What yet is there that I should do,
Lingering in this darksome vale? 
Proud and mighty, fair to view,
Are our schemes, and yet they fail,
Like the sand before the wind,
That no power of man can bind. 
Arndt, Lyra Germanica.

Dynevor Terrace was said to have dark, damp kitchens, but by none who had ever been in N, when the little compact fire was compressed to one glowing red crater of cinders, their smile laughing ruddily back from the bright array on the dresser, the drugget laid down, the round oaken table brought forward, and Jane Beckett, in afternoon trim, tending her geraniums, the offspring of the parting Cheveleigh nosegay, or gauffreing her mistress’s caps.  No wonder that on raw evenings, Master James, Miss Clara, or my young Lord, had often been found gossiping with Jane, toasting their own cheeks as well as the bread, or pinching their fingers in her gauffreing machine.

Yet, poor little Charlotte Arnold learnt that the kitchen could be dreary, when Mrs. Beckett had been summoned to nurse Lord Fitzjocelyn, and she remained in sole charge, under Mrs. Martha’s occasional supervision.  She found herself, her household cares over all too soon, on a cold light March afternoon, with the clock ticking loud enough for midnight, the smoke-jack indulging in supernatural groans, and the whole lonely house full of undefined terrors, with an unlimited space of the like solitude before her.  She would even have been glad to be sure of an evening of Mrs. Martha’s good advice, and of darning stockings!  She sat down by the round table to Mr. James’s wristbands; but every creak or crack of the furniture made her start, and think of death-watches.  She might have learnt to contemn superstition, but that did not prevent it from affecting her nerves.

She spread her favourite study, The Old English Baron, on the table before her; but the hero had some connexion in her mind with Tom Madison, for whom she had always coveted a battle-field in France.  What would he feel when he heard how he had filled up his course of evil, being well-nigh the death of his benefactor!  If any one ought to be haunted, it would assuredly be no other than Tom!

Chills running over her at the thought, she turned to the fire as the thing nearest life, but at the moment started at a hollow call of her own name.  A face was looking in at her through the geraniums!  She shrieked aloud, and clasped her hands over her eyes.

‘Don’t make a row.  Open the door!’

It was such a relief to hear something unghostly, that she sprang to the door; but as she undid it, all her scruples seized her, and she tried to hold it, saying, ’Don’t come in!  You unfortunate boy, do you know what you have done?’

But Tom Madison was in a mood to which her female nature cowered.  He pushed the door open, saying authoritatively, ‘Tell me how he is!’

‘He is as ill as he can be to be alive,’ said Charlotte, actuated at once by the importance of being the repository of such tidings, and by the excitement of communicating them to one so deeply concerned.  ’Mr. Poynings came in to fetch Mrs. Beckett ­he would have no one else to nurse him ­and he says the old Lord and Missus have never had their clothes off these two nights.’

‘Then, was it along of them stones?’ asked the lad, hoarsely.

‘Yourself should know best!’ returned Charlotte.  ’Mr. Poynings says ’twas a piece of rock as big as that warming-pan as crushed his ankle! and you know ­’

‘I know nothing,’ said Tom.  ’Master kept me in all day yesterday, and I only heard just now at Little Northwold, where I’ve been to take home some knives of Squire Calcott’s.  Master may blow me up if he likes, but I couldn’t come till I’d heard the rights of it.  Is he so very bad?’

‘They’ve sent up to London for a doctor,’ pursued Charlotte.  ’Mr. Walby don’t give but little hope of him.  Poor young gentleman, I’m sure he had a good word from high and low!’

‘Well!  I’m gone!’ cried Tom, vehemently.  ’Goodbye to you, Charlotte Arnold!  You’ll never see me in these parts more!’

‘Gone!  Oh, Tom! what do you mean!’

’D’ye think I’ll stay here to have this here cast in my face?  Such a one as won’t never walk the earth again!’ and he burst out into passionate tears.  ‘I wish I was dead!’

‘Oh, hush, Tom! ­that is wicked!’

‘May be so!  I am all that’s wicked, and you all turn against me!’

