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Tales and Fantasies.............................................................................................................................................1

Robert Louis Stevenson...........................................................................................................................1

JOHN VAREY NICHOLSON was stupid; yet, stupider men than he are now sprawling in Parliament, and

lauding themselves as the authors of their own distinction. He was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and

inclined to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life; and possibly this attitude of mind was the

original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in

His father that iron gentleman had long ago enthroned himself on the heights of the Disruption Principles.

What these are (and in spite of their grim name they are quite innocent) no array of terms would render

thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr.

Nicholson found in them the milk of lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their

annual assemblies, he was to be seen descending the Mound in the company of divers redheaded clergymen:

these voluble, he only contributing oracular nods, brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his stretched

upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran

on the Residuary Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little theological kingdom

of Scotland might have listened and gathered literally nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man)

knew this, and raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside, to whom Disruption Principles were as the

chatter of treetop apes; the paper brought him chill whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who had asked

lightly if he did not belong to the Church of Scotland, and then had failed to be much interested by his

elucidation of that nice point; it was an evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in DOZENEDNESS, for

nothing short of a Scots word will paint this Scotsman's feelings. And when he entered into his own house in

Randolph Crescent (south side), and shut the door behind him, his heart swelled with security. Here, at least,

was a citadel impregnable by righthand defections or lefthand extremes. Here was a family where prayers

came at the same hour, where the Sabbath literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who should

have leaned to any false opinion was instantly set down, and over which there reigned all week, and grew

denser on Sundays, a silence that was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he found comfortable.

Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, and left him with three children: a daughter two years, and a son about

eight years younger than John; and John himself, the unlucky bearer of a name infamous in English history.

The daughter, Maria, was a good girl dutiful, pious, dull, but so easily startled that to speak to her was quite

a perilous enterprise. 'I don't think I care to talk about that, if you please,' she would say, and strike the

boldest speechless by her unmistakable pain; this upon all topics dress, pleasure, morality, politics, in

which the formula was changed to 'my papa thinks otherwise,' and even religion, unless it was approached

with a particular whining tone of voice. Alexander, the younger brother, was sickly, clever, fond of books and

drawing, and full of satirical remarks. In the midst of these, imagine that natural, clumsy, unintelligent, and

mirthful animal, John; mighty wellbehaved in comparison with other lads, although not up to the mark of

the house in Randolph Crescent; full of a sort of blundering affection, full of caresses, which were never very

warmly received; full of sudden and loud laughter which rang out in that still house like curses. Mr.

Nicholson himself had a great fund of humour, of the Scots order intellectual, turning on the observation of

men; his own character, for instance if he could have seen it in another would have been a rare feast to

him; but his son's empty guffaws over a broken plate, and empty, almost lighthearted remarks, struck him

Outside the family John had early attached himself (much as a dog may follow a marquis) to the steps of

Alan Houston, a lad about a year older than himself, idle, a trifle wild, the heir to a good estate which was

still in the hands of a rigorous trustee, and so royally content with himself that he took John's devotion as a

thing of course. The intimacy was gall to Mr. Nicholson; it took his son from the house, and he was a jealous

parent; it kept him from the office, and he was a martinet; lastly, Mr. Nicholson was ambitious for his family

(in which, and the Disruption Principles, he entirely lived), and he hated to see a son of his play second fiddle

to an idler. After some hesitation, he ordered that the friendship should cease an unfair command, though

seemingly inspired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, saying nothing, continued to disobey the order under

John was nearly nineteen when he was one day dismissed rather earlier than usual from his father's office,

where he was studying the practice of the law. It was Saturday; and except that he had a matter of four

hundred pounds in his pocket which it was his duty to hand over to the British Linen Company's Bank, he

had the whole afternoon at his disposal. He went by Princes Street enjoying the mild sunshine, and the little

thrill of easterly wind that tossed the flags along that terrace of palaces, and tumbled the green trees in the

garden. The band was playing down in the valley under the castle; and when it came to the turn of the pipers,

he heard their wild sounds with a stirring of the blood. Something distantly martial woke in him; and he

Now, it is undeniable that he should have gone directly to the bank, but right in the way stood the

billiardroom of the hotel where Alan was almost certain to be found; and the temptation proved too strong.

He entered the billiardroom, and was instantly greeted by his friend, cue in hand.

'Nonsense,' said Alan. 'You can get some. Go and borrow at your tailor's; they all do it. Or I'll tell you what:

'How is he to know? He doesn't wind it up for you at night, does he?' inquired Alan, at which John guffawed.

'No, seriously; I am in a fix,' continued the tempter. 'I have lost some money to a man here. I'll give it you

tonight, and you can get the heirloom out again on Monday. Come; it's a small service, after all. I would

Whereupon John went forth, and pawned his gold watch under the assumed name of John Froggs, 85

Pleasance. But the nervousness that assailed him at the door of that inglorious haunt a pawnshop and the

effort necessary to invent the pseudonym (which, somehow, seemed to him a necessary part of the

procedure), had taken more time than he imagined: and when he returned to the billiardroom with the spoils,

This was a shrewd knock. 'A piece of business had been neglected.' He heard these words in his father's

trenchant voice, and trembled, and then dodged the thought. After all, who was to know? He must carry four

hundred pounds about with him till Monday, when the neglect could be surreptitiously repaired; and

meanwhile, he was free to pass the afternoon on the encircling divan of the billiardroom, smoking his pipe,

sipping a pint of ale, and enjoying to the masthead the modest pleasures of admiration.

None can admire like a young man. Of all youth's passions and pleasures, this is the most common and least

alloyed; and every flash of Alan's black eyes; every aspect of his curly head; every graceful reach, every easy,

standoff attitude of waiting; ay, and down to his shirtsleeves and wristlinks, were seen by John through a

luxurious glory. He valued himself by the possession of that royal friend, hugged himself upon the thought,

and swam in warm azure; his own defects, like vanquished difficulties, becoming things on which to plume

himself. Only when he thought of Miss Mackenzie there fell upon his mind a shadow of regret; that young

lady was worthy of better things than plain John Nicholson, still known among schoolmates by the derisive

name of 'Fatty'; and he felt, if he could chalk a cue, or stand at ease, with such a careless grace as Alan, he

could approach the object of his sentiments with a less crushing sense of inferiority.

Before they parted, Alan made a proposal that was startling in the extreme. He would be at Colette's that

night about twelve, he said. Why should not John come there and get the money? To go to Colette's was to

see life, indeed; it was wrong; it was against the laws; it partook, in a very dingy manner, of adventure. Were

it known, it was the sort of exploit that disconsidered a young man for good with the more serious classes, but

gave him a standing with the riotous. And yet Colette's was not a hell; it could not come, without vaulting

hyperbole, under the rubric of a gilded saloon; and, if it was a sin to go there, the sin was merely local and

municipal. Colette (whose name I do not know how to spell, for I was never in epistolary communication

with that hospitable outlaw) was simply an unlicensed publican, who gave suppers after eleven at night, the

Edinburgh hour of closing. If you belonged to a club, you could get a much better supper at the same hour,

and lose not a jot in public esteem. But if you lacked that qualification, and were an hungered, or inclined

toward conviviality at unlawful hours, Colette's was your only port. You were very illsupplied. The

company was not recruited from the Senate or the Church, though the Bar was very well represented on the

only occasion on which I flew in the face of my country's laws, and, taking my reputation in my hand,

penetrated into that grim supperhouse. And Colette's frequenters, thrillingly conscious of wrongdoing and

'that twohanded engine (the policeman) at the door,' were perhaps inclined to somewhat feverish excess. But

the place was in no sense a very bad one; and it is somewhat strange to me, at this distance of time, how it

In precisely the same spirit as a man may debate a project to ascend the Matterhorn or to cross Africa, John

considered Alan's proposal, and, greatly daring, accepted it. As he walked home, the thoughts of this

excursion out of the safe places of life into the wild and arduous, stirred and struggled in his imagination with

the image of Miss Mackenzie incongruous and yet kindred thoughts, for did not each imply unusual

tightening of the pegs of resolution? did not each woo him forth and warn him back again into himself?

Between these two considerations, at least, he was more than usually moved; and when he got to Randolph

Crescent, he quite forgot the four hundred pounds in the inner pocket of his greatcoat, hung up the coat, with

its rich freight, upon his particular pin of the hatstand; and in the very action sealed his doom.

ABOUT halfpast ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer his arm to Miss Mackenzie, and escort her

home. The night was chill and starry; all the way eastward the trees of the different gardens rustled and

looked black. Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, the breeze made a rush and set

the flames of the streetlamps quavering; and when at last they had mounted to the Royal Terrace, where

Captain Mackenzie lived, a great salt freshness came in their faces from the sea. These phases of the walk

remained written on John's memory, each emphasised by the touch of that light hand on his arm; and behind

all these aspects of the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind'seye, a picture of the lighted drawingroom at

home where he had sat talking with Flora; and his father, from the other end, had looked on with a kind and

ironical smile. John had read the significance of that smile, which might have escaped a stranger. Mr.

Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglement with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it still

At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a certain emphasis; and John took it and kept it a little

longer, and said, 'Goodnight, Flora, dear,' and was instantly thrown into much fear by his presumption. But

she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell; and while she was waiting for the door to open, kept

close in the porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a fortification. She had a knitted shawl over her

head; her blue Highland eyes took the light from the neighbouring streetlamp and sparkled; and when the

He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when he came to Greenside Church, he

halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay the way to Colette's, where Alan

would soon be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have no more consented to go than he would

have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the touch of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his father's

eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him was the way home, which pointed only to bed, a place of

little ease for one whose fancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent heart was just then

tumultuously moved. The hilltop, the cool air of the night, the company of the great monuments, the sight of

the city under his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew him by all he had of the

poetic, and he turned that way; and by that quite innocent deflection, ripened the crop of his venial errors for

On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps half an hour, looking down upon the lamps of

Edinburgh, and up at the lamps of heaven. Wonderful were the resolves he formed; beautiful and kindly were

the vistas of future life that sped before him. He uttered to himself the name of Flora in so many touching and

dramatic keys, that he became at length fairly melted with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. At that

juncture a certain creasing in his greatcoat caught his ear. He put his hand into his pocket, pulled forth the

envelope that held the money, and sat stupefied. The Calton Hill, about this period, had an ill name of nights;

and to be sitting there with four hundred pounds that did not belong to him was hardly wise. He looked up.

There was a man in a very bad hat a little on one side of him, apparently looking at the scenery; from a little

on the other a second nightwalker was drawing very quietly near. Up jumped John. The envelope fell from

his hands; he stooped to get it, and at the same moment both men ran in and closed with him.

A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the poorer by a purse which contained exactly one penny

Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of lovely exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to

be supported alone; and not many hundred yards away his greatest friend was sitting at supper ay, and even

expecting him. Was it not in the nature of man that he should run there? He went in quest of sympathy in

quest of that droll article that we all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait, and have agreed to call

advice; and he went, besides, with vague but rather splendid expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or would

be so when he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he might remedy this misfortune, and avert that dreaded

interview with Mr. Nicholson, from which John now shrunk in imagination as the hand draws back from fire.

Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow avenue, part street, part byroad. The head of it faces

the doors of the prison; its tail descends into the sunless slums of the Low Calton. On one hand it is overhung

by the crags of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard. Between these two the roadway runs in a trench,

sparsely lighted at night, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it was cleared the place of tombs,

by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of these was the house of Colette; and at his door our illstarred John

was presently beating for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealous inquiries of the contraband

hotelkeeper; in an evil hour he penetrated into the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was there,

seated in a room lighted by noisy gasjets, beside a dirty tablecloth, engaged on a coarse meal, and in the

company of several tipsy members of the junior bar. But Alan was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds

upon a horserace, had received the news at dinnertime, and was now, in default of any possible means of

extrication, drowning the memory of his predicament. He to help John! The thing was impossible; he couldn't

'If you have a beast of a father,' said he, 'I can tell you I have a brute of a trustee.'

'I'm not going to hear my father called a beast,' said John with a beating heart, feeling that he risked the last

'All right, old fellow,' said he. 'Mos' respec'able man your father.' And he introduced his friend to his

John sat in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate tablelinen, and even down to Colette's villainous

casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a scurrying; the police, so

lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken FLAGRANTE

DELICTO, with their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly

summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent case against that archshebeener, Colette.

It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came forth again. The vague terror of public opinion

weighed generally on them all; but there were private and particular horrors on the minds of individuals. Alan

stood in dread of his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the group was the son of a country minister, another

of a judge; John, the unhappiest of all, had David Nicholson to father, the idea of facing whom on such a

scandalous subject was physically sickening. They stood awhile consulting under the buttresses of Saint

Giles; thence they adjourned to the lodgings of one of the number in North Castle Street, where (for that

matter) they might have had quite as good a supper, and far better drink, than in the dangerous paradise from

which they had been routed. There, over an almost tearful glass, they debated their position. Each explained

he had the world to lose if the affair went on, and he appeared as a witness. It was remarkable what bright

prospects were just then in the very act of opening before each of that little company of youths, and what

pious consideration for the feelings of their families began now to well from them. Each, moreover, was in an

odd state of destitution. Not one could bear his share of the fine; not one but evinced a wonderful twinkle of

hope that each of the others (in succession) was the very man who could step in to make good the deficit. One

took a high hand; he could not pay his share; if it went to a trial, he should bolt; he had always felt the

English Bar to be his true sphere. Another branched out into touching details about his family, and was not

listened to. John, in the midst of this disorderly competition of poverty and meanness, sat stunned,

At last, upon a pledge that each should apply to his family with a common frankness, this convention of

unhappy young asses broke up, went down the common stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, with the

streets lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on into the daylight in diminished lustre, and the

birds beginning to sound premonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went each his own way

The rooks were awake in Randolph Crescent; but the windows looked down, discreetly blinded, on the return

of the prodigal. John's passkey was a recent privilege; this was the first time it had been used; and, oh! with

what a sickening sense of his unworthiness he now inserted it into the welloiled lock and entered that citadel

of the proprieties! All slept; the gas in the hall had been left faintly burning to light his return; a dreadful

stillness reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eightday clock. He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in

the hall, waiting and counting the minutes, longing for any human countenance. But when at last he heard the

alarm spring its rattle in the lower story, and the servants begin to be about, he instantly lost heart, and fled to

SHORTLY after breakfast, at which he assisted with a highly tragical countenance, John sought his father

where he sat, presumably in religious meditation, on the Sabbath mornings. The old gentleman looked up

with that sour, inquisitive expression that came so near to smiling and was so different in effect.

'I know that,' returned John; 'but I have I want I've made a dreadful mess of it,' he broke out, and turned to

Mr. Nicholson sat silent for an appreciable time, while his unhappy son surveyed the poles in the back green,

and a certain yellow cat that was perched upon the wall. Despair sat upon John as he gazed; and he raged to

think of the dreadful series of his misdeeds, and the essential innocence that lay behind them.

'Well,' said the father, with an obvious effort, but in very quiet tones, 'what is it?'

'Maclean gave me four hundred pounds to put in the bank, sir,' began John; 'and I'm sorry to say that I've been

'Robbed of it?' cried Mr. Nicholson, with a strong rising inflection. 'Robbed? Be careful what you say, John!'

'I can't say anything else, sir; I was just robbed of it,' said John, in desperation, sullenly.

'And where and when did this extraordinary event take place?' inquired the father.

'The Calton Hill?' repeated Mr. Nicholson. 'And what were you doing there at such a time of the night?'

'I neglected that piece of business,' said John, anticipating comment; and then in his own dialect: 'I clean

'Well,' said his father, 'it's a most extraordinary story. Have you communicated with the police?'

'I have,' answered poor John, the blood leaping to his face. 'They think they know the men that did it. I dare

say the money will be recovered, if that was all,' said he, with a desperate indifference, which his father set

'Oh, the watch is all right!' cried John. 'At least, I mean I was coming to the watch the fact is, I am ashamed

to say, I I had pawned the watch before. Here is the ticket; they didn't find that; the watch can be redeemed;

they don't sell pledges.' The lad panted out these phrases, one after another, like minute guns; but at the last

word, which rang in that stately chamber like an oath, his heart failed him utterly; and the dreaded silence

It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking up the pawnticket: 'John Froggs, 85 Pleasance,' he read; and then

turning upon John, with a brief flash of passion and disgust, 'Who is John Froggs?' he cried.

'Oh! I think scarcely quite that,' said the culprit; 'it's a form, they all do it, the man seemed to understand, we

He paused at that, for he saw his father wince at the picture like a man physically struck; and again there was

'I do not think,' said Mr. Nicholson, at last, 'that I am an ungenerous father. I have never grudged you money

within reason, for any avowable purpose; you had just to come to me and speak. And now I find that you

have forgotten all decency and all natural feeling, and actually pawned pawned your mother's watch. You

must have had some temptation; I will do you the justice to suppose it was a strong one. What did you want

'I will not be fenced with,' cried his father. 'There must be an end of disingenuous answers. What did you

And 'In a billiardroom' was the damning answer. Thus, had John's single departure from the truth brought

instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiardroom; but he had

desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable

Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile tidings in silence, and when John stole a glance at his father's

'Well,' said the old gentleman, at last, 'I cannot pretend not to be simply bowed down. I rose this morning

what the world calls a happy man happy, at least, in a son of whom I thought I could be reasonably proud

But it was beyond human nature to endure this longer, and John interrupted almost with a scream. 'Oh,

wheest!' he cried, 'that's not all, that's not the worst of it it's nothing! How could I tell you were proud of

me? Oh! I wish, I wish that I had known; but you always said I was such a disgrace! And the dreadful thing is

this: we were all taken up last night, and we have to pay Colette's fine among the six, or we'll be had up for

evidence shebeening it is. They made me swear to tell you; but for my part,' he cried, bursting into tears, 'I

just wish that I was dead!' And he fell on his knees before a chair and hid his face.

Whether his father spoke, or whether he remained long in the room or at once departed, are points lost to

history. A horrid turmoil of mind and body; bursting sobs; broken, vanishing thoughts, now of indignation,

now of remorse; broken elementary whiffs of consciousness, of the smell of the horsehair on the chair

bottom, of the jangling of church bells that now began to make day horrible throughout the confines of the

city, of the hard floor that bruised his knees, of the taste of tears that found their way into his mouth: for a

period of time, the duration of which I cannot guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these were

When at last, as by the touching of a spring, he returned again to clearness of consciousness and even a

measure of composure, the bells had but just done ringing, and the Sabbath silence was still marred by the

patter of belated feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by these more speaking signs, the service had not

long begun; and the unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church, might count on near two hours of

only comparative unhappiness. With his father, the superlative degree returned infallibly. He knew it by

every shrinking fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, at the mere thought of

that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an hour and threequarters, if the doctor was longwinded, and

then would begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk as from

the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalmbooks,

Maria with her smellingsalts, his father sitting spectacled and critical; and at once he was struck with

indignation, not unjustly. It was inhuman to go off to church, and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished,

unforgiven. And at the very touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity was lessened; yet the paternal terror only

And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his father should have locked him in. The notion had no

ground in sense; it was probably no more than a reminiscence of similar calamities in childhood, for his

father's room had always been the chamber of inquisition and the scene of punishment; but it stuck so

rigorously in his mind that he must instantly approach the door and prove its untruth. As he went, he struck

upon a drawer left open in the business table. It was the moneydrawer, a measure of his father's disarray: the

moneydrawer perhaps a pointing providence! Who is to decide, when even divines differ between a

providence and a temptation? or who, sitting calmly under his own vine, is to pass a judgment on the doings

of a poor, hunted dog, slavishly afraid, slavishly rebellious, like John Nicholson on that particular Sunday?

His hand was in the drawer, almost before his mind had conceived the hope; and rising to his new situation,

he wrote, sitting in his father's chair and using his father's blottingpad, his pitiful apology and farewell:

'MY DEAR FATHER, I have taken the money, but I will pay it back as soon as I am able. You will never

hear of me again. I did not mean any harm by anything, so I hope you will try and forgive me. I wish you

would say goodbye to Alexander and Maria, but not if you don't want to. I could not wait to see you, really.

The coins abstracted and the missive written, he could not be gone too soon from the scene of these

transgressions; and remembering how his father had once returned from church, on some slight illness, in the

middle of the second psalm, he durst not even make a packet of a change of clothes. Attired as he was, he

slipped from the paternal doors, and found himself in the cool spring air, the thin spring sunshine, and the

great Sabbath quiet of the city, which was now only pointed by the cawing of the rooks. There was not a soul

in Randolph Crescent, nor a soul in Queensferry Street; in this outdoor privacy and the sense of escape, John

took heart again; and with a pathetic sense of leavetaking, he even ventured up the lane and stood awhile, a

strange peri at the gates of a quaint paradise, by the west end of St. George's Church. They were singing

within; and by a strange chance, the tune was 'St. George's, Edinburgh,' which bears the name, and was first

sung in the choir of that church. 'Who is this King of Glory?' went the voices from within; and, to John, this

was like the end of all Christian observances, for he was now to be a wild man like Ishmael, and his life was

It was thus, with no rising sense of the adventurous, but in mere desolation and despair, that he turned his

back on his native city, and set out on foot for California, with a more immediate eye to Glasgow.

IT is no part of mine to narrate the adventures of John Nicholson, which were many, but simply his more

momentous misadventures, which were more than he desired, and, by human standards, more than he

deserved; how he reached California, how he was rooked, and robbed, and beaten, and starved; how he was at

last taken up by charitable folk, restored to some degree of selfcomplacency, and installed as a clerk in a

bank in San Francisco, it would take too long to tell; nor in these episodes were there any marks of the

peculiar Nicholsonic destiny, for they were just such matters as befell some thousands of other young

adventurers in the same days and places. But once posted in the bank, he fell for a time into a high degree of

good fortune, which, as it was only a longer way about to fresh disaster, it behooves me to explain.

It was his luck to meet a young man in what is technically called a 'dive,' and thanks to his monthly wages, to

extricate this new acquaintance from a position of present disgrace and possible danger in the future. This

young man was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill magnates, who run the San Francisco Stock Exchange,

much as more humble adventurers, in the corner of some public park at home, may be seen to perform the

simple artifice of pea and thimble: for their own profit, that is to say, and the discouragement of public

gambling. It was thus in his power and, as he was of grateful temper, it was among the things that he

desired to put John in the way of growing rich; and thus, without thought or industry, or so much as even

understanding the game at which he played, but by simply buying and selling what he was told to buy and

sell, that plaything of fortune was presently at the head of between eleven and twelve thousand pounds, or, as

How he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than how he had formerly earned disgrace at home, was a

problem beyond the reach of his philosophy. It was true that he had been industrious at the bank, but no more

so than the cashier, who had seven small children and was visibly sinking in decline. Nor was the step which

had determined his advance a visit to a dive with a month's wages in his pocket an act of such

transcendent virtue, or even wisdom, as to seem to merit the favour of the gods. From some sense of this, and

of the dizzy seesaw heavenhigh, helldeep on which men sit clutching; or perhaps fearing that the

sources of his fortune might be insidiously traced to some root in the field of petty cash; he stuck to his work,

said not a word of his new circumstances, and kept his account with a bank in a different quarter of the town.

