The great room of the prison to which he was taken Darnay found full of ladies and gentlemen, most of them rich and titled, the men chatting, the women reading or doing embroidery, all courteous and polite, as if they sat in their own splendid homes, instead of in a prison from which most of them could issue only to a dreadful death. He was allowed to remain here only a few moments; then he was taken to an empty cell and left alone.

It happened that the bank of which Mr. Lorry was agent had an office also in Paris, and the old gentleman had come there on business the day before Darnay arrived. Mr. Lorry was an Englishman born, and for him there was no danger. He knew nothing of the arrest of Darnay until a day or two later, when, as he sat in his room, Doctor Manette and Lucie entered, just arrived from London, deeply agitated and in great fear for Darnay's safety.

As soon as Lucie had read her husband's letter she had followed at once with her father and Miss Pross. Doctor Manette, knowing Darnay's real name and title (for, before he married Lucie, he had told her father everything concerning himself), feared danger for him. But he had reasoned that his own long imprisonment in the Bastille—the building the people had first destroyed—would make him a favorite, and render him able to aid Darnay if danger came. On the way, they had heard the sad news of his arrest, and had come at once to Mr. Lorry to consider what might best be done.

While they talked, through the window they saw a great crowd of people come rushing into the courtyard of the building to sharpen weapons at a huge grindstone that stood there. They were going to murder the prisoners with which the jails were by this time full!

Fearful that he would be too late to save Darnay, Doctor Manette rushed to the yard, his white hair streaming in the wind, and told the leaders of the mob who he was—how he had been imprisoned for eighteen years in the Bastille, and that now one of his kindred, by some unknown error, had been seized. They cheered him, lifted him on their shoulders and rushed away to demand for him the release of Darnay, while Lucie, in tears, with Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, waited all night for tidings.

But none came that night. The rescue had not proved easy. Next day Defarge, the wine shop keeper, brought a short note to Lucie from Darnay at the prison, but it was four days before Doctor Manette returned to the house. He had, indeed, by the story of his own sufferings, saved Darnay's life for the time being, but the prisoner, he had been told, could not be released without trial.

For this trial they waited, day after day. The time passed slowly and terribly. Prisoners were no longer murdered without trial, but few escaped the death penalty. The king and queen were beheaded. Thousands were put to death merely on suspicion, and thousands more were thrown into prison to await their turn. This was that dreadful period which has always since been called "The Reign of Terror," when no one felt sure of his safety.

There was a certain window in the prison through which Darnay sometimes found a chance to look, and from which he could see one dingy street corner. On this corner, every afternoon, Lucie took her station for hours, rain or shine. She never missed a day, and thus at long intervals her husband got a view of her.

So months passed till a year had gone. All the while Doctor Manette, now become a well-known figure in Paris, worked hard for Darnay's release. And at length his turn came to be tried and he was brought before the drunken, ignorant men who called themselves judge and jury.

He told how he had years before renounced his family and title, left France, and supported himself rather than be a burden on the peasantry. He told how he had married a woman of French birth, the only daughter of the good Doctor Manette, whom all Paris knew, and had come to Paris now of his own accord to help a poor servant who was in danger through his fault.

The story caught the fancy of the changeable crowd in the room. They cheered and applauded it. When he was acquitted they were quite as pleased as if he had been condemned to be beheaded, and put him in a great chair and carried him home in triumph to Lucie.

There was only one there, perhaps, who did not rejoice at the result, and that was the cold, cruel wife of the wine seller, Madame Defarge, who had knitted the name "Evremonde" so many times into her knitting.

III

SYDNEY CARTON'S SACRIFICE

That same night of his release all the happiness of Darnay and Lucie was suddenly broken. Soldiers came and again arrested him. Defarge and his wife were the accusers this time, and he was to be retried.

The first one to bring this fresh piece of bad news to Mr. Lorry was Sydney Carton, the reckless and dissipated young lawyer. Probably he had heard, in London, of Lucie's trouble, and out of his love for her, which he always carried hidden in his heart, had come to Paris to try to aid her husband. He had arrived only to hear, at the same time, of the acquittal and the rearrest.

As Carton walked along the street thinking sadly of Lucie's new grief, he saw a man whose face and figure seemed familiar. Following, he soon recognized him as the English spy, Barsad, whose false testimony, years before in London, had come so near convicting Darnay when he was tried for treason. Barsad (who, as it happened, was now a turnkey in the very prison where Darnay was confined) had left London to become a spy in France, first on the side of the king and then on the side of the people.

At the time of this story England was so hated by France that if the people had known of Barsad's career in London they would have cut off his head at once. Carton, who was well aware of this, threatened the spy with his knowledge and made him swear that if worst came to worst and Darnay were condemned, he would admit Carton to the cell to see him once before he was taken to execution. Why Carton asked this Barsad could not guess, but to save himself he had to promise.

Next day Darnay was tried for the second time. When the judge asked for the accusation, Defarge laid a paper before him.

It was a letter that had been found when the Bastille fell, in the cell that had been occupied for eighteen years by Doctor Manette. He had written it before his reason left him, and hidden it behind a loosened stone in the wall; and in it he had told the story of his own unjust arrest. Defarge read it aloud to the jury. And this was the terrible tale it told:

The Marquis de St. Evremonde (the cruel uncle of Darnay), when he was a young man, had dreadfully wronged a young peasant woman, had caused her husband's death and killed her brother with his own hand. As the brother lay dying from the sword wound, Doctor Manette, then also a young man, had been called to attend him, and so, by accident, had learned the whole. Horrified at the wicked wrong, he wrote of it in a letter to the Minister of Justice. The Marquis whom it accused learned of this, and, to put Doctor Manette out of the way, had him arrested secretly, taken from his wife and baby daughter and thrown into a secret cell of the Bastille, where he had lived those eighteen years, not knowing whether his wife and child lived or died. He waited ten years for release, and when none came, at last, feeling his mind giving way, he wrote the account, which he concealed in the cell wall, denouncing the family of Evremonde and all their descendants.

The reading of this paper by Defarge, as may be guessed, aroused all the murderous passions of the people in the court room. There was a further reason for Madame Defarge's hatred, for the poor woman whom Darnay's uncle had so wronged had been her own sister! In vain old Doctor Manette pleaded. That his own daughter was now Darnay's wife made no difference in their eyes. The jury at once found Darnay guilty and sentenced him to die by the guillotine the next morning.

Lucie fainted when the sentence was pronounced. Sydney Carton, who had witnessed the trial, lifted her and bore her to a carriage. When they reached home he carried her up the stairs and laid her on a couch.

Before he went, he bent down and touched her cheek with his lips, and they heard him whisper: "For a life you love!"

They did not know until next day what he meant.

Carton had, in fact, formed a desperate plan to rescue Lucie's husband, whom he so much resembled in face and figure, even though it meant his own death. He went to Mr. Lorry and made him promise to have ready next morning passports and a coach and swift horses to leave Paris for England with Doctor Manette, Lucie and himself, telling him that if they delayed longer, Lucie's life and her father's also would be lost.

Next, Carton bought a quantity of a drug whose fumes would render a man insensible, and with this in his pocket early next morning he went to the spy, Barsad, and bade him redeem his promise and take him to the cell where Darnay waited for the signal of death.

Darnay was seated, writing a last letter to Lucie, when Carton entered. Pretending that he wished him to write something that he dictated, Carton stood over him and held the phial of the drug to his face. In a moment the other was unconscious. Then Carton changed clothes with him and called in the spy, directing him to take the unconscious man, who now seemed to be Sydney Carton instead of Charles Darnay, to Mr. Lorry's house. He himself was to take the prisoner's place and suffer the penalty.

The plan worked well. Darnay, who would not have allowed this sacrifice if he had known, was carried safely and without discovery, past the guards. Mr. Lorry, guessing what had happened when he saw the unconscious figure, took coach at once with him, Doctor Manette and Lucie, and started for England that very hour. Miss Pross was left to follow them in another carriage.

While Miss Pross sat waiting in the empty house, who should come in but the terrible Madame Defarge! The latter had made up her mind, as Carton had suspected, to denounce Lucie also. It was against the law to mourn for any one who had been condemned as an enemy to France, and the woman was sure, of course, that Lucie would be mourning for her husband, who was to die within the hour. So she stopped on her way to the execution to see Lucie and thus have evidence against her.

When Madame Defarge entered, Miss Pross read the hatred and evil purpose in her face. The grim old nurse knew if it were known that Lucie had gone, the coach would be pursued and brought back. So she planted herself in front of the door of Lucie's room, and would not let Madame Defarge open it.

The savage Frenchwoman tried to tear her away, but Miss Pross seized her around the waist, and held her back. The other drew a loaded pistol from her breast to shoot her, but in the struggle it went off and killed Madame Defarge herself.

Then Miss Pross, all of a tremble, locked the door, threw the key into the river, took a carriage and followed after the coach.

Not long after the unconscious Darnay, with Lucie and Doctor Manette, passed the gates of Paris, the jailer came to the cell where Sydney Carton sat and called him. It was the summons to die. And with his thoughts on Lucie, whom he had always hopelessly loved, and on her husband, whom he had thus saved to her, he went almost gladly.

A poor little seamstress rode in the death cart beside him. She was so small and weak that she feared to die, and Carton held her cold hand all the way and comforted her to the end. Cruel women of the people sat about the guillotine knitting and counting with their stitches, as each poor victim died. And when Carton's turn came, thinking he was Darnay, the hated Marquis de St. Evremonde, they cursed him and laughed.

