Chapter I (2)

“I have a question yet to ask;
Be patient, husband dear.
A stranger, one auspicious morn,
Did send some jewels here;
Until to take them from my care,
But yesterday he came,
And I restored them with a sigh:
—Dost thou approve, or blame?”

“I marvel much, sweet wife, that thou
Shouldst breathe such words to me;
Restore to man, resign to God,
Whate’er is lent to thee;
Restore it with a willing heart,
Be grateful for the trust;
Whate’er may tempt or try us, wife,
Let us be ever just.”

She took him by the passive hand,
And up the moonlit stair,
She led him to their bridal bed,
With mute and mournful air;
She turned the cover down, and there,
In grave-like garments dressed,
Lay the twin children of their love,
In death’s serenest rest.

“These were the jewels lent to me,
Which God has deigned to own;
The precious caskets still remain,
But, ah, the _gems_ are flown;
But thou didst teach me to resign
What God alone can claim;
He giveth and he takes away,
Blest be His holy name!”

The father gazed upon his babes,
The mother drooped apart,
Whilst all the woman’s sorrow gushed
From her o’erburdened heart;
And with the striving of her grief,
Which wrung the tears she shed,
Were mingled low and loving words
To the unconscious dead.

When the sad sire had looked his fill.
He veiled each breathless face,
And down in self-abasement bowed,
For comfort and for grace;
With the deep eloquence of woe,
Poured forth his secret soul,
Rose up, and stood erect and calm,
In spirit healed and whole.

“Restrain thy tears, poor wife,” he said,
“I learn this lesson still,
God gives, and God can take away,
Blest be His holy will!
Blest are my children, for they _live_
From sin and sorrow free,
And I am not all joyless, wife,
With faith, hope, love, and thee.”

THE LABORATORY IN THE CHEST.

The mind of Mr. Bagges was decidedly affected—beneficially—by the lecture on the Chemistry of a Candle, which, as set forth in a previous number of this journal, had been delivered to him by his youthful nephew. That learned discourse inspired him with a new feeling; an interest in matters of science. He began to frequent the Polytechnic Institution, nearly as much as his club. He also took to lounging at the British Museum; where he was often to be seen, with his left arm under his coat-tails, examining the wonderful works of nature and antiquity, through his eye-glass. Moreover, he procured himself to be elected a member of the Royal Institution, which became a regular house of call to him, so that in a short time he grew to be one of the ordinary phenomena of the place.

Mr. Bagges likewise adopted a custom of giving _conversaziones_, which, however, were always very private and select—generally confined to his sister’s family. Three courses were first discussed; then dessert; after which, surrounded by an apparatus of glasses and decanters, Master Harry Wilkinson was called upon, as a sort of juvenile Davy, to amuse his uncle by the elucidation of some chemical or other physical mystery. Master Wilkinson had now attained to the ability of making experiments; most of which, involving combustion, were strongly deprecated by the young gentleman’s mamma; but her opposition was overruled by Mr. Bagges, who argued that it was much better that a young dog should burn phosphorus before your face than let off gunpowder behind your back, to say nothing of occasionally pinning a cracker to your skirts. He maintained that playing with fire and water, throwing stones, and such like boys’ tricks, as they are commonly called, are the first expressions of a scientific tendency—endeavours and efforts of the infant mind to acquaint itself with the powers of Nature.

His own favourite toys, he remembered, were squibs, suckers, squirts, and slings; and he was persuaded that, by his having been denied them at school, a natural philosopher had been nipped in the bud.

Blowing bubbles was an example—by-the-bye, a rather notable one—by which Mr. Bagges, on one of his scientific evenings, was instancing the affinity of child’s play to philosophical experiments, when he bethought him Harry had said on a former occasion that the human breath consists chiefly of carbonic acid, which is heavier than common air. How then, it occurred to his inquiring, though elderly mind, was it that soap-bladders, blown from a tobacco-pipe, rose instead of sinking? He asked his nephew this.

“Oh, uncle!” answered Harry, “in the first place, the air you blow bubbles with mostly comes in at the nose and goes out at the mouth, without having been breathed at all. Then it is warmed by the mouth, and warmth, you know, makes a measure of air get larger, and so lighter in proportion. A soap-bubble rises for the same reason that a fire-balloon rises—that is, because the air inside of it has been heated, and weighs less than the same sized bubbleful of cold air.”

