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Put Yourself in His Place

by Charles Reade · English · Gutenberg #2497 · 1,131,055 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Put Yourself in His Place

Author: Charles Reade


        
Release date: May 17, 2006 [eBook #2497]
                Most recently updated: March 5, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2497

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE ***




Produced by Donald Lainson





PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE


By Charles Reade



“I will frame a work of fiction upon notorious fact, so that anybody
shall think he can do the same; shall labor and toil attempting
the same, and fail--such is the power of sequence and connection in
writing.”--HORACE: Art of Poetry.




CHAPTER I.


Hillsborough and its outlying suburbs make bricks by the million, spin
and weave both wool and cotton, forge in steel from the finest needle up
to a ship's armor, and so add considerably to the kingdom's wealth.

But industry so vast, working by steam on a limited space, has been
fatal to beauty: Hillsborough, though built on one of the loveliest
sites in England, is perhaps the most hideous town in creation. All ups
and down and back slums. Not one of its wriggling, broken-backed streets
has handsome shops in an unbroken row. Houses seem to have battled in
the air, and stuck wherever they tumbled down dead out of the melee. But
worst of all, the city is pockmarked with public-houses, and bristles
with high round chimneys. These are not confined to a locality, but
stuck all over the place like cloves in an orange. They defy the law,
and belch forth massy volumes of black smoke, that hang like acres of
crape over the place, and veil the sun and the blue sky even in the
brightest day. But in a fog--why, the air of Hillsborough looks a thing
to plow, if you want a dirty job.

More than one crystal stream runs sparkling down the valleys, and
enters the town; but they soon get defiled, and creep through it heavily
charged with dyes, clogged with putridity, and bubbling with poisonous
gases, till at last they turn to mere ink, stink, and malaria, and
people the churchyards as they crawl.

This infernal city, whose water is blacking, and whose air is coal, lies
in a basin of delight and beauty: noble slopes, broad valleys, watered
by rivers and brooks of singular beauty, and fringed by fair woods in
places; and, eastward, the hills rise into mountains, and amongst them
towers Cairnhope, striped with silver rills, and violet in the setting
sun.

Cairnhope is a forked mountain, with a bosom of purple heather and a
craggy head. Between its forks stood, at the period of my story, a great
curiosity; which merits description on its own account, and also as the
scene of curious incidents to come.

It was a deserted church. The walls were pierced with arrow-slits,
through which the original worshipers had sent many a deadly shaft in
defense of their women and cattle, collected within the sacred edifice
at the first news of marauders coming.

Built up among the heathery hills in times of war and trouble, it had
outlived its uses. Its people had long ago gone down into the fruitful
valley, and raised another church in their midst, and left this old
house of God alone, and silent as the tombs of their forefathers that
lay around it.

It was no ruin, though on the road to decay. One of the side walls was
much lower than the other, and the roof had two great waves, and was
heavily clothed, in natural patterns, with velvet moss, and sprinkled
all over with bright amber lichen: a few tiles had slipped off in two
places, and showed the rafters brown with time and weather: but the
structure was solid and sound; the fallen tiles lay undisturbed beneath
the eaves; not a brick, not a beam, not a gravestone had been stolen,
not even to build the new church: of the diamond panes full half
remained; the stone font was still in its place, with its Gothic cover,
richly carved; and four brasses reposed in the chancel, one of them
loose in its bed.

What had caused the church to be deserted had kept it from being
desecrated; it was clean out of the way. No gypsy, nor vagrant, ever
slept there, and even the boys of the village kept their distance.
Nothing would have pleased them better than to break the sacred windows
time had spared, and defile the graves of their forefathers with
pitch-farthing and other arts; but it was three miles off, and there was
a lion in the way: they must pass in sight of Squire Raby's house; and,
whenever they had tried it, he and his groom had followed them on
swift horses that could jump as well as gallop, had caught them in the
churchyard, and lashed them heartily; and the same night notice to quit
had been given to their parents, who were all Mr. Raby's weekly tenants:
and this had led to a compromise and flagellation.

Once or twice every summer a more insidious foe approached. Some little
party of tourists, including a lady, who sketched in water and never
finished anything, would hear of the old church, and wander up to it.
But Mr. Raby's trusty groom was sure to be after them, with orders
to keep by them, under guise of friendship, and tell them outrageous
figments, and see that they demolished not, stole not, sculptured not.

All this was odd enough in itself, but it astonished nobody who knew Mr.
Raby. His father and predecessor had guarded the old church religiously
in his day, and was buried in it, by his own orders; and, as for Guy
Raby himself, what wonder he respected it, since his own mind, like that
old church, was out of date, and a relic of the past?

An antique Tory squire, nursed in expiring Jacobitism, and cradled in
the pride of race; educated at Oxford, well read in books, versed in
county business, and acquainted with trade and commerce; yet puffed up
with aristocratic notions, and hugging the very prejudices our nobility
are getting rid of as fast as the vulgar will let them.

He had a sovereign contempt for tradespeople, and especially for
manufacturers. Any one of those numerous disputes between masters and
mechanics, which distinguish British industry, might have been safely
referred to him, for he abhorred and despised them both with strict
impartiality.


The lingering beams of a bright December day still gilded the moss-clad
roof of that deserted church, and flamed on its broken panes, when a
young man came galloping toward it, from Hillsborough, on one of those
powerful horses common in that district.

He came so swiftly and so direct, that, ere the sun had been down twenty
minutes, he and his smoking horse had reached a winding gorge about
three furlongs from the church. Here, however, the bridle-road, which
had hitherto served his turn across the moor, turned off sharply
toward the village of Cairnhope, and the horse had to pick his way
over heather, and bog, and great loose stones. He lowered his nose, and
hesitated more than once. But the rein was loose upon his neck, and he
was left to take his time. He had also his own tracks to guide him in
places, for this was by no means his first visit; and he managed so
well, that at last he got safe to a mountain stream which gurgled past
the north side of the churchyard: he went cautiously through the water,
and then his rider gathered up the reins, stuck in the spurs, and put
him at a part of the wall where the moonlight showed a considerable
breach. The good horse rose to it, and cleared it, with a foot to spare;
and the invader landed in the sacred precincts unobserved, for the
road he had come by was not visible from Raby House, nor indeed was the
church itself.

He was of swarthy complexion, dressed in a plain suit of tweed, well
made, and neither new nor old. His hat was of the newest fashion, and
glossy. He had no gloves on.

He dismounted, and led his horse to the porch. He took from his pocket a
large glittering key and unlocked the church-door; then gave his horse
a smack on the quarter. That sagacious animal walked into the church
directly, and his iron hoofs rang strangely as he paced over the brick
floor of the aisle, and made his way under the echoing vault, up to
the very altar; for near it was the vestry-chest, and in that chest his
corn.

The young man also entered the church; but soon came out again with
a leathern bucket in his hand. He then went round the church, and was
busily employed for a considerable time.

He returned to the porch, carried his bucket in, and locked the door,
leaving the key inside.


That night Abel Eaves, a shepherd, was led by his dog, in search of a
strayed sheep, to a place rarely trodden by the foot of man or beast,
viz., the west side of Cairnhope Peak. He came home pale and disturbed,
and sat by the fireside in dead silence. “What ails thee, my man?” said
Janet, his wife; “and there's the very dog keeps a whimpering.”

“What ails us, wife? Pincher and me? We have seen summat.”

“What was it?” inquired the woman, suddenly lowering her voice.

“Cairnhope old church all o' fire inside.”

“Bless us and save us!” said Janet, in a whisper.

“And the fire it did come and go as if hell was a blowing at it. One
while the windows was a dull red like, and the next they did flare so,
I thought it would all burst out in a blaze. And so 'twould, but, bless
your heart, their heads ha'n't ached this hundred year and more, as
lighted that there devilish fire.”

He paused a moment, then said, with sudden gravity and resignation and
even a sort of half business-like air, “Wife, ye may make my shroud, and
sew it and all; but I wouldn't buy the stuff of Bess Crummles; she is an
ill-tongued woman, and came near making mischief between you and me last
Lammermas as ever was.”

“Shroud!” cried Mrs. Eaves, getting seriously alarmed. “Why, Abel, what
is Cairnhope old church to you? You were born in an other parish.”

Abel slapped his thigh. “Ay, lass, and another county, if ye go to
that.” And his countenance brightened suddenly.

“And as for me,” continued Janet, “I'm Cairnhope; but my mother came
from Morpeth, a widdy: and she lies within a hundred yards of where
I sit a talking to thee. There's none of my kin laid in old Cairnhope
churchyard. Warning's not for thee, nor me, nor yet for our Jock. Eh,
lad, it will be for Squire Raby. His father lies up there, and so do all
his folk. Put on thy hat this minute, and I'll hood myself, and we'll go
up to Raby Hall, and tell Squire.”

Abel objected to that, and intimated that his own fireside was
particularly inviting to a man who had seen diabolical fires that came
and went, and shone through the very stones and mortar of a dead church.

“Nay, but,” said Janet, “they sort o' warnings are not to be slighted
neither. We must put it off on to Squire, or I shall sleep none this
night.”

They went up, hand in hand, and often looked askant upon the road.

When they got to the Hall, they asked to see Mr. Raby. After some demur
they were admitted to his presence, and found him alone, so far as they
could judge by the naked eye; but, as they arrived there charged to
the muzzle with superstition, the room presented to their minds some
appearances at variance with this seeming solitude. Several plates were
set as if for guests, and the table groaned, and the huge sideboard
blazed, with old silver. The Squire himself was in full costume, and on
his bosom gleamed two orders bestowed upon his ancestors by James
III. and Charles III. In other respects he was rather innocuous, being
confined to his chair by an attack of gout, and in the act of sipping
the superannuated compound that had given it him--port. Nevertheless,
his light hair, dark eyebrows, and black eyes, awed them, and
co-operated with his brilliant costume and the other signs of company,
to make them wish themselves at the top of Cairnhope Peak. However, they
were in for it, and told their tale, but in tremulous tones and a low
deprecating voice, so that if the room SHOULD happen to be infested with
invisible grandees from the other world, their attention might not be
roused unnecessarily.

Mr. Raby listened with admirable gravity; then fixed his eyes on the
pair, in silence; and then said in a tone so solemn it was almost
sepulchral, “This very day, nearly a century and a half ago, Sir Richard
Raby was beheaded for being true to his rightful king--”

“Eh, dear poor gentleman! so now a walks.” It was Janet who edged in
this--

“And,” continued the gentleman, loftily ignoring the comment, “they say
that on this night such of the Rabys as died Catholics hold high mass in
the church, and the ladies walk three times round the churchyard; twice
with their veils down, once with bare faces, and great eyes that glitter
like stars.”

“I wouldn't like to see the jades,” quavered Abel: “their ladyships I
mean, axing their pardon.”

“Nor I!” said Janet, with a great shudder.

“It would not be good for you,” suggested the Squire; “for the first
glance from those dead and glittering eyes strikes any person of the
lower orders dumb, the second, blind; the third, dead. So I'm INFORMED.
Therefore--LET ME ADVISE YOU NEVER TO GO NEAR CAIRNHOPE OLD CHURCH AT
NIGHT.”

“Not I, sir,” said the simple woman.

“Nor your children: unless you are very tired of them.”

“Heaven forbid, sir! But oh, sir, we thought it might be a warning
like.”

“To whom?”

“Why, sir, th' old Squire lies there; and heaps more of your folk: and
so Abel here was afear'd--but you are the best judge; we be no scholars.
Th' old church warn't red-hot from eend to eend for naught: that's
certain.”

“Oh it is me you came to warn?” said Raby, and his lip curled.

“Well, sir,” (mellifluously), “we thought you had the best right to
know.”

“My good woman,” said the warned, “I shall die when my time comes. But
I shall not hurry myself, for all the gentlemen in Paradise, nor all the
blackguards upon earth.”

He spake, and sipped his port with one hand, and waved them superbly
back to their village with the other.

But, when they were gone, he pondered.

And the more he pondered, the further he got from the prosaic but
singular fact.




CHAPTER II.


In the old oak dining-room, where the above colloquy took place, hung
a series of family portraits. One was of a lovely girl with oval face,
olive complexion, and large dark tender eyes: and this was the gem of
the whole collection; but it conferred little pleasure on the spectator,
owing to a trivial circumstance--it was turned with its face to the
wall; and all that met the inquiring eye was an inscription on the
canvas, not intended to be laudatory.

This beauty, with her back to creation, was Edith Raby, Guy's sister.

During their father's lifetime she was petted and allowed her own way.
Hillsborough, odious to her brother, was, naturally, very attractive to
her, and she often rode into the town to shop and chat with her friends,
and often stayed a day or two in it, especially with a Mrs. Manton, wife
of a wealthy manufacturer.

Guy merely sneered at her, her friends, and her tastes, till he suddenly
discovered that she had formed an attachment to one of the obnoxious
class, Mr. James Little, a great contract builder. He was too shocked at
first to vent his anger. He turned pale, and could hardly speak; and the
poor girl's bosom began to quake.

But Guy's opposition went no further than cold aversion to the
intimacy--until his father died. Then, though but a year older than
Edith, he assumed authority and, as head of the house, forbade the
connection. At the same time he told her he should not object, under the
circumstances, to her marrying Dr. Amboyne, a rising physician, and
a man of good family, who loved her sincerely, and had shown his love
plainly before ever Mr. Little was heard of.

Edith tried to soften her brother; but he was resolute, and said Raby
Hall should never be an appendage to a workshop. Sooner than that, he
would settle it on his cousin Richard, a gentleman he abhorred, and
never called, either to his face or behind his back, by any other name
than “Dissolute Dick.”

Then Edith became very unhappy, and temporized more or less, till her
lover, who had shown considerable forbearance, lost patience at last,
and said she must either have no spirit, or no true affection for him.

Then came a month or two of misery, the tender clinging nature of the
girl being averse to detach itself from either of these two persons. She
loved them both with an affection she could have so easily reconciled,
if they would only have allowed her.

And it all ended according to Nature. She came of age, plucked up a
spirit, and married Mr. James Little.

Her brother declined to be present at the wedding; but, as soon as she
returned from her tour, and settled in Hillsborough, he sent his groom
with a cold, civil note, reminding her that their father had settled
nineteen hundred pounds on her, for her separate use, with remainder to
her children, if any; that he and Mr. Graham were the trustees of this
small fund; that they had invested it, according to the provisions of
the settlement, in a first mortgage on land; and informing her that half
a year's interest at 4 12 per cent was due, which it was his duty to
pay into her own hand and no other person's; she would therefore oblige
him by receiving the inclosed check, and signing the inclosed receipt.

The receipt came back signed, and with it a few gentle lines, “hoping
that, in time, he would forgive her, and bestow on her what she needed
and valued more than money; her own brother's, her only brother's
affection.”

On receiving this, his eyes were suddenly moist, and he actually
groaned. “A lady, every inch!” he said; “yet she has gone and married a
bricklayer.”

Well, blood is thicker than water, and in a few years they were pretty
good friends again, though they saw but little of one another, meeting
only in Hillsborough, which Guy hated, and never drove into now without
what he called his antidotes: a Bible and a bottle of lavender-water. It
was his humor to read the one, and sprinkle the other, as soon as ever
he got within the circle of the smoky trades.

When Edith's little boy was nine years old, and much admired for his
quickness and love of learning, and of making walking-stick heads and
ladies' work-boxes, Mr. Little's prosperity received a severe check, and
through his own fault. He speculated largely in building villas, overdid
the market, and got crippled. He had contracts uncompleted, and was
liable to penalties; and at last saw himself the nominal possessor of a
brick wilderness, but on the verge of ruin for want of cash.

He tried every other resource first; but at last he came to his wife,
to borrow her L1900. The security he offered was a mortgage on twelve
carcasses, or houses the bare walls and roofs of which were built.

Mrs. Little wrote at once to Mr. Raby for her money.

Instead of lending the trust-money hastily, Raby submitted the proposal
to his solicitor, and that gentleman soon discovered the vaunted
security was a second mortgage, with interest overdue on the first; and
so he told Guy, who then merely remarked, “I expected as much. When had
a tradesman any sense of honor in money matters? This one would cheat
his very wife and child.”

He declined the proposal, in two words, “Rotten security!”

Then Mr. James Little found another security that looked very plausible,
and primed his wife with arguments, and she implored Guy to call and
talk it over with them both.

He came that very afternoon, and brought his father's will.

Then Edith offered the security, and tried to convey to the trustee her
full belief that it was undeniable.

Guy picked terrible holes in it, and read their father's will, confining
the funds to consols, or a first mortgage on land. “You take the money
on these conditions: it is almost as improper of you to wish to evade
them, as it would be of me to assist you. And then there is your child;
I am hound in honor not to risk his little fortune. See, here's my
signature to that.”

“My child!” cried Edith. “When he comes of age, I'll go on my knees to
him and say, 'My darling, I borrowed your money to save your father's
credit.' And my darling will throw his arms round me, and forgive me.”

“Simpleton!” said Guy. “And how about your daughters and their husbands?
And their husbands' solicitors? Will they throw their arms round your
neck, and break forth into twaddle? No! I have made inquiries. Your
husband's affairs are desperate. I won't throw your money into his well;
and you will both live to thank me for seeing clearer than you do, and
saving this L1900 for you and yours.”

James Little had writhed in his chair for some time: he now cried out
wildly,

“Edith, you shall demean yourself no more. He always hated me: and now
let him have his will, and seal my dishonor and my ruin. Oblige me by
leaving my house, Mr. Raby.”

“Oh, no, James!” cried Edith, trembling, and shocked at this
affront. But Guy rose like a tower. “I've noticed this trait in all
tradespeople,” said he grimly. “They are obsequious to a gentleman so
long as they hope to get the better of him; but, the moment they find
it is impossible to overreach him, they insult him.” And with this he
stalked out of the house.

“Oh, my poor James, how could you?” said Edith.

“Forgive me,” said he, quietly. “It is all over. That was our last
chance.”

Guy Raby walked down the street, stung to the quick. He went straight to
his solicitor and arranged to borrow L1900 on his own property. “For,”
 said he, “I'll show them both how little a snob can understand a
gentleman. I won't tamper with her son's money, but I'll give her my own
to throw into his well. Confound him! why did she ever marry him?”

When the business was virtually settled, he came back to the house in
great haste.


Meantime Mr. James Little went up to his dressing-room, as usual, to
dress for dinner; but he remained there so long that, at last, Mrs.
Little sent her maid to tell him dinner was ready.

The girl had hardly reached the top of the stairs, when she gave a
terrible scream that rang through the whole house.

Mrs. Little rushed upstairs, and found her clinging to the balusters,
and pointing at the floor, with eyes protruding and full of horror.
Her candle-stick had fallen from her benumbed hand; but the hall-lamp
revealed what her finger was quivering and pointing at: a dark fluid
trickling slowly out into the lobby from beneath the bedroom door.

It was blood.

The room was burst into, and the wretched, tottering wife, hanging upon
her sobbing servants, found her lover, her husband, her child's father,
lying on the floor, dead by his own hand; stone dead. A terrible sight
for strangers to see; but for her, what words can even shadow the horror
of it!

I drop the veil on her wild bursts of agony, and piteous appeals to him
who could not hear her cries.

The gaping wound that let out that precious life, her eye never ceased
to see it, nor her own heart to bleed with it, while she lived.

She was gently dragged away, and supported down to another room. Doctor
Amboyne came and did what he could for her; and that was--nothing.

At this time she seemed stupefied. But when Guy came beaming into the
room to tell her he had got her the money, a terrible scene occurred.
The bereaved wife uttered a miserable scream at sight of him, and
swooned away directly.

The maids gathered round her, laid her down, and cut her stays, and told
Guy the terrible tidings, in broken whispers, over her insensible body.

He rose to his feet horrified. He began to gasp and sob. And he yearned
to say something to comfort her. At that moment his house, his heart,
and all he had, were hers.

But, as soon as she came to herself, and caught sight of him, she
screamed out, “Oh, the sight of him! the sight of him!” and swooned away
again.

Then the women pushed him out of the room, and he went away with uneven
steps, and sick at heart.

He shut himself up in Raby Hall, and felt very sad and remorseful.
He directed his solicitor to render Mrs. Little every assistance, and
supply her with funds. But these good offices were respectfully declined
by Mr. Joseph Little, the brother of the deceased, who had come from
Birmingham to conduct the funeral and settle other matters.

Mr. Joseph Little was known to be a small master-cutler, who had risen
from a workman, and even now put blades and handles together with his
own hands, at odd times, though he had long ceased to forge or grind.

Mr. Raby drew in haughtily at this interference.

It soon transpired that Mr. James Little had died hopelessly insolvent,
and the L1900 would really have been ingulfed.

Raby waited for this fact to sink into his sister's mind; and then one
day nature tugged so at his heart-strings, that he dashed off a warm
letter beginning--“My poor Edith, let bygones be bygones,” and inviting
her and her boy to live with him at Raby Hall.

The heart-broken widow sent back a reply, in a handwriting scarcely
recognizable as hers. Instead of her usual precise and delicate hand,
the letters were large, tremulous, and straggling, and the lines slanted
downward.


“Write to me, speak to me, no more. For pity's sake let me forget there
is a man in the world who is my brother and his murderer.

“EDITH.”


Guy opened this letter with a hopeful face, and turned pale as ashes at
the contents.

But his conscience was clear, and his spirit high. “Unjust idiot!” he
muttered, and locked her letter up in his desk.

