THE BEASTS OF THE VILLAGE.—ABEL SICKENS.—THE GOOD SHEPHERD.—RUFUS PLAYS THE PHILANTHROPIST.—MASTER SWIFT SEES THE SUN RISE.—THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

Amid the havoc made by the fever amongst men, women, and children, the immunity of the beasts and birds had a sad strangeness.

There was a small herd of pigs which changed hands three times in ten days.  The last purchaser hesitated, and was only induced by the cheapness of the bargain to suppress a feeling that they brought ill-luck.  Cats mewed wistfully about desolated hearths.  One dog moaned near the big grave in which his master lay, and others, with sad sagacious eyes, went to look for new friends and homes.

It was a day or two after the burial of the miller’s three children, that, as Jan sat at dinner with Abel and his two parents, he was struck by the way in which the mill cats hung about Abel, purring and rubbing themselves against his legs.

“I do think they misses the others,” he whispered to his foster-brother, and his tears fell thick and fast on to his plate.

Abel made no answer.  He did not wish Jan to know that he had given all his food by bits to the cats, because he could not swallow it himself.  But, later in the day, Jan found him in the round-house, lying on an empty sack, with his head against a full one.

“Don’t ’ee tell mother,” he said; “but I do feel bad.”

And as Jan sat down, and put his arms about him, on the very spot where they had so often sat together, learning the alphabet and educating their thumbs, Abel laid his head on his foster-brother’s shoulder, saying,—

“I do think, Janny dear, that Mary, she wants me, and the others too.  I think I be going after them.  But thee’ll look to mother, Janny dear, eh?”

“But I want thee, too, Abel dear,” sobbed Jan.

“I be thinking perhaps them that brought thee hither’ll fetch thee away some day, Jan.  But thee’ll see to mother?” repeated Abel, his eyes wandering restlessly with a look of pain.

Jan knew now that he was only an adopted child of the windmill, though he stoutly ignored the fact, being very fond of his foster-parents.

Abel’s illness came with the force of a fresh blow.  There had been a slight pause in the course of the fever at the mill, and it seemed as if these two boys were to be spared.  Abel had been busy helping his father to burn the infected bedding, etc., that very morning, and at night he lay raving.

He raved of Jan’s picture which swung unheeded above Master Chuter’s door, and confused it with some church-window that he seemed to fancy Jan had painted; then of his dead brothers and sisters.  And then from time to time he rambled about a great flock of sheep which he saw covering the vast plains about the windmill, and which he wearied himself in trying to count.  And, as he tossed, he complained in piteous tones about some man who seemed to be the shepherd, and who would not do something that Abel wanted.

For the most part, he knew no one but Jan, and then only when Jan touched him.  It seemed to give him pleasure.  He understood nothing that was said to him, except in brief intervals.  Once, after a short sleep, he opened his eyes and recognized the schoolmaster.

“Master Swift,” said he, “do ’ee think that be our Lord among them sheep?  With His hair falling on’s shoulders, and the light round His head, and the long frock?”

Master Swift’s eyes turned involuntarily in the direction in which Abel’s were gazing.  He saw nothing but the dark corners of the dwelling-room; but he said,—

“Ay, ay, Abel, my lad.”

“What be His frock all red for, then?  Bright red, like blood.  ’Tis like them figures in—in”—

Here Abel wandered again, and only muttered to himself.  But when Jan crept near to him, and touching him said, “The figures in the window, Abel dear,” he opened his eyes and said,—

“So it be, Janny.  With the sun shining through ’em.  Thee knows.”

And then he wailed fretfully,—

“Why do He keep His back to me all along?  I follows Him up and down, all over, till I be tired.  Why don’t He turn His face?”

Jan was speechless from tears, but the old schoolmaster took Abel’s hot hand in his, and said, with infinite tenderness,—

“He will, my lad.  He’ll turn His face to thee very soon.  Wait for Him, Abel.”

“Do ’ee think so?” said Abel.  And after a while he muttered, “You be the schoolmaster, and ought to know.”

And, seemingly satisfied, he dozed once more.

Master Swift hurried away.  He had business in the village, and he wanted to catch the doctor, and ask his opinion of Abel’s case.

“Will be get round, sir?” he asked.