Men said of him about the city that night that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. If they could have read his thought, if he could have spoken it in words it would have been these:

"I see the lives, for which I lay down mine, peaceful and happy in that England I shall see no more. I see Lucie and Darnay with a child that bears my name, and I see that I shall hold a place in their hearts for ever. I see her weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see the blot I threw upon my name faded away, and I know that till they die neither shall be more honored in the soul of the other than I am honored in the souls of both. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known!"



BLEAK HOUSE

Published 1852-1853

Scene: London and the Country

Time: 1832 to 1852

CHARACTERS

Mr. Jarndyce Master of Bleak House

Mr. Boythorn His friend

Sir Leicester Dedlock An aged nobleman Mr. Boythorn's neighbor

Lady Dedlock His wife

Mr. Tulkinghorn His lawyer

Captain Hawdon A dissipated and poverty-stricken copyist in London, known as "Nemo"

Esther Summerson Mr. Jarndyce's ward In reality a daughter of Captain Hawdon and Lady Dedlock

Ada Clare } } Wards of Mr. Jarndyce Richard Carstone }

Vholes Richard's lawyer

Mrs. Rouncewell Sir Leicester's housekeeper

"Mr. George" Proprietor of a London shooting-gallery Her son

Hortense Lady Dedlock's French maid

Miss Flite A little, old, demented woman

Mrs. Jellyby A lady greatly interested in the welfare of the heathen

Caddy Jellyby Her daughter

Harold Skimpole A trifler with life, preferring to live at other people's expense

Allan Woodcourt A young surgeon

Grandfather Smallweed A money-lender

Mrs. Smallweed His crazy wife

Mr. Turveydrop The proprietor of a dancing school and a model of deportment

Prince Turveydrop His son. Later, Caddy's husband

Joe A crossing sweeper

Krook A dealer in rags and old bottles

"Lady Jane" His cat



BLEAK HOUSE

I

THE COURT OF CHANCERY

An Englishman named Jarndyce, once upon a time having made a great fortune, died and left a great will. The persons appointed to carry out its provisions could not agree; they fell to disputing among themselves and went to law over it.

The court which in England decides such suits is called the Court of Chancery. Its action is slow and its delays many, so that men generally consider it a huge misfortune to be obliged to have anything to do with it. Sometimes it has kept cases undecided for many years, till the heirs concerned were dead and gone; and often when the decision came at last there was no money left to be divided, because it had all been eaten up by the costs of the suit. Lawyers inherited some cases from their fathers, who themselves had made a living by them, and many suits had become so twisted that nobody alive could have told at last what they really meant.

Such came to be the case with the Jarndyce will. It had been tried for so many years that the very name had become a joke. Those who began it were long since dead and their heirs either knew nothing of it or had given up hope of its ever being ended.

The only one who seemed to be interested in it was a little old woman named Miss Flite, whom delay and despair in a suit of her own had made half crazy. For many years she had attended the Chancery Court every day and many thoughtless people made fun of her.

She was wretchedly poor and lived in a small room over a rag-and-bottle shop kept by a man named Krook. Here she had a great number of birds in little cages—larks and linnets and goldfinches. She had given them names to represent the different things which the cruel Chancery Court required to carry on these shameful suits, such as Hope, Youth, Rest, Ashes, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Folly, Words, Plunder and Jargon. She used to say that when the Jarndyce case was decided she would open the cages and let the birds all go.

The last Jarndyce that was left had given up in disgust all thought of the famous lawsuit and steadfastly refused to have anything to do with it. He lived quietly in the country in a big, bare building called Bleak House. He was past middle-age, and his hair was silver-gray, but he was straight and strong and merry.

He was rich, yet was so tender-hearted and benevolent that all who knew him loved him. Most of his good deeds he never told, for he had a great dislike to being thanked. It used to be said that once, after he had done an extremely generous thing for a relative of his, seeing her coming in the front gate to thank him, he escaped by the back door and was not seen again for three months. He never spoke ill of his neighbors, and whenever he was vexed he would pretend to look for a weather-cock and say, "Dear, dear! The wind must be coming from the east!"

It happened, finally, that all the other Jarndyce heirs had died except two, a young girl named Ada Clare and a young man named Richard Carstone. These two, who were cousins, were left orphans. The master of Bleak House, therefore, in the goodness of his heart, offered them a home with him, and this they thankfully accepted. Mr. Jarndyce now wished to find a companion for Ada Clare; and this is how Esther Summerson comes into this story.

Esther was a sweet girl who had been brought up by a stern, hard-hearted woman whom she had always called "godmother," in ignorance of her parentage. She had never known who were her mother or father, for from earliest babyhood her godmother had forbidden her to ask questions concerning them, and she would have had a sad and lonely youth but for her sunny disposition.

It was not till her godmother died suddenly that she found she had a guardian, and that he was Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House. How he came to be her guardian was a mystery to her, but she was glad to find herself not altogether friendless. Although he had taken the pains to see her more than once, and had noticed with pleasure what a cheerful, loving nature she had, yet Esther had never, so far as she knew, seen him, so that she received his invitation to come and live at Bleak House with joyful surprise.

She went, on the day appointed, to London, and there she met Ada, whom she began to love at once, and Richard, a handsome, careless young fellow of nineteen. They spent the day together and got well acquainted before they took the morrow's coach to Bleak House.

At the Chancery Court they met poor, crazy little Miss Flite, who insisted on taking them to her room above the rag-and-bottle shop to show them her caged birds. And that night (as they had been directed) they stayed at the house of a Mrs. Jellyby, of whom Mr. Jarndyce had heard as a woman of great charity.

Mrs. Jellyby was a woman with a mission, which mission was the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, in Africa, and the cultivation there of the coffee-bean. She thought of nothing else, and was for ever sending out letters or pamphlets about it.

But she seemed unable to see or think of anything nearer home than Africa. The house was unswept, the children dirty and always under foot, and the meals half-cooked. She would sit all day in slipshod slippers and a dress that did not meet in the back, drinking coffee and dictating to her eldest daughter Caddy (who hated Africa and all its natives) letters about coffee cultivation and the uplifting of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.

A very strange sort of philanthropist both Esther and Ada thought Mrs. Jellyby. Perhaps, however, Mr. Jarndyce sent them there for a useful lesson, for he afterward asked them what they thought of her, and he seemed well pleased to learn that they considered her ideas of doing good in the world extremely odd.

Next day they drove to Bleak House. Not one of them had ever seen Mr. Jarndyce, but they found him all they had imagined and more—the kindest, pleasantest and most thoughtful person in the world. Before they had been there two days they felt as if they had known him all their lives.

Bleak House was a building where one went up and down steps from one room to another, and where there were always more rooms when one thought he had seen them all. In the daytime there was horseback riding or walking to amuse them, and in the evenings Ada often sang and played to the rest. Altogether the time flew by most pleasantly, and, judging by Mr. Jarndyce's jollity, the wind seldom showed any signs of coming from the east.

It was soon clear to everybody that Richard was in love with Ada and that Ada was beginning to love him in return. This pleased Mr. Jarndyce, for he was fond of both.

But he was fondest of Esther. He made her his housekeeper and she carried a big bunch of keys and kept the house as clean as a new pin. He used to say she reminded him of:

"Little old woman and whither so high? To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky."

She was so cheerful, he said, she would sweep the cobwebs out of anybody's sky. And from this they took to calling her "Little Old Woman," and "Cobweb," and "Mother Hubbard," till none of them thought of her real name at all.

Bleak House had a number of visitors who came more or less often. One of these was an old school friend of Mr. Jarndyce's, named Boythorn. He was a big, blustering man with a laugh as big as himself. Wherever he went he carried a tiny tame canary, that used to sit at meal-time perched on the top of his great shaggy head. It was odd to see this wee bird sitting there unafraid, even at one of his "ha-ha-ha's" that shook the whole house.

Mr. Boythorn was exceedingly tender-hearted, but took delight in pretending to be the stubbornest, most cross-grained, worst-tempered individual possible. His neighbor was Sir Leicester Dedlock, a dignified and proud old baronet, and him Mr. Boythorn loved to keep in perpetual anger by bringing against him all manner of lawsuits regarding the boundary between their land.

Another visitor whom Esther found amusing was Harold Skimpole, a light, bright creature of charming manners, with a large head and full of simple gaiety. He was a man who seemed to trifle with everything. He sang a little, composed a little and sketched a little. But his songs were never completed and his sketches never finished.

His aim in life seemed to be to avoid all responsibility, and to find some one else to pay his debts. He always spoke of himself as a "child," though he was middle-aged. He claimed to have no idea whatever of the value of money. He would take a handful of coins from his pocket and say laughing, "Now, there's some money. I have no idea how much. I don't know how to count it. I dare say I owe more than that. If good-natured people don't stop letting me owe them, why should I? There you have Harold Skimpole." Mr. Jarndyce was far too honest and innocent himself to see through the man's hollow selfishness and was continually paying his debts, as they soon learned.

Most of all Bleak House's visitors, Esther came to like Allan Woodcourt, a handsome dark-haired young surgeon, and before long she found herself unconsciously looking and longing for his coming. Woodcourt was poor, however, and although he was in love with Esther he did not tell her, but soon sailed away on a long voyage as a ship's doctor.

II

LADY DEDLOCK'S SECRET

Sir Leicester Dedlock, whom Mr. Boythorn so loved to torment, was seventy years old. His wife, many years younger than himself, he had married for love. Lady Dedlock was not noble by birth—no one, indeed, knew who she had been before her marriage—but she was very beautiful. She was as proud and haughty, too, as she was lovely, and was much sought after. But with all her popularity she had few close friends, and no one in whom she confided.