Next morning he received a letter from Joseph Little, in a clear, stiff,
perpendicular writing:


“SIR,--I find my sister-in-law wrote you, yesterday, a harsh letter,
which I do not approve; and have told her as much. Deceased's affairs
were irretrievable, and I blame no other man for his rash act, which may
God forgive! As to your kind and generous invitation, it deserves her
gratitude; but Mrs. Little and myself have mingled our tears together
over my poor brother's grave, and now we do not care to part. Before
your esteemed favor came to hand, it had been settled she should leave
this sad neighborhood and keep my house at Birmingham, where she will
meet with due respect. I am only a small tradesman; but I can pay my
debts, and keep the pot boiling. Will teach the boy some good trade, and
make him a useful member of society, if I am spared.

“I am, sir, yours respectfully,

“JOSEPH LITTLE.”


“Sir,--I beg to acknowledge, with thanks, your respectable letter.

“As all direct communication between Mrs. James Little and myself is at
an end, oblige me with your address in Birmingham, that I may remit to
you, half-yearly, as her agent, the small sum that has escaped bricks
and mortar.

“When her son comes of age, she will probably forgive me for declining
to defraud him of his patrimony.

“But it will be too late; for I shall never forgive her, alive or dead.

“I am, sir, your obedient servant,

“GUY RABY.”


When he had posted this letter he turned Edith's picture to the wall,
and wrote on the canvas--


“GONE INTO TRADE.”


He sent for his attorney, made a new will, and bequeathed his land,
houses, goods, and chattels, to Dissolute Dick and his heirs forever.




CHAPTER III.


The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty
of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of
her sight. Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and
self-indulgent. She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought
home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him.
Nor was she unqualified. If she had less learning than school-masters,
she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind.
She taught him to read fluently, and to write beautifully; and she
coaxed him, as only a woman can, over the dry elements of music and
arithmetic. She also taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on
a button. He was a quick boy at nearly everything, but, when he was
fourteen, his true genius went ahead of his mere talents; he showed
a heaven-born gift for--carving in wood. This pleased Joseph Little
hugely, and he fostered it judiciously.

The boy worked, and thought, and in time arrived at such delicacies of
execution, he became discontented with the humdrum tools then current.
“Then learn to make your own, boy,” cried Joseph Little, joyfully; and
so initiated him into the whole mystery of hardening, forging, grinding,
handle-making, and cutlery: and Henry, young and enthusiastic, took his
turn at them all in right down earnest.

At twenty, he had sold many a piece of delicate carving, and could make
graving-tools incomparably superior to any he could buy; and, for his
age, was an accomplished mechanic.

Joseph Little went the way of all flesh.

They mourned and missed him; and, at Henry's earnest request, his mother
disposed of the plant, and went with him to London.

Then the battle of life began. He was a long time out of employment, and
they both lived on his mother's little fortune.

But Henry was never idle. He set up a little forge hard by, and worked
at it by day, and at night he would often sit carving, while his mother
read to him, and said he, “Mother, I'll never rest till I can carve the
bloom upon a plum.”

Not to dwell on the process, the final result was this. He rose at last
to eminence as a carver: but as an inventor and forger of carving tools
he had no rival in England.

Having with great labor, patience, and skill, completed a masterpiece of
carving (there were plums with the bloom on, and other incredibles),
and also a set of carving-tools equally exquisite in their way, he got a
popular tradesman to exhibit both the work and the tools in his window,
on a huge silver salver.

The thing made a good deal of noise in the trade, and drew many
spectators to the shop window.

One day Mr. Cheetham, a master-cutler, stood in admiration before the
tools, and saw his way to coin the workman.

This Cheetham was an able man, and said to himself, “I'll nail him for
Hillsborough, directly. London mustn't have a hand that can beat us at
anything in our line.”

He found Henry out, and offered him constant employment, as a forger and
cutler of carving-tools, at L4 per week.

Henry's black eyes sparkled, but he restrained himself. “That's to be
thought of. I must speak to my old lady. She is not at home just now.”

He did speak to her, and she put her two hands together and said,
“Hillsborough! Oh Henry!” and the tears stood in her eyes directly.

“Well, don't fret,” said he: “it is only saying no.”

So when Mr. Cheetham called again for the reply, Henry declined, with
thanks. On this, Mr. Cheetham never moved, but smiled, and offered him
L6 per week, and his journey free.

Henry went into another room, and argued the matter. “Come, mother, he
is up to L6 a week now; and that is every shilling I'm worth; and, when
I get an apprentice, it will be L9 clear to us.”

“The sight of the place!” objected Mrs. Little, hiding her face in her
hands instinctively.

He kissed her, and talked good manly sense to her, and begged her to
have more courage.

She was little able to deny him, and she consented; but cried, out of
his sight, a good many times about it.

As for Henry, strong in the consciousness of power and skill, he felt
glad he was going to Hillsborough. “Many a workman has risen to the
top of the tree in that place,” said he. “Why, this very Cheetham was
grinding saws in a water-wheel ten years ago, I've heard uncle Joe say.
Come, mother, don't you be a baby! I'll settle you in a cottage outside
the smoke; you shall make a palace of it; and we'll rise in the very
town where we fell, and friends and foes shall see us.”

Mr. Cheetham purchased both the carving and the tools to exhibit in
Hillsborough; and the purchase-money, less a heavy commission, was paid
to Henry. He showed Mrs. Little thirty pounds, and helped her pack up;
and next day they reached Hillsborough by train.

Henry took a close cab, and carried his mother off to the suburbs in
search of a lodging. She wore a thick veil, and laid her head on her
son's shoulder, and held his brown though elegant hand with her white
fingers, that quivered a little as she passed through the well-known
streets.

As for Henry, he felt quite triumphant and grand, and consoled her in an
off-hand, hearty way. “Come, cheer up, and face the music. They have all
forgotten you by this time, and, when they do see you again, you shall
be as good as the best of them. I don't drink, and I've got a trade all
to myself here, and I'd rather make my fortune in this town than any
other; and, mother, you have been a good friend to me; I won't ever
marry till I have done you justice, and made you the queen of this very
town.”

And so he rattled on, in such high spirits, that the great soft thing
began to smile with motherly love and pride through her tears, ere they
found a lodging.

Next day to the works, and there the foreman showed him a small forge on
the ground floor, and a vacant room above to make his handles in and put
the tools together; the blades were to be ground, whetted, and finished
by cheaper hands.

A quick-eared grinder soon came up to them, and said roughly, “Ain't we
to wet new forge?”

“They want their drink out of you,” said the foreman; and whispered, in
great anxiety, “Don't say no, or you might as well work in a wasp's nest
as here.”

“All right,” said Henry, cheerfully. “I'm no drinker myself, but I'll
stand what is customary.”

“That is right,” said Foreman Bayne. “'Twill cost you fifteen shillings.
But Peace is cheap at as many guineas.”

The word was given, and every man who worked on the same floor with
Henry turned out to drink at his expense, and left off work for a good
hour. With some exceptions they were a rough lot, and showed little
friendliness or good-humor over it. One even threw out a hint that no
cockney forges were wanted in Hillsborough. But another took him up, and
said, “Maybe not; but you are not much of a man to drink his liquor and
grudge him his bread.”

After this waste of time and money, Henry went back to the works, and a
workman told him rather sulkily, he was wanted in the foreman's office.

He went in, and there was a lovely girl of eighteen, who looked at him
with undisguised curiosity, and addressed him thus: “Sir, is it you that
carve wood so beautifully?”

Henry blushed, and hesitated; and that made the young lady blush herself
a very little, and she said, “I wished to take lessons in carving.”
 Then, as he did not reply, she turned to Mr. Bayne. “But perhaps he
objects to teach other people?”

“WE should object to his teaching other workmen,” said the foreman;
“but,” turning to Henry, “there is no harm in your giving her a lesson
or two, after hours. You will want a set of the tools, miss?”

“Of course I shall. Please put them into the carriage; and--when will he
come and teach me, I wonder? for I am wild to begin.”

Henry said he could come Saturday afternoon, or Monday morning early.

“Whichever you please,” said the lady, and put down her card on the
desk; then tripped away to her carriage, leaving Henry charmed with her
beauty and ease.

He went home to his mother, and told her he was to give lessons to the
handsomest young lady he had ever seen. “She has bought the specimen
tools too; so I must forge some more, and lose no time about it.”

“Who is she, I wonder?”

“Here is her card. 'Miss Carden, Woodbine Villa, Heath Hill.'”

“Carden!” said the widow. Then, after a moment's thought, “Oh, Henry,
don't go near them. Ah, I knew how it would be. Hillsborough is not like
London. You can't be long hid in it.”

“Why, what is the matter? Do you know the lady?”

“Oh, yes. Her papa is director of an insurance company in London. I
remember her being born very well. The very day she was christened--her
name is Grace--you were six years old, and I took you to her
christening; and oh, Harry, my brother is her godfather. Don't you
go near that Grace Carden; don't visit any one that knew us in better
days.”

“Why, what have we to be ashamed of?” said Henry. “'Tisn't as if we
sat twiddling our thumbs and howling, 'We have seen better days.' And
'tisn't as if we asked favors of anybody. For my part I don't care who
knows I am here, and can make three hundred a year with my own hands
and wrong no man. I'd rather be a good workman in wood and steel than an
arrogant old fool like your b--. No, I won't own him for yours or mine
either--call him Raby. Well, I wouldn't change places with him, nor any
of his sort: I'm a British workman, and worth a dozen Rabys--useless
scum!”

“That you are, dear; so don't demean yourself to give any of them
lessons. Her godfather would be sure to hear of it.”

“Well, I won't, to please you. But you have no more pluck than a
chicken--begging your pardon, mother.”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Little, humbly, quite content to gain her point
and lose her reputation for pluck; if any.

Henry worked regularly, and fast, and well, and in less than a fortnight
a new set of his carving-tools were on view in Hillsborough, and another
in London; for it was part of Mr. Cheetham's strategy to get all
the London orders, and even make London believe that these superior
instruments had originated in Hillsborough.

One day Miss Carden called and saw Bayne in the office. Her vivid
features wore an expression of vexation, and she complained to him that
the wood-carver had never been near her.

Bayne was surprised at that; but he was a man who always allayed
irritation on the spot. “Rely on it, there's some reason,” said he.
“Perhaps he has not got settled. I'll go for him directly.”

“Thank you,” said the young lady. Then in the same breath, “No, take me
to him, and perhaps we may catch him carving--cross thing!”

Bayne assented cheerfully, and led the way across a yard, and up a
dirty stone stair, which, solid as it was, vibrated with the powerful
machinery that steam was driving on every side of it. He opened a door
suddenly, and Henry looked up from his work, and saw the invaders.

He stared a little at first, and then got up and looked embarrassed and
confused.

“You did not keep your word, sir,” said Grace, quietly.

“No,” he muttered, and hung his head.

He seemed so confused and ashamed, that Bayne came to his assistance.
“The fact is, no workman likes to do a hand's-turn on Saturday
afternoon. I think they would rather break Sunday than Saturday.”

“It is not that,” said Henry, in a low voice.

Grace heard him, but answered Mr. Bayne: “Oh dear, I wish I had known. I
fear I have made an unreasonable request: for, of course, after working
so hard all the week--but then why did you let me purchase the tools to
carve with? Papa says they are very dear, Mr. Bayne. But that is what
gentlemen always say if one buys anything that is really good. But of
course they WILL be dear, if I am not to be taught how to use them.”
 She then looked in Mr. Bayne's face with an air of infantine simplicity:
“Would Mr. Cheetham take them back, I wonder, under the circumstances?”

At this sly thrust, Bayne began to look anxious; but Henry relieved him
the next moment by saying, in a sort of dogged way, “There, there; I'll
come.” He added, after a pause, “I will give you six lessons, if you
like.”

“I shall be so much obliged. When will you come, sir?”

“Next Saturday, at three o'clock.”

“I shall be sure to be at home, sir.”

She then said something polite about not disturbing him further, and
vanished with an arch smile of pleasure and victory, that disclosed a
row of exquisite white teeth, and haunted Henry Little for many a day
after.

He told his mother what had happened, and showed so much mortified pride
that she no longer dissuaded him from keeping his word. “Only pray don't
tell her your name,” said she.

“Well, but what am I to do if she asks it?”

“Say Thompson, or Johnson, or anything you like, except Little.”

This request roused Henry's bile. “What, am I a criminal to deny my
name? And how shall I look, if I go and give her a false name, and then
she comes to Bayne and learns my right one? No, I'll keep my name back,
if I can; but I'll never disown it. I'm not ashamed of it, if you are.”

This reduced poor Mrs. Little to silence; followed, in due course, by a
few meek, clandestine tears.

Henry put on his new tweed suit and hat, and went up to the villa. He
announced himself as the workman from Cheetham's; and the footman, who
had probably his orders, ushered him into the drawing-room at once.
There he found Grace Carden seated, reading, and a young woman sewing at
a respectful distance. This pair were types; Grace, of a young English
gentlewoman, and Jael Dence of a villager by unbroken descent. Grace was
tall, supple, and serpentine, yet not thin; Jael was robust and ample,
without being fat; she was of the same height, though Grace looked the
taller. Grace had dark brown eyes and light brown hair; and her blooming
cheek and bewitching mouth shone with expression so varied, yet vivid,
and always appropriate to the occasion, grave or gay, playful or
dignified, that her countenance made artificial faces, and giggling
in-the-wrong-place faces, painfully ridiculous. As for such faces as
Jael's, it killed them on the spot, but that was all. Jael's hair was
reddish, and her full eyes were gray; she was freckled a little under
the eyes, but the rest of her cheek full of rich pure color, healthy,
but not the least coarse: and her neck an alabaster column. Hers was a
meek, monotonous countenance; but with a certain look of concentration.
Altogether, a humble beauty of the old rural type; healthy, cleanly,
simple, candid, yet demure.

Henry came in, and the young lady received him with a manner very
different from that she had worn down at the works. She was polite, but
rather stiff and dignified.

He sat down at her request, and, wondering at himself, entered on the
office of preceptor. He took up the carving-tools, and explained the use
of several; then offered, by way of illustration, to work on something.

“That will be the best way, much,” said Grace quietly, but her eye
sparkled.

“I dare say there's some lumber to be found in a great house like this?”

“Lumber? why, there's a large garret devoted to it. Jael, please take
him to the lumber-room.”

Jael fixed her needle in her work, and laid it down gently on a table
near her, then rose and led the way to the lumber-room.

In that invaluable repository Henry soon found two old knobs lying on
the ground (a four-poster had been wrecked hard by) and a piece of deal
plank jutting out of a mass of things. He pulled hard at the plank; but
it was long, and so jammed in by miscellaneous articles, that he could
not get it clear.

Jael looked on demurely at his efforts for some time; then she suddenly
seized the plank a little higher up. “Now, pull,” said she, and gave
a tug like a young elephant: out came the plank directly, with a great
rattle of dislocated lumber.

“Well, you are a strong one,” said Henry.

“Oh, one and one makes two, sir,” replied the vigorous damsel, modestly.

“That is true, but you threw your weight into it like a workman. Now
hand me that rusty old saw, and I'll cut off as much as we want.”

While he was sawing off a piece of the plank, Jael stood and eyed him
silently a while. But presently her curiosity oozed out. “If you please,
sir, be you really a working man?”

“Why, what else should I be?” was the answer, given rather brusquely.

“A great many gentlefolks comes here as is no better dressed nor you
be.”

“Dress is no rule. Don't you go and take me for a gentleman, or we
sha'n't agree. Wait till I'm as arrogant, and empty, and lazy as they
are. I am a workman, and proud of it.”

“It's naught to be ashamed on, that's certain,” said Jael. “I've carried
many a sack of grain up into our granary, and made a few hundred-weight
of cheese and butter, besides house-work and farm-work. Bless your
heart, I bayn't idle when I be at home.”

“And pray where is your home?” asked Henry, looking up a moment, not
that he cared one straw.

“If you please, sir, I do come from Cairnhope village. I'm old Nat
Dence's daughter. There's two of us, and I'm the youngest. Squire sent
me in here, because miss said Hillsborough girls wasn't altogether
honest. She is a dear kind young lady; but I do pine for home and the
farm at times; and frets about the young calves: they want so much
looking after. And sister, she's a-courting, and can't give her mind to
'em as should be. I'll carry the board for you, sir.”

“All right,” said Henry carelessly; but, as they went along, he thought
to himself, “So a skilled workman passes for a gentleman with rustics:
fancy that!”

On their return to the drawing-room, Henry asked for a high wooden
stool, or chair, and said it would be as well to pin some newspapers
over the carpet. A high stool was soon got from the kitchen, and
Jael went promptly down on her knees, and crawled about, pinning the
newspapers in a large square.

Henry stood apart, superior, and thought to himself, “So much for
domestic servitude. What a position for a handsome girl--creeping about
on all fours!”

When all was ready, he drew some arabesque forms with his pencil on the
board. He then took an exquisite little saw he had invented for this
work, and fell upon the board with a rapidity that, contrasted with
his previous nonchalance, looked like fury. But he was one of your fast
workmen. The lithe saw seemed to twist in his hand like a serpent,
and in a very short time he had turned four feet of the board into
open-work. He finished the edges off with his cutting tools, and there
was a transformation as complete as of linen cloth turned lace.

Grace was delighted. “Shall I ever be able to do that?”

“In half a day. That's not carving; that's trickery. The tool does it
all. Before I invented this saw, a good workman would have been a day
over that; but now YOU can do it in half an hour, when you are master of
the instrument. And now I'll show you honest work.” He took one of the
knobs and examined it; then sawed off a piece, and worked on the rest
so cunningly with his various cutters, that it grew into a human face
toward their very eyes. He even indicated Jael Dence's little flat cap
by a means at once simple and ingenious. All the time he was working the
women's eyes literally absorbed him; only those of Grace flashed vivid
curiosity, Jael's open orbs were fixed with admiration and awe upon his
supernatural cleverness.

He now drew some more arabesques on the remaining part of the board,
and told Miss Carden she must follow those outlines with the saw, and he
would examine her work on Monday morning. He then went off with a quick,
independent air, as one whose every minute was gold.

“If you please, miss,” said Jael, “is he a real working man, or only a
gentleman as makes it his pastime?”

“A gentleman! What an idea! Of course he is a working man. But a very
superior person.”

“To be sure,” continued Jael, not quite convinced, “he don't come up to
Squire Raby; but, dear heart, he have a grander way with him than most
of the Hillsborough gentlefolks as calls here.”

“Nonsense!” said Grace, authoritatively. “Look at his nails.”

Henry came twice a week, and his pupil made remarkable progress. She was
deferential, attentive, enthusiastic.

By degrees the work led to a little conversation; and that, in due
course, expanded into a variety of subjects; and the young lady, to
her surprise, found her carver well-read in History and Sciences, and
severely accurate in his information, whereas her own, though abundant,
was rather loose.

One day she expressed her surprise that he could have found time to be
so clever with his fingers and yet cultivate his mind.

“Well,” said he, “I was lucky enough to have a good mother. She taught
me all she knew, and she gave me a taste for reading; and that has been
the making of me; kept me out of the public-house, for one thing.”

“Ah! you WERE fortunate. I lost my mother, sir, when I was but eight
years old.”

“Oh dear, that was a bad job,” said Henry brusquely but kindly.

“A very bad job,” said Grace, smiling; but the next moment she suddenly
turned her fair head away and tears stole down her cheeks.

Henry looked very sorry, and Jael, without moving, looked at Grace, and
opened those sluices, her eyes, and two big drops of sympathy rolled
down her comely face in a moment.

That day, when young Little shut the street-door of “Woodbine Villa” and
stepped into the road, a sort of dull pain seemed to traverse his chest.
It made his heart ache a little, this contrast of the sweet society
he had left and the smoky town toward which he now turned his face. He
seemed to be ejected from Paradise for the next five days. It was Monday
yet he wished the next day was Saturday, and the intervening period
could be swept away, so that he might be entering that soft Paradise
instead of leaving it.

And this sentiment, once rooted, grew rapidly in an aspiring nature, and
a heart that had never yet entertained a serious passion. Now the fair
head that bowed over the work so near him, the lovely hand he had so
often to direct, and almost to guide, and all the other perfections of
mind and body this enchanting girl possessed, crept in at his admiring
eyes, and began to steal into his very veins, and fill him with soft
complacency. His brusque manner dissolved away, and his voice became low
and soft, whenever he was in her delicious presence. He spoke softly to
Jael even, if Grace was there. The sturdy workman was enthralled.

Often he wondered at himself. Sometimes he felt alarmed at the strength
of his passion and the direction it had taken.

“What,” said he, “have I flirted with so many girls in my own way
of life, and come away heart-whole, and now to fall in love with a
gentlewoman, who would bid her footman show me the door if she knew of
my presumption!”

But these misgivings could neither cure him nor cow him. Let him only
make money, and become a master instead of a workman, and then he would
say to her, “I don't value birth myself, but if you do, why, I am not
come of workpeople.”

He traced a plan with workmanlike precision:--Profound discretion
and self-restraint at “Woodbine Villa:” restless industry and stern
self-denial in Hillsborough.

After his day's work he used to go straight to his mother. She gave him
a cup of tea, and then they had their chat; and after that the sexes
were inverted, so to speak: the man carved fruit, and flowers, and dead
woodcocks, the woman read the news and polities of the day, and the
essays on labor and capital, and any other articles not too flimsy
to bear reading aloud to a man whose time was coin. (There was a free
library in Hillsborough, and a mechanic could take out standard books
and reviews.) Thus they passed the evening hours agreeably, and usefully
too, for Henry sucked in knowledge like a leech, and at the same time
carved things that sold well in London. He had a strong inclination to
open his heart about Miss Carden. Accordingly, one evening he said, “She
lost her mother when she was a child.”