The concealment, innocent as it seems, was the first step in the second tragicomedy of John's existence.

Meanwhile, he had never written home. Whether from diffidence or shame, or a touch of anger, or mere

procrastination, or because (as we have seen) he had no skill in literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes

tempted to suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents young men not otherwise beasts from

the performance of this simple act of piety months and years had gone by, and John had never written. The

habit of not writing, indeed, was already fixed before he had begun to come into his fortune; and it was only

the difficulty of breaking this long silence that withheld him from an instant restitution of the money he had

stolen or (as he preferred to call it) borrowed. In vain he sat before paper, attending on inspiration; that

heavenly nymph, beyond suggesting the words 'my dear father,' remained obstinately silent; and presently

John would crumple up the sheet and decide, as soon as he had 'a good chance,' to carry the money home in

person. And this delay, which is indefensible, was his second step into the snares of fortune.

Ten years had passed, and John was drawing near to thirty. He had kept the promise of his boyhood, and was

now of a lusty frame, verging toward corpulence; good features, good eyes, a genial manner, a ready laugh, a

long pair of sandy whiskers, a dash of an American accent, a close familiarity with the great American joke,

and a certain likeness to a Ry l Prsnge, who shall remain nameless for me, made up the man's externals

as he could be viewed in society. Inwardly, in spite of his gross body and highly masculine whiskers, he was

It chanced one day, as he was strolling down Market Street on the eve of his fortnight's holiday, that his eye

was caught by certain railway bills, and in very idleness of mind he calculated that he might be home for

Christmas if he started on the morrow. The fancy thrilled him with desire, and in one moment he decided he

There was much to be done: his portmanteau to be packed, a credit to be got from the bank where he was a

wealthy customer, and certain offices to be transacted for that other bank in which he was an humble clerk;

and it chanced, in conformity with human nature, that out of all this business it was the last that came to be

neglected. Night found him, not only equipped with money of his own, but once more (as on that former

Now it chanced there lived in the same boardinghouse a fellowclerk of his, an honest fellow, with what is

called a weakness for drink though it might, in this case, have been called a strength, for the victim had

been drunk for weeks together without the briefest intermission. To this unfortunate John intrusted a letter

with an inclosure of bonds, addressed to the bank manager. Even as he did so he thought he perceived a

certain haziness of eye and speech in his trustee; but he was too hopeful to be stayed, silenced the voice of

warning in his bosom, and with one and the same gesture committed the money to the clerk, and himself into

I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on John's minutest errors, his case being so perplexing to the moralist; but

we have done with them now, the roll is closed, the reader has the worst of our poor hero, and I leave him to

judge for himself whether he or John has been the less deserving. Henceforth we have to follow the spectacle

of a man who was a mere whiptop for calamity; on whose unmerited misadventures not even the humourist

That same night the clerk entered upon a bout of drunkenness so consistent as to surprise even his intimate

acquaintance. He was speedily ejected from the boardinghouse; deposited his portmanteau with a perfect

stranger, who did not even catch his name; wandered he knew not where, and was at last hoveto, all

standing, in a hospital at Sacramento. There, under the impenetrable ALIAS of the number of his bed, the

crapulous being lay for some more days unconscious of all things, and of one thing in particular: that the

police were after him. Two months had come and gone before the convalescent in the Sacramento hospital

was identified with Kirkman, the absconding San Francisco clerk; even then, there must elapse nearly a

fortnight more till the perfect stranger could be hunted up, the portmanteau recovered, and John's letter

carried at length to its destination, the seal still unbroken, the inclosure still intact.

Meanwhile, John had gone upon his holidays without a word, which was irregular; and there had disappeared

with him a certain sum of money, which was out of all bounds of palliation. But he was known to be careless,

and believed to be honest; the manager besides had a regard for him; and little was said, although something

was no doubt thought, until the fortnight was finally at an end, and the time had come for John to reappear.

Then, indeed, the affair began to look black; and when inquiries were made, and the penniless clerk was

found to have amassed thousands of dollars, and kept them secretly in a rival establishment, the stoutest of

his friends abandoned him, the books were overhauled for traces of ancient and artful fraud, and though none

were found, there still prevailed a general impression of loss. The telegraph was set in motion; and the

correspondent of the bank in Edinburgh, for which place it was understood that John had armed himself with

Now this correspondent was a friend of Mr. Nicholson's; he was well acquainted with the tale of John's

calamitous disappearance from Edinburgh; and putting one thing with another, hasted with the first word of

this scandal, not to the police, but to his friend. The old gentleman had long regarded his son as one dead;

John's place had been taken, the memory of his faults had already fallen to be one of those old aches, which

awaken again indeed upon occasion, but which we can always vanquish by an effort of the will; and to have

'Macewen,' said the old man, 'this must be hushed up, if possible. If I give you a cheek for this sum, about

'You understand,' resumed Mr. Nicholson, speaking precisely, but with ashen lips, 'I do this for my family,

not for that unhappy young man. If it should turn out that these suspicions are correct, and he has embezzled

large sums, he must lie on his bed as he has made it.' And then looking up at Macewen with a nod, and one of

his strange smiles: 'Goodbye,' said he, and Macewen, perceiving the case to be too grave for consolation, took

BY a little after noon on the eve of Christmas, John had left his portmanteau in the cloakroom, and stepped

forth into Princes Street with a wonderful expansion of the soul, such as men enjoy on the completion of

longnourished schemes. He was at home again, incognito and rich; presently he could enter his father's

house by means of the passkey, which he had piously preserved through all his wanderings; he would throw

down the borrowed money; there would be a reconciliation, the details of which he frequently arranged; and

he saw himself, during the next month, made welcome in many stately houses at many frigid dinnerparties,

taking his share in the conversation with the freedom of the man and the traveller, and laying down the law

upon finance with the authority of the successful investor. But this programme was not to be begun before

evening not till just before dinner, indeed, at which meal the reassembled family were to sit roseate, and the

Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminiscences crowding round him, sad ones also, both with the

same surprising pathos. The keen frosty air; the low, rosy, wintry sun; the castle, hailing him like an old

acquaintance; the names of friends on doorplates; the sight of friends whom he seemed to recognise, and

whom he eagerly avoided, in the streets; the pleasant chant of the northcountry accent; the dome of St.

George's reminding him of his last penitential moments in the lane, and of that King of Glory whose name

had echoed ever since in the saddest corner of his memory; and the gutters where he had learned to slide, and

the shop where he had bought his skates, and the stones on which he had trod, and the railings in which he

had rattled his clachan as he went to school; and all those thousand and one nameless particulars, which the

eye sees without noting, which the memory keeps indeed yet without knowing, and which, taken one with

another, build up for us the aspect of the place that we call home: all these besieged him, as he went, with

His first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Regent Terrace, kept for him in old days by an aunt. The

door was opened (to his surprise) upon the chain, and a voice asked him from within what he wanted.

'No' young Mr. John?' cried the voice, with a sudden increase of Scotch accent, testifying to a friendlier

And the old butler removed his defences, remarking only 'I thocht ye were that man.' But his master was not

there; he was staying, it appeared, at the house in Murrayfield; and though the butler would have been glad

enough to have taken his place and given all the news of the family, John, struck with a little chill, was eager

to be gone. Only, the door was scarce closed again, before he regretted that he had not asked about 'that man.'

He was to pay no more visits till he had seen his father and made all well at home; Alan had been the only

possible exception, and John had not time to go as far as Murrayfield. But here he was on Regent Terrace;

there was nothing to prevent him going round the end of the hill, and looking from without on the

Mackenzies' house. As he went, he reflected that Flora must now be a woman of near his own age, and it was

within the bounds of possibility that she was married; but this dishonourable doubt he dammed down.

There was the house, sure enough; but the door was of another colour, and what was this two doorplates?

He drew nearer; the top one bore, with dignified simplicity, the words, 'Mr. Proudfoot'; the lower one was

more explicit, and informed the passerby that here was likewise the abode of 'Mr. J. A. Dunlop Proudfoot,

Advocate.' The Proudfoots must be rich, for no advocate could look to have much business in so remote a

quarter; and John hated them for their wealth and for their name, and for the sake of the house they

desecrated with their presence. He remembered a Proudfoot he had seen at school, not known: a little,

wheyfaced urchin, the despicable member of some lower class. Could it be this abortion that had climbed to

be an advocate, and now lived in the birthplace of Flora and the home of John's tenderest memories? The

chill that had first seized upon him when he heard of Houston's absence deepened and struck inward. For a

moment, as he stood under the doors of that estranged house, and looked east and west along the solitary

pavement of the Royal Terrace, where not a cat was stirring, the sense of solitude and desolation took him by

And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent

cigar that he now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad

who, on a certain spring Sunday ten years before, and in the hour of churchtime silence, had stolen from that

city by the Glasgow road. In the face of these changes, it were impious to doubt fortune's kindness. All would

be well yet; the Mackenzies would be found, Flora, younger and lovelier and kinder than before; Alan would

be found, and would have so nicely discriminated his behaviour as to have grown, on the one hand, into a

valued friend of Mr. Nicholson's, and to have remained, upon the other, of that exact shade of joviality which

John desired in his companions. And so, once more, John fell to work discounting the delightful future: his

first appearance in the family pew; his first visit to his uncle Greig, who thought himself so great a financier,

and on whose purblind Edinburgh eyes John was to let in the dazzling daylight of the West; and the details in

general of that unrivalled transformation scene, in which he was to display to all Edinburgh a portly and

The time began to draw near when his father would have returned from the office, and it would be the

prodigal's cue to enter. He strolled westward by Albany Street, facing the sunset embers, pleased, he knew

not why, to move in that cold air and indigo twilight, starred with streetlamps. But there was one more

At the corner of Pitt Street he paused to light a fresh cigar; the vesta threw, as he did so, a strong light upon

It was too late to avoid recognition; and besides, as John was now actually on the way home, it hardly

'Great Scott!' he cried, 'Beatson!' and shook hands with warmth. It scarce seemed he was repaid in kind.

'In the States,' said John 'California. I've made my pile though; and it suddenly struck me it would be a

'I see,' said Beatson. 'Well, I hope we'll see something of you now you're here.'

This was a cruel first experience. It was idle to blink facts: here was John home again, and Beatson Old

Beatson did not care a rush. He recalled Old Beatson in the past that merry and affectionate lad and

their joint adventures and mishaps, the window they had broken with a catapult in India Place, the escalade of

the castle rock, and many another inestimable bond of friendship; and his hurt surprise grew deeper. Well,

after all, it was only on a man's own family that he could count; blood was thicker than water, he

remembered; and the net result of this encounter was to bring him to the doorstep of his father's house, with

The night had come; the fanlight over the door shone bright; the two windows of the diningroom where the

cloth was being laid, and the three windows of the drawingroom where Maria would be waiting dinner,

glowed softlier through yellow blinds. It was like a vision of the past. All this time of his absence life had

gone forward with an equal foot, and the fires and the gas had been lighted, and the meals spread, at the

accustomed hours. At the accustomed hour, too, the bell had sounded thrice to call the family to worship.

And at the thought, a pang of regret for his demerit seized him; he remembered the things that were good and

that he had neglected, and the things that were evil and that he had loved; and it was with a prayer upon his

He stepped into the lighted hall, shut the door softly behind him, and stood there fixed in wonder. No surprise

of strangeness could equal the surprise of that complete familiarity. There was the bust of Chalmers near the

stairrailings, there was the clothesbrush in the accustomed place; and there, on the hatstand, hung hats and

coats that must surely be the same as he remembered. Ten years dropped from his life, as a pin may slip

between the fingers; and the ocean and the mountains, and the mines, and crowded marts and mingled races

of San Francisco, and his own fortune and his own disgrace, became, for that one moment, the figures of a

He took off his hat, and moved mechanically toward the stand; and there he found a small change that was a

great one to him. The pin that had been his from boyhood, where he had flung his balmoral when he loitered

home from the Academy, and his first hat when he came briskly back from college or the office his pin was

occupied. 'They might have at least respected my pin!' he thought, and he was moved as by a slight, and

began at once to recollect that he was here an interloper, in a strange house, which he had entered almost by a

He moved at once, his hat still in his hand, to the door of his father's room, opened it, and entered. Mr.

Nicholson sat in the same place and posture as on that last Sunday morning; only he was older, and greyer,

and sterner; and as he now glanced up and caught the eye of his son, a strange commotion and a dark flush

'Father,' said John, steadily, and even cheerfully, for this was a moment against which he was long ago

prepared, 'father, here I am, and here is the money that I took from you. I have come back to ask your

'Father!' cried John; 'for God's sake don't receive me this way. I've come for '

'Understand me,' interrupted Mr. Nicholson; 'you are no son of mine; and in the sight of God, I wash my

hands of you. One last thing I will tell you; one warning I will give you; all is discovered, and you are being

hunted for your crimes; if you are still at large it is thanks to me; but I have done all that I mean to do; and

from this time forth I would not raise one finger not one finger to save you from the gallows! And now,'

with a low voice of absolute authority, and a single weighty gesture of the finger, 'and now go!'

How John passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind, in what squalls of anger and lulls of sick

collapse, in what pacing of streets and plunging into publichouses, it would profit little to relate. His misery,

if it were not progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish; for in proportion as grief and indignation abated,

fear began to take their place. At first, his father's menacing words lay by in some safe drawer of memory,

biding their hour. At first, John was all thwarted affection and blighted hope; next bludgeoned vanity raised

its head again, with twenty mortal gashes: and the father was disowned even as he had disowned the son.

What was this regular course of life, that John should have admired it? what were these clockwork virtues,

from which love was absent? Kindness was the test, kindness the aim and soul; and judged by such a

standard, the discarded prodigal now rapidly drowning his sorrows and his reason in successive drams

was a creature of a lovelier morality than his selfrighteous father. Yes, he was the better man; he felt it,

glowed with the consciousness, and entering a publichouse at the corner of Howard Place (whither he had

somehow wandered) he pledged his own virtues in a glass perhaps the fourth since his dismissal. Of that he

knew nothing, keeping no account of what he did or where he went; and in the general crashing hurry of his

nerves, unconscious of the approach of intoxication. Indeed, it is a question whether he were really growing

intoxicated, or whether at first the spirits did not even sober him. For it was even as he drained this last glass

that his father's ambiguous and menacing words popping from their hidingplace in memory startled him

like a hand laid upon his shoulder. 'Crimes, hunted, the gallows.' They were ugly words; in the ears of an

innocent man, perhaps all the uglier; for if some judicial error were in act against him, who should set a limit

to its grossness or to how far it might be pushed? Not John, indeed; he was no believer in the powers of

innocence, his cursed experience pointing in quite other ways; and his fears, once wakened, grew with every

It was, perhaps, nearly nine at night; he had eaten nothing since lunch, he had drunk a good deal, and he was

exhausted by emotion, when the thought of Houston came into his head. He turned, not merely to the man as

a friend, but to his house as a place of refuge. The danger that threatened him was still so vague that he knew

neither what to fear nor where he might expect it; but this much at least seemed undeniable, that a private

house was safer than a public inn. Moved by these counsels, he turned at once to the Caledonian Station,

passed (not without alarm) into the bright lights of the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from the

cloakroom, and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow Road. The change of movement and position,

the sight of the lamps twinkling to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw which clung

about the vehicle, wrought in him strange alternations of lucidity and mortal giddiness.

'I have been drinking,' he discovered; 'I must go straight to bed, and sleep.' And he thanked Heaven for the

From one of these spells he was wakened by the stoppage of the cab; and, getting down, found himself in

quite a country road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and the high walls of a garden

rising before him in the dark. The Lodge (as the place was named), stood, indeed, very solitary. To the south

it adjoined another house, but standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on all other sides, open

fields stretched upward to the woods of Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or

downward toward the valley of the Leith. The effect of seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden

walls, which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in former days, defied the climbing schoolboy.

The lamp of the cab threw a gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle of the bell.

'Shall I ring for ye?' said the cabman, who had descended from his perch, and was slapping his chest, for the

'I wish you would,' said John, putting his hand to his brow in one of his accesses of giddiness.

The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell replied from further in the garden; twice and thrice

he did it, with sufficient intervals; in the great frosty silence of the night the sounds fell sharp and small.

'Does he expect ye?' asked the driver, with that manner of familiar interest that well became his portwine

face; and when John had told him no, 'Well, then,' said the cabman, 'if ye'll tak' my advice of it, we'll just

gang back. And that's disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in the Glesgie Road.'

'Hout!' said the driver. 'He keeps no servants here, man. They're a' in the town house; I drive him often; it's

The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon the gravel, and a voice of singular nervous

irritability cried to them through the door, 'Who are you, and what do you want?'

'Alan,' said John, 'it's me it's Fatty John, you know. I'm just come home, and I've come to stay with you.'

'Do nothing of the kind,' said Alan; and then to John, 'Come in here a moment. I want to speak to you.'

John entered the garden, and the door was closed behind him. A candle stood on the gravel walk, winking a

little in the draughts; it threw inconstant sparkles on the clumped holly, struck the light and darkness to and

fro like a veil on Alan's features, and sent his shadow hovering behind him. All beyond was inscrutable; and

John's dizzy brain rocked with the shadow. Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was pale, and his voice, when

'What brings you here tonight?' he began. 'I don't want, God knows, to seem unfriendly; but I cannot take

'Alan,' said John, 'you've just got to! You don't know the mess I'm in; the governor's turned me out, and I

daren't show my face in an inn, because they're down on me for murder or something!'

'Murder!' repeated Alan, and passed his hand over his eyes. 'What was that you were saying?' he asked again.

'That they were down on me,' said John. 'I'm accused of murder, by what I can make out; and I've really had a

dreadful day of it, Alan, and I can't sleep on the roadside on a night like this at least, not with a

'Hush!' said Alan, with his head on one side; and then, 'Did you hear nothing?' he asked.

'No,' said John, thrilling, he knew not why, with communicated terror. 'No, I heard nothing; why?' And then,

as there was no answer, he reverted to his pleading: 'But I say, Alan, you've just got to take me in. I'll go right

away to bed if you have anything to do. I seem to have been drinking; I was that knocked over. I wouldn't

'No?' returned Alan. 'Neither will you, then. Come and let's get your portmanteau.'

The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, lamplighted hill, and the two friends stood on the

sidewalk beside the portmanteau till the last rumble of the wheels had died in silence. It seemed to John as

though Alan attached importance to this departure of the cab; and John, who was in no state to criticise,

When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shouldered the portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked

the garden door; and then, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon him, and he stood with his hand on the

'No, I'm not myself,' said Alan; and he sat down on the portmanteau and put his face in his hands.

John stood beside him swaying a little, and looking about him at the swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles,

and the steady stars overhead, until the windless cold began to touch him through his clothes on the bare skin.

And he rose at once, reshouldered the portmanteau, and taking the candle in his other hand, moved forward to

the Lodge. This was a long, low building, smothered in creepers; and now, except for some chinks of light

In the hall Alan lighted another candle, gave it to John, and opened the door of a bedroom.

'Here,' said he; 'go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You'll be sorry for me when you know.'

'Wait a bit,' returned John; 'I've got so cold with all that standing about. Let's go into the diningroom a

On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with a whisky label on a tray. It was plain the bottle had

'Take that,' said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then with a certain roughness pushed his friend into the

John stood amazed; then he shook the bottle, and, to his further wonder, found it partly empty. Three or four

glasses were gone. Alan must have uncorked a bottle of whisky and drank three or four glasses one after the

other, without sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his own cold lobby on this freezing night! It

fully explained his eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. Poor Alan! He was

drunk; and what a dreadful thing was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in this unsociable,

uncomfortable fashion! The man who would drink alone, except for health's sake as John was now doing

was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and felt hazier, but warmer. It was hard work opening the

portmanteau and finding his night things; and before he was undressed, the cold had struck home to him once

more. 'Well,' said he; 'just a drop more. There's no sense in getting ill with all this other trouble.' And

When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already in the heavens, but his watch had stopped, and

it was impossible to tell the hour exactly. Ten, he guessed it, and made haste to dress, dismal reflections

crowding on his mind. But it was less from terror than from regret that he now suffered; and with his regret

there were mingled cutting pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel, indeed, but yet only

the punishment of old misdoing; and he had rebelled and plunged into fresh sin. The rod had been used to

chasten, and he had bit the chastening fingers. His father was right; John had justified him; John was no guest

for decent people's houses, and no fit associate for decent people's children. And had a broader hint been

needed, there was the case of his old friend. John was no drunkard, though he could at times exceed; and the

picture of Houston drinking neat spirits at his halltable struck him with something like disgust. He hung

back from meeting his old friend. He could have wished he had not come to him; and yet, even now, where

These musings occupied him while he dressed, and accompanied him into the lobby of the house. The door

stood open on the garden; doubtless, Alan had stepped forth; and John did as he supposed his friend had

done. The ground was hard as iron, the frost still rigorous; as he brushed among the hollies, icicles jingled

and glittered in their fall; and wherever he went, a volley of eager sparrows followed him. Here were

Christmas weather and Christmas morning duly met, to the delight of children. This was the day of reunited

families, the day to which he had so long looked forward, thinking to awake in his own bed in Randolph

Crescent, reconciled with all men and repeating the footprints of his youth; and here he was alone, pacing the

And that reminded him: why was he alone? and where was Alan? The thought of the festal morning and the

due salutations reawakened his desire for his friend, and he began to call for him by name. As the sound of

his voice died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence that environed him. But for the twittering of

the sparrows and the crunching of his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world of air hung

over him entranced, and the stillness weighed upon his mind with a horror of solitude.

Still calling at intervals, but now with a moderated voice, he made the hasty circuit of the garden, and finding

neither man nor trace of man in all its evergreen coverts, turned at last to the house. About the house the

silence seemed to deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open as before; but the windows were still

shuttered, the chimneys breathed no stain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir

(perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which a house announces and

betrays its human lodgers. And yet Alan must be there Alan locked in drunken slumbers, forgetful of the

return of day, of the holy season, and of the friend whom he had so coldly received and was now so

churlishly neglecting. John's disgust redoubled at the thought, but hunger was beginning to grow stronger

than repulsion, and as a step to breakfast, if nothing else, he must find and arouse this sleeper.

