Chapter III - Third Quarter.

The Chimes

by Charles Dickens

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when
the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead.
Monsters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect
resurrection; the several parts and shapes of different things are
joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by what wonderful
degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and object of the
mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man - though every
man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery - can
tell.

So, when and how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed
to shining light; when and how the solitary tower was peopled with a
myriad figures; when and how the whispered 'Haunt and hunt him,'
breathing monotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice
exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, 'Break his slumbers;' when
and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such
things were, companioning a host of others that were not; there are
no dates or means to tell. But, awake and standing on his feet upon
the boards where he had lately lain, he saw this Goblin Sight.

He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him,
swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells.
He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring from the Bells without
a pause. He saw them, round him on the ground; above him, in the
air; clambering from him, by the ropes below; looking down upon him,
from the massive iron-girded beams; peeping in upon him, through the
chinks and loopholes in the walls; spreading away and away from him
in enlarging circles, as the water ripples give way to a huge stone
that suddenly comes plashing in among them. He saw them, of all
aspects and all shapes. He saw them ugly, handsome, crippled,
exquisitely formed. He saw them young, he saw them old, he saw them
kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them merry, he saw them grim; he saw
them dance, and heard them sing; he saw them tear their hair, and
heard them howl. He saw the air thick with them. He saw them come
and go, incessantly. He saw them riding downward, soaring upward,
sailing off afar, perching near at hand, all restless and all
violently active. Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became
transparent to him as to them. He saw them in the houses, busy at
the sleepers' beds. He saw them soothing people in their dreams; he
saw them beating them with knotted whips; he saw them yelling in
their ears; he saw them playing softest music on their pillows; he
saw them cheering some with the songs of birds and the perfume of
flowers; he saw them flashing awful faces on the troubled rest of
others, from enchanted mirrors which they carried in their hands.

He saw these creatures, not only among sleeping men but waking
also, active in pursuits irreconcilable with one another, and
possessing or assuming natures the most opposite. He saw one
buckling on innumerable wings to increase his speed; another loading
himself with chains and weights, to retard his. He saw some putting
the hands of clocks forward, some putting the hands of clocks
backward, some endeavouring to stop the clock entirely. He saw them
representing, here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral; in this
chamber an election, in that a ball he saw, everywhere, restless and
untiring motion.

Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary figures, as
well as by the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were
ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned his
white face here and there, in mute and stunned astonishment.

As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The
whole swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted
them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted
into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down
pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on
his feet, but he was dead and gone before he could turn round. Some
few of the late company who had gambolled in the tower, remained
there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these became at
every turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went the way of
the rest. The last of all was one small hunchback, who had got into
an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by
himself a long time; showing such perseverance, that at last he
dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally retired; but
he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent.

Then and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded
figure of the bulk and stature of the Bell - incomprehensibly, a
figure and the Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful of
him, as he stood rooted to the ground.

Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the
night air of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged in
the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark, although he
saw them by some light belonging to themselves - none else was there
- each with its muffled hand upon its goblin mouth.

He could not plunge down wildly through the opening in the
floor; for all power of motion had deserted him. Otherwise he would
have done so - aye, would have thrown himself, headforemost, from the
steeple-top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that
would have waked and watched although the pupils had been taken
out.

Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and of
the wild and fearful night that reigned there, touched him like a
spectral hand. His distance from all help; the long, dark, winding,
ghost-beleaguered way that lay between him and the earth on which men
lived; his being high, high, high, up there, where it had made him
dizzy to see the birds fly in the day; cut off from all good people,
who at such an hour were safe at home and sleeping in their beds; all
this struck coldly through him, not as a reflection but a bodily
sensation. Meantime his eyes and thoughts and fears, were fixed upon
the watchful figures; which, rendered unlike any figures of this
world by the deep gloom and shade enwrapping and enfolding them, as
well as by their looks and forms and supernatural hovering above the
floor, were nevertheless as plainly to be seen as were the stalwart
oaken frames, cross-pieces, bars and beams, set up there to support
the Bells. These hemmed them, in a very forest of hewn timber; from
the entanglements, intricacies, and depths of which, as from among
the boughs of a dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept
their darksome and unwinking watch.