The doctor shook his head, and Master Swift felt a double pang.  He was sorry about Abel, but the real object of his anxiety was Jan.  Once he had hoped the danger was past, but the pestilence seemed still in full strength at the windmill, and the agonizing conviction strengthened in his mind that once more his hopes were to be disappointed, and the desire of his eyes was to be snatched away.  The doctor thought that he was grieving for Abel, and said,—

“I’m just as sorry as yourself.  He’s a fine lad, with something angelic about the face, when ye separate it from its surroundings.  But they’ve no constitution in that family.  It’s just the want of strength in him, and not the strength of the fever, this time; for the virulence of the poison’s abating.  The cases are recovering now, except where other causes intervene.”

Master Swift felt almost ashamed of the bound in his spirits.  But the very words which shut out all hope of Abel’s recovery opened a possible door of escape for Jan.  He was not one of the family, and it was reasonable to hope that his constitution might be of sterner stuff.  He turned with a lighter heart into his cottage, where he purposed to get some food and then return to the mill.  There might be a lucid interval before the end, in which the pious Abel might find comfort from his lips; and if Jan sickened, he would nurse him night and day.

Rufus welcomed his master not merely with cordiality, but with fussiness.  The partly apologetic character of his greeting was accounted for when a half starved looking dog emerged from beneath the table, and, not being immediately kicked, wagged the point of its tail feebly, keeping at a respectful distance, whilst Rufus introduced it.

“So ye’re for playing the philanthropist, are ye?” said Master Swift.  “Ye’ve picked up one of these poor houseless, masterless creatures?  I’m not for undervaluing disinterested charity, Rufus, my man; but I wish ye’d had the luck to light on a better bred beast while ye were about it.”

It is, perhaps, no disadvantage to what we call “dumb animals” if they understand the general drift of our remarks without minutely following every word.  They have generally the sense, too, to leave well alone, and, without pressing the question of the new comer’s adoption, the two dogs curled themselves round, put their noses into their pockets, and went to sleep with an air of its being unnecessary to pursue the topic farther.

Master Swift shared his meal with them, and left them to keep house when he returned to the mill.

His quick eye, doubly quickened by experience and by anxiety, saw that Jan’s were full of fever, and his limbs languid.  But he would not quit Abel’s side, and Master Swift remained with the afflicted family.

Abel muttered deliriously all night, with short intervals of complete stupor.  The fever, like a fire, consumed his strength, and the fancy that he was toiling over the downs seemed to weary him as if he had really been on foot.  Just before sunrise, Master Swift left him asleep, and went to breathe some out-door air.

The fresh, tender light of early morning was over every thing.  The windmill stood up against the red-barred sky with outlines softened by the clinging dew.  The plains glistened, and across them, through the pure air, came the voice of Master Salter’s chanticleer from the distant farm.

It was such a contrast to the scene within that Master Swift burst into tears.  But even as he wept the sun leaped to the horizon, and, reflected from every dewdrop, and from the very tears upon the old man’s cheeks, flooded the world about him with its inimitable glory.

The schoolmaster uncovered his head, and kneeling upon the short grass prayed passionately for the dying boy.  But, as he knelt in the increasing sunshine, his prayers for the peace of the departing soul unconsciously passed almost into thanksgiving that so soon, and so little stained, it should exchange the dingy sick-room—not for these sweet summer days, which lose their sweetness!—but to taste, in peace which passeth understanding, what God has prepared for them that love Him.

It was whilst the schoolmaster still knelt outside the windmill that Abel awoke, and raised his eyes to Jan’s with a smile.

“Thee must go out a bit soon, Janny dear,” he whispered, “it be such a lovely day.”

Jan was too much pleased to hear him speak to wonder how he knew what kind of a day it was, and Abel lay with his head in Jan’s arms, breathing painfully and gazing before him.  Suddenly he raised himself, and cried,—so loudly that the old man outside heard the cry,—

“Janny dear!  He’ve turned his face to me.  He be coming right to me.  Oh!  He”—

But He had come.

JAN HAS THE FEVER.—CONVALESCENCE IN MASTER SWIFT’S COTTAGE.—THE SQUIRE ON DEMORALIZATION.

