Book + 

I + 

A Respectable Young Man + 

I + 

The Good Schoolmaster + 

I don’t suppose it rained harder in the good town of Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy than it rained anywhere else. But it did rain. There was scarcely an umbrella in Slopperton that could hold its own against the rain that came pouring down that November afternoon, between the hours of four and five. Every gutter in High Street, Slopperton; every gutter in Broad Street (which was of course the narrowest street); in New Street (which by the same rule was the oldest street); in East Street, West Street, Blue Dragon Street, and Windmill Street; every gutter in every one of these thoroughfares was a little Niagara, with a maelstrom at the corner, down which such small craft as bits of orange-peel, old boots and shoes, scraps of paper, and fragments of rag were absorbed⁠—as better ships have been in the great northern whirlpool. That dingy stream, the Sloshy, was swollen into a kind of dirty Mississippi, and the graceful coal-barges which adorned its bosom were stripped of the clotheslines and fluttering linen which usually were to be seen on their decks. A bad, determined, black-minded November day. A day on which the fog shaped itself into a demon, and lurked behind men’s shoulders, whispering into their ears, “Cut your throat!⁠—you know you’ve got a razor, and can’t shave with it, because you’ve been drinking and your hand shakes; one little gash under the left ear, and the business is done. It’s the best thing you can do. It is, really.” A day on which the rain, the monotonous ceaseless persevering rain, has a voice as it comes down, and says, “Don’t you think you could go melancholy mad? Look at me; be good enough to watch me for a couple of hours or so, and think, while you watch me, of the girl who jilted you ten years ago; and of what a much better man you would be today if she had only loved you truly. Oh, I think, if you’ll only be so good as watch me, you might really contrive to go mad.” Then again the wind. What does the wind say, as it comes cutting through the dark passage, and stabbing you, like a coward as it is, in the back, just between the shoulders⁠—what does it say? Why, it whistles in your ear a reminder of the little bottle of laudanum you’ve got upstairs, which you had for your toothache last week, and never used. A foggy wet windy November day. A bad day⁠—a dangerous day. Keep us from bad thoughts today, and keep us out of the Police Reports next week. Give us a glass of something hot and strong, and a bit of something nice for supper, and bear with us a little this day; for if the strings of yonder piano⁠—an instrument fashioned on mechanical principles by mortal hands⁠—if they are depressed and slackened by the influence of damp and fog, how do we know that there may not be some string in this more critical instrument, the human mind, not made on mechanical principles or by mortal hands, a little out of order on this bad November day? + 

But of course bad influences can only come to bad men; and of course he must be a very bad man whose spirits go up and down with every fluctuation of the weatherglass. Virtuous people no doubt are virtuous always; and by no chance, or change, or trial, or temptation, can they ever become other than virtuous. Therefore why should a wet day or a dark day depress them? No; they look out of the windows at houseless men and women and fatherless and motherless children wet through to the skin, and thank Heaven that they are not as other men: like good Christians, punctual ratepayers, and unflinching churchgoers as they are. + 

Thus it was with Mr. Jabez North, assistant and usher at the academy of Dr. Tappenden. He was not in anywise affected by fog, rain, or wind. There was a fire at one end of the schoolroom, and Allecompain Major had been fined sixpence, and condemned to a page of Latin grammar, for surreptitiously warming his worst chilblain at the bars thereof. But Jabez North did not want to go near the fire, though in his official capacity he might have done so; ay, even might have warmed his hands in moderation. He was not cold, or if he was cold, he didn’t mind being cold. He was sitting at his desk, mending pens and hearing six red-nosed boys conjugate the verb Amare, “to love”⁠—while the aforesaid boys were giving practical illustrations of the active verb “to shiver,”⁠—and the passive ditto, “to be puzzled.” He was not only a good young man, this Jabez North (and he must have been a very good young man, for his goodness was in almost every mouth in Slopperton⁠—indeed, he was looked upon by many excellent old ladies as an incarnation of the adjective “pious”)⁠—but he was rather a handsome young man also. He had delicate features, a pale fair complexion, and, as young women said, very beautiful blue eyes; only it was unfortunate that these eyes, being, according to report, such a very beautiful colour, had a shifting way with them, and never looked at you long enough for you to find out their exact hue, or their exact expression either. He had also what was called a very fine head of fair curly hair, and what some people considered a very fine head⁠—though it was a pity it shelved off on either side in the locality where prejudiced people place the organ of conscientiousness. A professor of phrenology, lecturing at Slopperton, had declared Jabez North to be singularly wanting in that small virtue; and had even gone so far as to hint that he had never met with a parallel case of deficiency in the entire moral region, except in the skull of a very distinguished criminal, who invited a friend to dinner and murdered him on the kitchen stairs while the first course was being dished. But of course the Sloppertonians pronounced this professor to be an impostor, and his art a piece of charlatanism, as they were only too happy to pronounce any professor or any art that came in their way. + 

Slopperton believed in Jabez North. Partly because Slopperton had in a manner created, clothed, and fed him, set him on his feet, patted him on his head, and reared him under the shadow of Sloppertonian wings, to be the good and worthy individual he was. + 

The story was in this wise. Nineteen years before this bad November day, a little baby had been dragged, to all appearance drowned, out of the muddy waters of the Sloshy. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, he turned out to be less drowned than dirty, and after being subjected to very sharp treatment⁠—such as being held head downwards, and scrubbed raw with a jack-towel, by the Sloppertonian Humane Society, founded by a very excellent gentleman, somewhat renowned for maltreating his wife and turning his eldest son out of doors⁠—this helpless infant set up a feeble squall, and evinced, other signs of a return to life. He was found in a Slopperton river by a Slopperton bargeman, resuscitated by a Slopperton society, and taken by the Slopperton beadle to the Slopperton workhouse; he therefore belonged to Slopperton. Slopperton found him a species of barnacle rather difficult to shake off. The wisest thing, therefore, for Slopperton to do, was to put the best face on a bad matter, and, out of its abundance, rear this un-welcome little stranger. And truly virtue has its reward; for, from the workhouse brat to the Sunday-school teacher; from the Sunday-school teacher to the scrub at Dr. Tappenden’s academy; from scrub to usher of the fourth form; and from fourth form usher to first assistant, pet toady, and factotum, were so many steps in the ladder of fortune which Jabez mounted, as in seven-leagued boots. + 

As to his name, Jabez North, it is not to be supposed that when some wretched drab (mad with what madness, or wretched to what intensity of wretchedness, who shall guess?) throws her hapless and sickly offspring into the river⁠—it is not, I say, to be supposed that she puts his card-case in his pocket, with his name and address inscribed in neat copperplate upon enamelled cards therein. No, the foundling of Slopperton was called by the board of the workhouse Jabez; first, because Jabez was a scriptural name; secondly, perhaps, because it was an ugly one, and agreed better with the cut of his clothes and the fashion of his appointments than Reginald, Conrad, or Augustus might have done. The gentlemen of the board further bestowed upon him the surname of North because he was found on the north bank of the Sloshy, and because North was an unobtrusive and commonplace cognomen, appropriate to a pauper; like whose impudence it would indeed be to write himself down Montmorency or Fitz-Hardinge. + 

Now there are many natures (God-created though they be) of so black and vile a tendency as to be soured and embittered by workhouse treatment; by constant keeping down; by days and days which grow into years and years, in which to hear a kind word is to hear a strange language⁠—a language so strange as to bring a choking sensation into the throat, and not unbidden tears into the eyes. Natures there are, so innately wicked, as not to be improved by tyranny; by the dominion, the mockery, and the insult of little boys, who are wise enough to despise poverty, but not charitable enough to respect misfortune. And fourth-form ushers in a second-rate academy have to endure this sort of thing now and then. Some natures too may be so weak and sentimental as to sicken at a life without one human tie; a boyhood without father or mother; a youth without sister or brother. Not such the excellent nature of Jabez North. Tyranny found him meek, it is true, but it left him much meeker. Insult found him mild, but it left him lamblike. Scornful speeches glanced away from him; cruel words seemed drops of water on marble, so powerless were they to strike or wound. He would take an insult from a boy whom with his powerful right hand he could have strangled: he would smile at the insolence of a brat whom he could have thrown from the window with one uplifting of his strong arm almost as easily as he threw away a bad pen. But he was a good young man; a benevolent young man; giving in secret, and generally getting his reward openly. His left hand scarcely knew what his right hand did; but Slopperton always knew it before long. So every citizen of the borough raised and applauded this model young man, and many were the prophecies of the day when the pauper boy should be one of the greatest men in that greatest of all towns, the town of Slopperton. + 

The bad November day merged into a bad November night. Dark night at five o’clock, when candles, few and far between, flickering in Dr. Tappenden’s schoolroom, and long rows of half-pint mugs⁠—splendid institutions for little boys to warm their hands at, being full of a boiling and semi-opaque liquid, par excellence milk-and-water⁠—ornamented the schoolroom table. Darker night still, when the half-pint mugs have been collected by a red maidservant, with nose, elbows, and knuckles picked out in purple; when all traces of the evening meal are removed; when the six red-nosed first-form boys have sat down to Virgil⁠—for whom they entertain a deadly hatred, feeling convinced that he wrote with a special view to their being flogged from inability to construe him. Of course, if he hadn’t been a spiteful beast he would have written in English, and then he wouldn’t have had to be construed. Darker night still at eight o’clock, when the boys have gone to bed, and perhaps would have gone to sleep, if Allecompain Major had not a supper-party in his room, with Banbury cakes, pigs trotters, periwinkles, acid rock, and ginger-beer powders, laid out upon the bolster. Not so dark by the head assistant’s desk, at which Jabez sits, his face ineffably calm, examining a pile of exercises. Look at his face by that one candle; look at the eyes, which are steady now, for he does not dream that anyone is watching him⁠—steady and luminous with a subdued fire, which might blaze out some day into a deadly flame. Look at the face, the determined mouth, the thin lips, which form almost an arch⁠—and say, is that the face of a man to be content with a life of dreary and obscure monotony? A somewhat intellectual face; but not the face of a man with an intellect seeking no better employment than the correcting of French and Latin exercises. If we could look into his heart, we might find the answers to these questions. He raises the lid of his desk; a deep desk that holds many things⁠—paper, pens, letters; and what?⁠—a thick coil of rope. A strange object in the assistant’s desk, this coil of rope! He looks at it as if to assure himself that it is safe; shuts his desk quickly, locks it, puts the key in his waistcoat-pocket; and when at half-past nine he goes up into his little bedroom at the top of the house, he will carry the desk under his arm. + 

II + 

Good for Nothing + 

The November night is darkest, foggiest, wettest, and windiest out on the open road that leads into Slopperton. A dreary road at the best of times, this Slopperton road, and dreariest of all in one spot about a mile and a half out of the town. Upon this spot stands a solitary house, known as the Black Mill. It was once the cottage of a miller, and the mill still stands, though in disuse. + 

The cottage had been altered and improved within the last few years, and made into a tolerable-sized house; a dreary, rambling, tumbledown place, it is true, but still with some pretension about it. It was occupied at this time by a widow lady, a Mrs. Marwood, once the owner of a large fortune, which had nearly all been squandered by the dissipation of her only son. This son had long left Slopperton. His mother had not heard of him for years. Some said he had gone abroad. She tried to hope this, but sometimes she mourned him as dead. She lived in modest style, with one old female servant, who had been with her since her marriage, and had been faithful through every change of fortune⁠—as these common and unlearned creatures, strange to say, sometimes are. It happened that at this very time Mrs. Marwood had just received the visit of a brother, who had returned from the East Indies with a large fortune. This brother, Mr. Montague Harding, had on his landing in England hastened to seek out his only sister, and the arrival of the wealthy nabob at the solitary house on the Slopperton road had been a nine-days’ wonder for the good citizens of Slopperton. He brought with him only one servant, a half-caste; his visit was to be a short one, as he was about buying an estate in the south of England, on which he intended to reside with his widowed sister. + 

Slopperton had a great deal to say about Mr. Harding. Slopperton gave him credit for the possession of uncounted and uncountable lakhs of rupees; but Slopperton wouldn’t give him credit for the possession of the hundredth part of an ounce of liver. Slopperton left cards at the Black Mill, and had serious thoughts of getting up a deputation to invite the rich East Indian to represent its inhabitants at the great congress of Westminster. But both Mr. Harding and Mrs. Marwood kept aloof from Slopperton, and were set down accordingly as mysterious, not to say dark-minded individuals, forthwith. + 

The brother and sister are seated in the little, warm, lamp-lit drawing-room at the Black Mill this dark November night. She is a woman who has once been handsome, but whose beauty has been fretted away by anxieties and suspenses, which wear out the strongest hope, as water wears away the hardest rock. The Anglo-Indian very much resembles her; but though his face is that of an invalid, it is not careworn. It is the face of a good man, who has a hope so strong that neither fear nor trouble can disquiet him. + 

He is speaking⁠—“And you have not heard from your son?” + 

“For nearly seven years. Seven years of cruel suspense; seven years, during which every knock at yonder door seems to have beaten a blow upon my heart⁠—every footstep on yonder garden-walk seems to have trodden down a hope.” + 

“And you do not think him dead?” + 

“I hope and pray not. Not dead, impenitent; not dead, without my blessing; not gone away from me forever, without one pressure of the hand, one prayer for my forgiveness, one whisper of regret for all he has made me suffer.” + 

“He was very wild, then, very dissipated?” + 

“He was a reprobate and a gambler. He squandered his money like water. He had bad companions, I know; but was not himself wicked at heart. The very night he ran away, the night I saw him for the last time, I’m sure he was sorry for his bad courses. He said something to that effect; said his road was a dark one, but that it had only one end, and he must go on to the end.” + 

“And you made no remonstrance?” + 

“I was tired of remonstrance, tired of prayer, and had wearied out my soul with hope deferred.” + 

