I said to him, there, where she's gone to--I am-' the tears filled
her shut eyes, and came softly overflowing down her cheeks; 'and yet
it were true, what I said, I cannot forgive him; he's just spoilt my
life, and I'm not one-and-twenty yet, and he knowed how wretched,
how very wretched, I were. A word fra' him would ha' mended it a';
and Charley had bid him speak the word, and give me his faithful
love, and Philip saw my heart ache day after day, and niver let on
as him I was mourning for was alive, and had sent me word as he'd
keep true to me, as I were to do to him.'

'A wish a'd been theere; a'd ha' felled him to t' ground,' said
Kester, clenching his stiff, hard hand with indignation.

Sylvia was silent again: pale and weary she sate, her eyes still
shut.

Then she said,

'Yet he were so good to mother; and mother loved him so. Oh,
Kester!' lifting herself up, opening her great wistful eyes, 'it's
well for folks as can die; they're spared a deal o' misery.'

'Ay!' said he. 'But there's folk as one 'ud like to keep fra'
shirkin' their misery. Think yo' now as Philip is livin'?'

Sylvia shivered all over, and hesitated before she replied.

'I dunnot know. I said such things; he deserved 'em all----'

'Well, well, lass!' said Kester, sorry that he had asked the
question which was producing so much emotion of one kind or another.
'Neither thee nor me can tell; we can neither help nor hinder,
seein' as he's ta'en hissel' off out on our sight, we'd best not
think on him. A'll try an' tell thee some news, if a can think on it
wi' my mind so full. Thou knows Haytersbank folk ha' flitted, and t'
oud place is empty?'

'Yes!' said Sylvia, with the indifference of one wearied out with
feeling.

'A only telled yo' t' account like for me bein' at a loose end i'
Monkshaven. My sister, her as lived at Dale End an' is a widow, has
comed int' town to live; an' a'm lodging wi' her, an' jobbin' about.
A'm gettin' pretty well to do, an' a'm noane far t' seek, an' a'm
going now: only first a just wanted for t' say as a'm thy oldest
friend, a reckon, and if a can do a turn for thee, or go an errand,
like as a've done to-day, or if it's any comfort to talk a bit to
one who's known thy life from a babby, why yo've only t' send for
me, an' a'd come if it were twenty mile. A'm lodgin' at Peggy
Dawson's, t' lath and plaster cottage at t' right hand o' t' bridge,
a' among t' new houses, as they're thinkin' o' buildin' near t' sea:
no one can miss it.'

He stood up and shook hands with her. As he did so, he looked at her
sleeping baby.

'She's liker yo' than him. A think a'll say, God bless her.'

With the heavy sound of his out-going footsteps, baby awoke. She
ought before this time to have been asleep in her bed, and the
disturbance made her cry fretfully.

'Hush thee, darling, hush thee!' murmured her mother; 'there's no
one left to love me but thee, and I cannot stand thy weeping, my
pretty one. Hush thee, my babe, hush thee!'

She whispered soft in the little one's ear as she took her upstairs
to bed.

About three weeks after the miserable date of Bell Robson's death
and Philip's disappearance, Hester Rose received a letter from him.
She knew the writing on the address well; and it made her tremble so
much that it was many minutes before she dared to open it, and make
herself acquainted with the facts it might disclose.

But she need not have feared; there were no facts told, unless the
vague date of 'London' might be something to learn. Even that much
might have been found out by the post-mark, only she had been too
much taken by surprise to examine it.

It ran as follows:--

'DEAR HESTER,--

'Tell those whom it may concern, that I have left Monkshaven for
ever. No one need trouble themselves about me; I am provided for.
Please to make my humble apologies to my kind friends, the Messrs
Foster, and to my partner, William Coulson. Please to accept of my
love, and to join the same to your mother. Please to give my
particular and respectful duty and kind love to my aunt Isabella
Robson. Her daughter Sylvia knows what I have always felt, and shall
always feel, for her better than I can ever put into language, so I
send her no message; God bless and keep my child. You must all look
on me as one dead; as I am to you, and maybe shall soon be in
reality.

'Your affectionate and obedient friend to command,

'PHILIP HEPBURN.

'P.S.--Oh, Hester! for God's sake and mine, look
after ('my wife,' scratched out) Sylvia and my child. I think
Jeremiah Foster will help you to be a friend to them. This is the
last solemn request of P. H. She is but very young.'

Hester read this letter again and again, till her heart caught the
echo of its hopelessness, and sank within her. She put it in her
pocket, and reflected upon it all the day long as she served in the
shop.

The customers found her as gentle, but far more inattentive than
usual. She thought that in the evening she would go across the
bridge, and consult with the two good old brothers Foster. But
something occurred to put off the fulfilment of this plan.

That same morning Sylvia had preceded her, with no one to consult,
because consultation would have required previous confidence, and
confidence would have necessitated such a confession about Kinraid
as it was most difficult for Sylvia to make. The poor young wife yet
felt that some step must be taken by her; and what it was to be she
could not imagine.

She had no home to go to; for as Philip was gone away, she remained
where she was only on sufferance; she did not know what means of
livelihood she had; she was willing to work, nay, would be thankful
to take up her old life of country labour; but with her baby, what
could she do?

In this dilemma, the recollection of the old man's kindly speech and
offer of assistance, made, it is true, half in joke, at the end of
her wedding visit, came into her mind; and she resolved to go and
ask for some of the friendly counsel and assistance then offered.

It would be the first time of her going out since her mother's
funeral, and she dreaded the effort on that account. More even than
on that account did she shrink from going into the streets again.
She could not get over the impression that Kinraid must be lingering
near; and she distrusted herself so much that it was a positive
terror to think of meeting him again. She felt as though, if she but
caught a sight of him, the glitter of his uniform, or heard his
well-known voice in only a distant syllable of talk, her heart would
stop, and she should die from very fright of what would come next.
Or rather so she felt, and so she thought before she took her baby
in her arms, as Nancy gave it to her after putting on its
out-of-door attire.

With it in her arms she was protected, and the whole current of her
thoughts was changed. The infant was wailing and suffering with its
teething, and the mother's heart was so occupied in soothing and
consoling her moaning child, that the dangerous quay-side and the
bridge were passed almost before she was aware; nor did she notice
the eager curiosity and respectful attention of those she met who
recognized her even through the heavy veil which formed part of the
draping mourning provided for her by Hester and Coulson, in the
first unconscious days after her mother's death.

Though public opinion as yet reserved its verdict upon Philip's
disappearance--warned possibly by Kinraid's story against hasty
decisions and judgments in such times as those of war and general
disturbance--yet every one agreed that no more pitiful fate could
have befallen Philip's wife.

Marked out by her striking beauty as an object of admiring interest
even in those days when she sate in girlhood's smiling peace by her
mother at the Market Cross--her father had lost his life in a
popular cause, and ignominious as the manner of his death might be,
he was looked upon as a martyr to his zeal in avenging the wrongs of
his townsmen; Sylvia had married amongst them too, and her quiet
daily life was well known to them; and now her husband had been
carried off from her side just on the very day when she needed his
comfort most.

For the general opinion was that Philip had been 'carried off'--in
seaport towns such occurrences were not uncommon in those
days--either by land-crimps or water-crimps.

So Sylvia was treated with silent reverence, as one sorely
afflicted, by all the unheeded people she met in her faltering walk
to Jeremiah Foster's.

She had calculated her time so as to fall in with him at his dinner
hour, even though it obliged her to go to his own house rather than
to the bank where he and his brother spent all the business hours of
the day.

Sylvia was so nearly exhausted by the length of her walk and the
weight of her baby, that all she could do when the door was opened
was to totter into the nearest seat, sit down, and begin to cry.

In an instant kind hands were about her, loosening her heavy cloak,
offering to relieve her of her child, who clung to her all the more
firmly, and some one was pressing a glass of wine against her lips.

'No, sir, I cannot take it! wine allays gives me th' headache; if I
might have just a drink o' water. Thank you, ma'am' (to the
respectable-looking old servant), 'I'm well enough now; and perhaps,
sir, I might speak a word with yo', for it's that I've come for.'

'It's a pity, Sylvia Hepburn, as thee didst not come to me at the
bank, for it's been a long toil for thee all this way in the heat,
with thy child. But if there's aught I can do or say for thee, thou
hast but to name it, I am sure. Martha! wilt thou relieve her of her
child while she comes with me into the parlour?'

But the wilful little Bella stoutly refused to go to any one, and
Sylvia was not willing to part with her, tired though she was.

So the baby was carried into the parlour, and much of her after-life
depended on this trivial fact.

Once installed in the easy-chair, and face to face with Jeremiah,
Sylvia did not know how to begin.

Jeremiah saw this, and kindly gave her time to recover herself, by
pulling out his great gold watch, and letting the seal dangle before
the child's eyes, almost within reach of the child's eager little
fingers.

'She favours you a deal,' said he, at last. 'More than her father,'
he went on, purposely introducing Philip's name, so as to break the
ice; for he rightly conjectured she had come to speak to him about
something connected with her husband.

Still Sylvia said nothing; she was choking down tears and shyness,
and unwillingness to take as confidant a man of whom she knew so
little, on such slight ground (as she now felt it to be) as the
little kindly speech with which she had been dismissed from that
house the last time that she entered it.

'It's no use keeping yo', sir,' she broke out at last. 'It's about
Philip as I comed to speak. Do yo' know any thing whatsomever about
him? He niver had a chance o' saying anything, I know; but maybe
he's written?'

'Not a line, my poor young woman!' said Jeremiah, hastily putting an
end to that vain idea.

'Then he's either dead or gone away for iver,' she whispered. 'I mun
be both feyther and mother to my child.'

'Oh! thee must not give it up,' replied he. 'Many a one is carried
off to the wars, or to the tenders o' men-o'-war; and then they turn
out to be unfit for service, and are sent home. Philip 'll come back
before the year's out; thee'll see that.'

'No; he'll niver come back. And I'm not sure as I should iver wish
him t' come back, if I could but know what was gone wi' him. Yo'
see, sir, though I were sore set again' him, I shouldn't like harm
to happen him.'

'There is something behind all this that I do not understand. Can
thee tell me what it is?'

'I must, sir, if yo're to help me wi' your counsel; and I came up
here to ask for it.'

Another long pause, during which Jeremiah made a feint of playing
with the child, who danced and shouted with tantalized impatience at
not being able to obtain possession of the seal, and at length
stretched out her soft round little arms to go to the owner of the
coveted possession. Surprise at this action roused Sylvia, and she
made some comment upon it.

'I niver knew her t' go to any one afore. I hope she'll not be
troublesome to yo', sir?'

The old man, who had often longed for a child of his own in days
gone by, was highly pleased by this mark of baby's confidence, and
almost forgot, in trying to strengthen her regard by all the winning
wiles in his power, how her poor mother was still lingering over
some painful story which she could not bring herself to tell.

'I'm afeared of speaking wrong again' any one, sir. And mother were
so fond o' Philip; but he kept something from me as would ha' made
me a different woman, and some one else, happen, a different man. I
were troth-plighted wi' Kinraid the specksioneer, him as was cousin
to th' Corneys o' Moss Brow, and comed back lieutenant i' t' navy
last Tuesday three weeks, after ivery one had thought him dead and
gone these three years.'

She paused.

'Well?' said Jeremiah, with interest; although his attention
appeared to be divided between the mother's story and the eager
playfulness of the baby on his knee.

'Philip knew he were alive; he'd seen him taken by t' press-gang,
and Charley had sent a message to me by Philip.'

Her white face was reddening, her eyes flashing at this point of her
story.

'And he niver told me a word on it, not when he saw me like to break
my heart in thinking as Kinraid were dead; he kept it a' to hissel';
and watched me cry, and niver said a word to comfort me wi' t'
truth. It would ha' been a great comfort, sir, only t' have had his
message if I'd niver ha' been to see him again. But Philip niver let
on to any one, as I iver heared on, that he'd seen Charley that
morning as t' press-gang took him. Yo' know about feyther's death,
and how friendless mother and me was left? and so I married him; for
he were a good friend to us then, and I were dazed like wi' sorrow,
and could see naught else to do for mother. He were allays very
tender and good to her, for sure.'

Again a long pause of silent recollection, broken by one or two deep
sighs.

'If I go on, sir, now, I mun ask yo' to promise as yo'll niver tell.
I do so need some one to tell me what I ought to do, and I were led
here, like, else I would ha' died wi' it all within my teeth. Yo'll
promise, sir?'

Jeremiah Foster looked in her face, and seeing the wistful, eager
look, he was touched almost against his judgment into giving the
promise required; she went on.

'Upon a Tuesday morning, three weeks ago, I think, tho' for t'
matter o' time it might ha' been three years, Kinraid come home;
come back for t' claim me as his wife, and I were wed to Philip! I
met him i' t' road at first; and I couldn't tell him theere. He
followed me into t' house--Philip's house, sir, behind t' shop--and
somehow I told him all, how I were a wedded wife to another. Then he
up and said I'd a false heart--me false, sir, as had eaten my daily
bread in bitterness, and had wept t' nights through, all for sorrow
and mourning for his death! Then he said as Philip knowed all t'
time he were alive and coming back for me; and I couldn't believe
it, and I called Philip, and he come, and a' that Charley had said
were true; and yet I were Philip's wife! So I took a mighty oath,
and I said as I'd niver hold Philip to be my lawful husband again,
nor iver forgive him for t' evil he'd wrought us, but hold him as a
stranger and one as had done me a heavy wrong.'

She stopped speaking; her story seemed to her to end there. But her
listener said, after a pause,

'It were a cruel wrong, I grant thee that; but thy oath were a sin,
and thy words were evil, my poor lass. What happened next?'