“What, hot breath does!” said Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, it’s a curious thing, when you come to think of it, that the breath should be hot—indeed, the warmth of the body generally seems a puzzle. It is wonderful, too, how the bodily heat can be kept up so long as it is. Here, now, is this tumbler of hot grog—a mixture of boiling water, and what d’ye call it, you scientific geniuses?”

“Alcohol, uncle.”

“Alcohol—well—or, as we used to say, brandy. Now, if I leave this tumbler of brandy-and-water alone——”

“_If_ you do, uncle,” interposed his nephew, archly.

“Get along, you idle rogue! If I let that tumbler stand there, in a few minutes the brandy-and water—eh?—I beg pardon—the alcohol-and-water—gets cold. Now, why—why the deuce—if the brandy—the alcohol-and-water cools; why—how—how is it we don’t cool in the same way, I want to know? eh?” demanded Mr. Bagges, with the air of a man who feels satisfied that he has propounded a “regular poser.”

“Why,” replied Harry, “for the same reason that the room keeps warm so long as there is a fire in the grate.”

“You don’t mean to say that I have a fire in my body?”

“I do, though.”

“Eh, now? That’s good,” said Mr. Bagges. “That reminds me of the man in love crying, ‘Fire! fire!’ and the lady said, ‘Where, where?’ And he called out, ‘Here! here!’ with his hand upon his heart. Eh?—but now I think of it—you said, the other day, that breathing was a sort of burning. Do you mean to tell me that I—eh?—have fire, fire, as the lover said, here, here—in short, that my chest is a grate or an Arnott’s stove?”

“Not exactly so, uncle. But I do mean to tell you that you have a sort of fire burning partly in your chest; but also, more or less, throughout your whole body.”

“Oh, Henry!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, “How can you say such horrid things!”

“Because they’re quite true, mamma—but you needn’t be frightened. The fire of one’s body is not hotter than from ninety degrees to one hundred and four degrees or so. Still it is fire, and will burn some things, as you would find, uncle, if, in using phosphorus, you were to let a little bit of it get under your nail.”

“I’ll take your word for the fact, my boy,” said Mr. Bagges. “But, if I have a fire burning throughout my person—which I was not aware of, the only inflammation I am ever troubled with being in the great toe—I say, if my body is burning continually—how is it I don’t smoke—eh? Come, now!”

“Perhaps you consume your own smoke,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson, senior, “like every well-regulated furnace.”

“You smoke nothing but your pipe, uncle, because you burn all your carbon,” said Harry. “But, if your body doesn’t smoke, it steams. Breathe against a looking-glass, or look at your breath on a cold morning. Observe how a horse reeks when it perspires. Besides—as you just now said you recollected my telling you the other day—you breathe out carbonic acid, and that, and the steam of the breath together, are exactly the same things, you know, that a candle turns into in burning.”

“But if I burn like a candle—why don’t I burn _out_ like a candle?” demanded Mr. Bagges. “How do you get over that?”

“Because,” replied Harry, “your fuel is renewed as fast as burnt. So perhaps you resemble a lamp rather than a candle. A lamp requires to be fed; so does the body—as, possibly, uncle, you may be aware.”

“Eh?—well—I have always entertained an idea of that sort,” answered Mr. Bagges, helping himself to some biscuits. “But the lamp feeds on train-oil.”

“So does the Laplander. And you couldn’t feed the lamp on turtle or mulligatawny, of course, uncle. But mulligatawny or turtle can be changed into fat—they are so, sometimes, I think—when they are eaten in large quantities, and fat will burn fast enough. And most of what you eat turns into something which burns at last, and is consumed in the fire that warms you all over.”

“Wonderful, to be sure,” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, and how does this extraordinary process take place?”

“First, you know, uncle, your food is digested—”

“Not always, I am sorry to say, my boy,” Mr. Bagges observed, “but go on.”

“Well; when it _is_ digested, it becomes a sort of fluid, and mixes gradually with the blood, and turns into blood, and so goes over the whole body, to nourish it. Now, if the body is always being nourished, why doesn’t it keep getting bigger and bigger, like the ghost in the Castle of Otranto?”

“Eh? Why, because it loses as well as gains, I suppose. By perspiration—eh—for instance?”

“Yes, and by breathing; in short, by the burning I mentioned just now. Respiration, or breathing, uncle, is a perpetual combustion.”

“But if my system,” said Mr. Bagges, “is burning throughout, what keeps up the fire in my little finger—putting gout out of the question?”