“My dear Agnes! And this poor boy, this wretched misguided boy, Heaven have pity upon him and restore him! Heaven have pity upon every wanderer, this dismal and pitiless night!” + 

Heaven, indeed, have pity upon that wanderer, out on the bleak highroad to Slopperton; out on the shelterless Slopperton road, a mile away from the Black Mill! The wanderer is a young man, whose garments, of the shabby-genteel order, are worst of all fitted to keep out the cruel weather; a handsome young man, or a man who has once been handsome, but on whom riotous days and nights, drunkenness, recklessness, and folly, have had their dire effects. He is struggling to keep a pad cigar alight, and when it goes out, which is about twice in five minutes, he utters expressions which in Slopperton are thought very wicked, and consigns that good city, with its virtuous citizens, to a very bad neighbourhood. + 

He talks to himself between his struggles with the cigar. “Footsore and weary, hungry and thirsty, cold and ill; it is not a very hopeful way for the only son of a rich man to come back to his native place after seven years’ absence. I wonder what star presides over my vagabond existence; if I knew, I’d shake my fist at it,” he muttered, as he looked up at two or three feeble luminaries glimmering through the rain and fog. “Another mile to the Black Mill⁠—and then what will she say to me? What can she say to me but to curse me? What have I earned by such a life as mine except a mother’s curse?” His cigar chose this very moment of all others to go out. If the bad three-half-penny Havannah had been a sentient thing with reasoning powers, it might have known better. He threw it aside into a ditch with an oath. He slouched his hat over his eyes, thrust one hand into the breast of his coat⁠—(he had a stick cut from some hedgerow in the other)⁠—and walked with a determined though a weary air onward through slush and mire towards the Black Mill, from which already the lighted windows shone through the darkness like so many beacons. + 

On through slush and mire, with a weary and slouching step. + 

No matter. It is the step for which his mother has waited for seven long years; it is the step whose ghostly echo on the garden-walk has smitten so often on her heart and trodden out the light of hope. But surely the step comes on now⁠—full surely, and for good or ill. Whether for good or ill comes this long-watched-for step, this bad November night, who shall say? + 

In a quarter of an hour the wanderer stands in the little garden of the Black Mill. He has not courage to knock at the door; it might be opened by a stranger; he might hear something he dare not whisper to his own heart⁠—he might hear something which would strike him down dead upon the threshold. + 

He sees the light in the drawing-room windows. He approaches, and hears his mother’s voice. + 

It is a long time since he has uttered a prayer: but he falls on his knees by the long French window and breathes a thanksgiving. + 

That voice is not still! + 

What shall he do? What can he hope from his mother, so cruelly abandoned? + 

At this moment Mr. Harding opens the window to look out at the dismal night. As he does so, the young man falls fainting, exhausted, into the room. + 

Draw a curtain over the agitation and the bewilderment of that scene. The almost brokenhearted mother’s joy is too sacred for words. And the passionate tears of the prodigal son⁠—who shall measure the remorseful agony of a man whose life has been one long career of recklessness, and who sees his sin written in his mother’s face? + 

The mother and son sit together, talking gravely, hand in hand, for two long hours. He tells her, not of all his follies, but of all his regrets⁠—his punishment, his anguish, his penitence, and his resolutions for the future. + 

Surely it is for good, and good alone, that he has come over a long and dreary road, through toil and suffering, to kneel here at his mother’s feet and build up fair schemes for the future. + 

The old servant, who has known Richard from a baby, shares in his mother’s joy. After the slight supper which the weary wanderer is induced to eat, her brother and her son persuade Mrs. Marwood to retire to rest; and left tête-à-tête, the uncle and nephew sit down to discuss a bottle of old madeira by the sea-coal fire. + 

“My dear Richard”⁠—the young man’s name is Richard⁠—(“Daredevil Dick” he has been called by his wild companions)⁠—“My dear Richard,” says Mr. Harding very gravely, “I am about to say something to you, which I trust you will take in good part.” + 

“I am not so used to kind words from good men that I am likely to take anything you can say amiss.” + 

“You will not, then, doubt the joy I feel in your return this night, if I ask you what are your plans for the future?” + 

The young man shook his head. Poor Richard! he had never in his life had any definite plan for the future, or he might not have been what he was that night. + 

“My poor boy, I believe you have a noble heart, but you have led a wasted life. This must be repaired.” + 

Richard shook his head again. He was very hopeless of himself. + 

“I am good for nothing,” he said; “I am a bad lot. I wonder they don’t hang such men as me.” + 

“I wonder they don’t hang such men.” He uttered this reckless speech in his own reckless way, as if it would be rather a good joke to be hung up out of the way and done for. + 

“My dear boy, thank Heaven you have returned to us. Now I have a plan to make a man of you yet.” + 

Richard looked up this time with a hopeful light in his dark eyes. He was hopeless at five minutes past ten; he was radiant when the minute hand had moved on to the next figure on the dial. He was one of those men whose bad and good angels have a sharp fight and a constant struggle, but whom we all hope to see saved at last. + 

“I have a plan which has occurred to me since your unexpected arrival this evening,” continued his uncle. “Now, if you stay here, your mother, who has a trick (as all loving mothers have) of fancying you are still a little boy in a pinafore and frock⁠—your mother will be for having you loiter about from morning till night with nothing to do and nothing to care for; you will fall in again with all your old Slopperton companions, and all those companions’ bad habits. This isn’t the way to make a man of you, Richard.” + 

Richard, very radiant by this time, thinks not. + 

“My plan is, that you start off tomorrow morning before your mother is up, with a letter of introduction which I will give you to an old friend of mine, a merchant in the town of Garden Cord, forty miles from here. At my request, he will give you a berth in his office, and will treat you as if you were his own son. You can come over here to see your mother as often as you like; and if you choose to work hard as a merchant’s clerk, so as to make your own fortune, I know an old fellow just returned from the East Indies, with not enough liver to keep him alive many years, who will leave you another fortune to add to it. What do you say, Richard? Is it a bargain?” + 

“My dear generous uncle!” Richard cries, shaking the old man by the hand. + 

Was it a bargain? Of course it was. A merchant’s office⁠—the very thing for Richard. He would work hard, work night and day to repair the past, and to show the world there was stuff in him to make a man, and a good man yet. + 

Poor Richard, half an hour ago wishing to be hung and put out of the way, now full of radiance and hope, while the good angel has the best of it! + 

“You must not begin your new life without money, Richard: I shall, therefore, give you all I have in the house. I think I cannot better show my confidence in you, and my certainty that you will not return to your old habits, than by giving you this money.” Richard looks⁠—he cannot speak his gratitude. + 

The old man conducts his nephew upstairs to his bedroom, an old-fashioned apartment, in one window of which is a handsome cabinet, half desk, half bureau. He unlocks this, and takes from it a pocketbook containing one hundred and thirty-odd pounds in small notes and gold, and two bills for one hundred pounds each on an Anglo-Indian bank in the city. + 

“Take this, Richard. Use the broken cash as you require it for present purposes⁠—in purchasing such an outfit as becomes my nephew; and on your arrival in Gardenford, place the bills in the bank for future exigencies. And as I wish your mother to know nothing of our little plan until you are gone, the best thing you can do is to start before anyone is up⁠—tomorrow morning.” + 

“I will start at daybreak. I can leave a note for my mother.” + 

“No, no,” said the uncle, “I will tell her all. You can write directly you reach your destination. Now, you will think it cruel of me to ask you to leave your home on the very night of your return to it; but it is quite as well, my dear boy, to strike while the iron’s hot. If you remain here your good resolutions may be vanquished by old influences; for the best resolution, Richard, is but a seed, and if it doesn’t bear the fruit of a good action, it is less than worthless, for it is a lie, and promises what it doesn’t perform. I’ve a higher opinion of you than to think that you brought no better fruit of your penitence home to your loving mother than empty resolutions. I believe you have a steady determination to reform.” + 

“You only do me justice in that belief, sir. I ask nothing better than the opportunity of showing that I am in earnest.” + 

Mr. Harding is quite satisfied, and once more suggests that Richard should depart very early the next day. + 

“I will leave this house at five in the morning,” said the nephew; “a train starts for Gardenford about six. I shall creep out quietly, and not disturb anyone. I know the way out of the dear old house⁠—I can get out of the drawing-room window, and need not unlock the hall-door; for I know that good stupid old woman Martha sleeps with the key under her pillow.” + 

“Ah, by the by, where does Martha mean to put you tonight?” + 

“In the little back-parlour, I think she said; the room under this.” + 

The uncle and nephew went down to this little parlour, where they found old Martha making up a bed on the sofa. + 

“You will sleep very comfortably here for tonight, Master Richard,” said the old woman; “but if my mistress doesn’t have this ceiling mended before long there’ll be an accident some day.” + 

They all looked up at the ceiling. The plaster had fallen in several places, and there were one or two cracks of considerable size. + 

“If it was daylight,” grumbled the old woman, “you could see through into Mister Harding’s bedroom, for his worship won’t have a carpet.” + 

His worship said he had not been used to carpets in India, and liked the sight of Mrs. Martha’s snow-white boards. + 

“And it’s hard to keep them white, sir, I can tell you; for when I scour the floor of that room the water runs through and spoils the furniture down here.” + 

But Daredevil Dick didn’t seem to care much for the dilapidated ceiling. The madeira, his brightened prospects, and the excitement he had gone through, all combined to make him thoroughly wearied out. He shook his uncle’s hand with a brief but energetic expression of gratitude, and then flung himself half dressed upon the bed. + 

“There is an alarm clock in my room,” said the old man, “which I will set for five o’clock. I always sleep with my door open; so you will be sure to hear it go down. It won’t disturb your mother, for she sleeps at the other end of the house. And now good night, and God bless you, my boy!” + 

He is gone, and the returned prodigal is asleep. His handsome face has lost half its look of dissipation and care, in the renewed light of hope; his black hair is tossed off his broad forehead, and it is a fine candid countenance, with a sweet smile playing round the mouth. Oh, there is stuff in him to make a man yet, though he says they should hang such fellows as he! + 

His uncle has retired to his room, where his half-caste servant assists at his toilette for the night. This servant, who is a Lascar, and cannot speak one word of English (his master converses with him in Hindostanee), and is thought to be as faithful as a dog, sleeps in a little bed in the dressing-room adjoining his master’s apartment. + 

So, on this bad November night, with the wind howling round the walls as if it were an angry unadmitted guest that clamoured to come in; with the rain beating on the roof, as if it had a special purpose and was bent on flooding the old house; there is peace and happiness, and a returned and penitent wanderer at the desolate old Black Mill. + 

The wind this night seems to howl with a peculiar significance, but nobody has the key to its strange language; and if, in every shrill dissonant shriek, it tries to tell a ghastly secret or to give a timely warning, it tries in vain, for no one heeds or understands. + 

III + 

The Usher Washes His Hands + 

Mr. Jabez North had not his little room quite to himself at Dr. Tappenden’s. There are some penalties attendant even on being a good young man, and our friend Jabez sometimes found his very virtues rather inconvenient. It happened that Allecompain Junior was ill of a fever⁠—sometimes delirious; and as the usher was such an excellent young person, beloved by the pupils and trusted implicitly by the master, the sick little boy was put under his especial care, and a bed was made up for him in Jabez’ room. + 

This very November night, when the usher comes upstairs, his great desk under one arm (he is very strong, this usher), and a little feeble tallow candle in his left hand, he finds the boy very ill indeed. He does not know Jabez, for he is talking of a boat-race⁠—a race that took place in the bright summer gone by. He is sitting up on the pillow, waving his little thin hand, and crying out at the top of his feeble voice, “Bravo, red! Red wins! Three cheers for red! Go it⁠—go it, red! Blue’s beat⁠—I say blue’s beat! George Harris has won the day. I’ve backed George Harris. I’ve bet six-pennorth of toffey on George Harris! Go it, red!” + 

“We’re worse tonight, then,” said the usher; “so much the better. We’re off our head, and we’re not likely to take much notice; so much the better;” and this benevolent young man began to undress. To undress, but not to go to bed; for from a small trunk he takes out a dark smock-frock, a pair of leather gaiters, a black scratch wig, and a countryman’s slouched hat. He dresses himself in these things, and sits down at a little table with his desk before him. + 

The boy rambles on. He is out nutting in the woods with his little sister in the glorious autumn months gone by. + 

“Shake the tree, Harriet, shake the tree; they’ll fall if you only shake hard enough. Look at the hazelnuts! so thick you can’t count’em. Shake away, Harriet; and take care of your head, for they’ll come down like a shower of rain!” + 

The usher takes the coil of rope from his desk, and begins to unwind it; he has another coil in his little trunk, another hidden away under the mattress of his bed. He joins the three together, and they form a rope of considerable length. He looks round the room; holds the light over the boy’s face, but sees no consciousness of passing events in those bright feverish eyes. + 

He opens the window of his room; it is on the second story, and looks out into the playground⁠—a large space shut in from the lane in which the school stands by a wall of considerable height. About half the height of this room are some posts erected for gymnastics; they are about ten feet from the wall of the house, and the usher looks at them dubiously. He lowers the rope out of the window and attaches one end of it to an iron hook in the wall⁠—a very convenient hook, and very secure apparently, for it looks as if it had been only driven in that very day. + 

He surveys the distance beneath him, takes another dubious look at the posts in the playground, and is about to step out of the window, when a feeble voice from the little bed cries out⁠—not in any delirious ramblings this time⁠—“What are you doing with that rope? Who are you? What are you doing with that rope?” + 

Jabez looks round, and although so good a young man, mutters something very much resembling an oath. + 

“Silly boy, don’t you know me? I’m Jabez, your old friend⁠—” + 

“Ah, kind old Jabez; you won’t send me back in Virgil, because I’ve been ill; eh, Mr. North?” + 