'I don't justly remember,' she said, wearily. 'Kinraid went away,
and mother cried out; and I went to her. She were asleep, I thought,
so I lay down by her, to wish I were dead, and to think on what
would come on my child if I died; and Philip came in softly, and I
made as if I were asleep; and that's t' very last as I've iver seen
or heared of him.'

Jeremiah Foster groaned as she ended her story. Then he pulled
himself up, and said, in a cheerful tone of voice,

'He'll come back, Sylvia Hepburn. He'll think better of it: never
fear!'

'I fear his coming back!' said she. 'That's what I'm feared on; I
would wish as I knew on his well-doing i' some other place; but him
and me can niver live together again.'

'Nay,' pleaded Jeremiah. 'Thee art sorry what thee said; thee were
sore put about, or thee wouldn't have said it.'

He was trying to be a peace-maker, and to heal over conjugal
differences; but he did not go deep enough.

'I'm not sorry,' said she, slowly. 'I were too deeply wronged to be
"put about"; that would go off wi' a night's sleep. It's only the
thought of mother (she's dead and happy, and knows nought of all
this, I trust) that comes between me and hating Philip. I'm not
sorry for what I said.'

Jeremiah had never met with any one so frank and undisguised in
expressions of wrong feeling, and he scarcely knew what to say.

He looked extremely grieved, and not a little shocked. So pretty and
delicate a young creature to use such strong relentless language!

She seemed to read his thoughts, for she made answer to them.

'I dare say you think I'm very wicked, sir, not to be sorry. Perhaps
I am. I can't think o' that for remembering how I've suffered; and
he knew how miserable I was, and might ha' cleared my misery away
wi' a word; and he held his peace, and now it's too late! I'm sick
o' men and their cruel, deceitful ways. I wish I were dead.'

She was crying before she had ended this speech, and seeing her
tears, the child began to cry too, stretching out its little arms to
go back to its mother. The hard stony look on her face melted away
into the softest, tenderest love as she clasped the little one to
her, and tried to soothe its frightened sobs.

A bright thought came into the old man's mind.

He had been taking a complete dislike to her till her pretty way
with her baby showed him that she had a heart of flesh within her.

'Poor little one!' said he, 'thy mother had need love thee, for
she's deprived thee of thy father's love. Thou'rt half-way to being
an orphan; yet I cannot call thee one of the fatherless to whom God
will be a father. Thou'rt a desolate babe, thou may'st well cry;
thine earthly parents have forsaken thee, and I know not if the Lord
will take thee up.'

Sylvia looked up at him affrighted; holding her baby tighter to her,
she exclaimed.

'Don't speak so, sir! it's cursing, sir! I haven't forsaken her! Oh,
sir! those are awful sayings.'

'Thee hast sworn never to forgive thy husband, nor to live with him
again. Dost thee know that by the law of the land, he may claim his
child; and then thou wilt have to forsake it, or to be forsworn?
Poor little maiden!' continued he, once more luring the baby to him
with the temptation of the watch and chain.

Sylvia thought for a while before speaking. Then she said,

'I cannot tell what ways to take. Whiles I think my head is crazed.
It were a cruel turn he did me!'

'It was. I couldn't have thought him guilty of such baseness.'

This acquiescence, which was perfectly honest on Jeremiah's part,
almost took Sylvia by surprise. Why might she not hate one who had
been both cruel and base in his treatment of her? And yet she
recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to
Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed
Jeremiah to be. From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she
began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment
which she herself had been the first to pronounce.

'He were so tender to mother; she were dearly fond on him; he niver
spared aught he could do for her, else I would niver ha' married
him.'

'He was a good and kind-hearted lad from the time he was fifteen.
And I never found him out in any falsehood, no more did my brother.'

'But it were all the same as a lie,' said Sylvia, swiftly changing
her ground, 'to leave me to think as Charley were dead, when he
knowed all t' time he were alive.'

'It was. It was a self-seeking lie; putting thee to pain to get his
own ends. And the end of it has been that he is driven forth like
Cain.'

'I niver told him to go, sir.'

'But thy words sent him forth, Sylvia.'

'I cannot unsay them, sir; and I believe as I should say them
again.'

But she said this as one who rather hopes for a contradiction.

All Jeremiah replied, however, was, 'Poor wee child!' in a pitiful
tone, addressed to the baby.

Sylvia's eyes filled with tears.

'Oh, sir, I'll do anything as iver yo' can tell me for her. That's
what I came for t' ask yo'. I know I mun not stay theere, and Philip
gone away; and I dunnot know what to do: and I'll do aught, only I
must keep her wi' me. Whativer can I do, sir?'

Jeremiah thought it over for a minute or two. Then he replied,

'I must have time to think. I must talk it over with brother John.'

'But you've given me yo'r word, sir!' exclaimed she.

'I have given thee my word never to tell any one of what has passed
between thee and thy husband, but I must take counsel with my
brother as to what is to be done with thee and thy child, now that
thy husband has left the shop.'

This was said so gravely as almost to be a reproach, and he got up,
as a sign that the interview was ended.

He gave the baby back to its mother; but not without a solemn
blessing, so solemn that, to Sylvia's superstitious and excited
mind, it undid the terrors of what she had esteemed to be a curse.

'The Lord bless thee and keep thee! The Lord make His face to shine
upon thee!'

All the way down the hill-side, Sylvia kept kissing the child, and
whispering to its unconscious ears,--

'I'll love thee for both, my treasure, I will. I'll hap thee round
wi' my love, so as thou shall niver need a feyther's.'

CHAPTER XXXVII

BEREAVEMENT

Hester had been prevented by her mother's indisposition from taking
Philip's letter to the Fosters, to hold a consultation with them
over its contents.

Alice Rose was slowly failing, and the long days which she had to
spend alone told much upon her spirits, and consequently upon her
health.

All this came out in the conversation which ensued after reading
Hepburn's letter in the little parlour at the bank on the day after
Sylvia had had her confidential interview with Jeremiah Foster.

He was a true man of honour, and never so much as alluded to her
visit to him; but what she had then told him influenced him very
much in the formation of the project which he proposed to his
brother and Hester.

He recommended her remaining where she was, living still in the
house behind the shop; for he thought within himself that she might
have exaggerated the effect of her words upon Philip; that, after
all, it might have been some cause totally disconnected with them,
which had blotted out her husband's place among the men of
Monkshaven; and that it would be so much easier for both to resume
their natural relations, both towards each other and towards the
world, if Sylvia remained where her husband had left her--in an
expectant attitude, so to speak.

Jeremiah Foster questioned Hester straitly about her letter: whether
she had made known its contents to any one. No, not to any one.
Neither to her mother nor to William Coulson? No, to neither.

She looked at him as she replied to his inquiries, and he looked at
her, each wondering if the other could be in the least aware that a
conjugal quarrel might be at the root of the dilemma in which they
were placed by Hepburn's disappearance.

But neither Hester, who had witnessed the misunderstanding between
the husband and wife on the evening, before the morning on which
Philip went away, nor Jeremiah Foster, who had learnt from Sylvia
the true reason of her husband's disappearance, gave the slightest
reason to the other to think that they each supposed they had a clue
to the reason of Hepburn's sudden departure.

What Jeremiah Foster, after a night's consideration, had to propose
was this; that Hester and her mother should come and occupy the
house in the market-place, conjointly with Sylvia and her child.
Hester's interest in the shop was by this time acknowledged.
Jeremiah had made over to her so much of his share in the business,
that she had a right to be considered as a kind of partner; and she
had long been the superintendent of that department of goods which
were exclusively devoted to women. So her daily presence was
requisite for more reasons than one.

Yet her mother's health and spirits were such as to render it
unadvisable that the old woman should be too much left alone; and
Sylvia's devotion to her own mother seemed to point her out as the
very person who could be a gentle and tender companion to Alice Rose
during those hours when her own daughter would necessarily be
engaged in the shop.

Many desirable objects seemed to be gained by this removal of Alice:
an occupation was provided for Sylvia, which would detain her in the
place where her husband had left her, and where (Jeremiah Foster
fairly expected in spite of his letter) he was likely to come back
to find her; and Alice Rose, the early love of one of the brothers,
the old friend of the other, would be well cared for, and under her
daughter's immediate supervision during the whole of the time that
she was occupied in the shop.

Philip's share of the business, augmented by the money which he had
put in from the legacy of his old Cumberland uncle, would bring in
profits enough to support Sylvia and her child in ease and comfort
until that time, which they all anticipated, when he should return
from his mysterious wandering--mysterious, whether his going forth
had been voluntary or involuntary.

Thus far was settled; and Jeremiah Foster went to tell Sylvia of the
plan.

She was too much a child, too entirely unaccustomed to any
independence of action, to do anything but leave herself in his
hands. Her very confession, made to him the day before, when she
sought his counsel, seemed to place her at his disposal. Otherwise,
she had had notions of the possibility of a free country life once
more--how provided for and arranged she hardly knew; but Haytersbank
was to let, and Kester disengaged, and it had just seemed possible
that she might have to return to her early home, and to her old
life. She knew that it would take much money to stock the farm
again, and that her hands were tied from much useful activity by the
love and care she owed to her baby. But still, somehow, she hoped
and she fancied, till Jeremiah Foster's measured words and
carefully-arranged plan made her silently relinquish her green,
breezy vision.

Hester, too, had her own private rebellion--hushed into submission
by her gentle piety. If Sylvia had been able to make Philip happy,
Hester could have felt lovingly and almost gratefully towards her;
but Sylvia had failed in this.

Philip had been made unhappy, and was driven forth a wanderer into
the wide world--never to come back! And his last words to Hester,
the postscript of his letter, containing the very pith of it, was to
ask her to take charge and care of the wife whose want of love
towards him had uprooted him from the place where he was valued and
honoured.

It cost Hester many a struggle and many a self-reproach before she
could make herself feel what she saw all along--that in everything
Philip treated her like a sister. But even a sister might well be
indignant if she saw her brother's love disregarded and slighted,
and his life embittered by the thoughtless conduct of a wife! Still
Hester fought against herself, and for Philip's sake she sought to
see the good in Sylvia, and she strove to love her as well as to
take care of her.

With the baby, of course, the case was different. Without thought or
struggle, or reason, every one loved the little girl. Coulson and
his buxom wife, who were childless, were never weary of making much
of her. Hester's happiest hours were spent with that little child.
Jeremiah Foster almost looked upon her as his own from the day when
she honoured him by yielding to the temptation of the chain and
seal, and coming to his knee; not a customer to the shop but knew
the smiling child's sad history, and many a country-woman would save
a rosy-cheeked apple from out her store that autumn to bring it on
next market-day for 'Philip Hepburn's baby, as had lost its father,
bless it.'

Even stern Alice Rose was graciously inclined towards the little
Bella; and though her idea of the number of the elect was growing
narrower and narrower every day, she would have been loth to exclude
the innocent little child, that stroked her wrinkled cheeks so
softly every night in return for her blessing, from the few that
should be saved. Nay, for the child's sake, she relented towards the
mother; and strove to have Sylvia rescued from the many castaways
with fervent prayer, or, as she phrased it, 'wrestling with the
Lord'.

Alice had a sort of instinct that the little child, so tenderly
loved by, so fondly loving, the mother whose ewe-lamb she was, could
not be even in heaven without yearning for the creature she had
loved best on earth; and the old woman believed that this was the
principal reason for her prayers for Sylvia; but unconsciously to
herself, Alice Rose was touched by the filial attentions she
constantly received from the young mother, whom she believed to be
foredoomed to condemnation.

Sylvia rarely went to church or chapel, nor did she read her Bible;
for though she spoke little of her ignorance, and would fain, for
her child's sake, have remedied it now it was too late, she had lost
what little fluency of reading she had ever had, and could only make
out her words with much spelling and difficulty. So the taking her
Bible in hand would have been a mere form; though of this Alice Rose
knew nothing.

No one knew much of what was passing in Sylvia; she did not know
herself. Sometimes in the nights she would waken, crying, with a
terrible sense of desolation; every one who loved her, or whom she
had loved, had vanished out of her life; every one but her child,
who lay in her arms, warm and soft.

But then Jeremiah Foster's words came upon her; words that she had
taken for cursing at the time; and she would so gladly have had some
clue by which to penetrate the darkness of the unknown region from
whence both blessing and cursing came, and to know if she had indeed
done something which should cause her sin to be visited on that
soft, sweet, innocent darling.

If any one would teach her to read! If any one would explain to her
the hard words she heard in church or chapel, so that she might find
out the meaning of sin and godliness!--words that had only passed
over the surface of her mind till now! For her child's sake she
should like to do the will of God, if she only knew what that was,
and how to be worked out in her daily life.

But there was no one she dared confess her ignorance to and ask
information from. Jeremiah Foster had spoken as if her child, sweet
little merry Bella, with a loving word and a kiss for every one, was
to suffer heavily for the just and true words her wronged and
indignant mother had spoken. Alice always spoke as if there were no
hope for her; and blamed her, nevertheless, for not using the means
of grace that it was not in her power to avail herself of.

And Hester, that Sylvia would fain have loved for her uniform
gentleness and patience with all around her, seemed so cold in her
unruffled and undemonstrative behaviour; and moreover, Sylvia felt
that Hester blamed her perpetual silence regarding Philip's absence
without knowing how bitter a cause Sylvia had for casting him off.

The only person who seemed to have pity upon her was Kester; and his
pity was shown in looks rather than words; for when he came to see
her, which he did from time to time, by a kind of mutual tacit
consent, they spoke but little of former days.

