Book + 

II + 

A Clearance of All Scores + 

I + 

Blind Peter + 

The favourite, “Gallows,” having lost in the race with Richard Marwood, there was very little more interest felt in Slopperton about poor Daredevil Dick’s fate. It was known that he was in the county lunatic asylum, a prisoner for life, or, as it is expressed by persons learned in legal matters, during the pleasure of the sovereign. It was known that his poor mother had taken up her abode near the asylum, and that at intervals she was allowed the melancholy pleasure of seeing the wreck of her once lighthearted boy. Mrs. Marwood was now a very rich woman, inheritress of the whole of her poor murdered brother’s wealth⁠—for Mr. Montague Harding’s will had been found to bequeath the whole of his immense fortune to his only sister. She spent little, however, and what she did expend was chiefly devoted to works of charity; but even her benevolence was limited, and she did little more for the poor than she had done before from her own small income. The wealth of the East Indian remained accumulating in the hands of her bankers. Mrs. Marwood was, therefore, very rich, and Slopperton accordingly set her down as a miser. + 

So the nine-days’ wonder died out, and the murder of Mr. Harding was forgotten. The sunshine on the factory chimneys of Slopperton grew warmer every day. Every day the “hands” appertaining to the factories felt more and more the necessity of frequent application to the public-house, as the weather grew brighter and brighter⁠—till the hot June sun blazed down upon the pavement of every street in Slopperton, baking and grilling the stones; till the sight of a puddle or an overflowing gutter would have been welcome as pools of water in the great desert of Sahara; till the people who lived on the sunny side of the way felt spitefully disposed towards the inhabitants of the shady side; till the chandler at the corner, who came out with a watering-pot and sprinkled the pavement before his door every evening, was thought a public benefactor; till the baker, who added his private stock of caloric to the great firm of Sunshine and Co., and baked the pavement above his oven on his own account, was thought a public nuisance, and hot bread an abomination; till the butter Slopperton had for tea was no longer butter, but oil, and eluded the pursuit of the knife, or hid itself in a cowardly manner in the holes of the quartern loaf when the housewife attempted to spread it thereon; till cattle standing in pools of water were looked upon with envy and hatred; and till⁠—wonder of wonders!⁠—Slopperton paid up the water-rate sharp, in fear and anguish at the thought of the possible cutting-off of that refreshing fluid. + 

The 17th of June ushered in the midsummer holidays at Dr. Tappenden’s establishment, and on the evening of that day Dr. Tappenden broke up. Of course, this phrase, breaking up, is only a schoolboy’s slang. I do not mean that the worthy Doctor (how did he ever come to be a doctor, I wonder? or where did he get his degree?) experienced any physical change when he broke up; or that he underwent the moral change of going into the Gazette and coming out thereof better off than when he went in⁠—which is, I believe, the custom in most cases of bankruptcy; I merely mean to say, that on the evening of the 17th of June Dr. Tappenden gave a species of ball, at which Mr. Pranskey, the dancing-master, assisted with his pumps and his violin; and at which the young gentlemen appeared also in pumps, a great deal of wristband and shirt-collar, and shining faces⁠—in a state of painfully high polish, from the effect of the yellow soap that had been lavished upon them by the respectable young person who looked to the wardrobe department, and mended the linen of the young gentlemen. + 

By the evening of the 18th, Dr. Tappenden’s young gentlemen, with the exception of two little fellows with dark complexions and frizzy hair, whose nearest connections were at Trinidad, all departed to their respective family circles; and Mr. Jabez North had the schoolroom to himself for the whole of the holidays⁠—for, of course, the little West Indians, playing at a sea-voyage on one of the forms, with a cricket-bat for a mast, or reading Sinbad the Sailor in a corner, were no hindrance to that gentleman’s proceedings. + 

Our friend Jabez is as calm-looking as ever. The fair pale complexion may be, perhaps, a shade paler, and the arched mouth a trifle more compressed⁠—(that absurd professor of phrenology had declared that both the head and face of Jabez bespoke a marvellous power of secretiveness)⁠—but our friend is as placid as ever. The pale face, delicate aquiline nose, the fair hair and rather slender figure, give a tone of aristocracy to his appearance which even his shabby black suit cannot conceal. But Jabez is not too well pleased with his lot. He paces up and down the schoolroom in the twilight of the June evening, quite alone, for the little West Indians have retired to the long dormitory which they now inhabit in solitary grandeur. Dr. Tappenden has gone to the seaside with his slim only daughter, familiarly known amongst the scholars, who have no eyes for ethereal beauty, as “Skinny Jane.” Dr. Tappenden has gone to enjoy himself; for Dr. Tappenden is a rich man. He is said to have some twenty thousand pounds in a London bank. He doesn’t bank his money in Slopperton. And of “Skinny Jane,” it may be observed, that there are young men in the town who would give something for a glance from her insipid grey eyes, and who think her ethereal figure the very incarnation of the poet’s ideal, when they add to that slender form the bulky figures that form the sum-total of her father’s banking account. + 

Jabez paces up and down the long schoolroom with a step so light that it scarcely wakes an echo (those crotchety physiologists call this light step another indication of a secretive disposition)⁠—up and down, in the darkening summer evening. + 

“Another six months’ Latin grammar,” he mutters, “another half-year’s rudiments of Greek, and all the tiresome old fables of Paris and Helen, and Hector and Achilles, for entertainment! A nice life for a man with my head⁠—for those fools who preached about my deficient moral region were right perhaps when they told me my intellect might carry me anywhere. What has it done for me yet? Well, at the worst, it has taken me out of loathsome parish rags; it has given me independence. And it shall give me fortune. But how? What is to be the next trial? This time it must be no failure. This time my premises must be sure. If I could only hit upon some scheme! There is a way by which I could obtain a large sum of money; but then, the fear of detection! Detection, which if eluded today might come tomorrow! And it is not a year or two’s riot and dissipation that I want to purchase; but a long life of wealth and luxury, with proud men’s necks to trample on, and my old patrons to lick the dust off my shoes. This is what I must fight for, and this is what I must attain⁠—but how? How?” + 

He takes his hat up, and goes out of the house. He is quite his own master during these holidays. He comes in and goes out as he likes, provided he is always at home by ten o’clock, when the house is shut up for the night. + 

He strolls with a purposeless step through the streets of Slopperton. It is half-past eight o’clock, and the factory hands fill the streets, enjoying the coolness of the evening, but quiet and subdued in their manner, being exhausted by the heat of the long June day. Jabez does not much affect these crowded streets, and turns out of one of the most busy quarters of the town into a little lane of old houses, which leads to a great old-fashioned square, in which stand two ancient churches with very high steeples, an antique-looking town-hall (once a prison), a few quaint houses with peaked roofs and projecting upper stones, and a gaunt pump. Jabez soon leaves this square behind him, and strolls through two or three dingy, narrow, old-fashioned streets, till he comes to a labyrinth of tumbledown houses, pig-styes, and dog-kennels, known as Blind Peter’s Alley. Who Blind Peter was, or how he ever came to have this alley⁠—or whether, as a place possessing no thoroughfare and admitting very little light, it had not originally been called Peter’s Blind Alley⁠—nobody living knew. But if Blind Peter was a myth, the alley was a reality, and a dirty loathsome fetid reality, with regard to which the Board of Health seemed as if smitten with the aforesaid Peter’s own infirmity, ignoring the horror of the place with fatal blindness. So Blind Peter was the Alsatia of Slopperton, a refuge for crime and destitution⁠—since destitution cannot pick its company, but must be content often, for the sake of shelter, to jog cheek by jowl with crime. And thus no doubt it is on the strength of that golden adage about birds of a feather that destitution and crime are thought by numerous wise and benevolent persons to mean one and the same thing. Blind Peter had risen to popularity once or twice⁠—on the occasion of a girl poisoning her father in the crust of a beefsteak pudding, and a boy of fourteen committing suicide by hanging himself behind a door. Blind Peter, on the first of these occasions, had even had his portrait taken for a Sunday paper; and very nice indeed he had looked in a woodcut⁠—so nice, that he had found some difficulty in recognizing himself; which perhaps was scarcely wonderful, when it is taken into consideration that the artist, who lived in the neighbourhood of Holborn, had sketched Blind Peter from a mountain gorge in the Tyrol, broken up with three or four houses out of Chancery Lane. + 

Certainly Blind Peter had a peculiar wildness in his aspect, being built on the side of a steep hill, and looked very much like a London alley which had been removed from its site and pitched haphazard on to a Slopperton mountain. + 

It is not to be supposed for a moment that so highly respectable an individual as Mr. Jabez North had any intention of plunging into the dirty obscurity of Blind Peter. He had come thus far only on his way to the outskirts of the town, where there was a little brick-bestrewn, pseudo country, very much more liberally ornamented by oyster-shells, broken crockery, and scaffolding, than by trees or wild flowers⁠—which natural objects were wondrous rarities in this part of the Sloppertonian outskirts. + 

So Jabez pursued his way past the mouth of Blind Peter⁠—which was adorned by two or three broken-down and rusty iron railings that looked like jagged teeth⁠—when he was suddenly arrested by a hideous-looking woman, who threw her arms about him, and addressed him in a shrill voice thus⁠— + 

“What, he’s come back to his best friends, has he? He’s come back to his old granny, after frightening her out of her poor old wits by staying away four days and four nights. Where have you been, Jim, my deary? And where did you get your fine toggery?” + 

“Where did I get my fine toggery? What do you mean, you old hag? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Let me pass, will you? or I’ll knock you down!” + 

“No, no,” she screamed; “he wouldn’t knock down his old granny; he wouldn’t knock down his precious granny that nursed him, and brought him up like a gentleman, and will tell him a secret one of these days worth a mint of money, if he treats her well.” + 

Jabez pricked up his ears at the words “mint of money,” and said in rather a milder tone⁠— + 

“I tell you, my good woman, you mistake me for somebody else. I never saw you before.” + 

“What! you’re not my Jim?” + 

“No. My name is Jabez North. If you’re not satisfied, here’s my card,” and he took out his card-case. + 

The old woman stuck her arms akimbo, and stared at him with a gaze of admiration. + 

“Lor’,” she cried, “don’t he do it nat’ral? Ain’t he a born genius? He’s been a-doing the respectable reduced tradesman, or the young man brought up to the church, what waits upon the gentry with a long letter, and has a wife and two innocent children staying in another town, and only wants the railway fare to go to ’em. Eh, Jim, that’s what you’ve been a-doing, ain’t it now? And you’ve brought home the swag like a good lad to your grandmother, haven’t you now?” she said in a wheedling tone. + 