A blast of air - how cold and shrill! - came moaning through the
tower. As it died away, the Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great
Bell, spoke.

'What visitor is this!' it said. The voice was low and deep,
and Trotty fancied that it sounded in the other figures as well.

'I thought my name was called by the Chimes!' said Trotty,
raising his hands in an attitude of supplication. 'I hardly know why
I am here, or how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many
years. They have cheered me often.'

'And you have thanked them?' said the Bell.

'A thousand times!' cried Trotty.

'How?'

'I am a poor man,' faltered Trotty, 'and could only thank them
in words.'

'And always so?' inquired the Goblin of the Bell. 'Have you
never done us wrong in words?'

'No!' cried Trotty eagerly.

'Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?'
pursued the Goblin of the Bell.

Trotty was about to answer, 'Never!' But he stopped, and was
confused.

'The voice of Time,' said the Phantom, 'cries to man, Advance!
Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth,
his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that
goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period
when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence,
have come and gone - millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and
died - to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or
stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the
meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its
momentary check!'

'I never did so to my knowledge, sir,' said Trotty. 'It was
quite by accident if I did. I wouldn't go to do it, I'm sure.'

'Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its servants,' said the
Goblin of the Bell, 'a cry of lamentation for days which have had
their trial and their failure, and have left deep traces of it which
the blind may see - a cry that only serves the present time, by
showing men how much it needs their help when any ears can listen to
regrets for such a past - who does this, does a wrong. And you have
done that wrong, to us, the Chimes.'

Trotty's first excess of fear was gone. But he had felt
tenderly and gratefully towards the Bells, as you have seen; and when
he heard himself arraigned as one who had offended them so weightily,
his heart was touched with penitence and grief.

'If you knew,' said Trotty, clasping his hands earnestly - 'or
perhaps you do know - if you know how often you have kept me company;
how often you have cheered me up when I've been low; how you were
quite the plaything of my little daughter Meg (almost the only one
she ever had) when first her mother died, and she and me were left
alone; you won't bear malice for a hasty word!'

'Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking disregard, or
stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, of the many-
sorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that gauges
human passions and affections, as it gauges the amount of miserable
food on which humanity may pine and wither; does us wrong. That
wrong you have done us!' said the Bell.

'I have!' said Trotty. 'Oh forgive me!'

'Who hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters
Down of crushed and broken natures, formed to be raised up higher
than such maggots of the time can crawl or can conceive,' pursued the
Goblin of the Bell; 'who does so, does us wrong. And you have done
us wrong!'

'Not meaning it,' said Trotty. 'In my ignorance. Not meaning
it!'

'Lastly, and most of all,' pursued the Bell. 'Who turns his
back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as
vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced
precipice by which they fell from good - grasping in their fall some
tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when
bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to
time and to eternity. And you have done that wrong!'

'Spare me!' cried Trotty, falling on his knees; 'for Mercy's
sake!'

'Listen!' said the Shadow.

'Listen!' cried the other Shadows.

'Listen!' said a clear and childlike voice, which Trotty thought
he recognised as having heard before.

The organ sounded faintly in the church below. Swelling by
degrees, the melody ascended to the roof, and filled the choir and
nave. Expanding more and more, it rose up, up; up, up; higher,
higher, higher up; awakening agitated hearts within the burly piles
of oak: the hollow bells, the iron-bound doors, the stairs of solid
stone; until the tower walls were insufficient to contain it, and it
soared into the sky.

No wonder that an old man's breast could not contain a sound so
vast and mighty. It broke from that weak prison in a rush of tears;
and Trotty put his hands before his face.

'Listen!' said the Shadow.

'Listen!' said the other Shadows.

'Listen!' said the child's voice.

A solemn strain of blended voices, rose into the tower.

It was a very low and mournful strain - a Dirge - and as he
listened, Trotty heard his child among the singers.

'She is dead!' exclaimed the old man. 'Meg is dead! Her Spirit
calls to me. I hear it!'

