedoubles at our door in one night! But, I fell back upon my strength of mind, and didn't

Again Trotty heard the voices, saying, 'Follow her!' He turned towards his guide, and saw it rising from him,

He hovered round her; sat down at her feet; looked up into her face for one trace of her old self; listened for

one note of her old pleasant voice. He flitted round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so dreadful in its

gravity, so plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable wail. He almost worshipped it. He clung to it as her

only safeguard; as the last unbroken link that bound her to endurance. He set his father's hope and trust on the

frail baby; watched her every look upon it as she held it in her arms; and cried a thousand times, 'She loves it!

He saw the woman tend her in the night; return to her when her grudging husband was asleep, and all was

still; encourage her, shed tears with her, set nourishment before her. He saw the day come, and the night

again; the day, the night; the time go by; the house of death relieved of death; the room left to herself and to

the child; he heard it moan and cry; he saw it harass her, and tire her out, and when she slumbered in

exhaustion, drag her back to conscious ness, and hold her with its little hands upon the rack; but she was

constant to it, gentle with it, patient with it. Patient! Was its loving mother in her in most heart and soul, and

All this time she was in want: languishing away, in dire and pining want. With the baby in her arms she

wandered here and there, in quest of occupation; and with its thin face lying in her lap, and looking up in

hers, did any work for any wretched sum; a day and night of labour for as many farthings as there were

figures on the dial. If she had quarrelled with it, if she had neglected it; if she had looked upon it with a

moment's hate; if, in the frenzy of an in stant, she had struck it! No. His comfort was, She loved it always.

She told no one of her extremity, and wandered abroad in the day lest she should be questioned by her only

friend: for any help she received from her hands, occasioned fresh disputes between the good woman and her

husband; and it was new bitterness to be the daily cause of strife and discord where she owed so much.

She loved it still. She loved it more and more But a change fell on the aspect of her love. One night.

She was singing faintly to it in its sleep, and walk ing to and fro to hush it, when her door was softly

'Margaret, my race is nearly run. I couldn't finish it, without a parting word with you. Without one grateful

After a short silence, he made a gesture with his hand, as if he set her question by; as if he brushed it aside;

'It's long ago, Margaret, now; but that night is as fresh in my memory as ever 'twas. We little thought then,' he

added, looking round, 'that we should ever meet like this. Your child, Margaret? Let me have it in my arms.

He put his hat upon the floor, and took it. And he trembled as he took it, from head to foot.

'See how weak I'm grown, Margaret, when I want the courage to look at it! Let her be, a moment. I won't hurt

He seemed to breathe more freely; and after paus ing for an instant, took away his hand, and looked upon

She sunk down in a chair, and pressed the infant to her breast, and wept over it. Sometimes, she re leased it

from her embrace, to look anxiously in its face: then strained it to her bosom again. At those times, when she

gazed upon it, then it was that some thing fierce and terrible began to mingle with her love. Then it was that

'Follow her! ' was sounded through the house. 'Learn it, from the creature dearest to your heart!'

'Margaret,' said Fern, bending over her, and kiss ing her upon the brow: 'I thank you for the last time.

Goodnight. Goodbye! Put your hand in mine; and tell me you'll forget me from this hour, and try to think

'There'll be a Fire tonight,' he said, removing from her. There'll be Fires this wintertime, to light the dark

nights, East, West, North, and South. When you see the distant sky red, they'll be blazing. When you see the

distant sky red, think of me no more; or, if you do, remember what a Hell was lighted up inside of me, and

She called to him; but he was gone. She sat down stupefied, until her infant roused her to a sense of hunger,

cold, and darkness. She paced the room with it the livelong night, hushing it and soothing it. She said at

intervals, 'Like Lilian, when her mother died and left her!' Why was her step so quick, her eye so wild, her

'But, it is Love,' said Trotty. 'It is Love. She'll never cease to love it. My poor Meg!'

She dressed the child next morning with unusual care ah, vain expenditure of care upon such squalid

robes! and once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old Year. She tried till

She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it pleased some officer appointed to

dispense the public charity (the lawful charity; not that once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and

question them, and say to this one, 'Go to such a place,' to that one, 'Come next week'; to make a football of

another wretch, and pass him here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he wearied and

lay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of

She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast. And that was quite enough.

It was night: a bleak, dark, cutting night: when, pressing the child close to her for warmth, she arrived outside

the house she called her home. She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one standing in the doorway until

she was close upon it, and about to enter. Then she recognised the master of the house, who had so disposed

'Don't you think you have lived here long enough without paying any rent? Don't you think that, without any

money, you've been a pretty constant customer at this shop, now?' said Mr. Tugby.