‘I don’t turn against you,’ sobbed Charlotte, moved to the bottom of her gentle heart.

’You! you turned against me long ago.  You’ve been too proud to cast one look at me these three months; and he forgot me; and that’s what drew me on, when who cared what became of me ­nor I neither now.’

’Don’t speak that way!  Don’t say ’twas pride.  Oh no! but I had to behave proper, and how should I keep up acquaintance when they said you went on ­unsteady ­’

‘Aye, aye!  I know how it is,’ said poor Tom, with broken-down humility:  ’I was not fit for you then, and I’m next thing to a murderer now; and you’re like a white dove that the very fingers of me would grime.  I’ll take myself out of your way; but, let what will come of me, I’ll never forget you, Charlotte.’

’Oh, wait, Tom!  If I could but say it right! ­Oh!  I know there’s something about biding patiently, and getting a blessing ­if you’d only stop while I recollect it.’

‘I thought I heard voices!’ exclaimed Mrs. Martha, suddenly descending on them.  ’I wonder you aren’t ashamed of yourselves, and the family in such trouble!  Downright owdacious!’

‘Be this your house?’ said Tom, stepping before Charlotte, his dejection giving way instantly to rude independence.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Martha, with dignity.  ’I know what to expect from such sort of people.  The house and young woman is in my charge, sir; and if you don’t be off, I’ll call the police.’

‘Never trouble your old bones!’ retorted Tom.

‘Good-bye to you, Charlotte;’ and, as in defiance of Martha, he took her passive hand.  ’You’ll remember one as loved you true and faithful, but was drove desperate!  Good-bye!  I’ll not trouble no one no more!’

The three concluding negatives with which he dashed out of the house utterly overwhelmed Charlotte, and made her perfectly insensible to Mrs. Martha’s objurgations.  She believed in the most horrible and desperate intentions, and sobbed herself into such violent hysterics that Miss Mercy came in to assist ­imagined that the rude boy had terrified her, misunderstood her shamefaced attempts at explanation, and left her lying on her bed, crying quietly over her secret terrors, and over that first, strangely-made declaration of love.  The white dove! she did not deserve it, but it was so poetical! and poor Tom was so unhappy!  She had not time even to think what was become of her own character for wisdom and prudence.

The next morning, between monition and triumph, Martha announced that the good-for-nothing chap was off with a valuable parcel of Mr. Calcott’s, and the police were after him; with much more about his former idle habits, ­frequenting of democratic oratory, public-houses, and fondness for bad company and strolling actors.  Meek and easily cowed, Charlotte only opened her lips to say she knew that he had taken home Mr. Calcott’s parcel.  But this brought down a storm on her for being impertinent enough to defend him, and she sat trembling till it had subsided; and Martha retreating, left her to weep unrestrainedly over her wild fancies, and the world’s cruelty and injustice towards one whom, as she was now ready to declare, she loved with her whole heart.

The bell rang sharply, knocks rattled at the front door!  She was sure that Tom had been just taken out of the river!  But instinct to answer the bell awoke at the second furious clattering and double pealing, which allowed no time for her to compose her tear-streaked, swollen face, especially as the hasty sounds suggested ‘Mr. James.’

Mr. James it was, but the expected rebuke for keeping him waiting was not spoken.  As he saw her sorrowful looks, he only said, low and softly, ‘Is it so, Charlotte?’ In his eyes, there could be but one cause for grief, and Charlotte’s heart smote her for hypocrisy, when she could barely command her voice to reply, ’No, sir; my Lord has had a little better night.’

He spoke with unusual gentleness, as he made more inquiries than she could answer; and when, after a few minutes, he turned to walk on to Ormersfield, he said, kindly, ’Good-bye, Charlotte; I’ll send you word if I find him better:’  and the tears rose in his eyes at the thought how every one loved the patient.

He was not wrong.  There was everywhere great affection and sympathy for the bright, fantastic being whom all laughed at and liked, and Northwold and the neighbourhood felt that they could have better spared something more valuable.