'The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and mingles with the
dead - dead hopes, dead fancies, dead imaginings of youth,' returned
the Bell, 'but she is living. Learn from her life, a living truth.
Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are
born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest
stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To
desperation!'

Each of the shadowy figures stretched its right arm forth, and
pointed downward.

'The Spirit of the Chimes is your companion,' said the
figure.

'Go! It stands behind you!'

Trotty turned, and saw - the child! The child Will Fern had
carried in the street; the child whom Meg had watched, but now,
asleep!

'I carried her myself, to-night,' said Trotty. 'In these
arms!'

'Show him what he calls himself,' said the dark figures, one and
all.

The tower opened at his feet. He looked down, and beheld his
own form, lying at the bottom, on the outside: crushed and
motionless.

'No more a living man!' cried Trotty. 'Dead!'

'Dead!' said the figures all together.

'Gracious Heaven! And the New Year - '

'Past,' said the figures.

'What!' he cried, shuddering. 'I missed my way, and coming on
the outside of this tower in the dark, fell down - a year ago?'

'Nine years ago!' replied the figures.

As they gave the answer, they recalled their outstretched hands;
and where their figures had been, there the Bells were.

And they rung; their time being come again. And once again,
vast multitudes of phantoms sprung into existence; once again, were
incoherently engaged, as they had been before; once again, faded on
the stopping of the Chimes; and dwindled into nothing.

'What are these?' he asked his guide. 'If I am not mad, what
are these?'

'Spirits of the Bells. Their sound upon the air,' returned the
child. 'They take such shapes and occupations as the hopes and
thoughts of mortals, and the recollections they have stored up, give
them.'

'And you,' said Trotty wildly. 'What are you?'

'Hush, hush!' returned the child. 'Look here!'

In a poor, mean room; working at the same kind of embroidery
which he had often, often seen before her; Meg, his own dear
daughter, was presented to his view. He made no effort to imprint
his kisses on her face; he did not strive to clasp her to his loving
heart; he knew that such endearments were, for him, no more. But, he
held his trembling breath, and brushed away the blinding tears, that
he might look upon her; that he might only see her.

Ah! Changed. Changed. The light of the clear eye, how dimmed.
The bloom, how faded from the cheek. Beautiful she was, as she had
ever been, but Hope, Hope, Hope, oh where was the fresh Hope that had
spoken to him like a voice!

She looked up from her work, at a companion. Following her
eyes, the old man started back.

In the woman grown, he recognised her at a glance. In the long
silken hair, he saw the self-same curls; around the lips, the child's
expression lingering still. See! In the eyes, now turned
inquiringly on Meg, there shone the very look that scanned those
features when he brought her home!

Then what was this, beside him!

Looking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning
there: a lofty something, undefined and indistinct, which made it
hardly more than a remembrance of that child - as yonder figure might
be - yet it was the same: the same: and wore the dress.

Hark. They were speaking!

'Meg,' said Lilian, hesitating. 'How often you raise your head
from your work to look at me!'

'Are my looks so altered, that they frighten you?' asked Meg.

'Nay, dear! But you smile at that, yourself! Why not smile,
when you look at me, Meg?'

'I do so. Do I not?' she answered: smiling on her.

'Now you do,' said Lilian, 'but not usually. When you think I'm
busy, and don't see you, you look so anxious and so doubtful, that I
hardly like to raise my eyes. There is little cause for smiling in
this hard and toilsome life, but you were once so cheerful.'

'Am I not now!' cried Meg, speaking in a tone of strange alarm,
and rising to embrace her. 'Do I make our weary life more weary to
you, Lilian!'

'You have been the only thing that made it life,' said Lilian,
fervently kissing her; 'sometimes the only thing that made me care to
live so, Meg. Such work, such work! So many hours, so many days, so
many long, long nights of hopeless, cheerless, never- ending work -
not to heap up riches, not to live grandly or gaily, not to live upon
enough, however coarse; but to earn bare bread; to scrape together
just enough to toil upon, and want upon, and keep alive in us the
consciousness of our hard fate! Oh Meg, Meg!' she raised her voice
and twined her arms about her as she spoke, like one in pain. 'How
can the cruel world go round, and bear to look upon such lives!'

