Chapter III: Part 3

William Wordsworth was born in the little county town of Cockermouth; his father was an attorney—not a wealthy man, but in circumstances that enabled him to give his family a fair education. One son entered the merchant service, rose to command a vessel, and perished at sea. Another has acquired a name as master of Harrow, and the author of a delightful book on Greece, full of delicate beauty and fine classical feeling. The allusions by William to his favourite sister are among the most touching passages in his poems; and one or two little pieces of verse, and some extracts from her journals, which he has published, show that she was every way deserving of his love. The poetical dedication of the River Duddon to Dr. Wordsworth, is full of delightful allusions to the boyhood of the brothers, and conveys a pleasing impression of their family relations.

Our poet received the rudiments of his education at the grammar school of Hawkeshead, in Westmoreland, conducted in his time by a master of more than ordinary attainments. In 1787, he matriculated at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Even in his boyhood it was obvious that he possessed superior abilities, but they were not of the showy and ambitious kind which achieve school or college distinction. He was partial to solitary rambles; fond of reading and reciting verses; a boy whom elder men ‘singled out for his grave looks,’ as he has said in the Excursion, and liked to converse with.

It was intended that he should enter the Church, the family circumstances rendering it necessary that he should adopt a profession. But, independently of his wish to devote himself exclusively to literary pursuits, he had caught the prevalent spirit of the time—the aversion to conventional forms and opinions. A moderate income, settled upon him by Raisley Calvert, the victim of a premature decline, enabled him to follow his inclinations. This benefit the poet has gratefully acknowledged:—

‘Calvert, it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.
This care was thine, when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem;
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where’er I liked; and finally array
My temples with the Muse’s diadem.’

After leaving College he made extensive tours on foot, in Scotland and on the Continent with a youthful friend. In 1793 he for the first time ventured into print. Two small volumes appeared in that year: “Descriptive Sketches, in verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps;” and “An Evening Walk, an Epistle in Verse, addressed to a young Lady from the Lakes in the North of England.” In these poems we find no traces of the poetical theory which he subsequently adopted. But they are characterised by the same, almost exclusive, preference for lakes, cataracts and mountains, the elementary beauty of external nature, human passions and incidents, and they contain many passages of glaring imagination powerfully expressed.

In 1796 he took up his abode with his sister at Allfaxden, at the foot of the Quantock Hills, in Somersetshire. This was an important era in the development of his intellect and imagination. During his residence at Allfaxden he was in constant and unreserved communication with Coleridge. Totally dissimilar as the two men were in character, they had many sympathies. Upon both, the classical tastes and ecclesiastical opinions inculcated at English schools and colleges, had, without their being aware of it, made a deep and indelible impression. Both had been animated by the vague but ardent longings after an undefined liberty, and perfection of human nature, then prevalent. They were isolated from general sympathy without knowing it; from the revolutionary party by their literary tastes and strong attachment to traditional English morals; from the Church and State party by their freedom from sectarian narrowness. The resolute independence of thought of the young poets is worthy of all admiration; their frank and cordial communication of all their thoughts, equally so. A pleasing though brief sketch of them at that time has been given by Hazlitt, in an essay, entitled, ‘My first Acquaintance with Poets;’ a more petulant and shallow account, which yet contains some valuable information, by Cottle.

The result of this literary alliance was the first volume of the “Lyrical Ballads.” The quiet but perfect melody of Wordsworth’s versification and the depth of the human sentiment in his reflections, the more swelling tone of Coleridge’s verse and his wild unearthly imaginings, might have secured a more favourable reception for his work, had it not been announced as the result of a new theory of poetry. That theory was misapprehended by the critics of the day, and was indeed inadequately expressed by its authors themselves. Coleridge subsequently developed it in more precise and unexceptionable language in his Biographia Literaria. The effect of its premature announcement was, that the Lyrical Ballads were judged, not by their own intrinsic merits, but by the theory upon which they were said to have been constructed.

The insurmountable indolence of Coleridge—always planning works too great for human accomplishment, and resting satisfied with projects—left Wordsworth to pursue his path alone. This he did with characteristic pertinacity of purpose; if criticism had any influence on him at all, it was only to confirm him in his foregone conclusions. After an excursion to Germany, in which he was accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, he returned to his native country, ‘with the hope,’ as he has told us in his Preface to the Excursion, ‘of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live.’

In 1803, Wordsworth married his cousin, Miss Mary Hutchinson, and settled at Grasmere. He removed in a few years to Rydal Mount, where he continued to reside till his death. Subsequently to this time his life is utterly devoid of personal incident, and may be briefly recapitulated before proceeding to chronicle his poetical productions, which are indeed his life. By his wife, who survives him, he had one daughter, who died before him, and two sons, one of whom holds a vicarage in Cumberland, the other is a distributor of stamps. In 1814, Wordsworth, by the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale, was appointed distributor of stamps for Cumberland and Westmoreland—a recognition of the claims of genius to public support only second in eccentricity to the making of Burns an exciseman. After holding this office for twenty-eight years, he was allowed to relinquish it to his eldest son, and retire upon a pension of 300_l._ a year. In 1843, he succeeded Southey in the limited emoluments and questionable dignity of the Laureateship. His slender inheritance, the beneficence of Raisley Calvert, his office under Government, his retiring pension, and his emoluments as Laureate, sufficed, with his simple tastes, to enable him to wait the slow pecuniary returns of his literary labours.