He made the circuit of the bedroom quarters. All, until he came to Alan's chamber, were locked from without,

and bore the marks of a prolonged disuse. But Alan's was a room in commission, filled with clothes,

knickknacks, letters, books, and the conveniences of a solitary man. The fire had been lighted; but it had long

ago burned out, and the ashes were stone cold. The bed had been made, but it had not been slept in.

Worse and worse, then; Alan must have fallen where he sat, and now sprawled brutishly, no doubt, upon the

The diningroom was a very long apartment, and was reached through a passage; so that John, upon his

entrance, brought but little light with him, and must move toward the windows with spread arms, groping and

knocking on the furniture. Suddenly he tripped and fell his length over a prostrate body. It was what he had

looked for, yet it shocked him; and he marvelled that so rough an impact should not have kicked a groan out

of the drunkard. Men had killed themselves ere now in such excesses, a dreary and degraded end that made

By this, John had his hand upon the shutters, and flinging them back, beheld once again the blessed face of

the day. Even by that light the room had a discomfortable air. The chairs were scattered, and one had been

overthrown; the tablecloth, laid as if for dinner, was twitched upon one side, and some of the dishes had

fallen to the floor. Behind the table lay the drunkard, still unaroused, only one foot visible to John.

But now that light was in the room, the worst seemed over; it was a disgusting business, but not more than

disgusting; and it was with no great apprehension that John proceeded to make the circuit of the table: his last

comparatively tranquil moment for that day. No sooner had he turned the corner, no sooner had his eyes

alighted on the body, than he gave a smothered, breathless cry, and fled out of the room and out of the house.

It was not Alan who lay there, but a man well up in years, of stern countenance and irongrey locks; and it

was no drunkard, for the body lay in a black pool of blood, and the open eyes stared upon the ceiling.

To and fro walked John before the door. The extreme sharpness of the air acted on his nerves like an

astringent, and braced them swiftly. Presently, he not relaxing in his disordered walk, the images began to

come clearer and stay longer in his fancy; and next the power of thought came back to him, and the horror

He grasped his forehead, and staring on one spot of gravel, pieced together what he knew and what he

suspected. Alan had murdered some one: possibly 'that man' against whom the butler chained the door in

Regent Terrace; possibly another; some one at least: a human soul, whom it was death to slay and whose

blood lay spilled upon the floor. This was the reason of the whisky drinking in the passage, of his

unwillingness to welcome John, of his strange behaviour and bewildered words; this was why he had started

at and harped upon the name of murder; this was why he had stood and hearkened, or sat and covered his

eyes, in the black night. And now he was gone, now he had basely fled; and to all his perplexities and dangers

'Let me think let me think,' he said, aloud, impatiently, even pleadingly, as if to some merciless interrupter.

In the turmoil of his wits, a thousand hints and hopes and threats and terrors dinning continuously in his ears,

he was like one plunged in the hubbub of a crowd. How was he to remember he, who had not a thought to

spare that he was himself the author, as well as the theatre, of so much confusion? But in hours of trial the

It was plain he must stay no longer where he was, for here was a new Judicial Error in the very making. It

was not so plain where he must go, for the old Judicial Error, vague as a cloud, appeared to fill the habitable

world; whatever it might be, it watched for him, fullgrown, in Edinburgh; it must have had its birth in San

Francisco; it stood guard, no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank where he should cash his credit; and though

there were doubtless many other places, who should say in which of them it was not ambushed? No, he could

not tell where he was to go; he must not lose time on these insolubilities. Let him go back to the beginning. It

was plain he must stay no longer where he was. It was plain, too, that he must not flee as he was, for he could

not carry his portmanteau, and to flee and leave it was to plunge deeper in the mire. He must go, leave the

house unguarded, find a cab, and return return after an absence? Had he courage for that?

And just then he spied a stain about a hand'sbreadth on his trouserleg, and reached his finger down to

touch it. The finger was stained red: it was blood; he stared upon it with disgust, and awe, and terror, and in

He cleansed his finger in the snow, returned into the house, drew near with hushed footsteps to the

diningroom door, and shut and locked it. Then he breathed a little freer, for here at least was an oaken

barrier between himself and what he feared. Next, he hastened to his room, tore off the spotted trousers which

seemed in his eyes a link to bind him to the gallows, flung them in a corner, donned another pair, breathlessly

crammed his night things into his portmanteau, locked it, swung it with an effort from the ground, and with a

The portmanteau, being of occidental build, was no featherweight; it had distressed the powerful Alan; and as

for John, he was crushed under its bulk, and the sweat broke upon him thickly. Twice he must set it down to

rest before he reached the gate; and when he had come so far, he must do as Alan did, and take his seat upon

one corner. Here then, he sat a while and panted; but now his thoughts were sensibly lightened; now, with the

trunk standing just inside the door, some part of his dissociation from the house of crime had been effected,

and the cabman need not pass the garden wall. It was wonderful how that relieved him; for the house, in his

eyes, was a place to strike the most cursory beholder with suspicion, as though the very windows had cried

But there was to be no remission of the strokes of fate. As he thus sat, taking breath in the shadow of the wall

and hopped about by sparrows, it chanced that his eye roved to the fastening of the door; and what he saw

plucked him to his feet. The thing locked with a spring; once the door was closed, the bolt shut of itself; and

He saw himself obliged to one of two distasteful and perilous alternatives; either to shut the door altogether

and set his portmanteau out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the door ajar, so that any

thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in and stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least

desperate, his mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved. He peered out, and

down the long road; it lay dead empty. He went to the corner of the byroad that comes by way of Dean;

there also not a passenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide of his affairs; and he drew

the door as close as he durst, slipped a pebble in the chink, and made off downhill to find a cab.

Halfway down a gate opened, and a troop of Christmas children sallied forth in the most cheerful humour,

'And this is Christmasday!' thought John; and could have laughed aloud in tragic bitterness of heart.

In front of Donaldson's Hospital, John counted it good fortune to perceive a cab a great way of, and by much

shouting and waving of his arm, to catch the notice of the driver. He counted it good fortune, for the time was

long to him till he should have done for ever with the Lodge; and the further he must go to find a cab, the

greater the chance that the inevitable discovery had taken place, and that he should return to find the garden

full of angry neighbours. Yet when the vehicle drew up he was sensibly chagrined to recognise the portwine

cabman of the night before. 'Here,' he could not but reflect, 'here is another link in the Judicial Error.'

The driver, on the other hand, was pleased to drop again upon so liberal a fare; and as he was a man the

reader must already have perceived of easy, not to say familiar, manners, he dropped at once into a vein of

friendly talk, commenting on the weather, on the sacred season, which struck him chiefly in the light of a day

of liberal gratuities, on the chance which had reunited him to a pleasing customer, and on the fact that John

had been (as he was pleased to call it) visibly 'on the randan' the night before.

'And ye look dreidful bad theday, sir, I must say that,' he continued. 'There's nothing like a dram for ye if

ye'll take my advice of it; and bein' as it's Christmas, I'm no' saying,' he added, with a fatherly smile, 'but what

'I'll give you a dram when we've got through,' said he, affecting a sprightliness which sat on him most

unhandsomely, 'and not a drop till then. Business first, and pleasure afterward.'

With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to clamber to his place and drive, with hideous deliberation,

to the door of the Lodge. There were no signs as yet of any public emotion; only, two men stood not far off in

talk, and their presence, seen from afar, set John's pulses buzzing. He might have spared himself his fright,

for the pair were lost in some dispute of a theological complexion, and with lengthened upper lip and

enumerating fingers, pursued the matter of their difference, and paid no heed to John.

Nothing would keep him on his perch; he must clamber down, comment upon the pebble in the door (which

he regarded as an ingenious but unsafe device), help John with the portmanteau, and enliven matters with a

'He'll no' be here himsel', will he? No? Well, he's an eccentric man a fair oddity if ye ken the expression.

Great trouble with his tenants, they tell me. I've driven the fam'ly for years. I drove a cab at his father's

waddin'. What'll your name be? I should ken your face. Baigrey, ye say? There were Baigreys about

Gilmerton; ye'll be one of that lot? Then this'll be a friend's portmantie, like? Why? Because the name upon

it's Nucholson! Oh, if ye're in a hurry, that's another job. Waverley Brig? Are ye for away?'

So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept John's heart in a flutter. But to this also, as to other evils

under the sun, there came a period; and the victim of circumstances began at last to rumble toward the

railway terminus at Waverley Bridge. During the transit, he sat with raised glasses in the frosty chill and

mouldy fetor of his chariot, and glanced out sidelong on the holiday face of things, the shuttered shops, and

the crowds along the pavement, much as the rider in the Tyburn cart may have observed the concourse

At the station his spirits rose again; another stage of his escape was fortunately ended he began to spy blue

water. He called a railway porter, and bade him carry the portmanteau to the cloakroom: not that he had any

notion of delay; flight, instant flight was his design, no matter whither; but he had determined to dismiss the

cabman ere he named, or even chose, his destination, thus possibly balking the Judicial Error of another link.

This was his cunning aim, and now with one foot on the roadway, and one still on the coachstep, he made

haste to put the thing in practice, and plunged his hand into his trousers pocket.

Oh yes; this time he was to blame. He should have remembered, and when he deserted his bloodstained

pantaloons, he should not have deserted along with them his purse. Make the most of his error, and then

compare it with the punishment! Conceive his new position, for I lack words to picture it; conceive him

condemned to return to that house, from the very thought of which his soul revolted, and once more to expose

himself to capture on the very scene of the misdeed: conceive him linked to the mouldy cab and the familiar

cabman. John cursed the cabman silently, and then it occurred to him that he must stop the incarceration of

his portmanteau; that, at least, he must keep close at hand, and he turned to recall the porter. But his

reflections, brief as they had appeared, must have occupied him longer than he supposed, and there was the

Well, that was settled; he had lost his portmanteau also; for the sixpence with which he had paid the

Murrayfield Toll was one that had strayed alone into his waistcoat pocket, and unless he once more

successfully achieved the adventure of the house of crime, his portmanteau lay in the cloakroom in eternal

pawn, for lack of a penny fee. And then he remembered the porter, who stood suggestively attentive, words

John hunted right and left; he found a coin prayed God that it was a sovereign drew it out, beheld a

'Thank you, sir,' said he, and would have returned the base gratuity. But John, too, would none of it; and as

'Well,' said the driver, 'and what then? I would rather give a man a shillin' on a day like this than put him off

'Oh, very well,' said the driver. 'I know my place, if you know yours if you know yours!' he repeated, as one

who should imply grave doubt; and muttered inarticulate thunders, in which the grand old name of gentleman

Oh to have been able to discharge this monster, whom John now perceived, with tardy clearsightedness, to

have begun betimes the festivities of Christmas! But far from any such ray of consolation visiting the lost, he

stood bare of help and helpers, his portmanteau sequestered in one place, his money deserted in another and

guarded by a corpse; himself, so sedulous of privacy, the cynosure of all men's eyes about the station; and, as

if these were not enough mischances, he was now fallen in illblood with the beast to whom his poverty had

linked him! In illblood, as he reflected dismally, with the witness who perhaps might hang or save him!

There was no time to be lost; he durst not linger any longer in that public spot; and whether he had recourse

to dignity or conciliation, the remedy must be applied at once. Some happily surviving element of manhood

'Let us have no more of this,' said he, his foot once more upon the step. 'Go back to where we came from.'

He had avoided the name of any destination, for there was now quite a little band of railway folk about the

cab, and he still kept an eye upon the court of justice, and laboured to avoid concentric evidence. But here

'Drive on at once!' roared John, and slammed the door behind him, so that the crazy chariot rocked and

Forth trundled the cab into the Christmas streets, the fare within plunged in the blackness of a despair that

neighboured on unconsciousness, the driver on the box digesting his rebuke and his customer's duplicity. I

would not be thought to put the pair in competition; John's case was out of all parallel. But the cabman, too, is

worth the sympathy of the judicious; for he was a fellow of genuine kindliness and a high sense of personal

dignity incensed by drink; and his advances had been cruelly and publicly rebuffed. As he drove, therefore,

he counted his wrongs, and thirsted for sympathy and drink. Now, it chanced he had a friend, a publican in

Queensferry Street, from whom, in view of the sacredness of the occasion, he thought he might extract a

dram. Queensferry Street lies something off the direct road to Murrayfield. But then there is the hilly

crossroad that passes by the valley of the Leith and the Dean Cemetery; and Queensferry Street is on the

way to that. What was to hinder the cabman, since his horse was dumb, from choosing the crossroad, and

calling on his friend in passing? So it was decided; and the charioteer, already somewhat mollified, turned

John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his chin sunk upon his chest, his mind in abeyance. The smell of the cab was

still faintly present to his senses, and a certain leaden chill about his feet, all else had disappeared in one vast

oppression of calamity and physical faintness. It was drawing on to noon twoandtwenty hours since he

had broken bread; in the interval, he had suffered tortures of sorrow and alarm, and been partly tipsy; and

though it was impossible to say he slept, yet when the cab stopped and the cabman thrust his head into the

'If you'll no' STAND me a dram,' said the driver, with a wellmerited severity of tone and manner, 'I dare say

'Yes no do what you like,' returned John; and then, as he watched his tormentor mount the stairs and enter

the whiskyshop, there floated into his mind a sense as of something long ago familiar. At that he started fully

awake, and stared at the shopfronts. Yes, he knew them; but when? and how? Long since, he thought; and

then, casting his eye through the front glass, which had been recently occluded by the figure of the jarvey, he

beheld the treetops of the rookery in Randolph Crescent. He was close to home home, where he had

thought, at that hour, to be sitting in the wellremembered drawingroom in friendly converse; and, instead

It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the cab; his next, to cover his face with his hands. So he sat,

while the cabman toasted the publican, and the publican toasted the cabman, and both reviewed the affairs of

the nation; so he still sat, when his master condescended to return, and drive off at last downhill, along the

curve of Lynedoch Place; but even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street, he took one glance

'Well, just so,' thought he; 'I'll have killed my father! And this is Christmasday!'

If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must journey to the grave; and down this road, on the

same errand, his wife had preceded him years before; and many other leading citizens, with the proper

trappings and attendance of the end. And now, in that frosty, illsmelling, strawcarpeted, and

raggedcushioned cab, with his breath congealing on the glasses, where else was John himself advancing to?

The thought stirred his imagination, which began to manufacture many thousand pictures, bright and fleeting,

like the shapes in a kaleidoscope; and now he saw himself, ruddy and comfortered, sliding in the gutter; and,

again, a little woebegone, bored urchin tricked forth in crape and weepers, descending this same hill at the

foot's pace of mourning coaches, his mother's body just preceding him; and yet again, his fancy, running far

in front, showed him his destination now standing solitary in the low sunshine, with the sparrows hopping

on the threshold and the dead man within staring at the roof and now, with a sudden change, thronged about

with whitefaced, handuplifting neighbours, and doctor bursting through their midst and fixing his

stethoscope as he went, the policeman shaking a sagacious head beside the body. It was to this he feared that

he was driving; in the midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint explanations, and felt

the hand of the constable upon his shoulder. Heavens! how he wished he had played the manlier part; how he

despised himself that he had fled that fatal neighbourhood when all was quiet, and should now be tamely

Any strong degree of passion lends, even to the dullest, the forces of the imagination. And so now as he dwelt

on what was probably awaiting him at the end of this distressful drive John, who saw things little,

remembered them less, and could not have described them at all, beheld in his mind'seye the garden of the

Lodge, detailed as in a map; he went to and fro in it, feeding his terrors; he saw the hollies, the snowy

borders, the paths where he had sought Alan, the high, conventual walls, the shut door what! was the door

shut? Ay, truly, he had shut it shut in his money, his escape, his future life shut it with these hands, and

none could now open it! He heard the snap of the springlock like something bursting in his brain, and sat

And then he woke again, terror jarring through his vitals. This was no time to be idle; he must be up and

doing, he must think. Once at the end of this ridiculous cruise, once at the Lodge door, there would be

nothing for it but to turn the cab and trundle back again. Why, then, go so far? why add another feature of

suspicion to a case already so suggestive? why not turn at once? It was easy to say, turn; but whither? He had

nowhere now to go to; he could never he saw it in letters of blood he could never pay that cab; he was

saddled with that cab for ever. Oh that cab! his soul yearned and burned, and his bowels sounded to be rid of

it. He forgot all other cares. He must first quit himself of this illsmelling vehicle and of the human beast that

And just then the cab suddenly stopped, and there was his persecutor rapping on the front glass. John let it

'I ken wha ye are!' cried the husky voice. 'I mind ye now. Ye're a Nucholson. I drove ye to Hermiston to a

It is a fact. John knew the man; they had been even friends. His enemy, he now remembered, was a fellow of

great good nature endless good nature with a boy; why not with a man? Why not appeal to his better

'Great Scott! and so you did,' he cried, as if in a transport of delight, his voice sounding false in his own ears.

'Well, if that's so, I've something to say to you. I'll just get out, I guess. Where are we, any way?'

The driver had fluttered his ticket in the eyes of the branchtoll keeper, and they were now brought to on the

highest and most solitary part of the byroad. On the left, a row of fieldside trees beshaded it; on the right, it

was bordered by naked fallows, undulating downhill to the Queensferry Road; in front, Corstorphine Hill

raised its snowbedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John looked all about him, drinking the clear air

like wine; then his eyes returned to the cabman's face as he sat, not ungleefully, awaiting John's

The features of that face were hard to read, drink had so swollen them, drink had so painted them, in tints that

varied from brickred to mulberry. The small grey eyes blinked, the lips moved, with greed; greed was the

ruling passion; and though there was some good nature, some genuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the

old toper, his greed was now so set afire by hope, that all other traits of character lay dormant. He sat there a

John's heart slowly fell. He had opened his lips, but he stood there and uttered nought. He sounded the well of

his courage, and it was dry. He groped in his treasury of words, and it was vacant. A devil of dumbness had

him by the throat; the devil of terror babbled in his ears; and suddenly, without a word uttered, with no

conscious purpose formed in his will, John whipped about, tumbled over the roadside wall, and began

He had not gone far, he was not past the midst of the first afield, when his whole brain thundered within him,

'Fool! You have your watch!' The shock stopped him, and he faced once more toward the cab. The driver was

leaning over the wall, brandishing his whip, his face empurpled, roaring like a bull. And John saw (or

thought) that he had lost the chance. No watch would pacify the man's resentment now; he would cry for

vengeance also. John would be had under the eye of the police; his tale would be unfolded, his secret

He uttered a deep sigh; and just as the cabman, taking heart of grace, was beginning at last to scale the wall,

his defaulting customer fell again to running, and disappeared into the further fields.

WHERE he ran at first, John never very clearly knew; nor yet how long a time elapsed ere he found himself

in the byroad near the lodge of Ravelston, propped against the wall, his lungs heaving like bellows, his legs

leadenheavy, his mind possessed by one sole desire to lie down and be unseen. He remembered the thick

coverts round the quarryhole pond, an untrodden corner of the world where he might surely find

concealment till the night should fall. Thither he passed down the lane; and when he came there, behold! he

had forgotten the frost, and the pond was alive with young people skating, and the pondside coverts were

thick with lookerson. He looked on a while himself. There was one tall, graceful maiden, skating hand in

hand with a youth, on whom she bestowed her bright eyes perhaps too patently; and it was strange with what

anger John beheld her. He could have broken forth in curses; he could have stood there, like a mortified

tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his gall upon her by the hour or so he thought; and the next moment

his heart bled for the girl. 'Poor creature, it's little she knows!' he sighed. 'Let her enjoy herself while she can!'

But was it possible, when Flora used to smile at him on the Braid ponds, she could have looked so fulsome to

The thought of one quarry, in his frozen wits, suggested another; and he plodded off toward Craigleith. A

wind had sprung up out of the northwest; it was cruel keen, it dried him like a fire, and racked his

fingerjoints. It brought clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that blotted heaven and shed gloom upon

the earth. He scrambled up among the hazelled rubbish heaps that surround the caldron of the quarry, and lay

flat upon the stones. The wind searched close along the earth, the stones were cutting and icy, the bare hazels

wailed about him; and soon the air of the afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal harpings

that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's limbs to a harrowing impatience and blind desire of

change; now he would roll in his harsh lair, and when the flints abraded him, was almost pleased; now he

would crawl to the edge of the huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw the spiral of the descending roadway,

the steep crags, the clinging bushes, the peppering of snowwreaths, and far down in the bottom, the

diminished crane. Here, no doubt, was a way to end it. But it somehow did not take his fancy.

And suddenly he was aware that he was hungry; ay, even through the tortures of the cold, even through the

frosts of despair, a gross, desperate longing after food, no matter what, no matter how, began to wake and

spur him. Suppose he pawned his watch? But no, on Christmasday this was Christmasday! the

pawnshop would be closed. Suppose he went to the publichouse close by at Blackhall, and offered the

watch, which was worth ten pounds, in payment for a meal of bread and cheese? The incongruity was too

remarkable; the good folks would either put him to the door, or only let him in to send for the police. He

turned his pockets out one after another; some San Francisco tramcar checks, one cigar, no lights, the

passkey to his father's house, a pockethandkerchief, with just a touch of scent: no, money could be raised on

none of these. There was nothing for it but to starve; and after all, what mattered it? That also was a door of

He crept close among the bushes, the wind playing round him like a lash; his clothes seemed thin as paper,

his joints burned, his skin curdled on his bones. He had a vision of a highlying cattledrive in California,

and the bed of a dried stream with one muddy pool, by which the vaqueros had encamped: splendid sun over

all, the big bonfire blazing, the strips of cow browning and smoking on a skewer of wood; how warm it was,

how savoury the steam of scorching meat! And then again he remembered his manifold calamities, and

burrowed and wallowed in the sense of his disgrace and shame. And next he was entering Frank's restaurant

in Montgomery Street, San Francisco; he had ordered a panstew and venison chops, of which he was

immoderately fond, and as he sat waiting, Munroe, the good attendant, brought him a whisky punch; he saw

the strawberries float on the delectable cup, he heard the ice chink about the straws. And then he woke again

to his detested fate, and found himself sitting, humped together, in a windy combe of quarry refuse

darkness thick about him, thin flakes of snow flying here and there like rags of paper, and the strong

We have seen John in nothing but the stormiest condition; we have seen him reckless, desperate, tried beyond

his moderate powers; of his daily self, cheerful, regular, not unthrifty, we have seen nothing; and it may thus

be a surprise to the reader to learn that he was studiously careful of his health. This favourite preoccupation

now awoke. If he were to sit there and die of cold, there would be mighty little gained; better the police cell

and the chances of a jury trial, than the miserable certainty of death at a dykeside before the next winter's

He rose on aching legs, and stumbled here and there among the rubbish heaps, still circumvented by the

yawning crater of the quarry; or perhaps he only thought so, for the darkness was already dense, the snow

was growing thicker, and he moved like a blind man, and with a blind man's terrors. At last he climbed a

fence, thinking to drop into the road, and found himself staggering, instead, among the iron furrows of a

ploughland, endless, it seemed, as a whole county. And next he was in a wood, beating among young trees;

and then he was aware of a house with many lighted windows, Christmas carriages waiting at the doors, and

Christmas drivers (for Christmas has a double edge) becoming swiftly hooded with snow. From this glimpse

of human cheerfulness, he fled like Cain; wandered in the night, unpiloted, careless of whither he went; fell,

and lay, and then rose again and wandered further; and at last, like a transformation scene, behold him in the

lighted jaws of the city, staring at a lamp which had already donned the tilted nightcap of the snow. It came

thickly now, a 'Feeding Storm'; and while he yet stood blinking at the lamp, his feet were buried. He

remembered something like it in the past, a streetlamp crowned and caked upon the windward side with

snow, the wind uttering its mournful hoot, himself looking on, even as now; but the cold had struck too

sharply on his wits, and memory failed him as to the date and sequel of the reminiscence.