Jan took the fever.  He was very ill, too, partly from grief at Abel’s death.  He had also a not unnatural conviction that he would die, which was unfavorable to his recovery.

The day on which he gave Master Swift his old etching as a last bequest, he fairly infected him also with this belief, and during a necessary visit to the village the schoolmaster hung up the little picture in his cottage with a breaking heart.

But the next time Rufus saw him, he came to prepare for a visitor.  Jan was recovering, and Master Swift had persuaded the windmiller to let him come to the cottage for a few days, the rather that Mrs. Lake was going to stay with a relative whilst the windmill was thoroughly cleansed and disinfected.  The weather was delightful now, and, feeble as he had become, Jan soon grew strong again.  If he had not done so, it would have been from no lack of care on Master Swift’s part.  The old schoolmaster was a thrifty man, and had some money laid by, or he would have been somewhat pinched at this time.  As it was, he drew freely upon his savings for Jan’s benefit, and made many expeditions to the town to buy such delicacies as he thought might tempt his appetite.  Nor was this all.  The morning when Jan came languidly into the kitchen from the little inner room, where he and the schoolmaster slept, he saw his precious paint-box on the table, to fetch which Master Swift had been to the windmill.  And by it lay a square book with the word Sketch-book in ornamental characters on the binding, a couple of Cumberland lead drawing pencils, and a three-penny chunk of bottle India-rubber, delicious to smell.

If the schoolmaster had had any twinges of regret as he bought these things, in defiance of his principles for Jan’s education, they melted utterly away in view of his delight, and the glow that pleasure brought into his pale cheeks.  Master Swift was regarded, too, by a colored sketch of Rufus sitting at table in his arm-chair, with his more mongrel friend on the floor beside him.  It was the best sketch that Jan had yet accomplished.  But most people are familiar with the curious fact that one often makes an unaccountable stride in an art after it has been laid aside for a time.

It must not be supposed that Master Swift had neglected his duties in the village, or left the Parson, the Squire, and the doctor to struggle on alone, during the illness of Abel and of Jan.  Even now he was away from the cottage for the greater part of the day, and Jan was left to keep house with the dogs.  His presence gave great contentment to Rufus, if it scarcely lessened the melancholy dignity of his countenance; for dogs who live with human beings never like being left long alone.  And Jan, for his own part, could have wished for nothing better than to sit at the table where he had once hoped to make leaf-pictures, and paint away with materials that Rembrandt himself would not have disdained.

The pestilence had passed away.  But the labors of the Rector and his staff rather increased than diminished at this particular point.  To say nothing of those vile wretches who seem to spring out of such calamities as putrid matter breeds vermin, and who use them as opportunities for plunder, there were a good many people to be dealt with of a lighter shade of demoralization,—people who had really suffered, and whose daily work had been unavoidably stopped, but to whom idleness was so pleasant, and the fame of their misfortunes so gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes, on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as would place them in comfort.  Then that large class—the shiftless—was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in abundance, and there was hardly a bed or a blanket in the place.

“I have come,” said Mr. Ammaby, joining the Rector as he sat at breakfast, “to beg you, in the interests of the village, to check the flow of that fount of benevolence which springs eternal in the clerical pocket.  You will ruin us with your shillings and half crowns.”

“Bless my soul, Ammaby,” said the Rector, pausing with an eggshell transfixed upon his spoon, “shillings and half crowns don’t go far in the present condition of our households.  There are not ten families whose beds are not burnt.  What do you propose to do?”

“I’ll tell you, when I have first confessed that my ideas are not entirely original.  I have been studying political economy under that hard-headed Sandy, our friend the doctor.  In the first place, from to-morrow, we must cease to give any thing whatever, and both announce that determination and stick to it.”

“And then, my dear sir?” said the Rector, smiling; and nursing his black gaiter.