'Lilly!' said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from
her wet face. 'Why, Lilly! You! So pretty and so young!'

'Oh Meg!' she interrupted, holding her at arm's-length, and
looking in her face imploringly. 'The worst of all, the worst of
all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from
the dreadful thoughts that tempt me in my youth!'

Trotty turned to look upon his guide. But the Spirit of the
child had taken flight. Was gone.

Neither did he himself remain in the same place; for, Sir Joseph
Bowley, Friend and Father of the Poor, held a great festivity at
Bowley Hall, in honour of the natal day of Lady Bowley. And as Lady
Bowley had been born on New Year's Day (which the local newspapers
considered an especial pointing of the finger of Providence to number
One, as Lady Bowley's destined figure in Creation), it was on a New
Year's Day that this festivity took place.

Bowley Hall was full of visitors. The red-faced gentleman was
there, Mr. Filer was there, the great Alderman Cute was there -
Alderman Cute had a sympathetic feeling with great people, and had
considerably improved his acquaintance with Sir Joseph Bowley on the
strength of his attentive letter: indeed had become quite a friend
of the family since then - and many guests were there. Trotty's ghost
was there, wandering about, poor phantom, drearily; and looking for
its guide.

There was to be a great dinner in the Great Hall. At which Sir
Joseph Bowley, in his celebrated character of Friend and Father of
the Poor, was to make his great speech. Certain plum-puddings were
to be eaten by his Friends and Children in another Hall first; and,
at a given signal, Friends and Children flocking in among their
Friends and Fathers, were to form a family assemblage, with not one
manly eye therein unmoistened by emotion.

But, there was more than this to happen. Even more than this.
Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of Parliament, was to play a
match at skittles - real skittles - with his tenants!

'Which quite reminds me,' said Alderman Cute, 'of the days of
old King Hal, stout King Hal, bluff King Hal. Ah! Fine
character!'

'Very,' said Mr. Filer, dryly. 'For marrying women and
murdering 'em. Considerably more than the average number of wives by
the bye.'

'You'll marry the beautiful ladies, and not murder 'em, eh?'
said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve. 'Sweet boy!
We shall have this little gentleman in Parliament now,' said the
Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, and looking as reflective as
he could, 'before we know where we are. We shall hear of his
successes at the poll; his speeches in the House; his overtures from
Governments; his brilliant achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall
make our little orations about him in the Common Council, I'll be
bound; before we have time to look about us!'

'Oh, the difference of shoes and stockings!' Trotty thought.
But his heart yearned towards the child, for the love of those same
shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn
out bad, who might have been the children of poor Meg.

'Richard,' moaned Trotty, roaming among the company, to and fro;
'where is he? I can't find Richard! Where is Richard?' Not likely
to be there, if still alive! But Trotty's grief and solitude
confused him; and he still went wandering among the gallant company,
looking for his guide, and saying, 'Where is Richard? Show me
Richard!'

He was wandering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, the
confidential Secretary: in great agitation.

'Bless my heart and soul!' cried Mr. Fish. 'Where's Alderman
Cute? Has anybody seen the Alderman?'

Seen the Alderman? Oh dear! Who could ever help seeing the
Alderman? He was so considerate, so affable, he bore so much in mind
the natural desires of folks to see him, that if he had a fault, it
was the being constantly On View. And wherever the great people
were, there, to be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy between
great souls, was Cute.

Several voices cried that he was in the circle round Sir Joseph.
Mr. Fish made way there; found him; and took him secretly into a
window near at hand. Trotty joined them. Not of his own accord. He
felt that his steps were led in that direction.

'My dear Alderman Cute,' said Mr. Fish. 'A little more this
way. The most dreadful circumstance has occurred. I have this moment
received the intelligence. I think it will be best not to acquaint
Sir Joseph with it till the day is over. You understand Sir Joseph,
and will give me your opinion. The most frightful and deplorable
event!'

'Fish!' returned the Alderman. 'Fish! My good fellow, what is
the matter? Nothing revolutionary, I hope! No - no attempted
interference with the magistrates?'

