all the coal–trade;—saddest vaunt (though not the last), it had strewn
with gashed and mangled bodies (like its own waves, countless) the
coasts of Anglesea and Caernarvon.

On the morning now of the 27th, with the long sullen swell
gold–beater–skinned by the recovering sun, the shingle–bank was full of
interest to an active trader. They had picked up several bodies with a
good bit of money upon them, and the beach was strewn with oranges none
the worse for a little tossing. For the stout East Indiaman _Aliwal_
had touched at the Western Islands, and taken on board a thousand boxes
of the early orange harvest. And not only oranges were rolling among
the wrack, the starfish, the sharkʼs teeth, and the cuttle–eggs, but
also many a pretty thing, once prized and petted by women. There were
little boxes with gilt and paint, sucked heartily by the salt water,
and porcupine–quills rasping up from panels of polished ebony, cracked
mirrors inside them, and mother–of–pearl, and beading of scented wood;
all the taste and the labour of man yawning like dead cockles, crimped
backward, sodden and shredded, as hopeless a wreck as a drunkard.

Then there were barrels, and heavy chests, planking already like
hemp in the prison–yard, bulkheads, and bulwarks, and cordage, and
reeve–blocks, and ten thousand other things, well appreciated by the
wreckers, who were hauling them up the bunneys; while the Admiralty
droitsmen made an accurate inventory of the bungs and the blacking
bottles. Some of the sailors, and most of the passengers, who had
escaped in the boats to Christchurch, came over to look for anything
that might turn up of their property. Hereupon several fights ensued,
and many poor fellows enjoyed opportunity for a closer inspection
of the Rushford stratum than the most sanguine of their number
anticipated; until the police came down in force, and extinguished at
once all other rights of salvage except their own.

Nevertheless there was yet one field upon which the police could not
interfere; although Jack wished for nothing better than to catch the
lubbers there. This was Jackʼs own domain, the sea, where an animated
search was going on for the body of Colonel Nowell. His servant had
hurried from Christchurch to Nowelhurst to report the almost certain
death of Sir Cradockʼs only brother. He did not go first to ascertain
it; for the road along the cliffs was impassable during the height of
the storm. Sir Cradock received the announcement with very few signs of
emotion. He had loved that Clayton in early youth, but now had almost
forgotten him; and Clayton had never kept his brother at all apprised
of his doings. Sir Cradock had gone into mourning for him, some three
years ago; and Colonel Nowell never took the trouble to vindicate his
vitality until Dr. Huttonʼs return. And, even though they had really
known and loved one another as brothers, the loss would have been but a
tap on the back to a man already stabbed through the heart. Therefore
Sir Cradockʼs sorrow exploded (as we love to make our griefs do, and as
we so often express them) in the moneyed form. “I will give 500_l._ to
the man who finds my poor brotherʼs body.”

That little speech launched fourteen boats. What wrecker could hope
for anything of a tenth part of the value? Men who had sworn that they
never would pull in the same boat again together—might the Great
Being, the Giver of life, strike them dead if they did!—forgot the
solemn perjuration, and cried, “Give us your flipper, Ben; after all,
there are worse fellows going than you, my lad:” and Ben responded,
“Jump into the starn–sheets; you are just the hand as we want, Harry.
Manyʼs the time Iʼve thought on you.” Even the dredging smacks hauled
in–shore from their stations, and began to dredge for the Colonel;
till the small boats resolved on united action, tossed oars, and held
solemn council. Several speeches were made, none of them very long,
but all embodying that fine sentiment, “fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,”
in the form of “fair play, and be d—d to you.” Then Sandy Mac, of the
practical mind, made a suggestion which was received with three wild
rounds of cheers.

“Give ‘em a little ballast, boys, as they be come in–shore to dredge
for it.”

With one consent the fourteen boats made for the shore, like the fleet
of canoes described by the great Defoe. Nor long before each shallopʼs
nose “grated on the golden sands.” The men in the dredging smacks
looked at the sky to see if a squall was coming. And soon they got it,
thick as hail, and as hot as pepper. The fourteen boats in battle array
advanced upon them slowly, only two men rowing in each, all the rest
standing up, and every man charged heavily. When they were at a nice
wicket distance, old Mac gave the signal, and a flight of stones began,
which, in the words of the ancient chroniclers, “well–nigh darkened the
noonday sun.” The bravest dredger durst not show his head above the
gunwale; for the Rushford stones are close of grain, and it is sweeter
to start than to stop them. As for south–westers and dreadnoughts, they
were no more use than vine–leaves in a storm of electric hail.

  “Ah, little then those mellow grapes their vine–leaf shall avail,
  So thickly rattles on _the tiles_ the pelting of the hail.”

  _Georg._ i. 448.

The dredgers gave in, and hoisted a shirt as a signal for a parley.
The Rushford men refused to hear a syllable about “snacks.” What they
demanded was “unconditional surrender;” and the dredgers, having no
cement–stones on board, were compelled to accept it. So they took
up their bags, and walked the smacks off three miles away to their
station, with very faint hopes indeed that the obliging body might
follow them. The boatmen celebrated their victory with three loud
cheers for Sandy Mac, and a glass of grog all round. Then they
returned to the likeliest spot, and dragged hard all the afternoon.

“Tarnation ‘cute body,” cried Ben, “as ever I come across. Whoʼd a
thought as any perfessing Christian would have stuck to Davy Jonesʼs
locker, and refooged the parson and clerk so? Spit on your grapples, my
lads of wax, and better luck the cast after.”

“The Lord kens the best,” replied Sandy Mac, with a long–drawn sigh,
“us poor vessels canna do more than is the will of the Lord, boys.
Howsomever, I brought a bit of bait, a few lug–worms, and a soft crab
or two; and please the Lord Iʼll rig my line out, and see if the bass
be moving. And likely there may be a tumbling cod on the run speering
after the puir bodies. Ah, yes, the will of the Lord; we ates them, and
they ates us.”

The canny old Scotchman, without foregoing his share in the general
venture—for he helped to throw the grapnels, or took a spell at the
rudder—rigged out a hook on his own account, and fastened the line to
the rowlocks.

“Fair play, my son,” cried Ben, winking at his comrades; “us go snacks
in what you catch, mind. And the will of the Lord be done.”

“Dinna ye wish ye may get it?”—the old man glowered at him
indignantly—“Iʼll no fish at all on that onderstanding.”

“Fish away, old boy, and be blessed, then. I see he ainʼt been in
the purwentive sarvice for nothing. But Iʼm blowed if heʼll get much
supper, Harry, if itʼs all to come off that darned old hook.” They all
laughed at old Mac, who said nothing, but regarded his line attentively.

With many a joke and many an oath, they toiled away till the evening
fog came down upon the waters. Then, as they turned to go home, old Mac
felt a run upon his fishing–gear. Hand over hand he began to haul in,
coiling the line in the stern–sheets.

“Itʼs a wapping big fish, as ever I feel, mates; na, na, yeʼll no touch
it, or yeʼll be claiming to come and sup wi’ me. And deil a bit—the
Lord forgive me—will ye haʼ, for grinning at an auld mon the likes of
that, I tell ye. Lord ha’ mercy on me, a wake and sinful crater!”

They all fell back, except Macbride, as before them in the twilight
rose the ashy grey face and the long white hair of Colonel Clayton
Nowell.

Mac stuck to his haul like a Scotchman; to him the main chance was no
ghost. Many a time has he told that story, and turned his quid upon it,
cleverly raining between his teeth with fine art to prolong the crisis.

The line being his, and the hook being his, and the haul of his own
hands only, Sandy Mac could never see why he should not have all the
money. The question came close to litigation; but for that, except as
a word of menace, Mac was a deal too wide awake. He compounded at last
for 300_l._ and let the other four share the residue.

So poor Colonel Nowellʼs countenance, still looking grand and
dignified, was saved from the congers and lobsters; and he sleeps
close by his nephew and namesake in Nowelhurst churchyard. The body
of Captain Roberts was found a long way up the Solent. He had always
carried a weather helm, and shaped a good course for harbour. May they
rest in peace!

I have no doubt that Captain Roberts so rests, and am fain to believe,
in the mercy of God, the same of the brave old Colonel. At least,
we will hope that he is not gone to that eternal punishment, whose
existence our divines contend for in a manner so disinterested. He had
been a harum–scarum man; and now, having drowned and buried him, we may
enter upon his history with the charity due to both quick and dead, but
paid to the latter only.

A soldier is, in many things, by virtue of his calling, a generous,
careless man. We have always credited the sailor with these popular
qualities; hornpipes, national drama, and naval novels imbuing us. I
doubt if the sailor be, on the whole, so careless a man as the soldier.
Jack is obliged, by force of circumstance, to bottle up his money, his
rollicksomeness and sentimentality, and therefore has more to get rid
of, when he comes ashore once in a twelvemonth. But spread the outburst
over the year, strike the average of it, and the rainfall at Aldershot
will equal that at Portsmouth.

Only by watching the Army List—which at length he was tired of
doing—could the English brother tell if the Indian brother were
living. Even the most careful of us begin to feel that care is too much
for the nine lives of a cat, when Fahrenheit scores 110° in the very
coolest corner, and the punkah is too hot to move. So, after one or
two Griffin letters, full of marvels which the writer pretended not to
marvel at, a silence, as of the jungle, ensued, and Sir Cradock thought
of tigers. Then the slides of his own life began to move upon him; and
less and less every year he thought of the boy who had laughed and
cried with him.

Lieutenant Nowell was ordered suddenly to the borders of the Punjaub,
and for twenty years his brother Cradock drank his health at Christmas,
and wondered how about the Article against praying for the dead. The
next thing he heard, though it proved his own orthodoxy, disproved
it by making him swear hard. Clayton Nowell had married; married an
Affghan woman, to the great disgust of his brother officers, and the
furious disdain of her kinsmen. A very fine family of Affghan chiefs
immediately loaded their fusils, and swore to shoot both that English
dog and their own Bright Eyes of the Morning.

“To think,” cried Sir Cradock Nowell, “that a brother of mine should
disgrace himself, and (what matters far more) his family, by marrying a
wretched low Affghan woman!”

“To think,” cried Mohammed Khans, “that a sister of ours should
disgrace herself, and (what matters far more) her family, by marrying
a cursed low English dog!”

Which party was in the right, judge ye who understand the matter. The
officers’ wives got over their prejudice against Bright Eyes of the
Morning, and matronised, and petted, and tried to make a Christian of
her. Captain Nowell adored her; she was so elegant in every motion, so
loving, and so simple. She quite reformed him for the time from his too
benevolent anthropology, from the love of dice, and the vinous doings
which the Prophet does not encourage.

But the poor thing died in her first confinement, while following her
husbandʼs regiment at the foot of the Himalayah, leaving her new–born
babe to the care of a faithful Affghan nurse, who had kept at her dear
ladyʼs side, even among the infidels. This good nurse, being great of
soul, and therefore strong of faith, could not bear that the child of
her mistress, the highest blood of the Affghans, should become a low
Frank idolater. So she set off with it, in the dark night, crouching
past the sentinels, thieves, and other camp followers, and trusted
herself to the boundless jungle, with only the stars to guide her. She
put the wailing child to her breast, for her own dear babe was dead,
and hushed it from the vigilant ears of the man–eating tiger. Then off
again for Affghanistan, six hundred miles in the distance.

How this wonderful woman, soothing and coaxing the little stranger
(obtrusively remarkable for the power of her squalls), how she got on
through the thorns, the fire, the famine, the jaws of the tiger, and,
worse than all, the pestilent fever, bred from the rich stagnation of
that alluvial soil, is more than I, or any other unversed in womanʼs
unity, may pretend to show. Enough that with her eyes upon the grand
religious heights—heathen high places, we should call them—she
struggled along through nearly three–quarters of her pilgrimage, and
then she fell among robbers. A villanous hill–tribe, of mixed origin,
always shifting, never working, never even fighting when they could
run away, hated and despised by the nobler mountain races, the pariahs
of the Himalayah, ignorant of any good, debased as any Africans—in
a single word, Rakshas, or worshippers of the devil. A nice school
of education for a young lady of tender years—or rather months—to
commence in.

The nurse was allotted to one of their chiefs, and the babe was about
to be knocked on the head, when it struck an enlightened priest that in
two years’ time she would make a savoury oblation to the devil; so the
Affghan woman was allowed to keep her, until she began to crawl about
among the dogs and babes of the station. Here she so distinguished
herself by precocious skill in thieving, that her delighted owner
conferred upon her the title of “Never–spot–the–dust,” and even
instructed her how to steal the high priestʼs knife of sacrifice. That
last exploit saved her life. Such a genius had never appeared in any
tribe of the Rakshas until this great manifestation.

So “Never–spot–the–dust” was well treated, and made much of by her
owner, to whom she was quite a fortune; and soon all the band looked up
to her as the future priestess of the devil. For ten years she wandered
about with them, becoming every year more important, proud that none
could approach her skill in stealing, lying, and perjury, utterly void
of all religion, except the few snatches of Moslemism which her nurse
had contrived to impart, and the vague terror of the evil spirit to
whom the wild men paid their vows. But, when she was ten years old, a
tall and wonderfully active child, and just about to be consecrated
by the blood of inferior children, a British force drew suddenly all
around the nest of robbers. Of late the scoundrels had done things
that made John Bullʼs hair stand on end; and, when his hair is in that
condition, sparks are apt to come out of it.