Even her housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell, a fine, handsome old woman who had been Sir Leicester's servant for fifty years, thought her cold and reserved. Mrs. Rouncewell herself had had a son George, who many years before had gone off to be a soldier and had never come back; and, looking at her mistress's face, she often wondered if the shadow of pain there was the mark of some old grief or loss of which no one knew. However that may have been, the old baronet loved his wife and was very proud of her.

Sir Leicester's family lawyer was named Tulkinghorn. He was a dull, dignified man who always dressed in black and seldom spoke unless he had to. His one passion was the discovery of other people's secrets. He knew more family secrets than any one else in London, and to discover a new one he would have risked all his fortune.

Now, among the very many persons connected in some way or other with the famous Jarndyce case, which seemed destined never to end, was Sir Leicester Dedlock, and one day (the Chancery Court having actually made a little progress) Mr. Tulkinghorn brought the baronet some legal papers to read to him.

As the lawyer held one in his hand, Lady Dedlock, seeing the handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. He answered that it was the work of one of his copyists. A moment later, as he went on reading, they found that Lady Dedlock had fainted away.

Her husband did not connect her faintness with the paper, but Mr. Tulkinghorn did, and that instant he determined that Lady Dedlock had a secret, that this secret had something to do with the copyist, and that what this secret was, he, Tulkinghorn, would discover.

He easily found that the writing had been done by a man who called himself "Nemo," and who lived above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop, a neighbor to crazy little Miss Flite of the Chancery Court and the many bird-cages.

Krook himself was an ignorant, spectacled old rascal, whose sole occupations seemed to be to sleep and to drink gin, a bottle of which stood always near him. His only intimate was a big, gray, evil-tempered cat called "Lady Jane," who, when not lying in wait for Miss Flite's birds, used to sit on his shoulder with her tail sticking straight up like a hairy feather. People in the neighborhood called his dirty shop the "Court of Chancery," because, like that other court, it had so many old things in it and whatever its owner once got into it never got out again.

In return for Mr. Tulkinghorn's money Krook told him all he knew about his lodger. Nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged himself daily. So far as was known, he had but one friend—Joe, a wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often gave a coin.

Thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he learned nothing. For when Krook took him to the room Nemo occupied, they found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or design no one could tell) of an overdose of opium.

Curious to see how Lady Dedlock would receive this news, Mr. Tulkinghorn called on her and told her of the unknown man's death. She pretended to listen with little interest, but his trained eye saw that she was deeply moved by it, and he became more anxious than ever to find out what connection there could be between this proud and titled woman and the miserable copyist who had lived and died in squalor.

Chance favored Mr. Tulkinghorn's object. One night he saw Joe, the ragged crossing sweeper pointing out to a woman whose face was hidden by a veil, and whose form was closely wrapped in a French shawl, the gate of the cemetery where Nemo had been buried. Later, at Sir Leicester's, he saw Lady Dedlock's maid, Hortense—a black-haired, jealous French woman, with wolf-like ways—wearing the same shawl.

He cunningly entrapped the maid into coming to his house one night wearing both veil and shawl, and there brought her unexpectedly face to face with Joe. By the boy's actions Mr. Tulkinghorn decided at once that Joe had never seen Hortense before, and that instant, he guessed the truth—that the veiled woman who had gone to the cemetery was really Lady Dedlock herself, and that she had worn her maid's clothes to mislead any observer.

This was a clever trick in the lawyer, but it proved too clever for his own good, for, finding she had been enticed there for some deeper purpose, Hortense flew into a passion with him. He sneered at her and turned her out into the street, threatening if she troubled him to have her put into prison. Because of this she began to hate him with a fierceness which he did not guess.

Mr. Tulkinghorn felt himself getting nearer to his goal. But he now had to find out who Nemo really had been.

If he had only known it, Krook could have aided him. The old man had found a bundle of old letters in Nemo's room after his death, and these were all addressed to "Captain Hawdon."

Krook himself could not read, except enough to spell out an address, and he had no idea what the letters contained. But he was quick to think the bundle might be worth some money. So he put it carefully away.

But Mr. Tulkinghorn found out nothing from Krook, for one day a strange thing happened. Krook had drunk so much gin in his life that he had become perfectly soaked with alcohol, so that he was just like a big spongeful of it. Now, it is a curious fact that when a great mass of inflammable material is heaped together, sometimes it will suddenly burst into flame and burn up all in a minute, without anything or anybody setting fire to it. This is just what happened to Krook. As he stood in the middle of the dirty shop, without any warning, all in a twinkling, he blazed up and burned, clothes and all, and in less time than it takes to tell it, there was nothing left but a little pile of ashes, a burnt mark in the floor and a sticky smoke that stuck to the window-panes and hung in the air like soot. And this was all the neighbors found when they came to search for him.

This was the end of Krook, and the rag-and-bottle shop was taken possession of by Grandfather Smallweed, a hideous, crippled money-lender, who had been his brother-in-law, and who at once went to work ransacking all the papers he could find on the premises.

Grandfather Smallweed was a thin, toothless, wheezy, green-eyed old miser, who was so nearly dead from age and asthma that he had to be wheeled about by his granddaughter Judy.

He had a wife who was out of her mind. Everything said in her hearing she connected with the idea of money. If one said, for example, "It's twenty minutes past noon," Mrs. Smallweed would at once begin to gabble: "Twenty pence! Twenty pounds! Twenty thousand millions of bank-notes locked up in a black box!" and she would not stop till her husband threw a cushion at her (which he kept beside him for that very purpose) and knocked her mouth shut.

Grandfather Smallweed soon discovered the bundle of letters hidden back of the shelf where Lady Jane, Krook's big cat, slept.

The name they bore, "Captain Hawdon," was familiar enough to the money-lender. Long ago, when Hawdon was living a dissipated life in London, he had borrowed money from Grandfather Smallweed, and this money was still unpaid when he had disappeared. It was said that he had fallen overboard from a vessel and had been drowned.

To think now that the captain had been living as a copyist all these years in London, free from arrest for the debt, filled the wizened soul of the old man with rage. He was ready enough to talk when Mr. Tulkinghorn questioned him, and finally sold him the bundle of letters.

The lawyer saw that they were in Lady Dedlock's penmanship; it remained to prove that the dead Nemo had really been Captain Hawdon.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, of course, had many specimens of the copyist's hand, and after much search he found a man who had once been a fellow soldier of the captain's. He was called "Mr. George," and kept a shooting-gallery. Mr. George had among his papers a letter once written him by Captain Hawdon, and not knowing the purpose for which it was to be used, loaned it to the lawyer. The handwriting was the same! And thus Mr. Tulkinghorn knew that the copyist had really been Captain Hawdon and that the letters in the bundle had once been written to him by the woman who was now the haughty Lady Dedlock.

It was a strange, sad story that the letters disclosed, as Mr. Tulkinghorn, gloating over his success, read them, line by line. The man who had fallen so low as to drag out a wretched existence by copying law papers—whom, until she saw the handwriting in the lawyer's hands, she had believed to be dead—was a man Lady Dedlock had once loved.

Many years before, when a young woman, she had run away from home with him. A little child was born to them whom she named Esther. When she and Hawdon had separated, her sister, to hide from the world the knowledge of the elopement, had told her the baby Esther was dead, had taken the child to another part of the country, given her the name of Summerson, and, calling herself her godmother instead of her aunt, brought her up in ignorance of the truth. Years had gone by and Captain Hawdon was reported drowned. At length the little Esther's mother had met and married Sir Leicester Dedlock, and in his love and protection had thought her dark past buried from view for ever.

All this the pitiless lawyer read in the letters, and knew that Lady Dedlock's happiness was now in his hands. And as he thought how, with this knowledge, he could torture her with the fear of discovery, his face took on the look of a cat's when it plays with a mouse it has caught.

Meanwhile Lady Dedlock had suffered much. The knowledge that Hawdon had not been drowned as she had supposed, had come to her like a thunderclap. And the news of his death, following so soon after this discovery, had unnerved her. She felt Mr. Tulkinghorn's suspicious eyes watching her always and began to tremble in dread of what he might know.

In the midst of these fears, she accidentally discovered one day that the baby name of Esther Summerson of Bleak House had been, not Summerson, but Hawdon.

This made Lady Dedlock guess the whole truth—that Esther was in reality her own daughter. As soon as she was alone, she threw herself on her knees in the empty room with sobs, crying:

"Oh, my child! My child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! Oh, my child! My child!"

III

LITTLE JOE PLAYS A PART

While these events, which so closely concerned Esther, were occurring in London, life at Bleak House went quietly on. Ada and Esther had become bosom friends, and both loved and respected Mr. Jarndyce above every one. Harold Skimpole, as charming and careless as ever, and as willing as ever that some one else should pay his debts for him, was often there, and whenever they went to the city they saw Miss Flite and Mrs. Jellyby, the latter still busily sending letters about the growing of coffee and the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.

Esther grew especially to like Caddy, the slipshod daughter to whom Mrs. Jellyby dictated her letters. The poor girl had much good in her, and Esther encouraged and helped her all she could. Caddy finally fell in love with Prince Turveydrop, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired young man whose father kept a dancing school.

Old Mr. Turveydrop, his father, was a fat man with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, a wig and a padded chest. He always carried a cane, eye-glass and snuff-box and was so tightly buttoned up that when he bowed you could almost see creases come into the whites of his eyes. He thought himself a model of politeness and stood about to show off his clothes while he made his son, Prince, do all the teaching.