He was still lodging with his sister, widow Dobson, working at odd
jobs, some of which took him into the country for weeks at a time.
But on his returns to Monkshaven he was sure to come and see her and
the little Bella; indeed, when his employment was in the immediate
neighbourhood of the town, he never allowed a week to pass away
without a visit.

There was not much conversation between him and Sylvia at such
times. They skimmed over the surface of the small events in which
both took an interest; only now and then a sudden glance, a checked
speech, told each that there were deeps not forgotten, although they
were never mentioned.

Twice Sylvia--below her breath--had asked Kester, just as she was
holding the door open for his departure, if anything had ever been
heard of Kinraid since his one night's visit to Monkshaven: each
time (and there was an interval of some months between the
inquiries) the answer had been simply, no.

To no one else would Sylvia ever have named his name. But indeed she
had not the chance, had she wished it ever so much, of asking any
questions about him from any one likely to know. The Corneys had
left Moss Brow at Martinmas, and gone many miles away towards
Horncastle. Bessy Corney, it is true was married and left behind in
the neighbourhood; but with her Sylvia had never been intimate; and
what girlish friendship there might have been between them had
cooled very much at the time of Kinraid's supposed death three years
before.

One day before Christmas in this year, 1798, Sylvia was called into
the shop by Coulson, who, with his assistant, was busy undoing the
bales of winter goods supplied to them from the West Riding, and
other places. He was looking at a fine Irish poplin dress-piece when
Sylvia answered to his call.

'Here! do you know this again?' asked he, in the cheerful tone of
one sure of giving pleasure.

'No! have I iver seen it afore?'

'Not this, but one for all t' world like it.'

She did not rouse up to much interest, but looked at it as if trying
to recollect where she could have seen its like.

'My missus had one on at th' party at John Foster's last March, and
yo' admired it a deal. And Philip, he thought o' nothing but how he
could get yo' just such another, and he set a vast o' folk agait for
to meet wi' its marrow; and what he did just the very day afore he
went away so mysterious was to write through Dawson Brothers, o'
Wakefield, to Dublin, and order that one should be woven for yo'.
Jemima had to cut a bit off hers for to give him t' exact colour.'

Sylvia did not say anything but that it was very pretty, in a low
voice, and then she quickly left the shop, much to Coulson's
displeasure.

All the afternoon she was unusually quiet and depressed.

Alice Rose, sitting helpless in her chair, watched her with keen
eyes.

At length, after one of Sylvia's deep, unconscious sighs, the old
woman spoke:

'It's religion as must comfort thee, child, as it's done many a one
afore thee.'

'How?' said Sylvia, looking up, startled to find herself an object
of notice.

'How?' (The answer was not quite so ready as the precept had been.)
'Read thy Bible, and thou wilt learn.'

'But I cannot read,' said Sylvia, too desperate any longer to
conceal her ignorance.

'Not read! and thee Philip's wife as was such a great scholar! Of a
surety the ways o' this life are crooked! There was our Hester, as
can read as well as any minister, and Philip passes over her to go
and choose a young lass as cannot read her Bible.'

'Was Philip and Hester----'

Sylvia paused, for though a new curiosity had dawned upon her, she
did not know how to word her question.

'Many a time and oft have I seen Hester take comfort in her Bible
when Philip was following after thee. She knew where to go for
consolation.'

'I'd fain read,' said Sylvia, humbly, 'if anybody would learn me;
for perhaps it might do me good; I'm noane so happy.'

Her eyes, as she looked up at Alice's stern countenance, were full
of tears.

The old woman saw it, and was touched, although she did not
immediately show her sympathy. But she took her own time, and made
no reply.

The next day, however, she bade Sylvia come to her, and then and
there, as if her pupil had been a little child, she began to teach
Sylvia to read the first chapter of Genesis; for all other reading
but the Scriptures was as vanity to her, and she would not
condescend to the weakness of other books. Sylvia was now, as ever,
slow at book-learning; but she was meek and desirous to be taught,
and her willingness in this respect pleased Alice, and drew her
singularly towards one who, from being a pupil, might become a
convert.

All this time Sylvia never lost the curiosity that had been excited
by the few words Alice had let drop about Hester and Philip, and by
degrees she approached the subject again, and had the idea then
started confirmed by Alice, who had no scruple in using the past
experience of her own, of her daughter's, or of any one's life, as
an instrument to prove the vanity of setting the heart on anything
earthly.

This knowledge, unsuspected before, sank deep into Sylvia's
thoughts, and gave her a strange interest in Hester--poor Hester,
whose life she had so crossed and blighted, even by the very
blighting of her own. She gave Hester her own former passionate
feelings for Kinraid, and wondered how she herself should have felt
towards any one who had come between her and him, and wiled his love
away. When she remembered Hester's unfailing sweetness and kindness
towards herself from the very first, she could better bear the
comparative coldness of her present behaviour.

She tried, indeed, hard to win back the favour she had lost; but the
very means she took were blunders, and only made it seem to her as
if she could never again do right in Hester's eyes.

For instance, she begged her to accept and wear the pretty poplin
gown which had been Philip's especial choice; feeling within herself
as if she should never wish to put it on, and as if the best thing
she could do with it was to offer it to Hester. But Hester rejected
the proffered gift with as much hardness of manner as she was
capable of assuming; and Sylvia had to carry it upstairs and lay it
by for the little daughter, who, Hester said, might perhaps learn to
value things that her father had given especial thought to.

Yet Sylvia went on trying to win Hester to like her once more; it
was one of her great labours, and learning to read from Hester's
mother was another.

Alice, indeed, in her solemn way, was becoming quite fond of Sylvia;
if she could not read or write, she had a deftness and gentleness of
motion, a capacity for the household matters which fell into her
department, that had a great effect on the old woman, and for her
dear mother's sake Sylvia had a stock of patient love ready in her
heart for all the aged and infirm that fell in her way. She never
thought of seeking them out, as she knew that Hester did; but then
she looked up to Hester as some one very remarkable for her
goodness. If only she could have liked her!

Hester tried to do all she could for Sylvia; Philip had told her to
take care of his wife and child; but she had the conviction that
Sylvia had so materially failed in her duties as to have made her
husband an exile from his home--a penniless wanderer, wifeless and
childless, in some strange country, whose very aspect was
friendless, while the cause of all lived on in the comfortable home
where he had placed her, wanting for nothing--an object of interest
and regard to many friends--with a lovely little child to give her
joy for the present, and hope for the future; while he, the poor
outcast, might even lie dead by the wayside. How could Hester love
Sylvia?

Yet they were frequent companions that ensuing spring. Hester was
not well; and the doctors said that the constant occupation in the
shop was too much for her, and that she must, for a time at least,
take daily walks into the country.

Sylvia used to beg to accompany her; she and the little girl often
went with Hester up the valley of the river to some of the nestling
farms that were hidden in the more sheltered nooks--for Hester was
bidden to drink milk warm from the cow; and to go into the familiar
haunts about a farm was one of the few things in which Sylvia seemed
to take much pleasure. She would let little Bella toddle about while
Hester sate and rested: and she herself would beg to milk the cow
destined to give the invalid her draught.

One May evening the three had been out on some such expedition; the
country side still looked gray and bare, though the leaves were
showing on the willow and blackthorn and sloe, and by the tinkling
runnels, making hidden music along the copse side, the pale delicate
primrose buds were showing amid their fresh, green, crinkled leaves.
The larks had been singing all the afternoon, but were now dropping
down into their nests in the pasture fields; the air had just the
sharpness in it which goes along with a cloudless evening sky at
that time of the year.

But Hester walked homewards slowly and languidly, speaking no word.
Sylvia noticed this at first without venturing to speak, for Hester
was one who disliked having her ailments noticed. But after a while
Hester stood still in a sort of weary dreamy abstraction; and Sylvia
said to her,

'I'm afeared yo're sadly tired. Maybe we've been too far.'

Hester almost started.

'No!' said she, 'it's only my headache which is worse to-night. It
has been bad all day; but since I came out it has felt just as if
there were great guns booming, till I could almost pray 'em to be
quiet. I am so weary o' th' sound.'

She stepped out quickly towards home after she had said this, as if
she wished for neither pity nor comment on what she had said.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE RECOGNITION

Far away, over sea and land, over sunny sea again, great guns were
booming on that 7th of May, 1799.

The Mediterranean came up with a long roar on a beach glittering
white with snowy sand, and the fragments of innumerable sea-shells,
delicate and shining as porcelain. Looking at that shore from the
sea, a long ridge of upland ground, beginning from an inland depth,
stretched far away into the ocean on the right, till it ended in a
great mountainous bluff, crowned with the white buildings of a
convent sloping rapidly down into the blue water at its base.

In the clear eastern air, the different characters of the foliage
that clothed the sides of that sea-washed mountain might be
discerned from a long distance by the naked eye; the silver gray of
the olive-trees near its summit; the heavy green and bossy forms of
the sycamores lower down; broken here and there by a solitary
terebinth or ilex tree, of a deeper green and a wider spread; till
the eye fell below on the maritime plain, edged with the white
seaboard and the sandy hillocks; with here and there feathery
palm-trees, either isolated or in groups--motionless and distinct
against the hot purple air.

Look again; a little to the left on the sea-shore there are the
white walls of a fortified town, glittering in sunlight, or black in
shadow.

The fortifications themselves run out into the sea, forming a port
and a haven against the wild Levantine storms; and a lighthouse
rises out of the waves to guide mariners into safety.

Beyond this walled city, and far away to the left still, there is
the same wide plain shut in by the distant rising ground, till the
upland circuit comes closing in to the north, and the great white
rocks meet the deep tideless ocean with its intensity of blue
colour.

Above, the sky is literally purple with heat; and the pitiless light
smites the gazer's weary eye as it comes back from the white shore.
Nor does the plain country in that land offer the refuge and rest of
our own soft green. The limestone rock underlies the vegetation, and
gives a glittering, ashen hue to all the bare patches, and even to
the cultivated parts which are burnt up early in the year. In
spring-time alone does the country look rich and fruitful; then the
corn-fields of the plain show their capability of bearing, 'some
fifty, some an hundred fold'; down by the brook Kishon, flowing not
far from the base of the mountainous promontory to the south, there
grow the broad green fig-trees, cool and fresh to look upon; the
orchards are full of glossy-leaved cherry-trees; the tall amaryllis
puts forth crimson and yellow glories in the fields, rivalling the
pomp of King Solomon; the daisies and the hyacinths spread their
myriad flowers; the anemones, scarlet as blood, run hither and
thither over the ground like dazzling flames of fire.

A spicy odour lingers in the heated air; it comes from the multitude
of aromatic flowers that blossom in the early spring. Later on they
will have withered and faded, and the corn will have been gathered,
and the deep green of the eastern foliage will have assumed a kind
of gray-bleached tint.

Even now in May, the hot sparkle of the everlasting sea, the
terribly clear outline of all objects, whether near or distant, the
fierce sun right overhead, the dazzling air around, were
inexpressibly wearying to the English eyes that kept their skilled
watch, day and night, on the strongly-fortified coast-town that lay
out a little to the northward of where the British ships were
anchored.

They had kept up a flanking fire for many days in aid of those
besieged in St Jean d'Acre; and at intervals had listened,
impatient, to the sound of the heavy siege guns, or the sharper
rattle of the French musketry.

In the morning, on the 7th of May, a man at the masthead of the
_Tigre_ sang out that he saw ships in the offing; and in reply to
the signal that was hastily run up, he saw the distant vessels hoist
friendly flags. That May morning was a busy time. The besieged Turks
took heart of grace; the French outside, under the command of their
great general, made hasty preparations for a more vigorous assault
than all many, both vigorous and bloody, that had gone before (for
the siege was now at its fifty-first day), in hopes of carrying the
town by storm before the reinforcement coming by sea could arrive;
and Sir Sidney Smith, aware of Buonaparte's desperate intention,
ordered all the men, both sailors and marines, that could be spared
from the necessity of keeping up a continual flanking fire from the
ships upon the French, to land, and assist the Turks and the British
forces already there in the defence of the old historic city.

Lieutenant Kinraid, who had shared his captain's daring adventure
off the coast of France three years before, who had been a prisoner
with him and Westley Wright, in the Temple at Paris, and had escaped
with them, and, through Sir Sidney's earnest recommendation, been
promoted from being a warrant officer to the rank of lieutenant,
received on this day the honour from his admiral of being appointed
to an especial post of danger. His heart was like a war-horse, and
said, Ha, ha! as the boat bounded over the waves that were to land
him under the ancient machicolated walls where the Crusaders made
their last stand in the Holy Land. Not that Kinraid knew or cared
one jot about those gallant knights of old: all he knew was, that
the French, under Boney, were trying to take the town from the
Turks, and that his admiral said they must not, and so they should
not.

He and his men landed on that sandy shore, and entered the town by
the water-port gate; he was singing to himself his own country
song,--

  Weel may the keel row, the keel row, &C.

and his men, with sailors' aptitude for music, caught up the air,
and joined in the burden with inarticulate sounds.

So, with merry hearts, they threaded the narrow streets of Acre,
hemmed in on either side by the white walls of Turkish houses, with
small grated openings high up, above all chance of peeping
intrusion.

Here and there they met an ample-robed and turbaned Turk going along
with as much haste as his stately self-possession would allow. But
the majority of the male inhabitants were gathered together to
defend the breach, where the French guns thundered out far above the
heads of the sailors.

They went along none the less merrily for the sound to Djezzar
Pacha's garden, where the old Turk sate on his carpet, beneath the
shade of a great terebinth tree, listening to the interpreter, who
made known to him the meaning of the eager speeches of Sir Sidney
Smith and the colonel of the marines.