“And then, my dear sir,” said Mr. Ammaby, “I shall be able to get some men to do some work about my place, and those people at a distance who have widows here will relieve them (at least the widows will look up their well-to-do relatives), and the Church, in your person, will not be charged.  And some of the widows will consent to scrub for payment, instead of sitting weeping in your kitchen—also for payment.  They will, furthermore, compel their interesting sons to mind pigs, or scare birds, instead of hanging about the Heart of Oak, begging of the visitors who now begin to invade us.  Do you know that the very boys won’t settle to work, that the children are taking to gutter-life and begging, that the women won’t even tidy up their houses, and that the men are retailing the horrors of the fever in every alehouse in the county, instead of getting in the crops?  I give you my word, I had to go down to the inn yesterday, and a lad of eleven or twelve, who didn’t recognize me in Chuter’s dark kitchen, came up and began to beg with a whine that would have done credit to a professional mendicant.  I stood in the shadow and let him tell his whole story, of a widowed mother and three brothers and sisters living, and six dead; and when he’d finished, and two visitors were fumbling in their pockets, I took him by the collar and lifted him clean through the kitchen and down the yard into the street.  I nearly knocked Swift over, or rather I nearly fell myself, from concussion with his burly person, but he was the very man I wanted.  I said, ‘Mr. Swift, may I ask you to do me a favor?  This boy—whose father was a respectable man—has been begging—begging! in a public room.  His excuse is that his mother is starving.  Will you kindly take him to the Hall, and put him in charge of the gardener, with my strict orders that he is to do a good afternoon’s work at weeding in the shrubbery.  And that the gardener is to see that he comes every day at nine o’clock in the morning, and works there till four in the afternoon, till the day you reopen school, meal-times and Sundays excepted.  I will pay his mother five shillings a week, and, if he is a good boy, I’ll give him some old clothes.  And if ever you see or hear of his disgracing himself and his friends by begging again, if you don’t thrash him within an inch of his life, I shall.’  I promise you, the widow might starve for the want of that five shillings if the young gentleman could slip out of his bargain.  His face was a study.  But less so than the schoolmaster’s.  The job exactly suited him, and I suspect he knew the lad of old.”

“From what I’ve heard Swift say, I fancy he sympathizes with your theories,” said the Rector.

“I fear he sympathizes with my temper as well as my theories!” laughed the Squire.  “As I felt the flush on my own cheek-bone, I caught the fire in his eye.  But now, my dear sir, you will consent to some strong measures to prevent the village becoming a mere nest of lazzaroni?  Let us try the system at any rate.  I propose that we do not shut up the soup kitchen yet, but charge a small sum for the soup towards its expenses.  And I want to beg you to write another of those graphic and persuasive letters, in which you have appealed to the sympathy of the public with our misfortune.”

“But, bless me!” said the Rector, “I thought you were a foe to assisting the people, even out of their own parson’s pocket.”

“Well, I taunted the doctor myself with inconsistency, but we do not propose to make a sixpenny dole of the fund.  You know there are certain things they can’t do, and some help they seem fairly entitled to receive.  We’ve made them burn their bedding, in the interests of the public safety, and it’s only fair they should be helped to replace it.  Then there is a lot of sanitary work which can only be done by a fund for the purpose; and, if we get the money, we can employ idlers.  The women will tidy their houses when they see new blankets, and the sooner the churchyard is made nice, and that monument of yours erected, and we all get into orderly, respectable ways again, the better.”

“Enough, enough, my dear Ammaby!” cried the Rector; “I put myself in your hands, and I will see to the public appeal at once; though I may mention that the credit of those compositions chiefly belongs to old Swift.  He knows the data minutely, and he delights in the putting together.  I think he regards it as a species of literary work.  I hope you hear good news of Lady Louisa and little Amabel?”

“They are quite well, thank you,” said the Squire; “they are in town just now with Lady Craikshaw, who has gone up to consult her London doctor.”

“Well, farewell, Ammaby, for the present.  Tell the doctor I’ll give his plan a trial, and we’ll get the place into working order as fast as we can.”

“He will be charmed,” said the Squire.  “He says, as we are going on now, we are breeding two worse pests than the fever,—contentment under remediable discomfort, and a dislike to work.”

MR. FORD’S CLIENT.—THE HISTORY OF JAN’S FATHER—AMABEL AND BOGY THE SECOND.

Among the many sounds blended into that one which roared for ever round Mr. Ford’s offices in the city was the cry of the newsboys.