“I tell you, you confounded old fool, I’m not the man you take me for.” + 

“What, not my Jim! And you can look at me with his eyes, and tell me so with his voice. Then, if you’re not him, he’s dead, and you’re his ghost.” + 

Jabez thought the old woman was mad; but he was no coward, and the adventure began to interest him. Who was this man who was so like him, and who was to learn a secret some day worth a mint of money? + 

“Will you come with me, then,” said the old woman, “and let me get a light, and see whether you are my Jim or not?” + 

“Where’s the house?” asked Jabez. + 

“Why, in Blind Peter, to be sure. Where should it be?” + 

“How should I know?” said Jabez, following her. He thought himself safe even in Blind Peter, having nothing of value about him, and having considerable faith in the protecting power of his strong right arm. + 

The old woman led the way into the little mountain gorge, choked up with rickety hovels lately erected, or crazy old houses which had once been goodly residences, in the days when the site of Blind Peter had been a pleasant country lane. The house she entered was of this latter class; and she led the way into a stone-paved room, which had once been a tolerably spacious entrance-hall. + 

It was lighted by one feeble little candle with a long drooping wick, stuck in an old ginger-beer bottle; and by this dim light Jabez saw, seated on heap of rubbish by the desolate hearth, his own reflection⁠—a man dressed, unlike him, in the rough garments of a labourer, but whose face gave back as faithfully as ever glass had done the shadow of his own. + 

II + 

Like and Unlike + 

The old woman stared aghast, first at one of the young men, then at the other. + 

“Why, then, he isn’t Jim!” she exclaimed. + 

“Who isn’t Jim, grandmother? What do you mean? Here I am, back again; a bundle of aching bones, old rags, and empty pockets. I’ve done no good where I’ve been; so you needn’t ask me for any money, for I haven’t earned a farthing either by fair means or foul.” + 

“But the other,” she said⁠—“this young gentleman. Look at him, Jim.” + 

The man took up the candle, snuffed it with his fingers, and walked straight to Jabez. He held the light before the face of the usher, and surveyed him with a leisurely stare. That individual’s blue eyes winked and blinked at the flame like an owl’s in the sunshine, and looked every way except straight into the eyes looking into his. + 

“Why, curse his impudence!” said the man, with a faint sickly laugh; “I’m blest if he hasn’t been and boned my mug. I hope it’ll do him more good than it’s done me,” he added, bitterly. + 

“I can’t make out the meaning of this,” mumbled the old woman. “It’s all dark to me. I saw where the other one was put myself. I saw it done, and safely done too. Oh, yes of course⁠—” + 

“What do you mean by ‘the other one’?” asked the man, while Jabez listened intently for the answer. + 

“Why, my deary, that’s a part of the secret you’re to know some of these days. Such a secret. Gold, gold, gold, as long as it’s kept; and gold when it’s told, if it’s told at the right time, deary.” + 

“If it’s to be told at the right time to do me any good, it had better be told soon, then,” said Jim, with a dreary shiver. “My bones ache, and my head’s on fire, and my feet are like lumps of ice. I’ve walked twenty miles today, and I haven’t had bite nor sup since last night. Where’s Sillikens?” + 

“At the factory, Jim deary. Somebody’s given her a piece of work⁠—one of the regular hands; and she’s to bring home some money tonight. Poor girl, she’s been a fretting and a crying her eyes out since you’ve been gone, Jim.” + 

“Poor lass. I thought I might do some good for her and me both by going away where I did; but I haven’t; and so I’ve come back to eat her starvation wages, poor lass. It’s a cowardly thing to do, and if I’d had strength I should have gone on further, but I couldn’t.” + 

As he was saying these words a girl came in at the half-open door, and running up to him, threw her arms round his neck. + 

“O Jim, you’ve come back! I said you would; I knew you’d never stop away; I knew you couldn’t be so cruel.” + 

“It’s crueller to come back, lass,” he said; “it’s bad to be a burden on a girl like you.” + 

“A burden, Jim!” she said, in a low reproachful voice, and then dropped quietly down amongst the dust and rubbish at his feet, and laid her head caressingly against his knee. + 

She was not what is generally called a pretty girl. Hers had not been the delicate nurture which nourishes so frail an exotic as beauty. She had a pale sickly face; but it was lighted up by large dark eyes, and framed by a heavy mass of dark hair. + 

She took the man’s rough hand in hers, and kissed it tenderly. It is not likely that a duchess would have done such a thing; but if she had, she could scarcely have done it with better grace. + 

“A burden, Jim!” she said⁠—“a burden! Do you think if I worked for you day and night, and never rested, that I should be weary? Do you think, if I worked my fingers to the bone for you, that I should ever feel the pain? Do you think, if my death could make you a happy man, I should not be glad to die? Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know!” + 

She said this half-despairingly, as if she knew there was no power in his soul to fathom the depth of love in hers. + 

“Poor lass, poor lass,” he said, as he laid the other rough hand gently on her black hair. “If it’s as bad as this. I’m sorry for it⁠—more than ever sorry tonight.” + 

“Why, Jim?” She looked up at him with a sudden glance of alarm. “Why, Jim? Is anything the matter?” + 

“Not much, lass; but I don’t think I’m quite the thing tonight.” His head drooped as he spoke. The girl put it on her shoulder, and it lay there as if he had scarcely power to lift it up again. + 

“Grandmother, he’s ill⁠—he’s ill! why didn’t you tell me this before? Is that gentleman the doctor?” she asked, looking at Jabez, who still stood in the shadow of the doorway, watching the scene within. + 

“No; but I’ll fetch the doctor, if you like,” said that benevolent personage, who appeared to take a wonderful interest in this family group. + 

“Do, sir, if you will be so good,” said the girl imploringly; “he’s very ill, I’m sure. Jim, look up, and tell us what’s the matter?” + 

The man lifted his heavy eyelids with an effort, and looked up with bloodshot eyes into her face. No, no! Never could he fathom the depth of this love which looks down at him now with more than a mother’s tenderness, with more than a sister’s devotion, with more than a wife’s self-abnegation. This love, which knows no change, which would shelter him in those entwining arms a thief or a murderer, and which could hold him no dearer were he a king upon a throne. + 

Jabez North goes for a doctor, and returns presently with a gentleman, who, on seeing Jim the labourer, pronounces that he had better go to bed at once; “for,” as he whispers to the old woman, “he’s got rheumatic fever, and got it pretty sharp, too.” + 

The girl they call Sillikens bursts out crying on hearing this announcement, but soon chokes down her tears⁠—(as tears are wont to be choked down in Blind Peter, whose inhabitants have little time for weeping)⁠—and sets to work to get ready a poor apology for a bed⁠—a worn-out mattress and a thin patchwork counterpane; and on this they lay the bundle of aching bones known to Blind Peter as Jim Lomax. + 

The girl receives the doctor’s directions, promises to fetch some medicine from his surgery in a few minutes, and then kneels down by the sick man. + 

“O Jim, dear Jim,” she says, “keep a good heart, for the sake of those who love you.” + 

She might have said for the sake of her who loves you, for it never surely was the lot of any man, from my lord the marquis to Jim the labourer, to be twice in his life loved as this man was loved by her. + 

Jabez North on his way home must go the same way as the doctor; so they walk side by side. + 

“Do you think he will recover?” asks Jabez. + 

“I doubt it. He has evidently been exposed to great hardship, wet, and fatigue. The fever is very strong upon him; and I’m afraid there’s not much chance of his getting over it. I should think something might be done for him, to make him a little more comfortable. You are his brother, I presume, in spite of the apparent difference between you in station?” + 

Jabez laughed a scornful laugh. “His brother! Why, I never saw the man till ten minutes before you did.” + 

“Bless me!” said the old doctor, “you amaze me. I should have taken you for twin brothers. The likeness between you is something wonderful; in spite, too, of the great difference in your clothes. Dressed alike, it would be impossible to tell one from the other.” + 

“You really think so?” + 

“The fact must strike anyone.” + 

Jabez North was silent for a little time after this. Presently, as he parted from the doctor at a street-corner, he said⁠— + 

“And you really think there’s very little chance of this poor man’s recovery?” + 

“I’m afraid there is positively none. Unless a wonderful change takes place for the better, in three days he will be a dead man. Good night.” + 

“Good night,” says Jabez, thoughtfully. And he walked slowly home. + 

It would seem about this time that he was turning his attention to his personal appearance, and in some danger of becoming a fop; for the next morning he bought a bottle of hair-dye, and tried some experiments with it on one or two of his own light ringlets, which he cut off for that purpose. + 

It would seem a very trivial employment for so superior and intellectual a man as Jabez North, but it may be that every action of this man’s life, however apparently trivial, bore towards one deep and settled purpose. + 

III + 

A Golden Secret + 

Mr. Jabez North, being of such a truly benevolent character, came the next day to Blind Peter, full of kind and sympathetic inquiries for the sick man. For once in a way he offered something more than sympathy, and administered what little help he could afford from his very slender purse. Truly a good young man, this Jabez. + 

The dilapidated house in Blind Peter looked still more dreary and dilapidated in the daylight, or in such light as was called daylight by the denizens of that wretched alley. By this light, too, Jim Lomax looked none the better, with hungry pinched features, bloodshot eyes, and two burning crimson spots on his hollow cheeks. He was asleep when Jabez entered. The girl was still seated by his side, never looking up, or taking her large dark eyes from his face⁠—never stirring, except to rearrange the poor bundle of rags which served as a pillow for the man’s weary head, or to pour out his medicine, or moisten his hot forehead with wet linen. The old woman sat by the great gaunt fireplace, where she had lighted a few sticks, and made the best fire she could, by the doctor’s orders; for the place was damp and draughty, even in this warm June weather. She was rocking herself to and fro on a low three-legged stool, and muttering some disconnected jargon. + 

When Jabez had spoken a few words to the sick man, and made his offer of assistance, he did not leave the place, but stood on the hearth, looking with a thoughtful face at the old woman. + 

She was not quite right in her mind, according to general opinion in Blind Peter; and if a Commission of Lunacy had been called upon to give a return of her state of intellect on that day, I think that return would have agreed with the opinion openly expressed in a friendly manner by her neighbours. + 