His next conscious moment was on the Dean Bridge; but whether he was John Nicholson of a bank in a

California street, or some former John, a clerk in his father's office, he had now clean forgotten. Another

blank, and he was thrusting his passkey into the doorlock of his father's house.

Hours must have passed. Whether crouched on the cold stones or wandering in the fields among the snow,

was more than he could tell; but hours had passed. The finger of the hall clock was close on twelve; a narrow

peep of gas in the halllamp shed shadows; and the door of the back room his father's room was open and

emitted a warm light. At so late an hour, all this was strange; the lights should have been out, the doors

locked, the good folk safe in bed. He marvelled at the irregularity, leaning on the halltable; and marvelled to

himself there; and thawed and grew once more hungry, in the warmer air of the house.

The clock uttered its premonitory catch; in five minutes Christmasday would be among the days of the past

Christmas! what a Christmas! Well, there was no use waiting; he had come into that house, he scarce

knew how; if they were to thrust him forth again, it had best be done at once; and he moved to the door of the

There, in his father's room, at midnight, the fire was roaring and the gas blazing; the papers, the sacred papers

to lay a hand on which was criminal had all been taken off and piled along the floor; a cloth was spread,

and a supper laid, upon the business table; and in his father's chair a woman, habited like a nun, sat eating. As

he appeared in the doorway, the nun rose, gave a low cry, and stood staring. She was a large woman, strong,

calm, a little masculine, her features marked with courage and good sense; and as John blinked back at her, a

faint resemblance dodged about his memory, as when a tune haunts us, and yet will not be recalled.

'I dare say I'm mad,' said John, unconsciously following King Lear; 'but, upon my word, I do believe you're

And yet it is not Flora at all, thought John; Flora was slender, and timid, and of changing colour, and

dewyeyed; and had Flora such an Edinburgh accent? But he said none of these things, which was perhaps as

'Such nonsense!' said Flora. 'I'm a sicknurse; and I am here nursing your sister, with whom, between you

and me, there is precious little the matter. But that is not the question. The point is: How do you come here?

'Flora,' said John, sepulchrally, 'I haven't eaten anything for three days. Or, at least, I don't know what day it

'You unhappy man!' she cried. 'Here, sit down and eat my supper; and I'll just run upstairs and see my patient;

With this specimen of the French, not of StratfordatteBowe, but of a finishing establishment in Moray

Place, she left John alone in his father's sanctum. He fell at once upon the food; and it is to be supposed that

Flora had found her patient wakeful, and been detained with some details of nursing, for he had time to make

a full end of all there was to eat, and not only to empty the teapot, but to fill it again from a kettle that was

fitfully singing on his father's fire. Then he sat torpid, and pleased, and bewildered; his misfortunes were then

half forgotten; his mind considering, not without regret, this unsentimental return to his old love.

It was a long and (as the reader knows) a pitiful story; but Flora heard it with compressed lips. She was lost in

none of those questionings of human destiny that have, from time to time, arrested the flight of my own pen;

for women, such as she, are no philosophers, and behold the concrete only. And women, such as she, are very

'Very well,' said she, when he had done; 'then down upon your knees at once, and beg God's forgiveness.'

And the great baby plumped upon his knees, and did as he was bid; and none the worse for that! But while he

was heartily enough requesting forgiveness on general principles, the rational side of him distinguished, and

wondered if, perhaps, the apology were not due upon the other part. And when he rose again from that

becoming exercise, he first eyed the face of his old love doubtfully, and then, taking heart, uttered his protest.

'I must say, Flora,' said he, 'in all this business, I can see very little fault of mine.'

'If you had written home,' replied the lady, 'there would have been none of it. If you had even gone to

Murrayfield reasonably sober, you would never have slept there, and the worst would not have happened.

Besides, the whole thing began years ago. You got into trouble, and when your father, honest man, was

disappointed, you took the pet, or got afraid, and ran away from punishment. Well, you've had your own way

He looked at her, and his eye fell. A certain anger rose within him; here was a Flora he disowned; she was

hard; she was of a set colour; a settled, mature, undecorative manner; plain of speech, plain of habit he had

come near saying, plain of face. And this changeling called herself by the same name as the manycoloured,

clinging maid of yore; she of the frequent laughter, and the many sighs, and the kind, stolen glances. And to

make all worse, she took the upper hand with him, which (as John well knew) was not the true relation of the

She told him how she had nursed her father in his long illness, and when he died, and she was left alone, had

taken to nurse others, partly from habit, partly to be of some service in the world; partly, it might be, for

amusement. 'There's no accounting for taste,' said she. And she told him how she went largely to the houses

of old friends, as the need arose; and how she was thus doubly welcome as an old friend first, and then as an

'And, indeed, it's a mere farce my being here for poor Maria,' she continued; 'but your father takes her

ailments to heart, and I cannot always be refusing him. We are great friends, your father and I; he was very

A strange stir came in John's heart. All this while had he been thinking only of himself? All this while, why

had he not written to Flora? In penitential tenderness, he took her hand, and, to his awe and trouble, it

remained in his, compliant. A voice told him this was Flora, after all told him so quietly, yet with a thrill of

'And now,' said she, 'you have been fed and warmed, and I have heard your story, and now it's high time to

'I can't keep you here; I am a stranger,' said she. 'Do you want to run away again? I thought you had enough

He bowed his head under the reproof. She despised him, he reflected, as he sat once more alone; a monstrous

thing for a woman to despise a man; and strangest of all, she seemed to like him. Would his brother despise

And presently the brother appeared, under Flora's escort; and, standing afar off beside the doorway, eyed the

'The deuce you had!' said Alexander. 'Ah, you lived in a better world! There are no passkeys going now.'

'Well, father was always averse to them,' sighed John. And the conversation then broke down, and the

'Well, and what the devil are we to do?' said Alexander. 'I suppose if the authorities got wind of you, you

'It depends on whether they've found the body or not,' returned John. 'And then there's that cabman, to be

'Oh, bother the body!' said Alexander. 'I mean about the other thing. That's serious.'

'Is that what my father spoke about?' asked John. 'I don't even know what it is.'

It was plain, from Flora's face, that this was the first she had heard of it; it was plainer still, from John's, that

'I!' he exclaimed. 'I rob my bank! My God! Flora, this is too much; even you must allow that.'

'I never robbed a soul in all my days,' cried John: 'except my father, if you call that robbery; and I brought

'Look here, John,' said his brother, 'let us have no misunderstanding upon this. Macewen saw my father; he

told him a bank you had worked for in San Francisco was wiring over the habitable globe to have you

collared that it was supposed you had nailed thousands; and it was dead certain you had nailed three

hundred. So Macewen said, and I wish you would be careful how you answer. I may tell you also, that your

'Three hundred?' repeated John. 'Three hundred pounds, you mean? That's fifteen hundred dollars. Why, then,

it's Kirkman!' he broke out. 'Thank Heaven! I can explain all that. I gave them to Kirkman to pay for me the

night before I left fifteen hundred dollars, and a letter to the manager. What do they suppose I would steal

fifteen hundred dollars for? I'm rich; I struck it rich in stocks. It's the silliest stuff I ever heard of. All that's

needful is to cable to the manager: Kirkman has the fifteen hundred find Kirkman. He was a fellowclerk

of mine, and a hard case; but to do him justice, I didn't think he was as hard as this.'

'I say the cablegram shall go tonight!' cried Alexander, with energy. 'Answer prepaid, too. If this can be

cleared away and upon my word I do believe it can we shall all be able to hold up our heads again. Here,

you John, you stick down the address of your bank manager. You, Flora, you can pack John into my bed, for

which I have no further use tonight. As for me, I am off to the postoffice, and thence to the High Street

about the dead body. The police ought to know, you see, and they ought to know through John; and I can tell

them some rigmarole about my brother being a man of highly nervous organisation, and the rest of it. And

John gave the name of the driver, which, as I have not been able to command the vehicle, I here suppress.

'Well,' resumed Alexander, 'I'll call round at their place before I come back, and pay your shot for you. In that

John murmured inarticulate thanks. To see his brother thus energetic in his service moved him beyond

expression; if he could not utter what he felt, he showed it legibly in his face; and Alexander read it there, and

'But there's one thing,' said the latter, 'cablegrams are dear; and I dare say you remember enough of the

'Stamps money,' explained John. 'It's an American expression; I'm afraid I contracted one or two.'

'My dear Flora,' returned Alexander, 'a pound note won't see us very far; and besides, this is my father's

business, and I shall be very much surprised if it isn't my father who pays for it.'

'I would not apply to him yet; I do not think that can be wise,' objected Flora.

'You have a very imperfect idea of my resources, and not at all of my effrontery,' replied Alexander. 'Please

He put John from his way, chose a stout knife among the supper things, and with surprising quickness broke

'There's nothing easier when you come to try,' he observed, pocketing the money.

'I wish you had not done that,' said Flora. 'You will never hear the last of it.'

'Oh, I don't know,' returned the young man; 'the governor is human after all. And now, John, let me see your

famous passkey. Get into bed, and don't move for any one till I come back. They won't mind you not

IN spite of the horrors of the day and the teadrinking of the night, John slept the sleep of infancy. He was

awakened by the maid, as it might have been ten years ago, tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was

painting the east; and as the window was to the back of the house, it shone into the room with many strange

colours of refracted light. Without, the houses were all cleanly roofed with snow; the garden walls were

coped with it a foot in height; the greens lay glittering. Yet strange as snow had grown to John during his

years upon the Bay of San Francisco, it was what he saw within that most affected him. For it was to his own

room that Alexander had been promoted; there was the old paper with the device of flowers, in which a

cunning fancy might yet detect the face of Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John's former dominie; there was the

old chest of drawers; there were the chairs one, two, three three as before. Only the carpet was new, and

the litter of Alexander's clothes and books and drawing materials, and a pencildrawing on the wall, which

He was thus lying, and looking, and dreaming, hanging, as it were, between two epochs of his life, when

Alexander came to the door, and made his presence known in a loud whisper. John let him in, and jumped

'Well, John,' said Alexander, 'the cablegram is sent in your name, and twenty words of answer paid. I have

been to the cab office and paid your cab, even saw the old gentleman himself, and properly apologised. He

was mighty placable, and indicated his belief you had been drinking. Then I knocked up old Macewen out of

bed, and explained affairs to him as he sat and shivered in a dressinggown. And before that I had been to the

High Street, where they have heard nothing of your dead body, so that I incline to the idea that you dreamed

'Well, the police never do know anything,' assented Alexander; 'and at any rate, they have despatched a man

to inquire and to recover your trousers and your money, so that really your bill is now fairly clean; and I see

'I don't imagine so,' returned the other; 'not if you do what Flora and I have arranged; and your business now

is to dress, and lose no time about it. Is your watch right? Well, you have a quarter of an hour. By five

minutes before the halfhour you must be at table, in your old seat, under Uncle Duthie's picture. Flora will be

'If you mean to manage your own concerns, you can do precisely what you like,' replied Alexander; 'but if

you are not in your place five minutes before the halfhour I wash my hands of you, for one.'

And thereupon he departed. He had spoken warmly, but the truth is, his heart was somewhat troubled. And as

he hung over the balusters, watching for his father to appear, he had hard ado to keep himself braced for the

'If he takes it ill, why it'll be a herring across John's tracks, and perhaps all for the best. He's a confounded

At that stage a door opened below with a certain emphasis, and Mr. Nicholson was seen solemnly to descend

the stairs, and pass into his own apartment. Alexander followed, quaking inwardly, but with a steady face. He

knocked, was bidden to enter, and found his father standing in front of the forced drawer, to which he pointed

'I was afraid you would notice it,' observed his son; 'it made such a beastly hash of the table.'

'You were afraid I would notice it?' repeated Mr. Nicholson. 'And, pray, what may that mean?'

'That I was a thief, sir,' returned Alexander. 'I took all the money in case the servants should get hold of it;

and here is the change, and a note of my expenditure. You were gone to bed, you see, and I did not feel at

liberty to knock you up; but I think when you have heard the circumstances, you will do me justice. The fact

is, I have reason to believe there has been some dreadful error about my brother John; the sooner it can be

cleared up the better for all parties; it was a piece of business, sir and so I took it, and decided, on my own

responsibility, to send a telegram to San Francisco. Thanks to my quickness we may hear tonight. There

'It's most extraordinary,' said Mr. Nicholson. 'Do you mean to say you have been out all night?'

'All night, as you say, sir. I have been to the telegraph and the police office, and Mr. Macewen's. Oh, I had

'I do not see that I have much to gain in bringing back my elder brother,' returned Alexander, shrewdly.

The answer pleased the old man; he smiled. 'Well, well, I will go into this after breakfast,' said he.

'It's another example,' continued the son, 'of the awkwardness of a man having no money of his own. If I had

a proper allowance, like other fellows of my age, this would have been quite unnecessary.'

'A proper allowance!' repeated his father, in tones of blighting sarcasm, for the expression was not new to

'No doubt, no doubt,' said Alexander, 'but then you see you aren't always on the spot to have the thing

'Was it not some similar affair that first got John into a mess?' asked the son, skilfully evading the point.

But the father was not less adroit. 'And pray, sir, how did you come and go out of the house?' he asked.

'I have had cause to complain of that too often,' said Mr. Nicholson. 'But still I do not understand. Did you

'I propose to go into all that at length after breakfast,' returned Alexander. 'There is the halfhour going; we

Even Alexander, who, it must have been perceived was on terms of comparative freedom with his parent

even Alexander had never before dared to cut short an interview in this highhanded fashion. But the truth is,

the very mass of his son's delinquencies daunted the old gentleman. He was like the man with the cart of

apples this was beyond him! That Alexander should have spoiled his table, taken his money, stayed out all

night, and then coolly acknowledged all, was something undreamed of in the Nicholsonian philosophy, and

transcended comment. The return of the change, which the old gentleman still carried in his hand, had been a

feature of imposing impudence; it had dealt him a staggering blow. Then there was the reference to John's

original flight a subject which he always kept resolutely curtained in his own mind; for he was a man who

loved to have made no mistakes, and when he feared he might have made one kept the papers sealed. In view

of all these surprises and reminders, and of his son's composed and masterful demeanour, there began to

creep on Mr. Nicholson a sickly misgiving. He seemed beyond his depth; if he did or said anything, he might

come to regret it. The young man, besides, as he had pointed out himself, was playing a generous part. And if

wrong had been done and done to one who was, after, and in spite of, all, a Nicholson it should certainly

All things considered, monstrous as it was to be cut short in his inquiries, the old gentleman submitted,

pocketed the change, and followed his son into the diningroom. During these few steps he once more

mentally revolted, and once more, and this time finally, laid down his arms: a still, small voice in his bosom

having informed him authentically of a piece of news; that he was afraid of Alexander. The strange thing was

that he was pleased to be afraid of him. He was proud of his son; he might be proud of him; the boy had

These were his reflections as he turned the corner of the diningroom door. Miss Mackenzie was in the place

of honour, conjuring with a teapot and a cosy; and, behold! there was another person present, a large, portly,

whiskered man of a very comfortable and respectable air, who now rose from his seat and came forward,

Of the contention of feeling that ran high in Mr. Nicholson's starched bosom, no outward sign was visible;

nor did he delay long to make a choice of conduct. Yet in that interval he had reviewed a great field of

possibilities both past and future; whether it was possible he had not been perfectly wise in his treatment of

John; whether it was possible that John was innocent; whether, if he turned John out a second time, as his

outraged authority suggested, it was possible to avoid a scandal; and whether, if he went to that extremity, it

And then, in an embarrassed silence, all took their places; and even the paper from which it was the old

gentleman's habit to suck mortification daily, as he marked the decline of our institutions even the paper lay

But presently Flora came to the rescue. She slid into the silence with a technicality, asking if John still took

his old inordinate amount of sugar. Thence it was but a step to the burning question of the day; and in tones a

little shaken, she commented on the interval since she had last made tea for the prodigal, and congratulated

him on his return. And then addressing Mr. Nicholson, she congratulated him also in a manner that defied his

illhumour; and from that launched into the tale of John's misadventures, not without some suitable

Gradually Alexander joined; between them, whether he would or no, they forced a word or two from John;

and these fell so tremulously, and spoke so eloquently of a mind oppressed with dread, that Mr. Nicholson

relented. At length even he contributed a question: and before the meal was at an end all four were talking

Prayers followed, with the servants gaping at this newcomer whom no one had admitted; and after prayers

there came that moment on the clock which was the signal for Mr. Nicholson's departure.

'John,' said he, 'of course you will stay here. Be very careful not to excite Maria, if Miss Mackenzie thinks it

desirable that you should see her. Alexander, I wish to speak with you alone.' And then, when they were both

in the back room: 'You need not come to the office today,' said he; 'you can stay and amuse your brother,

and I think it would be respectful to call on Uncle Greig. And by the bye' (this spoken with a certain dare we

say? bashfulness), 'I agree to concede the principle of an allowance; and I will consult with Doctor Durie,

who is quite a man of the world and has sons of his own, as to the amount. And, my fine fellow, you may

Before noon a detective had restored to John his money, and brought news, sad enough in truth, but perhaps

the least sad possible. Alan had been found in his own house in Regent Terrace, under care of the terrified

butler. He was quite mad, and instead of going to prison, had gone to Morningside Asylum. The murdered

man, it appeared, was an evicted tenant who had for nearly a year pursued his late landlord with threats and

When Mr. Nicholson returned from dinner they were able to put a despatch into his hands: 'John V.

Nicholson, Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh. Kirkham has disappeared; police looking for him. All

understood. Keep mind quite easy. Austin.' Having had this explained to him, the old gentleman took down

the cellar key and departed for two bottles of the 1820 port. Uncle Greig dined there that day, and Cousin

Robina, and, by an odd chance, Mr. Macewen; and the presence of these strangers relieved what might have

been otherwise a somewhat strained relation. Ere they departed, the family was welded once more into a fair

In the end of April John led Flora or, as more descriptive, Flora led John to the altar, if altar that may be

called which was indeed the drawingroom mantelpiece in Mr. Nicholson's house, with the Reverend Dr.

The last I saw of them, on a recent visit to the north, was at a dinnerparty in the house of my old friend

Gellatly Macbride; and after we had, in classic phrase, 'rejoined the ladies,' I had an opportunity to overhear

Flora conversing with another married woman on the much canvassed matter of a husband's tobacco.

'Oh yes!' said she; 'I only allow Mr. Nicholson four cigars a day. Three he smokes at fixed times after a

meal, you know, my dear; and the fourth he can take when he likes with any friend.'

EVERY night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham the undertaker, and

the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or

snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular armchair. Fettes was an old drunken

Scotchman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had

come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an

adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the churchspire. His place in the

parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of

course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would

now and again set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum five glasses

regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his

right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was supposed to

have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known, upon a pinch, to set a fracture or reduce a

dislocation; but beyond these slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his character and antecedents.

One dark winter night it had struck nine some time before the landlord joined us there was a sick man in

the George, a great neighbouring proprietor suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to Parliament;

and the great man's still greater London doctor had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that

such a thing had happened in Debenham, for the railway was but newly open, and we were all

Fettes was far through his third tumbler, stupidly fuddled, now nodding over, now staring mazily around him;

but at the last word he seemed to awaken, and repeated the name 'Macfarlane' twice, quietly enough the first

Fettes became instantly sober; his eyes awoke, his voice became clear, loud, and steady, his language forcible

and earnest. We were all startled by the transformation, as if a man had risen from the dead.

'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I am afraid I have not been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this

Wolfe Macfarlane?' And then, when he had heard the landlord out, 'It cannot be, it cannot be,' he added; 'and

'God forbid!' was the reply. 'And yet the name is a strange one; it were too much to fancy two. Tell me,

'Well,' said the host, 'he's not a young man, to be sure, and his hair is white; but he looks younger than you.'

'He is older, though; years older. But,' with a slap upon the table, 'it's the rum you see in my face rum and

sin. This man, perhaps, may have an easy conscience and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear me speak. You

would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire

might have canted if he'd stood in my shoes; but the brains' with a rattling fillip on his bald head 'the

'If you know this doctor,' I ventured to remark, after a somewhat awful pause, 'I should gather that you do not

There was another pause, and then a door was closed rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard

It was but two steps from the small parlour to the door of the old George Inn; the wide oak staircase landed

almost in the street; there was room for a Turkey rug and nothing more between the threshold and the last

round of the descent; but this little space was every evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the light upon the

stair and the great signallamp below the sign, but by the warm radiance of the barroom window. The

George thus brightly advertised itself to passersby in the cold street. Fettes walked steadily to the spot, and

we, who were hanging behind, beheld the two men meet, as one of them had phrased it, face to face. Dr.

Macfarlane was alert and vigorous. His white hair set off his pale and placid, although energetic,

countenance. He was richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and the whitest of linen, with a great gold

watchchain, and studs and spectacles of the same precious material. He wore a broadfolded tie, white and

speckled with lilac, and he carried on his arm a comfortable drivingcoat of fur. There was no doubt but he

became his years, breathing, as he did, of wealth and consideration; and it was a surprising contrast to see our

parlour sot bald, dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old camlet cloak confront him at the bottom of the stairs.

The great doctor pulled up short on the fourth step, as though the familiarity of the address surprised and

The London man almost staggered. He stared for the swiftest of seconds at the man before him, glanced

behind him with a sort of scare, and then in a startled whisper, 'Fettes!' he said, 'You!'