“No, no! See, you want to know what I am doing with this rope; why, making a swing, to be sure.” + 

“A swing? Oh, that’s capital. Such a jolly thick rope too! When shall I be well enough to swing, I wonder? It’s so dull up here. I’ll try and go to sleep; but I dream such bad dreams.” + 

“There, there, go to sleep,” says the usher, in a soothing voice. This time, before he goes to the window, he puts out his tallow candle; the rushlight on the hearth he extinguishes also; feels for something in his bosom, clutches this something tightly; takes a firm grasp of the rope, and gets out of the window. + 

A curious way to make a swing! He lets himself down foot by foot, with wonderful caution and wonderful courage. When he gets on a level with the posts of the gymnasium he gives himself a sudden jerk, and swinging over against them, catches hold of the highest post, and his descent is then an easy one for the post is notched for the purpose of climbing, and Jabez, always good at gymnastics, descends it almost as easily as another man would an ordinary staircase. He leaves the rope still hanging from his bedroom window, scales the playground wall, and when the Slopperton clocks strike twelve is out upon the highroad. He skirts the town of Slopperton by a circuitous route, and in another half-hour is on the other side of it, bearing towards the Black Mill. A curious manner of making a swing this midnight ramble. Altogether a curious ramble for this good young usher; but even good men have sometimes strange fancies, and this may be one of them. + 

One o’clock from the Slopperton steeples: two o’clock: three o’clock. The sick little boy does not go to sleep, but wanders, oh, how wearily, through past scenes in his young life. Midsummer rambles, Christmas holidays, and merry games; the pretty speeches of the little sister who died three years ago; unfinished tasks and puzzling exercises, all pass through his wandering mind; and when the clocks chime the quarter after three, he is still talking, still rambling on in feeble accents, still tossing wearily on his pillow. + 

As the clocks chime the quarter, the rope is at work again, and five minutes afterwards the usher clambers into the room. + 

Not very good to look upon, either in costume or countenance; bad to look upon, with his clothes mud-bespattered and torn; wet to the skin; his hair in matted locks streaming over his forehead; worse to look upon, with his light blue eyes, bright with a dangerous and wicked fire⁠—the eyes of a wild beast baulked of his prey; dreadful to look upon, with his hands clenched in fury, and his tongue busy with half-suppressed but terrible imprecations. + 

“All for nothing!” he mutters. “All the toil, the scheming, and the danger for nothing⁠—all the work of the brain and the hands wasted⁠—nothing gained, nothing gained!” + 

He hides away the rope in his trunk, and begins to unbutton his mud-stained gaiters. The little boy cries out in a feeble voice for his medicine. + 

The usher pours a tablespoonful of the mixture into a wineglass with a steady hand, and carries it to the bedside. + 

The boy is about to take it from him, when he utters a sudden cry. + 

“What’s the matter?” asks Jabez, angrily. + 

“Your hand!⁠—your hand! What’s that upon your hand?” + 

A dark stain scarcely dry⁠—a dark stain, at the sight of which the boy trembles from head to foot. + 

“Nothing, nothing!” answers the tutor. “Take your medicine, and go to sleep.” + 

No, the boy cries hysterically, he won’t take his medicine; he will never take anything again from that dreadful hand. “I know what that horrid stain is. What have you been doing? Why did you climb out of the window with a rope? It wasn’t to make a swing; it must have been for something dreadful! Why did you stay away three hours in the middle of the night? I counted the hours by the church clocks. Why have you got those strange clothes on? What does it all mean? I’ll ask the Doctor to take me out of this room! I’ll go to him this moment, for I’m afraid of you.” + 

The boy tries to get out of bed as he speaks; but the usher holds him down with one powerful hand, which he places upon the boy’s mouth, at the same time keeping him from stirring and preventing him from crying out. + 

With his free right hand he searches among the bottles on the table by the bedside. + 

He throws the medicine out of the glass, and pours from another bottle a few spoonfuls of a dark liquid labelled, “Opium⁠—Poison!” + 

“Now, sir, take your medicine, or I’ll report you to the principal tomorrow morning.” + 

The boy tries to remonstrate, but in vain; the powerful hand throws back his head, and Jabez pours the liquid down his throat. + 

For a little time the boy, quite delirious now, goes on talking of the summer rambles and the Christmas games, and then falls into a deep slumber. + 

Then Jabez North sets to work to wash his hands. A curious young man, with curious fashions for doing things⁠—above all, a curious fashion of washing his hands. + 

He washes them very carefully in a small quantity of water, and when they are quite clean, and the water has become a dark and ghastly colour, he drinks it, and doesn’t make even one wry face at the horrible draught. + 

“Well, well,” he mutters, “if nothing is gained by tonight’s work, I have at least tried my strength, and I now know what I’m made of.” + 

Very strange stuff he must have been made of⁠—very strange and perhaps not very good stuff, to be able to look at the bed on which the innocent and helpless boy lay in a deep slumber, and say⁠— + 

“At any rate, he will tell no tales.” + 

No! he will tell no tales, nor ever talk again of summer rambles, or of Christmas holidays, or of his dead sister’s pretty words. Perhaps he will join that wept-for little sister in a better world, where there are no such good young men as Jabez North. + 

That worthy gentleman goes down aghast, with a white face, next morning, to tell Dr. Tappenden that his poor little charge is dead, and that perhaps he had better break the news to Allecompain Major, who is sick after that supper, which, in his boyish thoughtlessness, and his certainty of his little brother’s recovery, he had given last night. + 

“Do, yes, by all means, break the sad news to the poor boy; for I know, North, you’ll do it tenderly.” + 

IV + 

Richard Marwood Lights His Pipe + 

Daredevil Dick hears the alarm at five o’clock, and leaves his couch very cautiously. He would like, before he leaves the house, to go to his mother’s door, if it were only to breathe a prayer upon the threshold. He would like to go to his uncle’s bedside, to give one farewell look at the kind face; but he has promised to be very cautious, and to awaken no one; so he steals quietly out through the drawing-room window⁠—the same window by which he entered so strangely the preceding evening⁠—into the chill morning, dark as night yet. He pauses in the little garden-walk for a minute while he lights his pipe, and looks up at the shrouded windows of the familiar house. “God bless her!” he mutters; “and God reward that good old man, for giving a scamp like me the chance of redeeming his honour!” + 

There is a thick fog, but no rain. Daredevil Dick knows his way so well, that neither fog nor darkness are any hindrance to him, and he trudges on with a cheery step, and his pipe in his mouth, towards the Slopperton railway station. The station is half an hour’s walk out of the town, and when he reaches it the clocks are striking six. Learning that the train will not start for half an hour, he walks up and down the platform, looking, with his handsome face and shabby dress, rather conspicuous. Two or three trains for different destinations start while he is waiting on the platform, and several people stare at him, as he strides up and down, his hands in his pockets, and his weather-beaten hat slouched over his eyes⁠—(for he does not want to be known by any Slopperton people yet awhile, till his position is better)⁠—and when one man, with whom he had been intimate before he left the town, seemed to recognize him, and approached as if to speak to him, Richard turned abruptly on his heel and crossed to the other side of the station. + 

If he had known that such a little incident as that could have a dark and dreadful influence on his life, surely he would have thought himself foredoomed and set apart for a cruel destiny. + 

He strolled into the refreshment-room, took a cup of coffee, changed a sovereign in paying for his ticket, bought a newspaper, seated himself in a second-class carriage, and in a few minutes was out of Slopperton. + 

There was only one other passenger in the carriage⁠—a commercial traveller; and Richard and he smoked their pipes in defiance of the guards at the stations they passed. When did ever Daredevil Dick quail before any authorities? He had faced all Bow Street, chaffed Marlborough Street out of countenance, and had kept the station-house awake all night singing, “We won’t go home till morning.” + 

It is rather a dull journey at the best of times from Slopperton to Gardenford, and on this dark foggy November morning, of course, duller than usual. It was still dark at half-past six. The station was lighted with gas, and there was a little lamp in the railway carriage, but for which the two travellers would not have seen each other’s faces. Richard looked out of the window for a few minutes, got up a little conversation with his fellow traveller, which soon flagged (for the young man was rather out of spirits at leaving his mother directly after their reconciliation), and then, being sadly at a loss to amuse himself, took out his uncle’s letter to the Gardenford merchant, and looked at the superscription. The letter was not sealed, but he did not take it from the envelope. “If he said any good of me, it’s a great deal more than I deserve,” said Richard to himself; “but I’m young yet, and there’s plenty of time to redeem the past.” + 

Time to redeem the past! O poor Richard! + 

He twisted the letter about in his hands, lighted another pipe, and smoked till the train arrived at the Gardenford station. Another foggy November day had set in. + 

If Richard Marwood had been a close observer of men and manners, he might have been rather puzzled by the conduct of a short, thickset man, shabbily dressed, who was standing on the platform when he descended from the carriage. The man was evidently waiting for someone to arrive by this train: and as surely that someone had arrived, for the man looked perfectly satisfied when he had scanned, with a glance marvellously rapid, the face of every passenger who alighted. But who this someone was, for whom the man was waiting, it was rather difficult to discover. He did not speak to anyone, nor approach anyone, nor did he appear to have any particular purpose in being there after that one rapid glance at all the travellers. A very minute observer might certainly have detected in him a slight interest in the movements of Richard Marwood; and when that individual left the station the stranger strolled out after him, and walked a few paces behind him down the back street that led from the station to the town. Presently he came up closer to him, and a few minutes afterwards suddenly and unceremoniously hooked his arm into that of Richard. + 

“Mr. Richard Marwood, I think,” he said. + 

“I’m not ashamed of my name,” replied Daredevil Dick, “and that is my name. Perhaps you’ll oblige me with yours, since you’re so uncommonly friendly.” And the young man tried to withdraw his arm from that of the stranger; but the stranger was of an affectionate turn of mind, and kept his arm tightly hooked in his. + 

“Oh, never mind my name,” he said: “you’ll learn my name fast enough, I dare say. But,” he continued, as he caught a threatening look in Richard’s eye, “if you want to call me anything, why, call me Jinks.” + 

“Very well then, Mr. Jinks, since I didn’t come to Gardenford to make your acquaintance, and as now, having made your acquaintance, I can’t say I much care about cultivating it further, why I wish you a very good morning!” As he said this, Richard wrenched his arm from that of the stranger, and strode two or three paces forward. + 

Not more than two or three paces though, for the affectionate Mr. Jinks caught him again by the arm, and a friend of Mr. Jinks, who had also been lurking outside the station when the train arrived, happening to cross over from the other side of the street at this very moment, caught hold of his other arm, and poor Daredevil Dick, firmly pinioned by these two newfound friends, looked with a puzzled expression from one to the other. + 

“Come, come,” said Mr. Jinks, in a soothing tone, “the best thing you can do is to take it quietly, and come along with me.” + 

“Oh, I see,” said Richard. “Here’s a spoke in the wheel of my reform; it’s those cursed Jews, I suppose, have got wind of my coming down here. Show us your writ, Mr. Jinks, and tell us at whose suit it is, and for what amount? I’ve got a considerable sum about me, and can settle it on the spot.” + 

“Oh, you have, have you?” Mr. Jinks was so surprised by this last speech of Richard’s that he was obliged to take off his hat, and rub his hand through his hair before he could recover himself. “Oh!” he continued, staring at Richard, “Oh! you’ve got a considerable sum of money about you, have you? Well, my friend, you’re either very green, or you’re very cheeky; and all I can say is, take care how you commit yourself. I’m not a sheriff’s officer. If you’d done me the honour to reckon up my nose you might have knowed it” (Mr. Jinks’s olfactory organ was a decided snub); “and I ain’t going to arrest you for debt.” + 

“Oh, very well then,” said Dick; “perhaps you and your affectionate friend, who both seem to be afflicted with rather an overlarge allowance of the organ of adhesiveness, will be so very obliging as to let me go. I’ll leave you a lock of my hair, as you’ve taken such a wonderful fancy to me.” And with a powerful effort he shook the two strangers off him; but Mr. Jinks caught him again by the arm, and Mr. Jinks’s friend, producing a pair of handcuffs, locked them on Richard’s wrists with railroad rapidity. + 

“Now, don’t you try it on,” said Mr. Jinks. “I didn’t want to use these, you know, if you’d have come quietly. I’ve heard you belong to a respectable family, so I thought I wouldn’t ornament you with these here objects of bigotry” (it is to be presumed Mr. Jinks means bijouterie); “but it seems there’s no help for it, so come along to the station; we shall catch the eight-thirty train, and be in Slopperton before ten. The inquest won’t come on till tomorrow.” + 

Richard looked at his wrists, from his wrists to the faces of the two men, with an utterly hopeless expression of wonder. + 

“Am I mad,” he said, “or drunk, or dreaming? What have you put these cursed things upon me for? Why do you want to take me back to Slopperton? What inquest? Who’s dead?” + 

Mr. Jinks put his head on one side, and contemplated the prisoner with the eye of a connoisseur. + 

“Don’t he come the hinnocent dodge stunnin’?” he said, rather to himself than to his companion, who, by the by, throughout the affair had never once spoken. “Don’t he do it beautiful? Wouldn’t he be a first-rate actor up at the Wictoria Theayter in London? Wouldn’t he be prime in the Suspected One, or Gonsalvo the Guiltless? Vy,” said Mr. Jinks, with intense admiration, “he’d be worth his two-pound-ten a week and a clear half benefit every month to any manager as is.” + 

As Mr. Jinks made these complimentary remarks, he and his friend walked on. Richard, puzzled, bewildered, and unresisting, walked between them towards the railway station; but presently Mr. Jinks condescended to reply to his prisoner’s questions, in this wise:⁠— + 