“Who lost her mother?” asked Mrs. Little.

“Miss Carden,” said Henry, very softly.

The tone was not lost on Mrs. Little's fine and watchful ear; at least
her mind seized it a few seconds afterward.

“That is true,” said she. “Poor girl! I remember hearing of it. Henry,
what is that to you? Don't you trouble your head about that young lady,
or she will trouble your heart. I wish you did not go near her.”

And then came question upon question, and vague maternal misgivings.
Henry parried them as adroitly as he could: but never mentioned Miss
Carden's name again.

He thought of her all the more, and counted his gains every week, and
began to inquire of experienced persons how much money was wanted to
set up a wheel with steam power, and be a master instead of a man. He
gathered that a stranger could hardly start fair without L500.

“That is a good lump!” thought Henry: “but I'll have it, if I work night
as well as day.”

Thus inspired, his life became a sweet delirium. When he walked, he
seemed to tread on air: when he forged, his hammer felt a feather in
his hand. The mountains in the way looked molehills, and the rainbow
tangible, to Youth, and Health, and Hope, and mighty Love.


One afternoon, as he put on his coat and crossed the yard, after a
day's work that had passed like a pleasant hour, being gilded with such
delightful anticipations, the foreman of the works made him a mysterious
signal. Henry saw it, and followed him into his office. Bayne looked
carefully out of all the doors, then closed them softly, and his face
betrayed anxiety, and even fear.

“Little,” said he, almost in a whisper, “you know me: I'm a man of
peace, and so for love of peace I'm going to do something that might get
me into a wrangle. But you are the civillest chap ever worked under me
and the best workman, take you altogether, and I can't bear to see you
kept in the dark, when you are the man whose skin--only--if I act like a
man to you, will you act like one to me?”

“I will,” said Henry; “there's my hand on it.”

Then Bayne stepped to his desk, opened it, and took out some letters.

“You must never tell a soul I showed them you, or you will get me into a
row with Cheetham; and I want to be at peace in-doors as well as out.”

“I give you my word.”

“Then read that, to begin.”

And he handed him a letter addressed to Mr. Cheetham.


“SIR,--We beg respectfully to draw your attention to a matter, which
is of a nature to cause unpleasantness between you and the Trades. We
allude to your bringing a workman in from another town to do work that
we are informed can be done on the premises by your own hands.

“We assure you it would be more to your interest to work in harmony
with the smiths and the handle-makers in your employ, and the trade
generally. Yours respectfully,

“THE COMMITTEE OF THE EDGE-TOOL FORGERS' UNION.”


Henry colored up at this, and looked grieved; but he said, “I am sorry
to be the cause of any unpleasantness. But what can I do?”

“Oh,” said Bayne, with a sardonic grin, “they are sure to tell you that,
soon or late. Read this:”

No. 2 was dated a week later, and ran thus:


“MR. CHEETHAM: SIR,--I think you do very ill to annoy a many craftsmen
for one. Remember, you have suffered loss and inconvenience whenever
you have gone against Trades. We had to visit you last year, and when
we came your bands went and your bellows gaped. We have no wish to come
again this year, if you will be reasonable. But, sir, you must part with
London hand, or take consequences.

“BALAAM.”


Henry looked grave. “Can I see a copy of Mr. Cheetham's reply?”

Bayne stared at him, and then laughed in his face, but without the
gayety that should accompany a laugh. “Cheetham's reply to Balaam! And
where would he send it? To Mr. Beor's lodgings, No. 1 Prophet Place, Old
Testament Square. My poor chap, nobody writes replies to these letters.
When you get one, you go that minute to the secretary of whatever Union
you are wrong with, and you don't argue, or he bids you good-morning;
you give in to whatever he asks, and then you get civility; and justice
too, according to Trade lights. If you don't do that, and haven't
learned what a blessing Peace is, why, you make up your mind to fight
the Trade; and if you do, you have to fight them all; and you are safe
to get the worst of it, soon or late. Cheetham has taken no notice of
these letters. All the worse for him and you too. Read that.”

No. 3 ran thus:


“DEAR SIR,--I take the liberty of addressing you on the subject of your
keeping on this knobstick, in defiance of them that has the power to
make stones of Hillsborough too hot for you and him. Are you deaf, or
blind, or a fool, Jack Cheatem? You may cheat the world, but you don't
cheat the devil, nor me. Turn cockney up, with no more ado, or you'll
both get kicked to hell some dark night by

“BALAAM'S ASS.”


Henry was silent; quite silent. When he did speak, it was to ask why Mr.
Cheetham had kept all this from him.

“Because you shouldn't take fright and leave him,” was the unhesitating
reply.

“For that matter they threaten him more than they do me.”

“They warn the master first; but the workman's turn is sure to come,
and he gets it hottest, because they have so many ways of doing him.
Cheetham, he lives miles from here, and rides in across country, and
out again, in daylight. But the days are drawing in, and you have got
to pass through these dark streets, where the Trades have a thousand
friends, and you not one. Don't you make any mistake: you are in their
power; so pray don't copy any hot-headed, wrong-headed gentleman like
Cheetham, but speak them fair. Come to terms--if you can--and let us be
at peace; sweet, balmy peace.”

“Peace is a good thing, no doubt,” said Henry, “but” (rather bitterly)
“I don't thank Cheetham for letting me run blindfold into trouble, and
me a stranger.”

“Oh,” said Bayne, “he is no worse than the rest, believe me. What does
any master care for a man's life? Profit and loss go down in figures;
but life--that's a cipher in all their ledgers.”

“Oh, come,” said Harry, “it is unphilosophical and narrow-minded to
fasten on a class the faults of a few individuals, that form a very
moderate portion of that class.”

Bayne seemed staggered by a blow so polysyllabic; and Henry, to finish
him, added, “Where there's a multitude, there's a mixture.” Now the
first sentence he had culled from the Edinburgh Review, and the second
he had caught from a fellow-workman's lips in a public-house; and
probably this was the first time the pair of phrases had ever walked out
of any man's mouth arm in arm. He went on to say, “And as for Cheetham,
he is not a bad fellow, take him altogether. But you are a better for
telling me the truth. Forewarned, forearmed.”

He went home thoughtful, and not so triumphant and airy as yesterday;
but still not dejected, for his young and manly mind summoned its energy
and spirit to combat this new obstacle, and his wits went to work.

Being unable to sleep for thinking of what he should do he was the first
to reach the works in the morning. He lighted his furnace, and then went
and unlocked the room where he worked as a handle maker, and also as a
cutler. He entered briskly and opened the window. The gray light of the
morning came in, and showed him something on the inside of the door that
was not there when he locked it overnight. It was a very long knife,
broad toward the handle, but keenly pointed, and double-edged. It was
fast in the door, and impaled a letter addressed, in a vile hand--


“TO JAK THRE TRADES.”


Henry took hold of the handle to draw the knife out; but the formidable
weapon had been driven clean through the door with a single blow.

Then Henry drew back, and, as the confusion of surprise cleared away,
the whole thing began to grow on him, and reveal distinct and alarming
features.

The knife was not one which the town manufactured in the way of
business, it was a long, glittering blade, double-edged, finely pointed,
and exquisitely tempered. It was not a tool, but a weapon.

Why was it there, and, above all, how did it come there?

He distinctly remembered locking the door overnight. Indeed, he had
found it locked, and the window-shutters bolted; yet there was this
deadly weapon, and on its point a letter, the superscription of which
looked hostile and sinister.

He drew the note gently across the edge of the keen knife, and the paper
parted like a cobweb. He took it to the window and read it. It ran thus:


“This knifs wun of too made ekspres t'other is for thy hart if thou
doesnt harken Trade and leve Chetm. Is thy skin thicks dore thinks
thou if not turn up and back to Lundon or I cum again and rip thy ----
carkiss with feloe blade to this thou ---- cokny

“SLIPER JACK.”




CHAPTER IV.


Any one who reads it by the fireside may smile at the incongruous
mixture of a sanguinary menace with bad spelling. But deeds of blood had
often followed these scrawls in Hillsborough, and Henry knew it: and,
indeed, he who can not spell his own name correctly is the very man to
take his neighbor's life without compunction; since mercy is a fruit of
knowledge, and cruelty of ignorance.

And then there was something truly chilling in the mysterious entrance
of this threat on a dagger's point into a room he had locked overnight.
It implied supernatural craft and power. After this, where could a man
be safe from these all-penetrating and remorseless agents of a secret
and irresponsible tribunal.

Henry sat down awhile, and pored over the sanguinary scrawl, and glanced
from it with a shudder at the glittering knife. And, while he was in
this state of temporary collapse, the works filled, the Power moved, the
sonorous grindstones revolved, and every man worked at his ease, except
one, the best of them all beyond comparison.

He went to his friend Bayne, and said in a broken voice, “They have put
me in heart for work; given me a morning dram. Look here.” Bayne was
shocked, but not surprised. “It is the regular routine,” said he. “They
begin civil; but if you don't obey, they turn it over to the scum.”

“Do you think my life is really in danger?”

“No, not yet; I never knew a man molested on one warning. This is just
to frighten you. If you were to take no notice, you'd likely get another
warning, or two, at most; and then they'd do you, as sure as a gun.”

“Do me?”

“Oh, that is the Hillsborough word. It means to disable a man from work.
Sometimes they lie in wait in these dark streets, and fracture his skull
with life-preservers; or break his arm, or cut the sinew of his wrist;
and that they call DOING him. Or, if it is a grinder, they'll put powder
in his trough, and then the sparks of his own making fire it, and scorch
him, and perhaps blind him for life; that's DOING him. They have gone as
far as shooting men with shot, and even with a bullet, but never so as
to kill the man dead on the spot. They DO him. They are skilled workmen,
you know; well, they are skilled workmen at violence and all, and it is
astonishing how they contrive to stop within an inch of murder. They'll
chance it though sometimes with their favorite gunpowder. If you're very
wrong with the trade, and they can't DO you any other way, they'll blow
your house up from the cellar, or let a can of powder down the chimney,
with a lighted fuse, or fling a petard in at the window, and they take
the chance of killing a houseful of innocent people, to get at the one
that's on the black books of the trade, and has to be DONE.”

“The beasts! I'll buy a six-shooter. I'll meet craft with craft, and
force with force.”

“What can you do against ten thousand? No; go you at once to the
Secretary of the Edge-Tool Grinders, and get your trade into his Union.
You will have to pay; but don't mind that. Cheetham will go halves.”

“I'll go at dinner-time.”

“And why not now?”

“Because,” said Henry, with a candor all his own, “I'm getting over my
fright a bit, and my blood is beginning to boil at being threatened by a
sneak, who wouldn't stand before me one moment in that yard, knife or no
knife.”

Bayne smiled a friendly but faint smile, and shook his head with grave
disapprobation, and said, with wonder, “Fancy postponing Peace!”

Henry went to his forge and worked till dinner-time. Nay, more, was a
beautiful whistler, and always whistled a little at his work: so to-day
he whistled a great deal: in fact, he over-whistled.

At dinner-time he washed his face and hands and put on his coat to go
out.

But he had soon some reason to regret that he had not acted on Bayne's
advice to the letter. There had been a large trade's meeting overnight,
and the hostility to the London craftsman had spread more widely, in
consequence of remarks that had been there made. This emboldened the
lower class of workmen, who already disliked him out of pure envy, and
had often scowled at him in silence; and, now, as he passed them, they
spoke at him, in their peculiar language, which the great friend
and supporter of mechanics in general, The Hillsborough Liberal,
subsequently christened “THE DASH DIALECT.”

“We want no ---- cockneys here, to steal our work.”

“Did ever a ---- anvil-man handle his own blades in Hillsborough?”

“Not till this ---- knobstick came,” said another.

Henry turned sharp round upon them haughtily, and such was the power of
his prompt defiant attitude, and his eye, which flashed black lightning,
that there was a slight movement of recoil among the actual speakers.
They recovered it immediately, strong in numbers; but in that same
moment Little also recovered his discretion, and he had the address to
step briskly toward the gate and call out the porter; he said to him in
rather a loud voice, for all to hear, “if anybody asks for Henry Little,
say he has gone to the Secretary of the Edge-Tool Forgers' Union.” He
then went out of the works; but, as he went, he heard some respectable
workman say to the scum, “Come, shut up now. It is in better hands than
yours.”

Mr. Jobson, the Secretary of the Edge-Tool Forgers, was not at home,
but his servant-girl advised Little to try the “Rising Sun;” and in the
parlor of that orb he found Mr. Jobson, in company with other magnates
of the same class, discussing a powerful leader of The Hillsborough
Liberal, in which was advocated the extension of the franchise,
a measure calculated to throw prodigious power into the hands of
Hillsborough operatives, because of their great number, and their habit
of living each workman in a tenement of his own, however small.

Little waited till The Liberal had received its meed of approbation,
and then asked respectfully if he might speak to Mr. Jobson on a trade
matter. “Certainly,” said Mr. Jobson. “Who are you?”

“My name is Little. I make the carving-tools at Cheetham's.”

“I'll go home with you; my house is hard by.”

When they got to the house, Jobson told him to sit down, and asked
him, in a smooth and well-modulated voice, what was the nature of the
business. This query, coming from him, who had set the stone rolling
that bade fair to crush him, rather surprised Henry. He put his hand
into his pocket, and produced the threatening note, but said nothing as
to the time or manner of its arrival.

Mr. Jobson perused it carefully, and then returned it to Henry. “What
have we to do with this?” and he looked quite puzzled.

“Why, sir, it is the act of your Union.”

“You are sadly misinformed, Mr. Little. WE NEVER THREATEN. All we do
is to remind the master that, if he does not do certain things, certain
other things will probably be done by us; and this we wrap up in the
kindest way.”

“But, sir, you wrote to Cheetham against me.”

“Did we? Then it will be in my letter-book.” He took down a book,
examined it, and said, “You are quite right. Here's a copy of the
letter. Now surely, sir, comparing the language, the manners, and
the spelling, with that of the ruffian whose scrawl you received this
morning--”

“Then you disown the ruffian's threat?”

“Most emphatically. And if you can trace it home, he shall smart for
interfering in our business.”

“Oh, if the trade disowns the blackguard, I can despise him. But
you can't wonder at my thinking all these letters were steps of the
same--yes, and Mr. Bayne thought so too; for he said this was the
regular routine, and ends in DOING a poor fellow for gaining his bread.”

Mr. Jobson begged to explain.

“Many complaints are brought to us, who advise the trades. When they
are frivolous, we are unwilling to disturb the harmony of employers and
workmen; we reason with the complainant, and the thing dies away. When
the grievance is substantial, we take it out of the individual's hands
and lay it before the working committee. A civil note is sent to the
master; or a respectable member of the committee calls on him, and urges
him to redress the grievance, but always in kind and civil terms. The
master generally assents: experience has taught him it is his wisest
course. But if he refuses, we are bound to report the refusal to a
larger committee, and sometimes a letter emanates from them, reminding
the master that he has been a loser before by acts of injustice, and
hinting that he may be a loser again. I do not quite approve this form
of communication. But certainly it has often prevented the mischief
from spreading further. Well, but perhaps he continues rebellious. What
follows? We can't lock up facts that affect the trade; we are bound to
report the case at the next general meeting. It excites comments, some
of them perhaps a little intemperate; the lower kind of workmen get
inflamed with passion, and often, I am sorry to say, write ruffianly
letters, and now and then do ruffianly acts, which disgrace the town,
and are strongly reprobated by us. Why, Mr. Little, it has been my lot
to send a civil remonstrance, written with my own hand, in pretty fair
English--for a man who plied bellows and hammer twenty years of my
life--and be treated with silent contempt; and two months after to be
offering a reward of twenty or thirty pounds, for the discovery of some
misguided man, that had taken on himself to right this very matter with
a can of gunpowder, or some such coarse expedient.”

“Yes, but, sir, what hurts me is, you don't consider me to be worth a
civil note. You only remonstrated with Cheetham.”

“You can't wonder at that. Our trade hasn't been together many years:
and what drove us together? The tyranny of our employers. What has kept
us together? The bitter experience of hard work and little pay, whenever
we were out of union. Those who now direct the trades are old enough to
remember when we were all ground down to the dust by the greedy masters;
and therefore it is natural, when a grievance arises, we should be
inclined to look to those old offenders for redress in the first
instance. Sometimes the masters convince us the fault lies with workmen;
and then we trouble the master no more than we are forced to do in
order to act upon the offenders. But, to come to the point: what is your
proposal?”

“I beg to be admitted into the union.”

“What union?”

“Why, of course, the one I have offended, through ignorance. The
edge-tool forgers.”

Jobson shook his head, and said he feared there were one or two
objections.

Henry saw it was no use bidding low. “I'll pay L15 down,” said he,
“and I'll engage not to draw relief from your fund, unless disabled by
accident or violence.”

“I will submit your offer to the trade,” said Jobson. He added, “Then
there, I conclude, the matter rests for the present.”

Henry interpreted this to mean that he had nothing to apprehend, unless
his proposal should be rejected. He put the L15 down on the table,
though Mr. Jobson told him that was premature, and went off as light as
a feather. Being nice and clean, and his afternoon's work spoiled, he
could not resist the temptation; he went to “Woodbine Villa.” He found
Miss Carden at home, and she looked quietly pleased at his unexpected
arrival: but Jael's color came and went, and her tranquil bosom rose and
fell slowly, but grandly, for a minute, as she lowered her head over her
work.

This was a heavenly change to Henry Little. Away from the deafening
workshop, and the mean jealousies and brutality of his inferiors, who
despised him, to the presence of a beautiful and refined girl, who was
his superior, yet did not despise him. From sin to purity, from din to
cleanliness, from war to peace, from vilest passions to Paradise.

Her smile had never appeared so fascinating, her manner never so polite
yet placid. How softly and comfortably she and her ample dress nestled
into the corner of the sofa and fitted it! How white her nimble hand!
how bright her delicious face! How he longed to kiss her exquisite
hand, or her little foot, or her hem, or the ground she walked on, or
something she had touched, or her eye had dwelt on.

But he must not even think too much of such delights, lest he should
show his heart too soon. So, after a short lesson, he proposed to go
into the lumber-room and find something to work upon. “Yes, do,” said
Grace. “I would go too; but no; it was my palace of delight for years,
and its treasures inexhaustible. I will not go to be robbed of one more
illusion, it is just possible I might find it really is what the profane
in this house call it--a lumber-room--and not what memory paints it,
a temple of divine curiosities.” And so she sent them off, and she set
herself to feel old--“oh, so old!”

And presently Henry came back, laden with a great wooden bust of Erin,
that had been the figure-head of a wrecked schooner; and set it down,
and told her he should carve that into a likeness of herself, and she
must do her share of the work.

Straightway she forgot she was worn out; and clapped her hands, and her
eyes sparkled. And the floor was prepared, and Henry went to work like
one inspired, and the chips flew in every direction, and the paint was
chiseled away in no time, and the wood proved soft and kindly, and
just the color of a delicate skin, and Henry said, “The Greek Statues,
begging their pardons, have all got hair like mops; but this shall have
real hair, like your own: and the silk dress, with the gloss on; and the
lace; but the face, the expression, how can I ever--?”

“Oh, never mind THEM,” cried Grace. “Jael, this is too exciting. Please
go and tell them 'not at home' to anybody.”

Then came a pretty picture: the workman, with his superb hand, brown and
sinewy, yet elegant and shapely as a duchess's, and the fingers almost
as taper, and his black eye that glowed like a coal over the model,
which grew under his masterly strokes, now hard, now light: the
enchanting girl who sat to him, and seemed on fire with curiosity and
innocent admiration: and the simple rural beauty, that plied the needle,
and beamed mildly with demure happiness, and shot a shy glance upward
now and then.

Yes, Love was at his old mischievous game.

Henry now lived in secret for Grace Carden, and Jael was garnering Henry
into her devoted heart, unobserved by the object of her simple devotion.
Yet, of the three, these two, that loved with so little encouragement,
were the happiest. To them the world was Heaven this glorious afternoon.
Time, strewing roses as he went, glided so sweetly and so swiftly,
that they started with surprise when the horizontal beams glorified the
windows, and told them the brightest day of their lives was drawing to
its end.

Ah, stay a little while longer for them, Western Sun. Stand still,
not as in the cruel days of old, to glare upon poor, beaten, wounded,
panting warriors, and rob them of their last chance, the shelter of the
night: but to prolong these holy rapturous hours of youth, and hope, and
first love in bosoms unsullied by the world--the golden hours of life,
that glow so warm, and shine so bright, and flee so soon; and return in
this world--Never more!




CHAPTER V.


Henry Little began this bust in a fervid hour, and made great progress
the first day; but as the work grew on him, it went slower and slower;
for his ambitious love drove him to attempt beauties of execution that
were without precedent in this kind of wood-carving; and, on the other
hand, the fastidiousness of a true craftsman made him correct his
attempts again and again. As to those mechanical parts, which he
intrusted at first to his pupil, she fell so far short of his ideal even
in these, that he told her bluntly she must strike work for the present:
he could not have THIS spoiled.