'Deedles, the banker,' gasped the Secretary. 'Deedles Brothers
- who was to have been here to-day - high in office in the
Goldsmiths' Company - '

'Not stopped!' exclaimed the Alderman, 'It can't be!'

'Shot himself.'

'Good God!'

'Put a double-barrelled pistol to his mouth, in his own counting
house,' said Mr. Fish, 'and blew his brains out. No motive. Princely
circumstances!'

'Circumstances!' exclaimed the Alderman. 'A man of noble
fortune. One of the most respectable of men. Suicide, Mr. Fish! By
his own hand!'

'This very morning,' returned Mr. Fish.

'Oh the brain, the brain!' exclaimed the pious Alderman, lifting
up his hands. 'Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this
machine called Man! Oh the little that unhinges it: poor creatures
that we are! Perhaps a dinner, Mr. Fish. Perhaps the conduct of his
son, who, I have heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of
drawing bills upon him without the least authority! A most
respectable man. One of the most respectable men I ever knew! A
lamentable instance, Mr. Fish. A public calamity! I shall make a
point of wearing the deepest mourning. A most respectable man! But
there is One above. We must submit, Mr. Fish. We must submit!'

What, Alderman! No word of Putting Down? Remember, Justice,
your high moral boast and pride. Come, Alderman! Balance those
scales. Throw me into this, the empty one, no dinner, and Nature's
founts in some poor woman, dried by starving misery and rendered
obdurate to claims for which her offspring has authority in holy
mother Eve. Weigh me the two, you Daniel, going to judgment, when
your day shall come! Weigh them, in the eyes of suffering thousands,
audience (not unmindful) of the grim farce you play. Or supposing
that you strayed from your five wits - it's not so far to go, but
that it might be - and laid hands upon that throat of yours, warning
your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they croak their comfortable
wickedness to raving heads and stricken hearts. What then?

The words rose up in Trotty's breast, as if they had been spoken
by some other voice within him. Alderman Cute pledged himself to Mr.
Fish that he would assist him in breaking the melancholy catastrophe
to Sir Joseph when the day was over. Then, before they parted,
wringing Mr. Fish's hand in bitterness of soul, he said, 'The most
respectable of men!' And added that he hardly knew (not even he),
why such afflictions were allowed on earth.

'It's almost enough to make one think, if one didn't know
better,' said Alderman Cute, 'that at times some motion of a
capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the general
economy of the social fabric. Deedles Brothers!'

The skittle-playing came off with immense success. Sir Joseph
knocked the pins about quite skilfully; Master Bowley took an innings
at a shorter distance also; and everybody said that now, when a
Baronet and the Son of a Baronet played at skittles, the country was
coming round again, as fast as it could come.

At its proper time, the Banquet was served up. Trotty
involuntarily repaired to the Hall with the rest, for he felt himself
conducted thither by some stronger impulse than his own free will.
The sight was gay in the extreme; the ladies were very handsome; the
visitors delighted, cheerful, and good-tempered. When the lower doors
were opened, and the people flocked in, in their rustic dresses, the
beauty of the spectacle was at its height; but Trotty only murmured
more and more, 'Where is Richard! He should help and comfort her! I
can't see Richard!'

There had been some speeches made; and Lady Bowley's health had
been proposed; and Sir Joseph Bowley had returned thanks, and had
made his great speech, showing by various pieces of evidence that he
was the born Friend and Father, and so forth; and had given as a
Toast, his Friends and Children, and the Dignity of Labour; when a
slight disturbance at the bottom of the Hall attracted Toby's notice.
After some confusion, noise, and opposition, one man broke through
the rest, and stood forward by himself.

Not Richard. No. But one whom he had thought of, and had
looked for, many times. In a scantier supply of light, he might have
doubted the identity of that worn man, so old, and grey, and bent;
but with a blaze of lamps upon his gnarled and knotted head, he knew
Will Fern as soon as he stepped forth.