The danger was hardly exaggerated even by Charlotte.  The chill of the long exposure had brought on high fever; and besides the crushed ankle, there had been severe contusions, which had resulted in an acute pain in the side, hitherto untouched by remedies, and beyond the comprehension of the old Northwold surgeon, Mr. Walby.  As yet, however, the idea of peril had not presented itself to Louis, though he was perfectly sensible.  Severe pain and illness were new to him; and though not fretful nor impatient, he had not the stoicism either of pride or of physical indifference, put little restraint on the expression of suffering, and was to an almost childish degree absorbed in the present.  He was always considerate and grateful; and his fond affection for his Aunt Catharine, and for good old Jane, never failed to show itself whenever they did anything for his relief; and they were the best of nurses.

Poor Lord Ormersfield longed to be equally effective; but he was neither handy nor ready, and could only sit hour after hour beside his son, never moving except to help the nurses, or to try to catch the slightest accent of the sufferer.  Look up when Louis would, he always saw the same bowed head, and earnest eyes, which, as Mrs. Ponsonby told her daughter, looked as they did when Louisa was dying.

The coming of the London surgeon was an era to which Louis evidently looked anxiously, with the iteration of sickness, often reckoning the hours till he could arrive; and when at last he came, there was an evident effort to command attention.

When the visit was over, and the surgeon was taking leave after the consultation, Fitzjocelyn calmly desired to know his opinion, and kept his eyes steadily fixed on his face, weighing the import of each word.  All depended on the subduing the inflammatory action, in the side; and there was every reason to hope that he would have strength for the severe treatment necessary.  There was no reason to despond.

‘I understand ­thank you,’ said Louis.

He shut his eyes, and lay so still that Mrs. Frost trusted that he slept; but when his father came in, they were open, and Lord Ormersfield, bending over him, hoped he was in less pain.

‘Thank you, there is not much difference.’  But the plaintive sound was gone, the suffering was not the sole thought.

‘Walby is coming with the leeches at two o’clock,’ said Lord Ormersfield:  ‘I reckon much on them.’

‘Thank you.’  Silence again, but his face spoke a wish, and his aunt Catharine said, ‘What, my dear?’

‘I should like to see Mr. Holdsworth,’ said Louis, with eyes appealing to his father.

‘He has been here to inquire every day,’ said the Earl, choosing neither to refuse nor understand.  ’Whenever it is not too much for you ­’

‘It must be quickly, before I am weaker,’ said Louis.  ’Let it be before Walby returns, father.’

‘Whatever you wish, my dear ­’ and Lord Ormersfield, turning towards the table, wrote a note, which Mrs. Frost offered to despatch, thinking that her presence oppressed her elder nephew, who looked bowed down by the intensity of grief, which, unexpressed, seemed to pervade the whole man and weigh him to the earth:  and perhaps this also struck Louis for the first time, for, after having lain silent for some minutes, he softly said, ‘Father!’

The Earl was instantly beside him, but, instead of speaking, Louis gazed in his face, and sighed, as he murmured, ’I was meant to have been a comfort to you.’

‘My dear boy ­’ began Lord Ormersfield, but he could not trust his voice, as he saw Louis’s eyes moist with tears.

‘I wish I had!’ he continued; ’but I have never been anything but a care and vexation, and I see it all too late.’

‘Nay, Louis,’ said his father, trying to assume his usual tone of authority, as if to prove his security, ’you must not give way to feelings of illness.  It is weak to despond.’

‘It is best to face it,’ said the young man, with slow and feeble utterance, but with no quailing of eye or voice.  ’But oh, father!  I did not think you would feel it so much.  I am not worth it.’

For the Earl could neither speak nor breathe, as if smothered by one mighty unuttered sob, and holding his son’s hand between both his own, pressed it convulsively.

‘I am glad Mrs. Ponsonby is here,’ said Louis; ’and you will soon find what a nice fellow Edward Fitzjocelyn is, whom you may make just what ­’

‘Louis, my own boy, hush!  I cannot bear this,’ cried his father, in an accent wrung from him by excess of grief.

‘I may recover,’ said Louis, finding it his turn to comfort, ’and I should like to be longer with you, to try to make up ­’

’You will.  The leeches must relieve you.  Only keep up your spirits:  you have many years before you of happiness and success.’