Grace thought it hard she might not be allowed to spoil her own image;
however, she submitted, and henceforth her lesson was confined to
looking on. And she did look on with interest, and, at last, with
profound admiration. Hitherto she had thought, with many other persons,
that, if a man's hand was the stronger, a woman's was the neater; but
now she saw the same hand, which had begun by hewing away the coarse
outlines of the model, bestow touches of the chisel so unerring and
effective, yet so exquisitely delicate, that she said to herself, “No
woman's hand could be so firm, yet so feather-like, as all this.”

And the result was as admirable as the process. The very texture of the
ivory forehead began to come under those master-touches, executed with
perfect and various instruments: and, for the first time perhaps in the
history of this art, a bloom, more delicate far than that of a plum,
crept over the dimpled cheek. But, indeed, when love and skill work
together, expect a masterpiece.

Henry worked on it four afternoons, the happiest he had ever known.
There was the natural pleasure of creating, and the distinct glory and
delight of reproducing features so beloved; and to these joys were
added the pleasure of larger conversation. The model gave Grace
many opportunities of making remarks, or asking questions, and Henry
contrived to say so many things in answer to one. Sculptor and sitter
made acquaintance with each other's minds over the growing bust.

And then the young ladies and gentlemen dropped in, and gazed, and said
such wonderfully silly things, and thereby left their characters behind
them as fruitful themes for conversation. In short, topics were never
wanting now.

As for Jael, she worked, and beamed, and pondered every word her idol
uttered, but seldom ventured to say anything, till he was gone, and then
she prattled fast enough about him.

The work drew near completion. The hair, not in ropes, as heretofore,
but its silken threads boldly and accurately shown, yet not so as to
cord the mass, and unsatin it quite. The silk dress; the lace collar;
the blooming cheek, with its every dimple and incident; all these were
completed, and one eyebrow, a masterpiece in itself. This carved
eyebrow was a revelation, and made everybody who saw it wonder at the
conventional substitutes they had hitherto put up with in statuary of
all sorts, when the eyebrow itself was so beautiful, and might it seems
have been imitated, instead of libeled, all these centuries.

But beautiful works, and pleasant habits, seem particularly liable to
interruption. Just when the one eyebrow was finished, and when Jael
Dence had come to look on Saturday and Monday as the only real days in
the week, and when even Grace Carden was brighter on those days, and
gliding into a gentle complacent custom, suddenly a Saturday came and
went, but Little did not appear.

Jaet was restless.

Grace was disappointed, but contented to wait till Monday.

Monday came and went, but no Henry Little.

Jael began to fret and sigh; and, after two more blank weeks, she could
bear the mystery no longer. “If you please, miss,” said she, “shall I go
to that place where he works?”

“Where who works?” inquired Grace, rather disingenuously.

“Why, the dark young man, miss,” said Jael, blushing deeply.

Grace reflected and curiosity struggled with discretion; but discretion
got the better, being aided by self-respect. “No, Jael,” said she; “he
is charming, when he is here; but, when he gets away, he is not always
so civil as he might be. I had to go twice after him. I shall not go nor
send a third time. It really is too bad of him.”

“Dear heart,” pleaded Jael, “mayhap he is not well.”

“Then he ought to write and say so. No, no; he is a radical, and full
of conceit; and he has done this one eyebrow, and then gone off laughing
and saying, 'Now, let us see if the gentry can do the other amongst
them.' If he doesn't come soon, I'll do the other eyebrow myself.”

“Mayhap he will never come again,” said Jael.

“Oh, yes, he will,” said Grace, mighty cunningly; “he is as fond of
coming here as we are of having him. Not that I'm at all surprised; for
the fact is, you are very pretty, extremely pretty, abominably pretty.”

“I might pass in Cairnhope town,” said Jael, modestly, “but not here.
The moon goes for naught when the sun is there. He don't come here for
me.”

This sudden elegance of language, and Jael's tone of dignified
despondency, silenced Grace, somehow, and made her thoughtful. She
avoided the subject for several days. Indeed, when Saturday came, not a
word was said about the defaulter: it was only by her sending for Jael
to sit with her, and by certain looks, and occasional restlessness, she
betrayed the slightest curiosity or expectation.

Jael sat and sewed, and often looked quickly up at the window, as some
footstep passed, and then looked down again and sighed.

Young Little never came. He seemed to have disappeared from both their
lives; quietly disappeared.

Next day, Sunday, Jael came to Miss Carden, after morning church, and
said, meekly, “if you please, miss, may I go home?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Grace, a little haughtily. “What for?”

Jael hung her head, and said she was not used to be long away. Then she
lifted her head, and her great candid eyes, and spoke more frankly. “I
feel to be drawed home. Something have been at me all the night to
that degree as I couldn't close my eyes. I could almost feel it, like a
child's hand, a pulling me East. I'm afeared father's ill, or may be
the calves are bleating for me, that is better acquaint with them than
sister Patty is. And Hillsborough air don't seem to 'gree with me now
not altogether as it did at first. If you please, miss, to let me go;
and then I'll come back when I'm better company than I be now. Oh dear!
oh dear!”

“Why, Jael, my poor girl, what IS the matter?”

“I don't know, miss. But I feel very unked.”

“Are you not happy with me?”

“'Tis no fault of yourn, miss,” said Jael, rustic, but womanly.

“Then you are NOT happy here.”

No reply, but two clear eyes began to fill to the very brim.

Grace coaxed her, and said, “Speak to me like a friend. You know, after
all, you are not my servant. I can't possibly part with you altogether;
I have got to like you so: but, of course, you shall go home for a
little while, if you wish it very, very much.”

“Indeed I do, miss,” said Jael. “Please forgive me, but my heart feels
like lead in my bosom.” And, with these words, the big tears ran over,
and chased one another down her cheeks.

Then Grace, who was very kind-hearted, begged her, in a very tearful
voice, not to cry: she should go home for a week, a fortnight, a month
even. “There, there, you shall go to-morrow, poor thing.”


Now it is a curious fact, and looks like animal magnetism or something,
but the farm-house, to which Jael had felt so mysteriously drawn all
night, contained, at that moment, besides its usual inmates, one Henry
Little: and how he came there is an important part of this tale, which I
must deal with at once.


While Henry was still visiting Woodbine Villa, as related above, events
of a very different character from those soft scenes were taking place
at the works. His liberal offer to the Edge-Tool Forgers had been made
about a week, when, coming back one day from dinner to his forge, he
found the smoky wall written upon with chalk, in large letters, neatly
executed:--


“Why overlook the handlers?

“MARY.”


He was not alarmed this time, but vexed. He went and complained to
Bayne; and that worthy came directly and contemplated the writing, in
silence, for about a minute. Then he gave a weary sigh, and said, with
doleful resignation, “Take the chalk, and write. There it is.”

Henry took the chalk, and prepared to write Bayne's mind underneath
Mary's. Bayne dictated:


“I have offered the Handlers the same as the Forgers.”


“But that is not true,” objected Henry, turning round, with the chalk in
his hand.

“It will be true, in half an hour. We are going to Parkin, the Handlers'
Secretary.”

“What, another L15! This is an infernal swindle.”

“What isn't?” said Bayne, cynically.

Henry then wrote as desired; and they went together to Mr. Parkin.

Mr. Parkin was not at home. But they hunted him from pillar to post,
and caught him, at last, in the bar-parlor of “The Packsaddle.” He knew
Bayne well, and received him kindly, and, on his asking for a private
interview, gave a wink to two persons who were with him: they got up
directly, and went out.

“What, is there any thing amiss between you and the trade?” inquired Mr.
Parkin, with an air of friendly interest.

Bayne smiled, not graciously, but sourly. “Come, come, sir, that is a
farce you and I have worn out this ten years. This is the London workman
himself, come to excuse himself to Mary and Co., for not applying to
them before: and the long and the short is, he offers the Handlers the
same as he has the Smiths, fifteen down, and to pay his natty money, but
draw no scale, unless disabled. What d'y say? Yes, or no?”

“I'll lay Mr. Little's proposal before the committee.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Little. “And, meantime, I suppose I may feel safe
against violence, from the members of your union?”

“Violence!” said Mr. Parkin, turning his eye inward, as if he was
interrogating the centuries. Then to Mr. Bayne, “Pray, sir, do you
remember any deed of darkness that our Union has ever committed, since
we have been together; and that is twelve years?”

“WELL, Mr. Parkin,” said Bayne, “if you mean deeds of blood, and deeds
of gunpowder, et cetera--why, no, not one: and it is greatly to your
honor. But, mind you, if a master wants his tanks tapped and his
hardening-liquor run into the shore or his bellows to be ripped, his
axle-nuts to vanish, his wheel-bands to go and hide in a drain or a
church belfry, and his scythe-blades to dive into a wheel-dam, he has
only to be wrong with your Union, and he'll be accommodated as above. I
speak from experience.”

“Oh, rattening!” said Mr Parkin. “That's is a mighty small matter.”

“It is small to you, that are not in the oven, where the bread is baked,
or cooled, or burnt. But whatever parts the grindstones from the power,
and the bellows from the air, and the air from the fire, makes a hole
in the master's business to-day, and a hole in the workman's pocket
that day six months. So, for heaven's sake, let us be right with you.
Little's is the most friendly and liberal offer that any workman ever
made to any Union. Do, pray, close with it, and let us be at peace;
sweet--balmy--peace.”

Parkin declared he shared that desire: but was not the committee. Then,
to Henry: “I shall put your case as favorably as my conscience will let
me. Meantime, of course, the matter rests as it is.”

They then parted; and Henry, as he returned home, thanked Bayne
heartily. He said this second L15 had been a bitter pill at first; but
now he was glad he had offered it. “I would not leave Hillsborough for
fifteen hundred pounds.”

Two days after this promising interview with Mr. Parkin, Henry received
a note, the envelope of which showed him it came from Mr. Jobson. He
opened it eagerly, and with a good hope that its object was to tell him
he was now a member of the Edge-Tool Forgers' Union.

The letter, however, ran thus:


“DEAR SIR,--I hear, with considerable surprise, that you continue to
forge blades and make handles for Mr. Cheetham. On receipt of this
information I went immediately to Mr. Parkin, and he assured me that he
came to the same terms with you as I did. He says he intimated politely,
but plainly, that he should expect you not to make any more carving-tool
handles for Mr. Cheetham, till his committee had received your proposal.
He now joins me in advising you to strike work for the present.
Hillsborough is surrounded by beautiful scenes, which it might gratify
an educated workman to inspect, during the unavoidable delay caused by
the new and very important questions your case has raised.

“Yours obediently,

“SAML. JOBSON.

“P.S.--A respectable workman was with me yesterday, and objected that
you receive from Mr. Cheetham a higher payment than the list price. Can
you furnish me with a reply to this, as it is sure to be urged at the
trade meeting.”


When he read this, Little's blood boiled, especially at the cool advice
to lay down his livelihood, and take up scenery: and he dashed off a
letter of defiance. He showed it to Bayne, and it went into the fire
directly. “That is all right,” said this worthy. “You have written
your mind, like a man. Now sit down, and give them treacle for their
honey--or you'll catch pepper.”

Henry groaned, and writhed, but obeyed.

He had written his defiance in three minutes. It took him an hour to
produce the following:


“DEAR SIR,--I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I did not, for a
moment, attach that meaning to any thing that fell either from you or
Mr. Parkin.

“I must now remind you that, were I to strike work entirely, Mr.
Cheetham could discharge me, and even punish me, for breach of contract.
All I can do is to work fewer hours than I have done: and I am sure
you will be satisfied with that, if you consider that the delay in the
settlement of this matter rests with you, and not with me,

“I am yours respectfully, HENRY LITTLE.

“I furnish you, as requested, with two replies to the objection of a
respectable workman that I am paid above the list price.

“1.--To sell skilled labor below the statement price is a just offense,
and injury to trade. But to obtain above the statement price is to
benefit trade. The high price, that stands alone to-day, will not stand
alone forever. It gets quoted in bargains, and draws prices up to it.
That has been proved a thousand times.

“2.--It is not under any master's skin to pay a man more than he is
worth. It I get a high price, it is because I make a first-rate article.
If a man has got superior knowledge, he is not going to give it away to
gratify envious ignorance.”


To this, in due course, he received from Jobson the following:


“DEAR SIR,--I advised you according to my judgment and experience: but,
doubtless, you are the best judge of your own affairs.”


And that closed the correspondence with the Secretaries.


The gentle Jobson and the polite Parkin had retired from the
correspondence with their air of mild regret and placid resignation
just three days, when young Little found a dirty crumpled letter on his
anvil, written in pencil. It ran thus:


“Turn up or youl wish you had droped it. Youl be made so as youl never
do hands turn agin, an never know what hurt you.

“MOONRAKER.” (Signed)


Henry swore.

When he had sworn (and, as a Briton, I think he had denied himself
that satisfaction long enough), he caught up a strip of steel with his
pincers, shoved it into the coals, heated it, and, in half a minute,
forged two long steel nails. He then nailed this letter to his wall, and
wrote under it in chalk, “I offer L10 reward to any one who will show
me the coward who wrote this, but was afraid to sign it. The writing is
peculiar, and can easily be identified.”

He also took the knife that had been so ostentatiously fixed in his
door, and carried it about him night and day, with a firm resolve to use
it in self-defense, if necessary.

And now the plot thickened: the decent workmen in Cheetham's works were
passive; they said nothing offensive, but had no longer the inclination,
even if they had the power, to interfere and restrain the lower workmen
from venting their envy and malice. Scarcely a day passed without growls
and scowls. But Little went his way haughtily, and affected not to see,
nor hear them.

However, one day, at dinner-time, he happened, unluckily, to be detained
by Bayne in the yard, when the men came out: and two or three of the
roughs took this opportunity and began on him at once, in the Dash
Dialect, of course; they knew no other.

A great burly forger, whose red matted hair was powdered with coal-dust,
and his face bloated with habitual intemperance, planted himself
insolently before Henry, and said, in a very loud voice, “How many more
trade meetings are we to have for one ---- knobstick?”

Henry replied, in a moment, “Is it my fault if your shilly-shallying
committees can't say yes or no to L15? You'd say yes to it, wouldn't
you, sooner than go to bed sober?”

This sally raised a loud laugh at the notorious drunkard's expense, and
checked the storm, as a laugh generally does.

But men were gathering round, and a workman who had heard the raised
voices, and divined the row, ran out of the works, with his apron full
of blades, and his heart full of mischief. It was a grinder of a certain
low type, peculiar to Hillsborough, but quite common there, where
grinders are often the grandchildren of grinders. This degenerate
face was more canine than human; sharp as a hatchet, and with forehead
villainously low; hardly any chin; and--most characteristic trait of
all--the eyes, pale in color, and tiny in size, appeared to have come
close together, to consult, and then to have run back into the very
skull, to get away from the sparks, which their owner, and his sire, and
his grandsire, had been eternally creating.

This greyhound of a grinder flung down a lot of dull bluish blades, warm
from the forge, upon a condemned grindstone that was lying in the yard;
and they tinkled.

“---- me, if I grind cockney blades!” said he.

This challenge fired a sympathetic handle-maker. “Grinders are right,”
 said he. “We must be a ---- mean lot and all, to handle his ---- work.”

“He has been warned enough; but he heeds noane.”

“Hustle him out o' works.”

“Nay, hit him o'er th' head and fling him into shore.”

With these menacing words, three or four roughs advanced on him, with
wicked eyes; and the respectable workmen stood, like stone statues,
in cold and terrible neutrality; and Henry, looking round, in great
anxiety, found that Bayne had withdrawn.

He ground his teeth, and stepped back to the wall, to have all the
assailants in the front. He was sternly resolute, though very pale, and,
by a natural impulse, put his hand into his side-pocket, to feel if
he had a weapon. The knife was there, the deadly blade with which his
enemies themselves had armed him; and, to those who could read faces,
there was death in the pale cheek and gleaming eye of this young man, so
sorely tried.

At this moment, a burly gentleman walked into the midst of them, as
smartly as Van Amburgh amongst his tigers, and said steadily, “What
is to do now, lads?” It was Cheetham himself, Bayne knew he was in the
office, and had run for him in mortal terror, and sent him to keep the
peace. “They insult me, sir,” said Henry; “though I am always civil to
them; and that grinder refuses to grind my blades, there.”

“Is that so? Step out, my lad. Did you refuse to grind those blades?”

“Ay,” said the greyhound-man sullenly.

“Then put on your coat, and leave my premises this minute.”

“He is entitled to a week's warning, Mr. Cheetham,” said one of the
decent workmen, respectfully, but resolutely; speaking now for the first
time.

“You are mistaken, sir,” replied Mr. Cheetham, in exactly the same tone.
(No stranger could have divined the speakers were master and man.) “He
has vitiated his contract by publicly refusing to do his work. He'll get
nothing from me but his wages up to noon this day. But YOU can have a
week's warning, if you want it.”

“Nay, sir. I've naught against you, for my part. But they say it will
come to that, if you don't turn Little up.”

“Why, what's his fault? Come now; you are a man. Speak up.”

“Nay, I've no quarrel with the man. But he isn't straight with the
trade.”

“That is the secretaries' fault, not mine,” said Henry. “They can't see
I've brought a new trade in, that hurts no old trade, and will spread,
and bring money into the town.”

“We are not so ---- soft as swallow that,” said the bloated smith.
“Thou's just come t' Hillsborough to learn forging, and when thou'st
mastered that, off to London, and take thy ---- trade with thee.”

Henry colored to the brow at the inferior workman's vanity and its
concomitant, detraction. But he governed himself, by a mighty effort,
and said, “Oh, that's your grievance now, is it? Mr. Cheetham--sir--will
you ask some respectable grinder to examine these blades of mine?”

“Certainly. You are right, Little. The man to judge a forger's work is
a grinder, and not another forger. Reynolds, just take a look at them,
will ye?”

A wet grinder of a thoroughly different type and race from the
greyhound, stepped forward. He was thick-set in body, fresh-colored,
and of a square manly countenance. He examined the blades carefully, and
with great interest.

“Well,” said Henry, “were they forged by a smith, or a novice that is
come here to learn anvil work?”

Reynolds did not reply to him, nor to Mr. Cheetham: he turned to the
men. “Mates, I'm noane good at lying. Hand that forged these has naught
to learn in Hillsbro', nor any other shop.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reynolds,” said Henry, in a choking voice. “That is the
first gleam of justice that I--” He could say no more.

“Come, don't you turn soft for a word or two,” said Cheetham. “You'll
wear all this out in time. Go to the office. I have something to say to
you.”

The something was said. It amounted to this--“Stand by me and I'll stand
by you.”

“Well, sir,” said Henry, “I think I must leave you if the committees
refuse my offer. It is hard for one man to fight a couple of trades in
such a place as this. But I'm firm in one thing: until those that govern
the unions say 'no' to my offer, I shall go on working, and the scum of
the trades sha'n't frighten me away from my forge.”

“That's right; let the blackguards bluster. Bayne tells me you have had
another anonymous.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, look here: you must take care of yourself, outside the works;
but, I'll take care of you inside. Here, Bayne, write a notice that, if
any man molests, intimidates, or affronts Mr. Little, in my works, I'll
take him myself to the town-hall, and get him two months directly. Have
somebody at the gate to put a printed copy of that into every man's hand
as he leaves.”

“Thank you, sir!” said Henry, warmly. “But ought not the police to
afford me protection, outside?”

“The police! You might as well go to the beadle. No; change your
lodging, if you think they know it. Don't let them track you home. Buy a
brace of pistols, and, if they catch you in a dark place, and try to do
you, give them a barrel or two before they can strike a blow. No one of
THEM will ever tell the police, not if you shot his own brother dead at
that game. The law is a dead letter here, sir. You've nothing to expect
from it, and nothing to fear.”

“Good heavens! Am I in England?”

“In England? No. You are in Hillsborough.”

This epigram put Cheetham in good humor with himself, and, when Henry
told him he did not feel quite safe, even in his own forge, nor in his
handling-room, and gave his reasons, “Oh,” said cheerful Cheetham, “that
is nothing. Yours is a box-lock; the blackguard will have hid in the
works at night, and taken the lock off, left his writing, and then
screwed the lock on again: that is nothing to any Hillsborough hand.
But I'll soon stop that game. Go you to Chestnut Street, and get two
first-class Bramah locks. There's a pocket knife forge upstairs, close
to your handling-room. I'll send the pocket-knife hand down-stairs, and
you fasten the Bramah locks on both doors, and keep the keys yourself.
See to that now at once: then your mind will be easy. And I shall be in
the works all day now, and every day: come to me directly, if there is
any thing fresh.”

Henry's forge was cold, by this time; so he struck work, and spent the
afternoon in securing his two rooms with the Bramah locks. He also took
Cheetham's advice in another particular. Instead of walking home, he
took a cab, and got the man to drive rapidly to a certain alley. There
he left the cab, ran down the alley, and turned a corner, and went home
round about. He doubled like a hare, and dodged like a criminal evading
justice.

But the next morning he felt a pleasing sense of security when he opened
his forge-room with the Bramah key, and found no letters nor threats of
any kind had been able to penetrate.

Moreover, all this time you will understand he was visiting “Woodbine
Cottage” twice a week, and carving Grace Carden's bust.