'Suppose you try and deal somewhere else, he sald. 'And suppose you provide yourself with another lodg

'Now I see what you want,' said Tugby; 'and what you mean. You know there are two parties in this house

about you, and you delight in setting 'em by the ears. I don't want any quarrels; I'm speaking softly to avoid a

quarrel; but if you dont go away, I'll speak out loud, and you shall cause words high enough to please you.

She put her hair back with her hand, and looked in a sudden manner at the sky, and the dark lower ing

'This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won't carry illblood and quarrellings and disturbances into a New

One, to please you nor anybody else,' said Tugby, who was quite a retail Friend and Father. . 'I wonder you

an't ashamed of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year. If you haven't any busi ness in the world,

but to be always giving way, and always making disturbances between man and wife, you'd be better out of

Again the old man heard the voices. Looking up, he saw the figures hovering in the air, and pointing where

'She loves it!' he exclaimed, in agonised entreaty for her. 'Chimes! she loves it still!'

He joined in the pursuit; he kept close to her; he looked into her face. He saw the same fierce and terrible

expression mingling with her love, and kin dling in her eyes. He heard her say, 'Like Lilian! To be changed

0, for something to awaken her! For any sight, or sound, or scent, to call up tender recollections in a brain on

'I was her father! I was her father!' cried the old man, stretching out his hands to the dark shadows flying on

above. 'Have mercy on her, and on me! Where does she go? Turn her back! I was her father!'

But they only pointed to her, as she hurried on; and said, 'To desperation! Learn it from the crea ture dearest

A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath expended in those words. He seemed to take them in,

at every gasp he drew. They were every where, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same

light in her eyes, the same words in her mouth, 'Like Lilian! To be changed like Lilian!'

'Now, turn her back!' exclaimed the old man, tear ing his white hair. 'My child! Meg! Turn her back! Great

In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered hands, she smoothed its limbs,

composed its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would

resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and last long agony of Love.

Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, within her dress, next to her distracted heart, she set

its sleeping face against her: closely, steadily, against her: and sped onward to the River.

To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who

had sought a refuge there before her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sul len, red, and dull,

as torches that were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where no abode of living people casts its

To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate footsteps tended with the swiftness of its rapid waters

running to the sea. He tried to touch her as she passed him, going down to its dark level; but, the wild

distempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had left all human check or hold behind,

He followed her. She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful plunge. He fell down on his knees,

'I have learnt it!' cried the old man. 'From the creature dearest to my heart! 0, save her, save her!'

He could wind his fingers in her dress; could hold it! As the words escaped his lips, he felt his sense of touch

'I have learnt it!' cried the old man. 'O, have mercy on me in this hour, if, in my love for her, so young and

good, I slandered Nature in the breasts of mothers rendered desperate! Pity my presump tion, wickedness,

'Have mercy on her!' he exclaimed, 'as one in whom this dreadful crime has sprung from Love perverted;

from the strongest, deepest Love we fallen creatures know! Think what her misery must have been, when

such seed bears such fruit! Heaven meant her to be good. There is no loving mother on the earth who might

not come to this, if such a life had gone before. 0, have mercy on my child, who, even at this pass means

'I see the Spirit of the Chimes among you!' cried the old man, singling out the child, and speaking in some

inspiration, which their looks conveyed to him. 'I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I

know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away

like leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt

the good in one another. I have learnt it from the creature dearest to my heart. I clasp her in my arms again. O

Spirits, merciful and good, I take your lesson to my breast along with her! O Spirits, merciful and good, I am

He might have said more; but, the Bells, the old familiar Bells, his own dear, constant, steady friends, the

Chimes, began to ring the joypeals for a New Year: so lustily, so merrily, so harppily, so gaily, that he leapt

'And whatever you do, father,' said Meg, 'don't eat tripe again, without asking some doctor whether it's likely

She was working with her needle, at the little table by the fire: dressing her simple gown with ribbons for her

wedding. So quietly happy, so blooming and youthful, so full of beautiful promise, that he uttered a great cry

But, he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen on the hearth; and somebody came rushing in

'No!' cried the voice of this same somebody; a generous and jolly voice it was! 'Not even you. Not even you.

The first kiss of Meg in the New Year is mine. Mine! I have been waiting outside the house, this hour, to hear

the Bells and claim it. Meg, my precious prize, a happy year! A life of happy years, my darling wife!'