Seeing no chance of escape, and having very faint hopes of quarter,
the robbers fought with a bravery which quite astonished themselves;
but the evil spirit was against them—a rare inconsistence on his
part. Their rascally camp was burnt, which they who had burned some
hundreds of villages looked upon as the grossest cruelty, and more
than half of their number were sent home to their patron and guardian.
Then the Affghan nurse, so faithful and so unfortunate, fled from the
burning camp with her charge, fell before the British colonel, and
poured forth all her troubles. The Englishman knew Major Nowell, and
had heard some parts of his history; so he took “Never–spot–the–dust”
to her father, who was amazed at once and amused with her. She could
run up the punkah, and stand on the top, and twirl around on one
foot; she could cross the compound in three bounds; she could jump
upon her fatherʼs shoulder, and stay there with the spring of her
sole; she could glide along over the floor like a serpent, and hold
on with one hand to anything. And then her most wonderful lightness
of touch; she had fully earned her name, she could brush the dust
without marking it. She could come behind her fatherʼs back, crawling
over the table, and fasten his sword–hilt to his whiskers, without his
knowing a thing of it. She could pick all his pockets, of course; but
that was too rude an operation for her to take any delight in it. What
she delighted to do, and what even she found difficult, was to take
off his shoes and stockings without his being aware of it. It was a
beautiful thing to see her: consummate skill is beautiful, in whatever
way it is exercised. The shoe she could get off easily enough, but
the difficulty was with the stocking; and there the chief difficulty
was through the sensitiveness of the skin, unaccustomed to exposure.
Though she had never heard of temperature, evaporation, or anything
long, her genius told her the very first time where the tug was and how
to meet it. Keeping her little cornelian lips—lips which you could
see through—just at the proper distance, she would breathe so softly
upon the skin that the breath could not be felt, as inch by inch she
lowered down the thin elastic covering. Then she would jump up out of
the ground, and shout into his ears, with a voice of argute silver—

“Faddery, will ‘oo have ‘oor shoe? Fear to go wiyout him?”

She began to talk English, after a bit; and the weather beaten
Colonel—for now he had got that far—who had never looked upon any
child, except as one rupee per month—thinking of his beloved Bright
Eyes of the Morning, who might, with the will of God, have made a
first–rate man of him, only she was too good for him,—thinking of her,
and seeing the gleam of her glorious eyes in her child, he loved that
child beyond all reason, and christened her “Eoa.”

He never took to bad things again. He had something now in pledge with
God; a part of himself that still would live, and love him when he
was skeleton. And that, his better part, should learn how lying and
stealing do not lead to the right half of the other world.

His ideas about that other world were as dormant as Eoaʼs; but now
he began to think about it, because he wanted to see her there. So,
with lots of tears, not only feminine, Eoa Nowell was sent to the best
school in Calcutta, where she taught the other young ladies some very
odd things indeed.

Wherever she went, she must be foremost; “second to none” was her
motto. Therefore she learned with amazing quickness; but it was not so
easy to unlearn.

Then arose that awful mutiny, and the Colonel at Mhow was shot through
the neck, and let lie, by his own soldiers. His daughter heard of it,
and screamed, and no walls ever built would hold her. All the way from
Calcutta, up the dreary Ganges, she forced her passage, sometimes by
boat, sometimes on her weariless feet.

She had never cared much for civilization, and loved every blade of the
jungle. The old life revived within her, as she looked upon the broad
waters, and the boundless yellow tangle, wherein glided no swifter
thing, nothing more elegant, than herself.

She found her darling father in some rude cantonment, prostrate,
helpless, clinging faintly to the verge of death. Dead long ago he
must have been but for Rufus Hutton; and dead even now he would have
been but for his daughterʼs presence. His dreamy eyes went round the
hut to follow her graceful movements; she alone could tend the wounds
as if with the fall of gossamer, she alone could soothe and fan the
intolerable aching. They looked into each otherʼs eyes and cried
without thinking about it.

Then, as he gradually got better, and the surge of trouble passed them,
Eoa showed for his amusement all her strange accomplishments. She had
not forgotten one of them in the grand school at Calcutta. They had
even grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength.

She would leap over Rufus Huttonʼs head like a flash of light, and
stand facing him, without a muscle moving, and on his back would
be a land–crab; she would put his up–country hat on the floor, and
walk on one foot round the crown of it; she would steal his case of
instruments, and toss them in the air all open, and catch them all at
once.

By her nursing and her loving, her stealing and her mockery, she won
Dr. Huttonʼs heart so entirely that he would have proposed to her, had
she only been of marriageable age, or had come to think about anything.

Then they had all to cut and run, with barely three hours’ notice, for
the ebb of the rebellion swept through that district mightily. Eoa went
to school again, and her father came to see her daily, until he was
appointed to a regiment having something more than name and shadow.

Now Eoa, having learned everything that they can teach in Calcutta, the
Himalayah, or the jungle, was coming to England to receive the down and
crown of accomplishments. Who could tell but what they might even teach
her affectation? Youth is plastic and imitative; and she was sure to
find plenty of models.

Not that the honest Colonel wished to make a sickly humbug of her.
His own views were wide and grand, only too philoprogenitive. Still,
like most men of that class, who, upon sudden reformation, love Truth
so much that they roll upon her, having no firm rules of his own, and
being ashamed to profess anything, with the bad life fresh in memory,
he took the opinion of old fogeys who had been every bit as unblest as
himself, but had sown with a drill their wild oats. The verdict of all
was one—“Miss Nowell must go to England.”

Finding his wound still troublesome, he resolved to retire from
service; he had not saved half a lac of rupees, and his pension would
not be a mighty one; but, between the two, there would be enough for
an old man to live upon decently, and go wherever he was told that his
daughter ought to go.

He had seen enough of life, and found that it only meant repentance;
all that remained of it should be for the pleasure and love of his
daughter. And he knew that there was a sum in England, which must have
been long accumulating—a sum left on trust for him and his children,
under a very old settlement. He would never touch a farthing of it;
every farthing should go to Eoa. Bless her dear eyes; they had the true
light of his own Bright Eyes of the Morning.

CHAPTER VI.

Eoa was now sixteen years old, tall, and lithe, and graceful as the
creepers of tropic woodlands. Her face was of the clearest oval, a
quick concise terse oval, such as we find in the eggs of wild birds
rather than of tame ones. Her eyes were of bewildering brightness,
always flashing, always in motion, rarely allowing the gazer a chance
of guessing what their colour was. Very likely they were of no positive
colour, but a pure dark lustre, such as a clear swift river has, when
overhung by palm–trees. Her complexion, beautifully soft and even, was
toned with a delicate eastern tinge, like that fawn–coloured light
which sometimes flushes a cloudless sky before the midsummer sunrise.
And her warm oriental blood suffused it, at the slightest emotion, as
the leaping sun pervades that sky with a flood of limpid rubies.

She had never been flattened by education: all her qualities and
feelings, like her beauty, were in excess. You could see it in
the quick rise and fall of her breath, in the sudden grace of her
movements, in the infinite variety of her attitudes and aspects.

Whatever she thought, she said at once; yet none ever called her a
bold girl. Her modes of thought were as widely different from those of
an English maiden, as a wild honeysuckle differs in form, habit, and
scent, from a rose. She cared for no oneʼs opinion of her, any more
than the wind cares how a tree swings; unless indeed it were one whom
she loved, and then she would crawl to please him. For she loved with
all her heart and soul, and hated with no less; and she always took
care in either case to apprise the object of it. And yet, with all her
depth of passion, Eoa was pure of heart and mind,—ay, as pure as our
own Amy.

She soon recovered from her bruises, being perfectly healthy, and
elastic as india–rubber. Nevertheless, she would not have been saved
from that terrible sea but for the generosity of poor Captain Roberts,
and the gallantry of Bob Garnet.

Now Bob was hurt rather seriously, and, being (as we are well aware)
an uncommonly shy young fellow, he was greatly astonished, and shocked
a little, when on the Friday morning a beautiful girl, very strangely
dressed, ran to the side of his sofa, threw her arms round him, and
kissed him till he was out of breath, and his face was wet with the
dew of her tears.

“Oh, please donʼt,” said Bob; “I am sure I donʼt deserve it.”

“Yes, you do; and I will marry you when I am old enough. I donʼt know
what you are like, and I donʼt care two straws, directly they told me
what you had done. Only I must have papaʼs leave. Kiss me again, I like
it. Now where is my darling papa?”

“What, donʼt you know? Havenʼt they told you? Oh, poor thing!”

At the tone of his voice she leaped back, like a bird at the gun–flash,
and stood with her little hands clasped on her head, her eyes with
their deep light quivering, and the whole of her form swinging to and
fro, from the wild push of sudden terror. Then she spoke with a hollow
depth, which frightened Bob more than the kissing.

“They told me that he was well, gone to his brother somewhere, and I
thought it wasnʼt like him to leave me so, and—tell me the truth, or
Iʼll shake you to pieces.”

“No, donʼt,” said Bob, as she leaped at him; “I have had shaking
enough.”

“Yes, you poor boy, and for my sake. I am a brute, I know. Tell me the
truth, if you love me.”

“Your dear father is dead. But they have found his body.”

“Do you mean to say that God has been so wicked as to kill my father?”

“God knows best,” said Bob; he could think of nothing else to say.

“No, He doesnʼt. No, He doesnʼt. No, He never knows anything. He
couldnʼt have known who he was, and how terribly I loved him, or He
wouldnʼt have the heart to do it. Oh, you wicked boy; oh, you wicked
boy! I will never forgive you for saving me. Hya, hya, hya!”

Bob never saw such a thing before, and never will again. And he wonʼt
be much the loser; although the sight was magnificent. The screams and
shrieks of the clearest voice that ever puzzled echo brought up the
landlord and landlady, and our good friend Rufus Hutton, who had set
forth full speed from home on hearing about the _Aliwal_. He caught Eoa
in his arms, carried her back to her room, and dosed her. He gave her
some Indian specific, some powder of a narcotic fungus, which he had
brought on purpose.

It stupefied her for nearly three days, and even then she awoke into
the dreamy state of Nirwana, that bliss of semi–consciousness, like
mild annihilation, into which the Buddha is absorbed, and to which all
pious Buddhists look as their eternal happiness. Then she opened her
delicate tapering arms, where you could see the grand muscles moving,
but never once protruding, and she called for her darling father to
come. Finding that he did not come, she was satisfied with some
trifling answer, and then wanted to have Bob instead; but neither was
Bob forthcoming.

On the very day when Dr. Hutton came to look for Eoa, Mr. Garnet found
himself getting better from that wretched low nervous fever into which
his fright had thrown him. Then he asked Dr. Hutton whether there
would be any danger in moving Robert, and, finding that there would
be none whatever, if it were carefully managed, he ordered a carriage
immediately, and with some of his ancient spirit. The Crown, which had
the cross–bar of its N set up the wrong way (as is done, by–the–by,
on the roof of Hampton Court chapel, and in many other places), made
public claim to be regarded as a “commercial hotel and posting–house.”
No Rushford folk having yet been known to post anything, except a
letter at rare intervals, and a bill at rarer, this claim of the
Crown had never been challenged, and strangers entertained a languid
theoretical faith in it. But Mr. Brown looked very blue when Bull
Garnet in reviving accents ordered “a chaise and pair at the door in
half an hourʼs time; a roomy chaise, if you please, because my son must
keep his feet up.”

“Yes, sir; yes, to be sure, sir; I quite understand, sir. It shall be
attended to, sir.”

“Then why donʼt you go and order it?”

“To be sure, sir; I forgot. I will speak to Mrs. Brown, sir.”

Mrs. Brown, being a woman of resource, mounted the boy on her donkey,
the only quadruped she possessed, but a “wonner to go,” as the boy
said, “when you knows the right place to prog him in,” and sent him
post–haste to Lymington, whence the required conveyance arrived in
about an hour and a half.

Rufus Hutton, having promised to be at home that evening, left Eoa to
sleep off her heavy soporific, and followed the carriage on horseback;
neither did he leave its track where the Ringwood Road turns off, for
he had undertaken to tell Sir Cradock how his niece was getting on.
He started nearly half an hour after the Lymington chaise, for Polly
would never demean herself by trotting behind the “posters.” During
that half–hour he drank hot brown brandy–and–water, although he could
not bear it, to ingratiate him with Mrs. Brown for the sake of the poor
Eoa. For Mrs. Brown had no other hot method of crowning the flowing
bowl. And now, while I think of it, let me warn all gentle and simple
people who deign on this tale of the New Forest, never to ask for
pale brandy within the perambulations. How do you think they make it?
By mixing brown brandy with villanous gin. Rufus was up to this, of
course; and, as he must take something for the good of the house, and
to get at the kindly kernel of the heavy–browed hostess, he took that
which he thought would be least for his own evil. Then, leaving Mrs.
Brown (who, of course, had taken her own glass at his sole charge and
largesse, after fifty times “Oh no, sir, never! Oh Lord, how my Brown
would be shocked!”), having imbued that good Mrs. Brown, who really was
not a bad woman—which means that she was a good one, for women have
no medium—with a strong aromatic impression that he was a pleasant
gentleman, and no pride, not a bit of it, in him, no more than you nor
me might,—off he trotted at a furious pace, smoking two cheroots at
once.

I believe that there was and is—for I am happy to say that he still
inhales the breeze of life down his cigar, and looks browner and redder
than ever—I believe that, in spite of all his troubles in connexion
with this story, which took a good deal out of him, there was and is no
happier man in our merry England than the worthy Rufus Hutton. And, as
all happiness is negative, and goes without our knowing it, and only
becomes a positive past for us to look back upon, so his went before it
came, and goes or eʼer it comes. And yet he enjoys it none the less; he
multiplies it by three for the past and by nine for the future, and he
never finds it necessary to deduct for the present moment.

Happy man who never thinks beyond salutary average, who can accept,
in perfect faith, the traditions of his forbears, and yet is shrewd
enough to hope that his grandsons will discard at least a portion of
them,—who looks upon the passing life as a thing he need not move in,
a world which must improve itself, and every day is doing it. And all
the while he sympathises with his fellow–men, enjoys a bit of human
nature, laughs at the cross–purposes of native truth and training,
loves whatever he finds to be true, and does his best to foster it, is
pleased with his after–dinner story, and feels universally charitable;
then smiles at his wife, and kisses his children; and goes to bed with
the firm conviction that they are worth all the rest put together.

Yet this manʼs happiness is not sound, because it is built upon
selfishness.

In Nowelhurst village Dr. Hutton met Mark Stote, the gamekeeper, who
begged him to stop for a moment, just to hear a word or two. Rufus,
after hearing his news, resolved to take the upper road to the Hall,
past Mr. Garnetʼs house; it was not so very far out of his way, and
perhaps he might be of service there, and—ah, yes, Dr. Hutton, this
last was the real motive, though you may not have thought so—what
a fine opportunity to discover something which plagued him! Perhaps
I ought to say rather, the want of which was plaguing him. Rufus
took so kind an interest in his neighbours’ affairs, that anything
not thoroughly luculent in their dealings, mode of life or speech,
or management of their households, was to him the subject–matter of
continual mental scratchings. Ah, how genteel a periphrase, worthy of
Bailey Kettledrum; how happily we have shown our horror of that English
monosyllable, beginning with the third vowel, which must be (according
to Dr. Aldrich) the correlative of scratch! Score two, and go on after
Dr. Hutton.

