CONTENTS.

Chapter I.

NO NEWS FROM THE PORT.

Walter was so busy trenching in his garden, one late autumn afternoon, that he paid no attention to any thing that passed on the other side of the hedge. Train after train of coal-waggons slid by on the rail-road from the pit to the staithe, and from the staithe to the pit, and he never looked up, till a voice from one of the vehicles shouted to him that he was a pretty ferryman to let a passenger stand calling for his boat, for minutes together, while he gave no heed. Walter just turned to the cottage to shout, in his turn, “Father, the boat!” and then went on with his trenching.

The days were gone by when Walter used to uprear himself from his weeding or pruning, or stand resting on his spade, to watch his father putting off for the opposite bank, or speculate on who the passengers might be, whence they came, and whither they might be going. His garden was a tempting place whence to overlook the river, sloping as it did down to the very bank; but Walter had now too much to do and to think about to spare time for the chance amusements of former days. His father had duly and perpetually assured him in his childhood that “the hand of the diligent maketh rich,” and that “if a man will not work, neither should he eat;” but, though these quotations had their effect, there were thoughts in Walter’s mind which were yet more stimulating to his exertions.

He threw down his spade in no little hurry, however, when, in a few minutes, he heard himself called from behind. His cousin Effie was running up the slope of the garden, crying,

“Walter! Walter! is my father here? You need not be afraid to tell me. Is my father here?”

“Your father, no! I have not seen him since church, last Sunday.”

“Well, uncle Christopher said just so; but I got him to set me over, I was so unwilling to believe you did not know where my father was. O, Walter! cannot you give the least guess where he is? I dare not go back to my mother without news.”

Walter’s grieved countenance showed that he would afford news if he had any to impart. He hesitatingly mentioned the public-house.

“O, there is not a public-house between this and Newcastle, nor all over Shields, where one or other of us had not been before twelve o’clock last night. I did not know whether to be glad or sorry that he was not in one of them. Now I should be glad enough to see him in almost any way.”

“Before twelve o’clock last night! How long have you missed him?”

“He quitted the keel, they say, just at dark, when she came alongside the collier,—only because he had broken his pipe, and went to get another; but he did not come back.”

Walter was silent; but Effie could interpret his thought.

“It is certain the press-gang was out last night,” she observed.

“Where is the tender stationed?” asked Walter, pulling down his shirt sleeves, and looking round for his coat.

“Just in the river’s mouth; but there is no getting at her. Half the boats in Shields have been hanging about her; but, there being only women in them, they do but make sport for the officers. Nobody but an officer or two is to be seen on deck——”

“Ay, ay; the other poor creatures are kept close enough down below. I suppose, if there are few but women in the boats, her business is done, and she will make little further stay.”

“There is not a seaman to be seen in all Shields since the day before yesterday, they say; and so the jail has been half emptied to make up the number. Walter, you must not think of going to look for my father. There has scarcely a keel passed all this day, because the men will not venture to the port any more, while the tender is there. You will not think of going, Walter? I am not quite sure that it is safe for you to be working here, full in sight from the river. From the other side I saw you as plain as could be.”

“Why, Effie, what do you think they could make of a gardener on board a king’s ship?”

“What they make of other landsmen, I suppose. ’Tis certain they have got some who never were on ship-board in their lives.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes“Yes, indeed. So I do wish you would work, in you must work, under the hedge, or behind that plot of hollyoaks. Do you know I saw you stop and take off your cap, when you came to the end of this ridge, and then stoop——”

“What! while your head was full of your fatherfather; bless you!” murmured Walter, in a low fonefone, and with a blush of satisfaction.

“Is not it my duty to think of you first?” asked Effie; “and if it was not, how could I help it?”

Walter was in no hurry to answer this, and Effie went on.

“As to saying it, I cannot help that either; and why should I? It makes me wonder to see Bessy Davison pretending that her lover is the last person in the world that she thinks of or cares about, when she knows what a sin and shame it would be to pretend the same thing when he is her husband—which he is almost—for they are to be married next week.”

“I am sure we are much more like being husband and wife than they are, Effie; I wish we were going to be married next week.”

“I cannot talk about that, Walter, till I have heard something of my father, and made out what is to become of my mother, if he is really gone; but he may get back. There have been some set ashore again two days after they were carried off.”

Walter did not say what he knew, that those who were thus returned to their homes were persons unfit for the king’s service:—a poor tailor who might, by long training, have become a sail-maker, but would never be capable of more arduous service; a ploughman, who was gaping with amazement at the first sight of the sea, when he was surprised and carried off; and a pedlar, who seemed likely to die in a week for want of a wider walking range than the deck of a tender. Eldred was too good a man for the king’s purposes, as Walter knew, to be set at liberty again on the same footing with such helpless creatures as these.

“What will your mother do, Effie, if your father should really be away a year or two, or more?”

“Eh! I cannot say. There has been no time——Walter, if you could have seen her, all last night, it would have half broke your heart.”

“I am sure it has half broken yours. You look sadly worn, Effie.”

“O, I am used to her—to her ways of feeling and doing. But she did sob and complain so grievously, we were wholly at a loss what to do with her—poor Tim and I, for Adam was not to be found. I sent to his master’s to beg leave for him for a few hours, but he was out of bounds, and so I had no help. For a long time she kept blaming my father, till I was pained that Tim should hear all she said. When I had got him to bed, I left off trying to reason with her, which I know I am too apt to do. But, Walter, I am afraid to meet her again; and that is why I am lingering here, doing no good.”

“But what will she do?” Walter again inquired.

“I suppose we must all get work, as those do who have no father to work for them,” replied Effie.

“We had better marry at once,” said Walter, who seemed quite able to prove his point, that it would be a relief to Mrs. Eldred to see her daughter settled at once, instead of having to go back to the pit-mouth, where she had worked in her childhood, and where all parties had believed she would never need to work again.

“It never came into my mind till now,” said Effie, after considering her lover’s proposal for a moment; “but I will think about it as I go home, and try to find out what we ought to do.”