She kept muttering to herself, “And so, my deary, this is the other one. The water couldn’t have been deep enough. But it’s not my fault, Lucy dear, for I saw it safely put away.” + 

“What did you see so safely put away?” asked Jabez, in so low a voice as to be heard neither by the sick man nor the girl. + 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, deary?” mumbled the old hag, looking up at him with a malicious grin. “Don’t you very much want to know, my dear? But you never will; or if you ever do, you must be a rich man first; for it’s part of the secret, and the secret’s gold⁠—as long as it is kept, my dear, and it’s been kept a many years, and kept faithful.” + 

“Does he know it?” Jabez asked, pointing to the sick man. + 

“No, my dear; he’d want to tell it. I mean to sell it some day, for it’s worth a mint of money! A mint of money! He doesn’t know it⁠—nor she⁠—not that it matters to her; but it does matter to him.” + 

“Then you had best let him know before three days are over or he’ll never know it!” said the schoolmaster. + 

“Why not, deary?” + 

“Never you mind! I want to speak to you; and I don’t want those two to hear what I say. Can we go anywhere hereabouts where I can talk to you without the chance of being overheard?” + 

The old woman nodded assent, and led the way with feeble tottering steps out of the house, and through a gap in a hedge to some broken ground at the back of Blind Peter. Here the old crone seated herself upon a little hillock, Jabez standing opposite her, looking her full in the face. + 

“Now,” said he, with a determined look at the grinning face before him, “now tell me⁠—what was the something that was put away so safely? And what relation is that man in there to me? Tell me, and tell me the truth, or⁠—” He only finishes the sentence with a threatening look, but the old woman finishes it for him⁠— + 

“Or you’ll kill me⁠—eh, deary? I’m old and feeble, and you might easily do it⁠—eh? But you won’t⁠—you won’t, deary! You know better than that! Kill me, and you’ll never know the secret!⁠—the secret that may be gold to you some day, and that nobody alive but me can tell. If you’d got some very precious wine in a glass bottle, my dear, you wouldn’t smash the bottle now, would you? because, you see, you couldn’t smash the bottle without spilling the wine. And you won’t lay so much as a rough finger upon me, I know.” + 

The usher looked rather as if he would have liked to lay the whole force of ten very rough fingers upon the most vital part of the grinning hag’s anatomy at that moment⁠—but he restrained himself, as if by an effort, and thrust his hands deep into his trousers-pockets, in order the better to resist temptation. + 

“Then you don’t mean to tell me what I asked you?” he said impatiently. + 

“Don’t be in a hurry, my dear! I’m an old woman, and I don’t like to be hurried. What is it you want to know?” + 

“What that man in there is to me.” + 

“Own brother⁠—twin brother, my dear⁠—that’s all. And I’m your grandmother⁠—your mother’s mother. Ain’t you pleased to find your relations, my blessed boy?” + 

If he were, he had a strange way of showing pleasure; a very strange manner of welcoming newly-found relations, if his feelings were to be judged by that contracted brow and moody glance. + 

“Is this true?” he asked. + 

The old harridan looked at him and grinned. “That’s an ugly mark you’ve got upon your left arm, my dear,” she said, “just above the elbow; it’s very lucky, though, it’s under your coat-sleeve, where nobody can see it.” + 

Jabez started. He had indeed a scar upon his arm, though very few people knew of it. He remembered it from his earliest days in the Slopperton workhouse. + 

“Do you know how you came by that mark?” continued the old woman. “Shall I tell you? Why, you fell into the fire, deary, when you were only three weeks old. We’d been drinking a little bit, my dear, and we weren’t used to drinking much then, nor to eating much either, and one of us let you tumble into the fireplace, and before we could get you out, your arm was burnt; but you got over it, my dear, and three days after that you had the misfortune to fall into the water.” + 

“You threw me in, you old she-devil!” he exclaimed fiercely. + 

“Come, come,” she said, “you are of the same stock, so I wouldn’t call names if I were you. Perhaps I did throw you into the Sloshy. I don’t want to contradict you. If you say so, I dare say I did. I suppose you think me a very unnatural old woman?” + 

“It wouldn’t be so strange if I did.” + 

“Do you know what choice we had, your mother and me, as to what we were to do with our youngest hope⁠—you’re younger by two hours than your brother in there? Why, there was the river on one side, and a life of misery, perhaps starvation, perhaps worse, on the other. At the very best, such a life as he in there has led⁠—hard labour and bad food, long toilsome days and short nights, and bad words and black looks from all who ought to help him. So we thought one was enough for that, and we chose the river for the other. Yes, my precious boy, I took you down to the riverside one very dark night and dropped you in where I thought the water was deepest; but, you see, it wasn’t deep enough for you. Oh, dear,” she said, with an imbecile grin, “I suppose there’s a fate in it, and you were never born to be drowned.” + 

Her hopeful grandson looked at her with a savage frown. + 

“Drop that!” he said, “I don’t want any of your cursed wit.” + 

“Don’t you, deary? Lor, I was quite a wit in my young days. They used to call me Lively Betty; but that’s a long time ago.” + 

There was sufficient left, however, of the liveliness of a long time ago to give an air of ghastly mirth to the old woman’s manner, which made that manner extremely repulsive. What can be more repulsive than old age, which, shorn of the beauties and graces, is yet not purified from the follies or the vices of departed youth? + 

“And so, my dear, the water wasn’t deep enough, and you were saved. How did it all come about? Tell us, my precious boy?” + 

“Yes; I dare say you’d like to know,” replied her “precious boy,”⁠—“but you can keep your secret, and I can keep mine. Perhaps you’ll tell me whether my mother is alive or dead?” + 

Now this was a question which would have cruelly agitated some men in the position of Jabez North; but that gentleman was a philosopher, and he might have been inquiring the fate of some cast-off garment, for all the fear, tenderness, or emotion of any kind that his tone or manner betrayed. + 

“Your mother’s been dead these many years. Don’t you ask me how she died. I’m an old woman, and my head’s not so right but what some things will set it wrong. Talking of that is one of ’em. She’s dead. I couldn’t save her, nor help her, nor set her right. I hope there’s more pity where she’s gone than she ever got here; for I’m sure if trouble can need it, she needed it. Don’t ask me anything about her.” + 

“Then I won’t,” said Jabez. “My relations don’t seem such an eligible lot that I should set to work to write the history of the family. I suppose I had a father of some kind or other. What’s become of him? Dead or⁠—” + 

“Hung, eh, deary?” said the old woman, relapsing into the malicious grin. + 

“Take care what you’re about,” said the fascinating Mr. North, “or you’ll tempt me to shake the life out of your shrivelled old carcass.” + 

“And then you’ll never know who your father was. Eh? Ha, ha! my precious boy; that’s part of the golden secret that none but me can tell.” + 

“Then you won’t tell me my father’s name?” + 

“Perhaps I’ve forgotten it, deary; perhaps I never knew it⁠—who knows?” + 

“Was he of your class⁠—poor, insignificant, and wretched, the scum of the earth, the mud in the streets, the slush in the gutters, for other people to trample upon with their dirty boots? Was he that sort of thing? Because if he was, I shan’t put myself out of the way to make any tender inquiries about him.” + 

“Of course not, deary. You’d like him to have been a fine gentleman⁠—a baronet, or an earl, or a marquis, eh, my blessed boy? A marquis is about the ticket for you, eh? What do you say to a marquis?” + 

It was not very polite, certainly, what he did say; not quite the tone of conversation to be pleasing to any marquis, or to any noble or potentate whatever, except one, and him, by the laws of polite literature, I am not allowed to mention. + 

Puzzled by her mysterious mumblings, grinnings, and gesticulations, our friend Jabez stared hard in the old crone’s face for about three minutes⁠—looking very much as if he would have liked to throttle her; but he refrained from that temptation, turned on his heel, and walked off in the direction of Slopperton. + 

The old woman apostrophized his receding figure. + 

“Oh, yes, deary, you’re a nice young man, and a clever, civil-spoken young man, and a credit to them that reared you; but you’ll never have the golden secret out of me till you’ve got the money to pay for it.” + 

IV + 

Jim Looks Over the Brink of the Terrible Gulf + 

The light had gone down on the last of the days through which, according to the doctor’s prophecy, Jim Lomax was to live to see that light. + 

Poor Jim’s last sun sank to his rest upon such cloud-pillows of purple and red, and drew a curtain of such gorgeous colours round him in the western sky, as it would have very much puzzled any earthly monarch to have matched, though Ruskin himself had chosen the colours, and Turner had been the man to lay them on. Of course some of this red sunset flickered and faded upon the chimneypots and windowpanes⁠—rare luxuries, by the by, those windowpanes⁠—of Blind Peter; but there it came in a modified degree only⁠—this blessed sign-manual of an Almighty Power⁠—as all earthly and heavenly blessings should come to the poor. + 

One ray of the crimson light fell full upon the face of the sick man, and slanted from him upon the dark hair of the girl, who sat on the ground in her old position by the bedside. This light, which fell on them and on no other object in the dusky room, seemed to unite them, as though it were a messenger from the sky that said, “They stand alone in the world, and never have been meant to stand asunder.” + 

“It’s a beautiful light, lass,” said the sick man, “and I wonder I never cared more to notice or to watch it than I have. Lord, I’ve seen it many a time sinking behind the sharp edge of ploughed land, as if it had dug its own grave, and was glad to go down to it, and I’ve thought no more of it than a bit of candle; but now it seems such a beautiful light, and I feel as if I should like to see it again, lass.” + 

“And you will⁠—you will see it again, Jim.” She drew his head upon her bosom, and stroked the rough hair away from his damp forehead. She was half dead herself, with want, anxiety, and fatigue; but she spoke in a cheerful voice. She had not shed a tear throughout his illness. “Lord help you, Jim dear, you’ll live to see many and many a bright sunset⁠—live to see it go down upon our wedding-day, perhaps.” + 

“No, no, lass; that’s a day no sun will ever shine upon. You must get another sweetheart, and a better one, maybe. I’m sure you deserve a better one, for you’re true, lass, true as steel.” + 

The girl drew his head closer to her breast, and bending over him, kissed his dry lips. She never thought, or cared to know, what fever or what poison she might inhale in that caress. If she had thought about it, perhaps she would have prayed that the same fever which had struck him down might lay her low beside him. He spoke again, as the light, with a lingering glow, brightened, and flickered, and then faded out. + 