The words brought a look of oppression over Louis’s face, but it cleared as he said, ‘I am more willing to be spared those years!’

His father positively started.  ‘Louis, my poor boy,’ he said, ’is it really so?  I know I have seemed a cold, severe father.’

‘Oh, do not say so!’ exclaimed Louis; ’I have deserved far less-idle, ungrateful, careless of your wishes.  I did not know I could pain you so much, or I would not have done it.  You have forgiven often, say you forgive now.’

‘You have far more to forgive than I,’ said the Earl.

’If I could tell you the half-waywardness, discontent, neglect, levity, wasted time ­my treatment of you only three days back.  Everything purposed ­nothing done!  Oh! what a life to bring before the Judge!’ And he covered his face, but his father heard long-drawn sobs.

‘Compose yourself, my dear boy,’ he exclaimed, exceedingly grieved and perplexed.  ’You know there is no cause to despond; and even ­even if there were, you have no reason to distress yourself.  I can say, from the bottom of my heart, that you have never given me cause for real anxiety, your conduct has been exemplary, and I never saw such attention to religion in any young man.  These are mere trifles ­’

‘Oh, hush, father!’ exclaimed Louis.  ’You are only making it worse; you little know what I am!  If Mr. Holdsworth would come!’

‘He could only tell you the same,’ said his father.  ’You may take every comfort in thinking how blameless you have been, keeping so clear of all the faults of your age.  I may not have esteemed you as you deserved, my poor Louis; but, be assured that very few can have so little to reproach themselves with as you have.’

Louis almost smiled.  ‘Poor comfort that,’ he said, ’even if it were true; but oh, father!’ and there was a light in his eye, ’I had thought of ‘He hath blotted out like a cloud thy transgressions.’’

‘That is right.  One like you must find comfort in thinking.’

‘There is comfort ineffable,’ said Louis; ’but if I knew what I may dare to take home to myself!  It is all so dim and confused.  This pain will not let anything come connectedly.  Would you give me that little manuscript book!’

It was given; and as the many loose leaves fell under Louis’s weak hand, his father was amazed at the mass of copies of prayers, texts, and meditations that he had brought together; the earlier pages containing childish prayers written in Aunt Catharine’s hand.  Louis’s cheeks coloured at the revelation of his hidden life, as his father put them together for him.

‘It is of no use,’ he said, sadly; ’I cannot read.  Perhaps my aunt would come and read this to me.’

‘Let me,’ said his father; and Louis looked pleased.

Lord Ormersfield read what was pointed out.  To him it was a glimpse of a very new world of contrition, faith, hope, and prayer; but he saw the uneasy expression on Louis’s face give place to serenity, as one already at home in that sphere.

‘Thank you,’ he said.  ’That was what I wanted.  Mr. Holdsworth will soon come, and then I don’t want to say much more.  Only don’t take this too much to heart ­I am not worth it; and but for you and the dear Terrace home, I can be very glad.  If I may hope, the hope is so bright!  Here there are so many ways of going wrong, and all I do always fails; and yet I always tried to do Him service.  Oh, to have all perfect! ­no failure ­no inconsistency ­no self!  Can it be?’

‘I always tried to do Him service!’ Sadly and dejectedly as the words were spoken ­mournful as was the contrast between the will and the result, this was the true cause that there was peace with Louis.  Unstable, negligent, impetuous, and weak as he had been, the one earnest purpose had been his, guarding the heart, though not yet controlling the judgment.  His soul was awake to the unseen, and thus the sense of the reality of bliss ineffable, and power to take comfort in the one great Sacrifice, came with no novelty nor strangeness.  It was a more solemn, more painful preparation, but such as he had habitually made, only now it was for a more perfect Festival.

His father, as much awestruck by his hopes as distressed by his penitence, still gave himself credit for having soothed him, and went to meet and forewarn the Vicar that poor Fitzjocelyn was inclined to despond, and was attaching such importance to the merest, foibles in a most innocent life, that he required the most tender and careful encouragement.  He spoke in his usual tone of authoritative courtesy; and then, finding that his son wished to be left alone with Mr. Holdsworth, he went to the library to seek the only person to whom he could bear to talk.