“Horful p’ticklers of the plague in a village in —shire!” they screamed under the windows.  Not that Mr. Ford heard them.  But in five minutes the noiseless door opened, and a clerk laid the morning paper on the table, and withdrew in silence.  Mr.  Ford cut it leisurely with a large ivory knife, and skimmed the news.  His eye happened to fall upon the Rector’s letter, which, after a short summary of the history of the fever, pointed out the objects for which help was immediately required.  There was a postscript.  To give some idea of the ravages of the epidemic, and as a proof that the calamity was not exaggerated, a list of some of the worst cases was given, with names and particulars.  It was gloomy enough.  “Mary Smith, lost her husband (a laborer) and six children between the second and the ninth of the month.  George Harness, a blacksmith, lost his wife and four children.  Master Abel Lake, windmiller of the Tower Mill, lost all his children, five in number, between the fifth and the fifteenth of the month.  His wife’s health is completely broken up”—

At this point Mr. Ford dropped the paper, and, unlocking a drawer beside him, referred to some memoranda, after which he cut out the Rector’s letter with a large pair of office scissors, and enclosed it in one which he wrote before proceeding to any other business.  He had underlined one name in the doleful list,—Abel Lake, windmiller.

Some hours later the silent clerk ushered in a visitor, one of Mr. Ford’s clients.  He was a gentleman of middle height and middle age,—the younger half of middle age, though his dark hair was prematurely gray.  His eyes were black and restless, and his manner at once haughty and nervous.

“I am very glad to see you, my dear sir,” said Mr. Ford, suavely; “I had just written you a note, the subject of which I can now speak about.”  And, as he spoke, Mr. Ford tore open the letter which lay beside him, whilst his client was saying, “We are only passing through town on our way to Scotland.  I shall be here two nights.”

“You remember instructing me that it was your wish to economize as much as possible during the minority of your son?” said Mr. Ford.  His client nodded.

“I think,” continued the man of business, “there is a quarterly payment we have been in the habit of making on your account, which is now at an end.”  And, as he spoke, he pushed the Rector’s letter across the table, with his fingers upon the name Abel Lake, windmiller.  His client always spoke stiffly, which made the effort with which he now spoke less noticed by the lawyer.  “I should like to be certain,” he said.  “I mean, that there is no exaggeration or mistake.”

“You have never communicated with the man, or given him any chance of pestering you,” said Mr. Ford.  “I should hardly do so now, I think.”

“I certainly kept the power of reopening communication in my own hands, knowing nothing of the man; but I should be sorry to discontinue the allowance under a—a mistake of any kind.”

Mr. Ford meditated.  It may be said here that he by no means knew all that the reader knows of Jan’s history; but he saw that his client was anxious not to withhold the money if the child were alive.

“I think I have it, my dear sir,” he said suddenly.  “Allow me to write, in my own name, to this worthy clergyman.  I must ask you to subscribe to his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the letter, and I will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been printed accurately, and has his sanction.  If there has been any error, we shall hear of it.  The object of the subscription is—let me see—is—a monument to those who have died of the fever and”—

But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.

“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford,” he said; “your plan is, as usual, excellent.  Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name, and you will let me know if—if there is any mistake.  I will call in to-morrow about other matters.”

And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.

The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was grateful to his present mood.  To have been alone with his thoughts in the country would have been intolerable.  The fields smack of innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple tints of right and wrong in the memory.  But in that seething mass, which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful shifts, and open sins, as bad or worse than a man’s own, there is a silent sympathy and no reproach.  Mr. Ford’s client did not lean back, the tension of his mind was too great.  He sat stiffly, and gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way through the streets.  Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle memories of his own boyhood flitted over it.  Then, crawling behind a dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present anxieties to sleep.  But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a grim, hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a nightmare.

As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man’s thoughts went faster too.  He strove to do what he had not often tried, to review his life.  He had unconsciously gained the will to do it, because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have pressed on him was now impossible, and because the plague that had desolated Abel Lake’s home had swept the skeleton out of his own cupboard, and he could repent of the past and do his duty in the future.  His conscience was stronger than his courage.  He had long wished to repent, though he had not found strength to repair.

On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his life.  He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of youth.  Is any period of human life so tormented with cares as a self-indulgent youth?  He had been a slave to expensive habits, to social traditions, to past follies, ever since he could remember.  He had been in debt, in pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy days to this hour.  His tradesmen were paid long since, and, if death had cancelled what else he owed, how easy virtue would henceforth be!