“You burn all over, because you breathe all over, to the very tips of your fingers’ ends,” replied Harry.

“Oh, don’t talk nonsense to your uncle!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson.

“It isn’t nonsense,” said Harry. “The air that you draw into the lungs goes more or less over all the body, and penetrates into every fibre of it, which is breathing. Perhaps you would like to hear a little more about the chemistry of breathing, or respiration, uncle?”

“I should, certainly.”

“Well, then; first you ought to have some idea of the breathing apparatus. The laboratory that contains this, is the chest, you know. The chest, you also know, has in it the heart and lungs, which, with other things in it, fill it quite out, so as to leave no hollow space between themselves and it. The lungs are a sort of air-sponges, and when you enlarge your chest to draw breath, they swell out with it and suck the air in. On the other hand you narrow your chest and squeeze the lungs and press the air from them;—that is breathing out. The lungs are made up of a lot of little cells. A small pipe—a little branch of the windpipe—opens into each cell. Two blood-vessels, a little tiny artery, and a vein to match, run into it also. The arteries bring into the little cells dark-coloured blood, which _has been_ all over the body. The veins carry out of the little cells bright scarlet-coloured blood, which _is to go_ all over the body. So all the blood passes through the lungs, and in so doing, is changed from dark to bright scarlet.”

“Black blood, didn’t you say, in the arteries, and scarlet in the veins? I thought it was just the reverse,” interrupted Mr. Bagges.

“So it is,” replied Harry, “with all the other arteries and veins, except those that circulate the blood through the lung-cells. The heart has two sides, with a partition between them that keeps the blood on the right side separate from the blood on the left; both sides being hollow, mind. The blood on the right side of the heart comes there from all over the body, by a couple of large veins, dark, before it goes to the lungs. From the right side of the heart, it goes on to the lungs, dark still, through an artery. It comes back to the left side of the heart from the lungs, bright scarlet, through four veins. Then it goes all over the rest of the body from the left side of the heart, through an artery that branches into smaller arteries, all carrying bright scarlet blood. So the arteries and veins of the lungs on one hand, and of the rest of the body on the other, do exactly opposite work, you understand.”

“I hope so.”

“Now,” continued Harry, “it requires a strong magnifying glass to see the lung-cells plainly, they are so small. But you can fancy them as big as you please. Picture any one of them to yourself of the size of an orange, say, for convenience in thinking about it; that one cell, with whatever takes place in it, will be a specimen of the rest. Then you have to imagine an artery carrying blood of one colour into it, and a vein taking away blood of another colour from it, and the blood changing its colour in the cell.”

“Aye, but what makes the blood change its colour?”

“Recollect, uncle, you have a little branch from the windpipe opening into the cell which lets in the air. Then the blood and the air are brought together, and the blood alters in colour. The reason, I suppose you would guess, is that it is somehow altered by the air.”

“No very unreasonable conjecture, I should think,” said Mr. Bagges.

“Well; if the air alters the blood, most likely, we should think, it gives something to the blood. So first let us see what is the difference between the air we breathe _in_, and the air we breathe _out_. You know that neither we nor animals can keep breathing the same air over and over again. You don’t want me to remind you of the Black Hole of Calcutta, to convince you of that; and I dare say you will believe what I tell you, without waiting till I can catch a mouse and shut it up in an air-tight jar, and show you how soon the unlucky creature will get uncomfortable, and begin to gasp, and that it will by-and-by die. But if we were to try this experiment—not having the fear of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nor the fear of doing wrong, before our eyes—we should find that the poor mouse, before he died, had changed the air of his prison considerably. But it would be just as satisfactory, and much more humane, if you or I were to breathe in and out of a silk bag or a bladder till we could stand it no longer, and then collect the air which we had been breathing in and out. We should find that a jar of such air would put out a candle. If we shook some lime-water up with it, the lime-water would turn milky. In short, uncle, we should find that a great part of the air was carbonic acid, and the rest mostly nitrogen. The air we inhale is nitrogen and oxygen; the air we exhale has lost most of its oxygen, and consists of little more than nitrogen and carbonic acid. Together with this, we breathe out the vapour of water, as I said before. Therefore in breathing, we give off exactly what a candle does in burning, only not so fast, after the rate. The carbonic acid we breathe out, shows that carbon is consumed within our bodies. The watery vapour of the breath is a proof that hydrogen is so too. We take in oxygen with the air, and the oxygen unites with carbon, and makes carbonic acid, and with hydrogen, forms water.”