'What is this!' exclaimed Sir Joseph, rising. 'Who gave this
man admittance? This is a criminal from prison! Mr. Fish, sir, will
you have the goodness - '

'A minute!' said Will Fern. 'A minute! My Lady, you was born
on this day along with a New Year. Get me a minute's leave to
speak.'

She made some intercession for him. Sir Joseph took his seat
again, with native dignity.

The ragged visitor - for he was miserably dressed - looked round
upon the company, and made his homage to them with a humble bow.

'Gentlefolks!' he said. 'You've drunk the Labourer. Look at
me!'

'Just come from jail,' said Mr. Fish.

'Just come from jail,' said Will. 'And neither for the first
time, nor the second, nor the third, nor yet the fourth.'

Mr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was over
the average; and he ought to be ashamed of himself.

'Gentlefolks!' repeated Will Fern. 'Look at me! You see I'm at
the worst. Beyond all hurt or harm; beyond your help; for the time
when your kind words or kind actions could have done me good,' - he
struck his hand upon his breast, and shook his head, 'is gone, with
the scent of last year's beans or clover on the air. Let me say a
word for these,' pointing to the labouring people in the Hall; 'and
when you're met together, hear the real Truth spoke out for once.'

'There's not a man here,' said the host, 'who would have him for
a spokesman.'

'Like enough, Sir Joseph. I believe it. Not the less true,
perhaps, is what I say. Perhaps that's a proof on it. Gentlefolks,
I've lived many a year in this place. You may see the cottage from
the sunk fence over yonder. I've seen the ladies draw it in their
books, a hundred times. It looks well in a picter, I've heerd say;
but there an't weather in picters, and maybe 'tis fitter for that,
than for a place to live in. Well! I lived there. How hard - how
bitter hard, I lived there, I won't say. Any day in the year, and
every day, you can judge for your own selves.'

He spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found him in
the street. His voice was deeper and more husky, and had a trembling
in it now and then; but he never raised it passionately, and seldom
lifted it above the firm stern level of the homely facts he
stated.

''Tis harder than you think for, gentlefolks, to grow up decent,
commonly decent, in such a place. That I growed up a man and not a
brute, says something for me - as I was then. As I am now, there's
nothing can be said for me or done for me. I'm past it.'

'I am glad this man has entered,' observed Sir Joseph, looking
round serenely. 'Don't disturb him. It appears to be Ordained. He
is an example: a living example. I hope and trust, and confidently
expect, that it will not be lost upon my Friends here.'

'I dragged on,' said Fern, after a moment's silence, 'somehow.
Neither me nor any other man knows how; but so heavy, that I couldn't
put a cheerful face upon it, or make believe that I was anything but
what I was. Now, gentlemen - you gentlemen that sits at Sessions -
when you see a man with discontent writ on his face, you says to one
another, "He's suspicious. I has my doubts," says you, "about Will
Fern. Watch that fellow!" I don't say, gentlemen, it ain't quite
nat'ral, but I say 'tis so; and from that hour, whatever Will Fern
does, or lets alone - all one - it goes against him.'

Alderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, and
leaning back in his chair, and smiling, winked at a neighbouring
chandelier. As much as to say, 'Of course! I told you so. The
common cry! Lord bless you, we are up to all this sort of thing -
myself and human nature.'

'Now, gentlemen,' said Will Fern, holding out his hands, and
flushing for an instant in his haggard face, 'see how your laws are
made to trap and hunt us when we're brought to this. I tries to live
elsewhere. And I'm a vagabond. To jail with him! I comes back
here. I goes a-nutting in your woods, and breaks - who don't? - a
limber branch or two. To jail with him! One of your keepers sees me
in the broad day, near my own patch of garden, with a gun. To jail
with him! I has a nat'ral angry word with that man, when I'm free
again. To jail with him! I cuts a stick. To jail with him! I eats
a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with him! It's twenty mile
away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him!
At last, the constable, the keeper - anybody - finds me anywhere,
a-doing anything. To jail with him, for he's a vagrant, and a
jail-bird known; and jail's the only home he's got.'

The Alderman nodded sagaciously, as who should say, 'A very good
home too!'