Walter’s blush of satisfaction returned while he said something about his wonder how people had any comfort of each other who were off and on, and pretending, like Bessy and her lover, not to understand each other, instead of being straightforward, and agreeing on what was right and fit, so that they might depend on each other without drawback. It was difficult enough sometimes, at best, for people that had consciences to settle their minds so as to be at peace; and to perplex one another further was, in his opinion, but a poor sign of love. He might feel this the more strongly from his being too timid and undecided. He knew he was; and if Effie could but be aware what a blessing it was to him to be never made sport of—never put off with false reasons——

Effie coloured with indignation at the idea of any one taking advantage of Walter’s modesty to make sport of him. In her own heart she daily felt, (and sometimes she relieved herself by saying so,) that there was no one virtue she should like so much to have as Walter’s modesty, and that there was no one thing she feared so much as learning to abuse it, by accepting the supremacy he was willing to allow her. Walter’s objection, as far as he chose to make any, was that she was too tractable; while his father entertained an idea much more serious. He doubted whether they had grace enough between them to secure a blessing upon their union.

“Uncle Christopher seems too busy to speak to me to-day,” observed Effie. “He has always been engaged with his invention when I have come lately; but I thought to-day he would have come out to advise with me what we must do about my father.”

“He is bringing his invention to a point,” replied Walter, “and he will soon be ready to take it to London, and look after a patent for it. This fills his mind at present; but you need not doubt his feeling very much for you all, as soon as he can listen to what I shall tell him.”

“But what will he say to your notion of marrying next week—of your marrying while Adam is not out of his apprenticeship yet?”

“He can only say that Adam is an apprentice, and I am not. You and I may be as glad as we please, between ourselves, that I am a gardener, and not a rope-maker.”

“Ah! you would have had another year to serve, from this time, and then to set up for yourself. But, surely, gardening is a much more difficult business to learn than rope-making. Why should Adam be obliged to spend seven years in learning to twist hemp into ropes, when you learned long ago a great deal about the seasons, and the soils, and the nature of different kinds of plants, and how to manage a vast number of them? I should have thought that it would take more time and pains to learn to produce fine peaches, and such capital vegetables as yours, than to become a good rope-maker.”

“So should I; but all works of tillage have been mixed up together under the name of unskilled labour; and all that belong to manufactures, as skilled labour, which requires apprenticeship; so that the man who grows the finest grapes that care and knowledge ever produced, is held by the law to be a less skilled workman than one who dabs brick-clay into a mould all the summer through. If I were to turn pippin-monger instead of pippin-grower, I should have inquiries in plenty after my seven years of apprenticeship, and should be liable to suffer for not having served them. But I am a gardener, and never was bound to a master, and am now free to turn my hand to any occupation that comes near my own, if my own should fail, which is a sort of security for you, Effie, that it gives me pleasure to think of.”

“Security!” said his father, who had at length found time to come out and inquire into the afflictions of his niece and her family. “It is the notion of young people, who have not seen God’s ways in his works, to talk of security. Of what use is the watchman’s waking, unless the Lord keeps the city?”

“Indeed, uncle,” said Effie, “we want no teaching to-day about change and danger. Yesterday at this time we were looking for my father home from work, and now I much fear——”

“Fear nothing, child. Fear is sinful.”

“O, but, uncle, do you think you yourself could help it if Walter was gone, and you did not know where? Would not you fancy him shut down in that horrible tender? And could you help being afraid that he was miserable, being afraid that he would be ill, being afraid that you would be unhappy for many a long year, for want of him?”

“I dare say you think,” said uncle Christopher, seeing that Effie bit her lip to repress her tears,—“I dare say you think that I am a cruel old man, who has no compassion for what other people are feeling. Worldly people would say——”

“O, never mind what people would say who do not see and hear us: but I do not think you cruel, uncle. Only——”

“Only what?” inquired uncle Christopher, setting his lips in a prim form, as he always did when he expected to hear something unacceptable about himself.

“Only,—very pious people expect other people to feel exactly as they do, and make out that every difference is a difference of trust in God. Now, I trust in God that my father will be supported, and my poor mother——”

She was obliged to stop a moment, and then went on,

“But all this trust does not make me the less afraid that they will have to be unhappy first.”

Uncle Christopher shook his head with a condescending smile and sigh. This was what he called trust with a reservation; but prayed that the true faith might grow out of it in time. He could suggest nothing to be done, Eldred’s recovery being quite hopeless, he considered, if he was on board the tender. All that uncle Christopher could promise, was to go and pray with the widowed wife, on the Sabbath morning;—the day that he could not conscientiously give to his own engrossing pursuit,—the invention for which he hoped to take out a patent.

Walter had no intention of waiting till Sunday. He was going now, but that Effie would not allow it. The press-gang was before her mind’s eye, whichever way she turned; and she had no apprehension so great as of her lover falling in with it. Nowhere could he be so safe as in his father’s premises,—ferrymen being everywhere exempt from impressment. He parried her request of a promise not to show himself in his garden so as to be an object of observation from the river, and now saved his father the trouble of depositing Effie on the other side. He had a few words to say to her while they were crossing. His advice was not to harass herself with running about from place to place in search of her father, (who could have no motive for concealing himself from his family,) but to acquiesce in his being made a defender of his country against his will, and to hope that he would prove a faithful and valiant seaman amidst the perils and honours of war.

Effie thought that the very way to prevent this was so to treat a man as to make him hate the government he served, and to paralyze his arm by that sickness of heart which must come over him as often as he thought of his deserted wife and unprovided children. She believed a ready will was the soul of good service, on sea or land.

She had no very ready will to go home to her mother without tidings. She lingered to see her lover recross the river, being aware that he was an inexperienced ferryman, and that the tide was now running very strong. A barge was coming up, in fine style, and it seemed likely that Walter would have landed in time to watch its course, like herself, and perhaps to suspect, as she did, that certain of his Majesty’s agents were in it, seeking whom they might entrap. But Walter mismanaged his boat, causing it to make a zig-zag course, till he brought it very near the barge, and then seeming to lose his presence of mind so as to put himself directly in the way of being run down. Effie was in momentary expectation of witnessing the clash, and there was a movement on board the barge which terrified her no less.

“They have found him out to be no ferryman,” was her agonized thought. “They will carry him off too, and then my mother and I shall be widows together!”