Caddy was so tired of hearing about Africa that at last she married Prince and moved into the Turveydrop dancing school, and Mrs. Jellyby had to hire a boy to help her with her great plans for the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.

Once Esther and Ada went with Mr. Jarndyce to visit Mr. Boythorn—the man with the tremendous laugh and the pet canary—at his country house where he lived in one perpetual quarrel with his neighbor, Sir Leicester Dedlock. Esther had often heard of the beauty of Lady Dedlock, and one Sunday in the village church she saw her. There was something strangely familiar in her look that reminded Esther of her godmother. An odd sensation came over her then and she felt her heart beat quickly. But this was before Lady Dedlock had guessed the truth, and Esther and she did not meet.

Richard Carstone had soon begun to be a source of great anxiety to all at Bleak House. It was plainly to be seen that he loved Ada dearly, and that she loved him as well, but to Mr. Jarndyce's regret he had begun to think and dream of the famous chancery suit and of the fortune that would be his when it ended. Mr. Jarndyce, from his own bitter experience, hated the Chancery Court and everything connected with it, and saw with grief that Richard was growing to be a ne'er-do-well, who found it easier to trust in the future than to labor in the present.

In spite of all advice Richard went from bad to worse. He began the study of medicine, soon changed this for law, and lastly decided to enter the army. He was naturally a spendthrift, and as long as his money lasted Harold Skimpole found him a very fine friend and helped him spend it.

Skimpole also introduced to him a knavish lawyer named Vholes, who made him believe the great chancery suit must soon end in his favor, and who (when Richard had put the case in his hands) proceeded to rob him of all he had. He poisoned his mind, too, against Mr. Jarndyce, so that Richard began to think his truest friend deceitful.

Ada saw this with pain, but she loved Richard above all else, and the more so when she saw him so wretched and deceived; and at last, without telling either Mr. Jarndyce or Esther what she was going to do, she went to Richard one day and married him, so that, as her husband, he could take the little fortune she possessed to pay Vholes to go on with the chancery suit.

A great misfortune befell Esther about this time—a misfortune that came to her, strangely enough, through little Joe, the crossing sweeper.

Half-starved, ragged and homeless all his life, Joe had never known kindness save that given to him by the poor copyist who had lived above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop. He lived (if having a corner to sleep in can be called living) in a filthy alley called "Tom-all-Alone's." It seemed to him that every one he met told him to "move on." The policeman, the shopkeepers at whose doors he stopped for warmth, all told him to "move on," till the wretched lad wondered if there was any spot in London where he could rest undisturbed.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, in his search to find out the woman who had hired Joe to show her the cemetery, had dogged him so with his detective that at length the lad had become frightened and left London for the open country. There he was taken very ill, and on the highway near Bleak House one evening Esther found him helpless and delirious with fever.

Touched by his condition she had him taken at once to Bleak House and put to bed, intending when morning came to send for a doctor.

But in the morning little Joe was missing. Though they searched high and low he was not to be found, and they decided that in his delirium he had taken to the road again. It was not till long after that Esther found his leaving had been brought about by Harold Skimpole, who was then visiting Bleak House, and who, in his selfishness, feared the boy might be the bearer of some contagious disease.

This unfortunately proved to be the case. Joe's illness was smallpox, and a few days later a maid of Esther's fell ill with it. Esther nursed her day and night, and just as she was recovering was stricken with it herself.

In her unselfishness and love for the rest, before unconsciousness came, she made the maid promise faithfully to allow no one (particularly neither Mr. Jarndyce nor her beloved Ada) to enter the room till all danger was past.

For many days Esther hovered between life and death and all the time the maid kept her word. Caddy came from the Turveydrop dancing school early and late, and little Miss Flite walked the twenty miles from London in thin shoes to inquire for her. And at length, slowly, she began to grow well again.

But the disease had left its terrible mark. When she first looked in a mirror she found that her beauty was gone and her face strangely altered.

This was a great grief to her at first, but on the day when Mr. Jarndyce came into her sick-room and held her in his arms and said, "My dear, dear girl!" she thought, "He has seen me and is fonder of me than before. So what have I to mourn for?" She thought of Allan Woodcourt, too, the young surgeon somewhere on the sea, and she was glad that, if he had loved her before he sailed away, he had not told her so. Now, she told herself, when they met again and he saw her so sadly changed he would have given her no promise he need regret.

When she was able to travel, Esther went for a short stay at the house of Mr. Boythorn, and there, walking under the trees she grew stronger.

One day, as she sat in the park that surrounded the house, she saw Lady Dedlock coming toward her, and seeing how pale and agitated she was, Esther felt the same odd sensation she had felt in the church. Lady Dedlock threw herself sobbing at her feet, and put her arms around her and kissed her, as she told her that she was her unhappy mother, who must keep her secret for the sake of her husband, Sir Leicester.

Esther thought her heart must break with both grief and joy at once. But she comforted Lady Dedlock, and told her nothing would ever change her love for her, and they parted with tears and kisses.

Another surprise of a different sort awaited Esther on her return to Bleak House. Mr. Jarndyce told her that he loved her and asked her if she would marry him. And, remembering how tender he had always been, and knowing that he loved her in spite of her disfigured face, she said yes.

But one day—the very day he returned—Esther saw Allan Woodcourt on the street. Somehow at the first glimpse of him she knew that she had loved him all along. Then she remembered that she had promised to marry Mr. Jarndyce, and she began to tremble and ran away without speaking to Woodcourt at all.

But they soon met, and this time it was Joe the crossing sweeper who brought them together. Woodcourt found the poor ragged wanderer in the street, so ill that he could hardly walk. He had recovered from smallpox, but it had left him so weak that he had become a prey to consumption. The kind-hearted surgeon took the boy to little Miss Flite and they found him a place to stay in Mr. George's shooting-gallery, where they did what they could for him, and where Esther and Mr. Jarndyce came to see him.

Joe was greatly troubled when he learned he had brought the smallpox to Bleak House, and one day he got some one to write out for him in very large letters that he was sorry and hoped Esther and all the others would forgive him. And this was his will.

On the last day Allan Woodcourt sat beside him, "Joe, my poor fellow," he said.

"I hear you, sir, but it's dark—let me catch your hand."

"Joe, can you say what I say?"

"I'll say anything as you do, sir, for I know it's good."

"Our Father."

"Our Father; yes, that's very good, sir."

"Which art in Heaven."

"Art in Heaven. Is the light a-comin', sir?"

"Hallowed be thy name."

"Hallowed be—thy——"

But the light had come at last. Little Joe was dead.

IV

ESTHER BECOMES THE MISTRESS OF BLEAK HOUSE

When the last bit of proof was fast in his possession Mr. Tulkinghorn, pluming himself on the cleverness with which he had wormed his way into Lady Dedlock's secret, went to her at her London home and informed her of all he had discovered, delighting in the fear and dread which she could not help showing. She knew now that this cruel man would always hold his knowledge over her head, torturing her with the threat of making it known to her husband.

Some hours after he had gone home, she followed him there to beg him not to tell her husband what he had discovered. But all was dark in the lawyer's house. She rang the private bell twice, but there was no answer, and she returned in despair.

By a coincidence some one else had been seen to call at Mr. Tulkinghorn's that same night. This was Mr. George, of the shooting-gallery, who came to get back the letter he had loaned to the lawyer.

When morning came it was found that a dreadful deed had been done that night. Mr. Tulkinghorn was found lying dead on the floor of his private apartment, shot through the heart. All the secrets he had so cunningly discovered and gloated over with such delight had not been able to save his life there in that room.

Mr. Tulkinghorn was so well-known that the murder made a great sensation. The police went at once to the shooting-gallery to arrest Mr. George and he was put into jail.

He was able later to prove his innocence, however, and, all in all, his arrest turned out to be a fortunate thing. For by means of it old Mrs. Rouncewell, Lady Dedlock's housekeeper, discovered that he was her own son George, who had gone off to be a soldier so many years before. He had made up his mind not to return till he was prospering. But somehow this time had never come; bad fortune had followed him and he had been ashamed to go back.

But though he had acted so wrongly he had never lost his love for his mother, and was glad to give up the shooting-gallery and go with Mrs. Rouncewell to become Sir Leicester's personal attendant.

At first, after the death of Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock had hoped that her dread and fear were now ended, but she soon found that this was not to be. The telltale bundle of letters was in the possession of a detective whom the cruel lawyer had long ago called to his aid, and the detective, thinking Lady Dedlock herself might have had something to do with the murder, thought it his duty to tell all that his dead employer had discovered to Sir Leicester.

It was a fearful shock to the haughty baronet to find so many tongues had been busy with the name his wife had borne so proudly. When the detective finished, Sir Leicester fell unconscious, and when he came to his senses had lost the power to speak.

They laid him on his bed, sent for doctors and went to tell Lady Dedlock, but she had disappeared.

Almost at one and the same moment the unhappy woman had learned not only that the detective had told his story to Sir Leicester, but that she herself was suspected of the murder. These two blows were more than she could bear. She put on a cloak and veil and, leaving all her money and jewels behind her, with a note for her husband, went out into the shrill, frosty wind. The note read:

"If I am sought for or accused of his murder, believe I am wholly innocent. I have no home left, I will trouble you no more. May you forget me and forgive me."