It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage.  He was deeply in debt, and out of favor with his father.  It was on both accounts that he went abroad for some months.  In Holland he married.  His wife was Jan’s mother, and Jan was their only child.

Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated lives.  Her mother was dead, and she was her old father’s only child.  It would be doing injustice to the kind of love with which she inspired her husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it was of that high type which takes possession of the memory for ever.  She was very intensely, brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her face shone out like a star.  Time never dimmed one golden thread in her hair; and Death, who had done so much for Mr. Ford’s client, could not wash that face from his brain.  It blotted the traffic out of the streets, and in their place Dutch pastures, whose rich green levels were unbroken by hedge or wall, stretched flatly to the horizon.  It bent over a drawing on his knee as he and she sat sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the trees bore more moss than fruit.  The din of London was absolutely unheard by Mr. Ford’s client, but he heard her voice, saying, “You must learn to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery.  And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study the sky.  We have no mountains, but we have clouds.”  It was in the orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had plighted their troth—ten years ago.

They were married.  Had he ever denied himself a single gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of his career?  He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications all his life.  His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man, not difficult to deceive.  He spent most of the next ten months in Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest time he had ever known.  Then his father recalled him peremptorily to England.

When Mr. Ford’s client obeyed his father’s summons, the climax of his difficulties seemed at hand.  The old man was anxious for a reconciliation, but resolved that his son should “settle in life;” and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young, handsome, and with a good fortune.  He gave him a fortnight for consideration.  If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent.  If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his death.

It was at this juncture that Jan’s mother followed her husband to England.  Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her father.  The crisis could hardly have been worse.  Mr. Ford’s client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily by letter when he reached London.  But before the letter was written, his wife died.

Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears.  It is like the cruelty that comes of terror.  He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free.  He took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his grandson—Jan.  But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford’s client.  On the same day he got letters from his father and from his father-in-law.  From the first, to press his instant return home; from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him.  Jan’s father almost hated him.  That the child should have lived when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence.  But that that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was irritating to a degree.  He was frantic.  It was impossible to fail that very peremptory old gentleman, his father.  It was out of the question to allow his father-in-law to come to England.  He could not throw away all his prospects.  And the more he thought of it, the more certain it seemed that Jan’s existence would for ever tie him to Holland; that for his grandson’s sake the old man would investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or later.  The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with Holland would have died away naturally.  He wished to forget.  To a nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively evaded like any other unpleasant thing.  He resolved, at last, to let nothing stand between him and reconciliation with his father.  Once more he must desperately mortgage the future for present emergencies.  He wrote to the old father-in-law to say that the child was dead.  He excused this to himself on the ground of Jan’s welfare.  If the truth became fully known, and his father threw him off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and could do little for his child.  But with his father’s fortune, and, perhaps, the Scotch lady’s fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan a brilliant future, even if he never fully acknowledged him.  As yet he hardly recognized such an unnatural possibility.  He said to himself, that when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and would be so well provided for.

Mr. Ford’s client was reconciled to his father.  He married Lady Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law.  After which, his intercourse with Holland died out.

It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very happy one.  Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and mental, between the second wife and the first.  Lady Adelaide was half Scotch and half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type, and of an intellectual order of beauty.  But fair women are common enough.  It was stranger still that the best affections of two women of so high a moral and intellectual standard should have been devoted to the same and to such a husband.  Not quite in vain.  Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford’s client would probably have become an utterly different man.  But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful, unrepented sin as a clog.  It was a miserable result of the weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of Lady Adelaide’s should have encouraged him to confess to her what he dared not trust to his father’s imperious, petulant affection.  But he was afraid of her.  It had been the same with his first wife.  He had dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he had feared his father-in-law.  And years of happy companionship made it even less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady Adelaide’s regard.

But there was a far more overwhelming consideration which had been gathering strength for eight years between him and the idea of recognizing Jan as his eldest son, and his heir.  He had another son, Lady Adelaide’s only child.  If he had hesitated when the boy was only a baby to tell her that her darling was not his only son, it was less and less easy to him to think of bringing Jan,—of whom he knew nothing—from the rough life of the mill to supplant Lady Adelaide’s child, when the boy grew more charming as every year went by.  Clever, sweet-tempered, of aristocratic appearance, idolized by the relatives of both his parents, he seemed made by Providence to do credit to the position to which he was believed to have been born.