“It’s gone; it’s gone forever; it’s behind me now, lass, and must look straight before⁠—” + 

“At what, Jim?⁠—at what?” + 

“At a terrible gulf, my lass. I’m a-standing on the edge of it, and I’m a-looking down to the bottom of it⁠—a cold dark lonesome place. But perhaps there’s another light beyond it, lass; who knows?” + 

“Some say they do know, Jim,” said the girl; “some say they do know, and that there is another light beyond, better than the one we see here, and always shining. Some people do know all about it, Jim.” + 

“Then why didn’t they tell us about it?” asked the man, with an angry expression in his hollow eyes. “I suppose those as taught them meant them to teach us; but I suppose they didn’t think us worth the teaching. How many will be sorry for me, lass, when I am gone? Not grandmother; her brain’s crazed with that fancy of hers of a golden secret⁠—as if she wouldn’t have sold it long before this if she’d had a secret⁠—sold it for bread, or more likely for gin. Not anybody in Blind Peter⁠—they’ve enough to do to think of the bit of food to put inside them, or of the shelter to cover their unfortunate heads. Nobody but you, lass, nobody but you, will be sorry for me; and I think you will.” + 

He thinks she will be sorry. What has been the story of her life but one long thought and care for him, in which her every sorrow and her every joy have taken their colour from joys and sorrows of his? + 

While they are talking, Jabez comes in, and, seating himself on a low stool by the bed, talks to the sick man. + 

“And so,” says Jim, looking him full in the face with a curious glance⁠—“so you’re my brother⁠—the old woman’s told me all about it⁠—my twin brother; so like me, that it’s quite a treat to look at you. It’s like looking in a glass, and that’s a luxury I’ve never been accustomed to. Light a candle, lass; I want to see my brother’s face.” + 

His brother was against the lighting of the candle⁠—it might hurt the eyes of the sufferer, he suggested; but Jim repeated his request, and the girl obeyed. + 

“Now come here and hold the candle, lass, and hold it close to my brother’s face, for I want to have a good look at him.” + 

Mr. Jabez North seemed scarcely to relish the unflinching gaze of his newly-found relation; and again those fine blue eyes for which he was distinguished, winked and shifted, and hid themselves, under the scrutiny of the sick man. + 

“It’s a handsome face,” said Jim; “and it looks like the face of one of your fine highborn gentlemen too, which is rather queer, considering who it belongs to; but for all that, I can’t say it’s a face I much care about. There’s something under⁠—something behind the curtain. I say, brother, you’re hatching of some plot tonight, and a very deep-laid plot it is too, or my name isn’t Jim Lomax.” + 

“Poor fellow,” murmured the compassionate Jabez, “his mind wanders sadly.” + 

“Does it?” asked the sick man; “does my mind wander, lad? I hope it does; I hope I can’t see very clear tonight, for I didn’t want to think my own brother a villain. I don’t want to think bad of thee, lad, if it’s only for my dead mother’s sake.” + 

“You hear!” said Jabez, with a glance of appeal to the girl, “you hear how delirious he is?” + 

“Stop a bit, lad,” cried Jim, with sudden energy, laying his wasted hand upon his brother’s wrist; “stop a bit. I’m dying fast; and before it’s too late I’ve one prayer to make. I haven’t made so many either to God or man that I need forget this one. You see this lass; we’ve been sweethearts, I don’t know how long, now⁠—ever since she was a little toddling thing that I could carry on my shoulder; and, one of these days, when wages got to be better, and bread cheaper, and hopes brighter, somehow, for poor folks like us, we was to have been married; but that’s over now. Keep a good heart, lass, and don’t look so white; perhaps it’s better as it is. Well, as I was saying, we’ve been sweethearts for a many year, and often when I haven’t been able to get work, maybe sometimes when I haven’t been willing, when I’ve been lazy, or on the drink, or among bad companions, this lass has kept a shelter over me, and given me bread to eat with the labour of her own hands. She’s been true to me. I could tell you how true, but there’s something about the corners of your mouth that makes me think you wouldn’t care to hear it. But if you want me to die in peace, promise me this⁠—that as long as you’ve got a shilling she shall never be without a sixpence; that as long as you’ve got a roof to cover your head she shall never be without a shelter. Promise!” + 

He tightened his grasp convulsively upon his brother’s wrist. That gentleman made an effort to look him full in the face; but not seeming to relish the searching gaze of the dying man’s eyes, Mr. Jabez North was compelled to drop his own. + 

“Come,” said Jim; “promise⁠—swear to me, by all you hold sacred, that you’ll do this.” + 

“I swear!” said Jabez, solemnly. + 

“And if you break your oath,” added his brother, “never come anigh the place where I’m buried, for I’ll rise out of my grave and haunt you.” + 

The dying man fell back exhausted on his pillow. The girl poured out some medicine and gave it to him, while Jabez walked to the door, and looked up at the sky. + 

A very dark sky for a night in June. A wide black canopy hung over the earth, and as yet there was not one feeble star to break the inky darkness. A threatening night⁠—the low murmuring of whose sultry wind moaned and whispered prophecies of a coming storm. Never had the blindness of Blind Peter been darker than tonight. You could scarcely see your hand before you. A wretched woman who had just fetched half-a-quartern of gin from the nearest public-house, though a denizen of the place, and familiar with every broken flagstone and crumbling brick, stumbled over her own threshold, and spilt a portion of the precious liquid. + 

It would have been difficult to imagine either the heavens or the earth under a darker aspect in the month of June. Not so, however, thought Mr. Jabez North; for, after contemplating the sky for some moments in silence, he exclaimed⁠—“A fine night! A glorious night! It could not be better!” + 

A figure, one shade darker than the night, came between him and the darkness. It was the doctor, who said⁠— + 

“Well, sir, I’m glad you think it a fine night; but I must beg to differ with you on the subject, for I never remember seeing a blacker sky, or one that threatened a more terrible storm at this season of the year.” + 

“I was scarcely thinking of what I was saying, doctor. That poor man in there⁠—” + 

“Ah, yes; poor fellow! I doubt if he’ll witness the storm, near as it seems to be. I suppose you take some interest in him on account of his extraordinary likeness to you?” + 

“That would be rather an egotistical reason for being interested in him. Common humanity induced me to come down to this wretched place, to see if I could be of any service to the poor creature.” + 

“The action does you credit, sir,” said the doctor. “And now for my patient.” + 

It was with a very grave face that the medical man looked at poor Jim, who had, by this time, fallen into a fitful and restless slumber; and when Jabez drew him aside to ask his opinion, he said⁠—“If he lives through the next half-hour I shall be surprised. Where is the old woman⁠—his grandmother?” + 

“I haven’t seen her this evening,” answered Jabez. And then, turning to the girl, he asked her if she knew where the old woman was. + 

“No; she went out some time ago, and didn’t say where she was going. She’s not quite right in her mind, you know, sir, and often goes out after dark.” + 

The doctor seated himself on a broken chair, near the mattress on which the sick man lay. Only one feeble guttering candle, with a long, top-heavy wick, lighted the dismal and comfortless room. Jabez paced up and down with that soft step of which we have before spoken. Although in his character of a philosopher the death of a fellow-creature could scarcely have been very distressing to him, there was an uneasiness in his manner on this night which he could not altogether conceal. He looked from the doctor to the girl, and from the girl to his sick brother. Sometimes he paused in his walk up and down the room to peer out at the open door. Once he stooped over the feeble candle to look at his watch. There was a listening expression too in his eyes; an uneasy twitching about his mouth; and at times he could scarcely suppress a tremulous action of his slender fingers, which bespoke impatience and agitation. Presently the clocks of Slopperton chimed the first quarter after ten. On hearing this, Jabez drew the medical man aside, and whispered to him⁠— + 

“Are there no means,” he said, “of getting that poor girl out of the way? She is very much attached to that unfortunate creature; and if he dies, I fear there will be a terrible scene. It would be an act of mercy to remove her by some stratagem or other. How can we get her away till it is all over?” + 

“I think I can manage it,” said the doctor. “My partner has a surgery at the other end of the town; I will send her there.” + 

He returned to the bedside, and presently said⁠— + 

“Look here, my good girl; I am going to write a prescription for something which I think will do our patient good. Will you take it for me, and get the medicine made up?” + 

The girl looked at him with an appealing glance in her mournful eyes. + 

“I don’t like to leave him, sir.” + 

“But if it’s for his good, my dear?” + 

“Yes, yes, sir. You’re very kind. I will go. I can run all the way. And you won’t leave him while I’m gone, will you, sir?” + 

“No, my good girl, I won’t. There, there; here’s the prescription. It’s written in pencil, but the assistant will understand it. Now listen, while I tell you where to find the surgery.” + 

He gave her the direction; and after a lingering and mournful look at her lover, who still slept, she left the house, and darted off in the direction of Slopperton. + 

“If she runs as fast as that all the way,” said Jabez, as he watched her receding figure, “she will be back in less than an hour.” + 

“Then she will find him either past all help, or better,” replied the doctor. + 

Jabez’ pale face turned white as death at this word “better.” + 

“Better!” he said. “Is there any chance of his recovery?” + 

“There are wonderful chances in this race between life and death. This sleep may be a crisis. If he wakes, there may be a faint hope of his living.” + 

Jabez’ hand shook like a leaf. He turned his back to the doctor, walked once up and down the room, and then asked, with his old calmness⁠— + 

“And you, sir⁠—you, whose time is of such value to so many sick persons⁠—you can afford to desert them all, and remain here, watching this man?” + 

“His case is a singular one, and interests me. Besides, I do not know that I have any patient in imminent danger tonight. My assistant has my address, and would send for me were my services peculiarly needed.” + 

“I will go out and smoke a cigar,” said Jabez, after a pause. “I can scarcely support this sick room, and the suspense of this terrible conflict between life and death.” + 

He strode out into the darkness, was absent about five minutes, and returned. + 

“Your cigar did not last long,” remarked the doctor. “You are a quick smoker. Bad for the system, sir.” + 

“My cigar was a bad one. I threw it away.” + 

Shortly afterwards there was a knock at the door, and a ragged vagabond-looking boy, peeping in, asked⁠— + 

“Is Mr. Saunders the doctor here?” + 

“Yes, my lad. Who wants me?” + 

“A young woman up in Hill Fields, sir, what’s took poison, they say. You’re wanted very bad.” + 