As soon as the admiral saw the gallant sailors of H.M.S. _Tigre_, he
interrupted the council of war without much ceremony, and going to
Kinraid, he despatched them, as before arranged, to the North
Ravelin, showing them the way with rapid, clear directions.

Out of respect to him, they had kept silent while in the strange,
desolate garden; but once more in the streets, the old Newcastle
song rose up again till the men were, perforce, silenced by the
haste with which they went to the post of danger.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. For many a day these very men
had been swearing at the terrific heat at this hour--even when at
sea, fanned by the soft breeze; but now, in the midst of hot smoke,
with former carnage tainting the air, and with the rush and whizz of
death perpetually whistling in their ears, they were uncomplaining
and light-hearted. Many an old joke, and some new ones, came brave
and hearty, on their cheerful voices, even though the speaker was
veiled from sight in great clouds of smoke, cloven only by the
bright flames of death.

A sudden message came; as many of the crew of the _Tigre_ as were
under Lieutenant Kinraid's command were to go down to the Mole, to
assist the new reinforcements (seen by the sailor from the masthead
at day-dawn), under command of Hassan Bey, to land at the Mole,
where Sir Sidney then was.

Off they went, almost as bright and thoughtless as before, though
two of their number lay silent for ever at the North
Ravelin--silenced in that one little half-hour. And one went along
with the rest, swearing lustily at his ill-luck in having his right
arm broken, but ready to do good business with his left.

They helped the Turkish troops to land more with good-will than
tenderness; and then, led by Sir Sidney, they went under the shelter
of English guns to the fatal breach, so often assailed, so gallantly
defended, but never so fiercely contested as on this burning
afternoon. The ruins of the massive wall that here had been broken
down by the French, were used by them as stepping stones to get on a
level with the besieged, and so to escape the heavy stones which the
latter hurled down; nay, even the dead bodies of the morning's
comrades were made into ghastly stairs.

When Djezzar Pacha heard that the British sailors were defending the
breach, headed by Sir Sidney Smith, he left his station in the
palace garden, gathered up his robes in haste, and hurried to the
breach; where, with his own hands, and with right hearty good-will,
he pulled the sailors down from the post of danger, saying that if
he lost his English friends he lost all!

But little recked the crew of the _Tigre_ of the one old man--Pacha
or otherwise--who tried to hold them back from the fight; they were
up and at the French assailants clambering over the breach in an
instant; and so they went on, as if it were some game at play
instead of a deadly combat, until Kinraid and his men were called
off by Sir Sidney, as the reinforcement of Turkish troops under
Hassan Bey were now sufficient for the defence of that old breach in
the walls, which was no longer the principal object of the French
attack; for the besiegers had made a new and more formidable breach
by their incessant fire, knocking down whole streets of the city
walls.

'Fight your best Kinraid!' said Sir Sidney; 'for there's Boney on
yonder hill looking at you.'

And sure enough, on a rising ground, called Richard Coeur de Lion's
Mount, there was a half-circle of French generals, on horseback, all
deferentially attending to the motions, and apparently to the words,
of a little man in their centre; at whose bidding the aide-de-camp
galloped swift with messages to the more distant French camp.

The two ravelins which Kinraid and his men had to occupy, for the
purpose of sending a flanking fire upon the enemy, were not ten
yards from that enemy's van.

But at length there was a sudden rush of the French to that part of
the wall where they imagined they could enter unopposed.

Surprised at this movement, Kinraid ventured out of the shelter of
the ravelin to ascertain the cause; he, safe and untouched during
that long afternoon of carnage, fell now, under a stray musket-shot,
and lay helpless and exposed upon the ground undiscerned by his men,
who were recalled to help in the hot reception which had been
planned for the French; who, descending the city walls into the
Pacha's garden, were attacked with sabre and dagger, and lay
headless corpses under the flowering rose-bushes, and by the
fountain side.

Kinraid lay beyond the ravelins, many yards outside the city walls.

He was utterly helpless, for the shot had broken his leg. Dead
bodies of Frenchmen lay strewn around him; no Englishman had
ventured out so far.

All the wounded men that he could see were French; and many of
these, furious with pain, gnashed their teeth at him, and cursed him
aloud, till he thought that his best course was to assume the
semblance of death; for some among these men were still capable of
dragging themselves up to him, and by concentrating all their
failing energies into one blow, put him to a speedy end.

The outlying pickets of the French army were within easy rifle shot;
and his uniform, although less conspicuous in colour than that of
the marines, by whose sides he had been fighting, would make him a
sure mark if he so much as moved his arm. Yet how he longed to turn,
if ever so slightly, so that the cruel slanting sun might not beat
full into his aching eyes. Fever, too, was coming upon him; the pain
in his leg was every moment growing more severe; the terrible thirst
of the wounded, added to the heat and fatigue of the day, made his
lips and tongue feel baked and dry, and his whole throat seemed
parched and wooden. Thoughts of other days, of cool Greenland seas,
where ice abounded, of grassy English homes, began to make the past
more real than the present.

With a great effort he brought his wandering senses back; he knew
where he was now, and could weigh the chances of his life, which
were but small; the unwonted tears came to his eyes as he thought of
the newly-made wife in her English home, who might never know how he
died thinking of her.

Suddenly he saw a party of English marines advance, under shelter of
the ravelin, to pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls
for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could
hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay
within range of the French picket's fire.

For one moment he could not resist raising his head, to give himself
a chance for life; before the unclean creatures that infest a camp
came round in the darkness of the night to strip and insult the dead
bodies, and to put to death such as had yet the breath of life
within them. But the setting sun came full into his face, and he saw
nothing of what he longed to see.

He fell back in despair; he lay there to die.

That strong clear sunbeam had wrought his salvation.

He had been recognized as men are recognized when they stand in the
red glare of a house on fire; the same despair of help, of hopeless
farewell to life, stamped on their faces in blood-red light.

One man left his fellows, and came running forwards, forwards in
among the enemy's wounded, within range of their guns; he bent down
over Kinraid; he seemed to understand without a word; he lifted him
up, carrying him like a child; and with the vehement energy that is
more from the force of will than the strength of body, he bore him
back to within the shelter of the ravelin--not without many shots
being aimed at them, one of which hit Kinraid in the fleshy part of
his arm.

Kinraid was racked with agony from his dangling broken leg, and his
very life seemed leaving him; yet he remembered afterwards how the
marine recalled his fellows, and how, in the pause before they
returned, his face became like one formerly known to the sick senses
of Kinraid; yet it was too like a dream, too utterly improbable to
be real.

Yet the few words this man said, as he stood breathless and alone by
the fainting Kinraid, fitted in well with the belief conjured up by
his personal appearance. He panted out,--

'I niver thought you'd ha' kept true to her!'

And then the others came up; and while they were making a sling of
their belts, Kinraid fainted utterly away, and the next time that he
was fully conscious, he was lying in his berth in the _Tigre_, with
the ship surgeon setting his leg. After that he was too feverish for
several days to collect his senses. When he could first remember,
and form a judgment upon his recollections, he called the man
especially charged to attend upon him, and bade him go and make
inquiry in every possible manner for a marine named Philip Hepburn,
and, when he was found, to entreat him to come and see Kinraid.

The sailor was away the greater part of the day, and returned
unsuccessful in his search; he had been from ship to ship, hither
and thither; he had questioned all the marines he had met with, no
one knew anything of any Philip Hepburn.

Kinraid passed a miserably feverish night, and when the doctor
exclaimed the next morning at his retrogression, he told him, with
some irritation, of the ill-success of his servant; he accused the
man of stupidity, and wished fervently that he were able to go
himself.

Partly to soothe him, the doctor promised that he would undertake
the search for Hepburn, and he engaged faithfully to follow all
Kinraid's eager directions; not to be satisfied with men's careless
words, but to look over muster-rolls and ships' books.

He, too, brought the same answer, however unwillingly given.

He had set out upon the search so confident of success, that he felt
doubly discomfited by failure. However, he had persuaded himself
that the lieutenant had been partially delirious from the effects of
his wound, and the power of the sun shining down just where he lay.
There had, indeed, been slight symptoms of Kinraid's having received
a sun-stroke; and the doctor dwelt largely on these in his endeavour
to persuade his patient that it was his imagination which had endued
a stranger with the lineaments of some former friend.

Kinraid threw his arms out of bed with impatience at all this
plausible talk, which was even more irritating than the fact that
Hepburn was still undiscovered.

'The man was no friend of mine; I was like to have killed him when
last I saw him. He was a shopkeeper in a country town in England. I
had seen little enough of him; but enough to make me able to swear
to him anywhere, even in a marine's uniform, and in this sweltering
country.'

'Faces once seen, especially in excitement, are apt to return upon
the memory in cases of fever,' quoth the doctor, sententiously.

The attendant sailor, reinstalled to some complacency by the failure
of another in the search in which he himself had been unsuccessful,
now put in his explanation.

'Maybe it was a spirit. It's not th' first time as I've heared of a
spirit coming upon earth to save a man's life i' time o' need. My
father had an uncle, a west-country grazier. He was a-coming over
Dartmoor in Devonshire one moonlight night with a power o' money as
he'd got for his sheep at t' fair. It were stowed i' leather bags
under th' seat o' th' gig. It were a rough kind o' road, both as a
road and in character, for there'd been many robberies there of
late, and th' great rocks stood convenient for hiding-places. All at
once father's uncle feels as if some one were sitting beside him on
th' empty seat; and he turns his head and looks, and there he sees
his brother sitting--his brother as had been dead twelve year and
more. So he turns his head back again, eyes right, and never say a
word, but wonders what it all means. All of a sudden two fellows
come out upo' th' white road from some black shadow, and they
looked, and they let th' gig go past, father's uncle driving hard,
I'll warrant him. But for all that he heard one say to t' other,
"By----, there's _two_ on 'em!" Straight on he drove faster than
ever, till he saw th' far lights of some town or other. I forget its
name, though I've heared it many a time; and then he drew a long
breath, and turned his head to look at his brother, and ask him how
he'd managed to come out of his grave i' Barum churchyard, and th'
seat was as empty as it had been when he set out; and then he knew
that it were a spirit come to help him against th' men who thought
to rob him, and would likely enough ha' murdered him.'

Kinraid had kept quiet through this story. But when the sailor began
to draw the moral, and to say, 'And I think I may make bold to say,
sir, as th' marine who carried you out o' th' Frenchy's gun-shot was
just a spirit come to help you,' he exclaimed impatiently, swearing
a great oath as he did so, 'It was no spirit, I tell you; and I was
in my full senses. It was a man named Philip Hepburn. He said words
to me, or over me, as none but himself would have said. Yet we hated
each other like poison; and I can't make out why he should be there
and putting himself in danger to save me. But so it was; and as you
can't find him, let me hear no more of your nonsense. It was him,
and not my fancy, doctor. It was flesh and blood, and not a spirit,
Jack. So get along with you, and leave me quiet.'

All this time Stephen Freeman lay friendless, sick, and shattered,
on board the _Thesus_.

He had been about his duty close to some shells that were placed on
her deck; a gay young midshipman was thoughtlessly striving to get
the fusee out of one of these by a mallet and spike-nail that lay
close at hand; and a fearful explosion ensued, in which the poor
marine, cleaning his bayonet near, was shockingly burnt and
disfigured, the very skin of all the lower part of his face being
utterly destroyed by gunpowder. They said it was a mercy that his
eyes were spared; but he could hardly feel anything to be a mercy,
as he lay tossing in agony, burnt by the explosion, wounded by
splinters, and feeling that he was disabled for life, if life itself
were preserved. Of all that suffered by that fearful accident (and
they were many) none was so forsaken, so hopeless, so desolate, as
the Philip Hepburn about whom such anxious inquiries were being made
at that very time.

CHAPTER XXXIX

CONFIDENCES

It was a little later on in that same summer that Mrs. Brunton came
to visit her sister Bessy.

Bessy was married to a tolerably well-to-do farmer who lived at an
almost equal distance between Monkshaven and Hartswell; but from old
habit and convenience the latter was regarded as the Dawsons'
market-town; so Bessy seldom or never saw her old friends in
Monkshaven.

But Mrs. Brunton was far too flourishing a person not to speak out
her wishes, and have her own way. She had no notion, she said, of
coming such a long journey only to see Bessy and her husband, and
not to have a sight of her former acquaintances at Monkshaven. She
might have added, that her new bonnet and cloak would be as good as
lost if it was not displayed among those who, knowing her as Molly
Corney, and being less fortunate in matrimony than she was, would
look upon it with wondering admiration, if not with envy.

So one day farmer Dawson's market-cart deposited Mrs. Brunton in all
her bravery at the shop in the market-place, over which Hepburn and
Coulson's names still flourished in joint partnership.

After a few words of brisk recognition to Coulson and Hester, Mrs
Brunton passed on into the parlour and greeted Sylvia with
boisterous heartiness.

It was now four years and more since the friends had met; and each
secretly wondered how they had ever come to be friends. Sylvia had a
country, raw, spiritless look to Mrs. Brunton's eye; Molly was loud
and talkative, and altogether distasteful to Sylvia, trained in
daily companionship with Hester to appreciate soft slow speech, and
grave thoughtful ways.

However, they kept up the forms of their old friendship, though
their hearts had drifted far apart. They sat hand in hand while each
looked at the other with eyes inquisitive as to the changes which
time had made. Molly was the first to speak.