Those delightful hours did much to compensate him for his troubles in
the town, and were even of some service to him in training him to fence
with the trades of Hillsborough: for at “Woodbine Villa” he had to keep
an ardent passion within the strict bounds of reverence, and in the town
he had constantly to curb another passion, wrath, and keep it within the
bounds of prudence. These were kindred exercises of self-restraint, and
taught him self-government beyond his years. But what he benefited
most by, after all, was the direct and calming effect upon his agitated
heart, and irritated nerves, that preceded, and accompanied, and
followed these sweet, tranquilizing visits. They were soft, solacing,
and soothing; they were periodical and certain, he could count on
leaving his cares and worries, twice every week, at the door of that
dear villa; and, when he took them up again, they were no longer the
same; heavenly balm had been shed over them, and over his boiling blood.

One Saturday he heard, by a side-wind, that the Unions at a general
meeting had debated his case, and there had been some violent speeches,
and no decision come to; but the majority adverse to him. This
discouraged him sadly, and his yearning heart turned all the more toward
his haven of rest, and the hours, few but blissful, that awaited him.

About 11 o'clock, that same day, the postman brought him a letter, so
vilely addressed, that it had been taken to two or three places, on
speculation, before it reached its destination.

Little saw at once it was another anonymous communication. But he was
getting callous to these missives, and he even took it with a certain
degree of satisfaction. “Well done, Bramah! Obliged to send their venom
by post now.” This was the feeling uppermost in his mind. In short, he
opened the letter with as much contempt as anger.

But he had no sooner read the foul scrawl, than his heart died within
him.


“Thou's sharp but not sharp enow. We know where thou goes courting up
hill. Window is all glass and ripe for a Peter shall blow the house
tatums. There's the stuff in Hillsbro and the men that have done others
so, and will do her job as wells thine. Powders a good servant but a bad
master.

“ONE WHO MEANS DOING WHAT HE SAYS.”


At this diabolical threat, young Little leaned sick and broken over the
handle of his bellows.

Then he got up, and went to Mr. Cheetham, and said, patiently, “Sir, I
am sorry to say I must leave you this very day.”

“Don't say that, Little, don't say that.”

“Oh it is with a heavy heart, sir; and I shall always remember your
kindness. But a man knows when he is beat. And I'm beat now.” He hung
his head in silence awhile. Then he said, in a faint voice, “This is
what has done it, sir,” and handed him the letter.

Mr. Cheetham examined it, and said, “I am not surprised at your being
taken aback by this. But it's nothing new to us; we have all been
threatened in this form. Why, the very last time I fought the trades,
my wife was threatened I should be brought home on a shutter, with my
intestines sweeping the ground. That was the purport, only it was put
vernacular and stronger. And they reminded me that the old gal's clothes
(that is Mrs. Cheetham: she is only twenty-six, and the prettiest lass
in Coventry, and has a row of ivories that would do your heart good:
now these Hillsborough hags haven't got a set of front teeth among 'em,
young or old). Well, they told me the old gal's clothes could easily be
spoiled, and her doll's face and all, with a penn'orth of vitriol.”

“The monsters!”

“But it was all brag. These things are threatened fifty times, for once
they are done.”

“I shall not risk it. My own skin, if you like. But not hers: never, Mr.
Cheetham: oh, never; never!”

“Well, but,” said Mr. Cheetham, “she is in no danger so long as you keep
away from her. They might fling one of their petards in at the window,
if you were there; but otherwise, never, in this world. No, no, Little,
they are not so bad as that. They have blown up a whole household,
to get at the obnoxious party; but they always make sure he is there
first.”

Bayne was appealed to, and confirmed this; and, with great difficulty,
they prevailed on Little to remain with them, until the Unions should
decide; and to discontinue his visits to the house on the hill in the
meantime. I need hardly say they had no idea the house on the hill was
“Woodbine Villa.”

He left them, and, sick at heart, turned away from Heath Hill, and
strolled out of the lower part of the town, and wandered almost at
random, and sad as death.

He soon left the main road, and crossed a stile; it took him by the side
of a babbling brook, and at the edge of a picturesque wood. Ever and
anon he came to a water-wheel, and above the water-wheel a dam made
originally by art, but now looking like a sweet little lake. They were
beautiful places; the wheels and their attendant works were old and
rugged, but picturesque and countrified; and the little lakes behind,
fringed by the master-grinder's garden, were strangely peaceful and
pretty. Here the vulgar labor of the grindstone was made beautiful and
incredibly poetic.

“Ah!” thought poor Little, “how happy a workman must be that plies his
trade here in the fresh air. And how unfortunate I am to be tied to a
power-wheel, in that filthy town, instead of being here, where Nature
turns the wheel, and the birds chirp at hand, and the scene and the air
are all purity and peace.”

One place of the kind was particularly charming. The dam was larger
than most, and sloping grass on one side, cropped short by the grinder's
sheep: on the other his strip of garden: and bushes and flowers hung
over the edge and glassed themselves in the clear water. Below the
wheel, and at one side, was the master-grinder's cottage, covered with
creepers.

But Henry's mind was in no state to enjoy these beauties. He envied
them; and, at last, they oppressed him, and he turned his back on them,
and wandered, disconsolate, home.

He sat down on a stool by his mother, and laid his beating temples on
her knees.

“What is it, my darling?” said she softly.

“Well, mother, for one thing, the Unions are against me, and I see I
shall have to leave Hillsborough, soon or late.”

“Never mind, dear; happiness does not depend upon the place we live
in; and oh, Henry, whatever you do, never quarrel with those terrible
grinders and people. The world is wide. Let us go back to London; the
sooner the better. I have long seen there was something worrying you.
But Saturday and Monday--they used to be your bright days.”

“It will come to that, I suppose,” said Henry, evading her last
observation. “Yes,” said he, wearily, “it will come to that.” And he
sighed so piteously that she forbore to press him. She had not the heart
to cross-examine her suffering child.

That evening, mother and son sat silent by the fire: Henry had his own
sad and bitter thoughts; and Mrs. Little was now brooding over the words
Henry had spoken in the afternoon; and presently her maternal anxieties
found a copious vent. She related to him, one after another, all the
outrages that had been perpetrated in Hillsborough, while he was a
child, and had been, each in its turn, the town talk.

It was a subject on which, if her son had been older, and more
experienced in her sex, he would have closed her mouth promptly, she
being a woman whose own nerves had received so frightful a shock by the
manner of her husband's death. But, inadvertently, he let her run on,
till she told him how a poor grinder had been carried home to his wife,
blinded and scorched with gunpowder, and another had been taken home,
all bleeding, to his mother, so beaten and bruised with life-preservers,
that he had laid between life and death for nine days, and never uttered
one word all that time, in reply to all her prayers and tears.

Now Mrs. Little began these horrible narratives with a forced and
unnatural calmness; but, by the time she got to the last; she had
worked herself up to a paroxysm of sympathy with other wretched women in
Hillsborough, and trembled all over, like one in an ague, for herself:
and at last stretched out her shaking hands, and screamed to him, “Oh,
Harry, Harry, have pity on your miserable mother! Think what these
eyes of mine have seen--bleeding at my feet--there--there--I see it
now”--(her eyes dilated terribly at the word)--“oh, promise me, for
pity's sake, that these--same--eyes--shall never see YOU brought and
laid down bleeding like HIM!” With this she went into violent hysterics,
and frightened her son more than all the ruffians in the town had ever
frightened him.

She was a long time in this pitiable condition, and he nursed her: but
at last her convulsion ceased, and her head rested on her son's shoulder
in a pitiable languor.

Henry was always a good son: but he never loved his mother so tenderly
as he did this night. His heart yearned over this poor panting soul, so
stately in form, yet so weak, so womanly, and lovable; his playmate
in childhood; his sweet preceptor in boyhood; the best friend and most
unselfish lover he had, or could ever hope to have, on earth; dear to
him by her long life of loving sacrifice, and sacred by that their great
calamity, which had fallen so much heavier on her than on him.

He soothed her, he fondled her, he kneeled at her feet, and promised
her most faithfully he would never be brought home to her bruised or
bleeding. No; if the Unions rejected his offer he would go back to
London with her at once.

And so, thrust from Hillsborough by the trades, and by his fears for
Miss Carden, and also drawn from it by his mother's terrors, he felt
himself a feather on the stream of Destiny; and left off struggling:
beaten, heart-sick, and benumbed, he let the current carry him like any
other dead thing that drifts.

He still plied the hammer, but in a dead-alive way.

He wrote a few cold lines to Mr. Jobson, to say that he thought it was
time for a plain answer to be given to a business proposal. But, as he
had no great hope the reply would be favorable, he awaited it in a state
bordering on apathy. And so passed a miserable week.

And all this time she, for whose sake he denied himself the joy and
consolation of her company, though his heart ached and pined for it, had
hard thoughts of him, and vented them too to Jael Dence.

The young are so hasty in all their judgments.

While matters were in this condition, Henry found, one morning, two
fresh panes of glass broken in his window.

In these hardware works the windows seldom or never open: air is
procured in all the rooms by the primitive method of breaking a pane
here and a pane there; and the general effect is as unsightly as a
human mouth where teeth and holes alternate. The incident therefore was
nothing, if it had occurred in any other room; but it was not a thing to
pass over in this room, secured by a Bramah lock, the key of which was
in Henry's pocket: the panes must have been broken from the outside. It
occurred to him directly that a stone had been thrown in with another
threatening scrawl.

But, casting his eye all round, he saw nothing of the kind about.

Then, for a moment, a graver suspicion crossed his mind: might not some
detonating substance of a nature to explode when trodden upon, have been
flung in? Hillsborough excelled in deviltries of this kind.

Henry thought of his mother, and would not treat the matter lightly or
unsuspiciously. He stood still till he had lighted a lucifer match, and
examined the floor of his room. Nothing.

He lighted a candle, and examined all the premises. Nothing.

But, when he brought his candle to the window, he made a discovery: the
window had two vertical iron uprights, about three-quarters of an inch
in circumference: and one of these revealed to his quick eye a bright
horizontal line. It had been sawed with a fine saw.

Apparently an attempt had been made to enter his room from outside.

The next question was, had that attempt succeeded.

He tried the bar; it was not quite cut through.

He locked the forge up directly, and went to his handling room. There he
remained till Mr. Cheetham entered the works; then he went to him, and
begged him to visit his forge.

Mr. Cheetham came directly, and examined the place carefully.

He negatived, at once, the notion that any Hillsborough hand had been
unable to saw through a bar of that moderate thickness. “No,” said
he, “they were disturbed, or else some other idea struck them all of a
sudden; or else they hadn't given themselves time, and are coming again
to-morrow. I hope they are. By six o'clock to-night, I'll have a common
wooden shutter hung with six good hinges on each side, easy to open
at the center; only, across the center, I'll fix a Waterloo cracker
inside.”

“A Waterloo cracker!”

“Ay, but such a one as you never saw. I shall make it myself. It shall
be only four inches long, but as broad as my hand, and enough detonating
powder in it to blow the shutter fifty feet into the air: and if there
should be one of Jobson's lads behind the shutter at the time, why he'll
learn flying, and naught to pay for wings.”

“Why, sir, you are planning the man's death!”

“And what is HE planning? Light your forge, and leave the job to me. I'm
Hillsborough too, and they've put my blood up at last.”

While Henry lighted his forge, Mr. Cheetham whipped out a rule, and
measured the window exactly. This done, he went down the stairs, and
crossed the yard to go to his office.

But, before he could enter it, a horrible thing occurred in the room
he had just left; so horrible, it made him, brave as he was, turn and
scream like a woman.

Some miscreant, by a simple but ingenious means, which afterward
transpired, had mixed a quantity of gunpowder with the smithy-slack or
fine cinders of Henry's forge. The moment the forge was hot, the powder
ignited with a tremendous thud, a huge mass of flame rushed out, driving
the coals with it, like shot from a gun; Henry, scorched, blackened,
and blinded, was swept, as by a flaming wind, against the opposite wall;
then, yelling, and stark mad with fright (for nothing drives men out
of their wits like an explosion in a narrow space), he sprang at the
window, head foremost, and with such velocity that the sawed iron
snapped like a stick of barley-sugar, and out he went head foremost;
and this it was made Cheetham scream, to see him head downward, and the
paving-stones below.

But the aperture was narrow: his body flew through, but his tight arm
went round the unbroken upright, and caught it in the bend of the elbow.

Then Cheetham roared, “Hold on, Little! Hold on, I tell you!”

The scared brain of a man accustomed to obey received the command almost
without the mind; and the grinders and forgers, running wildly into the
yard, saw the obnoxious workman, black as a cinder from head to foot,
bleeding at the face from broken glass, hanging up there by one hand,
moaning with terror, and looking down with dilating eye, while thick
white smoke rushed curling out, as if his body was burning. Death by
suffocation was at his back, and broken bones awaited him below.




CHAPTER VI.


At sight of this human cinder, hanging by one hand between two deaths,
every sentiment but humanity vanished from the ruggedest bosom, and
the skilled workmen set themselves to save their unpopular comrade with
admirable quickness and judgment: two new wheel-bands, that had just
come into the works, were caught up in a moment, and four workmen ran
with them and got below the suspended figure: they then turned back to
back, and, getting the bands over their shoulders, pulled hard against
each other. This was necessary to straighten the bands: they weighed
half a hundred weight each. Others stood at the center of the bands, and
directed Little where to drop, and stood ready to catch him should he
bound off them.

But now matters took an unexpected turn. Little, to all appearance, was
blind and deaf. He hung there, moaning, and glaring, and his one sinewy
arm supported his muscular but light frame almost incredibly. He was out
of his senses, or nearly.

“Let thyself come, lad,” cried a workman, “we are all right to catch
thee.”

He made no answer, but hung there glaring and moaning.

“The man will drop noane, till he swouns,” said another, watching him
keenly.

“Then get you closer to the wall, men,” cried Cheetham, in great
anxiety. “He'll come like a stone, when he does come.” This injunction
was given none too soon; the men had hardly shifted their positions,
when Little's hand opened, and he came down like lead, with his hands
all abroad, and his body straight; but his knees were slightly bent, and
he caught the bands just below the knee, and bounded off them into the
air, like a cricket-ball. But many hands grabbed at him, and the grinder
Reynolds caught him by the shoulder, and they rolled on the ground
together, very little the worse for that tumble. “Well done! well done!”
 cried Cheetham. “Let him lie, lads, he is best there for a while; and
run for a doctor, one of you.”

“Ay, run for Jack Doubleface,” cried several voices at once.

“Now, make a circle, and give him air, men.” Then they all stood in
a circle, and eyed the blackened and quivering figure with pity and
sympathy, while the canopy of white smoke bellied overhead. Nor were
those humane sentiments silent; and the rough seemed to be even more
overcome than the others: no brains were required to pity this poor
fellow now; and so strong an appeal to their hearts, through their
senses, roused their good impulses and rare sensibilities. Oh, it was
strange to hear good and kindly sentiments come out in the Dash dialect.

“It's a ---- shame!”

“There lies a good workman done for by some ---- thief, that wasn't fit
to blow his bellows, ---- him!”

“Say he WAS a cockney, he was always ---- civil.”

“And life's as sweet to him as to any man in Hillsborough.”

“Hold your ---- tongue, he's coming to.”

Henry did recover his wits enough to speak; and what do you think was
his first word?

He clasped his hands together, and said,--“MY MOTHER! OH, DON'T LET HER
KNOW!”

This simple cry went through many a rough heart; a loud gulp or two were
heard soon after, and more than one hard and coaly cheek was channeled
by sudden tears. But now a burly figure came rolling in; they drew back
and silenced each other.--“The Doctor!” This was the remarkable person
they called Jack Doubleface. Nature had stuck a philosophic head, with
finely-cut features, and a mouth brimful of finesse, on to a corpulent
and ungraceful body, that yawed from side to side as he walked.

The man of art opened with two words. He looked up at the white cloud,
which was now floating away; sniffed the air, and said, “Gunpowder!”
 Then he looked down at Little, and said, “Ah!” half dryly, half sadly.
Indeed several sentences of meaning condensed themselves into that
simple interjection. At this moment, some men, whom curiosity had drawn
to Henry's forge, came back to say the forge had been blown up, and “the
bellows torn limb from jacket, and the room strewed with ashes.”

The doctor laid a podgy hand on the prisoner's wrist: the touch was
light, though the fingers were thick and heavy. The pulse, which had
been very low, was now galloping and bounding frightfully. “Fetch him a
glass of brandy-and-water,” said Dr. Amboyne. (There were still doctors
in Hillsborough, though not in London, who would have had him bled on
the spot.)

“Now, then, a surgeon! Which of you lads operates on the eye, in these
works?”

A lanky file-cutter took a step forward. “I am the one that takes the
motes out of their eyes.”

“Then be good enough to show me his eye.”

The file-cutter put out a hand with fingers prodigiously long and thin,
and deftly parted both Little's eyelids with his finger and thumb, so as
to show the whole eye.

“Hum!” said the doctor, and shook his head.

He then patted the sufferer all over, and the result of that examination
was satisfactory. Then came the brandy-and-water; and while Henry's
teeth were clattering at the glass and he was trying to sip the liquid,
Dr. Amboyne suddenly lifted his head, and took a keen survey of the
countenances round him. He saw the general expression of pity on the
rugged faces. He also observed one rough fellow who wore a strange wild
look: the man seemed puzzled, scared, confused like one half awakened
from some hideous dream. This was the grinder who had come into the
works in place of the hand Cheetham had discharged for refusing to grind
cockney blades.

“Hum!” said Dr. Amboyne, and appeared to be going into a brown study.

But he shook that off, and said briskly, “Now, then, what was his crime?
Did he owe some mutual aid society six-and-four-pence?”

“That's right,” said Reynolds, sullenly, “throw every thing on the
Union. If we knew who it was, he'd lie by the side of this one in less
than a minute, and, happen, not get up again so soon.” A growl of assent
confirmed the speaker's words. Cheetham interposed and drew Amboyne
aside, and began to tell him who the man was and what the dispute; but
Amboyne cut the latter explanation short. “What,” said he, “is this the
carver whose work I saw up at Mr. Carden's?”

“This is the very man, no doubt.”

“Why, he's a sculptor: Praxiteles in wood. A fine choice they have made
for their gunpowder, a workman that did honor to the town.”

A faint flush of gratified pride colored the ghastly cheek a moment.

“Doctor, shall I live to finish the bust?” said Henry, piteously.

“That and hundreds more, if you obey me. The fact is, Mr. Cheetham, this
young man is not hurt, but his nerves have received a severe shock; and
the sooner he is out of this place the better. Ah, there is my brougham
at the gate. Come, put him into it, and I'll take him to the infirmary.”

“No,” said Little, “I won't go there; my mother would hear of it.”

“Oh, then your mother is not to know?”

“Not for all the world! She has had trouble enough. I'll just wash my
face and buy a clean shirt, and she'll never know what has happened. It
would kill her. Oh, yes, it would kill her!”

The doctor eyed him with warm approval. “You are a fine young fellow.
I'll see you safe through this, and help you throw dust in your mother's
eyes. If you go to her with that scratched face, we are lost. Come, get
into my carriage, and home with me.”

“Mayn't I wash my face first? And look at my shirt: as black as a
cinder.”

“Wash your face, by all means: but you can button your coat over your
shirt.”

The coat was soon brought, and so was a pail of water and a piece of
yellow soap. Little dashed his head and face into the bucket, and soon
inked all the water. The explosion had filled his hair with black dust,
and grimed his face and neck like a sweep's. This ablution made him
clean, but did not bring back his ruddy color. He looked pale and
scratched.

The men helped him officiously into the carriage, though he could have
walked very well alone.

Henry asked leave to buy a clean shirt. The doctor said he would lend
him one at home.

While Henry was putting it on Dr. Amboyne ordered his dog-cart instead
of his brougham, and mixed some medicines. And soon Henry found himself
seated in the dog-cart, with a warm cloak over him, and whisking over
the stones of Hillsborough.

All this had been done so rapidly and unhesitatingly that Henry, injured
and shaken as he was, had yielded passive obedience. But now he began to
demur a little. “But where are we going, sir?” he asked.

“To change the air and the scene. I'll be frank with you--you are man
enough to bear the truth--you have received a shock that will very
likely bring on brain-fever, unless you get some sleep tonight. But you
would not sleep in Hillsborough. You'd wake a dozen times in the night,
trembling like an aspen leaf, and fancying you were blown up again.”

“Yes, but my mother, sir! If I don't go home at seven o'clock, she'll
find me out.”

“If you went crazy wouldn't she find you out? Come, my young friend,
trust to my experience, and to the interest this attempt to murder you,
and your narrow escape, have inspired in me. When I have landed you in
the Temple of Health, and just wasted a little advice on a pig-headed
patient in the neighborhood (he is the squire of the place), I'll drive
back to Hillsborough, and tell your mother some story or other: you and
I will concoct that together as we go.”

At this Henry was all obedience, and indeed thanked him, with the tears
in his eyes, for his kindness to a poor stranger.

Dr. Amboyne smiled. “If you were not a stranger, you would know that
saving cutlers' lives is my hobby, and one in which I am steadily
resisted and defeated, especially by the cutlers themselves: why, I look
upon you as a most considerate and obliging young man for indulging me
in this way. If you had been a Hillsborough hand, you would insist upon
a brain-fever, and a trip to the lunatic asylum, just to vex me, and
hinder me of my hobby.”

Henry stared. This was too eccentric for him to take it all in at once.
“What!” said Dr. Amboyne, observing his amazement, “Did you never hear
of Dr. Doubleface?”

“No, sir.”

“Never hear of the corpulent lunatic, who goes about the city chanting,
like a cuckoo, 'Put yourself in his place--put yourself in her place--in
their place?'

“No, sir, I never did.”