She ran to the water’s edge, and would probably have tried to walk through it, if the boats had not parted so as to allow her breathing time again. She was then struck with the improbability of the gang offering violence to the manager of a ferryboat, while in the actual discharge of his office; but this conviction did not at once restore strength to her shaking limbs, or remove the deadly sickness from her heart.

She was usually fond of this walk,—for other reasons than that Walter was at one end of it: but to-day everything appeared disagreeable. The rustling of the autumn wind in the leafless clump of trees under which she had to pass teazed her ear. She tried to find a path where she might walk without making a commotion among the dead leaves. When it became necessary to cross the rail-road, it seemed to her that it was the most difficult thing in the world to escape the trains of waggons. She felt pretty sure of being run over before she got home. The smoke from the colliery half stifled her, and the voices from the rows of cottages were more shrill and unfeeling than she had ever heard them before. The river side had been cold; the colliery was too warm; and the wind, or something else, prevented her getting forwards. She could almost have declared that her feet were tied.

While she was toiling on, somebody touched her shoulder. She turned, in attitude to run away; but it was only her eldest brother.

“What! did I frighten you, lass?” cried Adam, gaily.

“O, Adam! It would be well if you never did worse than frightening me in this way.”

“Hoot, toot! you are coming round to the old story of my having my indentures broke. Let them be broke, if my masters so please! I know my business well enough,—I knew it three years ago well enough to make my bread like another man; and so it is no wonder I am tired of working so long for another, when I am as fit as I ever shall be to work for myself.”

“But the disgrace,—the loss,—if you have your indentures broke!” exclaimed she. “How are you to get on a footing with those who have served their time properly, if you cannot submit to the law?”

“I wish I had been born where there is no such law,” declared Adam. “If I had been a Manchester or a Birmingham man, my apprenticeship might have been as long or as short as my business requires. Or if I had been an American, I might have learned rope-making without being bound at all.”

“In America, I have heard tell,” replied Effie, “the people are mostly well to do in the world, and can take their manhood upon them earlier than the youths here may do. They can set up for themselves, and marry, and have their rights earlier than here, where there are so many in proportion to the means of living. As to Birmingham and Manchester,—I do not know what is the character of the working youths there,—but I have heard it said that long apprenticeships are good for the morals of the young people.”

“Then I must be a much more moral person than Walter—Eh, Effie? But I should like to know what there is in my being bound to tread the length of the rope-walk so many times a-day, for my master’s profit, that is good for my morals. I hardly think that it is good for one’s morals to be running off as often as one can slip the noose, and sulky and grumbling all the while one is under a master’s eye.”

Effie did not see the absolute necessity of either playing truant or sulking. She thought a well-disposed youth should be grateful for being under the eye of a master at a time of life when guardianship was peculiarly needful.

“All very well two hundred years ago, Effie,—at the time of such apprenticeships as our great grandfather used to tell us of,—when the apprentices used to sit in the same room, and eat at the same table with their masters, and walk behind them to church. But times are changed now. I could tell you such things as you little dream of, if I chose to prove to you how much management our masters have over our pleasures and our morals. What is it to them what we do with ourselves when work is over? And as for the time that the wheels are turning, the masters must be clever men if they get half as much work out of their oldest and best apprentices as out of any one of their journeymen?”

“How were apprentices so different in our great grandfather’s time?”

“I dare say it might be more difficult to learn arts at that time; and so a longer apprenticeship might be wanted. Neither was there such a rush to get one’s bread as there is now; nor, consequently, so much provocation at being kept out of it, at a great expense to everybody, when one is capable of shifting for one’s self. You cannot wonder, Effie, at my flitting from time to time, when a chance offers of winning a penny, or when I can amuse myself, instead of toiling for nothing.”

“But I do wonder, Adam. You forget what you owe your master for teaching you your trade; and you forget what you forfeit, if you have your indentures broke.”

“Not I. I paid my master long ago for everything but the meat and drink that I would rather earn for myself. And you need not begin to talk of how foolish we should all be in marrying too early if our being bound till twenty-one did not prevent it. It may chance that worse things than early marriages happen when high-spirited apprentices are led or driven into a disposition for idleness. In my mind,—the best way to keep a young man steady and sober is to let him work, as soon as he is fit for it, with the hopefulness which comes from working for one’s self. You will see how steady I shall be as soon as I have something to work for.”

“And if your master casts you off, mean time?”

“Then I must go somewhere away from yon great town, where one can do little without a title of apprenticeship. When the Deep Cut is made,—as they say it certainly will be,—ropes will be wanted there in plenty, for ships that will put in. I’ll go and settle near the Deep Cut.—’Tis a fine place,—that sluice that is to be. Tommy Thorn and I got over to see it in one of our trips; and there was——”

“Tell me nothing about it now,” said Effie: “but go home to your master, that I may tell my mother that you are there; and so carry her some little comfort in her misery.”

“Misery! what misery?”

“Ah! Now you are almost the only person within five miles that does not know what an affliction has befallen your own kin. I kept putting off the telling you, being at last hopeless——”

“And I saw how you had been crying, but thought Walter might have been either rough or particularly tender. But O, Effie, what is it? Is poor little Tim——”

Tim was well again: and Adam was horror-struck at finding the family misfortune so much greater than he had anticipated. When he learned that Cuddie was absent,—making his first voyage in a collier to London,—he was full of remorse that his mother had been left without the support of either of her elder sons on such an occasion. Instead of going home to his master, he must first see his poor mother; and when Effie recollected that such a visit might serve as a plea of excuse to his master, and give his indentures another chance, she made no further opposition.

Effie found little promise of comfort on approaching home. About the spout or staithe, whence coals were shot from the waggons into the keels on the river, were gathered groups of people telling and hearing of one and another neighbour who had not returned when expected. This news rendered Eldred’s restoration less probable than ever, and all that could be hoped was that Mrs. Eldred was already prepared for this.

If she was, she did not look out the less eagerly for her daughter, or show less disappointment when she found there were no tidings.

“It was silly of me to trouble you for any,” she declared. “I am the last person ever to get tidings that I want. I am the last person to be helped by anybody.”