“Poison! that’s urgent,” said Mr. Saunders. “Who sent you here for me?” + 

The lad looked with a puzzled expression at Jabez standing in the shadow, who, unperceived by the doctor, whispered something behind his hand. + 

“Surgery, sir,” answered the boy, still looking at Jabez. + 

“Oh, you were sent from the surgery. I must be off, for this is no doubt a desperate case. I must leave you to look after this poor fellow. If he wakes, give him two teaspoonfuls of that medicine there. I could do no more if I stopped myself. Come, my lad.” + 

The doctor left the house, followed by the boy, and in a few moments both were lost in the darkness, and far out of the ken of Blind Peter. + 

Five minutes after the departure of the medical man Jabez went to the door, and after looking out at the squalid houses, which were all dark, gave a long low whistle. + 

A figure crept out of the darkness, and came up to where he stood. It was the old woman, his grandmother. + 

“All’s right, deary,” she whispered. “Bill Withers has got everything ready. He’s a waiting down by the wall yonder. There’s not a mortal about; and I’ll keep watch. You’ll want Bill’s help. When you’re ready for him, you’re to whistle softly three times running. He’ll know what it means⁠—and I’m going to watch while he helps you. Haven’t I managed beautiful, deary? and shan’t I deserve the golden sovereigns you’ve promised me? They was guineas always when I was young, deary. Nothing’s as good now as it used to be.” + 

“Don’t let us have any chattering,” said Jabez, as he laid a rough hand upon her arm; “unless you want to wake everybody in the place.” + 

“But, I say, deary, is it all over? Nothing unfair, you know. Remember your promise.” + 

“All over? Yes; half an hour ago. If you hinder me here with your talk, the girl will be back before we’re ready for her.” + 

“Let me come in and close his eyes, deary,” supplicated the old woman. “His mother was my own child. Let me close his eyes.” + 

“Keep where you are, or I’ll strangle you!” growled her dutiful grandson, as he shut the door upon his venerable relation, and left her mumbling upon the threshold. + 

Jabez crept cautiously towards the bed on which his brother lay. Jim at this moment awoke from his restless slumber; and, opening his eyes to their widest extent, looked full at the man by his side. He made no effort to speak, pointed to his lips, and, stretching out his hand towards the bottles on the table, made signs to his brother. These signs were a supplication for the cooling draught which always allayed the burning beat of the fever. + 

Jabez never stirred. “He has awoke,” he murmured. “This is the crisis of his life, and of my fate.” + 

The clocks of Slopperton chimed the quarter before eleven. + 

“It’s a black gulf, lass,” gasped the dying man; “and I’m fast sinking into it.” + 

There was no friendly hand, Jim, to draw you back from that terrible gulf. The medicine stood untouched upon the table; and, perhaps as guilty as the first murderer, your twin brother stood by your bedside. + 

V + 

Midnight by the Slopperton Clocks + 

The clouds and the sky kept their promise, and as the clocks chimed the quarter before twelve the storm broke over the steeples at Slopperton. + 

Blue lightning-flashes lit up Blind Peter, and attendant thunderclaps shook him to his very foundation; while a violent shower of rain gave him such a washing-down of every flagstone, chimney-pot, and doorstep, as he did not often get. Slopperton in bed was almost afraid to go to sleep; and Slopperton not in bed did not seem to care about going to bed. Slopperton at supper was nervous as to handling of glittering knives and steel forks; and Slopperton going to windows to look out at the lightning was apt to withdraw hurriedly at the sight thereof. Slopperton in general was depressed by the storm; thought there would be mischief somewhere; and had a vague idea that something dreadful would happen before the night was out. + 

In Dr. Tappenden’s quiet household there was consternation and alarm. Mr. Jabez North, the principal assistant, had gone out early in the evening, and had not returned at the appointed hour for shutting up the house. This was such an unprecedented occurrence, that it had occasioned considerable uneasiness⁠—especially as Dr. Tappenden was away from home, and Jabez was, in a manner, deputy-master of the house. The young woman who looked after the gentlemen’s wardrobes had taken compassion upon the housemaid, who sat up awaiting Mr. North’s return, and had brought her workbox, and a lapful of young gentlemen’s dilapidated socks, to the modest chamber in which the girl waited. + 

“I hope,” said the housemaid, “nothing ain’t happened to him through the storm. I hope he hasn’t been getting under no trees.” + 

The housemaid had a fixed idea that to go under a tree in a thunderstorm was to encounter immediate death. + 

“Poor dear young gentleman,” said the lady of the wardrobes; “I tremble to think what can keep him out so. Such a steady young man; never known to be a minute after time either. I’m sure every sound I hear makes me expect to see him brought in on a shutter.” + 

“Don’t now, Miss Smithers!” cried the housemaid, looking behind her as if she expected to see the ghost of Jabez North pointing to a red spot on his left breast at the back of her chair. “I wish you wouldn’t now! Oh, I hope he ain’t been murdered. There’s been such a many murders in Slopperton since I can remember. It’s only three years and a half ago since a man cut his wife’s throat down in Windmill Lane, because she hadn’t put no salt in the saucepan when she boiled the greens.” + 

The frightful parallel between the woman who boiled the greens without salt and Jabez North two hours after his time, struck such terror to the hearts of the young women, that they were silent for some minutes, during which they both looked uneasily at a thief in the candle which neither of them had the courage to take out⁠—their nerves not being equal to the possible clicking of the snuffers. + 

“Poor young man!” said the housemaid, at last. “Do you know, Miss Smithers, I can’t help thinking he has been rather low lately.” + 

Now this word “low” admits of several applications, so Miss Smithers replied, rather indignantly⁠— + 

“Low, Sarah Anna! Not in his language, I’m sure. And as to his manners, they’d be a credit to the nobleman that wrote the letters.” + 

“No, no, Miss Smithers; I mean his spirits. I’ve fancied lately he’s been a fretting about something; perhaps he’s in love, poor dear.” + 

Miss Smithers coloured up. The conversation was getting interesting. Mr. North had lent her Rasselas, which she thought a story of thrilling interest; and she had kept his stockings and shirt buttons in order for three years. Such things had happened; and Mrs. Jabez North sounded more comfortable than Miss Smithers, at any rate. + 

“Perhaps,” said Sarah Anne, rather maliciously⁠—“perhaps he’s been forgetting his situation and giving way to thoughts of marrying our young missus. She’s got a deal of money, you know, Miss Smithers, though her figure ain’t much to look at.” + 

Sarah Anne’s figure was plenty to look at, having a tendency to break out into luxuriance where you least expected it. + 

It was in vain that Sarah Anne or Miss Smithers speculated on the probable causes of the usher’s absence. Midnight struck from the Dutch clock in the kitchen, the eight-day clock on the staircase, the timepiece in the drawing-room⁠—a liberal and complicated piece of machinery which always struck eighteen to the dozen⁠—and eventually from every clock in Slopperton; and yet there was no sign of Jabez North. + 

No sign of Jabez North. A white face and a pair of glazed eyes staring up at the sky, out on a dreary heath three miles from Slopperton, exposed to the fury of a pitiless storm; a man lying alone on a wretched mattress in a miserable apartment in Blind Peter⁠—but no Jabez North. + 

Through the heartless storm, dripping wet with the pelting rain, the girl they have christened Sillikens hastens back to Blind Peter. The feeble glimmer of the candle, with the drooping wick sputtering in a pool of grease, is the only light which illumes that cheerless neighbourhood. The girl’s heart beats with a terrible flutter as she approaches that light, for an agonizing doubt is in her soul about that other light which she left so feebly burning, and which may be now extinct. But she takes courage; and pushing open the door, which opposes neither bolts nor bars to any deluded votary of Mercury, she enters the dimly-lighted room. The man lies with his face turned to the wall; the old woman is seated by the hearth, on which a dull and struggling flame is burning. She has on the table among the medicine-bottles, another, which no doubt contains spirits, for she has a broken teacup in her hand, from which ever and anon she sips consolation, for it is evident she has been crying. + 

“Mother, how is he⁠—how is he?” the girl asks, with a hurried notation painful to witness, since it reveals how much she dreads the answer. + 

“Better, deary, better⁠—Oh, ever so much better,” the old woman answers in a crying voice, and with another application to the broken teacup. + 

“Better! thank Heaven!⁠—thank Heaven!” and the girl, stealing softly to the bedside, bends down and listens to the sick man’s breathing, which is feeble, but regular. + 

“He seems very fast asleep, grandmother. Has he been sleeping all the time?” + 

“Since when, deary?” + 

“Since I went out. Where’s the doctor?” + 

“Gone, deary. Oh, my blessed boy, to think that it should come to this, and his dead mother was my only child! O dear, O dear!” And the old woman burst out crying, only choking her sobs by the aid of the teacup. + 

“But he’s better, grandmother; perhaps he’ll get over it now. I always said he would. Oh, I’m so glad⁠—so glad.” The girl sat down in her wet garments, of which she never once thought, on the little stool by the side of the bed. Presently the sick man turned round and opened his eyes. + 

“You’ve been away a long time, lass,” he said. + 

Something in his voice, or in his way of speaking, she did not know which, startled her; but she wound her arm round his neck, and said⁠— + 

“Jim, my own dear Jim, the danger’s past. The black gulf you’ve been looking down is closed for these many happy years to come, and maybe the sun will shine on our wedding-day yet.” + 

“Maybe, lass⁠—maybe. But tell me, what’s the time?” + 

“Never mind the time, Jim. Very late, and a very dreadful night; but no matter for that! You’re better, Jim; and if the sun never shone upon the earth again, I don’t think I should be able to be sorry, now you are safe.” + 

“Are all the lights out in Blind Peter, lass?” he asked. + 

“All the lights out? Yes, Jim⁠—these two hours. But why do you ask?” + 

“And in Slopperton did you meet many people, lass?” + 

“Not half-a-dozen in all the streets. Nobody would be out in such a night, Jim, that could help it.” + 

He turned his face to the wall again, and seemed to sleep. The old woman kept moaning and mumbling over the broken teacup⁠— + 

“To think that my blessed boy should come to this⁠—on such a night too, on such a night!” + 

The storm raged with unabated fury, and the rain pouring in at the dilapidated door threatened to flood the room. Presently the sick man raised his head a little way from the pillow. + 

“Lass,” he said, “could you get me a drop o’ wine? I think, if I could drink a drop o’ wine, it would put some strength into me somehow.” + 