They gave Sir Leicester this note, and great agony came to the stricken man's heart. He had always loved and honored her, and he loved her no less now for what had been told him. Nor did he believe for a moment that she could be guilty of the murder. He wrote on a slate the words, "Forgive—find," and the detective started at once to overtake the fleeing woman.

He went first to Esther, to whom he told the sad outcome, and together they began the search. For two days they labored, tracing Lady Dedlock's movements step by step, through the pelting snow and wind, across the frozen wastes outside of London, where brick-kilns burned and where she had exchanged clothes with a poor laboring woman, the better to elude pursuit—then back to London again, where at last they found her.

But it was too late. She was lying frozen in the snow, at the gate of the cemetery where Captain Hawdon, the copyist whom she had once loved, lay buried.

So Lady Dedlock's secret was hidden at last by death. Only the detective, whose business was silence, Sir Leicester her husband, and Esther her daughter, knew what her misery had been or the strange circumstances of her flight, for the police soon succeeded in tracing the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn to Hortense, the revengeful French maid whom he had threatened to put in prison.

One other shadow fell on Esther's life before the clouds cleared away for ever.

Grandfather Smallweed, rummaging among the papers in Krook's shop, found an old will, and this proved to be a last will made by the original Jarndyce, whose affairs the Court of Chancery had been all these years trying to settle. This will bequeathed the greater part of the fortune to Richard Carstone, and its discovery, of course, would have put a stop to the famous suit.

But the suit stopped of its own accord, for it was found now that there was no longer any fortune left to go to law about or to be willed to anybody. All the money had been eaten up by the costs.

After all the years of hope and strain, this disappointment was too much for Richard, and he died that night, at the very hour when poor crazed little Miss Flite (as she had said she would do when the famous suit ended) gave all her caged birds their liberty.

The time came at length, after the widowed Ada and her baby boy had come to make their home with Mr. Jarndyce, when Esther felt that she should fulfil her promise and become the mistress of Bleak House. So she told her guardian she was ready to marry him when he wished. He appointed a day, and she began to prepare her wedding-clothes.

But Mr. Jarndyce, true-hearted and generous as he had always been, had an idea very different from this in his mind. He had found, on Allan Woodcourt's return from his voyage, that the young surgeon still loved Esther. His keen eye had seen that she loved him in return, and he well knew that if she married him, Jarndyce, it would be because of her promise and because her grateful heart could not find it possible to refuse him. So, wishing most of all her happiness, he determined to give up his own love for her sake.

He bought a house in the town in which Woodcourt had decided to practise medicine, remodeled it and named it "Bleak House," after his own. When it was finished in the way he knew Esther liked best, he took her to see it, telling her it was to be a present from him to the surgeon to repay him for his kindness to little Joe.

Then, when she had seen it all, he told her that he had guessed her love for Woodcourt, and that, though she married the surgeon and not himself, she would still be carrying out her promise and would still become the mistress of "Bleak House."

When she lifted her tearful face from his shoulder she saw that Woodcourt was standing near them.

"This is 'Bleak House,'" said Jarndyce. "This day I give this house its little mistress, and, before God, it is the brightest day of my life!"



HARD TIMES

Published 1854

Scene: Coketown (an English factory town) and the Country.

Time: About 1850

CHARACTERS

Mr. Gradgrind A believer in "facts"

Mrs. Gradgrind His wife

Louisa Their daughter

Tom Their son

Josiah Bounderby A pompous mill owner and banker Later, Louisa's husband

"Mrs. Pegler" His mother

Mrs. Sparsit His housekeeper

Mr. M'Choakumchild A schoolmaster

Sleary The proprietor of a circus

"Signor" Jupe The clown

Cecelia Jupe His daughter. Known as "Sissy"

Stephen Blackpool } } Mill workers Rachel }

James Harthouse A man of the world

"Merrylegs" Signor Jupe's performing dog



HARD TIMES

I

MR. GRADGRIND AND HIS "SYSTEM"

In a cheerless house called Stone Lodge, in Coketown, a factory town in England, where great weaving mills made the sky a blur of soot and smoke, lived a man named Gradgrind. He was an obstinate, stubborn man, with a square wall of a forehead and a wide, thin, set mouth. His head was bald and shining, covered with knobs like the crust of a plum pie, and skirted with bristling hair. He had grown rich in the hardware business, and was a school director of the town.

He believed in nothing but "facts." Everything in the world to him was good only to weigh and measure, and wherever he went one would have thought he carried in his pocket a rule and scales and the multiplication table. He seemed a kind of human cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts.

"Now, what I want is facts!" he used to say to Mr. M'Choakumchild, the schoolmaster. "Teach boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Nothing else is of any service to anybody. Stick to facts, sir."

He had several children whom he had brought up according to this system of his, and they led wretched lives. No little Gradgrind child had ever seen a face in the moon, or learned Mother Goose or listened to fairy stories, or read The Arabian Nights. They all hated Coketown, always rattling and throbbing with machinery; they hated its houses all built of brick as red as an Indian's face, and its black canal and river purple with dyes. And most of all they hated facts.

Louisa, the eldest daughter, looked jaded, for her imagination was quite starved under their teachings. Tom, her younger brother, was defiant and sullen. "I wish," he used to say, "that I could collect all the facts and all the figures in the world, and all the people who found them out, and I wish I could put a thousand pounds of gunpowder under them and blow them all up together!"

Louisa was generous, and the only love she knew was for her selfish, worthless brother, who repaid her with very little affection. Of their mother they saw very little; she was a thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, feeble and ailing, and had too little mind to oppose her husband in anything.

Strangely enough, Mr. Gradgrind had once had a tender heart, and down beneath the facts of his system he had it still, though it had been covered up so long that nobody would have guessed it. Least of all, perhaps, his own children.

Mr. Gradgrind's intimate friend,—one whom he was foolish enough to admire,—was Josiah Bounderby, a big, loud, staring man with a puffed head whose skin was stretched so tight it seemed to hold his eyes open. He owned the Coketown mills and a bank besides, and was very rich and pompous.

Bounderby was a precious hypocrite, of an odd sort. His greatest pride was to talk continually of his former poverty and wretchedness, and he delighted to tell everybody that he had been born in a ditch, deserted by his wicked mother, and brought up a vagabond by a drunken grandmother—from which low state he had made himself wealthy and respected by his own unaided efforts.

Now, this was not in the least true. As a matter of fact, his grandmother had been a respectable, honest soul, and his mother had pinched and saved to bring him up decently, had given him some schooling, and finally apprenticed him in a good trade. But Bounderby was so ungrateful and so anxious to have people think he himself deserved all the credit, that after he became rich he forbade his mother even to tell any one who she was, and made her live in a little shop in the country forty miles from Coketown.

But in her good and simple heart the old woman was so proud of her son that she used to spend all her little savings to come into town, sometimes walking a good part of the way, cleanly and plainly dressed, and with her spare shawl and umbrella, just to watch him go into his fine house or to look in admiration at the mills or the fine bank he owned. On such occasions she called herself "Mrs. Pegler," and thought no one else would be the wiser.

The house in which Bounderby lived had no ornaments. It was cold and lonely and rich. He made his mill-hands more than earn their wages, and when any of them complained, he sneered that they wanted to be fed on turtle-soup and venison with a golden spoon.

Bounderby had for housekeeper a Mrs. Sparsit, who talked a great deal of her genteel birth, rich relatives and of the better days she had once seen. She was a busybody, and when she sat of an evening cutting out embroidery with sharp scissors, her bushy eyebrows and Roman nose made her look like a hawk picking out the eyes of a very tough little bird. In her own mind she had set her cap at Bounderby.

So firmly had Mr. Gradgrind put his trust in the gospel of facts which he had taught Louisa and Tom that he was greatly shocked one day to catch them (instead of studying any one of the dry sciences ending in "ology" which he made them learn) peeping through the knot holes in a wooden pavilion along the road at the performance of a traveling circus.

The circus, which was run by a man named Sleary, had settled itself in the neighborhood for some time to come, and all the performers meanwhile boarded in a near-by public house, The Pegasus's Arms. The show was given every day, and at the moment of Mr. Gradgrind's appearance one "Signor" Jupe, the clown, was showing the tricks of his trained dog, Merrylegs, and entertaining the audience with his choicest jokes.

Mr. Gradgrind, dumb with amazement, seized both Louisa and Tom and led them home, repeating at intervals, with indignation: "What would Mr. Bounderby say!"

This question was soon answered, for the latter was at Stone Lodge when they arrived. He reminded Mr. Gradgrind that there was an evil influence in the school the children attended, which no doubt had led them to such idle pursuits—this evil influence being the little daughter of Jupe, the circus clown. And Bounderby advised Mr. Gradgrind to have the child put out of the school at once.

The name of the clown's little daughter was Cecelia, but every one called her Sissy. She was a dark-eyed, dark-haired, appealing child, frowned upon by Mr. M'Choakumchild, the schoolmaster, because somehow many figures would not stay in her head at one time.

When the circus first came, her father, who loved her very much, had brought her to the Gradgrind house and begged that she be allowed to attend school. Mr. Gradgrind had consented. Now, however, at Bounderby's advice, he wished he had not done so, and started off with the other to The Pegasus's Arms to find Signor Jupe and deny to little Sissy the right of any more schooling.

Poor Jupe had been in great trouble that day. For a long time he had felt that he was growing too old for the circus business. His joints were getting stiff, he missed in his tumbling, and he could no longer make the people laugh as he had once done. He knew that before long Sleary would be obliged to discharge him, and this he thought he could not bear to have Sissy see.