“Do not you think——”—Effie began, but checked herself, in consideration of the trouble of spirit that her mother was in. The poor woman went on,

“One would think the time was gone by for your father to have the notion of deserting his family. He had better have done it years ago, when I was more fit for the charge. I am worn out now. But I always said there would be no rest for me till I was in the grave.”

“Is there no one who asks us to come and he will give us rest?” inquired one who was sitting beside the hearth, with little Tim on his knee. It was Mr. Severn, the clergyman, one of poor Tim’s best friends. Tim was only six years old; but he had lost his sight by an accident at the coal-pit, two years before. He was not an unhappy child at any time; but he was seldom so happy as when Mr. Severn’s cheerful voice and steady step came near, or when there was something new to be told or taught, which required that Tim should stand between the gentleman’s knees, or sit with an arm over his shoulder. He heard Mr. Severn’s question now, and asked who made that promise. The answer brought his mother to tears; but whether they were tears which would do her good seemed doubtful to those who watched with alarm the force of her emotions.

“Mother, you cannot think,—surely you cannot think that my father has left us of his own accord?” remonstrated Adam.

“If he has, it is you that have helped to send him away. No man was prouder than your father that no vagabond ever belonged to him; and many a time of late has he prophesied that you would turn out a vagabond;—many a time, I can tell you, Adam, when he has heard of your being missed from your work. I hope you will take it to heart, Adam.”

“Mother! mother! this is not the time,” said Effie, in a terror lest Adam should quit the cottage, never to return. “Mother, my father never spoke harshly about Adam, I am sure.”

“Harshly! no. He never spoke harshly to anybody in his life, and always let any one talk him over, and do what they would with him; and that is the case now, I’ll answer for it. I thought I had brought up my sons free from his fault; and now they are to break my heart in another way, I suppose. Well! among one and another, I shall soon be in my grave.”

“How is Cuddie to break your heart, mother? I wonder what is the matter with him, good lad!” said Adam, with an affectation of coolness.

Effie cast an imploring look at him, and at the same moment Tim began to make his voice heard,—

“O, don’t go! don’t go! Sir, sir; don’t go!”

“I must, my dear boy. I will come back again when——”

“When my mother does not insult me before you, sir,” said Adam. “But you will hardly find me here next time, after what you have heard to-day.”

“Yes, Adam, I trust I shall. I shall forget what I have heard, because it was said in a moment of irritation; and you will remember, I trust, that your mother is in deep affliction, and that her words should not be reckoned too strictly against her,—least of all by her son.”

“I cannot be spoken of in this way,” cried Mrs. Eldred. “I have been accustomed to have people against me, all my days; but I cannot hear myself so spoken of to my children, by anybody, Mr. Severn.”

“Tell us, then, how we shall think of you,—how we shall pray for you in your sorrow?”

“As one that was able to bear whatever it might please God to lay upon her,” she replied. Her violent weeping did not interrupt her declarations that she could go to the pit-mouth, and work for her living, and preserve the independence and good name she had always sought for herself and her children. She spoke proudly of her family, though she had just before been bitter against them. She talked of her strength, though she had so lately declared herself worn out. She did not want any comfort but what her own mind could supply her with, well as people meant, she did not doubt, by coming to comfort her. She forgot how she had complained, just before Mr. Severn entered, that nobody cared for her, and that she might bear her troubles as well as she could, without sympathy.

Mr. Severn, who abhorred officious interference, kindly wished her strength and comfort according to her need, and was departing, when little Tim, who had bustled after him to the door, reached out a hand to catch the gentleman by the skirt of his coat, missed his aim, and fell from the door-step. He merely slipped on his hands and knees; but the boy was first startled by the fall, and then thoroughly alarmed by his mother’s passion of terror. Any child must have concluded himself very much hurt, while his mother was sobbing over him so piteously.

“Indeed, mother, I don’t think he has hurt himself.”—“Do but let him walk across the room.”—“He does not seem to be in any pain,”—urged the son and daughter, in vain. Mr. Severn touched Adam’s arm, and made a sign to let the paroxysm exhaust itself. Effie quietly placed a cup of water within reach, and closed the door against any prying eyes that might be near. The time had been,—but it was now long past,—when her mother’s emotions had invariably opened the flood-gates of her own tears. Her heart was still heavily oppressed when she witnessed passion; but it was now only quiet grief that touched her sympathies. When the sobs were hushed, and only gentle tears flowed over poor Tim, Effie could refrain no longer, but became the most sorrowful weeper of the two. Adam did not know what to do with himself, and therefore did the best thing that remained. He took his mother’s hand, and signified a hope of being a greater comfort to her than he had been. He mentioned Cuddie; and here was something pleasant for every one to speak of. Mr. Severn considered Cuddie one of the most promising lads in the parish. Mrs. Eldred told how early she had discovered and pointed out to his father what Cuddie might become; but plaintively added a supposition of his being impressed during the voyage. All, with one voice, reminded her how young he was, and how unlikely it was that his Majesty should pick out lads of seventeen for impressment, when an ample supply of full-grown men might be obtained. Tim had his little story to tell of what Cuddie was to do for him when he came back; and his mother smiled, and blessed the boy aside for forgetting his terrible fall so easily. In ten minutes more, Mr. Severn left her, fully convinced that it would be much easier to count her troubles than her blessings; that Providence has a wise and kind purpose in all that it inflicts; and that the best welcome she could offer her husband on his return would be the sight of what she had done in his absence for his sake.

Chapter II.

NEWS FROM THE PORT.