“Grandmother,” said the girl, “can I get him any? You’ve got some money; it’s only just gone twelve; I can get in at the public-house. I will get in, if I knock them up, to get a drop o’ wine for Jim.” + 

The old woman fumbled among her rags and produced a sixpence, part of the money given her from the slender purse of the benevolent Jabez, and the girl hurried away to fetch the wine. + 

The public-house was called the Seven Stars; the seven stars being represented on a signboard in such a manner as to bear rather a striking resemblance to seven yellow hot-cross buns on a very blue background. The landlady of the Seven Stars was putting her hair in papers when the girl called Sillikens invaded the sanctity of her private life. Why she underwent the pain and grief of curling her hair for the admiration of such a neighbourhood as Blind Peter is one of those enigmas of this dreary existence to solve which the Oedipus has not yet appeared. I don’t suppose she much cared about suspending her toilet, and opening her bar, for the purpose of selling sixpennyworth of port wine; but when she heard it was for a sick man, she did not grumble. The girl thanked her heartily, and hurried homewards with her pitiful measure of wine. + 

Through the pitiless rain, and under the dark sky, it was almost impossible to see your hand before you; but as Sillikens entered the mouth of Blind Peter, a flash of lightning revealed to her the figure of a man gliding with a soft step between the broken iron railings. In the instantaneous glimpse she caught of him under the blue light, something familiar in his face or form quickened the beating of her heart, and made her turn to look back at him; but it was too dark for her to see more than the indistinct figure of a man hurrying away in the direction of Slopperton. Wondering who could be leaving Blind Peter on such a night and at such an hour, she hastened back to carry her lover the wine. + 

The old woman still sat before the hearth. The sputtering candle had gone out, and the light from the miserable little fire only revealed the dark outlines of the wretched furniture and the figure of Jim’s grandmother, looking, as she sat mumbling over the broken teacup, like a wicked witch performing an incantation over a portable cauldron. + 

The girl hurried to the bedside⁠—the sick man was not there. + 

“Grandmother! Jim⁠—Jim! Where is he?” she asked, in an alarmed voice; for the figure she had met hurrying through the storm flashed upon her with a strange distinctness. “Jim! Grandmother! tell me where he is, or I shall go mad! Not gone⁠—not gone out on such a night as this, and in a burning fever?” + 

“Yes, lass, he’s gone. My precious boy, my darling boy. His dead mother was my only child, and he’s gone forever and ever, and on this dreadful night. I’m a miserable old woman.” + 

No other explanation than this, no other words than these, chattered and muttered again and again, could the wretched girl extort from the old woman, who, half imbecile and more than half tipsy, sat grinning and grunting over the teacup till she fell asleep in a heap on the cold damp hearth, still hugging the empty teacup, and still muttering, even in her sleep⁠— + 

“His dead mother was my only child; and it’s very cruel it should come to this at last, and on such a night.” + 

VI + 

The Quiet Figure on the Heath + 

The morning after the storm broke bright and clear, promising a hot summer’s day, but also promising a pleasant breeze to counterbalance the heat of the sun. This was the legacy of the storm, which, dying out about three o’clock, after no purposeless fury, had left behind it a better and purer air in place of the sultry atmosphere which had heralded its coming. + 

Mr. Joseph Peters, seated at breakfast this morning, attended by Kuppins nursing the “fondling,” has a great deal to say by means of the dirty alphabet (greasy from the effects of matutinal bacon) about last night’s storm. Kuppins has in nowise altered since we last saw her, and four months have made no change in the inscrutable physiognomy of the silent detective; but four months have made a difference in the “fondling,” now familiarly known as “baby.” Baby is short-coated; baby takes notice. This accomplishment of taking notice appears to consist chiefly in snatching at every article within its reach, from Kuppins’s luxuriant locks to the hot bowl of Mr. Peters’s pipe. Baby also is possessed of a marvellous pair of shoes, which are alternately in his mouth, under the fender, and upon his feet⁠—to say nothing of their occasionally finding their way out of the window, on to the dust-heap, and into divers other domestic recesses too numerous to mention. Baby is also possessed of a cap with frills, which it is Kuppins’s delight to small-plait, and the delight of baby to demolish. Baby is devotedly attached to Kuppins, and evinces his affection by such pleasing demonstrations as poking his fists down her throat, hanging on to her nose, pushing a tobacco-pipe up her nostrils, and other equally gratifying proofs of infantine regard. Baby is, in short, a wonderful child; and the eye of Mr. Peters at breakfast wanders from his bacon and his watercresses to his young adopted, with a look of pride he does not attempt to conceal. + 

Mr. Peters has risen in his profession since last February. He has assisted at the discovery of two or three robberies, and has evinced on those occasions such a degree of tact, triumphing so completely over the difficulties he labours under from his infirmity, as to have won for himself a better place in the police force of Slopperton⁠—and of course a better salary. But business has been dull lately, and Mr. Joseph Peters, who is ambitious, has found no proper field for his abilities as yet. + 

“I should like an iron-safe case, a regular out-and-out burglary,” he muses, “or a good forgery, say to the tune of a thousand or so. Or a bit of bigamy; that would be something new. But a jolly good poisoning case might make my fortune. If that there little ’un was growed up,” he mentally ejaculated, as Kuppins’s charge gave an unusually loud scream, “his lungs might be a fortune to me. Lord,” he continued, waxing metaphysical, “I don’t look upon that hinfant as a hinfant, I looks upon him as a voice.” + 

The “voice” was a very powerful one just at this moment; for in an interval of affectionate weakness Kuppins had regaled the “fondling” on the rind of Mr. Peters’s rasher, which, not harmonizing with the limited development of his swallowing apparatus, had brought out the purple tints in his complexion with alarming violence. + 

For a long time Mr. Peters mused, and at last, after signalling Kuppins, as was his wont on commencing a conversation, with a loud snap of his finger and thumb, he began thus: + 

“There’s a case of shoplifting at Halford’s Heath, and I’ve got to go over and look up some evidence in the village. I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you; I’ll take you and baby over in Vorkins’s trap⁠—he said as how he’d lend it me whenever I liked to ask him for the loan of it; and I’ll stand treat to the Rosebush tea-gardens.” + 

Never had the dirty alphabet fashioned such sweet words. A drive in Mr. Vorkins’s trap, and the Rosebush tea-gardens! If Kuppins had been a fairy changeling, and had awoke one morning to find herself a queen, I don’t think she would have chosen any higher delight wherewith to celebrate her accession to the throne. + 

Kuppins had, during the few months of Mr. Peters’s residence in the indoor Eden of No. 5, Little Gulliver Street, won a very high place in that gentleman’s regards. The elderly proprietress of the Eden was as nothing in the eyes of Mr. Peters when compared with Kuppins. It was Kuppins whom he consulted when giving his orders for dinner; Kuppins, whose eye he knew to be infallible as regarded a chop, either mutton or pork; whose finger was as the finger of Fate in the matter of hard or soft-roed herrings. It was by Kuppins’s advice he purchased some mysterious garment for the baby, or some prodigious wonder in the shape of a bandana or a neck-handkerchief for himself; and this tea-garden treat he had long contemplated as a fitting reward for the fidelity of his handmaiden. + 

Mr. Vorkins was one of the officials of the police force, and Mr. Vorkins’s trap was a happy combination of the cart of a vender of feline provisions and the gig of a fast young man of half a century gone by⁠—that is to say, it partook of the disadvantages of each, without possessing the capabilities of either: but Mr. Peters looked at it with respect, and in the eye of Kuppins it was a gorgeous and fashionable vehicle, which the most distinguished member of the peerage might have driven along the Lady’s Mile, at six o’clock on a midsummer afternoon, with pride and delight. + 

At two o’clock on this June afternoon, behold Mr. Vorkins’s trap at the door of No. 5, Little Gulliver Street, with Kuppins in a miraculous bonnet, and baby in a wonderful hat, seated therein. Mr. Peters, standing on the pavement, contemplated the appointments of the equipage with some sense of pride, and the juvenile population of the street hovered around, absorbed in admiration of the turnout. + 

“Mind your bonnet don’t make the wehicle top-heavy, miss,” said one youthful votary of the renowned Joe Miller; “it’s big enough, anyways.” + 

Miss Kuppins (she was Miss Kuppins in her Sunday costume) flung a Parthian glance at the young barbarian, and drew down a green veil, which, next to the “fondling,” was the pride of her heart. Mr. Peters, armed with a formidable whip, mounted to his seat by her side, and away drove the trap, leaving the juvenile population aforesaid venting its envy in the explosion of a perfect artillery of jeux de mots. + 

Mr. Vorkins’s trap was as a fairy vehicle to Kuppins, and Mr. Vorkins’s elderly pony an enchanted quadruped, under the strokes of whose winged hoofs Slopperton flew away like a smoky dream, and was no more seen⁠—an enchanted quadruped, by whose means the Slopperton suburbs of unfinished houses, scaffolding, barren ground for sale in building lots, ugly lean streets, and inky river, all melted into the distance, giving place to a road that intersected a broad heath, in the undulations of which lay fairy pools of blue water, in whose crystal depths the good people might have admired their tiny beauties as in a mirror. Indeed, it was pleasant to ride in Mr. Vorkins’s jingling trap through the pure country air, scented with the odours of distant bean-fields, and, looking back, to see the smoke of Sloppertonian chimneys a mere black daub on the blue sky, and to be led almost to wonder how, on the face of such a fair and lovely earth, so dark a blot as Slopperton could be. + 

The Rosebush tea-gardens were a favourite resort of Slopperton on a Sunday afternoon; and many teachers there were in that great city who did not hesitate to say that the rosebushes of those gardens were shrubs planted by his Satanic Majesty, and that the winding road over Halford’s Heath, though to the ignorant eye bordered by bright blue streams and sweet-smelling wild flowers, lay in reality between two lakes of fire and brimstone. Some gentlemen, however, dared to say⁠—gentlemen who wore white neckcloths too, and were familiar and welcome in the dwellings of the poor⁠—that Slopperton might go to more wicked places than Rosebush gardens, and might possibly be led into more evil courses than the consumption of tea and watercresses at ninepence a-head. But in spite of all differences of opinion, the Rosebush gardens prospered, and Rosebush tea and bread-and-butter were pleasant in the mouth of Slopperton. + 

Mr. Peters deposited his fair young companion, with the baby in her arms, at the gate of the gardens⁠—after having authorized her to order two teas, and to choose an arbour⁠—and walked off himself into the village of Halford to transact his official business. + 