He overtook the Garnets twain just at their front gate, whence the
house could not be seen, on account of a bank of evergreens. The maid
came out with her cap flying off, and all her mind perturbed. Rufus
Hutton, checking his mare, for the road was very narrow, heard the
entire dialogue.

“Oh, sir! oh, master! have you heard of it? Such a thing, to be sure!”

“Heard of what, Sarah? Of course I have heard of the great disaster at
Rushford.”

“No, no. Here, sir, here! The two big trees is down on the house. Itʼs
a mussy as Nanny and me wasnʼt killed. And poor Miss Pearl have been
in hysterics ever since, without no dinner. There, you can hear her
screeching now, worse than the mangle, ever so much.”

Mr. Garnet did not say a word, but set off for the house full speed,
even forgetting that Bob wanted help to get from the gate to the
doorway.

Rufus Hutton jumped down from his mare, and called to the driver to
come and hold her, just for a minute or two; no fear of _his_ horses
bolting. Then, helping Bob to limp along, he followed through the
shrubbery. When they came within full view of the house, he was quite
amazed at the mischief. The two oaks interlocked had fallen upon it,
and, crashing as they did from the height above, the breaches they
made were hideous. They had cloven the house into three ragged pieces,
from the roof–ridge down to the first floor, where the solid joists
had stopped them. It had happened in the afternoon of the second day
of the tempest; when the heart of the storm was broken, but tremendous
squalls came now and then from the bright north–west. Mr. Garnetʼs own
bed was occupied by the tree which he detested. Pearl had screamed
“Judgment, judgment!” and danced among the ruins; so the maid was
telling Mr. Garnet, as he feared to enter his own door.

“Judgment for what?” asked Rufus Hutton, and Mr. Garnet seemed not to
hear him.

“I am sure I donʼt know, sir,” answered the maid, “for none of us done
any harm, sir; unless it was the bottle of pickled onions, when master
were away, and there was very few of them left, sir, very few, I do
declare to you, and we thought they was on the turn, sir, and it seemed
such a pity to waste them. And please, sir, weʼve all been working like
horses, though frightened out of our lives ‘most; and we fetched down
all the things from your room, where the cupboards was broken open, for
‘fraid it should come on to rain, sir; and weʼve taken all our meals
standing, sir; and made up a bed in the meat–screen, and another upon
the dresser; and Miss Pearl, what turns she have given us—— Here she
comes, I do declare.”

“Dr. Hutton,” said Bull Garnet, hastily, “good–bye; I am much obliged
to you. I shall see you, I hope, next week. Good–bye, good–bye. Excuse
me.”

But, before he could get him out of the way—for Rufus lingered
strangely—Pearl Garnet came into the little hall, with her eyes
distended fearfully. “There, there it is,” she cried, “there it is, I
tell you! No wonder the tree came down upon it. No wonder the house was
crushed for it.” And she pointed to a shattered box, tilted up endwise,
among a heap of account–books, clothes, and furniture.

“Oh yes, you may look at it. To be sure you may look at it. God would
not have it hidden longer. I have done my best, God knows, and my heart
knows, and my—I mean that man there knows. Is there anything more I
can do for you, anything more, _dear father_? You have done so much for
me, you know. And I will only ask you one little thing—put me in his
coffin.”

“The girl is raving,” cried Mr. Garnet. “Poor thing, it comes from her
mother.”

“No, it comes from her father,” said Pearl, going boldly up to him, and
fixing her large bright eyes upon his. “Do as you like with me; I donʼt
care; but donʼt put it on any one else. Oh, father, father, father!”

Moaning, she turned away from him; and then sprang into his arms with
shrieks. He lifted her tenderly, and forgot all about his own safety.
His great tears fell on her wan, sick face; and his heavy heart
throbbed for his daughter only, as he felt hers bounding perilously. He
carried her off to an inner room, and left them to their own devices.

“I should like uncommonly,” said Rufus Hutton, rubbing his chin,
“to know what is in that box. Indeed, I feel it my duty at once to
ascertain.”

“No, you shanʼt,” cried Bob, limping across in front of it; “I know no
more than you do, sir. But I wonʼt have fatherʼs things pryed into.”

“You are very polite,” replied the Doctor; “a chip of the old block,
I perceive. But, perhaps, you will believe me, my boy, when I tell
you that, if ever there was a gentleman totally devoid of improper
curiosity, it is Dr. Rufus Hutton, sir.”

“Oh, I am so glad,” said Bob; “because you wonʼt be disappointed, then.”

Rufus grinned, in spite of his wrath; but he was not to be baffled
so easily. He could not push poor Bob aside, in his present disabled
state, without being guilty of cowardice. So he called in an auxiliary.

“Betsy, my dear, your young mistress wished me just to examine that
box. Be kind enough to bring it to the light here, unless it is too
heavy for your little hands.”

Oh, if he had only said “Miss Sarah,” what a difference it might have
made!

“Betsy, indeed!” cried Sarah, who had followed her mistress, but,
being locked out, had come back to see the end of it; “my name, sir,
is nothing so low as that. My name is Sarah Mackarness, sir, very
much at your service; and my mother keeps a potato–shop, the largest
business in Lyndhurst, sir. Betsy, indeed! and from a stranger, not
to say a strange gentleman, for fear of making a mistake. And as
for my hands”—she thought he had been ironical, for her hands were
above regulation size—“my hands are such as pleased God to make them,
and honest hands, anyhow, and doesnʼt want to interfere with other
peopleʼs business. Oh, what will poor Nanny say, to think of me, Sarah
Mackarness, be permiscuous called Betsy?”

At this moment, when Sarah Mackarness, having recovered breath, was
starting into another native discourse on prænomina, and Rufus was
calling upon his resources for some constitutional measure, Bull Garnet
came back, treading heavily, defiant of all that the world could do.
His quick eyes, never glimpsing that way, but taking in all the room at
once, espied the box unmeddled with, and Bob upon guard in front of it.
He was his own man now again. What did he care for anybody, so long as
he had his children?

“Dr. Hutton, I thought that you were gone.”

“You see I am not,” said Rufus, squaring his elbows, and looking big,
for he was a plucky little fellow, “and, whatʼs more, I donʼt mean to
go till I know what is in that box.”

“Box, box!” cried Bull Garnet, striking his enormous forehead, as if to
recall something; “have we a box of yours, Dr. Hutton?”

“No, no; that box of _yours_. Your daughter told us to examine it. And,
from her manner, I believe that I am bound to do so.”

“Bound to examine one of my boxes!” Bull Garnet never looked once that
way, and Rufus took note of the strange avoidance; “my boxes are full
of confidential papers; surely, sir, you have caught my daughterʼs—I
mean to say, you are labouring under some hallucination.”

“There are no papers in that box. The contents of it are metal. I
have seen one article already through the broken cover, and shall not
forget its shape. Beware; there have been strange things done in this
neighbourhood. If you refuse to allay my suspicions, you confirm them.”

The only answer he received was a powerful hand at the back of his
neck, a sensation of being lifted with no increase of facilities for
placid respiration; finally, a lateral movement of great rapidity
through the air, and a loud sound as of a bang. Recovering reasonʼs
prerogative, he found himself in a dahlia, whose blossoms, turned into
heel–balls by the recent frost, were flapping round his countenance,
and whose stake had gone through his waistcoat back, and grazed his
coxendix, or something; he knows best what it was, as a medical man
deeply interested.

He had also a very unpleasant reminiscence of some such words as these,
to which he had no responsive power—“You wonʼt take a hint like a
gentleman; so take a hit like a blackguard.”

Dr. Rufus Hutton was not the man to sit down quietly under an insult of
any sort. At the moment he felt that brute force was irresistibly in
the ascendant, and he was wonderfully calm about it. He shook himself,
and smoothed his waistcoat, and tried the stretch of his garters;
then never once looked toward the house, never shook his fist, nor
frowned even. He walked off to his darling Polly as if nothing at all
had happened; gave the man a shilling for holding her, after looking
long for a sixpence; then mounted, and rode towards Nowelhurst Hall,
showing no emotion whatever. Only Polly knew that burning tears of a
brave manʼs sense of ignominy fell upon her glossy shoulder, and were
fiercely wiped way.

At the Hall he said nothing about it; never even mentioned that he had
called at Garnetʼs cottage; but told Sir Cradock, like a true man,
of Eoaʼs troubles, of her poor forlorn condition, and power of heart
to feel it. He even contrived to interest the bereaved man, now so
listless, in the young life thrown upon his care, as if by the breath
of heaven. We are never so eloquent for another as when our own hearts
are moved deeply by the feeling of wrong to ourselves; unless, indeed,
we are very small, and that subject excludes all others.

So it came to pass that the grand new carriage was ordered to the door,
and Sir Cradock would himself have gone—only Rufus Hutton had left
him, and the eloquence was oozing. The old man, therefore, turned back
on the threshold, saying to himself that it would be hardly decent
to appear in public yet; and Mrs. OʼGaghan was sent instead, sitting
inside, and half afraid to breathe for fear of the crystal. As for her
clothes, they were good enough, she knew, for the Lord Mayorʼs coach.
“Five–and–sixpence a yard, maʼam, lave alone trimming and binding.”
But, knowing what she did of herbs, she could not answer for the
peppermint.

Of course, they did not intend to fetch poor Eoa home yet; but Biddy
had orders to stay there until the young lady was moveable. Biddy took
to her at once, in her heavy, long–drawn sleep, with the soft black
lashes now and then lifting from the rich brown cheek.

“An’ if she isnʼt illigant, then,” said Biddy to Mrs. Brown, “ate me
wiʼout a purratie. Arl coom ov’ the blude, missus. Sazins, then, if me
and Pat had oonly got a child this day! Belikes, maʼam, for the matter
o’ that, a drap o’ whisky disagrays with you.”

Biddy, feeling strongly moved, and burning to drink her new childʼs
health, showed a bottle of brown potheen.

“To tell you the truth, mem,” said Mrs. Brown, “I know nothing about
them subjects. Spirituous liquors is a thing as has always been beyond
me.”

“Thin Iʼll clap it away again,” said Biddy, “and the divvil only the
wiser. I never takes it alone, marm.”

“It would ill become me, mem,” replied Mrs. Brown, “to be churlish in
my own house, mem. I have heard of you very often, mem. Yes, I assure
you I have, from the people as comes to bathe here, as a lady of great
experience in diseases of the chest. If you recommend any cordial, mem,
on the strength of your experience, for a female of weak witality, I
should take it as a dooty, mem, strictly as a dooty to my husband and
two darters.”

“Arrah, then, Iʼm your femmale. Me witality goes crossways, like, till
I has a drap o’ the crather.” And so they made a night of it, and Mr.
Brown had some.

CHAPTER VII.

Leave we now, with story pending, Biddy and Eoa, Pearl, and even Amy;
thee, too, rare Bull, and thee, O Rufus, overcast with anger. It is
time to track the steps of him whom Fortune, blithe at her cruel trade,
shall track as far as Gades, Cantaber, and wild Syrtes, where the
Moorish billow is for ever heaving. Will he exclaim with the poet, who
certainly was a jolly mortal,—“I praise her while she is my guest. If
she flap her nimble wings, I renounce her charities; and wrap me in my
manhood robe, and woo the upright poverty, the bride without a dower.”
“A very fine sentiment, Master Horace; but were you not a little too
fond even of Sabine and Lesbian—when the Massic juice was beyond your
credit—to do anything more than _feel_ it?”

As Cradock Nowell trudged that night towards the Brockenhurst Station,
before he got very far from Amy, and while her tears were still on his
cheek, he felt a little timid lick, a weak offering of sympathy.

Hereby black Wena made known to him that she was melted by his
misfortunes, and saw that the right and most feeling course, and
the one most pleasing to her dead master, was the transfer of her
allegiance, and the swearing of fealty to the brother. To which
conclusion the tender mode in which she was being carried conduced,
perhaps, considerably; for she was wrapped in Claytonʼs woolly jacket,
enthroned on Cradockʼs broad right arm, and with only her black nose
exposed to the moon. So she jogged along very comfortably, until she
had made up her mind, and given Cradock the kiss of seisin.

“Dear little thing,” he cried, for he looked on her now as Amyʼs
keepsake, “you shall go with me wherever I go. You are faithful enough
to starve with me; but you shall not starve until after me.”

Then he put her down, for he thought that a little run would do her
good, and, in spite of all her misery, Amy had kept her pretty plump,
plumper than she herself was; and it became no joke to carry her, with
a travelling–bag, &c., after the first half mile.

Then Wena capered about, and barked, and came and licked his shoe, and
offered to carry the coat for him. As he would not let her do this,
she occupied her mind with the rabbits, which were out upon the feed
largely, and were the last she would see for a long while, except the
fat Ostenders.

When he got to London, and took small lodgings at a Mrs.
Ducksacreʼs, “greengrocer and general fruiterer, Mortimer–street,
Cavendish–square,”—I quote from the ladyʼs bags: confound it, there! I
am always saying improper things; _honi soit_—I mean, of course, her
paper bags—it was not long before he made two important discoveries,
valuable rather than gratifying.

The first of these discoveries was, that our university portals are
a mere side–postern, and not the great _janua mundi_. He found his
classical scholarship, his early fame at Oxford, his love of elegant
literature, rather a disadvantage than a recommendation for business.

“Prigs, sir, prigs,” said a member of an eminent City firm; “of course,
I donʼt mean to be personal; but I have always found you Oxford men
prigs, quite unfit for desk–work. You fancy you know so much; you are
always discovering mareʼs–nests, and you wonʼt bear to be spoken to,
even if you stick to your work; which, I assure you, is quite the
exception. Then you hold yourself aloof, with your stupid etiquette,
from the other young men, who are quite as good as you are. I assure
you, the place was too hot to hold us with the last Oxford man we
took in the counting–house; he gave himself such airs, the donkey! I
vowed never to do it again: and I never will, sir. Good morning, sir;
Gregson, show this gentleman the way out.”