“Then don’t the hydrogen and carbon combine with the oxygen—that is, burn—in the lungs, and isn’t the chest the fireplace, after all?” asked Mr. Bagges.

“Not altogether, according to those who are supposed to know better. They are of opinion, that some of the oxygen unites with the carbon and hydrogen of the blood in the lungs; but that most of it is merely absorbed by the blood, and dissolved in it in the first instance.”

“Oxygen absorbed by the blood? That seems odd,” remarked Mr. Bagges, “How can that be?”

“We only know the fact that there are some things that will absorb gases—suck them in—make them disappear. Charcoal will, for instance. It is thought that the iron which the blood contains gives it the curious property of absorbing oxygen. Well; the oxygen going into the blood makes it change from dark to bright scarlet; and then this blood containing oxygen is conveyed all over the system by the arteries, and yields up the oxygen to combine with hydrogen and carbon as it goes along. The carbon and hydrogen are part of the substance of the body. The bright scarlet blood mixes oxygen with them, which burns them, in fact; that is, makes them into carbonic acid and water. Of course, the body would soon be consumed if this were all that the blood does. But while it mixes oxygen with the old substance of the body, to burn it up, it lays down fresh material to replace the loss. So our bodies are continually changing throughout, though they seem to us always the same; but then, you know, a river appears the same from year’s end to year’s end, although the water in it is different every day.”

“Eh, then,” said Mr. Bagges, “if the body is always on the change in this way, we must have had several bodies in the course of our lives, by the time we are old.”

“Yes, uncle; therefore, how foolish it is to spend money upon funerals. What becomes of all the bodies we use up during our lifetimes? If we are none the worse for their flying away in carbonic acid and other things without ceremony, what good can we expect from having a fuss made about the body we leave behind us, which is put into the earth? However, you are wanting to know what becomes of the water and carbonic acid which have been made by the oxygen of the blood burning up the old materials of our frame. The dark blood of the veins absorbs this carbonic acid and water, as the blood of the arteries does oxygen,—only, they say, it does so by means of a salt in it, called phosphate of soda. Then the dark blood goes back to the lungs, and in them it parts with its carbonic acid and water, which escapes as breath. As fast as we breathe out, carbonic acid and water leave the blood; as fast as we breathe in, oxygen enters it. The oxygen is sent out in the arteries to make the rubbish of the body into gas and vapour, so that the veins may bring it back and get rid of it. The burning of rubbish by oxygen throughout our frames is the fire by which our animal heat is kept up. At least this is what most philosophers think; though doctors differ a little on this point, as on most others, I hear. Professor Liebig says, that our carbon is mostly prepared for burning by being first extracted from the blood sent to it—(which contains much of the rubbish of the system dissolved)—in the form of bile, and is then re-absorbed into the blood, and burnt. He reckons that a grown-up man consumes about fourteen ounces of carbon a day. Fourteen ounces of charcoal a day, or eight pounds two ounces a week, would keep up a tolerable fire.”

“I had no idea we were such extensive charcoal-burners,” said Mr. Bagges. “They say we each eat our peck of dirt before we die—but we must burn bushels of charcoal.”

“And so,” continued Harry, “the Professor calculates that we burn quite enough fuel to account for our heat. I should rather think, myself, it had something to do with it—shouldn’t you?”

“Eh?” said Mr. Bagges; “it makes one rather nervous to think that one is burning all over—throughout one’s very blood—in this kind of way.”

“It is very awful!” said Mrs. Wilkinson.

“If true. But in that case, shouldn’t we be liable to inflame occasionally?” objected her husband.

“It is said,” answered Harry, “that spontaneous combustion does happen sometimes; particularly in great spirit drinkers. I don’t see why it should not, if the system were to become too inflammable. Drinking alcohol would be likely to load the constitution with carbon, which would be fuel for the fire, at any rate.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, pushing his brandy-and-water from him. “We had better take care how we indulge in combustibles.”

“At all events,” said Harry, “it must be bad to have too much fuel in us. It must choke the fire I should think, if it did not cause inflammation; which Dr. Truepenny says it does, meaning, by inflammation, gout, and so on, you know, uncle.”

“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Bagges.