“You want to know what inquest? Well, a inquest on a gentleman what’s been barbarously murdered. You want to know who’s dead? Why, your uncle is the gent as has been murdered. You want to know why we are going to take you back to Slopperton? Well, because we’ve got a warrant to arrest you upon suspicion of having committed the murder.” + 

“My uncle murdered!” cried Richard, with a face that now for the first time since his arrest betrayed anxiety and horror; for throughout his interview with Mr. Jinks he had never once seemed frightened. His manner had expressed only utter bewilderment of mind. + 

“Yes, murdered; his throat cut from ear to ear.” + 

“It cannot be,” said Richard. “There must be some horrid mistake here. My uncle, Montague Harding, murdered! I bade him goodbye at twelve last night in perfect health.” + 

“And this morning he was found murdered in his bed; with the cabinet in his room broken open, and rifled of a pocketbook known to contain upwards of three hundred pounds.” + 

“Why, he gave me that pocketbook last night. He gave it to me. I have it here in my breast-pocket.” + 

“You’d better keep that story for the coroner,” said Mr. Jinks. “Perhaps he’ll believe it.” + 

“I must be mad, I must be mad,” said Richard. + 

They had by this time reached the station, and Mr. Jinks having glanced into two or three carriages of the train about to start, selected one of the second-class, and ushered Richard into it. He seated himself by the young man’s side, while his silent and unobtrusive friend took his place opposite. The guard locked the door, and the train started. + 

Mr. Jinks’s quiet friend was exactly one of those people adapted to pass in a crowd. He might have passed in a hundred crowds, and no one of the hundreds of people in any of those hundred crowds would have glanced aside to look at him. + 

You could only describe him by negatives. He was neither very tall nor very short, he was neither very stout nor very thin, neither dark nor fair, neither ugly nor handsome; but just such a medium between the two extremities of each as to be utterly commonplace and unnoticeable. + 

If you looked at his face for three hours together, you would in those three hours find only one thing in that face that was any way out of the common⁠—that one thing was the expression of the mouth. + 

It was a compressed mouth with thin lips, which tightened and drew themselves rigidly together when the man thought⁠—and the man was almost always thinking: and this was not all, for when he thought most deeply the mouth shifted in a palpable degree to the left side of his face. This was the only thing remarkable about the man, except, indeed, that he was dumb but not deaf, having lost the use of his speech during a terrible illness which he had suffered in his youth. + 

Throughout Richard’s arrest he had watched the proceedings with unswerving intensity, and he now sat opposite the prisoner, thinking deeply, with his compressed lips drawn on one side. + 

The dumb man was a mere scrub, one of the very lowest of the police force, a sort of outsider and employee of Mr. Jinks, the Gardenford detective; but he was useful, quiet, and steady, and above all, as his patrons said, he was to be relied on, because he could not talk. + 

He could talk though, in his own way, and he began to talk presently in his own way to Mr. Jinks; he began to talk with his fingers with a rapidity which seemed marvellous. The fingers were more active than clean, and made rather a dirty alphabet. + 

“Oh, hang it,” said Mr. Jinks, after watching him for a moment, “you must do it a little slower, if you want me to understand. I am not an electric telegraph.” + 

The scrub nodded, and began again with his fingers, very slowly. + 

This time Richard too watched him; for Richard knew this dumb alphabet. He had talked whole reams of nonsense with it, in days gone by, to a pretty girl at a boarding-school, between whom and himself there had existed a platonic attachment, to say nothing of a high wall and broken glass bottles. + 

Richard watched the dirty alphabet. + 

First, two grimy fingers laid flat upon the dirty palm, N. Next, the tip of the grimy forefinger of the right hand upon the tip of the grimy third finger of the left hand, O; the next letter is T, and the man snaps his fingers⁠—the word is finished, not. Not what? Richard found himself wondering with an intense eagerness, which, even in the bewildered state of his mind, surprised him. + 

The dumb man began another word⁠— + 

G⁠—U⁠—I⁠—L⁠— + 

Mr. Jinks cut him short. + 

“Not guilty? Not fiddlesticks! What do you know about it, I should like to know? Where did you get your experience? Where did you get your sharp practice? What school have you been formed in, I wonder, that you can come out so positive with your opinion; and what’s the value you put your opinion at, I wonder? I should be glad to hear what you’d take for your opinion.” + 

Mr. Jinks uttered the whole of this speech with the most intense sarcasm; for Mr. Jinks was a distinguished detective, and prided himself highly on his acumen; and was therefore very indignant that his sub and scrub should dare to express an opinion. + 

“My uncle murdered!” said Richard; “my good, kind, generous-hearted uncle! Murdered in cold blood! Oh, it is too horrible!” + 

The scrub’s mouth was very much on one side as Richard muttered this, half to himself. + 

“And I am suspected of the murder?” + 

“Well, you see,” said Mr. Jinks, “there’s two or three things tell pretty strong against you. Why were you in such a hurry this morning to cut and run to Gardenford?” + 

“My uncle had recommended me to a merchant’s office in that town: see, here is the letter of introduction⁠—read it.” + 

“No, it ain’t my place,” said Mr. Jinks. “The letter’s not sealed, I see, but I mustn’t read it, or if I do, I stand the chance of gettin’ snubbed and lectured for goin’ beyond my dooty: howsumdever, you can show it to the coroner. I’m sure I should be very glad to see you clear yourself, for I’ve heard you belong to one of our good old county families, and it ain’t quite the thing to hang such as you.” + 

Poor Richard! His reckless words of the night before came back to him: “I wonder they don’t hang such fellows as I am.” + 

“And now,” says Jinks, “as I should like to make all things comfortable, if you’re willing to come along quietly with me and my friend here, why, I’ll move those bracelets, because they are not quite so ornamental as they’re sometimes useful; and as I’m going to light my pipe, why, if you like to blow a cloud, too, you can.” + 

With this Mr. Jinks unlocked and removed the handcuffs, and produced his pipe and tobacco. Richard did the same, and took from his pocket a matchbox in which there was only one match. + 

“That’s awkward,” said Jinks, “for I haven’t a light about me.” + 

They filled the two pipes, and lighted the one match. + 

Now, all this time Richard had held his uncle’s letter of introduction in his hand, and when there was some little difficulty in lighting the tobacco from the expiring lucifer, he, without a moment’s thought, held the letter over the flickering flame, and from the burning paper lighted his pipe. + 

In a moment he remembered what he had done. + 

The letter of introduction! the one piece of evidence in his favour! He threw the blazing paper on the ground and stamped on it, but in vain. In spite of all his efforts a few black ashes alone remained. + 

“The devil must have possessed me,” he exclaimed. “I have burnt my uncle’s letter.” + 

“Well,” says Mr. Jinks, “I’ve seen many dodges in my time, and I’ve seen a many knowing cards; but if that isn’t the neatest dodge, and if you ain’t the knowingest card I ever did see, blow me.” + 

“I tell you that letter was in my uncle’s hand; written to his friend, the merchant at Gardenford; and in it he mentions having given me the very money you say has been stolen from his cabinet.” + 

“Oh, the letter was all that, was it? And you’ve lighted your pipe with it. You’d better tell that little story before the coroner. It will be so very conwincing to the jury.” + 

The scrub, with his mouth very much to the left, spells out again the two words, “Not guilty!” + 

“Oh,” says Mr. Jinks, “you mean to stick to your opinion, do you, now you’ve formed it? Upon my word, you’re too clever for a country-town practice; I wonder they don’t send for you up at Scotland Yard; with your talents, you’d be at the top of the tree in no time, I’ve no doubt.” + 

During the journey, the thick November fog had been gradually clearing away, and at this very moment the sun broke out with a bright and sudden light that shone full upon the threadbare coat-sleeve of Daredevil Dick. + 

“Not guilty!” cried Mr. Jinks, with sudden energy. “Not guilty! Why, look here! I’m blest if his coat-sleeve isn’t covered with blood!” + 

Yes, on the shabby worn-out coat the sunlight revealed dark and ghastly stains; and, stamped and branded by those hideous marks as a villain and a murderer, Richard Marwood reentered his native town. + 

V + 

The Healing Waters + 

The Sloshy is not a beautiful river, unless indeed mud is beautiful, for it is very muddy. The Sloshy is a disagreeable kind of compromise between a river and a canal. It is like a canal which (after the manner of the mythic frog that wanted to be an ox) had seen a river, and swelled itself to bursting in imitation thereof. It has quite a knack of swelling and bursting, this Sloshy; it overflows its banks and swallows up a house or two, or takes an impromptu snack off a few outbuildings, once or twice a year. It is inimical to children, and has been known to suck into its muddy bosom the hopes of divers families; and has afterwards gone down to the distant sea, flaunting on its breast Billy’s straw hat or Johnny’s pinafore, as a flag of triumph for having done a little amateur business for the gentleman on the pale horse. + 

It has been a soft pillow of rest, too, this muddy breast of the Sloshy; and weary heads have been known to sleep more soundly in that loathsome, dark, and slimy bed than on couches of down. + 

Oh, keep us ever from even whispering to our own hearts that our best chance of peaceful slumber might be in such a bed! + 

An ugly, dark, and dangerous river⁠—a river that is always telling you of trouble, and anguish, and weariness of spirit⁠—a river that to some poor impressionable mortal creatures, who are apt to be saddened by a cloud or brightened by a sunbeam, is not healthy to look upon. + 

I wonder what that woman thinks of the river? A badly-dressed woman carrying a baby, who walks with a slow and restless step up and down by one of its banks, on the afternoon of the day on which the murder of Mr. Montague Harding took place. + 

It is a very solitary spot she has chosen, on the furthest outskirts of the town of Slopperton; and the town of Slopperton being at best a very ugly town, is ugliest at the outskirts, which consist of two or three straggling manufactories, a great gaunt gaol⁠—the stoniest of stone jugs⁠—and a straggling fringe of shabby houses, some new and only half-built, others ancient and half fallen to decay, which hang all round Slopperton like the rags that fringe the edges of a dirty garment. + 

The woman’s baby is fretful, and it may be that the damp foggy atmosphere on the banks of the Sloshy is scarcely calculated to engender either high spirits or amiable temper in the bosom of infant or adult. The woman hushes it impatiently to her breast, and looks down at the little puny features with a strange unmotherly glance. Poor wretch! Perhaps she scarcely thinks of that little load as a mother is apt to think of her child. She may remember it only as a shame, a burden, and a grief. She has been pretty; a bright country beauty, perhaps, a year ago; but she is a faded, careworn-looking creature now, with a pale face, and hollow circles round her eyes. She has played the only game a woman has to play, and lost the only stake a woman has to lose. + 

“I wonder whether he will come, or whether I must wear out my heart through another long long day.⁠—Hush, hush! As if my trouble was not bad enough without your crying.” + 

This is an appeal to the fretful baby; but that young gentleman is engaged at fisticuffs with his cap, and has just destroyed a handful of its tattered border. + 

There is on this dingy bank of the Sloshy a little dingy public-house, very old-fashioned, though surrounded by newly-begun houses. It is a little, one-sided, pitiful place, ornamented with the cheering announcements of “Our noted Old Tom at 4d. per quartern;” and “This is the only place for the real Mountain Dew.” It is a wretched place, which has never seen better days, and never hopes to see better days. The men who frequent it are a few stragglers from a factory near, and the colliers whose barges are moored in the neighbourhood. These shamble in on dark afternoons, and play at all-fours, or cribbage, in a little dingy parlour with dirty dog’s-eared cards, scoring their points with beer-marks on the sticky tables. Not a very attractive house of entertainment this; but it has an attraction for the woman with the baby, for she looks at it wistfully, as she paces up and down. Presently she fumbles in her pocket, and produces two or three halfpence⁠—just enough, it seems, for her purpose, for she sneaks in at the half-open door, and in a few minutes emerges in the act of wiping her lips. + 

As she does so, she almost stumbles against a man wrapped in a great coat, and with the lower part of his face muffled in a thick handkerchief. + 

“I thought you would not come,” she said. + 

“Did you? Then you see you thought wrong. But you might have been right, for my coming was quite a chance: I can’t be at your beck and call night and day.” + 

“I don’t expect you to be at my beck and call. I’ve not been used to get so much attention, or so much regard from you as to expect that, Jabez.” + 

The man started, and looked round as if he expected to find all Slopperton at his shoulder; but there wasn’t a creature about. + 

“You needn’t be quite so handy with my name,” he said; “there’s no knowing who might hear you. Is there anyone in there?” he asked, pointing to the public-house. + 

“No one but the landlord.” + 

“Come in, then; we can talk better there. This fog pierces one to the bones.” + 

He seems never to consider that the woman and the child have been exposed to that piercing fog for an hour and more, as he is above an hour after his appointment. + 

He leads the way through the bar into the little parlour. There are no colliers playing at all-fours today, and the dog’s-eared cards lie tumbled in a heap on one of the sticky tables among broken clay-pipes and beer-stains. This table is near the one window which looks out on the river, and by this window the woman sits, Jabez placing himself on the other side of the table. + 

The fretful baby has fallen asleep, and lies quietly in the woman’s lap. + 

“What will you take?” + 

“A little gin,” she answers, not without a certain shame in her tone. + 

“So you’ve found out that comfort, have you?” He says this with a glance of satisfaction he cannot repress. + 

“What other comfort is there for such as me, Jabez? It seemed at first to make me forget. Nothing can do that now⁠—except⁠—” + 

She did not finish this sentence, but sat looking with a dull vacant stare at the black waters of the Sloshy, which, as the tide rose, washed with a hollow noise against the brickwork of the pathway close to the window. + 

“Well, as I suppose you didn’t ask me to meet you here for the sole purpose of making miserable speeches, perhaps you’ll tell me what you want with me. My time is precious, and if it were not, I can’t say I should much care about stopping long in this place; it’s such a deliciously lively hole and such a charming neighbourhood.” + 