Gregson did so with a grin, for Cradockʼs face proved that the
principal had not been altogether wrong.

Is this prejudice, or, rather, perhaps, I should say, this aversion,
disappearing now–a–days, or is it upon the increase? At any rate, one
cause of it is being removed most rapidly; for the buckram etiquette of
Oxford will soon become a tradition. We will only hope she may not run
too far into the free and easy.

Cradockʼs other discovery was that 50_l._ is no large capital to
commence in life with, especially when the owner does not find his
start prepared for him; fails to prepare it for himself; and has
never been used to economy. He would not apply to any of his fatherʼs
friends, or of the people whom he had known in London, to help him in
this emergency. He would rather starve than do that; for he had dropped
all name and claim of Nowell, and cut his life in twain at manhood;
and the parts should never join again. Only one feeling should be
common to the two existences, to the happy and the wretched life; that
one feeling was the love of Amy, and, what now seemed part of it, his
gratitude to her father.

John Rosedew had given him a letter to a clergyman in London, a man of
high standing and extensive influence, whom John had known at college.
But the youth had not undertaken to deliver that credential, and he
never did so. It would have kept him to his identity, which (so far as
the world was concerned) he wished to change entirely, immediately, and
irrevocably. So he called himself “Nowell” no longer—although the name
is common enough in one form or another: the Nowells of Nowelhurst,
however, are proud of the double _l_, and think a good deal of the
_w_—and Cradock Nowell became “Charles Newman,” without license of Her
Majesty.

Even before his vain attempts to enter the stronghold of commerce,
and before he had learned that Oxford men are not thought “_prima
virorum_,” he had lifted the latch of literature, but the door would
not swing back for him. The _mare magnum_—to mix metaphors, although
bars are added to the Lucrine—the _mare magnum_ of letters was more
like his native element; and, if he once could have gotten—bare–footed
as we must be—over the jagged rocks which hedge that sea, I believe he
might have swum there.

In one respect he was fortunate. The publishers upon whom he called
were gentlemen, and told him the truth.

“Oh, poetry!” exclaimed one and all, as their eyes fell upon his
manuscript, “we cannot take it on our own account; and, if we published
it at your expense, we should only be robbing you.”

“Indeed!” replied Cradock, in the first surprise; “is there no chance,
then, of a sale for it?”

“None whatever. Poetry, unless it be some oneʼs whose name is well
known, is a perfect drug in the market. In the course of ten or a dozen
years, by advertising continually, by influence among the reviewers,
by hitting some popular vein, or being taken up by some authority, you
might attain an audience. Are you ready to encounter all this? Even if
you are, we must decline, we are sorry to say, to have anything to do
with it.”

“Verse, eh? Better have cut your throat,” more tersely replied an
elderly gentleman, well known for his rudeness to authors. However,
even that last was a friend, when compared with some whom it might have
been his evil luck to consult. They advertise their patent methods
of putting a work before the public, without any risk to the author,
&c. &c. Disinterested gentlemen! They are to have no profit whatever,
except from the sale of the work, and they know they wonʼt sell five
copies.

However, there are not many of this sort in an honourable and most
important profession; and Cradock Nowell was lucky enough not to
fall in with any of them. So he accepted the verdict so unanimously
returned, and stored away with a heavy heart his laborious little
manuscript. It was only a translation in verse of the Halieutics, and a
few short original pieces—the former at any rate valuable, as having
been revised by John Rosedew.

There are courts and alleys in the neighbourhood of Mortimer–street
which, for misery and poverty, dirt and desperation, may vie with
almost any of the more famous shames of London.

Cradockʼs own great trouble, the sympathy he had met with, and the
comfort he received from it, had begun by this time to soften his
heart, and render it more sensitive to the distress of others. At
first, it had been far otherwise. The feeling of bitter injustice,
resentment at, and defiance of, a blow which seemed to him so
unmerited, and, worse than all, his own fatherʼs base and low mistrust
of him—who could have been surprised if these things, acting upon a
sad lone heart, and a bold mind beginning to think for itself, had made
the owner an infidel? And very likely they would have done so, when he
was removed from John Rosedewʼs influence, but for that scene with Amy.
He loved that girl so warmly, so devotedly, so purely, that, when he
found his love returned in equal quantity and quality, it renewed his
faith in justice. He saw that there is a measure and law, even where
all appears to be anarchy and anomaly; that the hand of God is not
stretched forth upon His children wantonly; that we cannot gauge His
circling survey by the three–inch space between human eyes, neither
does He rest His balance on His earthly footstool. So Cradock escaped
the deadly harm, which almost seems designed to poise that noblest
gift of Heaven—a free and glorious intellect—he escaped it through
the mercy which gave him true affection.

And now once more he looked with love upon his fellow–men, such love
as the frigid atheist school shall never form nor educate—which truth
alone to a great heart might be conclusive against that school—the
love which few religions except our own inculcate, and no other takes
for its essence.

As yet he was too young to know the blind and inhuman selfishness,
the formality and truckling, and the other paltry dishonesties, which
still exist and try to cheat us under the name of “Society.” The cant
is going by already. Every man who dares to think knows that its laws
are obsolete, because they have not for their basis either of these
three—truth, simplicity, charity.

Even that young man was astonished at the manner in which society
ignores its broader and only true meaning—fellowship among men—and
renounces all other duties, save that of shaking from its shoes
its fellow–dust. He could not look upon the scenes so nigh to him,
and to each other, parted often by nothing more than nine inches
of brick or two inches of deal; the wealth and the want, the feast
and the famine, the satiety and the ravening, the euphemy and the
blasphemy—though sometimes that last got inside the door, blew its
nose, and was infidelity; the prudery and the indecency, the whispered
lie and the yelled one, the sale of maidens by their mothers, or
of women by themselves—though here again the difference was never
very perceptible; all this impious contrast, spread as if for Godʼs
approval, for the Universal Fatherʼs blessing, in the land most chiefly
blessed by Him: which of His sons, not cast out for ever, could look on
it without weeping?

Cradock did something more than weep. He went with his little stock of
money, though he knew it could not do much; and he tried to help in
little ways, though as yet he had no experience. He bought meat, and
clothes, and took things out of pawn, and tried to make peace where
fights were.

At first he was grossly insulted, as a meddlesome swell; but, when he
had done two or three good things, and done them as a brother should,
he began to be owned among them. In one thing he was right, although he
had no experience; he confined his exertions to a very narrow compass.
Of course he got imposed upon—of course he helped the unworthy; but
after a while he began to know them, and even the unworthy—some two
hundred per cent.—began to have faint ideas of trying to deserve good
luck.

One man who attempted to pick Cradʼs pocket was knocked down by the
biggest thief there. “I wish I had a heap of money,” said Cradock,
every day; “I must keep some for myself, I suppose. Perhaps, after all,
I was wrong, in throwing up so hastily my chance of doing good.”

Then he remembered that, but for his trouble, he might never have
thought of the good to be done. And the good done to him was threefold
as much as he could do to others. Every day he grew less selfish, less
imperious, less exacting; every day he saw more clearly the good which
is in the worst of us.

There is a flint of peculiar character—I know not the local name
of it—which is found sometimes on the great Chissel Bank, and away
towards Lyme Regis. It is as hard, and sullen, and dull a flint (with
even the outside polish lost from the chafing of the waves)—a stone
as grey and foggy–looking;—as ever Deucalion took the trouble to
cast away over the left into an empty world. Yet it has, through the
heart of it, traversing it from pole to pole (for its shape is always
conical) a thread, a spindle, a siphuncle, of the richest golden hue.
None but those who are used to it can see the head of the golden
column, can even guess its existence. The stone is not hollow; it is
quite distinct from all pudding–stones and conglomerates.

Many such flints poor Crad came across, and sought in vain for the
beauty of them. He never tried to split them with a hammer, as too many
do of our Boanergæ; but he was too young to see or feel the chord of
the golden siphuncle. One, especially, one great fellow, was harder and
rougher than any flint, like the matrix of the concentric jasper.

“Confound that fellow,” said Cradock to himself; “I never shall get
at the heart of him. If my pluck were up a little more. Iʼd fight him;
though I know he would lick me. Heʼd be sorry for me afterwards.”

Issachar Jupp could lick any two men in the court. He was a bargee, of
good intentions—at least, when he took to the cuddy; but his horses
had pulled crosswise ever since; and the devil knew, better than the
angels, what his nature now was.

“None of your d—d Scripture–reading for me!” he cried, when Cradock
came near him; though the young man had never attempted anything of the
sort.

He knew that the Word of God is not bread to a blackguardʼs empty
belly. And another thing he knew—that he was not of the age and aspect
for John Bunyanʼs business. Moreover, Jupp was wonderfully jealous
of his wife, a gentle but grimy woman, forty–five years old, whom he
larruped every day; although he might be an infidel, he would ensure
his wifeʼs fidelity. Nevertheless, he had his pure vein, and Cradock at
last got at it.

Mrs. and Miss Ducksacre were very good–hearted women, but, like many
other women of that fibre, whose education has been neglected, of a hot
and hasty order. Not that we need suppose the pepper to be neutralized
by the refinement, only to be absorbed more equably, and transfused
more generally.

A little thing came feeling the way into the narrow, dingy shop, one
dark November evening, groping along by the sacks of potatoes (all of
them “seconds,” for the firm did not deal much in “Ware Regents”),
feeling its way along the sacks which towered above its head, like
bulky snow–giants embrowned with thaw; and then by the legs of the
“tatie–bin,” with the great scales hanging above it, and then by the
heap of lighting–wood, piled in halfpenny bundles, with the ends
against the wall; and so the little thing emerged between two mighty
hills of coleworts, and under the frugal gas–burner, and congratulated
itself, with a hug of the heart, upon safety.

“Take care, my dear,” cried Mrs. Ducksacre, looking large behind the
counter, “or youʼll tumble down the coal–trap, where the black bogeys
lives. Bless my heart, if it ainʼt little Loo! Why, Loo, I hardly knew
you. You ainʼt looking like yourself a bit, child. And who sent you out
at this time of night? What a shame, to be sure!”

Loo, the pride of Issachar Jupp, was rather a pretty little body,
about three and a half years old, “going on for four,” as she loved
to say, if anybody asked her; and her pale but clean face would have
been _very_ pretty, if her mother would have let her hair alone. But
it was all combed back, and tied tightly behind, like the tail of a
horse at a fair, or as affording a spout to pour the little girl out
by. She looked up at Mrs. Ducksacre, while her fingers played with the
coleworts, for her hands were hot, and this cooled them; and then,
with the instinct of nature, she stuck up for her father and mother.

“Pease, maʼam, Loo not fray much,”—though her trembling frock belied
her, all over the throat and the heart of it—“and father don from
home, maʼam, on the Wasintote” [Basingstoke canal], “and mother dot
nobody, onʼy Loo, to do thins. And she send this, ‘cause Looʼs poor
troat be bad, maʼam.”

The little child, whose throat was tied up with worn flannel from the
char–bucket, with the grey edge still upon it, wriggled in and out of
her shape and self, in the way only children can do; and at length
drew, from some innermost shrine, a halfpenny and a farthing.

“And what am I to give you for it, Loo? Oh, you poor little thing, how
very hoarse you are!”

Loo, with a confidence in human nature purely non–Londinian, had placed
her cash upon the altar, upon the inside of which so many worship,
while on the outside so many are sacrificed; without circumlocution,
the counter. Her eyes were below the rim of it, till she stood upon
tiptoe with one foot, while the other was up in the colewort roots, and
then she could see the money, and she poked out her little lips at it,
as if she would fain suck it back again.

“Pease, maʼam, Looʼs troat so bad, mother are goin to make a ‘tew, tree
haʼporth of tipe and a haʼporth of ‘egents, and a fardy of inons!”

“What a splendid stew, Loo!” said Mrs. Ducksacre, seeming to smell
it; “and so you want a haʼporth of taties, and a farthingʼs worth
of onions. And you shall have them, my dear, and as good a three
farthings’ worth as ever was put up in London. Where are you going to
put them all?”

Loo opened her sore throat, and pointed down it. She had not yet lost
her appetite; and that child did love tripe so.

“No, no, I donʼt mean that, Loo. I know you have a nice room inside;
though some will be for mother, wonʼt it, now? I mean, how are you
going to carry it home?”

“In Looʼs pinney,” replied the child, delighted with her success; for
ever so many people had told her, that the Ducksacres now were getting
so high, they would soon leave off making farthings–worths; and any
tradesman who does that is above the sphere of the street–child.

“My dear, your pinney wonʼt hold them, potatoes are so cheap now”—she
had just sworn they were awfully dear to a person she disliked—“I
am sure you canʼt carry a haʼporth. Oh, Mr. Newman, you are so
good–natured”—Cradock was just coming in, rather glum from another
failure—“I really donʼt believe you would think you were bemeaning
yourself by going home with this poor little atom.”

“I should rather hope I would not,” replied Cradock, looking grand.

“Oh, I did not know. I beg your pardon, Iʼm sure. I would go myself,
only Sally is out, and the boy gone home ever so long ago. I beg your
pardon, Iʼm sure, Mr. Newman; I thought you were so good–natured.”

“Mrs. Ducksacre,” said Cradock, “you utterly misunderstand me. I
replied to the form of your sentence, perhaps, rather than to its
meaning. What I meant was, that I should rather hope I would not think
it below me to go home with this little dear. If I could suppose it any
disgrace to me, I should deserve to be kicked by your errand–boy all
round this shop, Mrs. Ducksacre; and I am surprised you misunderstand
me so. Why, I know this little girl well; and her name is Louisa Jupp.”

“Tiss Loo,” said the little child, standing up on tiptoe, and spreading
out her arms to Cradock. All the children loved him, as the little ones
at Nowelhurst would run after Mr. Rosedew. Children are even better
judges of character than dogs.

“Why, you poor little soul,” said Crad, as he seated her on his strong
right arm with her little cheek to his, and she drew a thousand straws
of light through her lashes from the gas–jet, which she had never yet
been so close to, “how hot and dry your lips are! I hope you are not
taking the—sickness”—he was going to say “fever,” but feared to
frighten Loo.