“Taking in too much fuel, I dare say you know, uncle, means eating and drinking to excess,” continued Harry. “The best remedy, the doctor says, for overstuffing is exercise. A person who uses great bodily exertion, can eat and drink more without suffering from it than one who leads an inactive life; a foxhunter, for instance, in comparison with an alderman. Want of exercise and too much nourishment must make a man either fat or ill. If the extra hydrogen and carbon are not burnt out, or otherwise got rid of, they turn to blubber, or cause some disturbance in the system, intended by Nature to throw them off, which is called a disease. Walking, riding, running, increase the breathing—as well as the perspiration—and make us burn away our carbon and hydrogen in proportion. Dr. Truepenny declares that if people would only take in as much fuel as is requisite to keep up a good fire, his profession would be ruined.”

“The good old advice—Baillie’s, eh?—or Abernethy’s—live upon sixpence a day, and earn it,” Mr. Bagges observed.

“Well, and then, uncle, in hot weather the appetite is naturally weaker than it is in cold—less heat is required, and therefore less food. So in hot climates; and the chief reason, says the doctor, why people ruin their health in India is their spurring and goading their stomachs to crave what is not good for them, by spices and the like. Fruits and vegetables are the proper things to eat in such countries, because they contain little carbon compared to flesh, and they are the diet of the natives of those parts of the world. Whereas food with much carbon in it, meat, or even mere fat or oil, which is hardly anything else than carbon and hydrogen, are proper in very cold regions, where heat from within is required to supply the want of it without. That is why the Laplander is able, as I said he does, to devour train-oil. And Dr. Truepenny says that it may be all very well for Mr. M‘Gregor to drink raw whiskey at deer-stalking in the Highlands, but if Major Campbell combines that beverage with the diversion of tiger-hunting in the East Indies, habitually, the chances are that the Major will come home with a diseased liver.”

“Upon my word, sir, the whole art of preserving health appears to consist in keeping up a moderate fire within us,” observed Mr. Bagges.

“Just so, uncle, according to my friend the Doctor. ‘Adjust the fuel,’ he says, ‘to the draught—he means the oxygen; keep the bellows properly at work, by exercise, and your fire will seldom want poking.’ The Doctor’s pokers, you know, are pills, mixtures, leeches, blisters, lancets, and things of that sort.”

“Indeed? Well, then, my heart-burn, I suppose, depends upon bad management of my fire?” surmised Mr. Bagges.

“I should say that was more than probable, uncle. Well, now, I think you see that animal heat can be accounted for, in very great part at least, by the combustion of the body. And then there are several facts that—as I remember Shakespeare says—

“‘help to thicken other proofs,
That do demonstrate thinly.’

“Birds that breathe a great deal are very hot creatures; snakes and lizards, and frogs and fishes, that breathe but little, are so cold that they are called cold-blooded animals. Bears and dormice, that sleep all the winter, are cold during their sleep, whilst their breathing and circulation almost entirely stop. We increase our heat by walking fast, running, jumping, or working hard; which sets us breathing faster, and then we get warmer. By these means we blow up our own fire, if we have no other, to warm ourselves on a cold day. And how is it that we don’t go on continually getting hotter and hotter?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, “I suppose that is one of Nature’s mysteries.”

“Why, what happens, uncle, when we take violent exercise? We break out into a perspiration; as you complain you always do, if you only run a few yards. Perspiration is mostly water, and the extra heat of the body goes into the water, and flies away with it in steam. Just for the same reason, you can’t boil water so as to make it hotter than two hundred and twelve degrees; because all the heat that passes into it beyond that, unites with some of it and becomes steam, and so escapes. Hot weather causes you to perspire even when you sit still; and so your heat is cooled in summer. If you were to heat a man in an oven, the heat of his body generally wouldn’t increase very much till he became exhausted and died. Stories are told of mountebanks sitting in ovens, and meat being cooked by the side of them. Philosophers have done much the same thing—Dr. Fordyce and others, who found they could bear a heat of two hundred and sixty degrees. Perspiration is our animal fire-escape. Heat goes out from the lungs, as well as the skin, in water; so the lungs are concerned in cooling us as well as heating us, like a sort of regulating furnace. Ah, uncle, the body is a wonderful factory, and I wish I were man enough to take you over it. I have only tried to show you something of the contrivances for warming it, and I hope you understand a little about that!”