Mrs. Eldred did not give too good an account of herself when she declared herself able to do for her family whatever circumstances might require of her. Within five days of her husband’s disappearance, she might be found in a situation which she had not expected ever to fill again. She was sorting and screening coals at the mouth of the neighbouring pit. She would not hear of Effie joining her in her labours. Her great desire was that Effie should marry Walter as soon as she pleased. This would be one care off her mind, she declared,—one duty discharged to her absent husband, whose only daughter should not suffer by the unhappy chance which had taken him away. The only argument was as to what should be done with Tim, during working hours. Effie was for keeping him beside her,—not only at present, while she was still in her mother’s cottage, but when she should have removed to Walter’s. She thought it more seemly that the child should play among the flower-beds than among the coal-heaps, and hinted the possibility of his falling down the pit, or into the river, while no one was heeding him. But the plea of danger would not do. No child of his age could be more fit to avoid danger from the pit and the river than Tim. His ear served him better than the eyes of little ones who do not think of taking care; and Tim might always be trusted to discover, by stamping on the ground, how near he was to hollow places. He might always be trusted to calculate the certainties of crossing the waggon-way before the train should come up, and to find his own path down the sloping bank to the stone which formed his favourite seat by the river-side—where he might sit, and pull rushes, and hear the water ripple. His mother hinted that he would run more risk among Walter’s bees than anywhere else. It was left, at last, to the child’s own taste; and he decided to go with his mother. Of all people, he knew least of the hastiness of her temper; for he rarely or never had to feel it himself, and could not yet understand its manifestations to others. He was very fond of Effie, but there was a charm about the corner of his mother’s apron which eclipsed all the blandishments of any one else. Besides this, Tim loved society,—not only as being a child, but as being blind. He quitted even the corner of his mother’s apron when he heard young voices, and pushed into the midst of every group of children he could find his way to. He had an ambition to work as other little ones worked, and to play as they played; and his mother’s occupation afforded him the opportunity. The sorting coal may be done by the touch as truly though more slowly than by the eye; and the work which Tim would not have been set to these five years, if he had had his sight, he was already permitted to do for amusement, because he was blind. His mother rectified his mistakes when he chanced to carry his contributions to the wrong heap; and his companions learned to be patient with him when he unwittingly spoiled their little arrangements, throwing down their coal-houses, trudging straight through their coal-gardens, and stumbling over their coal-mountains. No one seemed to enjoy the burning of the refuse coal more than he, though to him it was no spectacle. He always carefully ascertained the situation of the heap to be burned, and stood opposite to the conflagration, shouting when his companions’ shouts told that the flame was spreading, and rather courting than avoiding the heat and the smoke. There was some question among observers whether the glare did not excite some sensation through the veil of his blindness. He could give no account of it himself; and the point was left to be decided at some future time, when he should be better able to understand his own pleasures.

Mrs. Eldred was at the pit, as if nothing had happened, the morning of Effie’s marriage, within a fortnight of Eldred’s disappearance. There was nothing to stay at home for when Effie was gone; and no one ever shrank from being alone more painfully than the widowed wife did at present. She plied her labour busily at the pit’s mouth,—now helping to receive the coal which was brought up by the gin, now screening it, and depositing the large pieces for the London market in one place, and the small for other uses, or for destruction, in another place.

“Eh! bairn, what makes you turn that way, and listen so?” she asked of Tim. The boy jumped and clapped his hands as a distant shout arose. It spread nearer and nearer; and the sound of a carriage,—of several carriages,—was heard. What could it be? It turned out a very fine procession indeed,—the wedding-party in whose honour the bells of St. Nicholas, Newcastle, were ringing, as had been observed by several people about the colliery this morning. The Rev. Miles Otley, a neighbouring rector, had married the daughter of the rich Mr. Vivian of Newcastle; and everybody near was thinking a good deal about it,—not only because the marriage of the rector was a matter of real importance, but because it was a curious thing to the elderly folks to see such a boy as Miles Otley had but lately been, grown into so important a man as he now was. He had had extraordinary luck they thought, in respect both of education and preferment;—luck greatly exceeding that of Mr. Severn, his curate, who was much more popular on all points but one;—the one which constituted the rector’s chief importance at present to the people about him. Mr. Otley’s sporting was admired, his equipage praised, his preaching was a matter of question, his parties a matter of notoriety; but that which found him favour in the eyes of his neighbours was his opposition to a scheme for a public work which they thought would do a great injury to their colliery,—a scheme of which Mr. Severn could not be brought to say any harm.

Some way up the coast there were materials for a colliery which would have been opened long ago, if it could have competed with those which had superior advantages of carriage. A waggon-way to the river, or at once to the port of Shields, might have been made; but it was thought likely to be less expensive, and much more advantageous to the whole district to make a short cut through the rock of the coast, just at hand, and build a small pier, to aid the loading and unloading of vessels. This opening might also afford a shelter for small vessels on a very exposed coast; and there seemed to impartial persons no conceivable objection to the undertaking, if the company who proposed it were satisfied that it would yield them a profit. There was a jealousy about it, however, among some coal-owners who did not desire the opening of new works; and this jealousy, of course, spread to their dependents. It was taken up by the gay young rector with an earnestness which could not be accounted for otherwise than that this was the first object out of himself which had ever been known to interest him, and it might therefore have the charm of a new pursuit. He had talked of getting the bill thrown out in Parliament, had visited the proprietors of the land in the line of the Deep Cut, to endeavour to gain their dissent from the measure, and had been thought to come very near the matter in the last sermon he had preached (on innovations) previous to his marriage.