You never in all your life saw anything like Trotty after this. I don't care where you have lived or what you

have seen; you never in all your life saw any thing at all approaching him! He sat down in his chair and beat

his knees and cried; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and laughed; he sat down in his chair and beat

his knees and laughed and cried together; he got out of his chair and hugged Meg; he got out of his chair and

hugged Richard; he got out of his chair and hugged them both at once; he kept running up to Meg, and

squeezing her fresh face between his hands and kissing it, going from her backwards not to lose sight of it,

and running up again like a figure in a magic lantern; and whatever he did, he was constantly sitting himself

down in this chair, and never stopping in it for one single moment; being that's the truth beside himself

'And tomorrow's your your weddingday, my pet!' cried Trotty 'Your real, happy weddingday!'

'Today!' cried Richard, shaking hands with him 'Today. The Chimes are ringing in the New Year. Hear

They WERE ringing! Bless their sturdy hearts they WERE ringing! Great Bells as they were; melo dious,

deepmouthed, noble Bells; cast in no common metal; made by no common founder; when had they ever

'Because he's such a bad fellow, father,' said Meg An't you, Richard! Such a headstrong, violent man! He'd

have made no more of speaking his mind to that great Alderman, and putting him down I don t know where,

'No. Not a bit more,' said Meg. 'But I wouldn't let him, father. Where would have been the use!'

'Richard my boy!' cried Trotty. 'You was turned up Trumps originally; and Trumps you must be, till you die!

But, you were crying by the fire tonight my pet, when I came home! Why did you cry by the fire?'

'I was thinking of the years we've passed together father. Only that. And thinking that you might miss me, and

Trotty was backing off to that extraordinary chair again, when the child who had been awakened by the noise,

'Why, here she is!' cried Trotty, actching her up. 'Here's little Lilian! Ha ha ha! Here we are and here we go!

O here we are and here we go again! And here we are and here we go! and Uncle Will too!' Stopping in his

trot to greet him heartily. 'O, Uncle Will, the vision that I've had tonigilt, through lodging you! 0, Uncle

Will, the obligations that you've laid me under, by your coming, my good friend!'

Before Will Fern could make the least reply, a band of music burst into the room attended by a lot of

neighbours, screaming 'A Happy New Year, Meg!' 'A Happy Wedding!' 'Many of 'em!' and other frag

mentary good wishes of that sort. The Drum (who was a private friend of Trotty's) then stepped for ward

'Trotty Veck, my boy! It's got about, that your daughter is going to be married tomorrow. There an't a soul

that knows you that don't wish you well, or that knows her and don't wish her well. Or that knows you both,

and don't wish you both all the hap piness the New Year can bring. And here we are, to play it in and dance

Which was received with a general shout. The Drum was rather drunk, by the bye; but, never mind.

'What a happiness it is, I'm sure,' said Trotty, 'to be so esteemed! How kind and neighbourly you are; It's all

They were ready for a dance in half a second (Meg and Richard at the top); and the Drum was on the very

brink of leathering away with all his power; when a combination of prodigious sounds was heard outside, and

a goodhumoured comely woman of some fifty years of age, or thereabouts, came running in, attended by a

man bearing a stone pitcher of terrific size, and closely followed by the marrowbones and cleavers, and the

'Married, and not tell me, Meg!' cried the good woman 'Never! I couldn't rest on the last night of the Old Year

without coming to wish you joy. I couldn't have done it, Meg. Not if I had been bedridden. So here I am; and

as it s New Year's Eve, and the Eve of your wedding too, my dear I had a little flip made and brought it with

'Mrs. Chickenstalker's notion of a little flip, did honour to her character. The pitcher steamed and smoked and

'Mrs. Tugby!' said Trotty, who had been going round and round her, in an ecstasy. 'I should say

Chickenstalker Bless your heart and soul! A happy New Year, and many of 'em! Mrs. Tugby,' said Trotty

when he had saluted her; 'I should say Chickenstalker This is William Fern and Lilian.'

Her uncle answered 'Yes,' and meeting hastily they exchanged some hurried words together; of which the

upshot was, that Mrs. Chickenstalker shook him by both hands; saluted Trotty on his cheek again of her own

'Will Fern!' said Trotty, pulling on his righthand muffler; 'Not the friend you was hoping to find?'

'Ay!' returned Will, putting a hand on each of Trotty's shoulders. 'And like to prove a'most as good a friend, if

To the music of the band, the bells, the marrow bones and cleavers, all at once; and while the Chimes were

yet in lusty operation out of doors, Trotty making Meg and Richard second couple, led off Mrs.

Chickenstalker down the dance, and danced it in a step unknown before or since; founded on his own peculiar

Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys and sor rows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream;

the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to

bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere none is too wide, and

none too limited for such an end endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year

be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier

than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great