“Well,” said Mr. Bagges, “breathing, I understand you to say, is the chief source of animal heat, by occasioning the combination of carbon and hydrogen with oxygen, in a sort of gentle combustion, throughout our frame. The lungs and heart are an apparatus for generating heat, and distributing it over the body by means of a kind of warming pipes, called blood-vessels. Eh?—and the carbon and hydrogen we have in our systems we get from our food. Now, you see, here is a slice of cake, and there is a glass of wine—Eh?—now see whether you can get any carbon and oxygen out of that.”

The young philosopher, having finished his lecture, applied himself immediately to the performance of the proposed experiment, which he performed with cleverness and dispatch.

THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

It was observed by Woodruffe’s family, during one week of spring of the next year, that he was very absent. He was not in low spirits, but absorbed in thought, and much devoted to making calculations with pencil and paper. At last, out it came, one morning at breakfast.

“I wonder how we should all like to have Harry Hardiman to work with us again?”

Every one looked up. Harry! where was Harry? Was he here? Was he coming?

“Why, I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said their father. “I have thought long and carefully, and I believe I have made up my mind to send for Harry, to come and work for us as he used to do. We have not labour enough on the ground. Two stout men to the acre is the smallest allowance for trying what could be made of the place.”

“That is what Taylor and Brown are employing now on the best part of their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labour. There is such difference between that and one man to four or five acres, as there was before, that they can’t always get the labour.”

“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending for Harry. Our old neighbourhood was not prosperous when we left it, and I fancy it cannot have improved since; and Harry might be glad to follow his master to a thriving neighbourhood; and he is such a careful fellow that I dare say he has money for the journey,—even if he has a wife by this time, as I suppose he has.”

Moss looked most pleased, where all were pleased, at the idea of seeing Harry again. His remembrance of Harry was of a tall young man, who used to carry him on his shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-barrel, and sometimes offer to dip him in it when it was full, and show him how to dig in the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.

“Your rent, to be sure, is much lower than in the old place,” observed Abby.

“Why, we must not build upon that,” replied the father; “rent is rising here, and will rise. My landlord was considerate in lowering mine to 3_l._ per acre, when he saw how impossible it was to make it answer; and he says he shall not ask more yet, on account of the labour I laid out at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the rent will rise to 5_l._; and, in fact, I have made my calculations, in regard to Harry’s coming, at a higher rent than that.”

“Higher than that?”

“Yes: I should not be surprised if I found myself paying, as market-gardeners near London do, ten pounds per acre, before I die.”

“Or rather, to let the ground to me, for that, father,” said Allan, “when it is your own property, and you are tired of work, and disposed to turn it over to me. I will pay you ten pounds per acre then, and let you have all the cabbages you can eat, besides. It is capital land, and that is the truth. Come—shall that be a bargain?”

Woodruffe smiled, and said he owed a duty to Allan. He did not like to see him so hard worked as to be unable to take due care of his own corner of the garden;—unable to enter fairly into the competition for the prizes at the Horticultural Show in the summer. Becky now, too, ought to be spared from all but occasional help in the garden. Above all, the ground was now in such an improving state that it would be waste not to bestow due labour upon it. Put in the spade where you would, the soil was loose and well-aired as needs be: the manure penetrated it thoroughly; the frost and heat pulverised, instead of binding it; and the crops were succeeding each other so fast, that the year would be a very profitable one.

“Where will Harry live, if he comes?” asked Abby.

“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered for them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when once a system of house-drainage is set agoing, it costs scarcely more, in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have good mind to write to Harry to-day. What do you think,—all of you?”

Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his age should be; and he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush, caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth reminded Moss of one thing after another.

“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty once, somewhere hereabouts: but I cannot find them now.”

“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”

The stranger said he dared not go back without them: mother wanted them badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits, he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.

“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used to hunt rats.” And, leading the pony, he showed his old gipsy playfellow all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could fall in, in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cartload of vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbour had been made of the pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do nothing better than keep off the birds; and how fine the ducks were,—the five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was hidden behind a hedge.

Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and, with them, Allan’s hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer. On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.

“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”

“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But nobody would wear it before our eyes.”

“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must watch.”

Now Moss, for the first time, bethought himself of the boy he had brought in from the meadow; and now, for the first time, he told his family of that encounter.

“I never saw such a simpleton,” his father declared. “There, go along and work! Now, don’t cry, but hold up like a man and work.”