'Ay,' said the other, 'me! Did you think I was dead too? We are not so easy shut of our acquaintance.'

'Hush, hush!' exclaimed the doctor. 'Hush, hush! this meeting is so unexpected I can see you are unmanned.

I hardly knew you, I confess, at first; but I am overjoyed overjoyed to have this opportunity. For the present

it must be howd'yedo and goodbye in one, for my fly is waiting, and I must not fail the train; but you

shall let me see yes you shall give me your address, and you can count on early news of me. We must

do something for you, Fettes. I fear you are out at elbows; but we must see to that for auld lang syne, as once

'Money!' cried Fettes; 'money from you! The money that I had from you is lying where I cast it in the rain.'

Dr. Macfarlane had talked himself into some measure of superiority and confidence, but the uncommon

A horrible, ugly look came and went across his almost venerable countenance. 'My dear fellow,' he said, 'be it

as you please; my last thought is to offend you. I would intrude on none. I will leave you my address,

'I do not wish it I do not wish to know the roof that shelters you,' interrupted the other. 'I heard your name; I

feared it might be you; I wished to know if, after all, there were a God; I know now that there is none.

He still stood in the middle of the rug, between the stair and doorway; and the great London physician, in

order to escape, would be forced to step to one side. It was plain that he hesitated before the thought of this

humiliation. White as he was, there was a dangerous glitter in his spectacles; but while he still paused

uncertain, he became aware that the driver of his fly was peering in from the street at this unusual scene and

caught a glimpse at the same time of our little body from the parlour, huddled by the corner of the bar. The

presence of so many witnesses decided him at once to flee. He crouched together, brushing on the wainscot,

and made a dart like a serpent, striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet entirely at an end, for even

as he was passing Fettes clutched him by the arm and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully

The great rich London doctor cried out aloud with a sharp, throttling cry; he dashed his questioner across the

open space, and, with his hands over his head, fled out of the door like a detected thief. Before it had occurred

to one of us to make a movement the fly was already rattling toward the station. The scene was over like a

dream, but the dream had left proofs and traces of its passage. Next day the servant found the fine gold

spectacles broken on the threshold, and that very night we were all standing breathless by the barroom

'God protect us, Mr. Fettes!' said the landlord, coming first into possession of his customary senses. 'What in

Fettes turned toward us; he looked us each in succession in the face. 'See if you can hold your tongues,' said

he. 'That man Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that have done so already have repented it too late.'

And then, without so much as finishing his third glass, far less waiting for the other two, he bade us

We three turned to our places in the parlour, with the big red fire and four clear candles; and as we

recapitulated what had passed, the first chill of our surprise soon changed into a glow of curiosity. We sat

late; it was the latest session I have known in the old George. Each man, before we parted, had his theory that

he was bound to prove; and none of us had any nearer business in this world than to track out the past of our

condemned companion, and surprise the secret that he shared with the great London doctor. It is no great

boast, but I believe I was a better hand at worming out a story than either of my fellows at the George; and

perhaps there is now no other man alive who could narrate to you the following foul and unnatural events.

In his young days Fettes studied medicine in the schools of Edinburgh. He had talent of a kind, the talent that

picks up swiftly what it hears and readily retails it for its own. He worked little at home; but he was civil,

attentive, and intelligent in the presence of his masters. They soon picked him out as a lad who listened

closely and remembered well; nay, strange as it seemed to me when I first heard it, he was in those days well

favoured, and pleased by his exterior. There was, at that period, a certain extramural teacher of anatomy,

whom I shall here designate by the letter K. His name was subsequently too well known. The man who bore

it skulked through the streets of Edinburgh in disguise, while the mob that applauded at the execution of

Burke called loudly for the blood of his employer. But Mr. K was then at the top of his vogue; he enjoyed a

popularity due partly to his own talent and address, partly to the incapacity of his rival, the university

professor. The students, at least, swore by his name, and Fettes believed himself, and was believed by others,

to have laid the foundations of success when he had acquired the favour of this meteorically famous man. Mr.

K was a BON VIVANT as well as an accomplished teacher; he liked a sly illusion no less than a careful

preparation. In both capacities Fettes enjoyed and deserved his notice, and by the second year of his

attendance he held the halfregular position of second demonstrator or subassistant in his class.

In this capacity the charge of the theatre and lectureroom devolved in particular upon his shoulders. He had

to answer for the cleanliness of the premises and the conduct of the other students, and it was a part of his

duty to supply, receive, and divide the various subjects. It was with a view to this last at that time very

delicate affair that he was lodged by Mr. K in the same wynd, and at last in the same building, with the

dissectingrooms. Here, after a night of turbulent pleasures, his hand still tottering, his sight still misty and

confused, he would be called out of bed in the black hours before the winter dawn by the unclean and

desperate interlopers who supplied the table. He would open the door to these men, since infamous

throughout the land. He would help them with their tragic burden, pay them their sordid price, and remain

alone, when they were gone, with the unfriendly relics of humanity. From such a scene he would return to

snatch another hour or two of slumber, to repair the abuses of the night, and refresh himself for the labours of

Few lads could have been more insensible to the impressions of a life thus passed among the ensigns of

mortality. His mind was closed against all general considerations. He was incapable of interest in the fate and

fortunes of another, the slave of his own desires and low ambitions. Cold, light, and selfish in the last resort,

he had that modicum of prudence, miscalled morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient drunkenness or

punishable theft. He coveted, besides, a measure of consideration from his masters and his fellowpupils, and

he had no desire to fail conspicuously in the external parts of life. Thus he made it his pleasure to gain some

distinction in his studies, and day after day rendered unimpeachable eyeservice to his employer, Mr. K.

For his day of work he indemnified himself by nights of roaring, blackguardly enjoyment; and when that

balance had been struck, the organ that he called his conscience declared itself content.

The supply of subjects was a continual trouble to him as well as to his master. In that large and busy class, the

raw material of the anatomists kept perpetually running out; and the business thus rendered necessary was not

only unpleasant in itself, but threatened dangerous consequences to all who were concerned. It was the policy

of Mr. K to ask no questions in his dealings with the trade. 'They bring the body, and we pay the price,' he

used to say, dwelling on the alliteration 'QUID PRO QUO.' And, again, and somewhat profanely, 'Ask no

questions,' he would tell his assistants, 'for conscience' sake.' There was no understanding that the subjects

were provided by the crime of murder. Had that idea been broached to him in words, he would have recoiled

in horror; but the lightness of his speech upon so grave a matter was, in itself, an offence against good

manners, and a temptation to the men with whom he dealt. Fettes, for instance, had often remarked to himself

upon the singular freshness of the bodies. He had been struck again and again by the hangdog, abominable

looks of the ruffians who came to him before the dawn; and putting things together clearly in his private

thoughts, he perhaps attributed a meaning too immoral and too categorical to the unguarded counsels of his

master. He understood his duty, in short, to have three branches: to take what was brought, to pay the price,

One November morning this policy of silence was put sharply to the test. He had been awake all night with a

racking toothache pacing his room like a caged beast or throwing himself in fury on his bed and had

fallen at last into that profound, uneasy slumber that so often follows on a night of pain, when he was

awakened by the third or fourth angry repetition of the concerted signal. There was a thin, bright moonshine;

it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already preluded

the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually

eager to be gone. Fettes, sick with sleep, lighted them upstairs. He heard their grumbling Irish voices through

a dream; and as they stripped the sack from their sad merchandise he leaned dozing, with his shoulder

propped against the wall; he had to shake himself to find the men their money. As he did so his eyes lighted

'I know her, I tell you,' he continued. 'She was alive and hearty yesterday. It's impossible she can be dead; it's

But the other looked Fettes darkly in the eyes, and demanded the money on the spot.

It was impossible to misconceive the threat or to exaggerate the danger. The lad's heart failed him. He

stammered some excuses, counted out the sum, and saw his hateful visitors depart. No sooner were they gone

than he hastened to confirm his doubts. By a dozen unquestionable marks he identified the girl he had jested

with the day before. He saw, with horror, marks upon her body that might well betoken violence. A panic

seized him, and he took refuge in his room. There he reflected at length over the discovery that he had made;

considered soberly the bearing of Mr. K's instructions and the danger to himself of interference in so serious

a business, and at last, in sore perplexity, determined to wait for the advice of his immediate superior, the

This was a young doctor, Wolfe Macfarlane, a high favourite among all the reckless students, clever,

dissipated, and unscrupulous to the last degree. He had travelled and studied abroad. His manners were

agreeable and a little forward. He was an authority on the stage, skilful on the ice or the links with skate or

golfclub; he dressed with nice audacity, and, to put the finishing touch upon his glory, he kept a gig and a

strong trottinghorse. With Fettes he was on terms of intimacy; indeed, their relative positions called for

some community of life; and when subjects were scarce the pair would drive far into the country in

Macfarlane's gig, visit and desecrate some lonely graveyard, and return before dawn with their booty to the

On that particular morning Macfarlane arrived somewhat earlier than his wont. Fettes heard him, and met him

on the stairs, told him his story, and showed him the cause of his alarm. Macfarlane examined the marks on

'Do?' repeated the other. 'Do you want to do anything? Least said soonest mended, I should say.'

'Some one else might recognise her,' objected Fettes. 'She was as well known as the Castle Rock.'

'We'll hope not,' said Macfarlane, 'and if anybody does well, you didn't, don't you see, and there's an end.

The fact is, this has been going on too long. Stir up the mud, and you'll get K into the most unholy trouble;

you'll be in a shocking box yourself. So will I, if you come to that. I should like to know how any one of us

would look, or what the devil we should have to say for ourselves, in any Christian witnessbox. For me, you

know there's one thing certain that, practically speaking, all our subjects have been murdered.'

'And proof another. Yes, I know; and I'm as sorry as you are this should have come here,' tapping the body

with his cane. 'The next best thing for me is not to recognise it; and,' he added coolly, 'I don't. You may, if

you please. I don't dictate, but I think a man of the world would do as I do; and I may add, I fancy that is what

K would look for at our hands. The question is, Why did he choose us two for his assistants? And I answer,

This was the tone of all others to affect the mind of a lad like Fettes. He agreed to imitate Macfarlane. The

body of the unfortunate girl was duly dissected, and no one remarked or appeared to recognise her.

One afternoon, when his day's work was over, Fettes dropped into a popular tavern and found Macfarlane

sitting with a stranger. This was a small man, very pale and dark, with coalblack eyes. The cut of his

features gave a promise of intellect and refinement which was but feebly realised in his manners, for he

proved, upon a nearer acquaintance, coarse, vulgar, and stupid. He exercised, however, a very remarkable

control over Macfarlane; issued orders like the Great Bashaw; became inflamed at the least discussion or

delay, and commented rudely on the servility with which he was obeyed. This most offensive person took a

fancy to Fettes on the spot, plied him with drinks, and honoured him with unusual confidences on his past

career. If a tenth part of what he confessed were true, he was a very loathsome rogue; and the lad's vanity was

'I'm a pretty bad fellow myself,' the stranger remarked, 'but Macfarlane is the boy Toddy Macfarlane I call

him. Toddy, order your friend another glass.' Or it might be, 'Toddy, you jump up and shut the door.' 'Toddy

'Hear him! Did you ever see the lads play knife? He would like to do that all over my body,' remarked the

'We medicals have a better way than that,' said Fettes. 'When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we dissect

The afternoon passed. Gray, for that was the stranger's name, invited Fettes to join them at dinner, ordered a

feast so sumptuous that the tavern was thrown into commotion, and when all was done commanded

Macfarlane to settle the bill. It was late before they separated; the man Gray was incapably drunk.

Macfarlane, sobered by his fury, chewed the cud of the money he had been forced to squander and the slights

he had been obliged to swallow. Fettes, with various liquors singing in his head, returned home with devious

footsteps and a mind entirely in abeyance. Next day Macfarlane was absent from the class, and Fettes smiled

to himself as he imagined him still squiring the intolerable Gray from tavern to tavern. As soon as the hour of

liberty had struck he posted from place to place in quest of his last night's companions. He could find them,

however, nowhere; so returned early to his rooms, went early to bed, and slept the sleep of the just.

At four in the morning he was awakened by the wellknown signal. Descending to the door, he was filled

with astonishment to find Macfarlane with his gig, and in the gig one of those long and ghastly packages with

But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding him turn to business. When they had got the body upstairs and

laid it on the table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were going away. Then he paused and seemed to

hesitate; and then, 'You had better look at the face,' said he, in tones of some constraint. 'You had better,' he

Fettes was staggered; strange doubts assailed him. He looked from the young doctor to the body, and then

back again. At last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost expected the sight that met his eyes,

and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of sackcloth,

the man whom he had left well clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in

the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which reechoed in his

soul, that two whom he had known should have come to lie upon these icy tables. Yet these were only

secondary thoughts. His first concern regarded Wolfe. Unprepared for a challenge so momentous, he knew

not how to look his comrade in the face. He durst not meet his eye, and he had neither words nor voice at his

It was Macfarlane himself who made the first advance. He came up quietly behind and laid his hand gently

Now Richardson was a student who had long been anxious for that portion of the human subject to dissect.

There was no answer, and the murderer resumed: 'Talking of business, you must pay me; your accounts, you

Fettes found a voice, the ghost of his own: 'Pay you!' he cried. 'Pay you for that?'

'Why, yes, of course you must. By all means and on every possible account, you must,' returned the other. 'I

dare not give it for nothing, you dare not take it for nothing; it would compromise us both. This is another

case like Jane Galbraith's. The more things are wrong the more we must act as if all were right. Where does

There was an instant's hesitation, and the die was cast. Macfarlane could not suppress a nervous twitch, the

infinitesimal mark of an immense relief, as he felt the key between his fingers. He opened the cupboard,

brought out pen and ink and a paperbook that stood in one compartment, and separated from the funds in a

'Now, look here,' he said, 'there is the payment made first proof of your good faith: first step to your

security. You have now to clinch it by a second. Enter the payment in your book, and then you for your part

The next few seconds were for Fettes an agony of thought; but in balancing his terrors it was the most

immediate that triumphed. Any future difficulty seemed almost welcome if he could avoid a present quarrel

with Macfarlane. He set down the candle which he had been carrying all this time, and with a steady hand

'And now,' said Macfarlane, 'it's only fair that you should pocket the lucre. I've had my share already. By the

bye, when a man of the world falls into a bit of luck, has a few shillings extra in his pocket I'm ashamed to

speak of it, but there's a rule of conduct in the case. No treating, no purchase of expensive classbooks, no

'Macfarlane,' began Fettes, still somewhat hoarsely, 'I have put my neck in a halter to oblige you.'

'To oblige me?' cried Wolfe. 'Oh, come! You did, as near as I can see the matter, what you downright had to

do in selfdefence. Suppose I got into trouble, where would you be? This second little matter flows clearly

from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of Miss Galbraith. You can't begin and then stop. If you begin,

A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student.

'My God!' he cried, 'but what have I done? and when did I begin? To be made a class assistant in the name

of reason, where's the harm in that? Service wanted the position; Service might have got it. Would HE have

'My dear fellow,' said Macfarlane, 'what a boy you are! What harm HAS come to you? What harm CAN

come to you if you hold your tongue? Why, man, do you know what this life is? There are two squads of us

the lions and the lambs. If you're a lamb, you'll come to lie upon these tables like Gray or Jane Galbraith; if

you're a lion, you'll live and drive a horse like me, like K, like all the world with any wit or courage. You're

staggered at the first. But look at K! My dear fellow, you're clever, you have pluck. I like you, and Klikes

you. You were born to lead the hunt; and I tell you, on my honour and my experience of life, three days from

And with that Macfarlane took his departure and drove off up the wynd in his gig to get under cover before

daylight. Fettes was thus left alone with his regrets. He saw the miserable peril in which he stood involved.

He saw, with inexpressible dismay, that there was no limit to his weakness, and that, from concession to

concession, he had fallen from the arbiter of Macfarlane's destiny to his paid and helpless accomplice. He

would have given the world to have been a little braver at the time, but it did not occur to him that he might

still be brave. The secret of Jane Galbraith and the cursed entry in the daybook closed his mouth.

Hours passed; the class began to arrive; the members of the unhappy Gray were dealt out to one and to

another, and received without remark. Richardson was made happy with the head; and before the hour of

freedom rang Fettes trembled with exultation to perceive how far they had already gone toward safety.

For two days he continued to watch, with increasing joy, the dreadful process of disguise.

On the third day Macfarlane made his appearance. He had been ill, he said; but he made up for lost time by

the energy with which he directed the students. To Richardson in particular he extended the most valuable

assistance and advice, and that student, encouraged by the praise of the demonstrator, burned high with

Before the week was out Macfarlane's prophecy had been fulfilled. Fettes had outlived his terrors and had

forgotten his baseness. He began to plume himself upon his courage, and had so arranged the story in his

mind that he could look back on these events with an unhealthy pride. Of his accomplice he saw but little.

They met, of course, in the business of the class; they received their orders together from Mr. K. At times

they had a word or two in private, and Macfarlane was from first to last particularly kind and jovial. But it

was plain that he avoided any reference to their common secret; and even when Fettes whispered to him that

he had cast in his lot with the lions and foresworn the lambs, he only signed to him smilingly to hold his

At length an occasion arose which threw the pair once more into a closer union. Mr. K was again short of

subjects; pupils were eager, and it was a part of this teacher's pretensions to be always well supplied. At the

same time there came the news of a burial in the rustic graveyard of Glencorse. Time has little changed the

place in question. It stood then, as now, upon a cross road, out of call of human habitations, and buried

fathom deep in the foliage of six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the

streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to

pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the

bell and the old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural

church. The Resurrection Man to use a byname of the period was not to be deterred by any of the

sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old

tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of

bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some

bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the bodysnatcher, far from being repelled

by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in

joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamplit, terrorhaunted resurrection

of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in

sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities

Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a dying lamb, Fettes and Macfarlane were to be let loose upon a

grave in that green and quiet restingplace. The wife of a farmer, a woman who had lived for sixty years, and

been known for nothing but good butter and a godly conversation, was to be rooted from her grave at

midnight and carried, dead and naked, to that faraway city that she had always honoured with her Sunday's

best; the place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom; her innocent and almost venerable

Late one afternoon the pair set forth, well wrapped in cloaks and furnished with a formidable bottle. It rained

without remission a cold, dense, lashing rain. Now and again there blew a puff of wind, but these sheets of

falling water kept it down. Bottle and all, it was a sad and silent drive as far as Penicuik, where they were to

spend the evening. They stopped once, to hide their implements in a thick bush not far from the churchyard,

and once again at the Fisher's Tryst, to have a toast before the kitchen fire and vary their nips of whisky with

a glass of ale. When they reached their journey's end the gig was housed, the horse was fed and comforted,

and the two young doctors in a private room sat down to the best dinner and the best wine the house afforded.

The lights, the fire, the beating rain upon the window, the cold, incongruous work that lay before them, added

zest to their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their cordiality increased. Soon Macfarlane handed a

'A compliment,' he said. 'Between friends these little dd accommodations ought to fly like pipelights.'

Fettes pocketed the money, and applauded the sentiment to the echo. 'You are a philosopher,' he cried. 'I was

an ass till I knew you. You and K between you, by the Lord Harry! but you'll make a man of me.'

'Of course we shall,' applauded Macfarlane. 'A man? I tell you, it required a man to back me up the other

morning. There are some big, brawling, fortyyearold cowards who would have turned sick at the look of

'Well, and why not?' Fettes thus vaunted himself. 'It was no affair of mine. There was nothing to gain on the

one side but disturbance, and on the other I could count on your gratitude, don't you see?' And he slapped his

Macfarlane somehow felt a certain touch of alarm at these unpleasant words. He may have regretted that he

had taught his young companion so successfully, but he had no time to interfere, for the other noisily

'The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between you and me, I don't want to hang that's practical; but for

all cant, Macfarlane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God, Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the old

gallery of curiosities they may frighten boys, but men of the world, like you and me, despise them. Here's

It was by this time growing somewhat late. The gig, according to order, was brought round to the door with

both lamps brightly shining, and the young men had to pay their bill and take the road. They announced that

they were bound for Peebles, and drove in that direction till they were clear of the last houses of the town;

then, extinguishing the lamps, returned upon their course, and followed a byroad toward Glencorse. There

was no sound but that of their own passage, and the incessant, strident pouring of the rain. It was pitch dark;

here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for

the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through that resonant

blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the sunken woods that traverse the neighbourhood of

the buryingground the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and reillumine

one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping trees, and environed by huge and moving shadows,

They were both experienced in such affairs, and powerful with the spade; and they had scarce been twenty

minutes at their task before they were rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin lid. At the same moment

Macfarlane, having hurt his hand upon a stone, flung it carelessly above his head. The grave, in which they

now stood almost to the shoulders, was close to the edge of the plateau of the graveyard; and the gig lamp

had been propped, the better to illuminate their labours, against a tree, and on the immediate verge of the

steep bank descending to the stream. Chance had taken a sure aim with the stone. Then came a clang of

broken glass; night fell upon them; sounds alternately dull and ringing announced the bounding of the lantern

down the bank, and its occasional collision with the trees. A stone or two, which it had dislodged in its

descent, rattled behind it into the profundities of the glen; and then silence, like night, resumed its sway; and

they might bend their hearing to its utmost pitch, but naught was to be heard except the rain, now marching to

They were so nearly at an end of their abhorred task that they judged it wisest to complete it in the dark. The

coffin was exhumed and broken open; the body inserted in the dripping sack and carried between them to the

gig; one mounted to keep it in its place, and the other, taking the horse by the mouth, groped along by wall

and bush until they reached the wider road by the Fisher's Tryst. Here was a faint, diffused radiancy, which

they hailed like daylight; by that they pushed the horse to a good pace and began to rattle along merrily in the

They had both been wetted to the skin during their operations, and now, as the gig jumped among the deep

ruts, the thing that stood propped between them fell now upon one and now upon the other. At every

repetition of the horrid contact each instinctively repelled it with the greater haste; and the process, natural

although it was, began to tell upon the nerves of the companions. Macfarlane made some illfavoured jest

about the farmer's wife, but it came hollowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop in silence. Still their

unnatural burden bumped from side to side; and now the head would be laid, as if in confidence, upon their

shoulders, and now the drenching sackcloth would flap icily about their faces. A creeping chill began to

possess the soul of Fettes. He peered at the bundle, and it seemed somehow larger than at first. All over the

countryside, and from every degree of distance, the farm dogs accompanied their passage with tragic

ululations; and it grew and grew upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that

some nameless change had befallen the dead body, and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the dogs

'For God's sake,' said he, making a great effort to arrive at speech, 'for God's sake, let's have a light!'