‘Mary,’ he said, ’you were right.  I have done so little to make that poor boy of mine happy, that he does not wish for life.’

Mrs. Ponsonby looked up surprised.  ‘Are you sure of what he meant?’ she said.  ’Was it not that this life has nothing to compare with that which is to come?’

‘But what can be more unnatural?’ said the Earl.  ’At his age, with everything before him, nothing but what he felt as my harshness could so have checked hope and enjoyment.  My poor Louis!’ And, though eye and voice were steady and tearless, no words could express the anguish of his under-tone.

Mrs. Ponsonby adduced instances showing that, to early youth, with heart still untainted by the world, the joys of the Life Everlasting have often so beamed out as to efface all that earth could promise, but he could not be argued out of self-reproach for his own want of sympathy, and spoke mournfully of his cold manner, sternness to small faults, and denial of gratifications.

Mary the younger could not help rising from her corner to say, ’Indeed, Louis said the other day that you never had denied him any personal indulgence.’

‘My dear, he never asked for personal indulgences,’ said the Earl.  His further speech was interrupted by a quick step, a slow opening of the door, and the entrance of James Frost, who grasped his outstretched hand with a breathless inquiry.

‘He is very ill ­’ Lord Ormersfield paused, too much oppressed to say more.

‘No better?  What did the London surgeon say? what?’

’He says there is no time to be lost in attacking the inflammation.  If we can subdue that, he may recover; but the state of the ankle weakens him severely.  I believe myself that he is going fast,’ said the Earl, with the same despairing calmness; and James, after gazing at him to collect his meaning, dropped into a chair, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed aloud.

Lord Ormersfield looked on as if he almost envied the relief of the outburst, but James’s first movement was to turn on him, as if he were neglecting his son, sharply demanding, ‘Who is with him?’

‘He wished to be left with Mr. Holdsworth.’

‘Is it come to this!’ cried James.  ’Oh, why did I not come down with him?  I might have prevented all this!’

‘You could not have acted otherwise,’ said the Earl, kindly.  ’Your engagement was already formed.’

‘I could!’ said James.  ’I would not.  I thought it one of your excuses for helping us.’

‘It is vain to lament these things now,’ said Lord Ormersfield.  ’It is very kind in you to have come down, and it will give him great pleasure if he be able to see you.’

‘If!’ James stammered between consternation and anger at the doubt, and treated the Earl with a kind of implied resentment as if for injustice suffered by Louis, but it was affecting to see his petulance received with patience, almost with gratitude, as a proof of his affection for Louis.  The Earl stood upright and motionless before the fire, answering steadily, but in an almost inward voice, all the detailed questions put by James, who, seated on one chair, with his hands locked on the back of the other, looked keenly up to him with his sharp black eyes, often overflowing with tears, and his voice broken by grief.  When he had elicited that Louis had been much excited and distressed by the thought of his failings, he burst out, ’Whatever you may think, Lord Ormersfield, no one ever had less on his conscience!’

‘I am sure of it.’

’I know of no one who would have given up his own way again and again without a murmur, only to be called fickle.’

‘Yes, it has often been so,’ meekly said Lord Ormersfield.

‘Fickle!’ repeated James, warming with the topic, and pouring out what had been boiling within for years.  ’He was only fickle because his standard was too high to be reached!  You thought him weak!’

‘There may be weakness by nature strengthened by principle,’ said Mrs. Ponsonby.

‘True,’ cried Jem, who, having taken no previous notice of her, had at first on her speaking bent his brows on her as if to extend to her the storm he was inflicting on poor, defenceless Lord Ormersfield, ’he is thought soft because of his easy way; but come to the point where harm displays itself, you can’t move him a step farther ­though he hangs back in such a quiet, careless fashion, that it seems as if he was only tired of the whole concern, and so it goes down again as changeableness.’

‘You always did him justice,’ said Lord Ormersfield, laying his hand on his cousin’s shoulder, but James retreated ungraciously.

‘I suppose, where he saw evil, he actually took a dislike,’ said Mrs. Ponsonby.