Moss did cry; he could not help it; but he worked too. He would fain have been one of the watchers, moreover; but his father said he was too young. For two nights he was ordered to bed, when Allan took his dark lantern, and went down to the pent-house; the first night accompanied by his father, and the next by Harry Hardiman, who had come on the first summons. By the third evening, Moss was so miserable that his sisters interceded for him, and he was allowed to go down with his old friend Harry.

It was a starlight night, without a moon. The low country lay dim, but unobscured by mist. After a single remark on the fineness of the night, Harry was silent. Silence was their first business. They stole round the fence as if they had been thieves themselves, listened for some time before they let themselves in at the gate, passed quickly in, and locked the gate (the lock of which had been well oiled), went behind every screen, and along every path, to be sure that no one was there, and finally, perceiving that the remaining ducks were safe, settled themselves in the darkness of the pent-house.

There they sat, hour after hour, listening. If there had been no sound, perhaps they could not have borne the effort: but the sense was relieved by the bark of a dog at a distance; and then by the hoot of the owl that was known to have done them good service in mousing, many a time; and once, by the passage of a train on the railway above. When these were all over, poor Moss had much ado to keep awake, and at last his head sank on Harry’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, and everything else in the world. He was awakened by Harry’s moving, and then whispering quite into his ear:—

“Sit you still. I hear somebody yonder. No—sit you still. I won’t go far—not out of call: but I must get between them and the gate.”

With his lantern under his coat, Harry stole forth, and Moss stood up, all alone in the darkness and stillness. He could hear his heart beat, but nothing else, till footsteps on the path came nearer and nearer. They came quite up; they came in, actually into the arbour; and then the ducks were certainly fluttering. In an instant more, there was a gleam of light upon the white plumage of the ducks, and then light enough to show that this was the gipsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gipsy boy that Moss was there. The two boys stood, face to face, motionless from utter amazement, and the ducks had scuttled and waddled away before they recovered themselves. Then, Moss flew at him in a glorious passion, at once of rage and fear.

“Leave him to me, Moss,” cried Harry, casting light upon the scene from his lantern, while he collared the thief with the other hand. “Let go, I say, Moss. There, now we’ll go round and be sure whether there is any one else in the garden, and then we’ll lodge this young rogue where he will be safe.”

Nobody was there, and they went home in the dawn, locked up the thief in the shed, and slept through what remained of the night.

It was about Mr. Nelson’s usual time for coming down the line; and it was observed that he now always stopped at this station till the next train passed,—probably because it was a pleasure to him to look upon the improvement of the place. It was no surprise therefore to Woodruffe to see him standing on the embankment after breakfast; and it was natural that Mr. Nelson should be immediately told that the gipsies were here again, and how one of them was caught thieving.

“Thieving! So you found some of your property upon him, did you!”

“Why, no. I thought myself that it was a pity that Moss did not let him alone till he had laid hold of a duck or something.”

“Pho! pho! don’t tell me you can punish the boy for theft, when you can’t prove that he stole anything. Give him a whipping, and let him go.”

“With all my heart. It will save me much trouble to finish off the matter so.”

Mr. Nelson seemed to have some curiosity about the business; for he accompanied Woodruffe to the shed. The boy seemed to feel no awe of the great man whom he supposed to be a magistrate, and when asked whether he felt none, he giggled and said “No;” he had seen the gentleman more afraid of his mother than anybody ever was of him, he fancied. On this, a thought struck Mr. Nelson. He would now have his advantage of the gipsy woman, and might enjoy, at the same time, an opportunity of studying human nature under stress—a thing he liked, when the stress was not too severe. So he passed a decree on the spot that, it being now nine o’clock, the boy should remain shut up without food till noon, when he should be severely flogged, and driven from the neighbourhood: and with this pleasant prospect before him, the young rogue remained, whistling ostentatiously, while his enemies locked the door upon him.

“Did you hear him shoot the bolt?” asked Woodruffe. “If he holds to that, I don’t know how I shall get at him at noon.”

“There, now, what fools people are! Why did you not take out the bolt? A pretty constable you would make! Come—come this way. I am going to find the gipsy-tent again. You are wondering that I am not afraid of the woman, I see: but, you observe, I have a hold over her this time. What do you mean by allowing those children to gather about your door? You ought not to permit it.”

“They are only the scholars. Don’t you see them going in? My daughter keeps a little school, you know, since her husband’s death.”

“Ah, poor thing! poor thing!” said Mr. Nelson, as Abby appeared on the threshold, calling the children in.