Seemingly Macfarlane was affected in the same direction; for, though he made no reply, he stopped the

horse, passed the reins to his companion, got down, and proceeded to kindle the remaining lamp. They had by

that time got no farther than the crossroad down to Auchenclinny. The rain still poured as though the deluge

were returning, and it was no easy matter to make a light in such a world of wet and darkness. When at last

the flickering blue flame had been transferred to the wick and began to expand and clarify, and shed a wide

circle of misty brightness round the gig, it became possible for the two young men to see each other and the

thing they had along with them. The rain had moulded the rough sacking to the outlines of the body

underneath; the head was distinct from the trunk, the shoulders plainly modelled; something at once spectral

For some time Macfarlane stood motionless, holding up the lamp. A nameless dread was swathed, like a wet

sheet, about the body, and tightened the white skin upon the face of Fettes; a fear that was meaningless, a

horror of what could not be, kept mounting to his brain. Another beat of the watch, and he had spoken. But

And as Fettes took the lamp his companion untied the fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from

the head. The light fell very clear upon the dark, wellmoulded features and smoothshaven cheeks of a too

familiar countenance, often beheld in dreams of both of these young men. A wild yell rang up into the night;

each leaped from his own side into the roadway: the lamp fell, broke, and was extinguished; and the horse,

terrified by this unusual commotion, bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a gallop, bearing along with

WHEN Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd acquaintances; for he was one of those who have ears to

hear, and can use their eyes no less than their intelligence. He made as many thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his

philosophy concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as to its method. He was a typehunter among

mankind. He despised small game and insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen,

letting them go by like seaweed; but show him a refined or powerful face, let him hear a plangent or a

penetrating voice, fish for him with a living look in some one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning and

ambiguous smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. 'There was a man, there was a woman,' he

seemed to say, and he stood up to the task of comprehension with the delight of an artist in his art.

And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an artistic interest. There is no science in the personal

study of human nature. All comprehension is creation; the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork; and

the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish his subject as to make her more than human,

whilst yet by a cunning art he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman can go on

being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of

common pleasures, and he continue to worship without a thought of incongruity. To love a character is only

the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by some noble method of our own or some nobility of

mien or nature in the other, we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. When we are merely

studying an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a series of allowances. To begin to understand is to

begin to sympathise; for comprehension comes only when we have stated another's faults and virtues in terms

of our own. Hence the proverbial toleration of artists for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about

that Dick Naseby, a highminded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman as you would want to

meet, held in a sort of affection the various human creeping things whom he had met and studied.

One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an Englishspeaking, twolegged animal of the international genus,

and by profession of general and more than equivocal utility. Years before he had been a painter of some

standing in a colony, and portraits signed 'Van Tromp' had celebrated the greatness of colonial governors and

judges. In those days he had been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap. What were

the steps of his declension? No one exactly knew. Here he was at least, and had been any time these past ten

It would be hazardous to specify his exact industry. Coarsely followed, it would have merited a name grown

somewhat unfamiliar to our ears. Followed as he followed it, with a skilful reticence, in a kind of social

chiaroscuro, it was still possible for the polite to call him a professional painter. His lair was in the Grand

Hotel and the gaudiest cafes. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an air of some inspiration; and

he was always affable, and one of the easiest of men to fall in talk withal. A conversation usually ripened into

a peculiar sort of intimacy, and it was extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp contrived to render

in the course of sixandthirty hours. He occupied a position between a friend and a courier, which made

him worse than embarrassing to repay. But those whom he obliged could always buy one of his villainous

little pictures, or, where the favours had been prolonged and more than usually delicate, might order and pay

for a large canvas, with perfect certainty that they would hear no more of the transaction.

Among resident artists he enjoyed celebrity of a nonprofessional sort. He had spent more money no less

than three individual fortunes, it was whispered than any of his associates could ever hope to gain. Apart

from his colonial career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine with four brass carronades; he had travelled

Europe in a chaise and four, drawing bridle at the palacedoors of German princes; queens of song and dance

had followed him like sheep and paid his tailor's bills. And to behold him now, seeking small loans with

plaintive condescension, sponging for breakfast on an artstudent of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan who had

neglected to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance for young imaginations. His name and his

bright past, seen through the prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the nickname of THE ADMIRAL.

Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom, rapidly painting a pair of hens and a cock in a little

watercolour sketching box, and now and then glancing at the ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration

from the muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to work over an absinthe in a public

cafe, and looked the man over. The aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a youthful costume; he

had disreputable grey hair and a disreputable sore, red nose; but the coat and the gesture, the outworks of the

man, were still designed for show. Dick came up to his table and inquired if he might look at what the

'A bit of a thing,' said he. 'I just dash them off like that. I I dash them off,' he added with a gesture.

'Understand me,' continued Van Tromp; 'I am a man of the world. And yet once an artist always an artist.

All of a sudden a thought takes me in the street; I become its prey: it's like a pretty woman; no use to

'Yes,' pursued the painter; 'it all comes easily, easily to me; it is not my business; it's a pleasure. Life is my

business life this great city, Paris Paris after dark its lights, its gardens, its odd corners. Aha!' he cried,

'to be young again! The heart is young, but the heels are leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old! Nothing

remains but the COUP D'OEIL, the contemplative man's enjoyment, Mr. ,' and he paused for the name.

The other treated him at once to an exciting beverage, and expatiated on the pleasure of meeting a compatriot

in a foreign land; to hear him, you would have thought they had encountered in Central Africa. Dick had

never found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it in an easier or less offensive manner. He

seemed tickled with him as an elderly fellow about town might be tickled by a pleasant and witty lad; he

indicated that he was no precision, but in his wildest times had never been such a blade as he thought Dick.

Dick protested, but in vain. This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van Tromp's

stockintrade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with youth he imposed himself, and in the same

breath imposed an ideal on his victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this old and

'And so am I,' returned Van Tromp gaily. 'Paris! My young friend you will allow me? when you know

Paris as I do, you will have seen Strange Things. I say no more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are men of

the world, you and I, and in Paris, in the heart of civilised existence. This is an opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let

Dick consented. On the way to dinner the Admiral showed him where to buy gloves, and made him buy

them; where to buy cigars, and made him buy a vast store, some of which he obligingly accepted. At the

restaurant he showed him what to order, with surprising consequences in the bill. What he made that night by

his percentages it would be hard to estimate. And all the while Dick smilingly consented, understanding well

that he was being done, but taking his losses in the pursuit of character as a hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for

the Strange Things, the reader will be relieved to hear that they were no stranger than might have been

expected, and he may find things quite as strange without the expense of a Van Tromp for guide. Yet he was

a guide of no mean order, who made up for the poverty of what he had to show by a copious, imaginative

'So English!' cried Van Tromp, clutching him by the hand. 'So English! So BLASE! Such a charming

'Look here,' returned Dick, 'I have said good night, and now I'm going. You're an amusing old boy: I like you,

in a sense; but here's an end of it for tonight. Not another cigar, not another grog, not another percentage out

'Tut, man!' said Dick; 'you're not offended; you're a man of the world, I thought. I've been studying you, and

Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands up to the elbows, hoped cordially they would meet again and that

often, but looked after Dick as he departed with a tremor of indignation. After that they two not unfrequently

fell in each other's way, and Dick would often treat the old boy to breakfast on a moderate scale and in a

restaurant of his own selection. Often, too, he would lend Van Tromp the matter of a pound, in view of that

gentleman's contemplated departure for Australia; there would be a scene of farewell almost touching in

character, and a week or a month later they would meet on the same boulevard without surprise or

embarrassment. And in the meantime Dick learned more about his acquaintance on all sides: heard of his

yacht, his chaise and four, his brief season of celebrity amid a more confiding population, his daughter, of

whom he loved to whimper in his cups, his sponging, parasitical, nameless way of life; and with each new

detail something that was not merely interest nor yet altogether affection grew up in his mind towards this

disreputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left Paris Van Tromp was one of those whom he entertained to a

farewell supper; and the old gentleman made the speech of the evening, and then fell below the table,

OLD Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, untutored nature of the upper middle class. The universe seemed plain to

him. 'The thing's right,' he would say, or 'the thing's wrong'; and there was an end of it. There was a

contained, prophetic energy in his utterances, even on the slightest affairs; he SAW the damned thing; if you

did not, it must be from perversity of will; and this sent the blood to his head. Apart from this, which made

him an exacting companion, he was one of the most upright, hottempered, hotheaded old gentlemen in

England. Florid, with white hair, the face of an old Jupiter, and the figure of an old foxhunter, he enlivened

He had a hearty respect for Dick as a lad of parts. Dick had a respect for his father as the best of men,

tempered by the politic revolt of a youth who has to see to his own independence. Whenever the pair argued,

they came to an open rupture; and arguments were frequent, for they were both positive, and both loved the

work of the intelligence. It was a treat to hear Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of

oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax

indignant, and none the less so because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not seldom in

the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy, and declare that black was white, and blue

yellow, with much conviction and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed upon

him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where he walked before breakfast on a terrace overlooking

'Of course you have,' the old gentleman would cut in cheerfully. 'You spoke like a fool. Say no more about it.'

'You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular point. I confess there is much force in your argument

'Of course there is,' returned his father. 'Come down and look at the stables. Only,' he would add, 'bear this in

mind, and do remember that a man of my age and experience knows more about what he is saying than a raw

He would utter the word 'boy' even more offensively than the average of fathers, and the light way in which

he accepted these apologies cut Richard to the heart. The latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered

that he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him a high station in his own esteem, and thus

contributed indirectly to his better behaviour; for he was scrupulous as well as highspirited, and prided

So things went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming engrossed in securing the election

of a sound party candidate to Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about every

demerit of party letters in general; it was expressed with the energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a

little more than half unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what was untrue, you

may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched it on

'The Liberal candidate,' he concluded, 'is thus a public turncoat. Is that the sort of man we want? He has been

given the lie, and has swallowed the insult. Is that the sort of man we want? I answer No! With all the force

And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's pride, and looked to be famous by the morrow.

Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up first on that inauspicious day, and took the journal to an

arbour in the garden. He found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading article. 'No one

that we are aware of,' ran the article, 'had consulted Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to

by the whole body of electors, his letter would be none the less ungenerous and unjust to Mr. Dalton. We do

not choose to give the lie to Mr. Naseby, for we are too well aware of the consequences; but we shall venture

instead to print the facts of both cases referred to by this redhot partisan in another portion of our issue. Mr.

Naseby is of course a large proprietor in our neighbourhood; but fidelity to facts, decent feeling, and English

grammar, are all of them qualities more important than the possession of land. Mr. is doubtless a great man;

in his large gardens and that halfmile of greenhouses, where he has probably ripened his intellect and

'Liberalism,' continued the anonymous journalist, 'is of too free and sound a growth,' etc.

Richard Naseby read the whole thing from beginning to end; and a crushing shame fell upon his spirit. His

father had played the fool; he had gone out noisily to war, and come back with confusion. The moment that

his trumpets sounded, he had been disgracefully unhorsed. There was no question as to the facts; they were

one and all against the Squire. Richard would have given his ears to have suppressed the issue; but as that

could not be done, he had his horse saddled, and furnishing himself with a convenient staff, rode off at once

The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad apartment. The absence of furniture, the extreme meanness of the

meal, and the haggard, brighteyed, consumptive look of the culprit, unmanned our hero; but he clung to his

'My father is an old man,' said Richard; and then with an outburst, 'And a damned sight finer fellow than

either you or Dalton!' He stopped and swallowed; he was determined that all should go with regularity. 'I

have but one question to put to you, sir,' he resumed. 'Granted that my father was misinformed, would it not

have been more decent to withhold the letter and communicate with him in private?'

'Believe me,' returned the editor, 'that alternative was not open to me. Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he

had sent his letter to three other journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I kept it

back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened; I sympathise and approve of your emotion,

young gentleman; but the attack on Mr. Dalton was gross, very gross, and I had no choice but to offer him my

columns to reply. Party has its duties, sir,' added the scribe, kindling, as one who should propose a sentiment;

Richard stood for half a minute digesting the answer; and then the god of fair play came uppermost in his

His horse was not hurried on the way home, and he was late for breakfast. The Squire was standing with his

back to the fire in a state bordering on apoplexy, his fingers violently knitted under his coat tails. As Richard

'Well? What then? Is your mind so sterile, sir? Have you not a word of comment? no proposal?'

'I fear, sir, you must apologise to Mr. Dalton. It would be more handsome, indeed it would be only just, and a

free acknowledgment would go far ' Richard paused, no language appearing delicate enough to suit the

'That is a suggestion which should have come from me, sir,' roared the father. 'It is out of place upon your

lips. It is not the thought of a loyal son. Why, sir, if my father had been plunged in such deplorable

circumstances, I should have thrashed the editor of that vile sheet within an inch of his life. I should have

thrashed the man, sir. It would have been the action of an ass; but it would have shown that I had the blood

'I'll tell you what you are, sir,' pursued the Squire. 'You're a Benthamite. I disown you. Your mother would

have died for shame; there was no modern cant about your mother; she thought she said to me, sir I'm

glad she's in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed, sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no

natural affections? Are you clockwork, hey? Away! This is no place for you. Away!' (waving his hands in the

At this moment Dick beat a retreat in a disarray of nerves, a whistling and clamour of his own arteries, and in

short in such a final bodily disorder as made him alike incapable of speech or hearing. And in the midst of all

THERE was no return to the subject. Dick and his father were henceforth on terms of coldness. The upright

old gentleman grew more upright when he met his son, buckrammed with immortal anger; he asked after

Dick's health, and discussed the weather and the crops with an appalling courtesy; his pronunciation was

POINTDEVICE, his voice was distant, distinct, and sometimes almost trembling with suppressed

As for Dick, it seemed to him as if his life had come abruptly to an end. He came out of his theories and

clevernesses; his premature manoftheworldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels, 'shrank

like a thing ashamed' before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded honour, pity and respect tussled together daily

in his heart; and now he was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now of slipping

forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even

from the neighbourhood of this familiar valley, where every corner had its legend, and he was besieged with

memories of childhood. If he fled into a new land, and among none but strangers, he might escape his

destiny, who knew? and begin again lightheartedly. From that chief peak of the hills, that now and then, like

an uplifted finger, shone in an arrow of sunlight through the broken clouds, the shepherd in clear weather

might perceive the shining of the sea. There, he thought, was hope. But his heart failed him when he saw the

Squire; and he remained. His fate was not that of the voyager by sea and land; he was to travel in the spirit,

For it chanced one day that his walk led him into a portion of the uplands which was almost unknown to him.

Scrambling through some rough woods, he came out upon a moorland reaching towards the hills. A few lofty

Scotch firs grew hard by upon a knoll; a clear fountain near the foot of the knoll sent up a miniature streamlet

which meandered in the heather. A shower had just skimmed by, but now the sun shone brightly, and the air

smelt of the pines and the grass. On a stone under the trees sat a young lady sketching. We have learned to

think of women in a sort of symbolic transfiguration, based on clothes; and one of the readiest ways in which

we conceive our mistress is as a composite thing, principally petticoats. But humanity has triumphed over

clothes; the look, the touch of a dress has become alive; and the woman who stitched herself into these

material integuments has now permeated right through and gone out to the tip of her skirt. It was only a black

dress that caught Dick Naseby's eye; but it took possession of his mind, and all other thoughts departed. He

drew near, and the girl turned round. Her face startled him; it was a face he wanted; and he took it in at once

'Ten to one, you do yourself injustice,' returned Dick. 'Besides, it's a freemasonry. I sketch myself, and you

'Two things,' he answered. 'First, that I am no very difficult critic; and second, that I have a right to see your

'Indeed, I might give you a hint,' said Dick. 'Although no artist myself, I have known many; in Paris I had

'In Paris?' she cried, with a leap of light into her eyes. 'Did you ever meet Mr. Van Tromp?'

'The Admiral? Do they call him that?' she cried. 'Oh, how nice, how nice of them! It is the younger men who

'You can understand now,' she said, with an unspeakable accent of contented nobleminded pride, 'why it is I

do not choose to show my sketch. Van Tromp's daughter! The Admiral's daughter! I delight in that name. The

'Well,' said Dick, 'I met him often; we were even intimate. He may have mentioned my name Naseby.'

'He writes so little. He is so busy, so devoted to his art! I have had a half wish,' she added laughing, 'that my

father was a plainer man, whom I could help to whom I could be a credit; but only sometimes, you know,

'Not much,' he admitted; 'but I know that many people are glad to buy Mr. Van Tromp's pictures.'

'Call him the Admiral!' she cried. 'It sounds kindly and familiar; and I like to think that he is appreciated and

looked up to by young painters. He has not always been appreciated; he had a cruel life for many years; and

when I think' there were tears in her eyes 'when I think of that, I feel incline to be a fool,' she broke off.

'And now I shall go home. You have filled me full of happiness; for think, Mr. Naseby, I have not seen my

father since I was six years old; and yet he is in my thoughts all day! You must come and call on me; my aunt

will be delighted, I am sure; and then you will tell me all all about my father, will you not?'

Dick helped her to get her sketching traps together; and when all was ready, she gave Dick her hand and a

'You are my father's friend,' she said; 'we shall be great friends too. You must come and see me soon.'

Then she was gone down the hillside at a run; and Dick stood by himself in a state of some bewilderment and

even distress. There were elements of laughter in the business; but the black dress, and the face that belonged

to it, and the hand that he had held in his, inclined him to a serious view. What was he, under the

circumstances, called upon to do? Perhaps to avoid the girl? Well, he would think about that. Perhaps to

break the truth to her? Why, ten to one, such was her infatuation, he would fail. Perhaps to keep up the

illusion, to colour the raw facts; to help her to false ideas, while yet not plainly stating falsehoods? Well, he

would see about that; he would also see about avoiding the girl. He saw about this last so well, that the next

In the meantime the girl had gone straight home, light as a bird, tremulous with joy, to the little cottage where

she lived alone with a maiden aunt; and to that lady, a grim, sixty years old Scotchwoman, with a nodding

'A friend of his?' cried the aunt. 'What like is he? What did ye say was his name?'

She was dead silent, and stared at the old woman darkling. Then very slowly, 'I said he was my father's

friend; I have invited him to my house, and come he shall,' she said; and with that she walked off to her room,

where she sat staring at the wall all the evening. Miss M'Glashan, for that was the aunt's name, read a large

It was perhaps halfpast three when Dick presented himself, rather scrupulously dressed, before the cottage

door; he knocked, and a voice bade him enter. The kitchen, which opened directly off the garden, was

somewhat darkened by foliage; but he could see her as she approached from the far end to meet him. This

second sight of her surprised him. Her strong black brows spoke of temper easily aroused and hard to quiet;

her mouth was small, nervous and weak; there was something dangerous and sulky underlying, in her nature,

And she gave him her hand, with a sort of curtsy. It was a pretty greeting, although somewhat mannered; and

Dick felt himself among the gods. She led him through the kitchen to a parlour, and presented him to Miss

And as soon as the girl was gone upon this hospitable intent, the old woman crossed the room and came quite

'Well, and what brings ye here?' she said. 'I couldn't save the mother her that's dead but the bairn!' She

had a note in her voice that filled poor Dick with consternation. 'Man,' she went on, 'what is it now? Is it

'My dear lady,' said Dick, 'I think you misinterpret my position. I am young Mr. Naseby of Naseby House.

My acquaintance with Mr. Van Tromp is really very slender; I am only afraid that Miss Van Tromp has

exaggerated our intimacy in her own imagination. I know positively nothing of his private affairs, and do not

Miss M'Glashan drew along breath. 'In Paris?' she said. 'Well, and what do you think of him? what do ye

think of him?' she repeated, with a different scansion, as Richard, who had not much taste for such a question,

'I'll warrant!' she sneered; and before Dick could find more to say, she was gone from the room.

'I shall begin to think it is more than you are, Mr. Naseby,' she said, with a laugh. 'I am his daughter, you

forget. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all you have seen of him, all he said and all you answered. You

So with that he began: how he had found the Admiral painting in a cafe; how his art so possessed him that he

could not wait till he got home to well, to dash off his idea; how (this in reply to a question) his idea

consisted of a cock crowing and two hens eating corn; how he was fond of cocks and hens; how this did not

lead him to neglect more ambitious forms of art; how he had a picture in his studio of a Greek subject which

was said to be remarkable from several points of view; how no one had seen it nor knew the precise site of

the studio in which it was being vigorously though secretly confected; how (in answer to a suggestion) this

shyness was common to the Admiral, Michelangelo, and others; how they (Dick and Van Tromp) had struck

up an acquaintance at once, and dined together that same night; how he (the Admiral) had once given money

to a beggar; how he spoke with effusion of his little daughter; how he had once borrowed money to send her a

doll a trait worthy of Newton, she being then in her nineteenth year at least; how, if the doll never arrived

(which it appeared it never did), the trait was only more characteristic of the highest order of creative

intellect; how he was no, not beautiful striking, yes, Dick would go so far, decidedly striking in

appearance; how his boots were made to lace and his coat was black, not cutaway, a frock; and so on, and so

on by the yard. It was astonishing how few lies were necessary. After all, people exaggerated the difficulty of

life. A little steering, just a touch of the rudder now and then, and with a willing listener there is no limit to

the domain of equivocal speech. Sometimes Miss M'Glashan made a freezing sojourn in the parlour; and then

the task seemed unaccountably more difficult; but to Esther, who was all eyes and ears, her face alight with

interest, his stream of language flowed without break or stumble, and his mind was ever fertile in ingenious

'Ah!' she said at last, 'it's good to hear all this! My aunt, you should know, is narrow and too religious; she

cannot understand an artist's life. It does not frighten me,' she added grandly; 'I am an artist's daughter.'

With that speech, Dick consoled himself for his imposture; she was not deceived so grossly after all; and then

if a fraud, was not the fraud piety itself? and what could be more obligatory than to keep alive in the heart

of a daughter that filial trust and honour which, even although misplaced, became her like a jewel of the

mind? There might be another thought, a shade of cowardice, a selfish desire to please; poor Dick was merely

A MONTH later Dick and Esther met at the stile beside the cross roads; had there been any one to see them

but the birds and summer insects, it would have been remarked that they met after a different fashion from

the day before. Dick took her in his arms, and their lips were set together for a long while. Then he held her at

It was some time before they started for their walk; he kept an arm about her, and their sides were close

together as they walked; the sun, the birds, the west wind running among the trees, a pressure, a look, the

grasp tightening round a single finger, these things stood them in lieu of thought and filled their hearts with

joy. The path they were following led them through a wood of pinetrees carpeted with heather and

blueberry, and upon this pleasant carpet, Dick, not without some seriousness, made her sit down.