'Well, to be sure! how thin and pale yo've grown, Sylvia! Matrimony
hasn't agreed wi' yo' as well as it's done wi me. Brunton is allays
saying (yo' know what a man he is for his joke) that if he'd ha'
known how many yards o' silk I should ha' ta'en for a gown, he'd ha'
thought twice afore he'd ha' married me. Why, I've gained a matter
o' thirty pound o' flesh sin' I were married!'

'Yo' do look brave and hearty!' said Sylvia, putting her sense of
her companion's capacious size and high colour into the prettiest
words she could.

'Eh! Sylvia! but I know what it is,' said Molly, shaking her head.
'It's just because o' that husband o' thine as has gone and left
thee; thou's pining after him, and he's not worth it. Brunton said,
when he heared on it--I mind he was smoking at t' time, and he took
his pipe out of his mouth, and shook out t' ashes as grave as any
judge--"The man," says he, "as can desert a wife like Sylvia Robson
as was, deserves hanging!" That's what he says! Eh! Sylvia, but
speakin' o' hanging I was so grieved for yo' when I heared of yo'r
poor feyther! Such an end for a decent man to come to! Many a one
come an' called on me o' purpose to hear all I could tell 'em about
him!'

'Please don't speak on it!' said Sylvia, trembling all over.

'Well, poor creature, I wunnot. It is hard on thee, I grant. But to
give t' devil his due, it were good i' Hepburn to marry thee, and so
soon after there was a' that talk about thy feyther. Many a man
would ha' drawn back, choose howiver far they'd gone. I'm noane so
sure about Charley Kinraid. Eh, Sylvia! only think on his being
alive after all. I doubt if our Bessy would ha' wed Frank Dawson if
she'd known as he wasn't drowned. But it's as well she did, for
Dawson's a man o' property, and has getten twelve cows in his
cow-house, beside three right down good horses; and Kinraid were
allays a fellow wi' two strings to his bow. I've allays said and do
maintain, that he went on pretty strong wi' yo', Sylvie; and I will
say I think he cared more for yo' than for our Bessy, though it were
only yesterday at e'en she were standing out that he liked her
better than yo'. Yo'll ha' heared on his grand marriage?'

'No!' said Sylvia, with eager painful curiosity.

'No! It was in all t' papers! I wonder as yo' didn't see it. Wait a
minute! I cut it out o' t' _Gentleman's Magazine_, as Brunton bought
o' purpose, and put it i' my pocket-book when I were a-coming here:
I know I've got it somewheere.'

She took out her smart crimson pocket-book, and rummaged in the
pocket until she produced a little crumpled bit of printed paper,
from which she read aloud,

'On January the third, at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, Charles
Kinraid, Esq., lieutenant Royal Navy, to Miss Clarinda Jackson, with
a fortune of 10,000_l_.'

'Theere!' said she, triumphantly, 'it's something as Brunton says,
to be cousin to that.'

'Would yo' let me see it?' said Sylvia, timidly.

Mrs. Brunton graciously consented; and Sylvia brought her newly
acquired reading-knowledge, hitherto principally exercised on the
Old Testament, to bear on these words.

There was nothing wonderful in them, nothing that she might not have
expected; and yet the surprise turned her giddy for a moment or two.
She never thought of seeing him again, never. But to think of his
caring for another woman as much as he had done for her, nay,
perhaps more!

The idea was irresistibly forced upon her that Philip would not have
acted so; it would have taken long years before he could have been
induced to put another on the throne she had once occupied. For the
first time in her life she seemed to recognize the real nature of
Philip's love.

But she said nothing but 'Thank yo',' when she gave the scrap of
paper back to Molly Brunton. And the latter continued giving her
information about Kinraid's marriage.

'He were down in t' west, Plymouth or somewheere, when he met wi'
her. She's no feyther; he'd been in t' sugar-baking business; but
from what Kinraid wrote to old Turner, th' uncle as brought him up
at Cullercoats, she's had t' best of edications: can play on t'
instrument and dance t' shawl dance; and Kinraid had all her money
settled on her, though she said she'd rayther give it all to him,
which I must say, being his cousin, was very pretty on her. He's
left her now, having to go off in t' _Tigre_, as is his ship, to t'
Mediterranean seas; and she's written to offer to come and see old
Turner, and make friends with his relations, and Brunton is going to
gi'e me a crimson satin as soon as we know for certain when she's
coming, for we're sure to be asked out to Cullercoats.'

'I wonder if she's very pretty?' asked Sylvia, faintly, in the first
pause in this torrent of talk.

'Oh! she's a perfect beauty, as I understand. There was a traveller
as come to our shop as had been at York, and knew some of her
cousins theere that were in t' grocery line--her mother was a York
lady--and they said she was just a picture of a woman, and iver so
many gentlemen had been wantin' to marry her, but she just waited
for Charley Kinraid, yo' see!'

'Well, I hope they'll be happy; I'm sure I do!' said Sylvia.

'That's just luck. Some folks is happy i' marriage, and some isn't.
It's just luck, and there's no forecasting it. Men is such
unaccountable animals, there's no prophesyin' upon 'em. Who'd ha'
thought of yo'r husband, him as was so slow and sure--steady Philip,
as we lasses used to ca' him--makin' a moonlight flittin', and
leavin' yo' to be a widow bewitched?'

'He didn't go at night,' said Sylvia, taking the words 'moonlight
flitting' in their literal sense.

'No! Well, I only said "moonlight flittin'" just because it come
uppermost and I knowed no better. Tell me all about it, Sylvie, for
I can't mak' it out from what Bessy says. Had he and yo' had
words?--but in course yo' had.'

At this moment Hester came into the room; and Sylvia joyfully
availed herself of the pretext for breaking off the conversation
that had reached this painful and awkward point. She detained Hester
in the room for fear lest Mrs. Brunton should repeat her inquiry as
to how it all happened that Philip had gone away; but the presence
of a third person seemed as though it would be but little restraint
upon the inquisitive Molly, who repeatedly bore down upon the same
questions till she nearly drove Sylvia distracted, between her
astonishment at the news of Kinraid's marriage; her wish to be alone
and quiet, so as to realize the full meaning of that piece of
intelligence; her desire to retain Hester in the conversation; her
efforts to prevent Molly's recurrence to the circumstances of
Philip's disappearance, and the longing--more vehement every
minute--for her visitor to go away and leave her in peace. She
became so disturbed with all these thoughts and feelings that she
hardly knew what she was saying, and assented or dissented to
speeches without there being either any reason or truth in her
words.

Mrs. Brunton had arranged to remain with Sylvia while the horse
rested, and had no compunction about the length of her visit. She
expected to be asked to tea, as Sylvia found out at last, and this
she felt would be the worst of all, as Alice Rose was not one to
tolerate the coarse, careless talk of such a woman as Mrs. Brunton
without uplifting her voice in many a testimony against it. Sylvia
sate holding Hester's gown tight in order to prevent her leaving the
room, and trying to arrange her little plans so that too much
discordance should not arise to the surface. Just then the door
opened, and little Bella came in from the kitchen in all the pretty,
sturdy dignity of two years old, Alice following her with careful
steps, and protecting, outstretched arms, a slow smile softening the
sternness of her grave face; for the child was the unconscious
darling of the household, and all eyes softened into love as they
looked on her. She made straight for her mother with something
grasped in her little dimpled fist; but half-way across the room she
seemed to have become suddenly aware of the presence of a stranger,
and she stopped short, fixing her serious eyes full on Mrs. Brunton,
as if to take in her appearance, nay, as if to penetrate down into
her very real self, and then, stretching out her disengaged hand,
the baby spoke out the words that had been hovering about her
mother's lips for an hour past.

'Do away!' said Bella, decisively.

'What a perfect love!' said Mrs. Brunton, half in real admiration,
half in patronage. As she spoke, she got up and went towards the
child, as if to take her up.

'Do away! do away!' cried Bella, in shrill affright at this
movement.

'Dunnot,' said Sylvia; 'she's shy; she doesn't know strangers.'

But Mrs. Brunton had grasped the struggling, kicking child by this
time, and her reward for this was a vehement little slap in the
face.

'Yo' naughty little spoilt thing!' said she, setting Bella down in a
hurry. 'Yo' deserve a good whipping, yo' do, and if yo' were mine
yo' should have it.'

Sylvia had no need to stand up for the baby who had run to her arms,
and was soothing herself with sobbing on her mother's breast; for
Alice took up the defence.

'The child said, as plain as words could say, "go away," and if thou
wouldst follow thine own will instead of heeding her wish, thou mun
put up with the wilfulness of the old Adam, of which it seems to me
thee hast getten thy share at thirty as well as little Bella at
two.'

'Thirty!' said Mrs. Brunton, now fairly affronted. 'Thirty! why,
Sylvia, yo' know I'm but two years older than yo'; speak to that
woman an' tell her as I'm only four-and-twenty. Thirty, indeed!'

'Molly's but four-and-twenty,' said Sylvia, in a pacificatory tone.

'Whether she be twenty, or thirty, or forty, is alike to me,' said
Alice. 'I meant no harm. I meant but for t' say as her angry words
to the child bespoke her to be one of the foolish. I know not who
she is, nor what her age may be.'

'She's an old friend of mine,' said Sylvia. 'She's Mrs. Brunton now,
but when I knowed her she was Molly Corney.'

'Ay! and yo' were Sylvia Robson, and as bonny and light-hearted a
lass as any in a' t' Riding, though now yo're a poor widow
bewitched, left wi' a child as I mustn't speak a word about, an'
living wi' folk as talk about t' old Adam as if he wasn't dead and
done wi' long ago! It's a change, Sylvia, as makes my heart ache for
yo', to think on them old days when yo' were so thought on yo' might
have had any man, as Brunton often says; it were a great mistake as
yo' iver took up wi' yon man as has run away. But seven year '11
soon be past fro' t' time he went off, and yo'll only be
six-and-twenty then; and there'll be a chance of a better husband
for yo' after all, so keep up yo'r heart, Sylvia.'

Molly Brunton had put as much venom as she knew how into this
speech, meaning it as a vengeful payment for the supposition of her
being thirty, even more than for the reproof for her angry words
about the child. She thought that Alice Rose must be either mother
or aunt to Philip, from the serious cast of countenance that was
remarkable in both; and she rather exulted in the allusion to a
happier second marriage for Sylvia, with which she had concluded her
speech. It roused Alice, however, as effectually as if she had been
really a blood relation to Philip; but for a different reason. She
was not slow to detect the intentional offensiveness to herself in
what had been said; she was indignant at Sylvia for suffering the
words spoken to pass unanswered; but in truth they were too much in
keeping with Molly Brunton's character to make as much impression on
Sylvia as they did on a stranger; and besides, she felt as if the
less reply Molly received, the less likely would it be that she
would go on in the same strain. So she coaxed and chattered to her
child and behaved like a little coward in trying to draw out of the
conversation, while at the same time listening attentively.

'As for Sylvia Hepburn as was Sylvia Robson, she knows my mind,'
said Alice, in grim indignation. 'She's humbling herself now, I
trust and pray, but she was light-minded and full of vanity when
Philip married her, and it might ha' been a lift towards her
salvation in one way; but it pleased the Lord to work in a different
way, and she mun wear her sackcloth and ashes in patience. So I'll
say naught more about her. But for him as is absent, as thee hast
spoken on so lightly and reproachfully, I'd have thee to know he
were one of a different kind to any thee ever knew, I reckon. If he
were led away by a pretty face to slight one as was fitter for him,
and who had loved him as the apple of her eye, it's him as is
suffering for it, inasmuch as he's a wanderer from his home, and an
outcast from wife and child.'

To the surprise of all, Molly's words of reply were cut short even
when they were on her lips, by Sylvia. Pale, fire-eyed, and excited,
with Philip's child on one arm, and the other stretched out, she
said,--

'Noane can tell--noane know. No one shall speak a judgment 'twixt
Philip and me. He acted cruel and wrong by me. But I've said my
words to him hissel', and I'm noane going to make any plaint to
others; only them as knows should judge. And it's not fitting, it's
not' (almost sobbing), 'to go on wi' talk like this afore me.'

The two--for Hester, who was aware that her presence had only been
desired by Sylvia as a check to an unpleasant _tete-a-tete_
conversation, had slipped back to her business as soon as her mother
came in--the two looked with surprise at Sylvia; her words, her
whole manner, belonged to a phase of her character which seldom came
uppermost, and which had not been perceived by either of them
before.

Alice Rose, though astonished, rather approved of Sylvia's speech;
it showed that she had more serious thought and feeling on the
subject than the old woman had given her credit for; her general
silence respecting her husband's disappearance had led Alice to
think that she was too childish to have received any deep impression
from the event. Molly Brunton gave vent to her opinion on Sylvia's
speech in the following words:--

'Hoighty-toighty! That tells tales, lass. If yo' treated steady
Philip to many such looks an' speeches as yo'n given us now, it's
easy t' see why he took hisself off. Why, Sylvia, I niver saw it in
yo' when yo' was a girl; yo're grown into a regular little vixen,
theere wheere yo' stand!'

Indeed she did look defiant, with the swift colour flushing her
cheeks to crimson on its return, and the fire in her eyes not yet
died away. But at Molly's jesting words she sank back into her usual
look and manner, only saying quietly,--

'It's for noane to say whether I'm vixen or not, as doesn't know th'
past things as is buried in my heart. But I cannot hold them as my
friends as go on talking on either my husband or me before my very
face. What he was, I know; and what I am, I reckon he knows. And now
I'll go hurry tea, for yo'll be needing it, Molly!'