“Mother fray,” cried the small girl, proud of the importance accruing
to her, “Loo dot wever; Irishers dot bad wever on the foor below
mother. Loo det nice thins, and lay abed, if me dot the wever.”

“Put the poor childʼs things, whatever they are, in a basket, Mrs.
Ducksacre. How odd her little legs feel! And a shillingʼs worth of
grapes, if you please, in a bag by themselves. Hereʼs the money for
them. You know Iʼll bring back the basket. But the bags donʼt come
back, do they?”

“No, sir, of course not. Half–a–crown a gross for the small ones, with
the name and the cross–handle basket, and the cabbage and carrots, sir.
Sixpence more for cornopean–pattern with a pineapple, and grapes and
oranges. But lor, sir, the cornopean” [cornucopiæ] “would frighten half
our customers. The basket–pattern pays better for an advertisement than
to get them back again, even if parties would bring them, which I knows
well they never would, sir.”

Then Cradock set forth with the child on his arm, his coat thrown over
his shoulders, and the best shillingʼs worth of foreign grapes—Mrs.
Ducksacre never bought English ones—and the best three farthingʼs
worth of potatoes and onions that was made that day by any tradesman in
any part of London, not excluding “them low costers,” as the Ducksacre
firm expressed it.

Little Loo Juppʼs sore throat proved to be, as Cradock feared it
would, the first symptom of scarlet fever; and the young man had the
pleasure—one of the highest and purest pleasures which any man can
have—of saving a human life. He watched that trembling flame of
life, and fostered it, and sheltered it, as if “the hopes of a nation
hung”—as the penny–a–liners love to say of some babe not a whit more
valuable—upon its feeble flicker. He hired another room for her, where
the air was purer; he made the doctor attend to the case, which at
first that doctor cared little to do; he brought her many a trifling
comfort; in a word, he waited upon her so that the old women of the
court called him thenceforth “Nurse Newman.”

“What, you here again, you white–livered young sneak!” cried Issachar
Jupp, reeling in at the door, just as Cradock was coming out; “take
that, then——” and he lifted a great oak bludgeon, newly cut from the
towing–path of the Basingstoke Canal. If Cradock had not been as quick
as lightning, and caught the stick over the bargemanʼs shoulder, there
would have been weeping and wailing and a lifelong woe for Amy.

“Hush,” he said; “donʼt make such a noise, man. Your child is at the
point of death, in the room overhead.”

Poor Crad, naturally of a bright complexion, but pale from long
unhappiness, might now have retorted the compliment as to the “pallor
jecoris.” The bargee turned so pale, that he looked like a collierʼs
tablecloth. Then he planted his heavy stick on the ground; else he
would have lain flat on his threshold.

“My Loo, my Loo!” was all he could say; “oh my Loo! _Itʼs a lie, sir!_”

“I wish it was,” replied Cradock; “take my arm, Mr. Jupp. Donʼt be
over–frightened. We hope with all our hearts to save her, and to–night
we shall know. Already I think I perceive some change in her breathing,
though her tongue is like a furnace.”

He spoke with a tone and in a voice which no man ever has described,
nor shall, but which every born man feels to be genuine, long ere he
can think.

“[Condemn] me for a [sanguineous] fool,” cried Jupp, with two enormous
tears guttering down the coal–dust, and his great chest heaving and
wanting to sob, only it didnʼt know the way; “[condemn] my eyes for
swearing so, and making such a [female dog] of myself, but what the
[Hades] am I to do? Oh my Loo, my Loo! If you die, Iʼll go to [Hades]
after you.”

Excuse me for washing out this speech to regulation weakness; perhaps
it was entered in white on high, as the turn of a life of blackness.

Cradock turned away, and trembled. Who can see a rugged man split
to the bottom of his nature, and not himself be splintered? I donʼt
believe that any can: not even the cold iron scoundrels whom modern
plays delight in.

“Now come up with me, Mr. Jupp,” said Crad, taking care not to look at
him, “out at this door, in at the other. Poor little soul! she has
been so good. You canʼt think how good she has been. And she has taken
her medicine so nicely.”

“Pray God Almighty not to [condemn] me, for not [condemning] myself
enough,” said Issachar Jupp, below his breath, as he leaned on
Cradockʼs arm.

It was his form of prayer; and it meant more than most of ours do.
Though I may be discarded by turtle–dove quill–drivers for daring to
record it, will he ever be worse for uttering it? Of course, it was
very shocking; but far more so to men than to angels.

CHAPTER VIII.

Little Looʼs fever “took the turn” that night. Cradock went away, of
course, now her own father was come; and the savage bargee would have
gone on his knees, and crawled in that fashion—wherein all fashion
crawls—down the rough stairs, every one of them, if the young man
would only have let him. We are just beginning to scorn the serfdom of
one mind to another. We begin to desire that no man should, without
fair argument, accept our dicta as equal to his own in wisdom. And I
fully believe that if fate had thrown us across Shakespeare, Bacon, or
Newton, we should now refer to our own reason what they said, before
admiring it. For, after all, what are we? What are our most glorious
minds? Only one spark more of God.

And yet the servience, not of the mind, but of the heart to a larger
one, is a fealty most honourable to the giver and the receiver. In
a bold independent man, such as Issachar Jupp was, this fealty was
not to be won by any of that paltry sentiment about birth, clanship,
precedency, position, appearance, &c., which is our national method of
circumcising the New Testament—it was only to be won by proof that the
other heart was bigger than his. Prove that once, and till death it was
granted.

Now, the small Loo Jupp being out of danger, and her father, grinning
like a gridiron with the firelight behind it, every day at her bedside,
the force of circumstances—which, in good English, means the want of
money—sent Cradock Nowell once more catʼs–cradling throughout London,
to answer advertisements. His heart rose within him every day as he set
out in the morning, and in the same relative position fell, as he came
home every evening.

“Do, sir, do,” cried Issachar Jupp, who never swore now, before
Cradock, except under strongest pressure; “do come aboard our barge.
Iʼve aʼmost a–got the appointment of skipper to the _Industrious
Maiden_, homeside of Nine Elms, as tight a barge as ever was built,
and the name done in gold letters. Fact, I may say, and not tell no
secrets; I be safe to be aboord of her, if my Loo allow me to go, and I
donʼt swear hard at the check–house. And, perhaps, I shall be able to
help it, after Loo so ill, and you such a hangel.”

“Well, I donʼt know,” replied Cradock, who could not bear to simulate
intense determination; “I should like a trip into the country, if I
could earn my wages as agent, or whatever it is. But suppose the canal
is frozen up before our voyage begins, Jupp?”

“Oh, d—n that!” cried Issachar, for the idea was too much for him,
even in Cradockʼs presence; “I never yet knew a long winter, sir, after
a wonderful stormy autumn.”

And in that conclusion he was right, to the best of my experience.
Perhaps because the stormy autumn shows the set of the Gulf Stream.

By this time more than a month had passed since Cradock and Wena
arrived in London; half his money was spent, and he had found no
employment. He had advertised, and answered advertisements, till he was
tired. He had worn out his one pair of boots with walking, for he had
thought it better to walk, as it might be of service to him to know
London thoroughly; and that knowledge can only be acquired by perpetual
walking. No man can be said to know London thoroughly, who does not
know the suburbs also—who, if suddenly put down at the Elephant and
Castle, or at Shoreditch Church, cannot tell exactly whither each
of the six fingers points. Such knowledge very few men possess; it
requires the genius loci—to apply the expression barbarously—as well
as peculiar calls upon it. Cradock, of course, could not attain such
knowledge in a month. Indeed, he was obliged to ask his way to so
well–known a part as Hammersmith, when he had seen an advertisement
for a clerk, to help in some coal–office there.

With the water quelching in his boots (which were worn away to the
welting)—for the sky was like the pulp of an orange, and the pavement
wanted draining—he turned in at a little gate near the temporary
terminus of the West London line. In a wooden box, with a kitchen
behind it, he found Mr. Clinkers; who thought, when he saw Cradʼs face,
that he was come to give a large order; and when he saw his boots, that
he was come to ask to be errand–boy. Clinkers was a familiar, jocular,
red–faced fellow, whom his friends were fond of calling “not at all a
bad sort.”

“Take a glass, mister,” said he, when Cradock had stated his purpose;
“wonʼt do you no harm such a day as this, and I donʼt fancy ‘twould
me either. Jenny! Jenny! Why, bless that gal; ever since my poor wife
died, sheʼs along of them small–coals fellows. Iʼll bet a tanner she
is. What do you say to it, sir? Will you bet?”

“Well,” replied Cradock, smiling, “it wouldnʼt be at all a fair bet. In
the first place, I know nothing of Miss Jennyʼs propensities; and, in
the second, I have no idea what the small–coals fellows are.”

The small–coals men are the truck–drivers and the greengrocers in
the by–streets, who buy the crushings and riddlings by the sack, at
the wharf or terminus, and sell them by the quarter hundred–weight,
weight, at a profit of two hundred per cent. Cradock might have known
this, but the Ducksacre firm was reticent upon some little matters.

Mr. Clinkers could not stop to explain; only he said to himself,
“Pretty fellow to apply for a clerkship in the coal–line, and not know
that!”

Jenny appeared at last, looking perfectly self–possessed.

“Jenny, you baggage, two tumblers and silver teaspoons in no time. And
the _little_ kettle; mind now, I tell you the _little_ kettle. Canʼt
you understand, gal, that I may want to shave with the water, but ainʼt
going to have the foot–tub?”

Jennyʼs broad face, mapped with coal–dust, grinned from ear to ear, as
she looked at her master saucily—a proof almost infallible of a very
genial government. She heard that shaving joke every day, and, the more
she heard it, the more she enjoyed it. So the British public, at a
theatre, or an election, appreciates a joke according to the square of
the number of the times the joke has been poked at it. Hurrah for the
slow perception, and the blunt knife that opens the oyster!

“Queer gal, that,” said Clinkers, producing his raw material; “uncommon
queer gal, sir, as any you may have met with.”

“No doubt of it,” replied Cradock; “and now for the cause of my
visit——”

“Hang me, sir, you donʼt understand that gal. I say she is the queerest
gal that ever lived out of a barge. You should see her when she gets
along of some of them small–coals fellows. Blow me if she canʼt twist
a dozen of them round her finger, sir.”

“And her master too,” thought Cradock; “unless I am much mistaken, she
will be the new Mrs. Clinkers.”

Jenny heard most of her masterʼs commentary as she went to and fro, and
she kept up a constant grin without speech, in the manner of an empty
coal–scuttle.

“Ah, sir, grief is a dry thing, a sad dry thing;” and Clinkers banged
down his tumbler till the spoon reeled round the brandy; “no business,
if you please now, not a word of business till we both be below the
fiddle; and, if it isnʼt to your liking, speak out like a man, sir.”

“Below the fiddle, Mr. Clinkers! What fiddle? I donʼt at all understand
you.”

“Very few people does, young man; very few people indeed. Scarcely any,
I may say, except Jenny and the cookshop woman; and the latter have got
encumbrances as quite outweighs the business. Ainʼt you ever heard of
the fiddle of a teaspoon, sir?”

“Oh, very well,” said Cradock, tossing off his brandy–and–water to
bring things to a point. It was a good thing for him that he got it,
poor fellow, for he was sadly wet and weary.

“Lor, now, to see that!” cried Clinkers, opening his eyes; “Iʼm blowed
if you mustnʼt be a Hoxford gent.”

“To be sure, so I am,” replied Cradock, laughing; “but I should not
have thought that you would have known—I mean, I am surprised that
you, at this distance, should know anything of Oxford men.”

“Tell you about that presently. Come over again the fire, sir. Up with
your heel–tap, and have another.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Clinkers. You are very kind; but I shall not take
one drop more.”

“Then you ainʼt been there very long, thatʼs certain. Now you have come
about this place, I know; though itʼs a queer one for a Hoxford gent.
‘Gent under a cloud,’ thinks I, the moment I claps eyes on you. Ah, I
knows the aristocraxy, sir. Now, what might be your qualifications?”

“None whatever, except such knowledge as springs from a good education.”

“Whew!” whistled Mr. Clinkers, and that sound was worth fifty sentences.

“Then you conclude,” said Cradock, not so greatly downcast, for he
had got this speech by heart now, “that I am not fitted for the post
offered in your advertisement?”

“Knows what they Hoxford gents is,” continued Clinkers, reflectively;
“come across a lot of them once, when I was gay and rattling. They
ran into my tax–cart, coming home from Ascot, about a mile this side
of Brentford. Famous good company over a glass, when they drops their
aristocraxy; they runs up a tick all over town, and leaves a Skye dog
to pay for it; comes home about four in the morning, and donʼt know the
latch from the scraper. Always pays in the end, though; nearly always
pays in the end—so a Hoxford tradesman told me—and interest ten per
cent. Differs in that from the medicals; the fast medicals never do
pay, sir.”

“Most unjust,” said Cradock, rising, “a most unjust thing, Mr.
Clinkers; you not only judge the present by the past, but you reason
from the particular to the universal—the most fruitful and womanlike
of the fallacies.”

“It ainʼt anything about fallacy, sir, that makes me refuse you,” cried
Clinkers, who liked this outburst; “Iʼll tell you just what it is. You
Hoxford scholars may be very honest, _but you ainʼt got the grease for
business_.”

Sorely down at heart and heel, Cradock plodded away from the yard of
the hospitable Clinkers, who came to the door and looked after him,
fearing to indulge his liking for that queer young fellow. But he had
taken Cradʼs address; for who knew but something might turn up?