Mr. Ford’s client had almost made the resolve against which that fair face that was not Lady Adelaide’s for ever rose up in judgment: he was just deciding to put Jan to school, and to give up all idea of taking him home, when death seemed once more to have solved his difficulties.  An unwonted ease came into his heart.  Surely Heaven, knowing how sincerely he wished to be good, was making goodness easy to him,—was permitting him to settle with his conscience on cheaper terms than those of repentance and restitution.  (And indeed, if amendment, of the weak as well as of the strong, be God’s great purpose for us, who shall say that the ruggedness of the narrow road is not often smoothed for stumbling feet?)  The fever seemed quite providential, and Mr. Ford’s client felt quite pious about it.  He was conscious of no mockery in dwelling to himself on the thought that Jan was “better off” in Paradise with his mother.  And he himself was safe—for the first time since he could remember,—free at last to become worthier, with no black shadow at his heels.  Very touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son than his own father had been to him.  If he could not train him in high principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent to the consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to those fearful straits.  “But he’ll be a very different young man from what I was,” was his final thought.  “Thanks to his good mother.”

His mind was full of Lady Adelaide’s goodness as he entered his house, and she met him in the hall.

“Ah, Edward!” she cried, “I am so glad you’ve come home.  I want you to see that quaint child I was telling you about.”

“I don’t remember, my dear,” said Mr. Ford’s client.

“You’re looking very tired,” said Lady Adelaide, gently; “but about the child.  It is Lady Louisa Ammaby’s little girl.  You know I met her just before we left Brighton.  I only saw the child once, but it is the quaintest, most original little being!  So unlike its mother!  She and her mother are in town, and they were going out to luncheon to-day I found, so I asked the child here to dine with D’Arcy.  Her bonne is taking off her things, and I must go and bring her down.”

As Lady Adelaide went out, her son came in, and rushed up to his father.  If Mr. Ford’s client had failed in natural affection for one son, his love for the other had a double intensity.  He put his arm tenderly round him, whilst the boy told some long childish story, which was not finished when Lady Adelaide returned, leading Amabel by the hand.  Amabel was a good deal taller.  Her large feet were adorned with ornamental thread socks, and leathern shoes buttoned round the ankle.  Her hair was cropped, because Lady Craikshaw said this made it grow.  She wore a big pinafore by the same authority, in spite of which she carried herself with an admirable dignity.  The same candor, good sense, and resolution shone from her clear eyes and fat cheeks as of old.  Mr. Ford’s client was alarming to children, but Amabel shook hands courageously with him.

She was accustomed to exercise courage in her behavior.  From her earliest days a standard of manners had been expected of her beyond her age.  It was a consequence of her growth.  “You’re quite a big girl now,” was a nursery reproach addressed to her at least two years before the time, and she tried valiantly to live up to her inches.

But when Amabel saw D’Arcy, she started and stopped short.  “Won’t you shake hands with my boy, Amabel?” said Lady Adelaide.  “Oh, you must make friends with him, and he’ll give you a ride on the rocking-horse after dinner.  Surely such a big girl can’t be shy?”

Goaded by the old reproach, Amabel made an effort, and, advancing by herself, held out her hand, and said, “How do you do, Bogy?”

D’Arcy’s black eyes twinkled with merriment.  “How do you do, Mother Bunch?” said he.

“My dear D’Arcy!” said Lady Adelaide, reproachfully.

“Mamma, I am not rude.  I am only joking.  She calls me Bogy, so I call her Mother Bunch.”

“But I’m not Mother Bunch,” said Amabel.

“And I’m not Bogy,” retorted D’Arcy.

“Yes, you are,” said Amabel.  “Only you had very old clothes on in the wood.”

Lady Craikshaw had cruelly warned Lady Adelaide that Amabel sometimes told stories, and, thinking that the child was romancing, Lady Adelaide tried to change the subject.  But D’Arcy cried, “Oh, do let her talk, mamma.  I do so like her.  She is such fun!”