'Esther!' he began, 'there is something you ought to know. You know my father is a rich man, and you would

think, now that we love each other, we might marry when we pleased. But I fear, darling, we may have long

'I have courage for anything,' she said, 'I have all I want; with you and my father, I am so well off, and

He had a sharp pang at the mention of the Admiral. 'Hear me out,' he continued. 'I ought to have told you this

before; but it is a thought I shrink from; if it were possible, I should not tell you even now. My poor father

'It must sound strange to you; but yet I cannot think I am to blame,' he said. 'I will tell you how it happened.'

'Oh Dick!' she said, when she had heard him to an end, 'how brave you are, and how proud. Yet I would not

'What!' cried Dick, 'go in months after, and brag that I had meant to thrash the man, and then didn't. And

why? Because my father had made a bigger ass of himself than I supposed. My dear, that's nonsense.'

She winced at his words and drew away. 'But when that is all he asks,' she pleaded. 'If he only knew that you

had felt that impulse, it would make him so proud and happy. He would see you were his own son after all,

and had the same thoughts and the same chivalry of spirit. And then you did yourself injustice when you

spoke just now. It was because the editor was weak and poor and excused himself, that you repented your

first determination. Had he been a big red man, with whiskers, you would have beaten him you know you

would if Mr. Naseby had been ten times more committed. Do you think, if you can tell it to me, and I

understand at once, that it would be more difficult to tell it to your own father, or that he would not be more

ready to sympathise with you than I am? And I love you, Dick; but then he is your father.'

'My dear,' said Dick, desperately, 'you do not understand; you do not know what it is to be treated with daily

want of comprehension and daily small injustices, through childhood and boyhood and manhood, until you

despair of a hearing, until the thing rides you like a nightmare, until you almost hate the sight of the man you

love, and who's your father after all. In short, Esther, you don't know what it is to have a father, and that's

'I see,' she said musingly, 'you mean that I am fortunate in my father. But I am not so fortunate after all; you

forget, I do not know him; it is you who know him; he is already more your father than mine.' And here she

took his hand. Dick's heart had grown as cold as ice. 'But I am sorry for you, too,' she continued, 'it must be

'You misunderstand me,' said Dick, chokingly. 'My father is the best man I know in all this world; he is worth

There was a silence for a while. 'Dick,' she began again, 'I am going to ask a favour, it's the first since you

said you loved me. May I see your father see him pass, I mean, where he will not observe me?'

The hint was enough for Dick; he consented with haste, and full of hangdog penitence and disgust, took her

down by a backway and planted her in the shrubbery, whence she might see the Squire ride by to dinner.

There they both sat silent, but holding hands, for nearly half an hour. At last the trotting of a horse sounded in

the distance, the park gates opened with a clang, and then Mr. Naseby appeared, with stooping shoulders and

a heavy, bilious countenance, languidly rising to the trot. Esther recognised him at once; she had often seen

him before, though with her huge indifference for all that lay outside the circle of her love, she had never so

much as wondered who he was; but now she recognised him, and found him ten years older, leaden and

'Oh Dick, Dick!' she said, and the tears began to shine upon her face as she hid it in his bosom; his own fell

thickly too. They had a sad walk home, and that night, full of love and good counsel, Dick exerted every art

to please his father, to convince him of his respect and affection, to heal up this breach of kindness, and

reunite two hearts. But alas! the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day glooming over Dick's

estrangement for so he put it to himself, and now with growls, cold words, and the cold shoulder, he beat

THAT took place upon a Tuesday. On the Thursday following, as Dick was walking by appointment, earlier

than usual, in the direction of the cottage, he was appalled to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury,

containing the human form of Miss M'Glashan. The lady did not deign to remark him in her passage; her face

was suffused with tears, and expressed much concern for the packages by which she was surrounded. He

stood still, and asked himself what this circumstance might portend. It was so beautiful a day that he was loth

to forecast evil, yet something must perforce have happened at the cottage, and that of a decisive nature; for

here was Miss M'Glashan on her travels, with a small patrimony in brown paper parcels, and the old lady's

bearing implied hot battle and unqualified defeat. Was the house to be closed against him? Was Esther left

alone, or had some new protector made his appearance from among the millions of Europe? It is the character

of love to loathe the near relatives of the loved one; chapters in the history of the human race have justified

this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, in particular, has frequently met with censure from the independent

novelist. Miss M'Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours of regret; whoever succeeded her, Dick felt the

change would be for the worse. He hurried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew upon him with every step;

as he entered the garden a voice fell upon his ear, and he was once more arrested, not this time by doubt, but

Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the moment; but Esther kept a bright lookout when her

lover was expected. In a twinkling she was by his side, brimful of news and pleasure, too glad to notice his

embarrassment, and in one of those golden transports of exultation which transcend not only words but

caresses. She took him by the end of the fingers (reaching forward to take them, for her great preoccupation

was to save time), she drew him towards her, pushed him past her in the door, and planted him face to face

with Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of French country velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle on his nose.

Then, as though this was the end of what she could endure in the way of joy, Esther turned and ran out of the

The two men remained looking at each other with some confusion on both sides. Van Tromp was naturally

'And you know my little lass, my Esther?' he said. 'This is pleasant; this is what I have conceived of home. A

strange word for the old rover; but we all have a taste for home and the homelike, disguise it how we may. It

has brought me here, Mr. Naseby,' he concluded, with an intonation that would have made his fortune on the

stage, so just, so sad, so dignified, so like a man of the world and a philosopher, 'and you see a man who is

'Sit down,' continued the parasite, setting the example. 'Fortune has gone against me. (I am just sirrupping a

little brandy after my journey.) I was going down, Mr. Naseby; between you and me, I was DECAVE; I

borrowed fifty francs, smuggled my valise past the concierge a work of considerable tact and here I am!'

'Are you glad to see him?' she whispered in his ear, the pleasure in her voice almost bursting through the

'Help yourself,' said the Admiral, 'help yourself; and let us drink to a new existence.'

'To a new existence,' repeated Dick; and he raised the tumbler to his lips, but set it down untasted. He had had

Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father's feet, holding her knees in her arms, and looking with pride

from one to the other of her two visitors. Her eyes were so bright that you were never sure if there were tears

in them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her body; sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat,

sometimes threw back her head, with ecstasy; in a word, she was in that state when it is said of people that

they cannot contain themselves for happiness. It would be hard to exaggerate the agony of Richard.

'I never forget a friend,' said he, 'nor yet an enemy: of the latter, I never had but two myself and the public;

and I fancy I have had my vengeance pretty freely out of both.' He chuckled. 'But those days are done. Van

Tromp is no more. He was a man who had successes; I believe you knew I had successes to which we shall

refer no farther,' pulling down his neckcloth with a smile. 'That man exists no more: by an exercise of will I

have destroyed him. There is something like it in the poets. First, a brilliant and conspicuous career the

observed, I may say, of all observers, including the bumbailie: and then, presto! a quiet, sly, old, rustic

'Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we are old friends, and now near neighbours; and, A PROPOS, how are

we off for neighbours, Richard? The cottage stands, I think, upon your father's land a family which I

respect and the wood, I understand, is Lord Trevanion's. Not that I care; I am an old Bohemian. I have cut

society with a cut direct; I cut it when I was prosperous, and now I reap my reward, and can cut it with

dignity in my declension. These are our little AMOURS PROPRES, my daughter: your father must respect

himself. Thank you, yes; just a leetle, leetle, tiny thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But, as I was saying,

Richard, or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust; her aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in

parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of me; my nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder poles! But, now

that I am here, now that I have given up the fight, and live henceforth for one only of my works I have the

modesty to say it is my best my daughter well, we shall put all that to rights. The neighbours, Richard?'

Dick was understood to say that there were many good families in the Vale of Thyme.

Dick's shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to go; which Esther explained to herself by a fear of

intrusion, and so set down to the merit side of Dick's account, while she proceeded to detain him.

'You do not know that you are wanted,' she cried, leaning on his shoulder with a caress. 'I might wish to

speak to my old friend about my new father. But you shall come today, you shall do all you want; I have set

'I will just take ONE drop more,' said the Admiral, stooping to help himself to brandy. 'It is surprising how

this journey has fatigued me. But I am growing old, I am growing old, I am growing old, and I regret to add

He cocked a white wideawake coquettishly upon his head the habit of the ladykiller clung to him; and

Esther had already thrown on her hat, and was ready, while he was still studying the result in a mirror: the

'We are papa now; we must be respectable,' he said to Dick, in explanation of his dandyism: and then he went

to a bundle and chose himself a staff. Where were the elegant canes of his Parisian epoch? This was a support

for age, and designed for rustic scenes. Dick began to see and appreciate the man's enjoyment in a new part,

when he saw how carefully he had 'made it up.' He had invented a gait for this first country stroll with his

daughter, which was admirably in key. He walked with fatigue, he leaned upon the staff; he looked round him

with a sad, smiling sympathy on all that he beheld; he even asked the name of a plant, and rallied himself

gently for an old town bird, ignorant of nature. 'This country life will make me young again,' he sighed. They

reached the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun was descending heaven, the colour had

all drawn into the west; the hills were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and the wide

moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter

An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so touching to Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears;

yes, here was the father of whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic,

And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside, and something depending over the house door

There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached importance to the inquiry: Esther listened,

'Ah,' said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head; 'you are not an old campaigner; you have the world

to learn. Now I, you see, find an inn so very near my own home, and my first thought is my neighbours. I

shall go forward and make my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't come; I shall not be a moment.'

And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone with Esther on the road.

'Dick,' she exclaimed, 'I am so glad to get a word with you; I am so happy, I have such a thousand things to

say; and I want you to do me a favour. Imagine, he has come without a paintbox, without an easel; and I

want him to have all. I want you to get them for me in Thymebury. You saw, this moment, how his heart

turned to painting. They can't live without it,' she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michel Angelo.

Up to that moment, she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's behaviour. She was too happy to be curious;

and his silence, in presence of the great and good being whom she called her father, had seemed both natural

and praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became conscious of a barrier between her lover and

'But you are unhappy; you are strange; you you are not glad to see my father,' she concluded, with a break

'Esther,' he said, 'I tell you that I love you; if you love me, you know what that means, and that all I wish is to

see you happy. Do you think I cannot enjoy your pleasures? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I am alarmed, if

. Oh, believe me, try and believe in me,' he cried, giving up argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.

But the girl's suspicions were aroused; and though she pressed the matter no farther (indeed, her father was

already seen returning), it by no means left her thoughts. At one moment she simply resented the selfishness

of a man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate language on her joy; for there is nothing that a

woman can less easily forgive than the language of a passion which, even if only for the moment, she does

not share. At another, she suspected him of jealousy against her father; and for that, although she could see

excuses for it, she yet despised him. And at least, in one way or the other, here was the dangerous beginning

of a separation between two hearts. Esther found herself at variance with her sweetest friend; she could no

longer look into his heart and find it written with the same language as her own; she could no longer think of

him as the sun which radiated happiness upon her life, for she had turned to him once, and he had breathed

upon her black and chilly, radiated blackness and frost. To put the whole matter in a word, she was

WE will not follow all the steps of the Admiral's return and installation, but hurry forward towards the

catastrophe, merely chronicling by the way a few salient incidents, wherein we must rely entirely upon the

evidence of Richard, for Esther to this day has never opened her mouth upon this trying passage of her life,

and as for the Admiral well, that naval officer, although still alive, and now more suitably installed in a

seaport town where he has a telescope and a flag in his front garden, is incapable of throwing the slightest

gleam of light upon the affair. Often and often has he remarked to the present writer: 'If I know what it was

all about, sir, I'll be ' in short, be what I hope he will not. And then he will look across at his daughter's

portrait, a photograph, shake his head with an amused appearance, and mix himself another grog by way of

consolation. Once I heard him go farther, and express his feelings with regard to Esther in a single but

eloquent word. 'A minx, sir,' he said, not in anger, rather in amusement: and he cordially drank her health

upon the back of it. His worst enemy must admit him to be a man without malice; he never bore a grudge in

Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama was really performed; and its scene was in the heart of

Esther, shut away from all eyes. Had this warm, upright, sullen girl been differently used by destiny, had

events come upon her even in a different succession, for some things lead easily to others, the whole course

of this tale would have been changed, and Esther never would have run away. As it was, through a series of

acts and words of which we know but few, and a series of thoughts which any one may imagine for himself,

The first tangible cause of disenchantment was when Dick brought home a painter's arsenal on Friday

evening. The Admiral was in the chimneycorner, once more 'sirrupping' some brandy and water, and Esther

sat at the table at work. They both came forward to greet the new arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his

monstrous burthen, proceeded to display her offerings to her father. Van Tromp's countenance fell several

'God bless me,' he said; and then, 'I must really ask you not to interfere, child,' in a tone of undisguised

'Pardon me again,' she said firmly, 'but I do not, I cannot think that you are right in this. Suppose the world is

unjust, suppose that no one understands you, you have still a duty to yourself. And, oh, don't spoil the

pleasure of your coming home to me; show me that you can be my father and yet not neglect your destiny. I

am not like some daughters; I will not be jealous of your art, and I will try to understand it.'

The situation was odiously farcical. Richard groaned under it; he longed to leap forward and denounce the

humbug. And the humbug himself? Do you fancy he was easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other hand,

that he was acutely miserable; and he betrayed his sufferings by a perfectly silly and undignified access of

temper, during which he broke his pipe in several pieces, threw his brandy and water in the fire, and

employed words which were very plain although the drift of them was somewhat vague. It was of very brief

duration. Van Tromp was himself again, and in a most delightful humour within three minutes of the first

'I am an old fool,' he said frankly. 'I was spoiled when a child. As for you, Esther, you take after your mother;

you have a morbid sense of duty, particularly for others; strive against it, my dear strive against it. And as

for the pigments, well, I'll use them, some of these days; and to show that I'm in earnest, I'll get Dick here to

Dick was put to this menial task forthwith, the Admiral not even watching how he did, but quite occupied

A little after Esther arose, and making some pretext, good or bad, went off to bed. Dick was left hobbled by

The next day, Saturday, it is believed that little intercourse took place between Esther and her father; but

towards the afternoon Dick met the latter returning from the direction of the inn, where he had struck up quite

a friendship with the landlord. Dick wondered who paid for these excursions, and at the thought that the

reprobate must get his pocket money where he got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's generosity, he

had it almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman down. He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and

'Dear Dick,' he said, taking his arm, 'this is neighbourly of you; it shows your tact to meet me when I had a

'I am glad to hear you are so happy,' retorted Dick bitterly. 'There's certainly not much to trouble YOU.'

'No,' assented the Admiral, 'not much. I got out of it in time; and here well, here everything pleases me. I

am plain in my tastes. 'A PROPOS, you have never asked me how I liked my daughter?'

'Meaning you will not. And why, Dick? She is my daughter, of course; but then I am a man of the world and

a man of taste, and perfectly qualified to give an opinion with impartiality yes, Dick, with impartiality.

Frankly, I am not disappointed in her. She has good looks; she has them from her mother. So I may say I

'Dick,' cried the Admiral, stopping short; 'I have been expecting this. Let us let us go back to the

The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but a look at Dick's face, and some recollection of the terms

on which they had stood in Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom and restrained him.

'As you please,' he said; 'although I don't know what you mean nor care. But let us walk, if you prefer it.

You are still a young man; when you are my age But, however, to continue. You please me, Dick; you have

pleased me from the first; and to say truth, Esther is a trifle fantastic, and will be better when she is married.

She has means of her own, as of course you are aware. They come, like the looks, from her poor, dear, good

creature of a mother. She was blessed in her mother. I mean she shall be blessed in her husband, and you are

the man, Dick, you and not another. This very night I will sound her affections.'

'Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you,' he said; 'do what you please with yourself, but, for God's sake, let your

'It is my duty,' replied the Admiral, 'and between ourselves, you rogue, my inclination too. I am as

matchmaking as a dowager. It will be more discreet for you to stay away tonight. Farewell. You leave your

case in good hands; I have the tact of these little matters by heart; it is not my first attempt.'

All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to his point; nor did Richard conceal from himself how

seriously this might injure his prospects, and he fought hard. Once there came a glimmer of hope. The

Admiral again proposed an adjournment to the 'Trevanion Arms,' and when Dick had once more refused, it

hung for a moment in the balance whether or not the old toper would return there by himself. Had he done so,

of course Dick could have taken to his heels, and warned Esther of what was coming, and of how it had

begun. But the Admiral, after a pause, decided for the brandy at home, and made off in that direction.

Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish church, very properly dressed. He found the places, and

joined in response and hymn, as to the manner born; and his appearance, as he intended it should, attracted

some attention among the worshippers. Old Naseby, for instance, had observed him.

'There was a drunkenlooking blackguard opposite us in church,' he said to his son as they drove home; 'do

Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the escape he had effected. Had the Admiral met him with

his father, what would have been the result? And could such a catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed to

him as if the storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more nearly than he thought.

He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld by fear and shame; but when dinner was over at

Naseby House, and the Squire had gone off into a comfortable doze, Dick slipped out of the room, and ran

across country, in part to save time, in part to save his own courage from growing cold; for he now hated the

notion of the cottage or the Admiral, and if he did not hate, at least feared to think of Esther. He had no clue

to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his own heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the

He knocked and was admitted. The room looked very much as on his last visit, with Esther at the table and

Van Tromp beside the fire; but the expression of the two faces told a very different story. The girl was paler

than usual; her eyes were dark, the colour seemed to have faded from round about them, and her swiftest

glance was as intent as a stare. The appearance of the Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and flabby, and

moist; his jowl hung over his shirt collar, his smile was loose and wandering, and he had so far relaxed the

natural control of his eyes, that one of them was aimed inward, as if to watch the growth of the carbuncle. We

are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when

Richard entered, but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome. Esther took as little

'Aha! Dick!' cried the painter. 'I've been to church; I have, upon my word. And I saw you there, though you

didn't see me. And I saw a devilish pretty woman, by Gad. If it were not for this baldness, and a kind of

crapulous air I can't disguise from myself if it weren't for this and that and t'other thing I I've forgot

what I was saying. Not that that matters, I've heaps of things to say. I'm in a communicative vein tonight. I'll

let out all my cats, even unto seventy times seven. I'm in what I call THE stage, and all I desire is a listener,

Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary to give more than a sketch. The Admiral was

extremely silly, now and then amusing, and never really offensive. It was plain that he kept in view the

presence of his daughter, and chose subjects and a character of language that should not offend a lady. On

almost any other occasion Dick would have enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink,

struck a pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought to take his auditors entirely into

his confidence, and tell them his inmost conviction about himself. Between his selfknowledge, which was

considerable, and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a strange hybrid animal, and called it by his

own name. How he would plume his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened the heart of Caesar or

St. Paul; and anon, complete his own portrait with one of those touches of pitiless realism which the satirist

'Now, there's Dick,' he said, 'he's shrewd; he saw through me the first time we met, and told me so told me

so to my face, which I had the virtue to keep. I bear you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; I am a

You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the meeting between her two idols.

'I think perhaps,' he said, 'we had better all be thinking of going to bed.' And he smiled with a feeble and

'Not at all,' cried the Admiral, 'I know a trick worth two of that. Puss here,' indicating his daughter, 'shall go

Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and listened for two mortal hours while her idol defiled

himself and sneered away his godhead. One by one, her illusions had departed. And now he wished to order

her to bed in her own house! now he called her Puss! now, even as he uttered the words, toppling on his chair,

he broke the stem of his tobaccopipe in three! Never did the sheep turn upon her shearer with a more

commanding front. Her voice was calm, her enunciation a little slow, but perfectly distinct, and she stood

'No,' she said, 'Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home at once, and you will go to bed.'

The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers; he seemed by his countenance to have lived too

long in a world unworthy of him; but it is an odd circumstance, he attempted no reply, and sat thunderstruck,

Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only obey her. In the porch, finding she was close

'Many people like his paintings,' returned Dick, in stifled tones; 'I never did; I never said I did,' he added,

'Go,' she said, and was turning to reenter the house when another thought arrested her. 'Meet me tomorrow

And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in the darkness. There was still a chink of light

above the sill, a warm, mild glow behind the window; the roof of the cottage and some of the banks and

hazels were defined in denser darkness against the sky; but all else was formless, breathless, and noiseless

like the pit. Dick remained as she had left him, standing squarely upon one foot and resting only on the toe of

the other, and as he stood he listened with his soul. The sound of a chair pushed sharply over the floor startled

his heart into his mouth; but the silence which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once upon the

cottage and its vicinity. What took place during this interval is a secret from the world of men; but when it

was over the voice of Esther spoke evenly and without interruption for perhaps half a minute, and as soon as

that ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the parlour and mounted lurching up the stairs. The girl had

tamed her father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was obvious to the watcher in the road.

And yet he still waited, straining his ears, and with terror and sickness at his heart; for if Esther had followed

her father, if she had even made one movement in this great conspiracy of men and nature to be still, Dick

must have had instant knowledge of it from his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must she

He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the seconds; time stood still with him; an almost

superstitious terror took command of his faculties; at last, he could bear no more, and, springing through the

little garden in two bounds, he put his face against the window. The blind, which had not been drawn fully

down, left an open chink about an inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour was

thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat upright at the table, her head resting on her hand, her eyes

fixed upon the candle. Her brows were slightly bent, her mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still and

settled that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon

after, making a considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night, the clock lifted up its voice,

whined for a while like a partridge, and then eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still Esther continued

immovable and gazed upon the candle. Midnight followed, and then one of the morning; and still she had not

stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the window. And then, about halfpast one, the candle she had

been thus intently watching flared up into a last blaze of paper, and she leaped to her feet with an ejaculation,

looked about her once, blew out the light, turned round, and was heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the

Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled and dogged state of mind when a man thinks

that Misery must now have done her worst, and is almost glad to think so. He turned and walked slowly

towards the stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined, whenever she came, that she should find

him waiting. As he got there the day began to dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee

away. Up went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that were already disbanding in the east; a herald wind

had already sprung up to sweep the leafy earth and scatter the congregated dewdrops. 'Alas!' thought Dick

Naseby, 'how can any other day come so distastefully to me?' He still wanted his experience of the morrow.

IT was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for some time against the bank, when

Esther came up the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls,

recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties, and he half raised himself

and blinked upon the world. It took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a certain

blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had received a legacy overnight; but this feeling

gradually died away, and was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth. The

whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy

sense of sight, and he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.