“I live in this neighbourhood⁠—at least, I starve in this neighbourhood, Jabez.” + 

“Oh, now we’re coming to it,” said the gentleman, with a very gloomy face, “we’re coming to it. You want some money. That’s how this sort of thing always ends.” + 

“I hoped a better end than that, Jabez. I hoped long ago, when I thought you loved me⁠—” + 

“Oh, we’re going over that ground again, are we?” said he; and with a gesture of weariness, he took up the dog’s-eared cards on the sticky table before him, and began to build a house with them, such as children build in their play. + 

Nothing could express better than this action his thorough determination not to listen to what the woman might have to say; but in spite of this she went on⁠— + 

“You see I was a foolish country girl, Jabez, or I might have known better. I had been accustomed to take my father and my brother’s word of mouth as Bible truth, and had never known that word to be belied. I did not think, when the man I loved with all my heart and soul⁠—to utter forgetfulness of every other living creature on the earth, of every duty that I knew to man and heaven⁠—I did not think when the man I loved so much said this or that, to ask him if he meant it honestly, or if it was not a cruel and a wicked lie. Being so ignorant, I did not think of that, and I thought to be your wife, as you swore I should be, and that this helpless little one lying here might live to look up to you as a father, and be a comfort and an honour to you.” + 

To be a comfort and an honour to you! The fretful baby awoke at the words, and clenched its tiny fists with a spiteful action. + 

If the river, as a thing eternal in comparison to man⁠—if the river had been a prophet, and had had a voice in its waters wherewith to prophesy, I wonder whether it would have cried⁠— + 

“A shame and a dishonour, an enemy and an avenger in the days to come!” + 

Jabez’ card-house had risen to three stories; he took the dog’s-eared cards one by one in his white hands with a slow deliberate touch that never faltered. + 

The woman looked at him with a piteous but tearless glance; from him to the river; and back again to him. + 

“You don’t ask to look at the child, Jabez.” + 

“I don’t like children,” said he. “I get enough of children at the Doctor’s. Children and Latin grammar⁠—and the end so far off yet,”⁠—he said the last words to himself, in a gloomy tone. + 

“But your own child, Jabez⁠—your own.” + 

“As you say,” he muttered. + 

She rose from her chair and looked full at him⁠—a long long gaze which seemed to say, “And this is the man I loved; this is the man for whom I am lost!” If he could have seen her look! But he was stooping to pick up a card from the ground⁠—his house of cards was five stories high by this time. “Come,” he said, in a hard resolute tone, “you’ve written to me to beg me to meet you here, for you were dying of a broken heart; that’s to say you have taken to drinking gin (I dare say it’s an excellent thing to nurse a child upon), and you want to be bought off. How much do you expect? I thought to have a sum of money at my command today. Never you mind how; it’s no business of yours.” He said this savagely, as if in answer to a look of inquiry from her; but she was standing with her back turned to him, looking steadily out of the window. + 

“I thought to have been richer today,” he continued, “but I’ve had a disappointment. However, I’ve brought as much as I could afford; so the best thing you can do is to take it, and get out of Slopperton as soon as you can, so that I may never see your wretched white face again.” + 

He counted out four sovereigns on the sticky table, and then, adding the sixth story to his card-house, looked at the frail erection with a glance of triumph. + 

“And so will I build my fortune in days to come,” he muttered. + 

A man who had entered the dark little parlour very softly passed behind him and brushed against his shoulder at this moment; the house of cards shivered, and fell in a heap on the table. + 

Jabez turned round with an angry look. + 

“What the devil did you do that for?” he asked. + 

The man gave an apologetic shrug, pointed with his fingers to his lips, and shook his head. + 

“Oh,” said Jabez, “deaf and dumb! So much the better.” + 

The strange man seated himself at another table, on which the landlord placed a pint of beer; took up a newspaper, and seemed absorbed in it; but from behind the cover of this newspaper he watched Jabez with a furtive glance, and his mouth, which was very much on one side, twitched now and then with a nervous action. + 

All this time the woman had never touched the money⁠—never indeed turned from the window by which she stood; but she now came up to the table, and took the sovereigns up one by one. + 

“After what you have said to me this day, I would see this child starve, hour by hour, and die a slow death before my eyes, before I would touch one morsel of bread bought with your money. I have heard that the waters of that river are foul and poisonous, and death to those who live on its bank; but I know the thoughts of your wicked heart to be so much more foul and so much bitterer a poison, that I would go to that black river for pity and help rather than to you.” As she said this, she threw the sovereigns into his face with such a strong and violent hand, that one of them, striking him above the eyebrow, cut his forehead to the bone, and brought the blood gushing over his eyes. + 

The woman took no notice of his pain, but turning once more to the window, threw herself into a chair and sat moodily staring out at the river, as if indeed she looked to that for pity. + 

The dumb man helped the landlord to dress the cut on Jabez’ forehead. It was a deep cut, and likely to leave a scar for years to come. + 

Mr. North didn’t look much the better, either in appearance or temper, for this blow. He did not utter a word to the woman, but began, in a hangdog manner, to search for the money, which had rolled away into the corners of the room. He could only find three sovereigns; and though the landlord brought a light, and the three men searched the room in every direction, the fourth could not be found; so, abandoning the search, Jabez paid his score and strode out of the place without once looking at the woman. + 

“I’ve got off cheap from that tiger-cat,” he said to himself; “but it has been a bad afternoon’s work. What can I say about my cut face to the governor?” He looked at his watch, a homely silver one attached to a black ribbon. “Five o’clock; I shall be at the Doctor’s by teatime. I can get into the gymnasium the back way, take a few minutes’ turn with the poles and ropes, and say the accident happened in climbing. They always believe what I say, poor dolts.” + 

His figure was soon lost in the darkness and the fog⁠—so dense a fog that very few people saw the woman with the fretful baby when she emerged from the public-house, and walked along the riverbank, leaving even the outskirts of Slopperton behind, and wandered on and on till she came to a dreary spot, where dismal pollard willows stretched their dark and ugly shadows, like the bare arms of withered hags, over the dismal waters of the lonely Sloshy. + 

O river, sometimes so pitiless when thou devourest youth, beauty, and happiness, wilt thou be pitiful and tender tonight, and take a poor wretch, who has no hope of mortal pity, to peace and quiet on thy breast? + 

O merciless river, so often bitter foe to careless happiness, wilt thou tonight be friend to reckless misery and hopeless pain? + 

God made thee, dark river, and God made the wretch who stands shivering on thy bank: and may be, in His boundless love and compassion for the creatures of His hand, He may have pity even for those so lost as to seek forbidden comfort in thy healing waters. + 

VI + 

Two Coroner’s Inquests + 

There had not been since the last general election, when George Augustus Slashington, the Liberal member, had been returned against strong Conservative opposition, in a blaze of triumph and a shower of rotten eggs and cabbage-stumps⁠—there had not been since that great day such excitement in Slopperton as there was on the discovery of the murder of Mr. Montague Harding. + 

A murder was always a great thing for Slopperton. When John Boggins, weaver, beat out the brains of Sarah his wife, first with the heel of his clog and ultimately with a poker, Slopperton had a great deal to say about it⁠—though, of course, the slaughter of one “hand” by another was no great thing out of the factories. But this murder at the Black Mill was something out of the common. Uncommonly cruel, cowardly, and unmanly, and moreover occurring in a respectable rank of life. + 

Round that lonely house on the Slopperton road there was a crowd and a bustle throughout that short foggy day on which Richard Marwood was arrested. + 

Gentlemen of the Press were there, sniffing out, with miraculous acumen, particulars of the murder, which as yet were known to none but the heads of the Slopperton police force. + 

How many lines at three-half-pence per line these gentlemen wrote concerning the dreadful occurrence, without knowing anything whatever about it, no one unacquainted with the mysteries of their art would dare to say. + 

The two papers which appeared on Friday had accounts varying in every item, and the one paper which appeared on Saturday had a happy amalgamation of the two conflicting accounts⁠—demonstrating thereby the triumph of paste and scissors over penny-a-liners’ copy. + 

The head officials of the Slopperton police, attired in plain clothes, went in and out of the Black Mill from an early hour on that dark November day. Every time they came out, though none of them ever spoke, by some strange magic a fresh report got current among the crowd. I think the magical process was this: Some one man, auguring from such and such a significance in their manner, whispered to his nearest neighbour his suggestion of what might have been revealed to them within; and this whispered suggestion was repeated from one to another till it grew into a fact, and was still repeated through the crowd, while with every speaker it gathered interest until it grew into a series of imaginary facts. + 

Of one thing the crowd was fully convinced⁠—that was, that those grave men in plain clothes, the Slopperton detectives, knew all, and could tell all, if they only chose to speak. And yet I doubt if there was beneath the stars more than one person who really knew the secret of the dreadful deed. + 

The following day the coroner’s inquisition was held at a respectable hostelry near the Black Mill, whither the jury went, accompanied by the medical witness, to contemplate the body of the victim. With solemn faces they hovered round the bed of the murdered man: they took depositions, talked to each other in low hushed tones; and exchanged a few remarks, in a low voice, with the doctor who had probed the deep gashes in that cold breast. + 

All the evidence that transpired at the inquest only amounted to this⁠— + 

The servant Martha, rising at six o’clock on the previous morning, went, as she was in the habit of doing, to the door of the old East Indian to call him⁠—he being always an early riser, and getting up even in winter to study by lamplight. + 

Receiving, after repeated knocking at the door, no answer the old woman had gone into the room, and there had beheld, by the faint light of her candle, the awful spectacle of the Anglo-Indian lying on the floor by the bedside, his throat cut, cruel stabs upon his breast, and a pool of blood surrounding him; the cabinet in the room broken open and ransacked, and the pocketbook and money which it was known to contain missing. The papers of the murdered gentleman were thrown into confusion and lay in a heap near the cabinet; and as there was no blood upon them, the detectives concluded that the cabinet had been rifled prior to the commission of the murder. + 

The Lascar had been found lying insensible on his bed in the little dressing-room, his head cruelly beaten; and beyond this there was nothing to be discovered. The Lascar had been taken to the hospital, where little hope was given by the doctors of his recovery from the injuries he had received. + 

In the first horror and anguish of that dreadful morning Mrs. Marwood had naturally inquired for her son; had expressed her surprise at his disappearance; and when questioned had revealed the history of his unexpected return the night before. Suspicion fell at once upon the missing man. His reappearance after so many years on the return of his rich uncle; his secret departure from the house before anyone had risen⁠—everything told against him. Inquiries were immediately set on foot at the turnpike gates on the several roads out of Slopperton; and at the railway station from which he had started for Gardenford by the first train. + 

In an hour it was discovered that a man answering to Richard’s description had been seen at the station; half an hour afterwards a man appeared, who deposed to having seen and recognized him on the platform⁠—and deposed, too, to Richard’s evident avoidance of him. The railway clerks remembered giving a ticket to a handsome young man with a dark moustache, in a shabby suit, having a pipe in his mouth. Poor Richard! the dark moustache and pipe tracked him at every stage. “Dark moustache⁠—pipe⁠—shabby dress⁠—tall⁠—handsome face.” The clerk who played upon the electric telegraph wires, as other people play upon the piano, sent these words shivering down the line to the Gardenford station; from the Gardenford station to the Gardenford police-office the words were carried in less than five minutes; in five minutes more Mr. Jinks the detective was on the platform, and his dumb assistant, Joe Peters, was ready outside the station; and they both were ready to recognize Richard the moment they saw him. + 

O wonders of civilized life! cruel wonders, when you help to track an innocent man to a dreadful doom. + 

Richard’s story of the letter only damaged his case with the jury. The fact of his having burned a document of such importance seemed too incredible to make any impression in his favour. + 

Throughout the proceedings there stood in the background a shabbily dressed man, with watchful observant eyes, and a mouth very much on one side. + 

This man was Joseph Peters, the scrub of the detective force of Gardenford. He rarely took his eyes from Richard, who, with pale bewildered face, dishevelled hair, and slovenly costume, looked perhaps as much like guilt as innocence. + 

The verdict of the coroner’s jury was, as everyone expected it would be, to the effect that the deceased had been wilfully murdered by Richard Marwood his nephew; and poor Dick was removed immediately to the county gaol on the outskirts of Slopperton, there to lie till the assizes. + 

The excitement in Slopperton, as before observed, was immense. Slopperton had but one voice⁠—a voice loud in execration of the innocent prisoner, horror of the treachery and cruelty of the dreadful deed, and pity for the wretched mother of this wicked son, whose anguish had thrown her on a sick bed⁠—but who, despite of every proof repeated every hour, expressed her assurance of her unfortunate son’s innocence. + 

The coroner had plenty of work on that dismal November day: for from the inquest on the unfortunate Mr. Harding he had to hurry down to a little dingy public-house on the river’s bank, there to inquire into the cause of the untimely death of a wretched outcast found by some bargemen in the Sloshy. + 

This sort of death was so common an event in the large and thickly-populated town of Slopperton, that the coroner and the jury (lighted by two guttering tallow candles with long wicks, at four o’clock on that dull afternoon) had very little to say about it. + 

One glance at that heap of wet, torn, and shabby garments⁠—one half-shuddering, halt-pitying look at the white face, blue lips, and damp loose auburn hair, and a merciful verdict⁠—“Found drowned.” + 

One juryman, a butcher⁠—(we sometimes think them hard-hearted, these butchers)⁠—lays a gentle hand upon the auburn hair, and brushes a lock of it away from the pale forehead. + 

Perhaps so tender a touch had not been laid upon that head for two long years. Perhaps not since the day when the dead woman left her native village, and a fond and happy mother for the last time smoothed the golden braids beneath her daughter’s Sunday bonnet. + 

In half an hour the butcher is home by his cheerful fireside; and I think he has a more loving and protecting glance than usual for the fair-haired daughter who pours out his tea. + 