“That man,” said Cradock to himself, “has a kindly heart, and would
have helped me if he could. He wanted to pay my fare back to town, but
of course I would not let him. It was well worth while to come all this
distance, and get wet through twice over, to come across a kind–hearted
man, when a fellow is down so. I began with applying for grand places;
what a fool I was! Places worth 150_l._ or 200_l._ a–year. No wonder I
did not get them: and what a lot of boot I have wasted! Now I am come
down to 50_l._ per annum, and 75_l._ would be a fortune. If I had only
begun at that mark, I might have got something by this time. ‘Vaulting
ambition doth oʼerleap itself.’ And I might have emigrated—good
Heavens! I might have emigrated upon the bounty of Uncle John, to some
land where a man is worth more than the cattle of the field. Only Amy
stopped me, only the thought of my Amy. Darling love, the sweetest
angel—stop, I am so unlucky; if I begin to bless her, very likely
sheʼll get typhus fever. After all, what does it matter what sort of
life I take to? Or whether, indeed, I take the trouble to take to any
at all? Only for her sake. A man who has done what I have lives no
more, but drags his life. Now Iʼll go in for common labour, work of the
hands and muscles; many a better man has done it; and it will be far
wiser for me while my brain is so loose and wandering. I wonder I never
thought of that. Isnʼt it raining, though! What we used, in the happy
days, to call ‘Wood Fidley rainʼ”.

The future chironax trudged more cheerfully after this decision. But he
was very sorry to get so soaked, for he had his only suit of clothes
on. He had brought but one suit of his own; and all he had bought with
the rectorʼs money was six shirts at 3s. 6d., and four pairs of cotton
hose. So he could not afford to get wet.

There could be no doubt that he was shabbily dressed, no rich game to
an hotel–tout, no tempting fare to a cabman; but neither could there be
any doubt that he was a pure and noble gentleman; that was as clear as
in the heyday of finest Oxford dandyism. Only he carried his head quite
differently, and the tint of his cheeks was gone. He used to walk with
his broad and well–set head thrown back, and slightly inclined to one
side; now he bore it flagging, drooping, as if the spring of the neck
were gone.

But still the brave clear eyes met frankly all who cared to look at
him; the face and gait were of a man unhappy but not unmanly. If, at
the time Sir Cradock condemned his only son so cruelly, he had looked
at him once, and read the sorrow so unmistakeable in his face, the old
man might have repented, and wept, and saved a world of weeping. A tear
in time saves ninety–nine; but who has the sense to yield it?

Soaked and tired out at last, he reached his little lodgings—quite
large enough for him, though—and found Black Wena warming the chair,
the only chair he had to sit on. Unluckily, he did not do what a man
who cared for himself would have done. Having no change of raiment—in
plain English, only one pair of trousers—he should have gone to bed at
once, or at any rate have pulled his wet clothes off. Instead of doing
so, he sat and sat, with the wet things clinging closer to him, and
the shivers crawling deeper, until his last inch of candle was gone,
and the room was cold as an icehouse, for the rain had turned to snow
at nightfall, and the fire had not been lit.

Wena sat waiting and nodding upwards, on the yard and a half of brown
drugget, which now was her chiefest _pulvinar_, and once or twice she
nudged her master, and whined about supper and bedtime. But Cradock
only patted her, and improved the turn of his sentence. He was making
one last effort to save from waste and ridicule his tastes and his
education. A craftsman, if he have self–respect, is worthy, valuable,
admirable, nearer to the perception of simple truth than some men of
high refinement. Nevertheless, it is too certain—as I, who know them
well, and not unkindly, can testify—that there is scarcely one in a
dozen labourers, even around the metropolis, who respects himself and
his calling. Whose fault this is, I pretend not—for pretence it would
be—to say. Probably, the guilt is “much of a muchness,” as in all
mismanaged matters. The material was as good as our own; how has it got
so vitiated? It is as lowering to us as it is to themselves, that the
“enlightened working–men of England” cannot go out for their holiday,
cannot come home from their work, cannot even speak among their own
children, and in the goodwifeʼs presence, without words, not of manly
strength, but of hoggish coarseness. In time this must be otherwise;
but the evil is not cured easily. The boy believes it manly to talk as
he hears his father talk; he rejoices in it the more, perhaps, because
the school forbids it. He does not know what the foul words mean; and
all things strange have the grandest range. Those words tell powerfully
in a story, with smaller boys round him upon the green, or at the
street–corner. And so he grows up engrimed with them, and his own boys
follow suit.

Cradock was young and chivalrous, and knew not much of these things,
which his position had kept from him; nor in his self–abandonment
cared he much about them. Nevertheless, he shrank unconsciously from
the lowering of his existence. And now he sat up, writing, writing,
till his wet clothes made little pools on the floor, while he answered
twenty advertisements, commercial, literary, promiscuous. Then he
looked at his little roll of postage–stamps, and with shivering fingers
affixed them. There were only fifteen; and it was too late to get any
more that night; and he felt that he could not afford to use them now
so rashly. So he ran out into the slushy streets, gamboged with London
snow, and posted those fifteen of his letters which were the least
ambitious. By this time he knew that the best chance was of something
not over–gorgeous. Wena did not go with him, but howled until he came
back. Then he gave the poor little thing, with some self–reproach at
his tardiness, all the rest of his cottage loaf, and his haʼporth
of milk, which she took with some protestations, looking up at him
wistfully now and then, to see whether he was eating.

“No, Wena, I canʼt eat to–night; bilious from over–feeding, perhaps.
But Iʼve done a good eveningʼs work, and weʼll be very plucky for
breakfast, girl, and have sixpenceworth of cold ham. No fear there of
making a cannibal of you, you innocent little soul.”

He was desperately afraid, as most young fellows from the country are,
of having unclean animals spicily served up by the London allantopolæ.
This terror is the result for the most part of rustic sham knowingness,
and the British love of stale jokes. However, beyond all controversy,
dark are the rites of sepulture of the measly pigs around London.

He crept, at last, beneath his scanty bedding—clean, although so
patched and threadbare—and the iron cross–straps shook and rattled
with the shudders that went through him.

Wena, who slept beneath the bed in a nest which she made of the
drugget–scrap, jumped upon the blanket at midnight, to know pray what
was the matter. Then she licked his face, and tried to warm him, in his
broken slumbers. That day he had taken a virulent cold, which struck
into his system, and harboured there for a fortnight, till it broke out
in a raging fever.

The next day, Cradock received a letter, of doubtful classicality, and
bearing the Hammersmith post–mark.

 “RESPECTED SIR,—Was sorry after you streaked off yesterday that had
 not kept you longer. You was scarce gone out of the gate as one might
 say, when in comes a gent, no end of a nob, beats you as one might
 say in some respects, and a head of hair as good. Known by the name
 of Hearty,—Hearty Wibraham, Esquire, but friends prefers callin’ him
 Hearty, such bein’ his character. And hearty he were with my brandy, I
 do assure you, and no mistake. This gent say as he want to establish
 a hagency for the sale of first–class Hettons to the members of the
 _bone tons_: was I agreeable to supply him? So I say, ‘Certainly, by
 all means, if I see my way to my money.’ And then he breaks out, in a
 manner as would frighten some hands, about the artlessness of the age,
 the suspiciousness of commercial gents, and confidence between man and
 man. ‘Waste of time,’ says I; ‘coals is coals now, and none of them
 leaves this yard for nothing. Better keep that sort of stuff,’ says I,
 ‘for the green young gent from Hoxford as was here just now.’ ‘What,’
 says he, ‘Hoxford man after a situation?’ ‘ Yes,’ I says, ‘nice young
 gent, only under a cloud.’ Says he, ‘I loves a Hoxford man; hope he
 has got some money.’ ‘ For what?’ I says; ‘have you got anything good
 for him to invest in?’ ‘Havenʼt I?’ he says; ‘take a little more
 brandy, old chapʼ—my own brandy, mind you, blow me if he ainʼt a
 hearty one. Well, I canʼt tell you half he said, not being a talkative
 man myself, since the time as I lost Mrs. Clinkers. Only the upshot of
 it is, I think you couldnʼt do no harm by callinʼ, if he write you as
 he said he would.

 “Yours to command, and hope you didnʼt get wet,

 “ROBERT CLINKERS, Jun., for POKER, CLINKERS, and Co., Coal Merchants,
 West London Terminuss, Hammersmith.

 “N.B.—Coke supplied in your own sacks, on the most moderate terms.”

By the next delivery, Cradock got another letter, far more elegantly
written, but not half so honest.

 “Mr. Hearty Wibraham, having heard of Mr. Charles Newman from a mutual
 friend, Mr. Clinkers, of Hammersmith, presents his compliments to the
 former gentleman, and thinks it might be worth Mr. Newmanʼs while
 to call upon him, Mr. H. W., at six oʼclock this evening, supposing
 the post to do its duty, which it rarely does. Hearty Wibraham, No.
 66, Aurea Themis Buildings, Notting Hill district. N.B.—The above
 is _bonâ fide_. References will be required. But perhaps they may be
 dispensed with.

  “H. W.”

“Well,” said Cradock to Wena, shivering as he said it, for the cold was
striking into him, “you see we are in request, my dear. Not that I have
any high opinion of Mr. Hearty Wibraham; as a gentleman, I mean. But
for all that he may be an honest man. And beggars—as you know, Wena,
dear, when you sit up so prettily—beggars must not be choosers. Do you
think you could walk so far, Wena? If you could, it would do you good,
my beauty; and Iʼll see that you are not run over.”

Wena agreed, rather rashly, to go; for the London stones, to a country
dog, are as bad as a mussel–bank to a bather; but she thought she
might find some woodcocks—and so she did, at the game–shops, and some
curlews which they sold for them—but her real object in going, was
that she had made some nice acquaintances in the neighbourhood, whom
she wanted to see again. She wouldnʼt speak to any low dog, for she
meant to keep up the importance and grandeur of the Nowell family, but
there were some dogs, heigho! they had such ways with them, and they
were brushed so nicely, what could a poor little country dog do but
fall in love with them?

Therefore Wena came after her master, and made believe not to notice
them, but she lingered now and then at a scraper, and, when she
snapped, her teeth had gloves on.

When Cradock and his little dog, after many a twist and turn, found
Aurea Themis Buildings, the master rang at the sprightly door, newly
grained and varnished. Being inducted by a young woman, with a most
coquettish cap on, he told black Wena to wait outside, and she lay down
upon the door–step.

Then he was shown into the “first–floor drawing–room,” according to
arrangement, and requested to “take a seat, sir.” The smart maid, who
carried a candle, lit the gas in a twinkling, but Cradock wondered why
the coal–merchant had no coals in his fireplace.

Just when he had concluded, after a fit of shivering, that this defect
was due perhaps to that extreme familiarity which breeds in a grocer
contempt for figs, Mr. Wibraham came in, quite by accident, and was
evidently amazed to see him.

“What! Ah, no, my good sir, not Mr. Charles Newman, a member of the
University of Oxford!”

“Yes, sir, I am that individual,” replied Cradock, very uncomfortable
at the prominent use of his “alias.”

“Then, allow me, sir, to shake hands with you. I am strongly
prepossessed in your favour, young gentleman, from the description I
received of you from our mutual friend, Mr. Clinkers. Ah, I like that
Clinkers. No nonsense about Clinkers, sir.”

“So I believe,” said Cradock; “but, as I have only seen him once, it
would perhaps be premature of me——”

“Not a bit, my dear sir, not a bit. That is one of the mistakes we
make. I always rely upon first impressions, and they never deceive me.
Now I see exactly what you are, an upright honourable man, full of
conscientiousness, but _not overburdened here_.”

He gave a jocular tap to his forehead, which was about half the width
of Cradockʼs.

“Well,” thought Cradock, “you are straightforward, even to the verge of
rudeness. But no doubt you mean well, and perhaps you are nearer the
truth than the people who have told me otherwise. Anyhow, it does not
matter much.” But, in spite of this conclusion, he bowed in his stately
manner, and said:

“If that be the case, sir, I fear it will hardly suit your purpose to
take me into your employment.”

“Ah, I have hurt your feelings, I see. I am so blunt and hasty. Hearty
Wibraham is my name; and hearty enough I am, God knows; and perhaps a
little too hearty. ‘Hasty Wibraham, you ought to be called, by Jove,
you ought,’ said one of my friends last night, and by Gad I think he
was right, sir.”

“I am sure I donʼt know,” said Cradock; “how can I pretend to say,
without myself being hasty?”

“I suppose, Mr. Newman, you can command a little capital? It is not at
all essential, you know, in a _bonâ fide_ case like yours.”

“Thatʼs a good job,” said Cradock; “for my capital, like the new one of
Canada, is below contempt.”

“To a man imbued, Mr. Newman, with the genuine spirit of commerce, no
sum, however small, but may be the key of fortune.”

“My key of fortune, then, is about twenty pounds ten shillings.”

“A very, very small sum, my dear sir; but I dare say some of your
friends would assist you to make it, say fifty guineas. You Oxford men
are so generous; always ready to help each other. That is why I canʼt
help liking you so. Thoroughly fine fellows,” he added, in a loud
aside, “thoroughly noble fellows, when a messmate is in trouble. Canʼt
apply to his family, I see; but it would be mean in him not to let his
friends help him. I do believe the highest privilege of human life is
to assist a friend in difficulties.”

Cradock, of course, could not reply to all this, because he was not
meant to hear it; but he gazed with some admiration at the utterer of
such exalted sentiments. Mr. Hearty Wibraham, now about forty–five
years old, was rather tall and portly, with an aquiline face, a dark
complexion, and a quick, decisive manner. His clothes were well made,
and of good quality, unpretentious, neat, substantial. His only piece
of adornment was a magnificent gold watch–chain, which rather shunned
than courted observation.

“No,” said Cradock, at last, “I have not a single friend in the world
to whom I would think of applying for the loan of a sixpence.”

“Well, we _are_ independent,” Mr. Wibraham still held discourse with
himself; “but Hearty Wibraham likes and respects him the more for
that. Heʼll get over his troubles, whatever they are. My good sir,”
he continued, aloud, “I will not utter any opinion, lest you should
think me inclined to flatter—the last thing in the world I ever would
do. Nevertheless, in all manly candour, I am bound to tell you that my
prepossession in your favour induces me to make you a most advantageous
offer.”

“I am much obliged to you. Pray, what is it?”

“A clerkship in my counting–house, which I am just about to open,
having formed a very snug little connexion to begin with.”

“Oh!” cried Cradock, for, green as he was, he would rather have had to
do with a business already established.

“I see you are surprised. No wonder, sir; no wonder! But you must know
that I shall have at least my _quid pro quo_. My connexion is of a
very peculiar character. In fact, it lies entirely in the very highest
circles. To meet such customers as mine, not only a man of gentlemanly
manners is required, but a man of birth and education. How could I
offer such a man less than 150_l._ per annum?”