Mr. Severn was so far from seeing that the scheme was objectionable, that he firmly believed it would benefit all the parties concerned in its discussion. He knew that more coal was wanted in the south,—not that the people in the south could purchase more of the article, burdened as it now was with duties and unnecessary charges of various kinds,—but he knew that many manufacturers were pining for want of an abundant and cheap supply of fuel, and that thousands of poor creatures were shivering in their chilly homes, while an inexhaustible deposit of coal lay in the ground; and there were plenty of hands to work it, and an abundance of ships to transport it, if its charges could but be reduced to such a level as that those who needed might obtain. Every means by which a larger supply could be brought into the market would prove, he believed, a stimulus to the whole trade, and tempt more consumers to the purchase. Not only, therefore, would the land proprietors on the line of the Deep Cut, and the labourers, and the ship-builders, and the rope-makers, and the pitmen, be benefited in a direct way, but all connected with other coal-works in an indirect manner. It was true that other means existed of supplying the people more amply with the fuel which they wanted; but those means could not at present be made use of. It was true that coal enough,—and no little of a prime quality,—was destroyed at the pit mouth to afford warmth to crowds of those who pass the dreary winter night in darkness and in cold, in many of the cities of England. It was true that this destruction was sorely grudged by the coal-owners, and complained of by the dwellers in the neighbourhood, to whom these wasteful fires were a terrible nuisance; but it was also true that, while the corporation of London had the privilege of measuring the coal which was to warm London, and would admit none which was not in large pieces, there was little probability that the small coal would have any chance yet awhile; and the best hope was in the supply of large coal being increased, so as to lower the price, as far as it was possible for it to be lowered under the officious management of a corporation. As for the means of carrying the projected improvement into effect, as it was a work too expensive for individual enterprise, a company, privileged by Government, seemed the right instrument. Such companies are the fitting subjects of royal and parliamentary favour, when their undertakings serve to promote instead of impeding the industry of the many, and the rewards of that industry. A company to monopolize the production of coal would have been a curse against which Mr. Severn would have protested with all his might; a company to open a new channel for the distribution of coal was a public servant, whom he thought deserving of all honour and encouragement. Inasmuch as government would be bound, by its duty of protecting the industry of its subjects, to discountenance the former, it was bound to countenance the latter: therefore Mr. Severn exerted himself to subdue the prejudices against the scheme which existed in his parish; and, furthermore, did what in him lay to disabuse Parliament respecting the misrepresentations of the counter-petitioners. It is so much more easy, however, and so infinitely more entertaining, to join in a clamour against a proposition than to listen to reason in favour of it, that Mr. Severn was not at all surprised to hear the shouts which followed the bridegroom’s carriage,—“Otley for ever!” “He has cut up the Deep Cut!” “No new piers; the old ones will do.” “Don’t let the Cut go out of your mind, Otley. We’ll stand by you.”

Mr. Severn was visiting a poor man who was laid up with a hurt received in the pit. He turned to the window with a smile as the gay cavalcade passed, consisting of carriages, in which appeared to be all the relations of the bride, and half those of the bridegroom. Her father, the great Mr. Vivian, perhaps struck the most awe into the beholders,—he was such a very great man!—though he himself seemed less aware of the fact than other people. He had once sat next the Duke of Wellington, and been asked a question by him. He had given a luncheon to the Duke of Northumberland; and the Duchess had taken his arm in the Assembly-room at Newcastle. He was a very powerful man in the Trinity-house; and had had an audience of the First Lord of the Admiralty once upon a time in London. Mr. Vivian himself would have been surprised to know what a great man he was. One sort of proof of the fact was now offered him. The surgeon of the colliery,—also a great man in his way,—arrived in the distance just in time to learn what an event was taking place on the road below, in the passage of the bridal party. This gentleman had an earnest desire to be appointed surgeon to the Trinity-house, and had long wished to distinguish himself in the view of Mr. Vivian. He did so now, though not exactly in the way to secure a presentation to the office he sought. He urged his grey pony forward, that he might be within reach of Mr. Vivian’s notice, if the carriages should stop to allow the rector to make his acknowledgments to the people. The pony did not want urging, except when it was in one peculiar position, of which it was by no means fond—in the middle of a waggon-way, bestriding the twirling cable by which the waggons are worked. While standing thus, as horses in that neighbourhood are sure to do occasionally, it required no gentle persuasion to induce the pony to draw its hind-legs after its fore-legs over the rope; but that effort once made, it was sure to go on its way rapidly enough to satisfy the most impatient rider. So it was on the present occasion. The animal leaped down the ridge, dashed over the black level which lay between it and the colliery, and ended by shaking off his master, and giving him a roll in the dust, in full view of the wedding party. The surgeon’s purpose was doubly answered. Not only had he distinguished himself before Mr. Vivian, but the carriages stopped, and opportunity was thus afforded for requesting the patron’s interest at the Trinity-house. Poor Mr. Milford was, however, too dusty, too much out of breath, too anxious about his runaway pony, to give a very clear account of his wishes and his claims; and the matter ended with his handing his card to the patron, and receiving permission to call on him in Newcastle.

Three men now appeared with the recovered pony, holding its head as carefully as if it was likely to start off without the rest of the body. Four women held open their doors, with an invitation to the gentleman to walk in, in order to being dusted and brushed; and a score of children gathered round to point out a torn coat-flap, a burst elbow, and a bent hat. Somewhat annoyed and ashamed, the gentleman turned into the house of the patient he came to visit, where Mr. Severn was still standing, looking upon the bustle before the door.

“Sit down, sir, pray do; and don’t think of me yet,” said the patient, looking compassionately on the panting Mr. Milford. “My wife will get you a glass of gin, sir, to cheer your spirits.”

“And if,” said the wife, “you would take a word of advice, sir, you would turn your left-leg stocking, to prevent any more harm coming of the affair.”

Mr. Milford gravely accepted both the gin and the advice. It was a great object with him to make himself popular with the people, even when the curate was by. He protested that he did not regard the misadventure, as it gave him the opportunity of paying his respects to the bridegroom, whom he honoured for his public spirit about the Deep Cut.

“When he was a lad at school,—and none of the brightest, sir,—how little anybody thought what a great man he would be in the church! It was his father’s being ruined that destined him to the church. Nobody would have thought of it else.”

“Indeed! I should have supposed the long and expensive education necessary to a learned profession would have been the last a ruined man would have thought of for his son.”

“If he had had to pay the expense himself, certainly, sir. But so much is provided already for a church education, that, if a gentleman has interest, it is one of the cheapest ways that he can dispose of his sons, they say. But for this, they would never have thought of making Master Miles a clergyman, to judge by what I used to see of him as a boy. The big boys used to plague him, as he plagued the little ones; and the master and he plagued each other equally. If Miss Vivian had seen what I saw once, she would hardly have married him, altered as he is. The boys had buried him up to his chin in the middle of the play-ground, and when he screeched and roared, they let him have one arm out to beat the ground with. He did not then look much like a youth thinking of giving himself up to holy things.”

“Nor many another school-boy, who has yet turned out a good clergyman,” observed Mr. Severn gravely. “I have often thought that much harm is done by expecting ministers of the gospel to be different from others when they are men; but I never before heard that they must be a separate race as boys.”

“Nor I, sir. I only mean that one would not expect a stupid boy, with a bad temper, to choose the church, if left to himself; and its being all settled just when his father fell into difficulties makes one doubt the more whether it was pure choice.”