The last clause of this speech was meant to make peace; but Molly
was in twenty minds as to whether she should accept the olive-branch
or not. Her temper, however, was of that obtuse kind which is not
easily ruffled; her mind, stagnant in itself, enjoyed excitement
from without; and her appetite was invariably good, so she stayed,
in spite of the inevitable _tete-a-tete_ with Alice. The latter,
however, refused to be drawn into conversation again; replying to
Mrs. Brunton's speeches with a curt yes or no, when, indeed, she
replied at all.

When all were gathered at tea, Sylvia was quite calm again; rather
paler than usual, and very attentive and subduced in her behaviour
to Alice; she would evidently fain have been silent, but as Molly
was her own especial guest, that could not be, so all her endeavours
went towards steering the conversation away from any awkward points.
But each of the four, let alone little Bella, was thankful when the
market-cart drew up at the shop door, that was to take Mrs. Brunton
back to her sister's house.

When she was fairly off, Alice Rose opened her mouth in strong
condemnation; winding up with--

'And if aught in my words gave thee cause for offence, Sylvia, it
was because my heart rose within me at the kind of talk thee and she
had been having about Philip; and her evil and light-minded counsel
to thee about waiting seven years, and then wedding another.'

Hard as these words may seem when repeated, there was something of a
nearer approach to an apology in Mrs. Rose's manner than Sylvia had
ever seen in it before. She was silent for a few moments, then she
said,--

'I ha' often thought of telling yo' and Hester, special-like, when
yo've been so kind to my little Bella, that Philip an' me could
niver come together again; no, not if he came home this very
night----'

She would have gone on speaking, but Hester interrupted her with a
low cry of dismay.

Alice said,--

'Hush thee, Hester. It's no business o' thine. Sylvia Hepburn,
thou'rt speaking like a silly child.'

'No. I'm speaking like a woman; like a woman as finds out she's been
cheated by men as she trusted, and as has no help for it. I'm noane
going to say any more about it. It's me as has been wronged, and as
has to bear it: only I thought I'd tell yo' both this much, that yo'
might know somewhat why he went away, and how I said my last word
about it.'

So indeed it seemed. To all questions and remonstrances from Alice,
Sylvia turned a deaf ear. She averted her face from Hester's sad,
wistful looks; only when they were parting for the night, at the top
of the little staircase, she turned, and putting her arms round
Hester's neck she laid her head on her neck, and whispered,--

'Poor Hester--poor, poor Hester! if yo' an' he had but been married
together, what a deal o' sorrow would ha' been spared to us all!'

Hester pushed her away as she finished these words; looked
searchingly into her face, her eyes, and then followed Sylvia into
her room, where Bella lay sleeping, shut the door, and almost knelt
down at Sylvia's feet, clasping her, and hiding her face in the
folds of the other's gown.

'Sylvia, Sylvia,' she murmured, 'some one has told you--I thought no
one knew--it's no sin--it's done away with now--indeed it is--it was
long ago--before yo' were married; but I cannot forget. It was a
shame, perhaps, to have thought on it iver, when he niver thought o'
me; but I niver believed as any one could ha' found it out. I'm just
fit to sink into t' ground, what wi' my sorrow and my shame.'

Hester was stopped by her own rising sobs, immediately she was in
Sylvia's arms. Sylvia was sitting on the ground holding her, and
soothing her with caresses and broken words.

'I'm allays saying t' wrong things,' said she. 'It seems as if I
were all upset to-day; and indeed I am;' she added, alluding to the
news of Kinraid's marriage she had yet to think upon.

'But it wasn't yo', Hester: it were nothing yo' iver said, or did,
or looked, for that matter. It were yo'r mother as let it out.'

'Oh, mother! mother!' wailed out Hester; 'I niver thought as any one
but God would ha' known that I had iver for a day thought on his
being more to me than a brother.'

Sylvia made no reply, only went on stroking Hester's smooth brown
hair, off which her cap had fallen. Sylvia was thinking how strange
life was, and how love seemed to go all at cross purposes; and was
losing herself in bewilderment at the mystery of the world; she was
almost startled when Hester rose up, and taking Sylvia's hands in
both of hers, and looking solemnly at her, said,--

'Sylvia, yo' know what has been my trouble and my shame, and I'm
sure yo're sorry for me--for I will humble myself to yo', and own
that for many months before yo' were married, I felt my
disappointment like a heavy burden laid on me by day and by night;
but now I ask yo', if yo've any pity for me for what I went through,
or if yo've any love for me because of yo'r dead mother's love for
me, or because of any fellowship, or daily breadliness between us
two,--put the hard thoughts of Philip away from out yo'r heart; he
may ha' done yo' wrong, anyway yo' think that he has; I niver knew
him aught but kind and good; but if he comes back from wheriver in
th' wide world he's gone to (and there's not a night but I pray God
to keep him, and send him safe back), yo' put away the memory of
past injury, and forgive it all, and be, what yo' can be, Sylvia, if
you've a mind to, just the kind, good wife he ought to have.'

'I cannot; yo' know nothing about it, Hester.'

'Tell me, then,' pleaded Hester.

'No!' said Sylvia, after a moment's hesitation; 'I'd do a deal for
yo', I would, but I daren't forgive Philip, even if I could; I took
a great oath again' him. Ay, yo' may look shocked at me, but it's
him as yo' ought for to be shocked at if yo' knew all. I said I'd
niver forgive him; I shall keep to my word.'

'I think I'd better pray for his death, then,' said Hester,
hopelessly, and almost bitterly, loosing her hold of Sylvia's hands.

'If it weren't for baby theere, I could think as it were my death as
'ud be best. Them as one thinks t' most on, forgets one soonest.'

It was Kinraid to whom she was alluding; but Hester did not
understand her; and after standing for a moment in silence, she
kissed her, and left her for the night.

CHAPTER XL

AN UNEXPECTED MESSENGER

After this agitation, and these partial confidences, no more was
said on the subject of Philip for many weeks. They avoided even the
slightest allusion to him; and none of them knew how seldom or how
often he might be present in the minds of the others.

One day the little Bella was unusually fractious with some slight
childish indisposition, and Sylvia was obliged to have recourse to a
never-failing piece of amusement; namely, to take the child into the
shop, when the number of new, bright-coloured articles was sure to
beguile the little girl out of her fretfulness. She was walking
along the high terrace of the counter, kept steady by her mother's
hand, when Mr. Dawson's market-cart once more stopped before the
door. But it was not Mrs. Brunton who alighted now; it was a very
smartly-dressed, very pretty young lady, who put one dainty foot
before the other with care, as if descending from such a primitive
vehicle were a new occurrence in her life. Then she looked up at the
names above the shop-door, and after ascertaining that this was
indeed the place she desired to find, she came in blushing.

'Is Mrs. Hepburn at home?' she asked of Hester, whose position in the
shop brought her forwards to receive the customers, while Sylvia
drew Bella out of sight behind some great bales of red flannel.

'Can I see her?' the sweet, south-country voice went on, still
addressing Hester. Sylvia heard the inquiry, and came forwards, with
a little rustic awkwardness, feeling both shy and curious.

'Will yo' please walk this way, ma'am?' said she, leading her
visitor back into her own dominion of the parlour, and leaving Bella
to Hester's willing care.

'You don't know me!' said the pretty young lady, joyously. 'But I
think you knew my husband. I am Mrs. Kinraid!'

A sob of surprise rose to Sylvia's lips--she choked it down,
however, and tried to conceal any emotion she might feel, in placing
a chair for her visitor, and trying to make her feel welcome,
although, if the truth must be told, Sylvia was wondering all the
time why her visitor came, and how soon she would go.

'You knew Captain Kinraid, did you not?' said the young lady, with
innocent inquiry; to which Sylvia's lips formed the answer, 'Yes,'
but no clear sound issued therefrom.

'But I know your husband knew the captain; is he at home yet? Can I
speak to him? I do so want to see him.'

Sylvia was utterly bewildered; Mrs. Kinraid, this pretty, joyous,
prosperous little bird of a woman, Philip, Charley's wife, what
could they have in common? what could they know of each other? All
she could say in answer to Mrs. Kinraid's eager questions, and still
more eager looks, was, that her husband was from home, had been long
from home: she did not know where he was, she did not know when he
would come back.

Mrs. Kinraid's face fell a little, partly from her own real
disappointment, partly out of sympathy with the hopeless,
indifferent tone of Sylvia's replies.

'Mrs. Dawson told me he had gone away rather suddenly a year ago, but
I thought he might be come home by now. I am expecting the captain
early next month. Oh! how I should have liked to see Mr. Hepburn, and
to thank him for saving the captain's life!'

'What do yo' mean?' asked Sylvia, stirred out of all assumed
indifference. 'The captain! is that' (not 'Charley', she could not
use that familiar name to the pretty young wife before her) 'yo'r
husband?'

'Yes, you knew him, didn't you? when he used to be staying with Mr
Corney, his uncle?'

'Yes, I knew him; but I don't understand. Will yo' please to tell me
all about it, ma'am?' said Sylvia, faintly.

'I thought your husband would have told you all about it; I hardly
know where to begin. You know my husband is a sailor?'

Sylvia nodded assent, listening greedily, her heart beating thick
all the time.

'And he's now a Commander in the Royal Navy, all earned by his own
bravery! Oh! I am so proud of him!'

So could Sylvia have been if she had been his wife; as it was, she
thought how often she had felt sure that he would be a great man
some day.

'And he has been at the siege of Acre.'

Sylvia looked perplexed at these strange words, and Mrs. Kinraid
caught the look.

'St Jean d'Acre, you know--though it's fine saying "you know", when
I didn't know a bit about it myself till the captain's ship was
ordered there, though I was the head girl at Miss Dobbin's in the
geography class--Acre is a seaport town, not far from Jaffa, which
is the modern name for Joppa, where St Paul went to long ago; you've
read of that, I'm sure, and Mount Carmel, where the prophet Elijah
was once, all in Palestine, you know, only the Turks have got it
now?'

'But I don't understand yet,' said Sylvia, plaintively; 'I daresay
it's all very true about St Paul, but please, ma'am, will yo' tell
me about yo'r husband and mine--have they met again?'

'Yes, at Acre, I tell you,' said Mrs. Kinraid, with pretty petulance.
'The Turks held the town, and the French wanted to take it; and we,
that is the British Fleet, wouldn't let them. So Sir Sidney Smith, a
commodore and a great friend of the captain's, landed in order to
fight the French; and the captain and many of the sailors landed
with him; and it was burning hot; and the poor captain was wounded,
and lay a-dying of pain and thirst within the enemy's--that is the
French--fire; so that they were ready to shoot any one of his own
side who came near him. They thought he was dead himself, you see,
as he was very near; and would have been too, if your husband had
not come out of shelter, and taken him up in his arms or on his back
(I couldn't make out which), and carried him safe within the walls.'

'It couldn't have been Philip,' said Sylvia, dubiously.

'But it was. The captain says so; and he's not a man to be mistaken.
I thought I'd got his letter with me; and I would have read you a
part of it, but I left it at Mrs. Dawson's in my desk; and I can't
send it to you,' blushing as she remembered certain passages in
which 'the captain' wrote very much like a lover, 'or else I would.
But you may be quite sure it was your husband that ventured into all
that danger to save his old friend's life, or the captain would not
have said so.'

'But they weren't--they weren't--not to call great friends.'

'I wish I'd got the letter here; I can't think how I could be so
stupid; I think I can almost remember the very words, though--I've
read them over so often. He says, "Just as I gave up all hope, I saw
one Philip Hepburn, a man whom I had known at Monkshaven, and whom I
had some reason to remember well"--(I'm sure he says so--"remember
well"), "he saw me too, and came at the risk of his life to where I
lay. I fully expected he would be shot down; and I shut my eyes not
to see the end of my last chance. The shot rained about him, and I
think he was hit; but he took me up and carried me under cover." I'm
sure he says that, I've read it over so often; and he goes on and
says how he hunted for Mr. Hepburn all through the ships, as soon as
ever he could; but he could hear nothing of him, either alive or
dead. Don't go so white, for pity's sake!' said she, suddenly
startled by Sylvia's blanching colour. 'You see, because he couldn't
find him alive is no reason for giving him up as dead; because his
name wasn't to be found on any of the ships' books; so the captain
thinks he must have been known by a different name to his real one.
Only he says he should like to have seen him to have thanked him;
and he says he would give a deal to know what has become of him; and
as I was staying two days at Mrs. Dawson's, I told them I must come
over to Monkshaven, if only for five minutes, just to hear if your
good husband was come home, and to shake his hands, that helped to
save my own dear captain.'

'I don't think it could have been Philip,' reiterated Sylvia.

'Why not?' asked her visitor; 'you say you don't know where he is;
why mightn't he have been there where the captain says he was?'

'But he wasn't a sailor, nor yet a soldier.'

'Oh! but he was. I think somewhere the captain calls him a marine;
that's neither one nor the other, but a little of both. He'll be
coming home some day soon; and then you'll see!'

Alice Rose came in at this minute, and Mrs. Kinraid jumped to the
conclusion that she was Sylvia's mother, and in her overflowing
gratitude and friendliness to all the family of him who had 'saved
the captain' she went forward, and shook the old woman's hand in
that pleasant confiding way that wins all hearts.

'Here's your daughter, ma'am!' said she to the half-astonished,
half-pleased Alice. 'I'm Mrs. Kinraid, the wife of the captain that
used to be in these parts, and I'm come to bring her news of her
husband, and she don't half believe me, though it's all to his
credit, I'm sure.'

Alice looked so perplexed that Sylvia felt herself bound to explain.

'She says he's either a soldier or a sailor, and a long way off at
some place named in t' Bible.'

'Philip Hepburn led away to be a soldier!' said she, 'who had once
been a Quaker?'