He had therefore made up his mind to leave the company and disappear. He was too poor to take Sissy with him, so, loving her as he did, he decided to leave her there where at least she had some friends. He had come to this melancholy conclusion this very day, and had sent Sissy out on an errand so that he might slip away, accompanied only by his dog, Merrylegs, while she was absent.

Sissy was returning when she met Mr. Gradgrind and Bounderby, and came with them to find her father. But at the public house she met only sympathizing looks, for all of the performers had guessed what her father had done. They told her as gently as they could, but poor Sissy was at first broken-hearted in her grief and was comforted only by the assurance that her father would certainly come back to her before long.

While Sissy wept Mr. Gradgrind had been pondering. He saw here an excellent chance to put his "system" to the test. To take this untaught girl and bring her up from the start entirely on facts would be a good experiment. With this in view, then, he proposed to take Sissy to his house and to care for and teach her, provided she promised to have nothing further to do with the circus or its members.

Sissy knew how anxious her father had been to have her learn, so she agreed, and was taken at once to Stone Lodge and set to work upon facts.

But alas! Mr. Gradgrind's education seemed to make Sissy low-spirited, but no wiser. Every day she watched and longed for some message from her father, but none came. She was loving and lovable, and Louisa liked her and comforted her as well as she could. But Louisa was far too unhappy herself to be of much help to any one else.

Several years went by. Sissy's father had never returned. She had grown into a quiet, lovely girl, the only ray of light in that gloomy home. Mr. Gradgrind had realized one of his ambitions, had been elected to Parliament and now spent much time in London. Mrs. Gradgrind was yet feebler and more ailing. Tom had grown to be a young man, a selfish and idle one, and Bounderby had made him a clerk in his bank. Louisa, not blind to her brother's faults, but loving him devotedly, had become, in this time, an especial object of Bounderby's notice.

Indeed, the mill owner had determined to marry her. Louisa had always been repelled by his coarseness and rough ways, and when he proposed for her hand she shrank from the thought. If her father had ever encouraged her confidence she might then have thrown herself on his breast and told him all that she felt, but to Mr. Gradgrind marriage was only a cold fact with no romance in it, and his manner chilled her. Tom, in his utter selfishness, thought only of what a good thing it would be for him if his sister married his employer, and urged it on her with no regard whatever for her own liking.

At length, thinking, as long as she had never been allowed to have a sentiment that could not be put down in black and white, that it did not much matter whom she married after all, and believing that at least it would help Tom, she consented.

She married Bounderby, the richest man in Coketown, and went to live in his fine house, while Mrs. Sparsit, the housekeeper, angry and revengeful, found herself compelled to move into small rooms over Bounderby's bank.

II

THE ROBBERY OF BOUNDERBY'S BANK

In one of Bounderby's weaving mills a man named Stephen Blackpool had worked for years. He was sturdy and honest, but had a stooping frame, a knitted brow and iron-gray hair, for in his forty years he had known much trouble.

Many years before he had married; unhappily, for through no fault or failing of his own, his wife took to drink, left off work, and became a shame and a disgrace to the town. When she could get no money to buy drink with, she sold his furniture, and often he would come home from the mill to find the rooms stripped of all their belongings and his wife stretched on the floor in drunken slumber. At last he was compelled to pay her to stay away, and even then he lived in daily fear lest she return to disgrace him afresh.

What made this harder for Stephen to bear was the true love he had for a sweet, patient, working woman in the mill named Rachel. She had an oval, delicate face, with gentle eyes and dark, shining hair. She knew his story and loved him, too. He could not marry her, because his own wife stood in the way, nor could he even see or walk with her often, for fear busy tongues might talk of it, but he watched every flutter of her shawl.

One night Stephen went home to his lodging to find his wife returned. She was lying drunk across his bed, a besotted creature, stained and splashed, and evil to look at. All that night he sat sleepless and sick at heart.

Next day, at the noon hour, he went to his employer's house to ask his advice. He knew the law sometimes released two people from the marriage tie when one or the other lived wickedly, and his whole heart longed to marry Rachel.

But Bounderby told him bluntly that the law he had in mind was only for rich men, who could afford to spend a great deal of money. And he further added (according to his usual custom) that he had no doubt Stephen would soon be demanding the turtle-soup and venison and the golden spoon.

Stephen went home that night hopeless, knowing what he should find there. But Rachel had heard and was there before him. She had tidied the room and was tending the woman who was his wife. It seemed to Stephen, as he saw her in her work of mercy, there was an angel's halo about her head.

Soon the wretched creature she had aided passed out of his daily life again to go he knew not where, and this act of Rachel's remained to make his love and longing greater.

About this time a stranger came to Coketown. He was James Harthouse, a suave, polished man of the world, good-looking, well-dressed, with a gallant yet indolent manner and bold eyes.

Being wealthy, he had tried the army, tried a Government position, tried Jerusalem, tried yachting and found himself bored by them all. At last he had tried facts and figures, having some idea these might help in politics. In London he had met the great believer in facts, Mr. Gradgrind, and had been sent by him to Coketown to make the acquaintance of his friend Bounderby. Harthouse thus met the mill owner, who introduced him to Louisa, now his wife.

The year of married life had not been a happy one for her. She was reserved and watchful and cold as ever, but Harthouse easily saw that she was ashamed of Bounderby's bragging talk and shrank from his coarseness as from a blow. He soon perceived, too, that the only love she had for any one was given to Tom, though the latter little deserved it. In his own mind Harthouse called her father a machine, her brother a whelp and her husband a bear.

Harthouse was attracted by Louisa's beauty no less than by her pride. He was without conscience or honor, and determined, though she was already married, to make her fall in love with him. He knew the surest way to her liking was to pretend an interest in Tom, and he at once began to flatter the sullen young fellow. Under his influence the latter was not long in telling the story of Louisa's marriage, and in boasting that he himself had brought it about for his own advancement.

To Louisa, Harthouse spoke regretfully of the lad's idle habits, yet hopefully of his future, so that she, deeming him honestly Tom's friend, confided in him, telling him of her brother's love of gambling and how she had more than once paid his debts by selling some of her own jewelry. In such ways as these Harthouse, step by step, gained an intimacy with her.

While Harthouse was thus setting his net, Stephen Blackpool, the mill worker, was on trial.

It was a time of great dissatisfaction among workmen throughout the country. In many towns they were banding themselves together into "unions" in order to gain more privileges and higher wages from their employers. This movement in time had reached Coketown. Rachel was opposed to these unions, believing they would in the end do their members more harm than good, and knowing her mind, Stephen had long ago promised her that he would never join one. The day had come, however, when a workman who thus declined was looked on with suspicion and dislike by his fellows, and at length—though all had liked and respected Stephen—because he steadfastly refused to join the rest, he found himself shunned. Day after day he went to and from his work alone and spoken to by none, and, not seeing Rachel in these days, was lonely and disheartened.

This condition of things did not escape the eye of Bounderby, who sent for Stephen and questioned him. But even in his trouble, thinking his fellow workmen believed themselves in the right, Stephen refused to complain or to bear tales of them. Bounderby, in his arrogance, chose to be angry that one of his mill-hands should presume not to answer his questions and discharged him forthwith, so that now Stephen found himself without friends, money or work.

Not wholly without friends, either, for Rachel was still the same. And he had gained another friend, too. While he told her that evening in his lodgings what had occurred, and that he must soon go in search of work in some other town, Louisa came to him. She had witnessed the interview in which her husband had discharged this faithful workman, had found out where he lived, and had made her brother Tom bring her there that she might tell Stephen how sorry she was and beg him to accept money from her to help him in his distress.

This kindness touched Stephen. He thanked her and took as a loan a small portion of the money she offered him.

Tom had come on this errand with his sister in a sulky humor. While he listened now a thought came to him. As Louisa talked with Rachel, he beckoned Stephen from the room and told him that he could perhaps aid him in finding work. He told him to wait during the next two or three evenings near the door of Bounderby's bank, and promised that he himself would seek Stephen there and tell him further.

There was no kindness, however, in this proposal. It was a sudden plan, wicked and cowardly. Tom had become a criminal. He had stolen money from the bank and trembled daily lest the theft become known. What would be easier now, he thought, than to hide his crime, by throwing suspicion on some one else? He could force the door of the safe before he left at night, and drop a key of the bank door, which he had secretly made, in the street where it would afterward be found. He himself, then, next morning, could appear to find the safe open and the money missing. Stephen, he considered, would be just the one to throw suspicion upon.

All unconscious of this plot, Stephen in good faith waited near the bank during three evenings, walking past the building again and again, watching vainly for Tom to appear. Mrs. Sparsit, at her upper window, wondered to see his bowed form haunting the place. Nothing came of his waiting, however, and the fourth morning saw him, with his thoughts on Rachel, trudging out of town along the highroad, bravely and uncomplainingly, toward whatever new lot the future held for him.

Tom's plot worked well. Next day there was a sensation in Coketown. Bounderby's bank was found to have been robbed. The safe, Tom declared, he had found open, with a large part of its contents missing. A key to the bank door was picked up in the street; this, it was concluded, the thief had thrown away after using. Who had done it? Had any suspicious person been seen about the place?

Many people remembered a strange old woman, apparently from the country, who called herself "Mrs. Pegler," and who had often been seen standing looking fixedly at the bank. What more natural than to suspect her?

Then another rumor began to grow. Stephen Blackpool, discharged from the mill by Bounderby himself—the workman who had been shunned by all his comrades, to whom no one spoke—he had been seen recently loitering, night after night, near the robbed bank. Where was he? Gone, none knew where!