“Then such is fame. Well, never mind that just now; there's a time for
every thing. Please observe that ruined house: the ancient family to
whom it belongs are a remarkable example of the vicissitude of human
affairs.” He then told him the curious ups and downs of that family,
which, at two distant periods, had held vast possessions in the county;
but were now represented by the shell of one manor house, and its
dovecote, the size of a modern villa. Next he showed him an obscure
battlefield, and told him that story, and who were the parties engaged;
and so on. Every mile furnished its legend, and Dr. Amboyne related them
all so graphically that the patient's mind was literally stolen away
from himself. At last, after a rapid drive of eleven miles through the
pure invigorating air, they made a sudden turn, and entered a pleasant
and singularly rural village: they drew up at a rustic farmhouse, clad
with ivy; and Dr. Amboyne said, “This is the temple: here you can sleep
as safe from gunpowder as a field-marshal born.”

The farmer's daughter came out, and beamed pleasure at sight of the
doctor: he got down, and told her the case, privately, and gave
her precise instructions. She often interrupted the narrative with
“Lawkadaisies,” and other rural interjections, and simple exclamations
of pity. She promised faithful compliance with his orders.

He then beckoned Henry in, and said, “This picture of health was a
patient of mine once, as you are now; there's encouragement for you. I
put you under her charge. Get a letter written to your mother, and I'll
come back for it in half an hour. You had a headache, and were feverish,
so you consulted a doctor. He advised immediate rest and change of air,
and he drove you at once to this village. Write you that, and leave the
rest to me. We doctors are dissembling dogs. We have still something to
learn in curing diseases; but at making light of them to the dying, and
other branches of amiable mendacity, we are masters.”

As soon as he was gone, the comely young hostess began on her patient.
“Dear heart, sir, was it really you as was blowed up with gunpowder?”

“Indeed it was, and not many hours ago. It seems like a dream.”

“Well, now, who'd think that, to look at you? Why, you are none the
worse for, by a scratch or two, and dear heart, I've seen a young chap
bring as bad home, from courting, in these parts; and wed the lass as
marked him--within the year.”

“Oh, it is not the scratches; but feel my hand, how it trembles. And it
used to be as firm as a rock; for I never drink.”

“So it do, I declare. Why, you do tremble all over; and no wonder, poor
soul. Come you in this minut, and sit down a bit by the fire, while I go
and make the room ready for you.”

But, as soon as he was seated by the fire, the current began to flow
again. “Well, I never liked Hillsborough folk much--poor, mean-visaged
tykes they be--but now I do hate 'em. What, blow up a decent young man
like you, and a well-favored, and hair like jet, and eyes in your head
like sloes! But that's their ground of spite, I warrant me; the nasty,
ugly, dirty dogs. Well, you may just snap your fingers at 'em all now.
They don't come out so far as this; and, if they did, stouter men grows
in this village than any in Hillsborough: and I've only to hold up my
finger, for as little as I be, and they'd all be well ducked in father's
horsepond, and then flogged home again with a good cart-whip well laid
on. And, another thing, whatever we do, Squire, he will make it good in
law: he is gentle, and we are simple; but our folk and his has stood by
each other this hundred year and more. But, la, I run on so, and you was
to write a letter again the doctor came back. I'll fetch you some paper
this minut.”

She brought him writing materials, and stood by him with this apology,
“If 'twas to your sweetheart I'd be off. But 'tis to your mother.” (With
a side glance), “She have been a handsome woman in her day, I'll go
bail.”

“She is as beautiful as ever in my eyes,” said Henry, tenderly. “And,
oh, heaven! give me the sense to write to her without frightening her.”

“Then I won't hinder you no more with my chat,” said his hostess, with
kindly good humor, and slipped away upstairs. She lighted a great wood
fire in the bedroom, and laid the bed and the blankets all round it, and
opened the window, and took the homespun linen sheets out of a press,
and made the room very tidy. Then she went down again, and the moment
Henry saw her, he said “I feel your kindness, miss, but I don't know
your name, nor where in the world I am.” His hostess smiled. “That is no
secret. I'm Martha Dence--at your service: and this is Cairnhope town.”

“Cairnhope!” cried Henry, and started back, so that his wooden chair
made a loud creak upon the stones of the farmer's kitchen.

Martha Dence stared, but said nothing; for almost at that moment the
doctor returned, all in a hurry, for the letter.

Henry begged him to look at it, and see if it would do.

The doctor read it. “Hum!” said he, “it is a very pretty, filial letter,
and increases my interest in you; give me your hand: there. Well, it
won't do: too shaky. If your mother once sees this, I may talk till
doomsday, she'll not believe a word. You must put off writing till
to-morrow night. Now give me her address, for I really must get home.”

“She lives on the second floor, No. 13 Chettle Street.”

“Her name?”

“Sir, if you ask for the lady that lodges on the second floor, you will
be sure to see her.”

Dr. Amboyne looked a little surprised, and not very well pleased, at
what seemed a want of confidence. But he was a man singularly cautious
and candid in forming his judgments; so he forbore all comment, and
delivered his final instructions. “Here is a bottle containing only a
few drops of faba Ignatii in water, it is an innocent medicine, and
has sometimes a magical effect in soothing the mind and nerves. A
table-spoonful three times a day. And THIS is a sedative, which you can
take if you find yourself quite unable to sleep. But I wouldn't have
recourse to it unnecessarily; for these sedatives are uncertain in their
operation; and, when a man is turned upside down, as you have been, they
sometimes excite. Have a faint light in your bedroom. Tie a cord to the
bell-rope, and hold it in your hand all night. Fix your mind on that
cord, and keep thinking, 'This is to remind me that I am eleven
miles from Hillsborough, in a peaceful village, safe from all harm.'
To-morrow, walk up to the top of Cairnhope Peak, and inhale the glorious
breeze, and look over four counties. Write to your mother at night, and,
meantime, I'll do my best to relieve her anxiety. Good-by.”


Memory sometimes acts like an old flint-gun: it hangs fire, yet ends
by going off. While Dr. Amboyne was driving home, the swarthy, but
handsome, features of the workman he had befriended seemed to enter his
mind more deeply than during the hurry, and he said to himself, “Jet
black hair; great black eyes; and olive skin; they are rare in these
parts; and, somehow, they remind me a little of HER.”

Then his mind went back, in a moment, over many years, to the days when
he was stalwart, but not unwieldy, and loved a dark but peerless beauty,
loved her deeply, and told his love, and was esteemed and pitied, but
another was beloved.

And so sad, yet absorbing, was the retrospect of his love, his sorrow,
and her own unhappy lot, that it blotted out of his mind, for a time,
the very youth whose features and complexion had launched him into the
past.

But the moment his horse's feet rang on the stones, this burly
philosopher shook off the past, and set himself to recover lost time.
He drove rapidly to several patients, and, at six o'clock, was at 13
Chettle Street, and asked for the lady on the second floor, “Yes,
sir: she is at home,” was the reply. “But I don't know; she lives very
retired. She hasn't received any visits since they came. However, they
rent the whole floor, and the sitting-room fronts you.”

Dr. Amboyne mounted the stair and knocked at the door. A soft and mellow
voice bade him enter. He went in, and a tall lady in black, with plain
linen collar and wristbands, rose to receive him. They confronted
each other. Time and trouble had left their trace, but there were the
glorious eyes, and jet black hair, and the face, worn and pensive, but
still beautiful. It was the woman he had loved, the only one.

“Mrs. Little!” said he, in an indescribable tone.

“Dr. Amboyne!”

For a few moments he forgot the task he had undertaken; and could only
express his astonishment and pleasure at seeing her once more.

Then he remembered why he was there; and the office he had undertaken so
lightly alarmed him now.

His first instinct was to gain time. Accordingly, he began to chide her
gently for having resided in the town and concealed it from him; then,
seeing her confused and uncomfortable at that reproach, and in the mood
to be relieved by any change of topic, he glided off, with no little
address, as follows:--“Observe the consequences: here have I been most
despotically rusticating a youth who turns out to be your son.”

“My son! is there any thing the matter with my son? Oh, Dr. Amboyne!”

“He must have been out of sorts, you know, or he would not have
consulted me,” replied the doctor, affecting candor.

“Consult! Why, what has happened? He was quite well when he left me this
morning.”

“I doubt that. He complained of headache and fever. But I soon found his
MIND was worried. A misunderstanding with the trades! I was very much
pleased with his face and manner; my carriage was at the door; his pulse
was high, but there was nothing that country air and quiet will not
restore. So I just drove him away, and landed him in a farm-house.”

Mrs. Little's brow flushed at this. She was angry. But, in a nature so
gentle as hers, anger soon gave way. She turned a glance of tearful
and eloquent reproach on Dr. Amboyne. “The first time we have ever been
separated since he was born,” said she, with a sigh.

Dr. Amboyne's preconceived plan broke down that moment. He said,
hurriedly,

“Take my carriage, and drive to him. Better do that than torment
yourself.”

“Where is he?” asked the widow, brightening up at the proposal.

“At Cairnhope.”

At this word, Mrs. Little's face betrayed a series of emotions: first
confusion, then astonishment, and at last a sort of superstitious alarm.
“At Cairnhope?” she faltered at last, “My son at Cairnhope?”

“Pray do not torment yourself with fancies,” said the doctor. “All this
is the merest accident--the simplest thing in the world. I cured Patty
Dence of diphtheria, when it decimated the village. She and her family
are grateful; the air of Cairnhope has a magic effect on people who live
in smoke, and Martha and Jael let me send them out an invalid now and
then to be reinvigorated. I took this young man there, not knowing who
he was. Go to him, if you like. But, frankly, as his physician, I would
rather you did not. Never do a wise thing by halves. He ought to be
entirely separated from all his cares, even from yourself (who are
doubtless one of them), for five or six days. He needs no other medicine
but that and the fine air of Cairnhope.”

“Then somebody must see him every day, and tell me. Oh! Dr. Amboyne,
this is the beginning: what will the end be? I am miserable.”

“My man shall ride there every day, and see him, and bring you back a
letter from him.”

“Your man!” said Mrs. Little, a little haughtily.

Dr. Amboyne met her glance. “If there was any ground for alarm, should I
not go myself every day?” said he, gravely, and even tenderly.

“Forgive me,” said the widow, and gave him her hand with a sweet and
womanly gesture.

The main difficulty was now got over; and Dr. Amboyne was careful not to
say too much, for he knew that his tongue moved among pitfalls.

As Dr. Amboyne descended the stairs, the landlady held a door ajar, and
peeped at him, according to a custom of such delicate-minded females as
can neither restrain their curiosity nor indulge it openly. Dr. Amboyne
beckoned to her, and asked for a private interview. This was promptly
accorded.

“Would ten guineas be of any service to you, madam?”

“Eh, dear, that it would, sir. Why, my rent is just coming due.”

Under these circumstances, the bargain was soon struck. Not a syllable
about the explosion at Cheetham's was to reach the second floor lodger's
ears, and no Hillsborough journal was to mount the stairs until the
young man's return. If inquired for, they were to be reported all sold
out, and a London journal purchased instead.

Having secured a keen and watchful ally in this good woman, who, to do
her justice, showed a hearty determination to earn her ten guineas, Dr.
Amboyne returned home, his own philosophic pulse beating faster than it
had done for some years.

He had left Mrs. Little grateful, and, apparently, in good spirits;
but, ere he had been gone an hour, the bare separation from her son
overpowered her, and a host of vague misgivings tortured her, and
she slept but little that night. By noon next day she was thoroughly
miserable; but Dr. Amboyne's man rode up to the door in the afternoon
with a cheerful line from Henry.


“All right, dear mother. Better already. Letter by post.

“Henry.”


She detained the man, and made up a packet of things for Cairnhope, and
gave him five shillings to be sure and take them.

This was followed by a correspondence, a portion of which will suffice
to eke out the narrative.


“DEAREST MOTHER,--I slept ill last night, and got up aching from head
to foot, as if I had been well hided. But they sent me to the top of
Cairnhope Peak, and, what with the keen air and the glorious view, I
came home and ate like a hog. That pleased Martha Dence, and she kept
putting me slices off her own plate, till I had to cry quarter. As soon
as I have addressed this letter, I'm off to bed, for it is all I can do
not to fall asleep sitting.

“I am safe to be all right to-morrow, so pray don't fret. I am, dear
mother,” etc., etc.


“DEAREST MOTHER,--I hope you are not fretting about me. Dr. Amboyne
promised to stop all that. But do write, and say you are not fretting
and fancying all manner of things at my cutting away so suddenly. It was
the doctor's doing. And, mother, I shall not stay long away from you,
for I slept twelve hours at a stretch last night, and now I'm another
man. But really, I think the air of that Cairnhope Peak would cure a
fellow at his last gasp.

“Thank you for the linen, and the brushes, and things. But you are not
the sort to forget anything a fellow might want,” etc.


“No, my darling son. Be in no hurry to leave Cairnhope. Of course, love,
I was alarmed at first; for I know doctors make the best of every thing;
and then the first parting!--that is always a sorrowful thing. But, now
you are there, I beg you will stay till you are quite recovered. Your
letters are a delight, and one I could not have, and you as well, you
know.

“Since you are at Cairnhope--how strange that seems--pray go and see
the old church, where your forefathers are buried. There are curious
inscriptions, and some brasses nobody could decipher when I was a girl;
but perhaps you might, you are so clever. Your grandfather's monument
is in the chancel: I want you to see it. Am I getting very old, that my
heart turns back to these scenes of my youth?

“P.S.--Who is this Martha Dence?”


“DEAR MOTHER,--Martha Dence is the farmer's daughter I lodge with. She
is not so pretty as her sister Jael that is with Miss Carden; but she is
a comely girl, and as good as gold, and bespoke by the butcher. And her
putting slices from her plate to mine is a village custom, I find.

“Mother, the people here are wonderfully good and simple. First of all,
there's farmer Dence, with his high bald head, like a patriarch of old;
and he sits and beams with benevolence, but does not talk much. But he
lets me see I can stay with him six years, if I choose. Then, there's
Martha, hospitality itself, and ready to fly at my enemies like a
mastiff. She is a little hot in the temper, feathers up in a moment;
but, at a soft word, they go down again as quick. Then, there's the
village blacksmith. I call him 'The gentle giant.' He is a tremendous
fellow in height, and size, and sinew; but such a kind, sweet-tempered
chap. He could knock down an ox, yet he wouldn't harm a fly. I am his
idol: I sauntered in to his smithy, and forged him one or two knives;
and of course he had never seen the hammer used with that nicety;
but instead of hating me, as the bad forgers in Hillsborough do, he
regularly worships me, and comes blushing up to the farm-house after
hours, to ask after me and get a word with me. He is the best whistler
in the parish, and sometimes we march down the village at night,
arm-in-arm, whistling a duet. This charms the natives so that we could
take the whole village out at our heels, and put them down in another
parish. But the droll thing is, they will not take me for what I am. My
gentle giant would say 'Sir' till I pretended to be affronted; the women
and girls will bob me courtesies, and the men and white headed boys
will take off their hats and pull their front hair to me. If a skilled
workman wants to burst with vanity, let him settle in Cairnhope.”

[EXTRACT]

“Martha Dence and I have had words, and what do you think it was about?
I happened to let out my opinion of Mr. Raby. Mother, it was like
setting a match to a barrel of gunpowder. She turned as red as fire, and
said, 'Who be you that speaks against Raby to Dence?'

“I tried to pacify her, but it was no use. 'Don't speak to me,' said
she. 'I thought better of you. You and I are out.' I bowed before the
storm, and, to give her time to cool, I obeyed your wishes, and walked
to Cairnhope old church. What a curious place! But I could not get in;
and, on my return, I found Mr. Raby keeps the key. Now, you can't do a
thing here, or say a word, but what it is known all over the village. So
Martha Dence meets me at the door, and says, very stiffly, she thought
I might have told her I wanted to see the old church. I pulled a long,
penitent face, and said, 'Yes; but unfortunately, I was out of her good
books, and had orders not to speak to her.' 'Nay,' says she, 'life is
too short for long quarrels. You are a stranger, and knew no better.'
Then she told me to wait five minutes while she put on her bonnet, as
she calls it. Well, I waited the five and-forty minutes, and she put on
her bonnet, and so many other smart things, that we couldn't possibly
walk straight up to the old church. We had to go round by the butcher's
shop, and order half a pound of suet; no less. 'And bring it yourself,
this evening,' said I, 'or it might get lost on the road.' Says the
butcher, 'Well, sir, that is the first piece of friendly advice any good
Christian has bestowed--' But I heard no more, owing to Martha chasing
me out of the shop.

“To reach the old church we had to pass the old ruffian's door. Martha
went in; I sauntered on, and she soon came after me, with the key in
her hand. 'But,' said she, 'he told me if my name hadn't been Dence he
wouldn't trust me with it, though I went on my bended knees.'

“We opened the church-door, and I spent an hour inside, examining and
copying inscriptions for you. But, when I came to take up a loose brass,
to try and decipher it, Martha came screaming at me, 'Oh, put it down!
put it down! I pledged my word to Squire you should not touch them
brasses.' What could I do, mother? The poor girl was in an agony. This
old ruffian has, somehow, bewitched her, and her father too, into a sort
of superstitious devotion that I can't help respecting, unreasonable as
it is. So I dropped the brass, and took to reflecting. And I give you my
thoughts.

“What a pity and a shame that a building of this size should lie idle!
If it was mine I would carefully remove all the monuments, and the dead
bones, et cetera, to the new church, and turn this old building into a
factory, or a set of granaries, or something useful. It is as great a
sin to waste bricks and mortar as it is bread,” etc.


“MY DEAR HARRY,--Your dear sprightly letters delight me, and reconcile
me to the separation; for I see that your health is improving every day,
by your gayety; and this makes me happy, though I can not quite be gay.

“Your last letter was very amusing, yet, somehow, it set me thinking,
long and sadly; and some gentle remarks from Dr. Amboyne (he called
yesterday) have also turned my mind the same way. Time has softened the
terrible blow that estranged my brother and myself, and I begin to
ask myself, was my own conduct perfect? was my brother's quite without
excuse? I may have seen but one side, and been too hasty in judging him.
At all events, I would have you, who are a man, think for yourself, and
not rush into too harsh a view of that unhappy quarrel. Dearest, family
quarrels are family misfortunes: why should they go down to another
generation? You frighten me, when you wonder that Nathan and his family
(I had forgotten his name was Dence) are attached to Mr. Raby. Why, with
all his faults, my brother is a chivalrous, high-minded gentleman; his
word is his bond, and he never deserts a friend, however humble; and I
have heard our dear father say that, for many generations, uncommon acts
of kindness had passed between that family of yeomen and the knights and
squires of Raby.

“And now, dear, I am going to be very foolish. But, if these Dences
are as great favorites with him as they were with my father, she could
easily get you into the house some day, when he is out hunting; and I do
want you to see one thing more before you come back from Cairnhope--your
mother's picture. It hangs, or used to hang, in the great dining-room,
nearly opposite the fire-place.

“I blush at my childishness, but I SHOULD like my child to see what his
mother was when she brought him into the world, that sad world in which
he has been her only joy and consolation.

“P. S.--What an idea! Turn that dear old church into a factory! But you
are a young man of the day. And a wonderful day it is; I can not quite
keep up with it.”


“DEAR MOTHER,--I have been there. Mr. Raby is a borough magistrate, as
well as a county justice; and was in Hillsborough all day to-day. Martha
Dence took me to Raby Hall, and her name was a passport. When I got to
the door, I felt as if something pulled me, and said, 'It's an enemy's
house; don't go in.' I wish I had obeyed the warning; but I did not.

“Well, I have seen your portrait. It is lovely, it surpasses any woman I
ever saw. And it must have been your image, for it is very like you now,
only in the bloom of your youth.

“And now, dear mother, having done something for you, quite against my
own judgment, and my feelings too, please do something for me. Promise
me never to mention Mr. Raby's name to me again, by letter, or by word
of mouth either. He is not a gentleman: he is not a man; he is a mean,
spiteful, cowardly cur. I'll keep out of his way, if I can; but if he
gets in mine, I shall give him a devilish good hiding, then and there,
and I'll tell HIM the reason why; and I will not tell YOU.

“Dear mother, I did intend to stay till Saturday, but, after this, I
shall come back to you to-morrow. My own sweet dove of a mammy; who but
a beast could hurt or affront you?

“So no more letters from your dutiful and affectionate son,

“Harry.”


Next day young Little took leave of his friends in Cairnhope, with a
promise to come over some Sunday, and see them all. He borrowed a hooked
stick of his devotee, the blacksmith, and walked off with his little
bundle over his shoulder, in high health and spirits, and ripe for any
thing.

Some successful men are so stout-hearted, their minds seem never to
flinch. Others are elastic; they give way, and appear crushed; but, let
the immediate pressure be removed, they fly back again, and their enemy
finds he has not gained an inch. Henry's was of this sort; and, as he
swung along through the clear brisk air, the world seemed his football
once more.

This same morning Jael Dence was to go to Cairnhope, at her own request.

She packed her box, and corded it, and brought it down herself, and put
it in the passage, and the carrier was to call for it at one. As for
herself, four miles of omnibus, and the other seven on foot, was child's
play to her, whose body was as lusty and active as her heart was tender
and clinging.

She came in to the drawing-room, with her bonnet and shawl on, and the
tear in her eye, to bid Miss Carden good-bye. Two male friends would
have parted in five minutes; but this pair were a wonderful time
separating, and still there was always something to say, that kept
Grace detaining, or Jael lingering; and, when she had been going, going,
going, for more than half an hour, all of a sudden she cried, out, “Oh!
There he is!” and flushed all over.