'Do I say this to serve my cause!' cried Fern. 'Who can give me
back my liberty, who can give me back my good name, who can give me
back my innocent niece? Not all the Lords and Ladies in wide
England. But, gentlemen, gentlemen, dealing with other men like me,
begin at the right end. Give us, in mercy, better homes when we're
a-lying in our cradles; give us better food when we're a- working for
our lives; give us kinder laws to bring us back when were a-going
wrong; and don't set jail, jail, jail, afore us, everywhere we turn.
There an't a condescension you can show the Labourer then, that he
won't take, as ready and as grateful as a man can be; for, he has a
patient, peaceful, willing heart. But you must put his rightful
spirit in him first; for, whether he's a wreck and ruin such as me,
or is like one of them that stand here now, his spirit is divided
from you at this time. Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it back!
Bring it back, afore the day comes when even his Bible changes in his
altered mind, and the words seem to him to read, as they have
sometimes read in my own eyes - in jail: "Whither thou goest, I can
Not go; where thou lodgest, I do Not lodge; thy people are Not my
people; Nor thy God my God!'

A sudden stir and agitation took place in Hall. Trotty thought
at first, that several had risen to eject the man; and hence this
change in its appearance. But, another moment showed him that the
room and all the company had vanished from his sight, and that his
daughter was again before him, seated at her work. But in a poorer,
meaner garret than before; and with no Lilian by her side.

The frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a shelf and
covered up. The chair in which she had sat, was turned against the
wall. A history was written in these little things, and in Meg's
grief-worn face. Oh! who could fail to read it!

Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to see
the threads; and when the night closed in, she lighted her feeble
candle and worked on. Still her old father was invisible about her;
looking down upon her; loving her - how dearly loving her! - and
talking to her in a tender voice about the old times, and the Bells.
Though he knew, poor Trotty, though he knew she could not hear
him.

A great part of the evening had worn away, when a knock came at
her door. She opened it. A man was on the threshold. A slouching,
moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his
matted hair and unshorn beard in wild disorder; but, with some traces
on him, too, of having been a man of good proportion and good
features in his youth.

He stopped until he had her leave to enter; and she, retiring a
pace of two from the open door, silently and sorrowfully looked upon
him. Trotty had his wish. He saw Richard.

'May I come in, Margaret?'

'Yes! Come in. Come in!'

It was well that Trotty knew him before he spoke; for with any
doubt remaining on his mind, the harsh discordant voice would have
persuaded him that it was not Richard but some other man.

There were but two chairs in the room. She gave him hers, and
stood at some short distance from him, waiting to hear what he had to
say.

He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a
lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation,
of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she
put her hands before her face and turned away, lest he should see how
much it moved her.

Roused by the rustling of her dress, or some such trifling
sound, he lifted his head, and began to speak as if there had been no
pause since he entered.

'Still at work, Margaret? You work late.'

'I generally do.'

'And early?'

'And early.'

'So she said. She said you never tired; or never owned that you
tired. Not all the time you lived together. Not even when you
fainted, between work and fasting. But I told you that, the last
time I came.'

'You did,' she answered. 'And I implored you to tell me nothing
more; and you made me a solemn promise, Richard, that you never
would.'

'A solemn promise,' he repeated, with a drivelling laugh and
vacant stare. 'A solemn promise. To he sure. A solemn promise!'
Awakening, as it were, after a time; in the same manner as before; he
said with sudden animation:

'How can I help it, Margaret? What am I to do? She has been to
me again!'

'Again!' cried Meg, clasping her hands. 'O, does she think of
me so often! Has she been again!'

'Twenty times again,' said Richard. 'Margaret, she haunts me.
She comes behind me in the street, and thrusts it in my hand. I hear
her foot upon the ashes when I'm at my work (ha, ha! that an't
often), and before I can turn my head, her voice is in my ear,
saying, "Richard, don't look round. For Heaven's love, give her
this!" She brings it where I live: she sends it in letters; she
taps at the window and lays it on the sill. What can I do? Look at
it!"

He held out in his hand a little purse, and chinked the money it
enclosed.