In an hour Stephen was suspected. By the next day half of Coketown believed him guilty.

III

HARTHOUSE'S PLAN FAILS

Two persons, however, had a suspicion of the truth. One of these was the porter of the bank, whose suspicion was strong. The other was Louisa, who, though her love denied it room, hid in her secret heart a fear that her brother had had a share in the crime. In the night she went to Tom's bedside, put her arms around him and begged him to tell her any secret he might be keeping from her. But he answered sullenly that he did not know what she meant.

Mrs. Sparsit's fine-bred nerves (so she insisted) were so shaken by the robbery that she came to Bounderby's house to remain till she recovered.

The feeble, pink-eyed bundle of shawls that was Mrs. Gradgrind, happening to die at this time, and Louisa being absent at her mother's funeral, Mrs. Sparsit saw her opportunity. She had never forgiven Louisa for marrying Bounderby, and she now revenged herself by a course of such flattery that the vulgar bully began to think his cold, proud wife much too regardless of him and of his importance.

What pleased the hawk-faced old busybody most was the game the suave Harthouse was playing, which she was sharp enough to see through at once. If Louisa would only disgrace herself by running away with Harthouse, thought Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby might be free again and she might marry him. So she watched narrowly the growing intimacy between them, hoping for Louisa's ruin.

There came a day when Bounderby was summoned on business to London, and Louisa stayed meanwhile at the Bounderby country house, which lay some distance from Coketown. Mrs. Sparsit guessed that Harthouse would use this chance to see Louisa alone, and, to spy upon her, took the train herself, reaching there at nightfall.

She went afoot from the station to the grounds, opened the gate softly and crept close to the house. Here and there in the dusk, through garden and wood, she stole, and at length she found what she sought. There under the trees stood Harthouse, his horse tied near by, and talking with him was Louisa.

Mrs. Sparsit stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages, and listened with all her ears. She could not hear all, but caught enough to know that he was telling her he loved her, and begging her to leave her husband, her home and friends, and to run away with him.

In her delight and in the noise of rain upon the foliage (for a thunder-storm was rolling up) Mrs. Sparsit did not catch Louisa's answer. Where and when Harthouse asked her to join him, she could not hear, but as he mounted and rode away she thought he said "To-night."

She waited in the rain, rejoicing, till her patience was at length rewarded by seeing Louisa, cloaked and veiled as if for a journey, come from the house and go toward the railroad station. Then Mrs. Sparsit, drawing her draggled shawl over her head to hide her face, followed, boarded the same train, and hastened to tell the news of his wife's elopement to Bounderby in London.

Wet to the skin, her feet squashing in her shoes, her clothes spoiled and her bonnet looking like an over-ripe fig, with a terrible cold that made her voice only a whisper, and sneezing herself almost to pieces, Mrs. Sparsit found Bounderby at his city hotel, exploded with the combustible information she carried and fainted quite away on his coat collar.

Furious at the news she brought, Bounderby hustled her into a fast train, and together, he raging and glaring and she inwardly jubilant, they hurried toward Coketown to inform Mr. Gradgrind, who was then at home, of his daughter's doings.

But where, meanwhile, was Louisa? Not run away with Harthouse, as Mrs. Sparsit so fondly imagined, but safe in her own father's house in Coketown.

She had suffered much without complaint, but Harthouse's proposal had been the last straw. Added to all the insults she had suffered at her husband's hands, and her fearful suspicion of Tom's guilt, it had proven too much for her to bear. She had pretended to agree to Harthouse's plan only that she might the more quickly rid herself of his presence.

Mr. Gradgrind, astonished at her sudden arrival at Stone Lodge, was shocked no less at her ghastly appearance than by what she said. She told him she cursed the hour when she had been born to grow up a victim to his teachings; that her whole life had been empty; that every hope, affection and fancy had been crushed from her very infancy and her better angel made a demon. She told him the whole truth about her marriage to Bounderby—that she had married him solely for the advancement of Tom, the only one she had ever loved—and that now she could no longer live with her husband or bear the life she had made for herself.

And when she had said this, Louisa, the daughter his "system" had brought to such despair, fell at his feet.

At her pitiful tale the tender heart that Mr. Gradgrind had buried in his long-past youth under his mountain of facts stirred again and began to beat. The mountain crumbled away, and he saw in an instant, as by a lightning flash, that the plan of life to which he had so rigidly held was a complete and hideous failure. He had thought there was but one wisdom, that of the head; he knew at last that there was a deeper wisdom of the heart also, which all these years he had denied!

When she came to herself, Louisa found her father sitting by her bedside. His face looked worn and older. He told her he realized at last his life mistake and bitterly reproached himself. Sissy, too, was there, her love shining like a beautiful light on the other's darkness. She knelt beside the bed and laid the weary head on her breast, and then for the first time Louisa burst into sobs.

Next day Sissy sought out Harthouse, who was waiting, full of sulky impatience at the failure of Louisa to appear as he had expected. Sissy told him plainly what had occurred, and that he should never see Louisa again. Harthouse, realizing that his plan had failed, suddenly discovered that he had a great liking for camels, and left the same hour for Egypt, never to return to Coketown.

It was while Sissy was absent on this errand of her own that the furious Bounderby and the triumphant Mrs. Sparsit, the latter voiceless and still sneezing, appeared at Stone Lodge.

Mr. Gradgrind took the mill owner greatly aback with the statement that Louisa had had no intention whatever of eloping and was then in that same house and under his care. Angry and blustering at being made such a fool of, Bounderby turned on Mrs. Sparsit, but in her disappointment at finding it a mistake, she had dissolved in tears. When Mr. Gradgrind told him he had concluded it would be better for Louisa to remain for some time there with him, Bounderby flew into a still greater rage and stamped off, swearing his wife should come home by noon next day or not at all.

To be sure Louisa did not go, and next day Bounderby sent her clothes to Mr. Gradgrind, advertised his country house for sale, and, needing something to take his spite out upon, redoubled his efforts to find the robber of the bank.

And he began by covering the town with printed placards, offering a large regard for the arrest of Stephen Blackpool.

IV

STEPHEN'S RETURN

Rachel had known, of course, of the rumors against Stephen, and had been both indignant and sorrowful. She alone knew where he was, and how to find him, for deeming it impossible, because of his trouble with the Coketown workmen, to get work under his own name, he had taken another.

Now that he was directly charged with the crime, she wrote him the news at once, so that he might lose no time in returning to face the unjust accusation. Being so certain herself of his innocence, she made no secret of what she had done, and all Coketown waited, wondering whether he would appear or not.

Two days passed and he had not come, and then Rachel told Bounderby the address to which she had written him. Messengers were sent, who came back with the report that Stephen had received her letter and had left at once, saying he was going to Coketown, where he should long since have arrived.

Another day with no Stephen, and now almost every one believed he was guilty, had taken Rachel's letter as a warning and had fled. All the while Tom waited nervously, biting his nails and with fevered lips, knowing that Stephen, when he came, would tell the real reason why he had loitered near the bank, and so point suspicion to himself.

On the third day Mrs. Sparsit saw a chance to distinguish herself. She recognized on the street "Mrs. Pegler," the old countrywoman who also had been suspected. She seized her and, regardless of her entreaties, dragged her to Bounderby's house and into his dining-room, with a curious crowd flocking at their heels.

She plumed herself on catching one of the robbers, but what was her astonishment when the old woman called Bounderby her dear son, pleading that her coming to his house was not her fault and begging him not to be angry even if people did know at last that she was his mother.

Mr. Gradgrind, who was present when they entered, having always heard Bounderby tell such dreadful tales of his bringing-up, reproached her for deserting her boy in his infancy to a drunken grandmother. At this the old woman nearly burst with indignation, calling on Bounderby himself to tell how false this was and how she had pinched and denied herself for him till he had begun to be successful.

Everybody laughed at this, for now the true story of the bullying mill owner's tales was out. Bounderby, who had turned very red, was the only one who did not seem to enjoy the scene. After he had wrathfully shut every one else from the house, he vented his anger on Mrs. Sparsit for meddling (as he called it) with his own family affairs. He ended by giving her the wages due her and inviting her to take herself off at once.

So Mrs. Sparsit, for all her cap-setting and spying, had to leave her comfortable nest and go to live in a poor lodging as companion to the most grudging, peevish, tormenting one of her noble relatives, an invalid with a lame leg.

But meanwhile another day had passed—the fourth since Rachel had sent her letter—and still Stephen had not come. On this day, full of her trouble, Rachel had wandered with Sissy, now her fast friend, some distance out of the town, through some fields where mining had once been carried on.

Suddenly she cried out—she had picked up a hat and inside it was the name "Stephen Blackpool." An instant later a scream broke from her lips that echoed over the country-side. Before them, at their very feet, half-hidden by rubbish and grasses, yawned the ragged mouth of a dark, abandoned shaft. That instant both Rachel and Sissy guessed the truth—that Stephen, returning, had not seen the chasm in the darkness, and had fallen into its depths.

They ran and roused the town. Crowds came from Coketown. Rope and windlass were brought and two men were lowered into the pit. The poor fellow was there, alive but terribly injured. A rough bed was made, and so at last the crushed and broken form was brought up to the light and air.

A surgeon was at hand with wine and medicines, but it was too late. Stephen spoke with Rachel first, then called Mr. Gradgrind to him and asked him to clear the blemish from his name. He told him simply that he could do so through his son Tom. This was all. He died while they bore him home, holding the hand of Rachel, whom he loved.