“Who?” asked Grace, eagerly.

“The dark young man. He is at the door now, miss. And me going away,”
 she faltered.

“Well then, why go till he has paid his visit? Sit down. You needn't
take off your bonnet.”

Miss Carden then settled herself, took up her work, and prepared to
receive her preceptor as he deserved, an intention she conveyed to Jael
by a glance, just as Henry entered blooming with exercise and the keen
air, and looking extremely handsome and happy.

His reception was a chilling bow from Miss Carden, and from Jael a cheek
blushing with pleasure at the bare sight of him, but an earnest look
of mild reproach. It seemed cruel of him to stay away so long, and then
come just as she was going.

This reception surprised Henry, and disappointed him; however he
constrained himself, and said politely, but rather coldly, that some
unpleasant circumstances had kept him away; but he hoped now to keep his
time better.

“Oh, pray consult your own convenience entirely,” said Miss Carden.
“Come when you have nothing better to do; that is the understanding.”

“I should be always coming, at that rate.”

Grace took no notice. “Would you like to see how I look with my one
eyebrow?” said she. “Jael, please fetch it.”

While Jael was gone for the bust, Henry took a humbler tone, and in a
low voice began to excuse his absence; and I think he would have told
the real truth, if he had been encouraged a little; but he was met with
a cold and withering assurance that it was a matter of no consequence.
Henry thought this unfair, and, knowing in his own heart it was
ungrateful, he rebelled. He bit his lip, sat down as gloomy as the
grave, and resumed his work, silent and sullen.

As for Jael, she brought in the bust, and then sat down with her
bonnet on, quaking; for she felt sure that, in such a dismal dearth of
conversation, Miss Carden would be certain to turn round very soon, and
say, “Well, Jael, you can go now.”

But this Quaker's meeting was interrupted by a doctor looking in to
prescribe for Miss Carden's cold. The said cold was imperceptible to
vulgar eyes, but Grace had detected it, and had written to her friend,
Dr. Amboyne, to come and make it as imperceptible to herself as to the
spectator.

In rolled the doctor, and was not a little startled at sight of Little.

“Hallo!” cried be. “What, cured already? Cairnhope forever!” He then
proceeded to feel his pulse instead of Miss Carden's, and inspect his
eye, at which Grace Carden stared.

“What, is he unwell?”

“Why, a man does not get blown up with gunpowder without some little
disturbance of the system.”

“Blown up with gunpowder! What DO you mean?”

“What, have you not heard about it? Don't you read the newspapers?”

“No; never.”

“Merciful powers! But has he not told you?”

“No; he tells us nothing.”

“Then I'll tell you, it is of no use your making faces at me. There is
no earthly reason why she should be kept in the dark. These Hillsborough
trades want to drive this young man out of town: why--is too long
and intricate for you to follow. He resists this tyranny, gently, but
firmly.”

“I'd resist it furiously,” said Grace.

“The consequence is, they wrote him several threatening letters; and, at
last, some caitiff put gunpowder into his forge; it exploded, and blew
him out of a second-floor window.”

“Oh! oh!” screamed Grace Carden and Jael; and by one womanly impulse
they both put their hands before their faces, as if to shut out the
horrible picture.

“What is that for?” said the doctor. “You see he is all right now. But,
I promise you, he cut a very different figure when I saw him directly
afterward; he was scorched as black as a coal--”

“Oh, doctor, don't; pray don't. Oh, sir, why did you not tell me?”

“And his face bleeding,” continued the merciless doctor.

“Oh dear! oh dear!” And the sweet eyes were turned, all swimming in
water upon Henry, with a look of angelic pity.

“His nerves were terribly shaken, but there were no bones broken. I said
to myself, 'He must sleep or go mad, and he will not sleep in the town
that has blown him up.' I just drove the patient off to peace and pure
air, and confided him to one of the best creatures in England--Martha
Dence.”

Jael uttered an exclamation of wonder, which drew attention to her and
her glowing cheeks.

“Oh yes, Miss Jael,” said Henry, “I was going to tell you. I have been a
fortnight with your people, and, if I live a hundred years, I shall not
forget their goodness to me. God bless them.”

“'Twas the least they could do,” said Jael, softly.

“What a pity you are going out. I should have liked to talk to you about
your father, and Martha, and George the blacksmith. Doctor, who would
live in a town after Cairnhope?”

Jael's fingers trembled at her bonnet-strings, and, turning a look of
piteous supplication on Grace, she faltered out, “If you please, miss,
might I stay over to-day?”

“Of course. And then he will tell you all about your people, and that
will do just as well as you going to see them; and better.”

Off came Jael's bonnet with wonderful celerity.

“Get the whole story out of him,” said Dr. Amboyne. “It is well worth
your attention. As for me, I must go as soon as I have prescribed for
you. What is the matter?”

“The matter is that there's nothing the matter; prescribe for that. And
that I'm a goose--prescribe for that--and don't read the newspapers;
prescribe for that.”

“Well, then, I prescribe the Hillsborough Liberal. It has drawn a strong
picture of this outrage, and shown its teeth to the Trades. And, if I
might advise a lady of your age and experience, I would say, in
future always read the newspapers. They are, compared with books, what
machinery is compared with hand-labor. But, in this one instance, go to
the fountain-head, and ask Mr. Henry Little there, to tell you his own
tragedy, with all the ins and outs.”

“Ah! if he would,” said Grace, turning her eyes on Henry. “But he is not
so communicative to poor us. Is he, Jael?”

“No, miss.”

“He never even told us his name. Did he, Jael?”

“No, miss. He is very close.”

“Open him then,” said the doctor. “Come, come, there are a pair of you;
and evidently disposed to act in concert; if you can not turn a man
inside out, I disown you; you are a discredit to your sex.” He then
shook hands with all three of them, and rolled away.

“Jael,” said Miss Carden, “oblige me by ringing the bell.”

A servant entered.

“Not at home to any human creature,” said the young lady.

The servant retired.

“And, if they see me at the window, all the worse--for THEM. Now, Mr.
Little?”

Henry complied, and told the whole story, with the exception of the
threat to his sweetheart; and passed two delightful hours. Who is
so devoid of egotism as not to like to tell his own adventures to
sympathizing beauty? He told it in detail, and even read them portions
of the threatening letters; and, as he told it, their lovely eyes seemed
on fire; and they were red, and pale, by turns. He told it, like a
man, with dignity, and sobriety, and never used an epithet. It was Miss
Carden who supplied the “Monsters!” “Villains!” “Cowards!” “Wretches!”
 at due intervals. And once she started from her seat, and said she
could not bear it. “I see through it all,” she cried. “That Jobson is
a hypocrite; and he is at the bottom of it all. I hate him; and Parkin
worse. As for the assassin, I hope God, who saw him, will punish him.
What I want to do is to kill Jobson and Parkin, one after another; kill
them--kill them--kill them--I'll tell papa.”

As for Jael, she could not speak her mind, but she panted heavily, and
her fingers worked convulsively, and clutched themselves very tight at
last.

When he had done his narrative, he said sadly, “I despise these fellows
as much as you do; but they are too many for me. I am obliged to leave
Hillsborough.”

“What, let the wretches drive you away? I would never do that--if I was
a man.”

“What would you do, then?” asked Henry, his eye sparkling.

“Do? Why fight them; and beat them; and kill them, it is not as if they
were brave men. They are only cunning cowards. I'd meet cunning with
cunning. I'd outwit them somehow. I'd change my lodging every week, and
live at little inns and places. I'd lock up every thing I used, as well
as the rooms. I'd consult wiser heads, the editor of the Liberal, and
the Head of the police. I'd carry fire-arms, and have a bodyguard,
night and day; but they should never say they had frightened me out of
Hillsborough--if I was a man.”

“You are all right,” cried Henry. “I'll do all you advise me, and I
won't be driven out of this place. I love it. I'll live in it or I'll
die in it. I'll never leave it.”

This was almost the last word that passed this delightful afternoon,
when the sense of her own past injustice, the thrilling nature of the
story told by the very sufferer, and, above all, the presence and the
undisguised emotion of another sympathizing woman, thawed Grace Carden's
reserve, warmed her courage, and carried her, quite unconsciously, over
certain conventional bounds, which had, hitherto, been strictly observed
in her intercourse with this young workman.

Henry himself felt that this day was an era in his love. When he left
the door, he seemed to tread on air. He walked to the first cab-stand,
took a conveyance to his mother's door, and soon he was locked in her
arms.

She had been fretting for hours at his delay; but she never let him
know it. The whole place was full of preparations for his comfort, and
certain delicacies he liked were laid out on a little side board,
and the tea-things set, including the silver teapot, used now on high
occasions only.

She had a thousand questions to ask, and he to answer. And, while he
ate, the poor woman leaned back, and enjoyed seeing him eat; and,
while he talked, her fine eyes beamed with maternal joy. She reveled
deliciously in his health, his beauty, and his safe return to her;
and thought, with gentle complacency, they would soon return to London
together.

In the morning, she got out a large, light box, and said. “Harry, dear,
I suppose I may as well begin to pack up. You know I take longer than
you do.”

Henry blushed. “Pack up?” said he, hesitatingly. “We are not going
away.”

“Not going away, love? Why you agreed to leave, on account of those
dreadful Unions.”

“Oh, I was ill, and nervous, and out of spirits; but the air of
Cairnhope has made a man of me. I shall stay here, and make our
fortune.”

“But the air of Cairnhope has not made you friends with the unions.”
 She seemed to reflect a moment, then asked him at what time he had left
Cairnhope.

“Eleven o'clock.”

“Ah! And whom did you visit before you came to me?”

“You question me like a child, mother.”

“Forgive me, dear. I will answer my own question. You called on some one
who gave you bad advice.”

“Oh, did I?”

“On some woman.”

“Say, a lady”

“What does it matter to me?” cried Mrs. Little, wildly. “They are all my
enemies. And this one is yours. It is a woman, who is not your mother,
for she thinks more of herself than of you.”




CHAPTER VII.


Henry had now to choose between his mother's advice, and Miss Carden's
commands; and this made him rather sullen and irritable. He was glad
to get out of his mother's house, and went direct to the works. Bayne
welcomed him warmly, and, after some friendly congratulations and
inquiries, pulled out two files of journals, and told him he had
promised to introduce him to the editor of the Liberal. He then begged
Henry to wait in the office, and read the files--he would not be gone
many minutes.

The Constitutional gave a dry narrative of the outrage, and mourned the
frequency of such incidents.

The Liberal gave a dramatic narrative, and said the miscreant must have
lowered himself by a rope from the parapet, and passed the powder inside
without entering. “He periled his life to perpetrate this crime; and he
also risked penal servitude for ten years. That he was not deterred by
the double risk, proves the influence of some powerful motive; and that
motive must have been either a personal feud of a very virulent kind, or
else trade fanaticism. From this alternative there is no escape.”

Next day, both journals recorded a trade-meeting at “The Rising Sun.”
 Delegates from the Edge-Tool Forgers' Union, and the Edge-Tool Handlers'
Union, and some other representatives of Hillsborough Unions, were
present, and passed a resolution repudiating, with disgust, the outrage
that had been recently committed, and directed their secretaries to
offer a reward of twenty pounds, the same to be paid to any person
who would give such information as should lead to the discovery of the
culprit.

On this the Constitutional commented as follows:--“Although we never
for a moment suspected these respectable Unions of conniving at this
enormity, yet it is satisfactory to find them not merely passive
spectators, but exerting their energy, and spending their money, in a
praiseworthy endeavor to discover and punish the offenders.”

Henry laid down the paper, and his heart felt very warm to Jobson and
Parkin. “Come,” said he, “I am glad of that. They are not half a bad
sort, those two, after all.”

Then he took up the Liberal, and being young and generous, felt
disgusted at its comment:

“This appears to be creditable to the two Unions in question. But,
unfortunately, long experience proves that these small rewards never
lead to any discovery. They fail so invariably, that the Unions do
not risk a shilling by proffering them. In dramatic entertainments
the tragedy is followed by a farce: and so it is with these sanguinary
crimes in Hillsborough; they are always followed by a repudiation, and
offers of a trumpery reward quite disproportionate to the offense, and
the only result of the farce is to divert attention from the true line
of inquiry as to who enacted the tragedy. The mind craves novelty, and
perhaps these delegates will indulge that desire by informing us for
once, what was the personal and Corsican feud which led--as they would
have us believe--to this outrage; and will, at the same time, explain
to us why these outrages with gunpowder have never, either in this or in
any preceding case, attacked any but non-union men.”

When Henry had read thus far, the writer of the leader entered the room
with Mr. Bayne.

A gentleman not above the middle height, but with a remarkable chest,
both broad and deep; yet he was not unwieldy, like Dr. Amboyne, but
clean-built, and symmetrical. An agreeable face, with one remarkable
feature, a mouth full of iron resolution, and a slight humorous dimple
at the corners.

He shook hands with Henry, and said, “I wish to ask you a question or
two, in the way of business: but first let me express my sympathy, as a
man, and my detestation of the ruffians that have so nearly victimized
you.”

This was very hearty, and Henry thanked him with some emotion. “But,
sir,” said he, “if I am to reply to your questions, you must promise me
you will never publish my name.”

“It is on account of his mother,” whispered Bayne.

“Yes, sir. It was her misfortune to lose my father by a violent death,
and of course you may imagine--”

“Say no more,” said Mr. Holdfast: “your name shall not appear. And--let
me see--does your mother know you work here?”

“Yes, she does.”

“Then we had better keep Cheetham's name out as well.”

“Oh, thank you, sir, thank you. Now I'll answer any questions you like.”

“Well, then, I hear this outrage was preceded by several letters. Could
I see them?”

“Certainly. I carry mine always in my pocket, for fear my poor mother
should see them: and, Mr. Bayne, you have got Cheetham's.”

In another minute the whole correspondence was on the table, and Mr.
Holdfast laid it out in order, like a map, and went through it, taking
notes. “What a comedy,” said he. “All but the denouement. Now, Mr.
Bayne, can any other manufacturers show me a correspondence of this
kind?”

“Is there one that can't? There isn't a power-wheel, or a water-wheel,
within eight miles of Hillsborough, that can't show you just such a
correspondence as this; and rattening, or worse, at the tail of it.”

Mr. Holdfast's eye sparkled like a diamond. “I'll make the round,” said
he. “And, Mr. Little, perhaps you will be kind enough to go with me,
and let me question you, on the road. I have no sub-editor; no staff;
I carry the whole journal on my head. Every day is a hard race between
Time and me, and not a minute to spare.”

Mr. Cheetham was expected at the works this afternoon: so Henry, on
leaving Mr. Holdfast, returned to them, and found him there with Bayne,
looking, disconsolately, over a dozen orders for carving-tools.

“Glad to see you again, my lad,” said Cheetham. “Why, you look all the
better.”

“I'm none the worse, sir.”

“Come to take your balance and leave me?” This was said half
plaintively, half crossly.

“If you wish it, sir.”

“Not I. How is it to be?”

“Well, sir, I say to you what you said to me the other day, Stick to me,
and I'll stick to you.”

“I'll stick to you.”

Bayne held up his hands piteously to them both.

“What sir?” faltered he, turning to Cheetham, “after all your
experience!” then to Henry, “What, fight the Trades, after the lesson
they have given you?”

“I'll fight them all the more for that,” said Henry, grinding his teeth;
“fight them till all is blue.”

“So will I. That for the Trades!”

“Heaven help you both!” groaned Bayne, and looked the picture of
despair.

“You promised me shutters, with a detonator, sir.”

“Ay, but you objected.”

“That was before they blew me up.”

“Just so. Shutters shall be hung to-morrow; and the detonators I'll fix
myself.”

“Thank you, sir. Would you mind engaging a watchman?”

“Hum? Not--if you will share the expense.”

“I'll pay one-third.”

“Why should I pay two thirds? It is not like shutters and Bramah locks:
they are property. However, he'll be good against rattening; and you
have lost a fortnight, and there are a good many orders. Give me a good
day's work, and we won't quarrel over the watchman.” He then inquired,
rather nervously, whether there was anything more.

“No, sir: we are agreed. And I'll give you good work, and full time.”


The die was cast, and now he must go home and face his mother. For the
first time this many years he was half afraid to go near her. He dreaded
remonstrances and tears: tears that he could not dry; remonstrances that
would worry him, but could not shake him.

This young man, who had just screwed his physical courage up to defy the
redoubtable Unions had a fit of moral cowardice, and was so reluctant to
encounter the gentlest woman in England, that he dined at a chop-house,
and then sauntered into a music hall, and did not get home till past
ten, meaning to say a few kind, hurried words, then yawn, and slip to
bed.

But, meantime, Mrs. Little's mind had not been idle. She had long
divined a young rival in her son's heart, and many a little pang of
jealousy had traversed her own. This morning, with a quickness which may
seem remarkable to those who have not observed the watchful keenness
of maternal love, she had seen that her rival had worked upon Henry to
resign his declared intention of leaving Hillsborough. Then she felt her
way, and, in a moment, she had found the younger woman was the stronger.

She assumed as a matter of course, that this girl was in love with Henry
(who would not be in love with him?), and had hung, weeping, round his
neck, when he called from Cairnhope to bid her farewell, and had made
him promise to stay. This was the mother's theory; wrong, but rational.

Then came the question, What should she do? Fight against youth and
nature? Fight, unlikely to succeed, sure to irritate and disturb. Risk
any of that rare affection and confidence her son had always given her?

While her thoughts ran this way, seven o'clock came, and no Henry. Eight
o'clock, and no Henry. “Ah!” thought the mother, “that one word of mine
has had this effect already.”

She prepared an exquisite little supper. She made her own toilet with
particular care; and, when all was ready, she sat down and comforted
herself by reading his letters, and comparing his love with the cavalier
behavior of so many sons in this island, the most unfilial country in
Europe.

At half past ten Henry came up the stairs, not with the usual light
elastic tread, but with slow, hesitating foot. Her quick ear caught
that too, and her gentle bosom yearned. What, had she frightened him? He
opened the door, and she rose to receive him all smiles. “You are rather
late, dear,” she said; “but all the better. It has given me an excuse
for reading your dear letters all over again; and I have a thousand
questions to ask you about Cairnhope. But sit down first, and have your
supper.”

Henry brightened up, and ate a good supper, and his mother plied him
with questions, all about Cairnhope.

Here was an unexpected relief. Henry took a superficial view of all
this. Sharp young men of twenty-four understand a great many things; but
they can't quite measure their mothers yet.

Henry was selfishly pleased, but not ungrateful, and they passed a
pleasant and affectionate time: and, as for leaving Hillsborough, the
topic was avoided by tacit consent.

Next morning, after this easy victory, Henry took a cab and got to
“Woodbine Villa” by a circuitous route. His heart beat high as he
entered the room where Grace was seated. After the extraordinary warmth
and familiarity she had shown him at the last interview, he took for
granted he had made a lasting progress in her regard.

But she received him with a cold and distant manner, that quite benumbed
him. Grace Carden's face and manner were so much more expressive than
other people's, that you would never mistake or doubt the mood she was
in; and this morning she was freezing.

The fact is, Miss Carden had been tormenting herself: and when beauty
suffers, it is very apt to make others suffer as well.

“I am glad you are come, Mr. Little,” said she, “for I have been taking
myself to task ever since, and I blame myself very much for some things
I said. In the first place, it was not for me” (here the fair speaker
colored up to the temples) “to interfere in your affairs at all:
and then, if I must take such a liberty, I ought to have advised you
sensibly, and for your good. I have been asking people, and they all
tell me it is madness for one person to fight against these Unions.
Everybody gets crushed. So now let me hope you will carry out your wise
intention, and leave Hillsborough; and then my conscience will be at
ease.”

Every word fell like an icicle on her hearer's heart. To please this
cold, changeful creature, he had settled to defy the unchangeable
Unions, and had been ready to resist his mother, and slight her immortal
and unchanging love.

“You don't answer me, sir!” said Miss Carden, with an air of lofty
surprise.

“I answered you yesterday,” said he sullenly. “A man can't chop and
change like a weathercock.”

“But it is not changing, it's only going back to your own intention.
You know you were going to leave Hillsborough, before I talked all that
nonsense. Your story had set me on fire, and that's my only excuse.
Well, now, the same person takes the liberty to give you wise and
considerate advice, instead of hot, and hasty, romantic nonsense. Which
ought you to respect most--folly or reason--from the same lips?”

Henry seemed to reflect. “That sounds reasonable,” said he: “but, when
you advised me not to show the white feather, you spoke your heart; now,
you are only talking from your head. Then, your beautiful eyes flashed
fire, and your soul was in your words: who could resist them? And you
spoke to me like a friend; now you speak to me like an enemy.”

“Oh, Mr. Little, that is ridiculous.”

“You do, though. And I'm sure I don't know why.”

“Nor I. Perhaps because I am cross with myself; certainly not with you.”

“I am glad of that. Well, then, the long and the short is, you showed me
you thought it cowardly to fly from the Trades. You wouldn't, said you,
if you were a man. Well, I'm a man; and I'll do as you would do in my
place. I'll not throw my life away, I'll meet craft with craft, and
force with force; but fly I never will. I'll fight while I've a leg to
stand on.”

With these words he began to work on the bust, in a quiet dogged way
that was, nevertheless, sufficiently expressive.