No one recognizes the dead woman. No one knows her story; they guess at it as a very common history, and bury her in a parish burying-ground⁠—a damp and dreary spot not far from the river’s brink, in which many such as she are laid. + 

Our friend Jabez North, borrowing the Saturday’s paper of his principal in the evening after school-hours, is very much interested in the accounts of these two coroner’s inquests. + 

VII + 

The Dumb Detective a Philanthropist + 

The dreary winter months pass by. Time, slow of foot to some, and fast of wing to others, is a very chameleon, such different accounts do different people give of him. + 

He is very rapid in his flight, no doubt, for the young gentlemen from Dr. Tappenden’s home for the Christmas holidays: rapid enough perhaps for the young gentlemen’s papas, who have to send their sons back to the academy armed with Dr. Tappenden’s little account⁠—which is not such a very little account either, when you reckon up all the extras, such as dancing, French, gymnastics, drill-serjeant, hair-cutting, stationery, servants, and pew at church. + 

Fast enough, perhaps, is the flight of Time for Allecompain Major, who goes home in a new suit of mourning, and who makes it sticky about the cuffs and white about the elbows before the holidays are out. I don’t suppose he forgets his little dead brother; and I dare say, by the blazing hearth, where the firelight falls dullest upon his mother’s black dress, he sometimes thinks very sadly of the little grave out in the bleak winter night, on which the snow falls so purely white. But “cakes and ale” are eternal institutions; and if you or I, reader, died tomorrow, the baker would still bake, and Messrs. Barclay and Perkins would continue to brew the ale and stout for which they are so famous, and the friends who were sorriest for us would eat, drink, ay and be merry too, before long. + 

Who shall say how slow of foot is Time to the miserable young man awaiting his trial in the dreary gaol of Slopperton? + 

Who shall say how slow to the mother awaiting in agony the result of that trial? + 

The assizes take place late in February. So, through the fog and damp of gloomy November; through long, dark, and dreary December nights; through January frost and snow⁠—(of whose outward presence he has no better token than the piercing cold within)⁠—Richard paces up and down his narrow cell, and broods upon the murder of his uncle, and of his trial which is to come. + 

Ministers of religion come to convert him, as they say. He tells them that he hopes and believes all they can teach him, for that it was taught him in years gone by at his mother’s knee. + 

“The best proof of my faith,” he says, “is that I am not mad. Do you think, if I did not believe in an All-seeing Providence, I should not go stark staring mad, when, night after night, through hours which are as years in duration, I think, and think, of the situation in which I am placed, till my brain grows wild and my senses reel? I have no hope in the result of my trial, for I feel how every circumstance tells against me: but I have hope that Heaven, with a mighty hand, and an instrument of its own choosing, may yet work out the saving of an innocent man from an ignominious death.” + 

The dumb detective Peters had begged to be transferred from Gardenford to Slopperton, and was now in the employ of the police force of that town. Of very little account this scrub among the officials. His infirmity, they say, makes him scarcely worth his salt, though they admit that his industry is unfailing. + 

So the scrub awaits the trial of Richard Marwood, in whose fortunes he takes an interest which is in no way abated since he spelt out the words “Not guilty” in the railway carriage. + 

He had taken up his Slopperton abode in a lodging in a small street of six-roomed houses yclept Little Gulliver Street. At No. 5, Little Gulliver Street, Mr. Peters’ attention had been attracted by the announcement of the readiness and willingness of the occupier of the house to take in and do for a single gentleman. Mr. Peters was a single gentleman, and he accordingly presented himself at No. 5, expressing the amiable desire of being forthwith taken in and done for. + 

The back bedroom of that establishment, he was assured by its proprietress, was an indoor garden-of-Eden for a single man; and certainly, looked at by the light of such advantages as a rent of four-and-sixpence a week, a sofa-bedstead⁠—(that deliciously innocent white lie in the way of furniture which never yet deceived anybody); a Dutch oven, an apparatus for cooking anything, from a pheasant to a red herring; and a little high-art in the way of a young gentleman in red-and-yellow making honourable proposals to a young lady in yellow-and-red, in picture number one; and the same lady and gentleman perpetuating themselves in picture number two, by means of a red baby in a yellow cradle;⁠—taking into consideration such advantages as these, the one-pair back was a paradise calculated to charm a virtuously-minded single man. Mr. Peters therefore took immediate possession by planting his honest gingham in a corner of the room, and by placing two-and-sixpence in the hands of the proprietress by way of deposit. His luggage was more convenient than extensive⁠—consisting of a parcel in the crown of his hat, containing the lighter elegancies of his costume; a small bundle in a red cotton pocket handkerchief, which held the heavier articles of his wardrobe; and a comb, which he carried in his pocketbook. + 

The proprietress of the indoor Eden was a maiden lady of mature age, with a sharp red nose and metallic pattens. It was with some difficulty that Mr. Peters made her understand, by the aid of pantomimic gestures and violent shakings of the head, that he was dumb, but not deaf; that she need be under no necessity of doing violence to the muscles of her throat, as he could hear her with perfect ease in her natural key. He then⁠—still by the aid of pantomime⁠—made known a desire for pencil and paper, and on being supplied with these articles wrote the one word “baby,” and handed that specimen of caligraphy to the proprietress. + 

That sharp-nosed damsel’s maidenly indignation sent new roses to join the permanent blossoms at the end of her olfactory organ, and she remarked, in a voice of vinegar, that she let her lodgings to single men, and that single men as were single men, and not impostors, had no business with babies. + 

Mr. Peters again had recourse to the pencil, “Not mine⁠—fondling; to be brought up by hand; would pay for food and nursing.” + 

The maiden proprietress had no objection to a fondling, if paid for its requirements; liked children in their places; would call Kuppins; and did call Kuppins. + 

A voice at the bottom of the stairs responded to the call of Kuppins; a boy’s voice most decidedly; a boy’s step upon the stairs announced the approach of Kuppins; and Kuppins entered the room with a boy’s stride and a boy’s slouch; but for all this, Kuppins was a girl. + 

Not very much like a girl about the head, with that shock of dark rough short hair; not much like a girl about the feet, in high-lows, with hobnailed soles; but a girl for all that, as testified by short petticoats and a long blue pinafore, ornamented profusely with every variety of decoration in the way of three-cornered slits and grease-spots. + 

Kuppins was informed by her mistress that the gent had come to lodge; and moreover that the gent was dumb. It is impossible to describe Kuppins’ delight at the idea of a dumb lodger. + 

Kuppins had knowed a dumb boy as lived three doors from mother’s (Kuppins’ mother understood); this ’ere dumb boy was wicious, and when he was gone agin, ’owled ’orrid. + 

Was told that the gent wasn’t vicious and never howled, and seemed, if anything, disappointed. Understood the dumb alphabet, and had conversed in it for hours with the aforesaid dumb boy. The author, as omniscient, may state that Kuppins and the vicious boy had had some love-passages in days gone by. Mr. Peters was delighted to find a kindred spirit capable of understanding his dirty alphabet, and explained his wish that a baby, “a fondling” he intended to bring up, might be taken in and done for as well as himself. + 

Kuppins doted on babies; had nursed nine brothers and sisters, and had nursed outside the family circle, at the rate of fifteen-pence a week, for some years. Kuppins had been out in the world from the age of twelve, and was used up as to Slopperton at sixteen. + 

Mr. Peters stated by means of the dirty alphabet⁠—(more than usually dirty today, after his journey from Gardenford, whence he had transplanted his household gods, namely, the gingham umbrella, the bundle, parcel, pocketbook, and comb)⁠—that he would go and fetch the baby. Kuppins immediately proved herself an adept in the art of construing this manual language, and nodded triumphantly a great many times in token that she understood the detective’s meaning. + 

The baby was apparently not far off, for Mr. Peters returned in five minutes with a limp bundle smothered in an old pea-jacket, which on close inspection turned out to be the “fondling.” + 

Mr. Peters had lately purchased the pea-jacket secondhand, and believed it to be an appropriate outer garment for a baby in long-clothes. + 

The fondling soon evinced signs of a strongly-marked character, not to say a vindictive disposition, and fought manfully with Kuppins, smiting that young lady in the face, and abstracting handfuls of her hair with an address beyond his years. + 

“Ain’t he playful?” asked that young person, who was evidently experienced in fretful babies, and indifferent to the loss of a stray tress or so from her luxuriant locks. “Ain’t he playful, pretty hinnercent! Lor! he’ll make the place quite cheerful!” + 

In corroboration of which prediction the “fondling” set up a dismal wail, varied with occasional chokes and screams. + 

Surely there never could have been, since the foundation-stones of the hospitals for abandoned children in Paris and London were laid, such a “fondling” to choke as this fondling. The manner in which his complexion would turn⁠—from its original sickly sallow to a vivid crimson, from crimson to dark blue, and from blue to black⁠—was something miraculous; and Kuppins was promised much employment in the way of shakings and pattings on the back, to keep the “fondling” from an early and unpleasant death. But Kuppins, as we have remarked, liked a baby⁠—and, indeed, would have given the preference to a cross baby⁠—a cross baby being, as it were, a battle to fight, and a victory to achieve. + 

In half an hour she had conquered the fondling in a manner wonderful to behold. She laid him across her knee while she lighted a fire in the smoky little grate; for the indoor Eden offered a Hobson’s choice to its inhabitants, of smoke or damp; and Mr. Peters preferred smoke. She carried the infant on her left arm, while she fetched a red herring, an ounce of tea, and other comestibles from the chandler’s at the corner; put him under her arm while she cooked the herring and made the tea, and waited on Mr. Peters at his modest repast with the fondling choking on her shoulder. + 

Mr. Peters, having discussed his meal, conversed with Kuppins as she removed the tea-things. The alphabet by this time had acquired a piscatorial flavour, from his having made use of the five vowels to remove the bones of his herring. + 

“That baby’s a rare fretful one,” says Mr. Peters with rapid fingers. + 

Kuppins had nursed a many fretful babies. “Orphants was generally fretful; supposed the ‘fondling’ was a orphant.” + 

“Poor little chap!⁠—yes,” said Peters. “He’s had his trials, though he is a young ’un. I’m afeard he’ll never grow up a teetotaller. He’s had a little too much of the water already.” + 

Has had too much of the water? Kuppins would very much like to know the meaning of this observation. But Mr. Peters relapses into profound thought, and looks at the “fondling” (still choking) with the eye of a philanthropist and almost the tenderness of a father. + 

He who provides for the young ravens had, perhaps, in the marvellous fitness of all things of His creation, given to this helpless little one a better protector in the dumb scrub of the police force than he might have had in the father who had cast him off, whoever that father might be. + 

Mr. Peters presently remarks to the interested Kuppins, that he shall “ederkate,”⁠—he is some time deciding on the conflicting merits of a c or a k for this word⁠—he shall “ederkate the fondling, and bring him up to his own business.” + 

“What is his business?” asks Kuppins naturally. + 

“Detecktive,” Mr. Peters spells, embellishing the word with an extraneous k. + 

“Oh, perlice,” said Kuppins. “Crikey, how jolly! Shouldn’t I like to be a perliceman, and find out all about this ’ere ’orrid murder!” + 

Mr. Peters brightens at the word “murder,” and he regards Kuppins with a friendly glance. + 

“So you takes a hinterest in this ’ere murder, do yer?” he spells out. + 

“Oh, don’t I? I bought a Sunday paper. Shouldn’t I like to see that there young man as killed his uncle scragged⁠—that’s all!” + 

Mr. Peters shook his head doubtfully, with a less friendly glance at Kuppins. But there were secrets and mysteries of his art he did not trust at all times to the dirty alphabet; and perhaps his opinion on the subject of the murder of Mr. Montague Harding was one of them. + 

Kuppins presently fetched him a pipe; and as he sat by this smoky fire, he watched alternately the blue cloud that issued from his lips and the clumsy figure of the damsel pacing up and down with the “fondling” (asleep after the exhaustion attendant on a desperate choke) upon her arms. + 

“If,” mused Mr. Peters, with his mouth very much to the left of his nose⁠—“if that there baby was grow’d up, he might help me to find out the rights and wrongs of this ’ere murder.” + 

Who so fit? or who so unfit? Which shall we say? If in the wonderful course of events, this little child shall ever have a part in dragging a murderer to a murderer’s doom, shall it be called a monstrous and a terrible outrage of nature, or a just and a fitting retribution? + 

VIII + 

Seven Letters on the Dirty Alphabet + 

The 17th of February shone out bright and clear, and a frosty sunlight illumined the windows of the court where Richard Marwood stood to be tried for his life. + 

Never, perhaps, had that court been so crowded; never, perhaps, had there been so much anxiety felt in Slopperton for the result of any trial as was felt that day for the issue of the trial of Richard Marwood. + 

The cold bright sunlight streaming in at the windows seemed to fall brightest and coldest on the wan white face of the prisoner at the bar. + 

Three months of mental torture had done their work, and had written their progress in such characters upon that young and once radiant countenance, as Time, in his smooth and peaceful course, would have taken years to trace. But Richard Marwood was calm today, with the awful calmness of that despair which is past all hope. Suspense had exhausted him. But he had done with suspense, and felt that his fate was sealed; unless, indeed, Heaven⁠—infinite both in mercy and in power⁠—raised up as by a miracle some earthly instrument to save him. + 

The court was one vast sea of eager faces; for, to the spectators, this trial was as a great game of chance, which the counsel for the prosecution, the judge, and the jury, played against the prisoner and his advocate, and at which the prisoner staked his life. + 

There was but one opinion in that vast assemblage; and that was, that the accused would lose in this dreadful game, and that he well deserved to lose. + 