The ordering of the teas and the choosing of the arbour were a labour of love with the fair Kuppins. She selected a rustic retreat, over which the luxuriant tendrils of a hop-vine fell like a thick green curtain. It was a sight to see Kuppins skirmishing with the earwigs and spiders in their sylvan bower, and ultimately routing those insects from the nests of their fathers. Mr. Peters returned from the village in about an hour, hot and dusty, but triumphant as to the issue of the business he had come about, and with an inordinate thirst for tea at ninepence a-head. I don’t know whether Rosebush gardens made much out of the two teas at ninepence, but I know the bread-and-butter and watercresses disappeared by the aid of the detective and his fair companion as if by magic. It was pleasant to watch the “fondling” during this humble fête champêtre. He had been brought up by hand, which would be better expressed as by spoon, and had been fed on every variety of comestible, from pap and farinaceous food to beefsteaks and onions and the soft roes of red herrings⁠—to say nothing of sugar-sticks, bacon rinds, and the claws of shellfish; he therefore, immediately upon the appearance of the two teas, laid violent hands on a bunch of watercresses and a slice of bread-and-butter, wiping the buttered side upon his face⁠—so as to give himself the appearance of an infant in a violent perspiration⁠—preparatory to its leisurely consumption. He also made an onslaught on Mr. Peters’s cup of steaming tea, but scalding his hands therewith, withdrew to the bosom of Kuppins, and gave vent to his indignation in loud screams, which the detective said made the gardens quite lively. After the two teas, Mr. Peters, attended by Kuppins and the infant, strolled round the gardens, and peered into the arbours, very few of which were tenanted this weekday afternoon. The detective indulged in a gambling speculation with some wonderful machine, the distinguishing features of which were numbers and Barcelona nuts; and by the aid of which you might lose as much as threepence halfpenny before you knew where you were, while you could not by any possibility win anything. There was also a bowling-green, and a swing, which Kuppins essayed to mount, and which repudiated that young lady, by precipitating her forward on her face at the first start. + 

Having exhausted the mild dissipations of the gardens, Mr. Peters and Kuppins returned to their bower, where the gentleman sat smoking his clay pipe, and contemplating the infant, with a perfect serenity and calm enjoyment delightful to witness. But there was more on Mr. Peters’s mind that summer’s evening than the infant. He was thinking of the trial of Richard Marwood, and the part he had taken in that trial by means of the dirty alphabet; he was thinking, perhaps, of the fate of Richard⁠—poor unlucky Richard, a hopeless and incurable lunatic, imprisoned for life in a dreary asylum, and comforting himself in that wretched place by wild fancies of imaginary greatness. Presently Mr. Peters, with a preparatory snap of his fingers, asks Kuppins if she can “call to mind that there story of the lion and the mouse.” + 

Kuppins can call it to mind, and proceeds to narrate with volubility, how a lion, once having rendered a service to a mouse, found himself caught in a great net, and in need of a friend; how this insignificant mouse had, by sheer industry and perseverance, effected the escape of the mighty lion. Whether they lived happy ever afterwards Kuppins couldn’t say, but had no doubt they did; that being the legitimate conclusion of every legend, in this young lady’s opinion. + 

Mr. Peters scratched his head violently during this story, to which he listened with his mouth very much round the corner; and when it was finished he fell into a reverie that lasted till the distant Slopperton clocks chimed the quarter before eight⁠—at which time he laid down his pipe, and departed to prepare Mr. Vorkins’s trap for the journey home. + 

Perhaps of the two journeys, the journey home was almost the more pleasant. It seemed to Kuppins’s young imagination as if Mr. Peters was bent on driving Mr. Vorkins’s trap straight into the sinking sun, which was going down in a sea of crimson behind a ridge of purple heath. Slopperton was yet invisible, except as a dark cloud on the purple sky. This road across the heath was very lonely on every evening except Sunday, and the little party only met one group of haymakers returning from their work, and one stout farmer’s wife, laden with groceries, hastening home from Slopperton. It was a still evening, and not a sound rose upon the clear air, except the last song of a bird or the chirping of a grasshopper. Perhaps, if Kuppins had been with anybody else, she might have been frightened for Kuppins had a confused idea that such appearances as highwaymen and ghosts are common to the vesper hour; but in the company of Mr. Peters, Kuppins would have fearlessly met a regiment of highwaymen, or a churchyard full of ghosts: for was he not the law and the police in person, under whose shadow there could be no fear? + 

Mr. Vorkins’s trap was fast gaining on the sinking sun, when Mr. Peters drew up, and paused irresolutely between two roads. These diverging roads met at a point a little further on, and the Sunday afternoon pleasure-seekers crossing the heath took sometimes one, sometimes the other; but the road to the left was the least frequented, being the narrower and more hilly, and this road Mr. Peters took, still driving towards the dark line behind which the red sun was going down. + 

The broken ground of the heath was all aglow with the warm crimson light; a dissipated skylark and an early nightingale were singing a duet, to which the grasshoppers seemed to listen with suspended chirpings; a frog of an apparently fretful disposition was keeping up a captious croak in a ditch by the tide of the road; and beyond these voices there seemed to be no sound beneath the sky. The peaceful landscape and the tranquil evening shed a benign influence upon Kuppins, and awakened the dormant poetry in that young lady’s breast. + 

“Lor’, Mr. Peters,” she said, “it’s hard to think in such a place as this, that gents of your perfession should be wanted. I do think now, if I was ever led to feel to want to take and murder somebody, which I hopes ain’t likely⁠—knowin’ my duty to my neighbour better⁠—I do think, somehow, this evening would come back to my mind, and I should hear them birds a-singing, and see that there sun a-sinking, till I shouldn’t be able to do it, somehow.” + 

Mr. Peters shakes his head dubiously: he is a benevolent man and a philanthropist; but he doesn’t like his profession run down, and a murder and bread-and-cheese are inseparable things in his mind. + 

“And, do you know,” continued Kuppins, “it seems to me as if, when this world is so beautiful and quiet, it’s quite hard to think there’s one wicked person in it to cast a shadow on its peace.” + 

As Kuppins said this, she and Mr. Peters were startled by a shadow which came between them and the sinking sun⁠—a distorted shadow thrown across the narrow road from the sharp outline of the figure of a man lying upon a hillock a little way above them. Now, there is not much to alarm the most timid person in the sight of a man asleep upon a summer’s evening among heath and wild flowers; but something in this man’s appearance startled Kuppins, who drew nearer to Mr. Peters, and held the “fondling,” now fast asleep and muffled in a shawl, closer to her bosom. The man was lying on his back, with his face upturned to the evening sky, and his arms straight down at his sides. The sound of the wheels of Mr. Vorkins’s trap did not awaken him; and even when Mr. Peters drew up with a sudden jerk, the sleeping man did not raise his head. Now, I don’t know why Mr. Peters should stop, or why either he or Kuppins should feel any curiosity about this sleeping man; but they certainly did feel considerable curiosity. He was dressed rather shabbily, but still like a gentleman; and it was perhaps a strange thing for a gentleman to be sleeping so soundly in such a lonely spot as this. Then again, there was something in his attitude⁠—a want of ease, a certain stiffness, which had a strange effect upon both Kuppins and Mr. Peters. + 

“I wish he’d move,” said Kuppins; “he looks so awful quiet, lying there all so lonesome.” + 

“Call to him, my girl,” said Mr. Peters with his fingers. + 

Kuppins essayed a loud “Hilloa,” but it was a dismal failure, on which Mr. Peters gave a long shrill whistle, which must surely have disturbed the peaceful dreams of the seven sleepers, though it might not have awakened them. The man on the hillock never stirred. The pony, taking advantage of the halt, drew nearer to the heath and began to crop the short grass by the roadside, thus bringing Mr. Yorkins’s trap a little nearer the sleeper. + 

“Get down, lass,” said the fingers of the detective; “get down, my lass, and have a look at him, for I can’t leave this ’ere pony.” + 

Kuppins looked at Mr. Peters; and Mr. Peters looked at Kuppins, as much as to say, “Well, what then?” So Kuppins to whom the laws of the Medes and Persians would have been mild compared to the word of Mr. Peters, surrendered the infant to his care, and descending from the trap, mounted the hillock, and looked at the still reclining figure. + 

She did not look long, but returning rapidly to Mr. Peters, took hold of his arm, and said⁠— + 

“I don’t think he’s asleep⁠—leastways, his eyes is open; but he don’t look as if he could see anything, somehow. He’s got a little bottle in his hand.” + 

Why Kuppins should keep so tight a hold on Mr. Peters’s arm while she said this it is difficult to tell; but she did clutch his coat-sleeve very tightly, looking back while she spoke with her white face turned towards that whiter face under the evening sky. + 

Mr. Peters jumped quickly from the trap, tied the elderly pony to a furze-bush, mounted the hillock, and proceeded to inspect the sleeping figure. The pale set face, and the fixed blue eyes, looked up at the crimson light melting into the purple shadows of the evening sky, but never more would earthly sunlight or shadow, or night or morning, or storm or calm, be of any account to that quiet figure lying on the heath. Why the man was there, or how he had come there, was a part of the great mystery under the darkness of which he lay; and that mystery was Death! He had died apparently by poison administered by his own hand; for on the grass by his side there was a little empty bottle labelled “Opium,” on which his fingers lay, not clasping it, but lying as if they had fallen over it. His clothes were soaked through with wet, so that he must in all probability have lain in that place through the storm of the previous night. A silver watch was in the pocket of his waistcoat, which Mr. Peters found, on looking at it, to have stopped at ten o’clock⁠—ten o’clock of the night before, most likely. His hat had fallen off, and lay at a little distance, and his curling light hair hung in wet ringlets over his high forehead. His face was handsome, the features well chiselled, but the cheeks were sunken and hollow, making the large blue eyes seem larger. + 

Mr. Peters, in examining the pockets of the suicide, found no clue to his identity; a handkerchief, a little silver, a few halfpence, a penknife wrapped in a leaf torn out of a Latin Grammar, were the sole contents. + 