Grace looked at him silently for half a minute, and then rose from her
chair.

“Then,” said she, “I must go for somebody of more authority than I am.”
 She sailed out of the room.

Henry asked Jael who she was gone for.

“It will be her papa,” said Jael.

“As if I care for what he says.”

“I wouldn't show HER that, if I was you,” said Jael, quietly, but with a
good deal of weight.

“You are right,” said Henry. “You are a good girl. I don't know which
is the best, you or Martha. I say, I promised to go to Cairnhope some
Sunday, and see them all. Shall I drive you over?”

“And bring me back at night?”

“If you like. I must come back.”

“I'll ask Miss Carden.”

The words were quiet and composed, but the blushing face beamed with
unreasonable happiness; and Grace, who entered at that moment with her
father, was quite struck with its eloquence; she half started, but
took no further notice just then. “There, papa,” said she, “this is Mr.
Little.”


Mr. Carden was a tall gentleman, with somewhat iron features, but a fine
head of gray hair; rather an imposing personage; not the least
pompous though; quite a man of the world, and took a business view of
everything, matrimony, of course, included.

“Oh, this is Mr. Little, is it, whose work we all admire so much?”

“Yes, papa.”

“And whose adventure has made so much noise?”

“Yes, papa.”

“By-the-bye, there is an article to-day on you: have you seen it? No?
But you should see it; it is very smart. My dear” (to Jael), “will you
go to my study, and bring the Liberal here?”

“Yes, but meantime, I want you to advise him not to subject himself
to more gunpowder and things, but to leave the town; that is all the
wretches demand.”

“And that,” said Henry, with a sly, deferential tone, “is a good deal to
demand in a free country, is it not, sir?”

“Indeed it is. Ah, here comes the Liberal. Somebody read the article to
us, while he works. I want to see how he does it.”

Curiosity overpowered Grace's impatience, for a moment, and she read the
notice out with undisguised interest.


“'THE LAST OUTRAGE.

“'In our first remarks upon this matter, we merely laid down an
alternative which admits of no dispute; and, abstaining from idle
conjectures, undertook to collect evidence. We have now had an interview
with the victim of that abominable outrage. Mr.---- is one of those
superior workmen who embellish that class for a few years, but
invariably rise above it, and leave it' (there--Mr. Little!)--'He has
informed us that he is a stranger in Hillsborough, lives retired, never
sits down in a public-house, and has not a single enemy in Hillsborough,
great or small. He says that his life was saved by his fellow-workmen,
and that as he lay scorched--'(Oh, dear!')

“Well, go on, Grace.”

“It is all very well to say go on, papa--'scorched and bleeding on the
ground and unable to distinguish faces' (poor, poor Mr. Little!) 'he
heard, on all sides of him, expressions of rugged sympathy and sobs, and
tears, from rough, but--manly fellows, who--'(oh! oh! oh!”)

Grace could not go on for whimpering, and Jael cried, for company. Henry
left off carving, and turned away his head, touched to the heart by this
sweet and sudden sympathy.

“How badly you read,” said Mr. Carden, and took the journal from her.
He read in a loud business-like monotone, that, like some blessed balm,
dried every tear. “'Manly fellows who never shed a tear before: this
disposed of one alternative, and narrowed the inquiry. It was not a
personal feud; therefore it was a Trade outrage, or it was nothing. We
now took evidence bearing on the inquiry thus narrowed; and we found the
assault had been preceded by a great many letters, all of them breathing
the spirit of Unionism, and none of them intimating a private wrong.
These letters, taken in connection, are a literary curiosity; and we
find there is scarcely a manufacturer in the place who has not endured
a similar correspondence, and violence at the end of it. This curious
chapter of the human mind really deserves a separate heading, and we
introduce it to our readers as

“THE LITERATURE OF OUTRAGE.”

“'First of all comes a letter to the master intimating that he is doing
something objectionable to some one of the many Unions that go to make
a single implement of hardware. This letter has three features. It is
signed with a real name. It is polite. It is grammatical.

“'If disregarded, it is speedily followed by another. No. 2 is
grammatical, or thereabouts; but, under a feigned politeness, the
insolence of a vulgar mind shows itself pretty plainly, and the master
is reminded what he suffered on some former occasion when he rebelled
against the trades. This letter is sometimes anonymous, generally
pseudonymous.

“'If this reminder of the past and intimation of the future is
disregarded, the refractory master gets a missive, which begins with
an affectation of coarse familiarity, and then rises, with a ludicrous
bound, into brutal and contemptuous insolence. In this letter, grammar
is flung to the winds, along with good manners; but spelling survives,
by a miracle. Next comes a short letter, full of sanguinary threats, and
written in, what we beg leave to christen, the Dash dialect, because,
though used by at least three million people in England, and three
thousand in Hillsborough, it can only be printed with blanks, the
reason being simply this, that every sentence is measled with oaths and
indecencies. These letters are also written phonetically, and, as the
pronunciation, which directs the spelling, is all wrong, the double
result is prodigious. Nevertheless, many of these pronunciations are
ancient, and were once universal. An antiquarian friend assures us the
orthography of these blackguards, the scum of the nineteenth century, is
wonderfully like that of a mediaeval monk or baron.

“'When the correspondence has once descended to the Dash dialect,
written phonetically, it never remounts toward grammar, spelling
or civilization; and the next in the business is rattening, or else
beating, or shooting, or blowing-up the obnoxious individual by himself,
or along with a houseful of people quite strange to the quarrel. Now, it
is manifest to common sense, that all this is one piece of mosaic, and
that the criminal act it all ends in is no more to be disconnected from
the last letter, than the last letter from its predecessor, or letter
three from letter two. Here is a crime first gently foreshadowed, then
grimly intimated, then directly threatened, then threatened in words
that smell of blood and gunpowder, and then--done. The correspondence
and the act reveal--

“The various talents, but the single mind.”

“'In face of this evidence, furnished by themselves, the trades Unions,
some member of which has committed this crime, will do well to drop the
worn-out farce of offering a trumpery reward and to take a direct and
manly course. They ought to accept Mr.----'s preposterously liberal
offer, and admit him to the two Unions, and thereby disown the criminal
act in the form most consolatory to the sufferer: or else they should
face the situation, and say, “This act was done under our banner, though
not by our order, and we stand by it.” The Liberal will continue to
watch the case.'”


“This will be a pill,” said Mr. Carden, laying down the paper. “Why,
they call the Liberal the workman's advocate.”

“Yes, papa,” said Grace; “but how plainly he shows--But Mr. Little is a
stranger, and even this terrible lesson has not--So do pray advise him.”

“I shall be very happy; but, when you are my age, you will know it is of
little use intruding advice upon people.”

“Oh, Mr. Little will treat it with proper respect, coming from one so
much older than himself, and better acquainted with this wretched town.
Will you not, Mr. Little?” said she, with so cunning a sweetness that
the young fellow was entrapped, and assented, before he knew what he was
about; then colored high at finding himself committed.

Mr. Carden reflected a moment. He then said, “I can't take upon myself
to tell any man to give up his livelihood. But one piece of advice I can
conscientiously give Mr. Little.”

“Yes, papa.”

“And that is--TO INSURE HIS LIFE.”

“Oh, papa!” cried Grace.

As for Henry he was rather amused, and his lip curled satirically. But
the next moment he happened to catch sight of Jael Dence's face; her
gray eyes were expanded with a look of uneasiness; and, directly she
caught his eye she fixed it, and made him a quick movement of the head,
directing him to assent.

There was something so clear and decided in the girl's manner that it
overpowered Henry who had no very clear idea to oppose to it, and he
actually obeyed the nod of this girl, whom he had hitherto looked on as
an amiable simpleton.

“I have no objection to that,” said he, turning to Mr. Carden. Then,
after another look at Jael, he said, demurely, “Is there any insurance
office you could recommend?”

Mr. Carden smiled. “There is only one I have a right to recommend, and
that is the 'Gosshawk.' I am a director. But,” said he, with sudden
stiffness, “I could furnish you with the names of many others.”

Henry saw his way clear by this time. “No, sir, if I profit by your
advice, the least I can do is to choose the one you are a director of.”

Grace, who had latterly betrayed uneasiness and irritation, now rose,
red as fire. “The conversation is taking a turn I did not at all
intend,” said she, and swept out of the room with royal disdain.

Her father apologized carelessly for her tragical exit. “That is a
young lady who detests business; but she does not object to its
fruits--dresses, lace, footmen, diamonds, and a carriage to drive about
in. On the contrary, she would be miserable without them.”

“I should hope she never will be without them, sir.”

“I'll take care of that.”

Mr. Carden said this rather dryly, and then retired for a minute; and
Grace who was not far off, with an ear like a hare, came back soon
after.

But in the meantime Henry left his seat and went to Jael, and, leaning
over her as she worked, said, “There is more in that head of yours than
I thought.”

“Oh, they all talk before me,” said Jael, blushing faintly, and avoiding
his eye.

“Jael Dence,” said the young man, warmly, “I'm truly obliged to you.”

“What for?”

“For your good advice. I didn't see how good it was till after I had
taken it.”

“I'm afeard Miss Grace gave you better.”

“She advised me against my heart. What is the use of that?”

“Ay, young men are willful.”

“Come, come, don't you go back. You are my friend and counselor.”

“That is something,” said Jael, in a low voice; and her hands trembled
at her side.

“Why, my dear girl, what's the matter?”

“Hush! hush?”




CHAPTER VIII.


Grace came in, that moment, with a superb air. She settled herself on
the sofa.

“Now, it is my turn, if you please. Pray, sir, do you think your life
will be any safer for your insuring it? Insuring does not mean that
you are not to be killed; but that, when you ARE, for your obstinacy,
somebody else will get paid some money, to dance with over your grave.”

“I beg your pardon, Grace,” said Mr. Carden, entering with some printed
papers in his hand. “That is not the only use of an insurance. He may
want to marry, or to borrow a sum of money to begin business; and then
a policy of insurance, with two or three premiums paid, smooths the
difficulty. Everybody should make a will, and everybody should insure
his life.”

“Well then, sir, I will do both.”

“Stop!” said Mr. Carden, who could now afford to be candid. “First of
all, you ought to satisfy yourself of the flourishing condition of the
company.” He handed him a prospectus. “This will show you our capital,
and our disbursements last year, and the balance of profit declared. And
this gives the balance sheet of the 'Vulture' and the 'Falcon,' which
have assigned their business to us, and are now incorporated in the
'Gosshawk.'”

“Oh, what a voracious bird!” observed Grace. “I hope these other
chickabiddies will not prove indigestible. Were they plucked first,
papa? or did the 'Gosshawk' swallow them feathers and all?”

Little laughed heartily at this pert sally, but Mr. Carden winced under
it.

Then Grace saw she was not quite weaponless, and added, “After such a
meal, as that, Mr. Little, you will go down like a crumb.”

“Grace, that is enough,” said Mr. Carden, rather severely.

Grace held her tongue directly, and the water came into her eyes.
Anything like serious remonstrance was a novelty to her.

When Henry had read the papers, Mr. Carden asked him, rather carelessly,
what sum he wished to be insured for.

Now Henry had so little wish about the matter, that he had not given it
a thought, and the question took him quite aback. He looked helplessly
at Jael. To his surprise, she decided on the sum for him, without a
moment's hesitation, and conveyed the figure with that dexterity which
the simplest of her sex can command whenever telegraphy is wanted. She
did it with two unbroken movements; she put up all the fingers of her
right hand to her brow, and that meant five: then she turned her hand
rapidly, so as to hide her mouth from the others, who were both on her
right hand, and she made the word thousand clear, with her lips and
tongue, especially the “th.”

But the sum staggered Henry; and made him think he must be
misinterpreting her.

He hesitated, to gain time. “Hum!” said he, “the sum?”

Jael repeated her pantomime as before.

Still Henry doubted, and, to feel his way, said, half interrogatively,
“Five--thou--sand?”

Jael nodded.

“Five thousand pounds,” said Henry, as bold as brass.

“Five thousand pounds!” cried Mr. Carden. “A workman insure his life for
five thousand pounds!”

“Well, a man's life is worth five thousand pounds, or it is worth
nothing. And, sir, how long do you think I shall be a workman,
especially in Hillsborough, where from workman to master is no more than
hopping across a gutter?”

Mr. Carden smiled approval. “But five thousand pounds! The annual
premium will be considerable. May I ask about how much you make a year?”

“Oh, papa!”

“Well, sir, Mr. Cheetham pays me L300 a year, at the rate of, and I can
make another L100 by carving at odd times. But, if you doubt my ability,
let us stay as we are, sir. It was your proposal, not mine, you know.”

“Young man,” said Mr. Carden, “never be peppery in business.” He
said this so solemnly and paternally, it sounded like the eleventh
commandment.

To conclude, it was arranged Henry should take the higher class of
insurance, which provided for accidents, voyages, everything, and should
be insured for L5000, provided the physician appointed by the company
should pronounce him free from disease.

Henry then rose, and said, sorrowfully, to Grace, “You will not see me
here very often now; and never on Saturday afternoon or Monday morning.
I am not going to have some blackguard tracking me, and flinging a
can of gunpowder in at your window. When I do come, it will be in the
morning, and on a working day; and I shall perhaps go ten miles round
to get here. It must be diamond cut diamond, for many a month to come,
between the Trades and me.” He uttered these words with manly gravity,
as one who did not underrate the peril he was resolved to face; and left
them with a respectful bow.

“That's a rising man,” said Mr. Carden; “and may draw a hundred of his
class to the 'Gosshawk.' It was a good stroke of business, quite out of
the common.”

Grace said not a word, but she shook her head and looked pained and ill
at ease. Jael watched her fixedly.

Henry called at the works that night, and examined the new defenses,
with Mr. Cheetham. He also bought a powerful magnifying-glass; and next
morning he came to the factory, examined the cinders, and everything
else, with the magnifier, lighted his forge, and resumed his work.

At dinner-time he went out and had his chop, and read the Liberal; it
contained a letter from Jobson, in reply to the editor.

Jobson deplored the criminal act, admitted that the two Unions had
decided no individual could be a forger, a handler, and a cutler; such
an example was subversive of all the Unions in the city, based, as they
were, on subdivision of crafts. “But,” said Mr Jobson, “we were dealing
with the matter in a spirit quite inconsistent with outrages, and I
am so anxious to convince the public of this, that I have asked a
very experienced gentleman to examine our minute-books, and report
accordingly.”

This letter was supplemented by one from Mr. Grotait, secretary of the
Saw-Grinders, which ran thus:--“Messrs. Parkin and Jobson have appealed
to me to testify to certain facts. I was very reluctant to interfere,
for obvious reasons; but was, at last, prevailed on to examine the
minute-books of those two Unions, and they certainly do prove that on
the very evening before the explosion, those trades had fully discussed
Mr. ----'s case” (the real name was put, but altered by the editor),
“and had disposed of it as follows. They agreed, and this is entered
accordingly, to offer him his traveling expenses (first class) to
London, and one pound per week, from their funds, until such time as he
should obtain employment. I will only add, that both these secretaries
spoke kindly to me of Mr. ----; and, believing them to be sincere, I
ventured to advise them to mark their disapproval of the criminal act,
by offering him two pounds per week, instead of one pound; which advice
they have accepted very readily.”

Henry was utterly confounded by these letters.

Holdfast commented on them thus:

“Messrs. Jobson and Parkin virtually say that if A, for certain reasons,
pushes a man violently out of Hillsborough, and B draws him gently
out of Hillsborough for the same reasons, A and B can not possibly be
co-operating. Messrs. Parkin and Jobson had so little confidence in
this argument, which is equivalent to saying there is no such thing as
cunning in trade, that they employed a third party to advance it with
all the weight of his popularity and seeming impartiality. But who is
this candid person that objects to assume the judge, and assumes the
judge? He is the treasurer and secretary of an Union that does not
number three hundred persons; yet in that small Union, of which he
is dictator, there has been as much rattening, and more shooting, and
blowing-up wholesale and retail, with the farcical accompaniment of
public repudiation, than in all the other Unions put together. We
consider the entrance of this ingenuous personage on the scene a bad
omen, and shall watch all future proceedings with increased suspicion.”

Henry had hardly done reading this, when a man came into the works,
and brought him his fifteen pounds back from Mr. Jobson, and a line,
offering him his expenses to London, and two pounds per week, from the
Edge-Tool Forgers' box, till he should find employment. Henry took his
money, and sent back word that the proposal came too late; after the
dastardly attempt to assassinate him, he should defy the Unions, until
they accepted his terms. Jobson made no reply. And Henry defied the
Unions.

The Unions lay still, like some great fish at the bottom of a pool, and
gave no sign of life or animosity. This did not lull Henry into a false
security. He never relaxed a single precaution. He avoided “Woodbine
Villa;” he dodged and doubled like a hare, to hide his own abode. But he
forged, handled, and finished, in spite of the Unions.

The men were civil to him in the yard, and he had it all his own way,
apparently.

He was examined by a surgeon, and reported healthy. He paid the
insurance premium, and obtained the policy. So now he felt secure, under
the aegis of the Press, and the wing of the “Gosshawk.” By-and-by, that
great fish I have mentioned gave a turn of its tail, and made his placid
waters bubble a little.

A woman came into the yard, with a can of tea for her husband, and a
full apron. As she went out, she emptied a set of tools out of her apron
on to an old grindstone, and slipped out.

The news of this soon traveled into the office, and both Cheetham and
Bayne came out to look at them.

They were a set of carving-tools, well made, and highly polished; and
there was a scrap of paper with this distich:

     “We are Hillsborough made,
     Both haft and blade.”

Cheetham examined them, and said, “Well, they are clever fellows. I
declare these come very near Little's: call him down and let us draw
him.”

Bayne called to Henry, and that brought him down, and several more, who
winded something.

“Just look at these,” said Cheetham.

Little colored: he saw the finger of the Unions at once, and bristled
all over with caution and hostility.

“I see them, sir. They are very fair specimens of cutlery; and there are
only about twenty tools wanting to make a complete set; but there is one
defect in them as carving-tools.”

“What is that?”

“They are useless. You can't carve wood with them. None but a practical
carver can design these tools, and then he must invent and make the
steel molds first. Try and sell them in London or Paris, you'll soon
find the difference. Mr. Bayne, I wonder you should call me from
my forge to examine 'prentice-work.” And, with this, he walked off
disdainfully, but not quite easy in his mind, for he had noticed a
greedy twinkle in Cheetham's eye.

The next day all the grinders in Mr. Cheetham's employ, except the
scissors-grinders, rose, all of a sudden, like a flock of partridges,
and went out into the road.

“What is up now?” inquired Bayne. The answer was, their secretaries had
sent for them.

They buzzed in the road, for a few minutes, and then came back to work.

At night there was a great meeting at the “Cutlers' Arms,” kept by Mr.
Grotait.

At noon the next day, all the grinders aforesaid in Mr. Cheetham's
employ walked into the office, and left, each of them, a signed paper to
this effect:

“This is to give you notice that I will leave your service a week after
the date thereof.” (Meaning “hereof,” I presume.)

Cheetham asked several of them what was up. Some replied civilly, it was
a trade matter. Others suggested Mr. Cheetham knew as much about it as
they did.

Not a single hot or uncivil word was spoken on either side. The game had
been played too often for that, and with results too various.

One or two even expressed a sort of dogged regret. The grinder Reynolds,
a very honest fellow, admitted, to Mr. Cheetham, that he thought it
a sorry trick, for a hundred men to strike against one that had had a
squeak for his life. “But no matter what I think or what I say, I must
do what the Union bids me, sir.”

“I know that, my poor fellow,” said Cheetham. “I quarrel with none of
you. I fight you all. The other masters, in this town, are mice, but I'm
a man.”

This sentiment he repeated very often during the next six days.

The seventh came and the grinders never entered the works.

Cheetham looked grave. However, he said to Bayne, “Go and find out where
they are. Do it cleverly now. Don't be noticed.”

Bayne soon ascertained they were all in the neighboring public-houses.

“I thought so,” said Cheetham. “They will come in, before night. They
sha'n't beat me, the vagabonds. I'm a man, I'm not a mouse.”

“Orders pouring in, sir,” sighed Bayne. “And the grinders are rather
behind the others in their work already.”

“They must have known that: or why draw out the grinders? How could they
know it?”

“Sir,” said Bayne, “they say old Smitem is in this one. Wherever he is,
the master's business is known, or guessed, heaven knows how; and,
if there is a hole in his coat, that hole is hit. Just look at the
cleverness of it, sir. Here we are, wrong with the forgers and handlers.
Yet they come into the works and take their day's wages. But they draw
out the grinders, and mutilate the business. They hurt you as much as if
they struck, and lost their wages. But no, they want their wages to help
pay the grinders on strike. Your only chance was to discharge every man
in the works, the moment the grinders gave notice.”

“Why didn't you tell me so, then?”

“Because I'm not old Smitem. He can see a thing beforehand. I can see it
afterward. I'm like the weatherwise man's pupil; as good as my master,
give me time. The master could tell you, at sunrise, whether the day
would be wet or dry, and the pupil he could tell you at sunset: and that
is just the odds between old Smitem and me.”

“Well, if he is old Smitem, I'm old Fightem.”

At night, he told Bayne he had private information, that the grinders
were grumbling at being made a cat's-paw of by the forgers and the
handlers. “Hold on,” said he; “they will break up before morning.”

At ten o'clock next day he came down to the works, and some peremptory
orders had poured in. “They must wait,” said he,

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