'Hide it,' sad Meg. 'Hide it! When she comes again, tell her,
Richard, that I love her in my soul. That I never lie down to sleep,
but I bless her, and pray for her. That, in my solitary work, I
never cease to have her in my thoughts. That she is with me, night
and day. That if I died to-morrow, I would remember her with my last
breath. But, that I cannot look upon it!'

He slowly recalled his hand, and crushing the purse together,
said with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness:

'I told her so. I told her so, as plain as words could speak.
I've taken this gift back and left it at her door, a dozen times
since then. But when she came at last, and stood before me, face to
face, what could I do?'

'You saw her!' exclaimed Meg. 'You saw her! O, Lilian, my
sweet girl! O, Lilian, Lilian!'

'I saw her,' he went on to say, not answering, but engaged in
the same slow pursuit of his own thoughts. 'There she stood:
trembling! "How does she look, Richard? Does she ever speak of me?
Is she thinner? My old place at the table: what's in my old place?
And the frame she taught me our old work on - has she burnt it,
Richard!" There she was. I heard her say it.'

Meg checked her sobs, and with the tears streaming from her
eyes, bent over him to listen. Not to lose a breath.

With his arms resting on his knees; and stooping forward in his
chair, as if what he said were written on the ground in some half
legible character, which it was his occupation to decipher and
connect; he went on.

'"Richard, I have fallen very low; and you may guess how much I
have suffered in having this sent back, when I can bear to bring it
in my hand to you. But you loved her once, even in my memory,
dearly. Others stepped in between you; fears, and jealousies, and
doubts, and vanities, estranged you from her; but you did love her,
even in my memory!" I suppose I did,' he said, interrupting himself
for a moment. 'I did! That's neither here nor there - "O Richard,
if you ever did; if you have any memory for what is gone and lost,
take it to her once more. Once more! Tell her how I laid my head
upon your shoulder, where her own head might have lain, and was so
humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and
saw the beauty which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in
its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to see.
Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not refuse again.
She will not have the heart!"'

So he sat musing, and repeating the last words, until he woke
again, and rose.

'You won't take it, Margaret?'

She shook her head, and motioned an entreaty to him to leave
her.

'Good night, Margaret.'

'Good night!'

He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by
the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. It was a quick and
rapid action; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing
kindled in his form. In the next he went as he had come. Nor did
this glimmer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense
of his debasement.

In any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body,
Meg's work must be done. She sat down to her task, and plied it.
Night, midnight. Still she worked.

She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at
intervals to mend it. The Chimes rang half-past twelve while she was
thus engaged; and when they ceased she heard a gentle knocking at the
door. Before she could so much as wonder who was there, at that
unusual hour, it opened.

O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this. O
Youth and Beauty, blest and blessing all within your reach, and
working out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, look at this!

She saw the entering figure; screamed its name; cried
'Lilian!'

It was swift, and fell upon its knees before her: clinging to
her dress.

'Up, dear! Up! Lilian! My own dearest!'

'Never more, Meg; never more! Here! Here! Close to you,
holding to you, feeling your dear breath upon my face!'

'Sweet Lilian! Darling Lilian! Child of my heart - no mother's
love can be more tender - lay your head upon my breast!'

'Never more, Meg. Never more! When I first looked into your
face, you knelt before me. On my knees before you, let me die. Let
it be here!'

'You have come back. My Treasure! We will live together, work
together, hope together, die together!'

'Ah! Kiss my lips, Meg; fold your arms about me; press me to
your bosom; look kindly on me; but don't raise me. Let it be here.
Let me see the last of your dear face upon my knees!'

O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! O
Youth and Beauty, working out the ends of your Beneficent Creator,
look at this!

'Forgive me, Meg! So dear, so dear! Forgive me! I know you
do, I see you do, but say so, Meg!'

She said so, with her lips on Lilian's cheek. And with her arms
twined round - she knew it now - a broken heart.

'His blessing on you, dearest love. Kiss me once more! He
suffered her to sit beside His feet, and dry them with her hair. O
Meg, what Mercy and Compassion!'

As she died, the Spirit of the child returning, innocent and
radiant, touched the old man with its hand, and beckoned him away.