“Certainly,” observed the surgeon, “there are helps to a clerical education which we, in other learned professions, should be very glad of;—a great many pensions, and exhibitions, and bursaries, and such things, which we poor surgeons never hear of.”

“These are all evidently designed,” Mr. Severn observed, “to provide for religion being abundantly administered in the land. It is piety which founded all these helps to a clerical education.”

“No doubt, sir; but that does not lessen the temptation to enter a profession where so much is ready to one’s hand. It is plain to me, sir, that many are drawn into this department who would not otherwise think of it; and nothing will persuade me that they do not, so far, stand in the way of those whose hearts incline them to make the gospel their portion. I do not scruple saying this to you, Mr. Severn, because you are one of those who have not profited, but lost, by the plan. You will hardly deny, sir, that after all your toil and expense at college, one that cares less about his business than you has stepped into the living which you might have had if there had been no other rule of judging than fitness for the work.”

Mr. Severn could not allow this kind of remark, even from an old friend of his family. How was the broken arm? When did Mr. Milford suppose the patient might be allowed to go to his work again?

“I beg your pardon, I am sure, sir,” observed the old friend of the family; “but I meant no offence to you or to Mr. Otley. All I was thinking of was, that in the church, as everywhere else, the best rule for having everything done well is ‘a fair stage and no favour;’ and, indeed, I know no case where favour is likely to do so much harm and so little good: for those that have their profession most at heart are just those who are most likely to struggle on, gleaning only what the favoured ones have left them, and giving up half the fruits of their labour to those who would not have thought of coveting them, if the piety of which you were speaking had not offered them a bribe.”

“I am afraid you think the gospel in a bad way in this country,” observed Mr. Severn.

“I am afraid of something worse,” interposed the surgeon: “I am afraid you are a dissenter, my good man.”

“By no means, sir. I am such a friend to the church, that it vexes me to see spurious labourers bribed into her, and true labourers shut out, or kept under. I believe that there is so much need of the gospel, that the need will always be naturally made known and supplied; and that it is only sported with when it is made a pretence for getting people on in the world who are much more fit to get on in inferior ways. I do not much admire the piety of those who call in strangers to take shepherds’ hire, and doom the true pastor to be only a shepherd’s dog.”

“A dog!” cried the surgeon, excessively scandalized. “My good man, consider what you are saying: it actually amounts to calling Mr. Severn a dog.”

“There are two ways of calling a man a dog,” observed Mr. Severn, smiling: “the one in the sense of fidelity, and the other of brutishness. It is the compliment, and not the offence, that our friend means.”

“And there is a third sense,” pursued the old friend of the family. “The dog is fed from the leavings in his master’s wallet, and who will say that the curates have any thing better for their care of the fold? Has not the law again and again ordered that the curate should be made at least equal in condition with the common mechanic? and has the law ever availed?—And why has it not? Not because the higher clergy are by nature a hard-hearted set of men; not because the people disregard the interests of the keepers of the fold; but because theirs is one of the cases which no law can reach. We should see the folly at once of the law ordering that every pitman should have good wages, if there were twice as many pitmen as there is a natural call for; but we wonder at the plight of our poor clergy while we tempt idle and foolish men into the profession, to engross the hire of those who take 20l. a year because they must starve if they waited for 100l.; though 100l. would be a grievously scanty recompense for the toil and expense of an education like theirs.”

“It would be all right if there were no dissenters,” observed the surgeon, who had now satisfied himself respecting the sit of his coat flap, which had been mended by the silent and thrifty hostess. “These dissenters are shocking people. They ought to be put down,—interfering with the church as they do.”

“Friend Christopher, over the water there, would tell you that the church interferes with the dissenters, seeing that they have two churches to support, while we have only one.”

“But only conceive how they interfere with the religious administration of the country! Do you mean to say that if all their dissenting clergy were swept off, there would not be more room for our clergy?”

“As there is no reason to fear any such desolating plague as that must be which would sweep off so great a body of men,” observed the clergyman, “our endeavour should be to bring our operations into harmony with theirs, that——”

“Harmony with dissenters! And this from a clergyman!” cried Mr. Milford.

“Why opposition?” asked Mr. Severn. “To say nothing of the folly of opposition to a body which outnumbers ourselves, the times are past for men supposing that the interests of religion can be served by strife, or opinions changed by opposition. Since nobody thinks of getting the dissenters back into the church by fighting, it only remains for all professing Christians so to co-operate as that they may not interfere with each other, to the scandal of their common faith.”

“If every church supported its own clergy, Mr. Milford, and if no one church held out inducements to double the number of clergy wanted——”

“But we hear perpetually that there are too few of the established clergy for the number of souls to be taken care of.

“See if there would be, if every clergyman by interest were transformed into a clergyman by choice. All I ask is, that there should be no interference in the matter,—no coming between the religious wants of the people and the ministering to those wants;—whether that interference be on the part of government, or of a corporation, or of pious people who unconsciously curse the church as often as they offer a premium upon false pretension and interested service.”

“Come, come, my good patient, let me examine your arm, now I have recovered my breath a little. It will be a kindness to get you back to your work in the pit, if this is the manner you talk when out of it. We shall have the rector coming to call you to account for flat blasphemy.”

“Is it blasphemy to complain that Christ’s church is not tended as Christ would have it? Is it blasphemy to point out how it is that he has not due honour? Is it——”

“No, no,” said Mr. Severn. “Mr. Milford knows, as few out of his profession can know, where dwells blasphemy, and where piety: in how few places the one; under how many roofs the other. He sees men under the severest trial,—that of varied suffering; and if the natural language of complaint sometimes meets his ear, he will tell you how much oftener looks of patience and words of resignation are to be found in the sick chamber. He knows that if you sometimes say what he may think unwise, you have not, in your suffering, given vent to that which is irreligious.”

Mr. Milford was ready to testify to his patient’s Christian bearing under his late trial. When he spoke of blasphemy, it was only in the sense in which he often heard it used about those who speak against the church.