“Your terms are very liberal, very liberal, I am sure,” replied
Cradock, reddening warmly at the appraisement of his qualities. “I
should not be comfortable without telling you frankly that I am worth
about half that yearly sum; until, I mean, until I get a little up to
business. I shall be quite content to begin upon 100_l._ a year.

“No! will you, though?” exclaimed Hearty Wibraham, flushed with a good
heartʼs enthusiasm. “You are the finest young fellow I have seen since
I was your age myself. Suppose, now, we split the difference. Say
125_l._; and I shall work you pretty hard, I can tell you. For we do
not confine our attention exclusively to the members of the Ministry,
and the House of Lords; we also deal with the City magnates, and take
a contract for Somerset House. And remember one thing; you will be in
exclusive charge whenever I am away negotiating. A man deserves to be
paid, you know, for high responsibility.”

“And where will the”—he hardly knew what to call it—“the office, the
counting–house, the headquarters be?”

“Not in any common thoroughfare,” replied Mr. Wibraham, proudly; “that
would never do for a business of such a character. What do you think,
sir, of Howard Crescent, Park Lane? Not so bad, sir, is it, for the
sale of the grimy?”

“I really do not know,” said Cradock; “but it sounds very well. When do
we open the books?”

“Monday morning, sir, at ten oʼclock precisely. Let me see: to–day
is Friday. Perhaps it would be an accommodation to you, to have your
salary paid weekly, until you draw by the quarter. Now, remember, I
rely upon you to promote my interest in every way consistent with
honour.”

“That you may do, most fully. I shall never forget your kind
confidence, and your liberality.”

“You will have two young gentlemen, if not three, wholly under your
orders. Also a middle–aged gentleman, a sort of sleeping partner, will
kindly attend _pro tem._, and show you the work expected of you. I
myself shall be engaged, perhaps, during the forenoon, in promoting the
interests of the business in a most important quarter. Now, be true to
me, Newman—I take liberties, you see—keep your subordinates in their
place, and make them stick to work, sir. And remember that one ounce
of example is worth a pound of precept. If you act truly and honestly
by me, as I know you will, you may look forward to a partnership at no
distant date. But donʼt be over–sanguine, my dear boy; there is hard
work before you.”

“And you will not find me shrink from it,” said Cradock, throwing his
shoulders back; “but we have not settled yet as to the amount of the
premium, or deposit, whichever it may be.”

“Thank you. To be sure. I quite forgot that incident. Thirty guineas, I
think you said, was all that would be convenient to you.”

“No, Mr. Wibraham; I said twenty pounds ten shillings.”

“Ah, yes, my mistake. I knew that there was an odd ten shillings. Say
twenty–five guineas. A mere matter of form, you know; but one which
we dare not neglect. It is not a premium; simply a deposit; to be
returned at the expiration of the first twelve months. Will you send it
to me by cheque? That, perhaps, would be the more convenient form. It
will save you from coming again.”

“I am sorry to say I cannot; for now I have no banker. Neither can I by
any means make it twenty–five guineas. I have stated to you the utmost
figure of my present census.”

“Ah, quite immaterial. I am only sorry for your sake. The sum will be
invested. I shall hold it as your trustee. But, for the sake of the
books, merely to look well on the books, we must say twenty guineas.
How could I invest twenty pounds ten shillings?”

This appeared reasonable to Cradock, who knew nothing about investment;
and, after reflecting a minute or two, he replied as follows:

“I believe, Mr. Wibraham, that I might manage to make it twenty
guineas. You said, I think, that my salary would be payable weekly.”

“To be sure, my dear boy, to be sure. At any rate until further
arrangements.”

“Then I will undertake to pay you the twenty guineas. Next Monday, I
suppose, will do for it?”

“Oh yes, Monday will do. But stop, I shall not be there on that
morning; and, for formʼs sake, it must be paid first. Let us say
Saturday evening. I shall be ready with a stamped receipt. Will you
meet me here at six oʼclock, as you did this evening?”

Cradock agreed to this, and Mr. Hearty Wibraham shook hands with him
most cordially, begging that mutual trust and amity might in no way be
lessened by his own unfortunate obligation to observe certain rules and
precedents.

In the highest spirits possible under such troubles as his were, Crad
strode away from Aurea Themis Buildings, and whistled to black Wena,
whom two of the most accomplished dog–stealers in London had been doing
their best to inveigle. Failing of skill—for Wena was a deal too
knowing—they at last attempted violence, putting away their chopped
liver and hoof–meat, and other baits still more savoury, upon which I
dare not enlarge. But, just as Black George, having lifted her boldly
by the nape of the neck, was popping her into the sack tail foremost,
though her short tail was under her stomach, what did she do but twist
round upon him, in a way quite unknown to the faculty, and make her
upper and lower canines meet through the palm of his hand? It wonʼt do
to chronicle what he said—I am too much given to strictest accuracy;
enough that he let her drop, in the manner of a red–hot potato; and
Blue Bill, who made a grab at her, only got a scar on the wrist. Then
she retreated to her step, and fired a royal salute of howls, never
ending, ever beginning, until her master came out.

“Wena, dear,” he said, for he always looked on the little thing as an
inferior piece of Amy, “you are very tired, my darling; the pavement
has been too much for you. Sit upon my arm, pretty. We are both going
to make our fortunes. And then you ‘shall walk in silk attire, and
siller hae to spare.’”

Wena nuzzled her nose into its usual place in Cradockʼs identicity,
and growled if any other dog took the liberty of looking at him. And
so they got home, singing snug little songs to each other upon the
way; and they both made noble suppers on the strength of their rising
fortunes.

CHAPTER IX.

The following day was Saturday, and the young fellow spent great
part of it in learning the rules, the tables, and statistics of the
coal trade, so far as they could be ascertained from a sixpenny work
which he bought. Not satisfied with this, he went to the Geological
Museum, in Jermyn–street, and pored over the specimens, and laid in a
stock of carbonic knowledge that would have astonished Clinkers and
Jenny. When the building was closed at four oʼclock he hurried back to
Mortimer–street, paid Mrs. Ducksacre for his weekʼs lodgings, and ran
off to a pawnbrokerʼs to raise a little money. Without doing this, he
would not be able to deposit the twenty guineas. Mr. Gillʼs shopman
knew Cradock well, from his having been there frequently to redeem
some trifling articles for the poor people of the court, and felt
some good–will towards him for his kindness to the little customers.
It increased the activity of his trade, for most of the pledges were
repledged or ever the week was out. And of course he got the money for
issuing another duplicate.

“Hope thereʼs nothing amiss, Mr. Newman,” said the pawnbrokerʼs
assistant; “sorry to see you come here, sir, on your own account.”

“Oh, you ought to congratulate me,” returned Cradock, with a knowing
smile: “I am going to pay a premium, and enter into a good position
upon advantageous terms; very advantageous, I may say, seeing how
little I know of the coal trade.”

“Take care, sir, take care, I beg of you. People run down our line of
business, and call it coining tears, &c.; but you may take my word for
it, there is a deal more roguery in the coal trade, or rather in the
pretence of it, than ever there is in the broking way.”

“There can be none in the present case, for the simple reason that I am
not in any way committed to a partnership, neither am I to be at all
dependent upon the profits.” And Cradock looked thankful for advice,
but a deal too wise to want it.

“Well, sir, I hope it may be all right; for I am sure you deserve it.
But there is a man, not far from here, I think you took some things out
for him, by the name of Zakey Jupp; a shrewdish sort of fellow, though
a deal too fond of fighting. Heʼll be up to some of the coal tricks, I
expect, heʼs about in the yards so much; and the whippers and heavers
are good uns to talk. Donʼt you think it beneath you, sir, to consult
with Zakey Jupp, if you have the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

“I am proud to say that I have at last,” replied Cradock, smiling
grimly; “but he went on board the _Industrious Maiden_, at Nine Elms,
yesterday morning, and may not be back for a month. He wanted me to
go with him; but I did not see how to be useful, and had not given my
landlady notice. Now, if you please, I have not a moment to spare.”

The shopman saw that he could not, without being really impertinent,
press his advice any further; and, although Cradock was so
communicative, as young men are apt to be, especially about their
successes, he never afforded much temptation to any one for
impertinence.

“And how much upon them little articles?” was the next question put
to Cradock; and he did not ask any very high figure, for fear of not
getting them out again.

As he set off full speed for Aurea Themis Buildings, without inviting
Wena, it struck him that it would be but common prudence just to look
at the place of business; so he dashed aside out of Oxford–street, at
the rate of ten miles an hour—for he was very light of foot—and made
his way to Howard–crescent, whose position he had learned from the map.
Sure enough there it was, when he got to the number indicated. And what
a noble plate! So large, indeed, that it was absolutely necessary
to have it in two parts. What refulgent brass! What fine engraving,
especially on the lower part! You might call it chalco–illumination,
chromography, chromometallurgy; I do not know any word half grand
enough to describe it. And the legend itself so simple, how could
they have made so much of it? The upper plate, though beautifully
bright, was comparatively plain, and only carried the words, “Wibraham,
Fookes, and Co.;” the lower and far more elaborate part enabled the
public to congratulate itself upon having the above as “Coal Merchants
and Colliery Agents to Her Most Gracious Majesty and the Duchy of
Lancaster. Hours of Business, from Ten till Four.”

Cradock just took time to read this, by the light of the gas–lamp
close to it; then glanced at the house (which looked clean and smart,
though smaller than what he expected), and, feeling ashamed of his mean
suspiciousness, darted away towards Notting Hill. When he arrived at
Aurea Themis Buildings, he was kept waiting at the door so long that
it made him quite uneasy, lest Hearty Wibraham should have forgotten
all about his little deposit. At last the smart girl opened the door,
and a short young man, whose dress more than whispered that he was not
given to compromise his æsthetic views, came out with a bounce, and
clapped a shilling in the hand of the smiling damsel. “There, Polly,
get a peach–coloured cap–ribbon, and wear it in a true knot for my
sake. I fancy Iʼve done your governor. Heʼs a trifle green; isnʼt he?”
But, in spite of his conversational powers, the handmaid dismissed him
summarily, when she saw Cradock waiting there.

The gas in the drawing–room was lit this time, and a good fire burning;
and Mr. Wibraham, in spirits absolutely jocular, sprang forward to meet
Cradock, and cried, “Hail, oh future partner!” Then he offered him
a glass of “rare old Madeira;” and, producing a blank receipt form,
exclaimed, “Whatever you do, my young friend, never let it be known in
the counting–house that I accepted you with so ridiculous a deposit as
the sum of thirty guineas.”

“Twenty, sir, twenty was what you agreed to accept.” Poor Cradock
trembled from head to foot, lest even now, at the last moment, he
should be rejected. But, to his delight, his new principal replied,

“Then, sir, twenty be it: if in a weak moment I agreed. Hearty Wibraham
would rather throw up all his connexion than allow any man to say of
him, sir, that he had departed from his word.” His voice trembled
slightly, and there was a twinkle as of tears in his eyes. Crad began
to apologize, though he could not quite see what harm he had done.

“Dash it, my boy, not another word. We understand each other. There is
your receipt.”

In his confidence, Hearty Wibraham passed the receipt form, now filled
up, to the aspiring coal–merchant, without having seen so much as the
colour of his money. Then Cradock pulled out Amyʼs purse, in which he
had put the cash, for good luck, and paid his footing bravely.

“Sir, I will not thank you,” said Mr. Wibraham, as he took the money,
“because the act would not be genuine. And I am proudly able to declare
that I have never yet done anything, even for the sake of the common
courtesies of life, which has not been thoroughly genuine. My boy, this
paltry twenty guineas is the opening of your mercantile life. May that
life be prosperous; as I am sure you deserve.”

Cradock took another glass of Madeira, as genuine as its owner, and,
after a hearty farewell, felt so rapidly on the rise, so touched, for
the first time of many weeks, by the dexter wand of fortune, that
he bought a quarter of an ounce of birdʼs–eye with an infusion of
“Latakia” (grown in the footpath field at Mitcham), and actually warmed
his dear brotherʼs pipe, which had not once been incremated ever since
the sacred fire of the Prytaneum had languished.

Wena was overjoyed to see him, and she loved the smell of tobacco,
and had often come sniffing about on the hearth–rug (or the bit of
baize that did for it) to know whether it was true that a big man—a
mastiff of a man, they told her—had succeeded in abolishing it; now,
seeing the blue curls quivering nicely, she jumped upon his lap; and,
although she was rather heavy, he thought it would be practice towards
the nursing of Amy, and possibly Amyʼs children. Then, when he thought
of that, he grew more happy than fifty emperors.

Fortune may jump on a young fellowʼs heart, with both heels set
together; but, the moment she takes one off, up it comes, like a
bladder too big to go into the football.

On Monday morning at ten oʼclock, our Crad, in a state of large
excitement, appeared before the gorgeous plate, and rang the bell
thereover. It was answered by an office–boy, with a grin so intensely
humorous that it was worth all the guineas that could have been thrust
into the great mouth he exhibited.

“Mr. Newman?” asked the boy, with a patronizing air, which a little
mind would have found offensive.

“To be sure,” replied Cradock; “I suppose I am expected.”

“That you are,” said the cheeky boy, grinning harder than ever; “the
other three gents is waiting, sir. Get you a penny paper for three
half–pence.”

“Thank you,” answered Cradock, hoping to depress that boy, “I am not
come here, young man, I trust, to waste time in reading the papers.”

“Oh no! oh lor no,” cried the boy as he led the way in; “tip–top
business this is, and all of us wears out our marrow–bones. His Ro–oyal
Highness will be here bumbye. ‘Spect theyʼll appoint you to receive
him, ‘cos you would look such a swell with our governorʼs best boots
on. Donʼt you refoose now, mind me, donʼt refoose, mate, if you loves
me.”

“You want a little whipcord,” said Cradock; “and you shall have it too,
my boy, if you come much into my neighbourhood.”

“There now; there now!” sighed the boy—who would have been worth
something on the stage—“I have never been appreciated, and suppose I
never shall. Whatʼs the odds to a jinker? Cockalocks, there go in, and
let me mind your beaver.”