“You oughtn’t to laugh at me,” said poor Amabel, as D’Arcy took her into the dining-room, “I gave you my paint-box.”

The boy’s stare of amazement awoke a doubt in Amabel’s mind of his identity with the Bogy of the woods.  Between constantly peeping at him, and her anxiety to conduct herself conformably to her size in the etiquette of the dinner-table, she did not eat much.  When dinner was over, and D’Arcy led her away to the rocking horse, he asked, “Do you still think I’m Bogy?”

“N—no,” said Amabel, “I think perhaps you’re not.  But you’re very like him, though you talk differently.  Do you make pictures?”

D’Arcy shook his head.

“Not even of leaves?” said Amabel.

When she was going away, D’Arcy asked, “Which do you like best, me or Bogy?”

Amabel pondered.  “I like you very much.  You made the rocking-horse go so fast; but I liked Bogy.  He carried me all up the hill, and he picked up my moss.  I wasn’t afraid of him.  I gave him a kiss.”

“Well, give me a kiss,” said D’Arcy.  But there was a tone of raillery in his voice which put Amabel on her dignity, and she shook her head, and began to go down the steps of the house, one leg at a time.

“If I’m Bogy, you know, you have kissed me once,” shouted D’Arcy.  But Amabel’s wits were as well developed as her feet.

“Once is enough for bogies,” said she, and went sturdily away.

JAN FULFILS ABEL’S CHARGE.—SON OF THE MILL.—THE LARGE-MOUTHED WOMAN.

By the time Jan went back to the windmill he was quite well.

“Ye’ll be fit for the walk by I open school,” said Master Swift.

Jan promised himself that he would redouble his pains in class, from gratitude to the good schoolmaster.  But it was not to be.

The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage.  “Master Swift,” said he, “I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can’t come to school.”

“And how’s that?” said Master Swift.

“Well, Master Swift, I do think I be wanted at home.  My father’s not got Abel now; but it’s my mother that mostly wants me.  I be bothered about mother, somehow,” said Jan, with an anxious look.  “She do forget things so, and be so queer.  She left the beer-tap running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it.  And she do cry terrible,” Jan added, breaking down himself.  “But Abel says to me the day he was took ill, ‘Janny,’ he says, ‘look to mother.’  And so I will.”

“You’re a good lad, Jan,” said the schoolmaster.  “Sit ye down and get your tea, and I’ll come back with ye to the mill.  A bit of company does folk good that’s beside themselves with fretting.”

But the windmiller’s wife was beyond such simple cure.  The overtasked brain was giving way, and though there were from time to time such capricious changes in her condition as led Jan to hope she was better, she became more and more imbecile to the end of her life.

To say that he was a devoted son is to give a very vague idea of his life at this time to those for whom filial duty takes the shape of compliance rather than of action, or to those who have no experience of domestic attendance on the infirm both of body and of mind.

It was not in moments of tender feeling, or at his prayers, or by Abel’s grave, that Jan recalled his foster-brother’s dying charge; but as he emptied slops, cleaned grates, or fastened Mrs. Lake’s black dress behind.  Nor did gratitude flatter his zeal.  “Boys do be so ackered with hooks and eyes,” the poor woman grumbled in her fretfulness, and then she sat down to bemoan herself that she had not a daughter left.  She had got a trick of stopping short half way through her dressing, and giving herself up to tears, which led to Jan’s assisting at her toilette.  He was soon expert enough with hooks and eyes, the more tedious matter was getting up her courage, which invariably failed her at the stage of her linsey-woolsey petticoat.  But when Jan had hooked her up, and tied her apron on, and put a little shawl about her shoulders, and got her close-fitting cap set straight,—a matter about as easy as putting another man’s spectacles on his nose,—and seated her by the fire, the worst was over.  Mrs. Lake always cheered up after breakfast, and Jan always to the very end hoped that this was the beginning of her getting better.

JAN’S PROSPECTS AND MASTER SWIFT’S PLANS.—TEA AND MILTON.—NEW PARENTS.—PARTING WITH RUFUS.—JAN IS KIDNAPPED.

This shock seemed to give a last jar to the frail state of Mrs. Lake’s health, and the sleep into which she fell that night passed into a state of insensibility in which her sorely tried spirit was released without pain.