“One would think,” said Mr. Severn, “that if any were jealous for the church, it should be myself, to whom the church is my all, in every sense. Yet I declare that what we are wont to call blasphemy is much seldomer any irreverence to God than discontent with man’s doings. As soon as any of man’s established ways of honouring God are found to be faulty, the cry of blasphemy is raised against the fault-finder, though the glory of God may be his aim as well as his plea. It was once blasphemy to blame the Pope. It is now blasphemy to hint that poor curates might be better used. This sort of blasphemy may now, however, be found in every other house within these realms; while the real blasphemy is rare, very rare. Milford, how many blasphemers have you met with among your patients? I, for my part, never saw one,—out of the gin-shop. Within it, two legged creatures are no longer men, however they may still use their tongues to bless or curse at haphazard.”

Mr. Milford tried to recollect. He could remember only two instances;—one of a man in the extremity of pain, suddenly blinded by a horrible accident in the pit. This was no case, as sanity was lost for the time; but it made the beholder’s blood run cold so that no other such instance could ever occur without his remembering it, he was sure. The other was also a case of agony,—of the agony of disappointed hope. A very poor man, with a sick wife, had been promised work, and the promise was broken. He reviled heaven and earth when he saw his wife sinking from want. But at the first moment of her revival he repented, and the last of his sorrows to be got over, was remorse for his impiety.

“You would find it less easy to reckon the cases of piety you meet with, in and out of the pale of the church.”

“There are so many degrees of piety, one hardly likes to say that any body is wholly without. It is my lot to be much with sufferers; and while there are some aged folks, and strong men laid low, who give themselves much to psalms and prayers, it is rare to meet with parents who do not tell their children that it is God’s hand which is upon them for good, or with children who do not more or less strive to lie still under their sickness, ‘like a dumb lamb before the shearer,’ as their parents say.—There is one such, sir, one of those patient little ones,—as you can testify, for I know you have held him in your arms for many a half hour.”

“What! little Tim? I have often wondered what is passing in that poor child’s mind, when he has lain breathing his feverish breath on my bosom. Other children, while thus lying still from feebleness, turn their eyes from the clock to the kitten, and from the flickering fire to follow their mothers’ or sisters’ doings about the house. This child’s eyes roll in vain, but not the less patiently does he watch his pain away. I often wonder what is working in his little mind.”

“The thought of my pony will work in his mind the next time he is ill, I fancy,” observed Milford. “Do but see how he pats him, and feels out the mane, while his mother lifts him up?”

The hostess remarked that the best smiles seen on Mrs. Eldred’s face of late had been won from her by this little lad.

Mr. Milford gave Mr. Severn leave to indulge the child with a ride backwards and forwards, while he finished his business with his patient. Mrs. Eldred could not be persuaded to make herself quite easy about the pony’s quietness, and go back to her work. She lingered, and turned, and watched, as the animal sauntered to and fro, with a man at the head, a dozen boys at the heels, Mr. Severn holding on little Tim, and Tim himself now quietly laughing, now encouraging his steed as he heard others do, and for ever turning his head from side to side, as if gathering by that motion all the floating sounds which could tell him what was passing.

A sound soon came rushing instead of floating through the air, so vehement as to make the still restless pony rear bolt upright, jerking the child into Mr. Severn’s arms, and calling upon the man at the head for all his energies. The cry, loud as it was, came from some distance,—from the spout or staithe where a waggon was at the moment being emptied into a keel. A crowd soon collected on the spot, and it became certain that the shouts were of a joyous character. There was talk of “the gang,” “the tender,” “the pressed men”; but the tone was one of triumph, and cries of “Welcome!” were intermingled.—Mrs. Eldred heard part, and believed every thing,—every thing that in another moment would have been absurd;—that the king had had mercy upon her,—(as if, alas! he knew her heart-sorrow;) that peace was made on purpose to restore a father to her children; that Eldred had bid successful defiance to the gang, and was upheld by the whole people; that the world had been, somehow or other, turned upside down for her sake. She pushed her way, with an exulting countenance, among the crowd. She met Ned Elliott, the lame pitman, and passed him by; and she passed by several other returned captives;—Croley, with the weak right arm, and Pullen, the sickly steersman, and Gilbert, the half idiot, who was allowed to lounge about the works. All these she pushed past, and, from the extreme end of the little pier, looked down into the boat which had landed them. There was no one else. Eldred was neither a cripple, nor sickly, nor foolish; he was of the first order of labourers, and therefore snatched from his voluntary occupation, and made a slave. Most who had leisure to observe their heart-stricken neighbour gazed in silence; but the half idiot snapped his fingers, and blurted out that her husband was far down towards the south by this time, but he sent his love, and——

With a long moan,—the cry which conveys a refusal to endure, the poor woman pushed her informant from her with a force which startled him. She wrenched hands, shoulder, apron, from all who would have held her to comfort her, and cast herself against one of the waggons,—not to wrestle with her sorrow, but to let herself be overcome by it. Mr. Severn and one or two others kept themselves in readiness to aid her when it should not be an insult to speak to her. Her passion was moving,—but far less so than that of another sufferer who silently walked away with face unhidden, and steady step,—unable to join in the feelings of those about her, but not expecting them to regard hers. She quickened her pace, but showed no sign of anger when laughter overtook her,—noisy mirth which her heart loathed.

“A fine bargain his Majesty had of you! Eighteen pounds a piece you cost him. I wish him joy of you.”

“They might have let us have some of it, though.”

“Never mind that, now you are back. Come, lads, wish the king joy of catching cripples at eighteen pounds a piece, just to be let go again!”

“I wish the gang may be within hearing. Give them a shout, lads! Now for it!”

“Whisht! whisht! O whisht! I cannot bear it!” shrieked the miserable wife. “O, you barbarous——you mocking wretches——O, whisht, I tell ye!”

Shrill as her voice was, it was not heeded by many, who were all too much used to its shrillness. Her fellow sufferer regarded it, and turned back to beckon her away.

“Leave them alone! They don’t heed. Why should they?”

“Heed! Nobody heeds me. Nobody ever cared for me but one, and he is snatched from me. Nobody heeds me——”

Something fumbling with her apron caught her attention at this moment. Little Tim clung to her knees, trembling, and his face convulsed, as she had seen it before, when her voice took a certain tone, of which she was not otherwise conscious. She parted his hair on his forehead, lifted the child, and put his passive arms around her neck, and went home as mute as he.