She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still pale, but to all appearance perfectly composed; and

she showed neither surprise, relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer him her

'Yes,' she replied; and then, without a pause or any change of voice, 'I want you to take me away,' she added.

Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner and voice, exercise a double influence on the

hearer's mind. Dick was confounded; he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He

looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold, and recoiled from the thoughts which

'I want you to take me away,' she repeated with weary impatience. 'Take me away take me away from here.'

The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with concern whether she were altogether in

her right wits. To take her away, to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to do

all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not one of those toughhided and

smallhearted males who would marry their love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry her at all.

He desired that a woman should come to his arms with an attractive willingness, if not with ardour. And

Esther's bearing was more that of despair than that of love. It chilled him and taught him wisdom.

'Dearest,' he urged, 'tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can advise

you. But to go from here without a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than

madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak the truth; and I tell you again, the

'Let me go don't touch me what right have you to interfere? Who are you, to touch me?' she flashed out,

Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her firmly, almost roughly, by the arm, and held her while he

'You know well who I am, and what I am, and that I love you. You say I will not help you; but your heart

knows the contrary. It is you who will not help me; for you will not tell me what you want. You see or you

could see, if you took the pains to look how I have waited here all night to be ready at your service. I only

asked information; I only urged you to consider; and I still urge and beg you to think better of your fancies.

But if your mind is made up, so be it; I will beg no longer; I give you my orders; and I will not allow not

She looked at him for awhile with cold, unkind scrutiny like one who tries the temper of a tool.

'Good,' said Dick. 'Come with me to the stables; there we shall get the ponytrap and drive to the junction.

Tonight you shall be in London. I am yours so wholly that no words can make me more so; and, besides,

you know it, and the words are needless. May God help me to be good to you, Esther may God help me! for

So, without more speech, they set out together, and were already got some distance from the spot, ere he

observed that she was still carrying the handbag. She gave it up to him, passively, but when he offered her

his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone clearly and pleasantly; the wind was

fresh and brisk upon their faces, and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley

of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a perennial laughter. On the faraway hills,

sunburst and shadow raced along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air and water, each

seemed in better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in them than upon ordinary mornings; and

from east to west, from the lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every look and touch and scent, a

human creature could gather the most encouraging intelligence as to the durability and spirit of the universe.

Through all this walked Esther, picking her small steps like a bird, but silent and with a cloud under her thick

eyebrows. She seemed insensible, not only of nature, but of the presence of her companion. She was

altogether engrossed in herself, and looked neither to right nor to left, but straight before her on the road.

When they came to the bridge, however, she halted, leaned on the parapet, and stared for a moment at the

'I am going to drink,' she said; and descended the winding footpath to the margin.

There she drank greedily in her hands and washed her temples with water. The coolness seemed to break, for

an instant, the spell that lay upon her; for, instead of hastening forward again in her dull, indefatigable tramp,

she stood still where she was, for near a minute, looking straight before her. And Dick, from above on the

bridge where he stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal smile dawn slowly on her face and pass away

again at once and suddenly, leaving her as grave as ever; and the sense of distance, which it is so cruel for a

lover to endure, pressed with every moment more heavily on her companion. Her thoughts were all secret;

her heart was locked and bolted; and he stood without, vainly wooing her with his eves.

'Do you feel better?' asked Dick, as she at last rejoined him; and after the constraint of so long a silence, his

She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere she answered, and when she did, it was in the

Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted. His words died away on his tongue. Even his eyes, despairing of

encouragement, ceased to attend on hers. And they went on in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old

man followed them with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and love; and across the Ivy beck

where the mill was splashing and grumbling low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of the dell, and the

miller before the door was beating flour from his hands as he whistled a modulation; and up by the high

spinney, whence they saw the mountains upon either hand; and down the hill again to the back courts and

offices of Naseby House. Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick plodded obediently in her wake; but as

they neared the stables, he pushed on and took the lead. He would have preferred her to await him in the road

while he went on and brought the carriage back, but after so many repulses and rebuffs he lacked courage to

offer the suggestion. Perhaps, too, he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight. So they entered the yard in

The grooms eyebrows rose as he received the order for the ponyphaeton, and kept rising during all his

preparations. Esther stood bolt upright and looked steadily at some chickens in the corner of the yard. Master

Richard himself, thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for in truth, he carried the handbag like a

talisman, and either stood listless, or set off suddenly walking in one direction after another with brisk,

decisive footsteps. Moreover he had apparently neglected to wash his hands, and bore the air of one returning

from a prolonged nutting ramble. Upon the groom's countenance there began to grow up an expression as of

one about to whistle. And hardly had the carriage turned the corner and rattled into the high road with this

inexplicable pair, than the whistle broke forth prolonged, and low and tremulous; and the groom, already so

far relieved, vented the rest of his surprise in one simple English word, friendly to the mouth of Jacktar and

the sooty pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants' hall of Naseby House. Luncheon would

be on the table in little beyond an hour; and the Squire, on sitting down, would hardly fail to ask for Master

Richard. Hence, as the intelligent reader can foresee, this groom has a part to play in the imbroglio.

Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly. It seemed to him as if his love had gone from him,

indeed, yet gone but a little way; as if he needed but to find the right touch or intonation, and her heart would

recognise him and be melted. Yet he durst not open his mouth, and drove in silence till they had passed the

main parkgates and turned into the crosscut lane along the wall. Then it seemed to him as if it must be

'Can't you see you are killing me?' he cried. 'Speak to me, look at me, treat me like a human man.'

She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes that seemed kinder. He dropped the reins and caught

her hand, and she made no resistance, although her touch was unresponsive. But when, throwing one arm

round her waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover indeed, not because he wanted to do so, but as a

desperate man who puts his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from him, with a knot in her forehead,

backed and shied about fiercely with her head, and pushed him from her with her hand. Then there was no

room left for doubt, and Dick saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a distaste or nourished a grudge against

'Then you don't love me?' he said, drawing back from her, he also, as though her touch had burnt him; and

then, as she made no answer, he repeated with another intonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, 'You don't

'I don't know,' she replied. 'Why do you ask me? Oh, how should I know? It has all been lies together lies,

He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken a physical hurt, and that was the last word that either of

This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands, yet lying on the great up line to London. The nearest

town, Thymebury itself, was seven miles distant along the branch they call the Vale of Thyme Railway. It

was now nearly half an hour past noon, the down train had just gone by, and there would be no more traffic at

the junction until halfpast three, when the local train comes in to meet the up express at a quarter before

four. The stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which was half a mile away in a hollow of the

moor; a porter, who was just leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and promised to return it before night to

Naseby House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained to play propriety for Dick and Esther.

Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the station and seated herself upon a bench. The

endless, empty moorlands stretched before her, entirely unenclosed, and with no boundary but the horizon.

Two lines of rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the

silence was unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the waste.

With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air

Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform. Then, in two steps, he was by her side and

'Esther,' he said, 'have pity on me. What have I done? Can you not forgive me? Esther, you loved me once

'How can I tell you? How am I to know?' she answered. 'You are all a lie to me all a lie from first to last.

You were laughing at my folly, playing with me like a child, at the very time when you declared you loved

me. Which was true? was any of it true? or was it all, all a mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And you

say I loved you; I loved my father's friend. I never loved, I never heard of, you, until that man came home and

I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my father, be what you were before, and you may talk of love

'Is that your last word, Esther?' said he, very white, and biting his lip to keep it still.

'Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer,' he said. 'Had you still loved me, right or

wrong, I should have taken you away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is I must speak

plainly what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to me, and a rank unkindness to your father.

'What do you mean?' she flashed. 'I leave him my house and all my money; it is more than he deserves. I

wonder you dare speak to me about that man. And besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me

'No,' he replied, 'it is an argument. No one can make you like him, but don't disgrace him in his own eyes. He

is old, Esther, old and broken down. Even I am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared for. Write

to your aunt; when I see her answer you can leave quietly and naturally, and I will take you to your aunt's

door. But in the meantime you must go home. You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must do as I

tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your good, and your good only, so God help me.'

'You counted rightly then,' he retorted. 'I will not, to please you for a moment, make both of us unhappy for

our lives; and since I cannot marry you, we have only been too long away, and must go home at once.'

'There is no perhaps about the matter,' interrupted Dick. 'I must go and bring the phaeton.' And with that he

strode from the station, all in a glow of passion and virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks

flushed during these last words, relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She remained without motion

during his absence, and when he returned suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton, and driven off on

the return journey like an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she was now, her condition of the

morning seemed positively natural. She sat white and cold and silent, and there was no speculation in her

eyes. Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and once tried to whistle, but his courage was going down;

huge clouds of despair gathered together in his soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided by a

piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his love he had lost his love for good.

The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and the air sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began

to fail entirely. It seemed as if this miserable drive would never be done, as if poor Dick would never be able

to go away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all his desire was to escape from her presence and

the reproach of her averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought he had lost his love for good.

They were already not far from the cottage, when his heart again faltered and he appealed to her once more,

'I do not understand what you mean,' she replied, and I believe with perfect truth.

'Then,' said he, wounded to the quick, 'your aunt might come and fetch you herself. Of course you can

This was the only exchange of words between them till about four o'clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane,

'opened out' the cottage between the leafy banks. Thin smoke went straight up from the chimney; the flowers

in the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by

the sound of hoofs. For right before the gate a livery servant rode slowly up and down, leading a saddle horse.

The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his keeping; yet Dick thought he

touched his hat to him with something of a grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the

garden with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her, heard from within the cottage

his father's voice upraised in an anathema, and the shriller tones of the Admiral responding in the key of war.

SQUIRE NASEBY, on sitting down to lunch, had inquired for Dick, whom he had not seen since the day

before at dinner; and the servant answering awkwardly that Master Richard had come back but had gone out

again with the pony phaeton, his suspicions became aroused, and he crossquestioned the man until the

whole was out. It appeared from this report that Dick had been going about for nearly a month with a girl in

the Vale a Miss Van Tromp; that she lived near Lord Trevanion's upper wood; that recently Miss Van

Tromp's papa had returned home from foreign parts after a prolonged absence; that this papa was an old

gentleman, very chatty and free with his money in the publichouse whereupon Mr. Naseby's face became

encrimsoned; that the papa, furthermore, was said to be an admiral whereupon Mr. Naseby spat out a

whistle brief and fierce as an oath; that Master Dick seemed very friendly with the papa 'God help him!'

said Mr. Naseby; that last night Master Dick had not come in, and today he had driven away in the phaeton

'Yes, sir,' said the man, who had been unwilling enough to gossip from the first, and was now cowed by the

Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, struggling to keep down his emotion, and he mastered it so far as to

mount into the sarcastic vein, when he was in the nearest danger of melting into the sorrowful.

'And was this this Van Dunk with them?' he asked, dwelling scornfully upon the name.

The servant believed not, and being eager to shift the responsibility of speech to other shoulders, suggested

that perhaps the master had better inquire further from George the stableman in person.

'Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come with me. He can take the gray gelding; for we may ride fast. And

then you can take away this trash,' added Mr. Naseby, pointing to the luncheon; and he arose, lordly in his

There Dick's old nurse shrunk up to him, for the news went like wildfire over Naseby House, and timidly

'I'll pull him through,' the Squire said grimly, as though he meant to pull him through a threshingmill; 'I'll

save him from this gang; God help him with the next! He has a taste for low company, and no natural

affections to steady him. His father was no society for him; he must go fuddling with a Dutchman, Nance,

and now he's caught. Let us pray he'll take the lesson,' he added more gravely, 'but youth is here to make

Nance whimpered and recalled several episodes of Dick's childhood, which moved Mr. Naseby to blow his

nose and shake her hard by the hand; and then, the horse arriving opportunely, to get himself without delay

He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, where, as was to be expected, he could glean no tidings of the

runaways. They had not been seen at the George; they had not been seen at the station. The shadow darkened

on Mr. Naseby's face; the junction did not occur to him; his last hope was for Van Tromp's cottage; thither he

bade George guide him, and thither he followed, nursing grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart.

'What! on my own land!' he cried. 'How's this? I let this place to somebody M'Whirter or M'Glashan.'

'Ay dummies,' said the Squire. 'I shall whistle for my rent too. Here, take my horse.'

The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was sitting by the window with a long glass. He already knew the Squire by

sight, and now, seeing him dismount before the cottage and come striding through the garden, concluded

'This is why the girl is not yet home,' he thought: 'a very suitable delicacy on young Naseby's part.'

And he composed himself with some pomp, answered the loud rattle of the ridingwhip upon the door with a

dulcet invitation to enter, and coming forward with a bow and a smile, 'Mr. Naseby, I believe,' said he.

The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man from top to toe in one rapid and scornful glance, and

'You are Mr. Van Tromp?' he returned roughly, and without taking any notice of the proffered hand.

'No sir,' said the Squire, pointblank, 'I will not be seated. I am told that you are an admiral,' he added.

'No sir, I am not an admiral,' returned Van Tromp, who now began to grow nettled and enter into the spirit of

'You sail under false colours from beginning to end,' he said. 'Your very house was taken under a sham

'It is not my house. I am my daughter's guest,' replied the Admiral. 'If it WERE my house '

'Look here,' said Mr. Naseby, 'this intimidation is a waste of time; it is thrown away on me, sir; it will not

succeed with me. I will not permit you even to gain time by your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you understand

'I am entirely at a loss to account for your intrusion,' bows and waves Van Tromp.

'I will try to tell you then. I come here as a father' down came the ridingwhip upon the table 'I have right

and justice upon my side. I understand your calculations, but you calculated without me. I am a man of the

world, and I see through you and your manoeuvres. I am dealing now with a conspiracy I stigmatise it as

such, and I will expose it and crush it. And now I order you to tell me how far things have gone, and whither

'My God, sir!' Van Tromp broke out, 'I have had about enough of this. Your son? God knows where he is for

me! What the devil have I to do with your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you

where she was, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer madness. Name your business

'How often am I to tell you?' cried the Squire. 'Where did your daughter take my son today in that cursed

'Luggage, I said luggage!' shouted Naseby. 'You may spare me this dissimulation. Where's my son. You are

'But, sir, if this be true,' out came Van Tromp in a new key, 'it is I who have an explanation to demand?'

'Precisely. There is the conspiracy,' retorted Naseby. 'Oh!' he added, 'I am a man of the world. I can see

'You speak a great deal about being a father, Mr. Naseby,' said he; 'I believe you forget that the appellation is

common to both of us. I am at a loss to figure to myself, however dimly, how any man I have not said any

gentleman could so brazenly insult another as you have been insulting me since you entered this house. For

the first time I appreciate your base insinuations, and I despise them and you. You were, I am told, a

manufacturer; I am an artist; I have seen better days; I have moved in societies where you would not be

received, and dined where you would be glad to pay a pound to see me dining. The socalled aristocracy of

wealth, sir, I despise. I refuse to help you; I refuse to be helped by you. There lies the door.'

It was then that Dick entered. He had been waiting in the porch for some time back, and Esther had been

listlessly standing by his side. He had put out his hand to bar her entrance, and she had submitted without

surprise; and though she seemed to listen, she scarcely appeared to comprehend. Dick, on his part, was as

white as a sheet; his eyes burned and his lips trembled with anger as he thrust the door suddenly open,

introduced Esther with ceremonious gallantry, and stood forward and knocked his hat firmer on his head like

'Dick!' cried his father, suddenly breaking forth, 'it is not too late, is it? I have come here in time to save you.

'Keep your hands off me,' cried Dick, not meaning unkindness, but because his nerves were shattered by so

'No, no,' said the old man, 'don't repulse your father, Dick, when he has come here to save you. Don't repulse

me, my boy. Perhaps I have not been kind to you, not quite considerate, too harsh; my boy, it was not for

want of love. Think of old times. I was kind to you then, was I not? When you were a child, and your mother

was with us.' Mr. Naseby was interrupted by a sort of sob. Dick stood looking at him in a maze. 'Come away,'

pursued the father in a whisper; 'you need not be afraid of any consequences. I am a man of the world, Dick;

and she can have no claim on you no claim, I tell you; and we'll be handsome too, Dick we'll give them a

'You had better take care, sir, how you insult that lady,' said the son, as black as night.

'I do not care,' said the son, strengthening himself against his own heart; 'I I have said it, and it is the truth.'

'Dick,' said the old man at last, in a voice that was shaken as by a gale of wind, 'I am going. I leave you with

your friends, sir with your friends. I came to serve you, and now I go away a broken man. For years I have

seen this coming, and now it has come. You never loved me. Now you have been the death of me. You may

With that he was gone; and the three who remained together heard his horse's hoofs descend the lane. Esther

had not made a sign throughout the interview, and still kept silence now that it was over; but the Admiral,

who had once or twice moved forward and drawn back again, now advanced for good.

'You are a man of spirit, sir,' said he to Dick; 'but though I am no friend to parental interference, I will say

that you were heavy on the governor.' Then he added with a chuckle: 'You began, Richard, with a silver

spoon, and here you are in the water like the rest. Work, work, nothing like work. You have parts, you have

manners; why, with application you may die a millionaire!' Dick shook himself. He took Esther by the hand,

'Yes,' she answered. There was no tone in her voice, and she did not return his gaze.

'I have had hard measure,' he continued. 'In time I believe I could have shown you I was worthy, and there

was no time long enough to show how much I loved you. But it was not to be. I have lost all.'

He relinquished her hand, still looking at her, and she turned to leave the room.

'Why, what in fortune's name is the meaning of all this?' cried Van Tromp. 'Esther come back!'

'Let her go,' said Dick, and he watched her disappear with strangely mingled feelings. For he had fallen into

that stage when men have the vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards anything

decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of

'I feared as much,' said he, 'when I sounded her. Poor Dick, poor Dick. And yet I believe I am as much cut up

'You forget,' returned Dick, with something like a sneer, 'that I am now a pauper.'

Dick looked at him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that this shiftless, thriftless, worthless,

sponging parasite was yet, after and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet so it was.

'Go?' cried Van Tromp. 'Where? Not one foot, Mr. Richard Naseby. Here you shall stay in the meantime! and

well, and do something practical advertise for a situation as private secretary and when you have it, go

and welcome. But in the meantime, sir, no false pride; we must stay with our friends; we must sponge a while

'Dick, my boy,' replied the Admiral, winking, 'you mark me, I am not the worst.'

'Then why,' began Dick, and then paused. 'But Esther,' he began again, once more to interrupt himself. 'The

fact is, Admiral,' he came out with it roundly now, 'your daughter wished to run away from you today, and I

'In the pony carriage?' asked the Admiral, with the silliness of extreme surprise.

'I know that I was a sheet in the wind's eye, sir, once once only, since I reached this place,' retorted the

Admiral. 'And even then I was fit for any drawingroom. I should like you to tell me how many fathers, lay

and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and cod's eyes and are dull, upon the back of it

not even mirth for the money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I say is, let her run.'

'Confound her fancies!' cried Van Tromp. 'I used her kindly; she had her own way; I was her father. Besides I

had taken quite a liking to the girl, and meant to stay with her for good. But I tell you what it is, Dick, since

she has trifled with you Oh, yes, she did though! and since her old papa's not good enough for her the

'I never was unkind to a living soul,' replied the Admiral. 'Firm I can be, but not unkind.'

The Admiral swore by all his gods he should not go. 'Dick,' he said, 'You are a selfish dog; you forget your

It was useless to remind him that the house was not his to dispose of, that being a class of considerations to

which his intelligence was closed; so Dick tore himself off by force, and, shouting a goodbye, made off

IT was perhaps a week later, as old Mr. Naseby sat brooding in his study, that there was shown in upon him,

'I have to ask pardon for this intrusion, Mr. Naseby,' he said; 'but I come here to perform a duty. My card has

been sent in, but perhaps you may not know, what it does not tell you, that I am the editor of the

'I have only a word to say one piece of information to communicate. Some months ago, we had you will

pardon my referring to it, it is absolutely necessary but we had an unfortunate difference as to facts.'

'No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On the morning in question, your son, Mr. Richard Naseby '

Then the Editor described Dick's warning visit; and how he had seen in the lad's eye that there was a

thrashing in the wind, and had escaped through pity only so the Editor put it 'through pity only sir. And

oh, sir,' he went on, 'if you had seen him speaking up for you, I am sure you would have been proud of your

Next day the report went abroad that Mr. Richard was reconciled to his father and had been taken home to

Naseby House. He was still ailing, it was said, and the Squire nursed him like the proverbial woman.

Rumour, in this instance, did no more than justice to the truth; and over the sickbed many confidences were

exchanged, and clouds that had been growing for years passed away in a few hours, and as fond mankind

loves to hope, for ever. Many long talks had been fruitless in external action, though fruitful for the

understanding of the pair; but at last, one showery Tuesday, the Squire might have been observed upon his

The old gentleman had arranged his features with a view to selfcommand, rather than external cheerfulness;

and he entered the cottage on his visit of conciliation with the bearing of a clergyman come to announce a

The Admiral and his daughter were both within, and both looked upon their visitor with more surprise than

There came a little sound in Esther's throat, and she put her hand suddenly to her heart.

'You have, sir; and the acknowledgment suffices,' replied the Admiral. 'I am prepared, sir, to be easy with

you, since I hear you have made it up with my friend Dick. But let me remind you that you owe some

'I shall have the temerity to ask for more than her forgiveness,' said the Squire. 'Miss Van Tromp,' he

continued, 'once I was in great distress, and knew nothing of you or your character; but I believe you will

pardon a few rough words to an old man who asks forgiveness from his heart. I have heard much of you since

then; for you have a fervent advocate in my house. I believe you will understand that I speak of my son. He

is, I regret to say, very far from well; he does not pick up as the doctors had expected; he has a great deal

upon his mind, and, to tell you the truth, my girl, if you won't help us, I am afraid I shall lose him. Come

now, forgive him! I was angry with him once myself, and I found I was in the wrong. This is only a

misunderstanding, like the other, believe me; and with one kind movement, you may give happiness to him,

Esther made a movement towards the door, but long before she reached it she had broken forth sobbing.

'It is all right,' said the Admiral; 'I understand the sex. Let me make you my compliments, Mr. Naseby.'

'I had not ventured to propose it,' replied the Squire. 'LES CONVENANCES, I believe '

'JE M'EN FICHE,' cried the Admiral, snapping his fingers. 'She shall go and see my friend Dick. Run and get

'She has not has not run away again?' inquired Mr. Naseby, as soon as she was gone.

'No,' said Van Tromp, 'not again. She is a devilish odd girl though, mind you that.'

And this is why there is a new household and a brandnew baby in Naseby Dower House; and why the great

Van Tromp lives in pleasant style upon the shores of England; and why twentysix individual copies of the