Stephen's last words had told the truth to Mr. Gradgrind. He read in them that his own son was the robber. Tom's guilty glance had seen also. With suspicion removed from Stephen, he felt his own final arrest sure.

Sissy noted Tom's pale face and trembling limbs. Guessing that he would attempt flight too late, and longing to save the heartbroken father from the shame of seeing his son's arrest and imprisonment, she drew the shaking thief aside and in a whisper bade him go at once to Sleary, the proprietor of the circus to which her father had once belonged. She told him where the circus was to be found at that season of the year, and bade him ask Sleary to hide him for her sake till she came. Tom obeyed. He disappeared that night, and later Sissy told his father what she had done.

Mr. Gradgrind, with Sissy and Louisa, followed as soon as possible, intending to get his son to the nearest seaport and so out of the country on a vessel, for he knew that soon he himself, Tom's father, would be questioned and obliged to tell the truth. They traveled all night, and at length reached the town where the circus showed.

Sleary, for Sissy's sake, had provided Tom with a disguise in which not even his father recognized him. He had blacked his sullen face and dressed him in a moth-eaten greatcoat and a mad cocked hat, in which attire he played the role of a black servant in the performance. Tom met them, grimy and defiant, ashamed to meet Louisa's eyes, brazen to his father, anxious only to be saved from his deserved punishment.

A seaport was but three hours away. He was soon dressed and plans for his departure were completed. But at the last moment danger appeared. It came in the person of the porter of Bounderby's bank, who had all along suspected Tom. He had watched the Gradgrind house, followed its master when he left and now laid hands on Tom, vowing he would take him back to Coketown.

In this moment of the father's despair, Sleary the showman saved the day for the shivering thief. He agreed with the porter that as Tom was guilty of a crime he must certainly go with him, and he offered, moreover, to drive the captor and his prisoner at once to the nearest railroad station. He winked at Sissy as he proposed this, and she was not alarmed. The porter accepted the proposal at once, but he did not guess what the showman had in mind.

Sleary's horse was an educated horse. At a certain word from its owner it would stop and begin to dance, and would not budge from the spot till he gave the command in a particular way. He had an educated dog, also, that would do anything it was told. With this horse hitched to the carriage and this dog trotting innocently behind, the showman set off with the porter and Tom, while Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa, whom Sissy had told to trust in Sleary, waited all night for his return.

It was morning before Sleary came back, with the news that Tom was undoubtedly safe from pursuit, if not already aboard ship. He told them how, at the word from him, the educated horse had begun to dance; how Tom had slipped down and got away, while the educated dog, at his command, had penned the frightened porter in the carriage all night, fearing to stir.

Thus Tom, who did not deserve any such good luck, got safely away, but though his father was spared the shame of ever seeing his son behind the bars of a jail, yet he was a broken man ever after the truth became known.

What was the fate of all these? Bounderby, a bully to the last, died of a fit five years afterward, leaving his entire fortune to the perpetual support of twenty-five humbugs, each of whom was required to take the name of "Josiah Bounderby of Coketown." Louisa never remarried, but lived to be the comfort of her father and the loving comrade of Sissy Jupe. Sissy never found her father, and when at last Merrylegs, his wonderful dog, came back alone to die of old age at Sleary's feet, all knew that his master must be dead. Tom died, softened and penitent, in a foreign land. Rachel remained the same pensive little worker, always dressed in black, beloved by all and helping every one, even Stephen's besotted wife.

As for Mr. Gradgrind, a white-haired, decrepit old man, he forgot all the facts on which he had so depended, and tried for ever after to mingle his life's acts with Faith, Hope and Charity.



THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

Published 1870

Scene: London and Cloisterham, a Neighboring Town

Time: About 1865

CHARACTERS

Edwin Drood A young engineer

John Jasper His uncle and guardian. A choir master

Rosa Bud An orphan girl, engaged to marry Drood Known as "Rosebud"

Mr. Grewgious A lawyer. Her guardian

Miss Twinkleton The principal of the Young Ladies' Seminary in Cloisterham

The Reverend Mr. Crisparkle A minister A minister

Neville Landless Mr. Crisparkle's pupil

Helena His twin sister Rosebud's room-mate in the seminary

Luke Honeythunder A self-styled "philanthropist" and bore. Guardian of Neville and Helena

Lieutenant Tartar A retired naval officer

"Dick Datchery" A detective

Durdles A stone-mason and chiseler of tombstones

"The Deputy" A street Arab



THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

I

JOHN JASPER

In the quiet town of Cloisterham, in England, in a boarding-school, once lived a beautiful girl named Rosa Bud—an amiable, wilful, winning, whimsical little creature whom every one called Rosebud. She was an orphan. Her mother had been drowned when she was only seven years old and her father had died of grief on the first anniversary of that day.

Her father's friend and college mate, a Mr. Drood, had comforted his last hours, and they had agreed between them that when Rosebud was old enough she should marry Mr. Drood's son Edwin, then a little boy. Her father put this wish in his will, as did Mr. Drood, who died also soon after his friend, and so Rosebud and Edwin Drood grew up knowing that, though not bound in any way, each was intended for the other. So it came about that, while if they had been let alone they might have fallen in love naturally, yet as it was they were always shy and ill at ease with one another. Yet they liked each other, too.

Rosebud's guardian was a Mr. Grewgious, an arid, sandy man who looked as if he might be put in a grinding-mill and turned out first-class snuff. He had scanty hair like a yellow fur tippet, and deep notches in his forehead, and was very near-sighted. He seemed to have been born old, so that when he came to London to call on Rosebud amid all the school-girls he used to say he felt like a bear with the cramp. Grewgious, however, under his oddity had a very tender heart, particularly for Rosebud, whose mother he had been secretly in love with before she married. But he had grown up a dry old bachelor, living in gloomy rooms in London, and no one would have guessed him ever to have been a bit romantic.

The school Rosebud attended was called Nun's House. Miss Twinkleton, the prim old maid who managed it, termed it a "Seminary for Young Ladies." It had a worn front, with a shining brass door-plate that made it look at a distance like a battered old beau with a big new eye-glass stuck in his blind eye. Here Rosebud lived a happy life, the pet of the whole seminary, till she was a young lady.

Cloisterham was a dull, gray town with an ancient cathedral, which was so cold and dark and damp that looking into its door was like looking down the throat of old Father Time. The cathedral had a fine choir, which sang at all the services and was taught and led by a music-master whose name was John Jasper. This Jasper, as it happened, was the uncle and guardian of Edwin Drood.

Drood, who was studying to be an engineer, was very fond of his uncle and came often to Cloisterham to visit him, so that Rosebud saw a great deal of her intended husband. He always called her "Pussy." He used to call on her at the school and take her walking and buy her candy at a Turkish shop, called "Lumps of Delight," and did his best to get on well with her, though he felt awkward.

Drood and Jasper were much more like two friends than like uncle and nephew, for the choir master was very little older than the other.

Jasper seemed to be wonderfully fond of Drood, and every one who knew him thought him a most honorable and upright man; but in reality he was far different. At heart he hated the cathedral and the singing, and wished often that he could find relief, like some old monk, in carving demons out of the desks and seats. He had a soul that was without fear or conscience.

One vile and wicked practice he had which he had hidden from all who knew him. He was an opium smoker. He would steal away to London to a garret kept by a mumbling old woman who knew the secret of mixing the drug, and there, stretched on a dirty pallet, sometimes with a drunken Chinaman or a Lascar beside him, would smoke pipe after pipe of the dreadful mixture that stole away his senses and left him worse than before. Hours later he would awake, give the woman money and hurry back to Cloisterham just in time, perhaps, to put on his church robes and lead the cathedral choir.

Though no one knew of this, and though Edwin Drood thought his uncle was well-nigh perfect, Rosebud, after she grew up, had no liking for Jasper. He gave her music lessons and every time they met he terrified her. She felt sometimes that he haunted her thoughts like a dreadful ghost. He seemed almost to make a slave of her with his looks, and she felt that in every glance he was telling her that he, Jasper, loved her and yet compelled her to keep silence. But, though disliking the choir master so, and shivering whenever he came near her, Rosebud did not know how to tell Edwin, who she knew loved and believed in Jasper, of her feelings.

II

THE COMING OF NEVILLE LANDLESS

One of the ministers in charge of the cathedral was the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, a ruddy, young, active, honest fellow, who was perpetually practising boxing before the looking-glass or pitching himself head-foremost into all the streams about the town for a swim, even when it was winter and he had to break the ice with his head.

Mr. Crisparkle sometimes took young men into his home to live while he tutored them to prepare them for college. One day he received word from a Mr. Luke Honeythunder in London, telling him he was about to bring to Cloisterham a twin brother and sister, Neville and Helena Landless, the young man to be taught by Mr. Crisparkle and his sister Helena to be put in Miss Twinkleton's seminary.

This Luke Honeythunder called himself a philanthropist, but he was a queer sort of one, indeed. He was always getting up public meetings and talking loudly, insisting on everybody's thinking exactly as he did, and saying dreadful things of them if they did not.

Helena and Neville Landless had been born in Ceylon, where as little children they had been cruelly treated by their stepfather. But they had brave spirits, and four times in six years they had run away, only to be brought back each time and punished. On each of these occasions (the first had been when they were but seven years old) Helena had dressed as a boy and once had even tried to cut off her long hair with Neville's pocket-knife. At length their cruel stepfather died, and they were sent to England, where for no other reason than that his name was continually appearing in the newspapers, Mr. Honeythunder had been appointed their guardian.