There had been betting in Slopperton on the result of this awful hazard. For the theory of chances is to certain minds so delightful, that the range of subjects for a wager may ascend from a maggot-race to a trial for murder. Some adventurous spirits had taken desperate odds against the outsider “Acquittal;” and many enterprising gentlemen had made what they considered “good books,” by putting heavy sums on the decided favourite, “Found Guilty.” As, however, there might be a commutation of the sentence of death to transportation for life, some speculators had bet upon the chance of the prisoner being found guilty, but not executed; or, as it had been forcibly expressed, had backed “Penal Servitude” against “Gallows.” + 

So there were private interests, as well as a public interest, among that swelling ocean of men and women; and Richard had but very few backers in the great and terrible game that was being played. + 

In a corner of the gallery of the court, high up over the heads of the multitude, there was a little spot railed off from the public, and accessible only to the officials, or persons introduced by them. Here, among two or three policemen, stood our friend Mr. Joseph Peters, with his mouth very much on one side, and his eyes fixed intently upon the prisoner at the bar. The gallery in which he stood faced the dock, though at a great distance from it. + 

If there was one man in that vast assembly who, next to the prisoner, was most wretched, that man was the prisoner’s counsel. He was young, and this was only his third or fourth brief; and this was, moreover, the first occasion upon which he had ever been entrusted with an important case. He was an intensely nervous and excitable man, and failure would be to him worse than death; and he felt failure inevitable. He had not one inch of ground for the defence; and, in spite of the prisoner’s repeated protestations of his innocence, he believed that prisoner to be guilty. He was an earnest man; and this belief damped his earnestness. He was a conscientious man; and he felt that to defend Richard Marwood was something like a dishonest action. + 

The prisoner pleaded “Not guilty” in a firm voice. We read of this whenever we read of the trial of a great criminal; we read of the firm voice, the calm demeanour, the composed face, and the dignified bearing; and we wonder. Would it not be more wonderful were it otherwise? If we consider the pitch to which that man’s feelings have been wrought; the tension of every nerve; the exertion of every force, mental and physical, to meet those five or six desperate hours, we wonder no longer. The man’s life has become a terrible drama, and he is playing his great act. That mass of pale and watchful faces carries him through the long agony. Or perhaps it is less an agony than an excitement. It may be that his mind is mercifully darkened, and that he cannot see beyond the awful present into the more awful future. He is not busy with the vision of a ghastly structure of wood and iron; a dangling rope swinging loose in the chill morning air, till it is tightened and strained by a quivering and palpitating figure, which so soon grows rigid. He does not, it is to be hoped, see this. Life for him today stands still, and there is not room in his breast⁠—absorbed with the one anxious desire to preserve a proud and steady outward seeming⁠—for a thought of that dreadful future which may be so close at hand. + 

So, Richard Marwood, in an unfaltering voice, pleaded “Not guilty.” + 

There was among that vast crowd but one person who believed him. + 

Ay, Richard Marwood, thou mightest reverence those dirty hands, for they have spelt out the only language, except that of thy wretched mother, that ever spoke conviction of thy innocence. + 

Now the prisoner, though firm and collected in his manner spoke in so low and subdued a voice as to be only clearly audible to those near him. It happened that the judge, one of the celebrities of the bench, was afflicted with a trifling infirmity, which he would never condescend to acknowledge. That infirmity was partial deafness. He was what is called hard of hearing on one side, and his⁠—to use a common expression⁠—game ear happened to be nearest Richard. + 

“Guilty,” said the judge. “So, so⁠—Guilty. Very good.” + 

“Pardon me, my lord,” said the counsel for the defence, “the prisoner pleaded not guilty.” + 

“Nonsense, sir. Do you suppose me deaf?” asked his lordship; at which there was a slight titter among the habitués of the court. + 

The barrister gave his head a deprecatory shake. Of course, a gentleman in his lordship’s position could not be deaf. + 

“Very well, then,” said the judge, “unless I am deaf, the prisoner pleaded guilty. I heard him, sir, with my own ears⁠—my own ears.” + 

The barrister thought his lordship should have said “my own ear,” as the game organ ought not to count. + 

“Perhaps,” said the judge, “perhaps the prisoner will be good enough to repeat his plea; and this time he will be good enough to speak out.” + 

“Not guilty,” said Richard again, in a firm but not a loud voice⁠—his long imprisonment, with days, weeks, and months of slow agony, had so exhausted his physical powers, that to speak at all, under such circumstances, was an effort. + 

“Not guilty?” said the judge. “Why, the man doesn’t know his own mind. The man must be a born idiot⁠—he can’t be right in his intellect.” + 

Scarcely had the words passed his lordship’s lips, when a long low whistle resounded through the court. + 

Everybody looked up towards a corner of the gallery from which the sound came, and the officials cried “Order!” + 

Among the rest the prisoner raised his eyes, and looking to the spot from which this unexampled and daring interruption proceeded, recognized the face of the man who had spelt out the words “Not guilty” in the railway carriage. Their eyes met: and the man signalled to Richard to watch his hands, whilst with his fingers he spelt out several words slowly and deliberately. + 

This occurred during the pause caused by the endeavours of the officials to discover what contumacious person had dared to whistle at the close of his lordship’s remark. + 

The counsel for the prosecution stated the case⁠—a very clear case it seemed too⁠—against Richard Marwood. + 

“Here,” said the barrister, “is the case of a young man, who, after squandering a fortune, and getting deeply in debt in his native town, leaves that town, as it is thought by all, never to return. For seven years he does not return. His widowed and lonely mother awaits in anguish for any tidings of this heartless reprobate; but, for seven long years, by not so much as one line or one word, sent through any channel whatever, does he attempt to relieve her anxiety. His townsmen believe him to be dead; his mother believes him to be dead; and it is to be presumed from his conduct that he wishes to be lost sight of by all to whom he once was dear. But at the end of this seven years, his uncle, his mother’s only brother, a man of large fortune, returns from India and takes up his temporary abode at the Black Mill. Of course all Slopperton knows of the arrival of this gentleman, and knows also the extent of his wealth. We are always interested in rich people, gentlemen of the jury. Now, it is not very difficult to imagine, that through some channel or other the prisoner at the bar was made aware of his uncle’s return, and his residence at the Black Mill. The fact was mentioned in every one of the five enterprising journals which are the pride of Slopperton. The prisoner may have seen one of these journals; he may have had some former boon companion resident in Slopperton, with whom he may have been in correspondence. Be that as it may, gentlemen, on the eighth night after Mr. Montague Harding’s arrival, the prisoner at the bar appears, after seven years’ absence, with a long face and a penitent story, to beg his mother’s forgiveness. Gentlemen, we know the boundless power of maternal love; the inexhaustible depth of affection in a mother’s breast. His mother forgave him. The fatted calf was killed; the returned wanderer was welcomed to the home he had rendered desolate; the past was wiped out; and seven long years of neglect and desertion were forgotten. The family retired to rest. That night, gentlemen, a murder was committed of a deeper and darker dye than guilt ordinarily wears: a murder which in centuries hence will stand amongst the blackest chapters in the gloomy annals of crime. Under the roof whose shelter he had sought for the repose of his old age, Montague Harding was cruelly and brutally murdered. + 

“Now, gentlemen, who committed this outrage? Who was the monster in human form that perpetrated this villainous, cowardly, and bloodthirsty deed? Suspicion, gentlemen of the jury, only points to one man; and to that man suspicion points with so unerring a finger, that the criminal stands revealed in the broad glare of detected guilt. That man is the prisoner at the bar. On the discovery of the murder, the returned wanderer, the penitent and dutiful son, was of course sought for. But was he to be found? No, gentlemen. The bird had flown. The affectionate son, who, after seven years’ desertion, had returned to his mother’s feet⁠—as it was of course presumed never again to leave her⁠—had departed, secretly, in the dead of the night; choosing to sneak out of a window like a burglar, rather than to leave by the door, as the legitimate master of the house. Suspicion at once points to him; he is sought and found⁠—where, gentlemen? Forty miles from the scene of the murder, with the money rifled from the cabinet of the murdered man in his possession, and with his coat-sleeve stained by the blood of his victim. These, gentlemen, are, in brief, the circumstances of this harrowing case; and I think you will agree with me that never did circumstantial evidence so clearly point out the true criminal. I shall now proceed to call the witnesses for the crown.” + 

There was a pause and a little bustle in the court, the waves of the human sea were agitated for a moment. The backers of the favourites, “Guilty” and “Gallows,” felt they had made safe books. During this pause, a man pushed his way through the crowd, up to the spot where the prisoner’s counsel was seated, and put a little dirty slip of paper into his hand. There was written on it only one word, a word of three letters. The counsel read it, and then tore the slip of paper into the smallest atoms it was possible to reduce it to, and threw the fragments on the floor at his feet; but a warm flush mounted to his face, hitherto so pale, and he prepared himself to watch the evidence. + 

Richard Marwood, who knew the strength of the evidence against him, and knew his powerlessness to controvert it, had listened to its recapitulation with the preoccupied air of a man whom the proceedings of the day in no way concerned. His abstracted manner had been noticed by the spectators, and much commented upon. + 

It was singular, but at this most important crisis it appeared as if his chief attention was attracted by Joseph Peters, for he kept his eyes intently fixed upon the corner where that individual stood. The eyes of the people, following the direction of Richard’s eyes, saw nothing but a little group of officials leaning over a corner of the gallery. + 

The crowd did not see what Richard saw, namely, the fingers of Mr. Peters slowly shaping seven letters⁠—two words⁠—four letters in the first word, and three letters in the second. + 

There lay before the prisoner a few sprigs of rue; he took them up one by one, and gathering them together into a little bouquet, placed them in his buttonhole⁠—the eyes of the multitude staring at him all the time. + 

Strange to say, this trifling action appeared to be so pleasing to Mr. Joseph Peters, that he danced, as involuntarily, the first steps of an extempore hornpipe, and being sharply called to order by the officials, relapsed into insignificance for the remainder of the trial. + 

IX + 

“Mad, Gentlemen of the Jury” + 

The first witness called was Richard’s mother. From one to another amidst the immense number of persons in that well-packed courtroom there ran a murmur of compassion for that helpless woman with the white, anguish-worn face, and the quivering lip which tried so vainly to be still. All in Slopperton who knew anything of Mrs. Marwood, knew her to be a proud woman; they knew how silently she had borne the wild conduct of her son; how deeply she had loved that son; and they could guess now the depth of the bitterness of her soul when called upon to utter words which must help to condemn him. + 

After the witness had been duly sworn, the counsel for the prosecution addressed her thus: + 

“We have every wish, madam, to spare your feelings; I know there is not one individual present who does not sympathize with you in the position in which you now stand. But the course of Justice is as inevitable as it is sometimes painful, and we must all of us yield to its stern necessities. You will be pleased to state how long it is since your son left his home?” + 

“Seven years⁠—seven years last August.” + 

“Can you also state his reasons for leaving his home?” + 

“He had embarrassments in Slopperton⁠—debts, which I have since his departure liquidated.” + 

“Can you tell me what species of debts?” + 

“They were⁠—” she hesitated a little, “chiefly debts of honour.” + 

“Then am I to understand your son was a gambler?” + 

“He was unfortunately much addicted to cards.” + 

“To any other description of gambling?” + 

“Yes, to betting on the events of the turf.” + 

“He had fallen, I imagine, into bad companionship?” + 

She bowed her head, and in a faltering voice replied, “He had.” + 

“And he had acquired in Slopperton the reputation of being a scamp⁠—a ne’er-do-well?” + 

“I am afraid he had.” + 

“We will not press you further on this very painful subject; we will proceed to his departure from home. Your son gave you no intimation of his intention of leaving Slopperton?” + 

“None whatever. The last words he said to me were, that he was sorry for the past, but that he had started on a bad road, and must go on to the end.” + 

In this manner the examination proceeded, the account of the discovery of the murder being elicited from the witness, whose horror at having to give the details was exceedingly painful to behold. + 

The prisoner’s counsel rose and addressed Mrs. Marwood. + 

“In examining you, madam, my learned friend has not asked you whether you had looked upon your son, the prisoner at the bar, as a good or a bad son. Will you be kind enough to state your impression on this subject?” + 

“Apart from his wild conduct, he was a good son. He was kind and affectionate, and I believe it was his regret for the grief his dissipation had caused me that drove him away from his home.” + 

“He was kind and affectionate. I am to understand, then, that his disposition was naturally good?” + 

“Naturally he had a most excellent disposition. He was universally beloved as a boy; the servants were excessively attached to him; he had a great love of animals⁠—dogs followed him instinctively, as I believe they always do follow people who like them.” + 

“A very interesting trait, no doubt, in the prisoner’s disposition; but if we are to have so much charmingly minute description, I’m afraid we shall never conclude this trial,” said the opposite counsel. And a juryman, who had a ticket for a public dinner at four o’clock in his pocket, forgot himself so far that he applauded with the heels of his boots. + 

The prisoner’s counsel, regardless of the observation of his “learned friend,” proceeded. + 

“Madam,” he said, “had your son, before his departure from home, any serious illness?” + 

“The question is irrelevant,” said the judge. + 

“Pardon me, my lord. I shall not detain you long. I believe the question to be of importance. Permit me to proceed.” + 

Mrs. Marwood looked surprised by the question, but it came from her son’s advocate, and she did her best to answer it. + 

“My son had, shortly before his leaving home, a violent attack of brain-fever.” + 

“During which he was delirious?” + 

“Everybody is delirious in brain-fever,” said the judge. “This is trifling with the court, sir.” + 

The judge was rather inclined to snub the prisoner’s counsel; first, because he was a young and struggling man, and therefore ought to be snubbed; and secondly, because he had in a manner inferred that his lordship was deaf. + 