'Yes, and a very brave one too, and one that it would do my heart
good to look upon,' exclaimed Mrs. Kinraid. 'He's been saving my
husband's life in the Holy Land, where Jerusalem is, you know.'

'Nay!' said Alice, a little scornfully. 'I can forgive Sylvia for
not being over keen to credit thy news. Her man of peace becoming a
man of war; and suffered to enter Jerusalem, which is a heavenly and
a typical city at this time; while me, as is one of the elect, is
obliged to go on dwelling in Monkshaven, just like any other body.'

'Nay, but,' said Mrs. Kinraid, gently, seeing she was touching on
delicate ground, 'I did not say he had gone to Jerusalem, but my
husband saw him in those parts, and he was doing his duty like a
brave, good man; ay, and more than his duty; and, you may take my
word for it, he'll be at home some day soon, and all I beg is that
you'll let the captain and me know, for I'm sure if we can, we'll
both come and pay our respects to him. And I'm very glad I've seen
you,' said she, rising to go, and putting out her hand to shake that
of Sylvia; 'for, besides being Hepburn's wife, I'm pretty sure I've
heard the captain speak of you; and if ever you come to Bristol I
hope you'll come and see us on Clifton Downs.'

She went away, leaving Sylvia almost stunned by the new ideas
presented to her. Philip a soldier! Philip in a battle, risking his
life. Most strange of all, Charley and Philip once more meeting
together, not as rivals or as foes, but as saviour and saved! Add to
all this the conviction, strengthened by every word that happy,
loving wife had uttered, that Kinraid's old, passionate love for
herself had faded away and vanished utterly: its very existence
apparently blotted out of his memory. She had torn up her love for
him by the roots, but she felt as if she could never forget that it
had been.

Hester brought back Bella to her mother. She had not liked to
interrupt the conversation with the strange lady before; and now she
found her mother in an obvious state of excitement; Sylvia quieter
than usual.

'That was Kinraid's wife, Hester! Him that was th' specksioneer as
made such a noise about t' place at the time of Darley's death. He's
now a captain--a navy captain, according to what she says. And she'd
fain have us believe that Philip is abiding in all manner of
Scripture places; places as has been long done away with, but the
similitude whereof is in the heavens, where the elect shall one day
see them. And she says Philip is there, and a soldier, and that he
saved her husband's life, and is coming home soon. I wonder what
John and Jeremiah 'll say to his soldiering then? It'll noane be to
their taste, I'm thinking.'

This was all very unintelligible to Hester, and she would dearly
have liked to question Sylvia; but Sylvia sate a little apart, with
Bella on her knee, her cheek resting on her child's golden curls,
and her eyes fixed and almost trance-like, as if she were seeing
things not present.

So Hester had to be content with asking her mother as many
elucidatory questions as she could; and after all did not gain a
very clear idea of what had really been said by Mrs. Kinraid, as her
mother was more full of the apparent injustice of Philip's being
allowed the privilege of treading on holy ground--if, indeed, that
holy ground existed on this side heaven, which she was inclined to
dispute--than to confine herself to the repetition of words, or
narration of facts.

Suddenly Sylvia roused herself to a sense of Hester's deep interest
and balked inquiries, and she went over the ground rapidly.

'Yo'r mother says right--she is his wife. And he's away fighting;
and got too near t' French as was shooting and firing all round him;
and just then, according to her story, Philip saw him, and went
straight into t' midst o' t' shots, and fetched him out o' danger.
That's what she says, and upholds.'

'And why should it not be?' asked Hester, her cheek flushing.

But Sylvia only shook her head, and said,

'I cannot tell. It may be so. But they'd little cause to be friends,
and it seems all so strange--Philip a soldier, and them meeting
theere after all!'

Hester laid the story of Philip's bravery to her heart--she fully
believed in it. Sylvia pondered it more deeply still; the causes for
her disbelief, or, at any rate, for her wonder, were unknown to
Hester! Many a time she sank to sleep with the picture of the event
narrated by Mrs. Kinraid as present to her mind as her imagination or
experience could make it: first one figure prominent, then another.
Many a morning she wakened up, her heart beating wildly, why, she
knew not, till she shuddered at the remembrance of the scenes that
had passed in her dreams: scenes that might be acted in reality that
very day; for Philip might come back, and then?

And where was Philip all this time, these many weeks, these heavily
passing months?

CHAPTER XLI

THE BEDESMAN OF ST SEPULCHRE

Philip lay long ill on board the hospital ship. If his heart had
been light, he might have rallied sooner; but he was so depressed he
did not care to live. His shattered jaw-bone, his burnt and
blackened face, his many injuries of body, were torture to both his
physical frame, and his sick, weary heart. No more chance for him,
if indeed there ever had been any, of returning gay and gallant, and
thus regaining his wife's love. This had been his poor, foolish
vision in the first hour of his enlistment; and the vain dream had
recurred more than once in the feverish stage of excitement which
the new scenes into which he had been hurried as a recruit had
called forth. But that was all over now. He knew that it was the
most unlikely thing in the world to have come to pass; and yet those
were happy days when he could think of it as barely possible. Now
all he could look forward to was disfigurement, feebleness, and the
bare pittance that keeps pensioners from absolute want.

Those around him were kind enough to him in their fashion, and
attended to his bodily requirements; but they had no notion of
listening to any revelations of unhappiness, if Philip had been the
man to make confidences of that kind. As it was, he lay very still
in his berth, seldom asking for anything, and always saying he was
better, when the ship-surgeon came round with his daily inquiries.
But he did not care to rally, and was rather sorry to find that his
case was considered so interesting in a surgical point of view, that
he was likely to receive a good deal more than the average amount of
attention. Perhaps it was owing to this that he recovered at all.
The doctors said it was the heat that made him languid, for that his
wounds and burns were all doing well at last; and by-and-by they
told him they had ordered him 'home'. His pulse sank under the
surgeon's finger at the mention of the word; but he did not say a
word. He was too indifferent to life and the world to have a will;
otherwise they might have kept their pet patient a little longer
where he was.

Slowly passing from ship to ship as occasion served; resting here
and there in garrison hospitals, Philip at length reached Portsmouth
on the evening of a September day in 1799. The transport-ship in
which he was, was loaded with wounded and invalided soldiers and
sailors; all who could manage it in any way struggled on deck to
catch the first view of the white coasts of England. One man lifted
his arm, took off his cap, and feebly waved it aloft, crying, 'Old
England for ever!' in a faint shrill voice, and then burst into
tears and sobbed aloud. Others tried to pipe up 'Rule Britannia',
while more sate, weak and motionless, looking towards the shores
that once, not so long ago, they never thought to see again. Philip
was one of these; his place a little apart from the other men. He
was muffled up in a great military cloak that had been given him by
one of his officers; he felt the September breeze chill after his
sojourn in a warmer climate, and in his shattered state of health.

As the ship came in sight of Portsmouth harbour, the signal flags
ran up the ropes; the beloved Union Jack floated triumphantly over
all. Return signals were made from the harbour; on board all became
bustle and preparation for landing; while on shore there was the
evident movement of expectation, and men in uniform were seen
pressing their way to the front, as if to them belonged the right of
reception. They were the men from the barrack hospital, that had
been signalled for, come down with ambulance litters and other marks
of forethought for the sick and wounded, who were returning to the
country for which they had fought and suffered.

With a dash and a great rocking swing the vessel came up to her
appointed place, and was safely moored. Philip sat still, almost as
if he had no part in the cries of welcome, the bustling care, the
loud directions that cut the air around him, and pierced his nerves
through and through. But one in authority gave the order; and
Philip, disciplined to obedience, rose to find his knapsack and
leave the ship. Passive as he seemed to be, he had his likings for
particular comrades; there was one especially, a man as different
from Philip as well could be, to whom the latter had always attached
himself; a merry fellow from Somersetshire, who was almost always
cheerful and bright, though Philip had overheard the doctors say he
would never be the man he was before he had that shot through the
side. This marine would often sit making his fellows laugh, and
laughing himself at his own good-humoured jokes, till so terrible a
fit of coughing came on that those around him feared he would die in
the paroxysm. After one of these fits he had gasped out some words,
which led Philip to question him a little; and it turned out that in
the quiet little village of Potterne, far inland, nestled beneath
the high stretches of Salisbury Plain, he had a wife and a child, a
little girl, just the same age even to a week as Philip's own little
Bella. It was this that drew Philip towards the man; and this that
made Philip wait and go ashore along with the poor consumptive
marine.

The litters had moved off towards the hospital, the sergeant in
charge had given his words of command to the remaining invalids, who
tried to obey them to the best of their power, falling into
something like military order for their march; but soon, very soon,
the weakest broke step, and lagged behind; and felt as if the rough
welcomes and rude expressions of sympathy from the crowd around were
almost too much for them. Philip and his companion were about
midway, when suddenly a young woman with a child in her arms forced
herself through the people, between the soldiers who kept pressing
on either side, and threw herself on the neck of Philip's friend.

'Oh, Jem!' she sobbed, 'I've walked all the road from Potterne. I've
never stopped but for food and rest for Nelly, and now I've got you
once again, I've got you once again, bless God for it!'

She did not seem to see the deadly change that had come over her
husband since she parted with him a ruddy young labourer; she had
got him once again, as she phrased it, and that was enough for her;
she kissed his face, his hands, his very coat, nor would she be
repulsed from walking beside him and holding his hand, while her
little girl ran along scared by the voices and the strange faces,
and clinging to her mammy's gown.

Jem coughed, poor fellow! he coughed his churchyard cough; and
Philip bitterly envied him--envied his life, envied his approaching
death; for was he not wrapped round with that woman's tender love,
and is not such love stronger than death? Philip had felt as if his
own heart was grown numb, and as though it had changed to a cold
heavy stone. But at the contrast of this man's lot to his own, he
felt that he had yet the power of suffering left to him.

The road they had to go was full of people, kept off in some measure
by the guard of soldiers. All sorts of kindly speeches, and many a
curious question, were addressed to the poor invalids as they walked
along. Philip's jaw, and the lower part of his face, were bandaged
up; his cap was slouched down; he held his cloak about him, and
shivered within its folds.

They came to a standstill from some slight obstacle at the corner of
a street. Down the causeway of this street a naval officer with a
lady on his arm was walking briskly, with a step that told of health
and a light heart. He stayed his progress though, when he saw the
convoy of maimed and wounded men; he said something, of which Philip
only caught the words, 'same uniform,' 'for his sake,' to the young
lady, whose cheek blanched a little, but whose eyes kindled. Then
leaving her for an instant, he pressed forward; he was close to
Philip,--poor sad Philip absorbed in his own thoughts,--so absorbed
that he noticed nothing till he heard a voice at his ear, having the
Northumbrian burr, the Newcastle inflections which he knew of old,
and that were to him like the sick memory of a deadly illness; and
then he turned his muffled face to the speaker, though he knew well
enough who it was, and averted his eyes after one sight of the
handsome, happy man,--the man whose life he had saved once, and
would save again, at the risk of his own, but whom, for all that, he
prayed that he might never meet more on earth.

'Here, my fine fellow, take this,' forcing a crown piece into
Philip's hand. 'I wish it were more; I'd give you a pound if I had
it with me.'

Philip muttered something, and held out the coin to Captain Kinraid,
of course in vain; nor was there time to urge it back upon the
giver, for the obstacle to their progress was suddenly removed, the
crowd pressed upon the captain and his wife, the procession moved
on, and Philip along with it, holding the piece in his hand, and
longing to throw it far away. Indeed he was on the point of dropping
it, hoping to do so unperceived, when he bethought him of giving it
to Jem's wife, the footsore woman, limping happily along by her
husband's side. They thanked him, and spoke in his praise more than
he could well bear. It was no credit to him to give that away which
burned his fingers as long as he kept it.

Philip knew that the injuries he had received in the explosion on
board the _Theseus_ would oblige him to leave the service. He also
believed that they would entitle him to a pension. But he had little
interest in his future life; he was without hope, and in a depressed
state of health. He remained for some little time stationary, and
then went through all the forms of dismissal on account of wounds
received in service, and was turned out loose upon the world,
uncertain where to go, indifferent as to what became of him.

It was fine, warm October weather as he turned his back upon the
coast, and set off on his walk northwards. Green leaves were yet
upon the trees; the hedges were one flush of foliage and the wild
rough-flavoured fruits of different kinds; the fields were tawny
with the uncleared-off stubble, or emerald green with the growth of
the aftermath. The roadside cottage gardens were gay with hollyhocks
and Michaelmas daisies and marigolds, and the bright panes of the
windows glittered through a veil of China roses.

The war was a popular one, and, as a natural consequence, soldiers
and sailors were heroes everywhere. Philip's long drooping form, his
arm hung in a sling, his face scarred and blackened, his jaw bound
up with a black silk handkerchief; these marks of active service
were reverenced by the rustic cottagers as though they had been
crowns and sceptres. Many a hard-handed labourer left his seat by
the chimney corner, and came to his door to have a look at one who
had been fighting the French, and pushed forward to have a grasp of
the stranger's hand as he gave back the empty cup into the good
wife's keeping, for the kind homely women were ever ready with milk
or homebrewed to slake the feverish traveller's thirst when he
stopped at their doors and asked for a drink of water.

At the village public-house he had had a welcome of a more
interested character, for the landlord knew full well that his
circle of customers would be large that night, if it was only known
that he had within his doors a soldier or a sailor who had seen
service. The rustic politicians would gather round Philip, and smoke
and drink, and then question and discuss till they were drouthy
again; and in their sturdy obtuse minds they set down the extra
glass and the supernumerary pipe to the score of patriotism.