‘It is an absolute repugnance to anything bad.  You,’ turning again on the Earl, ’had an idea of his being too ready to run into all sorts of company; but I told you there was no danger.’

’You told me I might trust to his disgust to anything unrefined or dissipated.  You knew him best.’

’There is that about him which men, not otherwise particular, respect as they might a woman or a child.  They never show themselves in their true colours, and I have known him uphold them because he has never seen their worst side!’

’I have always thought he learnt that peculiar refinement from your grandmother.’

‘I think,’ said Mrs. Ponsonby, softly, ’that it is purity of heart which makes him see heaven so bright.’

‘Sydney Calcott walked part of the way with me,’ continued Jem, ’and showed more feeling than I thought was in him.  He said just what I do, that he never saw any one to whom evil seemed so unable to cling.  He spoke of him at school ­said he was the friend of all the juniors, but too dreamy and uncertain for fellows of his own standing.  He said, at first they did not know what to make of him, with his soft looks and cool ways ­they could not make him understand bullying, for he could not be frightened nor put in a passion.  Only once, one great lout tried forcing bad language on him, and then Fitzjocelyn struck him, fought him, and was thoroughly licked, to be sure:  but Calcott said it was a moral victory ­no one tried the like again ­’

James was interrupted by Mr. Holdsworth’s entrance.  He said a few words apart to the Earl, who answered, with alarm, ’Not now; he has gone through enough.’

’I told him so, but he is very anxious, and begged me to return in the evening.’

‘Thank you.  You had better join us at dinner.’

The Vicar understood Lord Ormersfield better than did James, and said, pressing his hand, ’My Lord, it is heart-breaking, but the blessedness is more than we can feel.’

Mrs. Ponsonby and Mary were left to try to pacify James, who was half mad at his exclusion from the sickroom, and very angry with every hint of resignation ­abusing the treatment of the doctors, calling Mr. Walby an old woman, and vehemently bent on prophesying the well-doing of the patient.  Keenly sensitive, grief and suspense made him unusually irritable; and he seemed to have no power of waiting patiently, and trusting the event to wiser Hands.

Mrs. Ponsonby dared not entertain any such ardent wishes.  Life had not afforded her so much joy that she should deem it the greatest good, and all that she had heard gave her the impression that Louis was too soft and gentle for the world’s hard encounter, ­most pure and innocent, sincere and loving at present, but rather with the qualities of childhood than of manhood, with little strength or perseverance, so that the very dread of taint or wear made it almost a relief to think of his freshness and sweetness being secured for ever.  Even when she thought of his father, and shrank from such grief for him, she could not but see a hope that this affliction might soften the heart closed up by the first and far worse sorrow, and detach it from the interests that had absorbed it too exclusively.  All this was her food for silent meditation.  Mary sat reading or working beside her, paler perhaps than her wont, and betraying that her ear caught every sound on the stairs, but venturing no word except the most matter-of-fact remark, quietly giving force to the more favourable symptoms.

Not till after Mr. Walby’s second visit, when there was a little respite in the hard life-and-death contest between the remedies and the inflammation, could Mrs. Frost spare a few moments for her grandson.  She met him on the stairs ­threw her arms round his neck, called him her poor Jemmy, and hastily told him that he must not make her cry.  He looked anxiously in her face, and told her that he must take her place, for she was worn out.’

‘No, thank you, my dear, I can rest by-and-by.’

It sounded very hopeless.

‘Come, granny, you always take the bright side.’

‘Who knows which is the bright side?’ she said.  ’Such as he are always the first.  But there, dear Jem, I told you not to make too much of granny ­’ and hastily withdrawing her hand, she gave a parting caress to his hair as he stood on the step below her, and returned to her charge.

It would have been an inexpressible comfort to James to have had some one to reproach.  His own wretchedness was like a personal injury, and an offence that he could resent would have been a positive relief.  He was forced to get out of the way of Frampton coming up with a tray of lemonade, and glared at him, as if even a station on the stairs were denied, then dashed out of doors, and paced the garden, goaded by every association the scene recalled.  It seemed a mere barbarity to deprive him of what he now esteemed as the charm of his life ­the cousin who had been as a brother, ever seeking his sympathy, never offended by his sharp, imperious temper, and though often slighted or tyrannized over, meeting all in his own débonnaire fashion, and never forsaking the poor, hard-working student, so that he might well feel that the world could not offer him aught like Louis Fitzjocelyn.