“Pardon me, my lord; you will see the drift of my question by-and-by.” + 

“I hope so, sir,” said his lordship, very testily. + 

“Was your son, madam, delirious during this fever?” + 

“Throughout it, sir.” + 

“And you attributed the fever⁠—” + 

“To his bad conduct having preyed upon his mind.” + 

“Were you alarmed for his life during his illness?” + 

“Much alarmed. But our greatest fear was for his reason.” + 

“Did the faculty apprehend the loss of his reason?” + 

“They did.” + 

“The doctors who attended him were resident in Slopperton?” + 

“They were, and are so still. He was attended by Dr. Morton and Mr. Lamb.” + 

The prisoner’s counsel here beckoned to some officials near him⁠—whispered some directions to them, and they immediately left the court. + 

Resuming the examination of this witness, the counsel said: + 

“You repeated just now the words your son made use of on the night of his departure from home. They were rather singular words⁠—‘he had started on a dark road, and he must go on to the end of it.’ ” + 

“Those were his exact words, sir.” + 

“Was there any wildness in his manner in saying these words?” he asked. + 

“His manner was always wild at this time⁠—perhaps wilder that night than usual.” + 

“His manner, you say, was always wild. He had acquired a reputation for a wild recklessness of disposition from an early age, had he not?” + 

“He had, unfortunately⁠—from the time of his going to school.” + 

“And his companions, I believe, had given him some name expressive of this?” + 

“They had.” + 

“And that name was⁠—” + 

“Daredevil Dick.” + 

Martha, the old servant, was next sworn. She described the finding of the body of Mr. Harding. + 

The examination by the prisoner’s counsel of this witness elicited nothing but that⁠— + 

Master Dick had always been a wild boy, but a good boy at heart; that he had been never known to hurt so much as a worm; and that she, Martha, was sure he’d never done the murder. When asked if she had any suspicion as to who had done the deed, she became nebulous in her manner, and made some allusions to “the French”⁠—having lived in the days of Waterloo, and being inclined to ascribe any deed of darkness, from the stealing of a leg of mutton to the exploding of an infernal machine, to the emissaries of Napoleon. + 

Mr. Jinks, who was then examined, gave a minute and rather discursive account of the arrest of Richard, paying several artful compliments to his own dexterity as a detective officer. + 

The man who met Richard on the platform at the railway station deposed to the prisoner’s evident wish to avoid a recognition; to his even crossing the line for that purpose. + 

“There is one witness,” said the counsel for the crown, “I am sorry to say I shall be unable to produce. That witness is the half-caste servant of the murdered gentleman, who still lies in a precarious state at the county hospital, and whose recovery from the injuries inflicted on him by the murderer of his master is pronounced next to an impossibility.” + 

The case for the prosecution closed; still a very clear case against Richard Marwood, and still the backers of the “Gallows” thought they had made a very good book. + 

The deposition of the Lascar, the servant of the murdered man, had been taken through an interpreter, at the hospital. It threw little light on the case. The man said, that on the night of the murder he had been awoke by a sound in Mr. Harding’s room, and had spoken in Hindostanee, asking if his master required his assistance, when he received in the darkness a blow on the head, which immediately deprived him of his senses. He could tell nothing of the person who struck the blow, except that at the moment of striking it a hand passed across his face⁠—a hand which was peculiarly soft and delicate, and the fingers of which were long and slender. + 

As this passage in the deposition was read, every eye in court was turned to the prisoner, who at that moment happened to be leaning forward with his elbow on the ledge of the dock before him, and his hand shading his forehead⁠—a very white hand, with long slender fingers. Poor Richard! In the good days gone by he had been rather proud of his delicate and somewhat feminine hand. + 

The prisoner’s counsel rose and delivered his speech for the defence. A very elaborate defence. A defence which went to prove that the prisoner at the bar, though positively guilty, was not morally guilty, or legally guilty⁠—“because, gentlemen of the jury, he is, and for some time has been, insane. Yes, mad, gentlemen of the jury. What has been every action of his life but the action of a madman? His wild boyhood; his reckless extravagant youth; his dissipated and wasted manhood, spent among drunken and dangerous companions. What was his return? Premeditated during the sufferings of delirium tremens, and premeditated long before the arrival of his rich uncle at Slopperton, as I shall presently prove to you. What was this, but the sudden repentance of a madman? Scarcely recovered from this frightful disease⁠—a disease during which men have been known frequently to injure themselves, and those very dear to them, in the most terrible manner⁠—scarcely recovered from this disease, he starts on foot, penniless, for a journey of upwards of two hundred miles. He accomplishes that journey⁠—how, gentlemen, in that dreary November weather, I tremble even to think⁠—he accomplishes that long and painful journey; and on the evening of the eighth day from that on which he left London he falls fainting at his mother’s feet. I shall prove to you, gentlemen, that the prisoner left London on the very day on which his uncle arrived in Slopperton; it is therefore impossible he could have had any knowledge of that arrival when he started. Well, gentlemen, the prisoner, after the fatigue, the extreme privation, he has suffered, has yet another trial to undergo⁠—the terrible agitation caused by a reconciliation with his beloved mother. He has eaten scarcely anything for two days, and is injudiciously allowed to drink nearly a bottle of old madeira. That night, gentlemen of the jury, a cruel murder is perpetrated; a murder as certain of immediate discovery, as clumsy in execution, as it is frightful in detail. Can there be any doubt that if it was committed by my unhappy client, the prisoner at the bar, it was perpetrated by him while labouring under an access of delirium, or insanity⁠—temporary, if you will, but unmitigated insanity⁠—aggravated by excessive fatigue, unprecedented mental excitement, and the bad effects of the wine he had been drinking? It has been proved that the cabinet was rifled, and that the pocketbook stolen therefrom was found in the prisoner’s possession. This may have been one of those strange flashes of method which are the distinguishing features of madness. In his horror at the crime he had in his delirium committed, the prisoner’s endeavour was to escape. For this escape he required money⁠—hence the plunder of the cabinet. The manner of his attempting to escape again proclaims the madman. Instead of flying to Liverpool, which is only thirty miles from this town⁠—whence he could have sailed for any part of the globe, and thus defied pursuit⁠—he starts without any attempt at disguise for a small inland town, whence escape is next to an impossibility, and is captured a few hours after the crime has been committed, with the blood of his unhappy victim upon the sleeve of his coat. Would a man in his senses, gentlemen, not have removed, at any rate, this fatal evidence of his guilt? Would a man in his senses not have endeavoured to disguise himself, and to conceal the money he had stolen? Gentlemen of the jury, I have perfect confidence in your coming to a just decision respecting this most unhappy affair. Weighing well the antecedents of the prisoner, and the circumstances of the crime, I can have not one shadow of a doubt that your verdict will be to the effect that the wretched man before you is, alas! too certainly his uncle’s murderer, but that he is as certainly irresponsible for a deed committed during an aberration of intellect.” + 

Strange to say, the counsel did not once draw attention to the singular conduct of the prisoner while in court; but this conduct had not been the less remarked by the jury, and did not the less weigh with them. + 

The witnesses for the defence were few in number. The first who mounted the witness-box was rather peculiar in his appearance. If you include amongst his personal attractions a red nose (which shone like the danger-signal on a railway through the dusky air of the court); a black eye⁠—not that admired darkness of the organ itself which is the handiwork of liberal nature, but that peculiarly mottled purple-and-green appearance about the region which bears witness to the fist of an acquaintance; a bushy moustache of a fine blue-black dye; a head of thick black hair, not too intimately acquainted with that modern innovation on manly habits, the comb⁠—you may perhaps have some notion of his physical qualifications. But nothing could ever give a full or just idea of the recklessness, the effrontery of his manner, the twinkle in his eye, the expression in every pimple of that radiant nose, or the depth of meaning he could convey by one twitch of his moustache, or one shake of his forest of black ringlets. + 

His costume inclined towards the fast and furious, consisting of a pair of loose Scotch plaid unmentionables, a bright blue greatcoat, no undercoat or waistcoat, a great deal of shirt ornamented with death’s-heads and pink ballet-dancers⁠—to say nothing of coffee and tobacco stains, and enough sham gold chain meandering over his burly breast to make up for every deficiency. While he was being duly sworn, the eyes of the witness wandered with a friendly and pitying glance towards the wretched prisoner at the bar. + 

“You are a member of the medical profession?” + 

“I am.” + 

“You were, I believe, in the company of the prisoner the night of his departure from London for this town?” + 

“I was.” + 

“What was the conduct of the prisoner on that night?” + 

“Rum.” + 

On being further interrogated, the witness stated that he had known Mr. Richard Marwood for many years, being himself originally a Slopperton man. + 

“Can you tell what led the prisoner to determine on returning to his mother’s house in the month of November last?” + 

“Blue devils,” replied the witness, with determined conciseness. + 

“Blue devils?” + 

“Yes, he’d been in a low way for three months, or more; he’d had a sharp attack of delirium tremens, and a touch of his old complaint⁠—” + 

“His old complaint?” + 

“Yes, brain-fever. During the fever he talked a great deal of his mother; said he had killed her by his bad conduct, but that he’d beg her forgiveness if he walked to Slopperton on his bare feet.” + 

“Can you tell me at what date he first expressed this desire to come to Slopperton?” + 

“Some time during the month of September.” + 

“Did you during this period consider him to be in a sound mind?” + 

“Well, several of my friends at Guy’s used to think rather the reverse. It was customary amongst us to say he had a loose slate somewhere.” + 

The counsel for the prosecution taking exception to this phrase “loose slate,” the witness went on to state that he thought the prisoner very often off his nut; had hidden his razors during his illness, and piled up a barricade of furniture before the window. The prisoner was remarkable for reckless generosity, good temper, a truthful disposition, and a talent for doing everything, and always doing it better than anybody else. This, and a great deal more, was elicited from him by the advocate for the defence. + 

He was cross-examined by the counsel for the prosecution. + 

“I think you told my learned friend that you were a member of the medical profession?” + 

“I did.” + 

Was first apprenticed to a chemist and druggist at Slopperton, and was now walking one of the hospitals in London with a view to attaining a position in the profession; had not yet attained eminence, but hoped to do so; had operated with some success in a desperate case of whitlow on the finger of a servant-girl, and should have effected a surprising cure, if the girl had not grown impatient and allowed her finger to be amputated by a rival practitioner before the curative process had time to develop itself; had always entertained a sincere regard for the prisoner; had at divers times borrowed money of him; couldn’t say he remembered ever returning any; perhaps he never had returned any, and that might, account for his not remembering the circumstance; had been present at the election of, and instrumental in electing the prisoner a member of a convivial club called the “Cheerful Cherokees.” No “Cheerful Cherokee” had ever been known to commit a murder, and the club was convinced of the prisoner’s innocence. + 

“You told the court and jury a short time ago, that the prisoner’s state on the last night you saw him in London was ‘rum,’ ” said the learned gentleman conducting the prosecution; “will you be good enough to favour us with the meaning of that adjective⁠—you intend it for an adjective, I presume?” + 

“Certainly,” replied the witness. “Rum, an adjective when applied to a gentleman’s conduct; a substantive when used to denominate his tipple.” + 

The counsel for the prosecution doesn’t clearly understand the meaning of the word “tipple.” + 

The witness thinks the learned gentleman had better buy a dictionary before he again assists in a criminal prosecution. + 

“Come, come, sir,” said the judge; “you are extremely impertinent. We don’t want to be kept here all night. Let us have your evidence in a straightforward manner.” + 

The witness squared his elbows, and turned that luminary, his nose, full on his lordship, as if it had been a bull’s-eye lantern. + 

“You used another strange expression,” said the counsel, “in answer to my friend. Will you have the kindness to explain what you mean by the prisoner having ‘a loose slate’?” + 

“A tile off. Something wrong about the roof⁠—the garret⁠—the upper story⁠—the nut.” + 

The counsel for the prosecution confessed himself to be still in the dark. + 

The witness declared himself sorry to hear it⁠—he could undertake to give his evidence; but he could not undertake to provide the gentleman with understanding. + 

“I will trouble you to be respectful in your replies to the counsel for the crown,” said the judge. + 

The medical student’s variegated eye looked defiantly at his lordship; the counsel for the crown had done with him, and he retired from the witness-box, after bowing to the judge and jury with studious politeness. + 

The next witnesses were two medical gentlemen of a different stamp to the “Cheerful Cherokee,” who had now taken his place amongst the spectators. + 

These gentlemen gave evidence of having attended the prisoner some years before, during brain-fever, and having very much feared the fever would have resulted in the loss of the patient’s reason. + 

The trial had by this time lasted so long, that the juryman who had a ticket for the public dinner began to feel that his card of admission to the festive board was so much waste pasteboard, and that the green fat of the turtle and the prime cut from the haunch of venison were not for him. + 

The counsel for the prosecution delivered himself of his second address to the jury, in which he endeavoured to demolish the superstructure which his “learned friend” had so ingeniously raised for the defence. Why should the legal defender of a man whose life is in the hands of the jury not be privileged to address that jury in favour of his client as often, at least, as the legal representative of the prosecutor? + 

The judge delivered his charge to the jury. + 

The jury retired, and in an hour and fifteen minutes returned. + 

They found that the prisoner, Richard Marwood, had murdered his uncle, Montague Harding, and had further beaten and injured a half-caste servant in the employ of his uncle, while suffering from aberration of intellect⁠—or, in simple phraseology, they found the prisoner “Not Guilty, on the ground of insanity.” + 

The prisoner seemed little affected by the verdict. He looked with a vacant stare round the court, removed the bouquet of rue from his buttonhole and placed it in his bosom; and then said, with a clear distinct enunciation⁠— + 

“Gentlemen of the jury, I am extremely obliged to you for the politeness with which you have treated me. Thanks to your powerful sense of justice, I have won the battle of Arcola, and I think I have secured the key of Italy.” + 

It is common for lunatics to fancy themselves some great and distinguished person. This unhappy young man believed himself to be Napoleon the First. + 