The detective reflected for a few moments, with his mouth on one side, and then, mounting the highest hillock near, looked over the surrounding country. He presently descried a group of haymakers at a little distance, whom he signalled with a loud whistle. To them, through Kuppins as interpreter, he gave his directions; and two of the tallest and strongest of the men took the body by the head and feet and carried it between them, with Kuppins’s shawl spread over the still white face. They were two miles from Slopperton, and those two miles were by no means pleasant to Kuppins, seated in Mr. Vorkins’s trap, which Mr. Peters drove slowly, so as to keep pace with the two men and their ghastly burden. Kuppins’s shawl, which of course would never be any use as a shawl again, was no good to conceal the sharp outline of the face it covered; for Kuppins had seen those blue eyes, and once to see was always to see them as she thought. The dreary journey came at last to a dreary end at the police-office, where the men deposited their dreadful load, and being paid for their trouble, departed rejoicing. Mr. Peters was busy enough for the next half-hour giving an account of the finding of the body, and issuing handbills of “Found dead, etc.” + 

Kuppins and the “fondling” returned to Little Gulliver Street, and if ever there had been a heroine in that street, that heroine was Kuppins. People came from three streets off to see her, and to hear the story, which she told so often that she came at last to tell it mechanically, and to render it slightly obscure by the vagueness of her punctuation. Anything in the way of supper that Kuppins would accept, and two or three dozen suppers if Kuppins would condescend to partake of them, were at Kuppins’s service; and her reign as heroine-in-chief of this dark romance in real life was only put an end to by the appearance of Mr. Peters, the hero, who came home by-and-by, hot and dusty, to announce to the world of Little Gulliver Street, by means of the alphabet, very grimy after his exertions, that the dead man had been recognized as the principal usher of a great school up at the other end of the town, and that his name was, or had been, Jabez North. His motive for committing suicide he had carried a secret with him into the dark and mysterious region to which he was a voluntary traveller; and Mr. Peters, whose business it was to pry about the confines of this shadowy land, though powerless to penetrate the interior, could only discover some faint rumour of an ambitious love for his master’s daughter as being the cause of the young usher’s untimely end. What secrets this dead man had carried with him into the shadow-land, who shall say? There might be one, perhaps, which even Mr. Peters, with his utmost acuteness, could not discover. + 

VII + 

The Usher Resigns His Situation + 

On the very day on which Mr. Peters treated Kuppins and the “fondling” to tea and watercresses, Dr. Tappenden and Jane his daughter returned to their household gods at Slopperton. + 

Who shall describe the ceremony and bustle with which that great dignitary, the master of the house, was received? He had announced his return by the train which reached Slopperton at seven o’clock; so at that hour a well-furnished tea-table was ready laid in the study⁠—that terrible apartment which little boys entered with red eyes and pale cheeks, emerging therefrom in a pleasant glow, engendered by a specific peculiar to schoolmasters whose desire it is not to spoil the child. But no ghosts of bygone canings, no infantine whimpers from shadow-land⁠—(though little Allecompain, dead and gone, had received correction in this very room)⁠—haunted the Doctor’s sanctorum⁠—a cheerful apartment, warm in winter, and cool in summer, and handsomely furnished at all times. The silver teapot reflected the evening sunshine; and reflected too Sarah Jane laying the table, none the handsomer for being represented upside down, with a tendency to become collapsed or elongated, as she hovered about the tea-tray. Anchovy-paste, pound-cake, Scotch marmalade and fancy bread, all seemed to cry aloud for the arrival of the doctor and his daughter to demolish them; but for all that there was fear in the hearts of the household as the hour for that arrival drew near. What would he say to the absence of his factotum? Who should tell him? Everyone was innocent enough, certainly; but in the first moment of his fury might not the descending avalanche of the Doctor’s wrath crush the innocent? Miss Smithers⁠—who, as well as being presiding divinity of the young gentlemen’s wardrobes, was keeper of the keys of divers presses and cupboards, and had sundry awful trusts connected with tea and sugar and butchers’ bills⁠—was elected by the whole household, from the cook to the knife-boy, as the proper person to make the awful announcement of the unaccountable disappearance of Mr. Jabez North. So, when the doctor and his daughter had alighted from the fly which brought them and their luggage from the station, Miss Smithers hovered timidly about them, on the watch for a propitious moment. + 

“How have you enjoyed yourself, miss? Judging by your looks I should say very much indeed, for never did I see you looking better,” said Miss Smithers, with more enthusiasm than punctuation, as she removed the shawl from the lovely shoulders of Miss Tappenden. + 

“Thank you, Smithers, I am better,” replied the young lady, with languid condescension. Miss Tappenden, on the strength of never having anything the matter with her, was always complaining, and passed her existence in taking sal-volatile and red lavender, and reading three volumes a day from the circulating library. + 

“And how,” asked the ponderous voice of the ponderous Doctor, “how is everything going on, Smithers?” By this time they were seated at the tea-table, and the learned Tappenden was in the act of putting five lumps of sugar in his cup, while the fair Smithers lingered in attendance. + 

“Quite satisfactory, sir, I’m sure,” replied that young lady, growing very much confused. “Everything quite satisfactory, sir; leastways⁠—” + 

“What do you mean by leastways, Smithers?” asked the Doctor, impatiently. “In the first place it isn’t English; and in the next it sounds as if it meant something unpleasant. For goodness sake, Smithers, be straightforward and businesslike. Has anything gone wrong? What is it? And why wasn’t I informed of it?” + 

Smithers, in despair at her incapability of answering these three questions at once, as no doubt she ought to have been able to do, or the Doctor would not have asked them, stammered out⁠— + 

“Mr. North, sir⁠—” + 

“ ‘Mr. North, sir’! Well, what of ‘Mr. North, sir’? By the by, where is Mr. North? Why isn’t he here to receive us?” + 

Smithers feels that she is in for it; so, after two or three nervous gulps, and other convulsive movements of the throat, she continues thus⁠—“Mr. North, sir, didn’t come home last night, sir. We sat up for him till one o’clock this morning⁠—last night, sir.” + 

The rising storm in the Doctor’s face is making Smithers’s English more un-English every moment. + 

“Didn’t come last night? Didn’t return to my house at the hour of ten, which hour has been appointed by me for the retiring to rest of every person in my employment?” cried the Doctor, aghast. + 

“No, sir! Nor yet this morning, sir! Nor yet this afternoon, sir! And the West-Indian pupils have been looking out of the window, sir, and would, which we told them not till we were hoarse, sir.” + 

“The person entrusted by me with the care of my pupils abandoning his post, and my pupils looking out of the window!” exclaimed Dr. Tappenden, in the tone of a man who says⁠—“The glory of England has departed! You wouldn’t, perhaps, believe it; but it has!” + 

“We didn’t know what to do, sir, and so we thought we’d better not do it,” continued the bewildered Smithers. “And we thought as you was coming back today, we’d better leave it till you did come back⁠—and please, sir, will you take any new-laid eggs?” + 

“Eggs!” said the Doctor; “new-laid eggs! Go away, Smithers. There must be some steps taken immediately. That young man was my right hand, and I would have trusted him with untold gold; or,” he added, “with my chequebook.” + 

As he uttered the words “chequebook,” he, as it were instinctively, laid his hand upon the pocket which contained that precious volume; but as he did so, he remembered that he had used the last leaf but one when writing a cheque for a midsummer butcher’s bill, and that he had a fresh book in his desk untouched. This desk was always kept in the study, and the Doctor gave an involuntary glance in the direction in which it stood. + 

It was a very handsome piece of furniture, ponderous, like the Doctor himself; a magnificent construction of shining walnut-wood and dark green morocco, with a recess for the Doctor’s knees, and on either side of this recess two rows of drawers, with brass handles and Bramah locks. The centre drawer on the left hand side contained an inner and secret drawer, and towards the lock of this drawer the Doctor looked, for this contained his new chequebook. The walnut-wood round the lock of this centre drawer seemed a little chipped; the Doctor thought he might as well get up and look at it; and a nearer examination showed the brass handle to be slightly twisted, as if a powerful hand had wrenched it out of shape. The Doctor, taking hold of the handle to pull it straight, drew the drawer out, and scattered its contents upon the floor; also the contents of the inner drawer, and amongst them the chequebook, half-a-dozen leaves of which had been torn out. + 

“So,” said the Doctor, “this man, whom I trusted, has broken open my desk, and finding no money, he has taken blank cheques, in the hope of being able to forge my name. To think that I did not know this man!” + 

To think that you did not, Doctor; to think, too, that you do not even now, perhaps, know half this man may have been capable of. + 

But it was time for action, not reflection; so the Doctor hurried to the railway station, and telegraphed to his bankers in London to stop any cheques presented in his signature, and to have the person presenting such cheques immediately arrested. From the railway station he hurried, in an undignified perspiration, to the police-office, to institute a search for the missing Jabez, and then returned home, striking terror into the hearts of his household, ay, even to the soul of his daughter, the lovely Jane, who took an extra dose of sal-volatile, and went to bed to read “Lady Clarinda, or the Heartbreaks of Belgravia.” + 

With the deepening twilight came a telegraphic message from the bank to say that cheques for divers sums had been presented and cashed by different people in the course of the day. On the heels of this message came another from the police-station, announcing that a body had been found upon Halford Heath answering to the description of the missing man. + 

The bewildered schoolmaster, hastening to the station, recognises, at a glance, the features of his late assistant. The contents of the dead man’s pocket, the empty bottle with the too significant label, are shown him. No, some other hand than the usher’s must have broken open the desk in the study, and the unfortunate young man’s reputation had been involved in a strange coincidence. But the motive for his rash act? That is explained by a most affecting letter in the dead man’s hand, which is found in his desk. It is addressed to the Doctor, expresses heartfelt gratitude for that worthy gentleman’s past kindnesses, and hints darkly at a hopeless attachment to his daughter, which renders the writer’s existence a burden too heavy for him to bear. For the rest, Jabez North has passed a threshold, over which the boldest and most inquisitive scarcely care to follow him. So he takes his own little mystery with him into the land of the great mystery. + 

There is, of course, an inquest, at which two different chemists, who sold laudanum to Jabez North on the night before his disappearance, give their evidence. There is another chemist, who deposes to having sold him, a day or two before, a bottle of patent hair-dye, which is also a poisonous compound; but surely he never could have thought of poisoning himself with hair-dye. + 

The London police are at fault in tracing the presenters of the cheques; and the proprietors of the bank, or the clerks, who maintain a common fund to provide against their own errors, are likely to be considerable losers. In the meanwhile the worthy Doctor announces, by advertisements in the Slopperton papers, that “his pupils assemble on the 27th of July.” + 