He stood in the midst of the botanical garden, and, with almost triumphant satisfaction, prognosticated that now there would be regret that Louis’s schemes had been neglected or sneered at, and when too late, his father might feel as much sorrow as he had time for.  It was the bitterness, not the softness of grief, in which he looked forth into the dull blue east-windy haze deepening in the twilight, and presently beheld something dark moving along under the orchard bank beneath.  ‘Hollo! who’s there?’ he exclaimed, and the form, rearing itself, disclosed young Madison, never a favourite with him, and though, as a persecuted protege of Louis, having claims which at another time might have softened him, coming forward at an unlucky moment, when his irritation only wanted an object on which to discharge itself.  It was plain that one who came skulking in the private grounds could intend no good, and James greeted him, harshly, with ’You’ve no business here!’

‘I’m doing no harm,’ said the boy, doggedly, for his temper was as stubborn as James’s was excitable.

’No harm! lurking here in that fashion in the dark!  You’ll not make me believe that!  Let me hear what brings you here!  The truth, mind!’

‘I came to hear how Lord Fitzjocelyn is,’ said Tom, with brief bluntness and defiance.

‘A likely story!  What, you came to ask the apple-trees?’ and James scornfully laughed.  ’There was no back-door, I suppose!  I could forgive you anything but such a barefaced falsehood, when you know it was your own intolerable carelessness that was the only cause of the accident!’

’Better say ‘twas yourself!’ cried Tom, hoarse with passion and shaking all over.

The provocation was intense enough to bring back James’s real principle and self-restraint, and he spoke with more dignity.  ’You seem to be beside yourself, Madison,’ he said, ’you had better go at once, before any one finds you here.  Lord Fitzjocelyn cared for you so much, that I should not wish for you to meet your deserts under present circumstances.  Go!  I wish to have no more of your tongue!’

The boy was bounding off, while James walked slowly after to see him beyond the grounds, and finding Warren the keeper, desired him to be on the look-out.  Warren replied with the tidings that Madison had run away from his place, and that the police were looking out for him on the suspicion of having stolen Mr. Calcott’s parcel, moralizing further on the depravity of such doings when my young Lord was so ill, but accounting for the whole by pronouncing poaching to be bred in the bone of the Marksedge people.

This little scene had done Jem a great deal of good, both by the exhalation of bitterness and by the final exertion of forbearance.  He had, indeed, been under two great fallacies on this day, ­soothing Charlotte for the grief that was not caused by Fitzjocelyn’s illness, and driving to extremity the lad brimming over with sorrow not inferior to his own.  Little did he know what a gentle word might have done for that poor, wild, tempestuous spirit!

Yet, James’s heart smote him that evening, when, according to Louis’s earnest wish, Mr. Holdsworth came again, and they all were admitted to the room, and he saw the feeble sign and summons to the Vicar to bend down and listen.  ’Tell poor Madison, it was wrong in me not to go to see him.  Give him one of my books, and tell him to go on well!’

That day had been one of rapid change, and the remedies and suffering had so exhausted Louis that he could scarcely speak, and seemed hardly conscious who was present.  All his faculties were absorbed in the one wish, which late in the evening was granted.  The scene was like an epitome of his life ­the large irregular room, cumbered with the disorderly apparatus of all his multifarious pursuits, while there he lay on his little narrow iron bed, his features so fair and colourless as to be strangely like his mother’s marble effigy ­his eyes closed, and his brows often contracted with pain, so that there was a doubt how far his attention was free, but still with a calm, pure sweetness, that settled down more and more, as if he were being lulled into a sleep.

‘He is asleep,’ Mrs. Frost said, as they all rose up.

They felt what that sleep might become.

‘We might as well wish to detain a snow-wreath,’ thought Mr. Holdsworth.