Cradock was shown into a room furnished as philosophically as the
wash–house of Cincinnatus; still, it looked like business. There was
no temptation to sit down, even though one had rowing–trousers on.
There were four tall desks of deal uncovered; each had four legs, and
resembled a naked Punch–and–Judy box. Hales, the Norfolk giant, could
not have written at either of them, while sitting on any of the stools
there.

Three of these desks were appropriated by three very nice young
gentlemen, all burning to begin their labours. Two of the men were
unknown to Cradock; but the third, the very short one, who had taken a
stool to stand upon, and was mending a pen most earnestly—him Cradock
recognised at once as the disburser of the shilling, the sanguine
youth, of broad views in apparel, who had cheated Mr. Wibraham so.

“Mr. Fookes, I presume,” he exclaimed, with a leap from the stool,
and a little run towards Cradock; “you see we are all ready, sir, to
receive the junior partner. Hardly know what to be up to.”

“I am sure I cannot tell you,” answered Crad, with a smile; “I do not
belong to the firm as yet, although I am promised a partnership at a
date not very distant.”

“So am I,” said the little man, staring; “indeed, I came up from
Cambridge principally upon the strength of it.”

“The deevil you did!” cried a tall, strapping fellow, crossing suddenly
from his desk; “if yeʼll hearken me, my time comes first. The agrahment
was signed for Candlemas, when the gloot of business allows it. And a
Durham man knows what coals are.”

“Agrayment, thin, is it?” exclaimed the fourth, a flourishing,
red–haired Irishman; “do you think Iʼd a left me Oonivarsity, Thrinity
College, Dooblin, wiʼout having it down all black and white? By the
same token, itʼs meself as is foremost. Christmas is the time, me boys;
and the farst dividend on St. Pathrickʼs Day, wakely sthipend in the
intherim. Divil take me sowl, but none o’ ye shall git before Manus
OʼToole.”

“Gentlemen,” said Cradock, “donʼt let us be in a hurry. No doubt Mr.
Fookes will be here presently, and then we can settle precedence. I see
there is work set out for us; and I suppose we are not all strangers
here.”

“Canʼt answer for the other gentlemen,” returned the little Cambridge
man, “but I was never here before, except to see the place on Saturday.”

“And thatʼs joost my own predeecament,” cried the tall man from
Hatfield Hall.

“Chop me up smarl,” said the Irishman, when they turned to him as their
senior, “but the gintleman has the advantage o’ me. I niver was here at
all, at all; and I hope I niver shall be.”

The four young men gathered round a desk, and gazed sadly at one
another. At this moment the office–boy, seeing the distance safe, for
he had been watching through the keyhole, pushed his head in at the
door, and shouted, “Hi! there, young coal–merchants, donʼt yer sell too
much now! Telegram from the Exchange, gents; grimy is on the rise. But
excoose me half an hour, gents; Her Majesty have commanded my presence,
to put the ro–oyal harms on me. Ho–hoop! Iʼm after you, Molly. Donʼt be
afraid of my splashing your legs, dear.”

“Well,” said Cradock, as the rising young coal–merchants seemed to look
to him for counsel, and stood in silent bewilderment—“it appears to me
that there is something wrong. Let us hope that it is a mistake only;
at any rate, let us stop, and see the matter out. I trust that none of
you gentlemen have paid a premium, as I have.”

“I am sure I donʼt know,” said the Cantab, “what the others have done;
but I was allowed to enter the firm for the sum of eighty guineas, a
great deal too little, considering all the advantages offered—the
proper sum being a hundred; but an abatement was made in my favour.”

“Ahty guineas!” cried the Durham man; “why I was admeeted for saxty,
because I had no more.”

“Itʼs me blessed self, then, as bates you all,” shouted the son of
Dublin; “shure and Iʼve made a clear sixty by it, for I hadnʼt no more
than forty.”

“And I,” replied Cradock, with a melancholy air, “was received for the
trifling sum of twenty, on account of my being an Oxford man.”

“Why, gentlemen,” said the little Cantab, “let us shake hands all
round. We represent the four chief universities, only Scotland being
omitted.”

“Catch a Scotchman with salt, me frinds!” cried the red Hibernian,
as they went through the ceremony. “By Jasers, but that infarnal old
Jew would have had to pay the porridge–man, for the pleasure of his
company.”

“Now let us fall to our work, gentlemen” (Crad tried to look hopeful
as he said it); “the books before us may throw some light upon this
strange, and, as it seems, very roguish matter. I was told to act for
our principal, during the absence of the sleeping partner; to keep you
all in your places, and make you stick to your work; and especially to
remember that one ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept.”

“I should be most happy, sir, to obey orders,” said the little
Cambridge man, bowing; “only I hold the identical commission, ounce of
practice and all, for your benefit, my good sir, and that of all the
other juniors.”

“Now that shows a want of vareaty,” cried the tall Dunelmian, “for the
sole charge of all of ye is commeeted to _me_.”

“Itʼs me blessed self that got it last, and that manes to kape it. What
time wur you there, gintlemen, at Ory Thamis Buildings?”

It was settled that the Irishman had received his commission last, for,
some whisky having been produced, he and Hearty Wibraham had kept it up
until twelve oʼclock on the Saturday night. So, to his intense delight,
he was now appointed captain.

“An’ if I donʼt drag him from his hole, to pay him the sixty guineas I
owe him, out of your money, gintlemen, say my name isnʼt Manus OʼToole.
Now the fust arder I give, is to have in the bhoy, and wallop him.”

Easier said than done, Mr. Toole. There was no boy to be found
anywhere; and the only result of a strong demonstration in the passage
was a curt note from the landlord.

 “GENTLEMEN,—I understood as I had lett my rooms to a respectable
 party, rent payable weakly, and weak is up this day. Will take it a
 favuor to reseeve two pound ten per bearer.

  “JOHN CODGER.”

The four university men looked wondrously blank at this—“gelidusque
per ima cucurrit ossa tremor.”

“Well, I _am_ blowed!” cried the little Cantab, getting smaller, and
with the sky–blue stripes on his trousers quivering.

“Thereʼs a cousin of mine, a soleecitor,” said the young north
countryman, “would take up this case for us, if we made a joint
deposeet.”

“Have down the landlord and fight him,” proposed the Emerald Islander.

“I donʼt care a fig for the landlord,” said Cradock, who now recalled
some shavings of law from the Quarter Sessions spokeshave; “he can
do nothing at all to us, until twelve oʼclock, and then he can send
us about our business, and no more harm done. We were not parties to
the original contract, and have nothing to do with the rent. Now,
gentlemen, there is only one thing I would ask you, in return for my
lucid legal opinion.”

“What is that?” cried all the rest; “whatever it is, you shall have it.”

“That you make over to me, _vivâ voce_, your three–fourths of the
brass–plate. I have taken a strange fancy to it; the engraving is so
fine.”

“You are perfectly welcome to it,” exclaimed the other three; “but
wonʼt it belong to the landlord?”

“Not if it is merely screwed on, as probably is the case. And I have a
screw–driver in my knife, which very few screws can resist.”

“Then go and take it, by all means, before twelve oʼclock, for
afterwards we shall only be trespassers.”

Crad put his hat on and went out, but returned with the wonderful
screw–driver snapped up into his knife–handle, and the first flush of
real British anger yet seen upon his countenance. What wonderful beings
we are! He had lost nearly all his substance, and he was vexed most
about the brass–plate.

“Done at every point,” he said; “that glorious under–plate is gone, and
only the narrow bar left with the name of the thief upon it, which of
course would not suit him again.”

“Oysters all round!” cried the Cambridge man, “as the landlord cannot
distrain us. An oyster is a legal esculent; I see they teach law
at Oxford; let us at least die jolly. And I claim the privilege of
standing oysters, because I have paid the highest premium, and am the
most promising partner—at any rate, the softest fellow. Gentlemen, if
you refuse me, I claim our captainʼs decision. Captain OʼToole, how is
it?”

“Arrah, thin, and I order eysters at this gintlemanʼs expinse, London
stout for the waker stomiks, and a drop o’ poteen for digestion, to
them as are wakest of all.”

“Done,” said the little Cantab, “if only to rile the landlord, and he
may distrain the shells. Call four university men, by implication,
unrespectable parties! We must have our action against him. Gentlemen.
I am off for the grub, and see that I get in again.”

“Faix, then, my honey,” cried the Irishman, forgetting all university
language, “and, if ye donʼt, ‘twill be a quare job for the bones on the
knuckles of Manus OʼToole.”

While all four were enjoying their oysters—for Cradock, being a
good–natured fellow, did not withhold his assistance—a sharp rap–rap
announced the postman, and Mr. OʼToole returned from the door with
a large square letter, sealed with the coat of arms of the company.
“Ship–letther, and eightpence to pay, begorra. Gintlemen, will we take
it?”

“How is it addressed?” asked two or three.

“Most gintaal. ‘To the sanior clerk or junior partner of the firm of
Wibraham, Fookes, and Co., Coal Merchants,’ and thatʼs meself, if itʼs
nobody.”

“Then itʼs you to pey the eightpence,” cried the Durham man.

“Do yer think, then, itʼs me who canʼt do it?” answered Mr. OʼToole,
angrily. And then he broke open the letter and read:

  “P. & O. steamer _Will o’ the Wisp_, off the Start
  Point.—_Sunday._

 “RESPECTED AND BELOVED PARTNERS,—His Royal Highness the Pasha
 of Egypt, having resolved to light with gas the interior of the
 Pyramids, also to provide hot–water bottles for the comfort of
 his household–brigade, principally female, and to erect extensive
 gas–cooking premises, where hot crocodile may always be had, has
 entrusted me with the whole arrangements, and the entire supply of
 coal, with no restriction except that the Nile shall not be set on
 fire.

 “Interested as you are in the success of our noble firm, you will
 thank, instead of blaming me, for an apparently unceremonious
 departure. By an extraordinary coincidence, Mr. Fookes has also been
 summoned peremptorily to Constantinople, to contract with the Sultan
 for warming the sacks of the ladies who are, from time to time,
 deposited in the Bosporus.

 “Therefore, gentlemen, the entire interest of the London branch is
 left in your experienced hands. Be steady, I entreat you; be diligent,
 be methodical. Above all things, remember that rigid probity, and
 the strictest punctuality in meeting payments, are the _very soul
 of business_, and that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of
 precept. But I have the purest confidence in you. I need not appeal
 to the honour of four university men. From my childhood upward, I
 have admired those admirable institutions, and the knowledge of life
 imparted by them. ‘Quid leges sine moribus?’ Excuse me; it is all the
 Latin I know.

 “There is a raw Irishman among you, rather of the physical order; if
 he is violent, expel him. Every gentleman will be entitled to his own
 deal desk, upon discharge of the bill, which he will find made out in
 his name, in the drawer thereof. And now farewell. I have been prolix
 in the endeavour to be precise.

 “There are no funds in hand for the London branch, but our credit is
 unbounded. Push our united interests, for I trust you to the last
 farthing. I hope to find you with coffers full, and commercial honour
 untainted, on the 31st of February prox.

 “Believe me, Gentlemen, ever your affectionate partner,

  “HEARTY WIBRAHAM, D.C.L.

 “P.S.—If none of my partners know the way to enter an order, the
 office–boy will instruct the manager of the firm.—H. W.”

“Consummate scoundrel!” exclaimed the little Cantab, with the beard of
an oyster in his throat.

“Detasteable heepocrite!” cried the representative of Durham.

“Raw Irishman! Oh then the powers! And the punch of the head I never
giv’ him, a week will be next Saturday.” Mr. OʼToole danced round
the room, caught up the desks like dolls, and dashed all their noses
together. Then he summoned the landlord, and pelted him out of the room
and up the stairs with oyster–shells, the books, and the whisky–bottle,
and two pewter–pots after his legs, as he luckily got round the
landing–place. The terrified man, and his wife worse frightened,
locked themselves in, and then threw up a window and bawled out for the
police.

Cradock, feeling ashamed of the uproar, seized OʼToole by the collar;
and the Durham man, being sedate and steady, grasped him on the other
side. So they lifted him off the ground, and bore him even into Hyde
Park, and there they left him upon a bench, and each went his several
way. The police, according to precedent, were in time to be too late.

CHAPTER X.

Cradock Nowell shivered hard, partly from his cold, and partly at the
thought of the bitter life before him. He had Amyʼs five and sixpence
left, an immutable peculium. In currency his means were limited to
exactly four and ninepence. With the accuracy of an upright man (even
in the smallest matters), he had forced upon Mr. OʼToole his twopence,
the quaternary of that letter. Also he had insisted upon standing
stout, when thirst increased with oysters. Now he took the shillings
four, having lost all faith in his destiny, and put one in each of
his waistcoat pockets; for he had little horse–shoes upwards, as well
as the straight chinks below. This being done, he disposed of his
ninepence with as tight a view to security.

All that day he wandered about, and regretted Issachar Jupp. Towards
nightfall, he passed a railway terminus, miserably lighted, a disgrace
to any style of architecture, teeming with insolence, pretence, dirt,
discomfort, fuss, and confusion. Let us call it the “Grand Junction
Wasting and Screwing Line;” because among railway companies the name is
generally applicable.

In a window, never cleaned since the prorogation of Parliament, the
following “Notice” tried to appear; and, if you rubbed the glass, you
might read it.

“Wanted immediately, a smart active young man, of good education. His
duties will not be onerous. Wages one pound per week. Uniform allowed.
Apply to Mr. Killquick, next door to the booking–office.”

Cradock read this three times over, for his wits were dull now, and
then he turned round, and felt whether all his money was safe. Yes,
every blessed halfpenny, for he had eaten nothing since the oysters.

“Surely I am an active young man, of good education,” said Crad to
himself, “although not very smart, perhaps, especially as to my boots;
but a suit, all uniform, allowed, will cure my only deficiency. I could
live and keep Wena comfortably upon a pound a week. I hope, however,
that they cash up. Railway companies have no honour, I know; but I
suppose they pay when they canʼt help it.”

Having meditated with himself thus much, he went, growing excited on
the way—for now he was no philosopher—to the indicated whereabouts of
that lineʼs factotum, Mr. Killquick. Here he had to wait very nearly
an hour, Mr. Killquick being engaged, as usual, in the companyʼs most
active department, arranging very effectually for a collision down the