Mr. Nelson always contrived to see some one or more of the family when he visited the station; but it so happened, that he had never entered the door of their dwelling. Perhaps he was not himself fully conscious of the reason. It was, that he could not bear to see Abby’s young face within the widow’s cap, and to be thus reminded that hers was a case of cruel wrong; that if the most ordinary thought and care had been used in preparing the place for human habitation, her husband might be living now, and she the happy creature that she would never be again.

On his way to the gipsies, Mr. Nelson saw some things that pleased him in his heart, though he found fault with them all. What business had Woodruffe with an additional man in his garden? It could not possibly answer. If it did not, the fellow must be sent away again. He must not burden the parish. The occupiers here seemed all alike. Such a fancy for new labour! One, two, six men at work on the land within sight at that moment, over and above what there used to be! It must be looked to. Humph! he could get to the alders dryshod now; but that was owing solely to the warmth of the spring. It was nonsense to attribute everything to drainage. Drainage was a good thing; but fine weather was better.

The gipsy-tent was found behind the alders as before, but no longer in a swamp. The woman was sitting on the ground at the entrance as before, but not now with a fevered child laid across her knees. She was weaving a basket.

“Oh, I see,” said Woodruffe, “This is the way our osiers go.”

“You have not many to lose, now-a-days,” said the woman.

“You are welcome to all the rushes you can find,” said Woodruffe; “but where is your son?”

Some change of countenance was seen in the woman; but she answered carelessly that the children were playing yonder.

“The one I mean is not there,” said Woodruffe. “We have him safe—caught him stealing my ducks.”

She called the boy a villain—disowned him, and so forth; but when she found the case a hopeless one, she did not, and therefore, probably could not, scold—that is, anybody but herself and her husband. She cursed herself for coming into this silly place, where now no good was to be got. When she was brought to the right point of perplexity about what to do, seeing that it would not do to stay, and being unable to go while her boy was in durance, she was told that his punishment should be summary, though severe, if she would answer frankly certain questions. When she had once begun giving her confidence, she seemed to enjoy the license. When her husband came up, he looked as if he only waited for the departure of his visitors to give his wife the same amount of thrashing that her son was awaiting elsewhere. She vowed that they would never pitch their tent here again. It used to be the best station in their whole round—the fogs were so thick! From sunset to long after sunrise, it had been as good as a winter night, for going where they pleased without fear of prying eyes. There was not a poultry-yard or pig-stye within a couple of miles round, where they could not creep up through the fog. And they escaped the blame, too; for the swamp and ditches used to harbour so much vermin, that the gipsies were not always suspected, as they were now. Till lately, people shut themselves into their homes, or the men went to the public-house in the chill evenings; and there was little fear of meeting any one. But now that the fogs were gone, people were out in their gardens, on these fine evenings, and there were men in the meadows, returning from fishing; for they could angle now, when their work was done, without the fear of catching an ague in the marsh as they went home.

Mr. Nelson used vigorously his last opportunity of lecturing these people. He had it all his own way, for the humility of the gipsies was edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while, though the gipsies never looked at each other, or raised their eyes from the ground. Woodruffe had to remind the Director that the whistle of the next train would soon be heard; and this brought the lecture to an abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that you will remember my advice, and never show your faces here again, and that you will take to a proper course of life in future, and bring up your son to honest industry;” the woman, with a countenance of grief, seized one hand and covered it with kisses, and the husband took the other hand and pressed it to his breast.

“We must make haste,” observed Mr. Nelson, as he led the way quickly back; “but I think I have made some impression upon them. You see now the right way to treat these people. I don’t think you will see them here again.”

“I don’t think we shall.”

As he reached the steps the whistle was heard, and Mr. Nelson could only wave his hand to Woodruffe, rush up the embankment, and throw himself panting into a carriage. Only just in time!

By an evening train, he re-appeared. When thirty miles off, he had wanted his purse, and it was gone. It had no doubt paid for the gipsies’ final gratitude.

Of course, a sufficient force was immediately sent to the alder clump; but there was nothing there but some charred sticks, and some clean pork bones, this time, instead of feathers of fowls, and a cabbage leaf or two. The boy had had his whipping at noon, after a conference with his little brother at the keyhole, which had caused him to withdraw the bolt, and offer no resistance. Considering his cries and groans, he had run off with surprising agility, and was now, no doubt, far away.