Altogether human nature turned its sunny side out to Philip just
now; and not before he needed the warmth of brotherly kindness to
cheer his shivering soul. Day after day he drifted northwards,
making but the slow progress of a feeble man, and yet this short
daily walk tired him so much that he longed for rest--for the
morning to come when he needed not to feel that in the course of an
hour or two he must be up and away.

He was toiling on with this longing at his heart when he saw that he
was drawing near a stately city, with a great old cathedral in the
centre keeping solemn guard. This place might be yet two or three
miles distant; he was on a rising ground looking down upon it. A
labouring man passing by, observed his pallid looks and his languid
attitude, and told him for his comfort, that if he turned down a
lane to the left a few steps farther on, he would find himself at
the Hospital of St Sepulchre, where bread and beer were given to all
comers, and where he might sit him down and rest awhile on the old
stone benches within the shadow of the gateway. Obeying these
directions, Philip came upon a building which dated from the time of
Henry the Fifth. Some knight who had fought in the French wars of
that time, and had survived his battles and come home to his old
halls, had been stirred up by his conscience, or by what was
equivalent in those days, his confessor, to build and endow a
hospital for twelve decayed soldiers, and a chapel wherein they were
to attend the daily masses he ordained to be said till the end of
all time (which eternity lasted rather more than a century, pretty
well for an eternity bespoken by a man), for his soul and the souls
of those whom he had slain. There was a large division of the
quadrangular building set apart for the priest who was to say these
masses; and to watch over the well-being of the bedesmen. In process
of years the origin and primary purpose of the hospital had been
forgotten by all excepting the local antiquaries; and the place
itself came to be regarded as a very pleasant quaint set of
almshouses; and the warden's office (he who should have said or sung
his daily masses was now called the warden, and read daily prayers
and preached a sermon on Sundays) an agreeable sinecure.

Another legacy of old Sir Simon Bray was that of a small croft of
land, the rent or profits of which were to go towards giving to all
who asked for it a manchet of bread and a cup of good beer. This
beer was, so Sir Simon ordained, to be made after a certain receipt
which he left, in which ground ivy took the place of hops. But the
receipt, as well as the masses, was modernized according to the
progress of time.

Philip stood under a great broad stone archway; the back-door into
the warden's house was on the right side; a kind of buttery-hatch
was placed by the porter's door on the opposite side. After some
consideration, Philip knocked at the closed shutter, and the signal
seemed to be well understood. He heard a movement within; the hatch
was drawn aside, and his bread and beer were handed to him by a
pleasant-looking old man, who proved himself not at all disinclined
for conversation.

'You may sit down on yonder bench,' said he. 'Nay, man! sit i' the
sun, for it's a chilly place, this, and then you can look through
the grate and watch th' old fellows toddling about in th' quad.'

Philip sat down where the warm October sun slanted upon him, and
looked through the iron railing at the peaceful sight.

A great square of velvet lawn, intersected diagonally with broad
flag-paved walks, the same kind of walk going all round the
quadrangle; low two-storied brick houses, tinted gray and yellow by
age, and in many places almost covered with vines, Virginian
creepers, and monthly roses; before each house a little plot of
garden ground, bright with flowers, and evidently tended with the
utmost care; on the farther side the massive chapel; here and there
an old or infirm man sunning himself, or leisurely doing a bit of
gardening, or talking to one of his comrades--the place looked as if
care and want, and even sorrow, were locked out and excluded by the
ponderous gate through which Philip was gazing.

'It's a nice enough place, bean't it?' said the porter, interpreting
Philip's looks pretty accurately. 'Leastways, for them as likes it.
I've got a bit weary on it myself; it's so far from th' world, as a
man may say; not a decent public within a mile and a half, where one
can hear a bit o' news of an evening.'

'I think I could make myself very content here,' replied Philip.
'That's to say, if one were easy in one's mind.'

'Ay, ay, my man. That's it everywhere. Why, I don't think that I
could enjoy myself--not even at th' White Hart, where they give you
as good a glass of ale for twopence as anywhere i' th' four
kingdoms--I couldn't, to say, flavour my ale even there, if my old
woman lay a-dying; which is a sign as it's the heart, and not the
ale, as makes the drink.'

Just then the warden's back-door opened, and out came the warden
himself, dressed in full clerical costume.

He was going into the neighbouring city, but he stopped to speak to
Philip, the wounded soldier; and all the more readily because his
old faded uniform told the warden's experienced eye that he had
belonged to the Marines.

'I hope you enjoy the victual provided for you by the founder of St
Sepulchre,' said he, kindly. 'You look but poorly, my good fellow,
and as if a slice of good cold meat would help your bread down.'

'Thank you, sir!' said Philip. 'I'm not hungry, only weary, and glad
of a draught of beer.'

'You've been in the Marines, I see. Where have you been serving?'

'I was at the siege of Acre, last May, sir.'

'At Acre! Were you, indeed? Then perhaps you know my boy Harry? He
was in the----th.'

'It was my company,' said Philip, warming up a little. Looking back
upon his soldier's life, it seemed to him to have many charms,
because it was so full of small daily interests.

'Then, did you know my son, Lieutenant Pennington?'

'It was he that gave me this cloak, sir, when they were sending me
back to England. I had been his servant for a short time before I
was wounded by the explosion on board the _Theseus_, and he said I
should feel the cold of the voyage. He's very kind; and I've heard
say he promises to be a first-rate officer.'

'You shall have a slice of roast beef, whether you want it or not,'
said the warden, ringing the bell at his own back-door. 'I recognize
the cloak now--the young scamp! How soon he has made it shabby,
though,' he continued, taking up a corner where there was an immense
tear not too well botched up. 'And so you were on board the
_Theseus_ at the time of the explosion? Bring some cold meat here
for the good man--or stay! Come in with me, and then you can tell
Mrs. Pennington and the young ladies all you know about Harry,--and
the siege,--and the explosion.'

So Philip was ushered into the warden's house and made to eat roast
beef almost against his will; and he was questioned and
cross-questioned by three eager ladies, all at the same time, as it
seemed to him. He had given all possible details on the subjects
about which they were curious; and was beginning to consider how he
could best make his retreat, when the younger Miss Pennington went
up to her father--who had all this time stood, with his hat on,
holding his coat-tails over his arms, with his back to the fire. He
bent his ear down a very little to hear some whispered suggestion of
his daughter's, nodded his head, and then went on questioning
Philip, with kindly inquisitiveness and patronage, as the rich do
question the poor.

'And where are you going to now?'

Philip did not answer directly. He wondered in his own mind where he
was going. At length he said,

'Northwards, I believe. But perhaps I shall never reach there.'

'Haven't you friends? Aren't you going to them?'

There was again a pause; a cloud came over Philip's countenance. He
said,

'No! I'm not going to my friends. I don't know that I've got any
left.'

They interpreted his looks and this speech to mean that he had
either lost his friends by death, or offended them by enlisting.

The warden went on,

'I ask, because we've got a cottage vacant in the mead. Old Dobson,
who was with General Wolfe at the taking of Quebec, died a fortnight
ago. With such injuries as yours, I fear you'll never be able to
work again. But we require strict testimonials as to character,' he
added, with as penetrating a look as he could summon up at Philip.

Philip looked unmoved, either by the offer of the cottage, or the
illusion to the possibility of his character not being satisfactory.
He was grateful enough in reality, but too heavy at heart to care
very much what became of him.

The warden and his family, who were accustomed to consider a
settlement at St Sepulchre's as the sum of all good to a worn-out
soldier, were a little annoyed at Philip's cool way of receiving the
proposition. The warden went on to name the contingent advantages.

'Besides the cottage, you would have a load of wood for firing on
All Saints', on Christmas, and on Candlemas days--a blue gown and
suit of clothes to match every Michaelmas, and a shilling a day to
keep yourself in all other things. Your dinner you would have with
the other men, in hall.'

'The warden himself goes into hall every day, and sees that
everything is comfortable, and says grace,' added the warden's lady.

'I know I seem stupid,' said Philip, almost humbly, 'not to be more
grateful, for it's far beyond what I iver expected or thought for
again, and it's a great temptation, for I'm just worn out with
fatigue. Several times I've thought I must lie down under a hedge,
and just die for very weariness. But once I had a wife and a child
up in the north,' he stopped.

'And are they dead?' asked one of the young ladies in a soft
sympathizing tone. Her eyes met Philip's, full of dumb woe. He tried
to speak; he wanted to explain more fully, yet not to reveal the
truth.

'Well!' said the warden, thinking he perceived the real state of
things, 'what I propose is this. You shall go into old Dobson's
house at once, as a kind of probationary bedesman. I'll write to
Harry, and get your character from him. Stephen Freeman I think you
said your name was? Before I can receive his reply you'll have been
able to tell how you'd like the kind of life; and at any rate you'll
have the rest you seem to require in the meantime. You see, I take
Harry's having given you that cloak as a kind of character,' added
he, smiling kindly. 'Of course you'll have to conform to rules just
like all the rest,--chapel at eight, dinner at twelve, lights out at
nine; but I'll tell you the remainder of our regulations as we walk
across quad to your new quarters.'

And thus Philip, almost in spite of himself, became installed in a
bedesman's house at St Sepulchre.

CHAPTER XLII

A FABLE AT FAULT

Philip took possession of the two rooms which had belonged to the
dead Sergeant Dobson. They were furnished sufficiently for every
comfort by the trustees of the hospital. Some little fragments of
ornament, some small articles picked up in distant countries, a few
tattered books, remained in the rooms as legacies from their former
occupant.

At first the repose of the life and the place was inexpressibly
grateful to Philip. He had always shrunk from encountering
strangers, and displaying his blackened and scarred countenance to
them, even where such disfigurement was most regarded as a mark of
honour. In St Sepulchre's he met none but the same set day after
day, and when he had once told the tale of how it happened and
submitted to their gaze, it was over for ever, if he so minded. The
slight employment his garden gave him--there was a kitchen-garden
behind each house, as well as the flower-plot in front--and the
daily arrangement of his parlour and chamber were, at the beginning
of his time of occupation, as much bodily labour as he could manage.
There was something stately and utterly removed from all Philip's
previous existence in the forms observed at every day's dinner, when
the twelve bedesmen met in the large quaint hall, and the warden
came in his college-cap and gown to say the long Latin grace which
wound up with something very like a prayer for the soul of Sir Simon
Bray. It took some time to get a reply to ship letters in those
times when no one could exactly say where the fleet might be found.

And before Dr Pennington had received the excellent character of
Stephen Freeman, which his son gladly sent in answer to his father's
inquiries, Philip had become restless and uneasy in the midst of all
this peace and comfort.

Sitting alone over his fire in the long winter evenings, the scenes
of his past life rose before him; his childhood; his aunt Robson's
care of him; his first going to Foster's shop in Monkshaven;
Haytersbank Farm, and the spelling lessons in the bright warm
kitchen there; Kinraid's appearance; the miserable night of the
Corneys' party; the farewell he had witnessed on Monkshaven sands;
the press-gang, and all the long consequences of that act of
concealment; poor Daniel Robson's trial and execution; his own
marriage; his child's birth; and then he came to that last day at
Monkshaven: and he went over and over again the torturing details,
the looks of contempt and anger, the words of loathing indignation,
till he almost brought himself, out of his extreme sympathy with
Sylvia, to believe that he was indeed the wretch she had considered
him to be.

He forgot his own excuses for having acted as he had done; though
these excuses had at one time seemed to him to wear the garb of
reasons. After long thought and bitter memory came some wonder. What
was Sylvia doing now? Where was she? What was his child like--his
child as well as hers? And then he remembered the poor footsore wife
and the little girl she carried in her arms, that was just the age
of Bella; he wished he had noticed that child more, that a clear
vision of it might rise up when he wanted to picture Bella.

One night he had gone round this mill-wheel circle of ideas till he
was weary to the very marrow of his bones. To shake off the
monotonous impression he rose to look for a book amongst the old
tattered volumes, hoping that he might find something that would
sufficiently lay hold of him to change the current of his thoughts.
There was an old volume of _Peregrine Pickle_; a book of sermons;
half an army list of 1774, and the _Seven Champions of Christendom_.
Philip took up this last, which he had never seen before. In it he
read how Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick, went to fight the Paynim in his
own country, and was away for seven long years; and when he came
back his own wife Phillis, the countess in her castle, did not know
the poor travel-worn hermit, who came daily to seek his dole of
bread at her hands along with many beggars and much poor. But at
last, when he lay a-dying in his cave in the rock, he sent for her
by a secret sign known but to them twain. And she came with great
speed, for she knew it was her lord who had sent for her; and they
had many sweet and holy words together before he gave up the ghost,
his head lying on her bosom.

The old story known to most people from their childhood was all new
and fresh to Philip. He did not quite believe in the truth of it,
because the fictitious nature of the histories of some of the other
Champions of Christendom was too patent. But he could not help
thinking that this one might be true; and that Guy and Phillis might
have been as real flesh and blood, long, long ago, as he and Sylvia
had even been. The old room, the quiet moonlit quadrangle into which
the cross-barred casement looked, the quaint aspect of everything
that he had seen for weeks and weeks; all this predisposed Philip to
dwell upon the story he had just been reading as a faithful legend
of two lovers whose bones were long since dust. He thought that if
he could thus see Sylvia, himself unknown, unseen--could live at her
gates, so to speak, and gaze upon her and his child--some day too,
when he lay a-dying, he might send for her, and in soft words of
mutual forgiveness breathe his life away in her arms. Or perhaps--and
so he lost himself, and from thinking, passed on to dreaming.
All night long Guy and Phillis, Sylvia and his child, passed in and