While the critical storm awakened by the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads was still raging, he composed his Peter Bell and his Waggoner, which were not, however, published till many years later. They are full of fine and deep-felt poetry. Their language is genuine racy English, and their versification unsurpassed for sweetness. It cannot, however, be denied that they are marked by a self-willed, exaggerated adherence to the theory of poetry he had promulgated, the effect of something that is very like a spirit of contradiction. In a playful adaptation of Milton’s sonnet, Tetrachordon, Wordsworth defends his choice of subjects by the admiration felt or professed for Tam o’ Shanter. He overlooks the utter difference between the mode in which Burns conceived and executed that poem, and himself his Benjamin the Waggoner. Burns was for the time the hero himself. In Tam o’ Shanter, and still more in the Jolly Beggars, he expresses the very passions of the characters he presents to us. Wordsworth, constitutionally incapable of the emotions of a boon companion, merely describes and moralises on the waywardness of his Benjamin. We sympathise with the common humanity of Burns’s genial reprobates; we feel the cold shadow of Wordsworth’s Benjamin to be a hideous intruder among the fine poetical imagery and thought with which he is mixed up.

In 1807, Wordsworth published two volumes, containing his own contributions to the Lyrical Ballads, with many additional poems. Minute detached criticism is not the object of this sketch. Suffice it to say that many pieces in these volumes are unsurpassed in English poetry, or in the poetry of any language. The Song at the feast of Brougham Castle has a rich lyrical exuberance of feeling; the Laodamia is as severely beautiful as a Greek statue; Hartleap Well is full of mellow humanity; Rob Roy’s Grave, the Highland Girl, ‘She was a phantom of delight,’—every piece, in short, is replete with delightful sentiment and graphic pictures of rural nature. The objects of some of these poems obviously originate in a mistaken apprehension of the scope and purpose of poetry. Wordsworth was a curious observer of the workings of the human mind, and he sometimes confounded the pleasure derived from such metaphysical scrutiny with the pleasure derived from the presentation of poetical imaginings. Hence, what is questionable in his Idiot Boy, his Harry Gill, and some others.

The Excursion, the most ambitious, and, with all its defects, the greatest of his works, was published in 1814. Here the poet was in his true element. Wordsworth’s genius was essentially moralising and reflective. Incidents and adventure had no charm for him. He arrived at his knowledge of character by an inductive process, not like Shakespeare, by the intuition of sympathy and imagination. He had no power of perceiving those light and graceful peculiarities of men and society, generally designated manners, vivid presentations of which constitute the charm of so many poets; but he was tremulously alive to the charms of inanimate nature.

‘——The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were there to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.’

His soul was full of lofty and imaginative conceptions of moral truths. He, therefore, after severe examination of his own poems, resolved to rest his claims to immortality on his composition of ‘a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled The Recluse, as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.’

How far this projected work has been advanced to completion, we have no means of knowing. A preliminary work, descriptive of the growth of his own powers, is, he has informed us, finished. The Recluse was to consist of three parts, the first and third containing chiefly meditations in the author’s own person; the intermediate introducing characters in a semi-dramatic form. It is to be regretted that his second part has alone been published, for Wordsworth’s genius was essentially undramatic. But notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the poet laboured from the selection of an uncongenial form, and his imperfect mastery of blank verse (a measure of which, perhaps. Milton alone among our English poets has developed the full measure, and varied power of modulation), the Excursion is, undoubtedly, a poem in the highest and truest sense of the word. The philosophical musings with which it abounds, are alike profound and elevating. And nothing can surpass the deep pathos of the episodes of Margaret and Ellen.

The subsequent publications of Wordsworth may be briefly enumerated. Peter Bell and the Waggoner appeared within two years after the Excursion; and the White Doe of Rylstone soon followed them. A miscellaneous volume, of which the River Duddon was the most prominent, was published in 1820, and Yarrow Revisited, in 1835. Of all these works, it may suffice to say that they are highly characteristic of the author, and contain many beauties.

Wordsworth’s poetry had long to contend against the conventional prepossessions of the literary world. From the beginning, however, his genius was felt by superior minds, and by a few young unprejudiced enthusiasts. His first admirers were literally a sect, and their admiration was, like the devotion of all sectarians, ardent and indiscriminating. They have, however, served as interpreters between him and the reading public, and thus his merits have come to be generally acknowledged. His writings lent a tone to the works of some who, like Shelley, dissented from his theory; and some who, like Byron, systematically scoffed at them. The public taste was thus insensibly approximated to them. Even yet, however, Wordsworth is probably more praised than liked. But the process will go on, and in time what is really valuable in his poems will take the place that is due to it in the land’s literature.

Of the first writings of Wordsworth little need be said. Though they contain valuable thoughts, they are lumbering and sufficiently unreadable. The once furious controversy about his literary creed as heresy, need not be resuscitated; there were great errors on both sides. If his merits were individually depreciated, there was much in his seemingly supercilious re-assertion, rather than defence and explanation of his views, to extenuate the petulance with which he was often treated. As for his wanderings in the fields of politics and polemics, he is no exception to the general truth, that the warmest admirers of poets must regret their deviations into such uncongenial by-ways.

The man was like his poetry; simple and therefore conservative in his tastes: self-reliant and sometimes repulsive from his austerity, yet with a rich fund of benevolence beneath the hard exterior. His frame was strong and sinewy from his habits of exercise; his look heavy, and, at first sight, unimpressive; but there was an inexpressible charm in his smile. He was the antithesis of the materialist and practical activity of the time. He did not understand, and therefore could not appreciate, the ennobling tendencies of the social and scientific career on which this age has entered—an age into which he had lingered, rather than to which he belonged. He looked out upon the world from his egotistic isolation rather as a critical spectator, than as a sympathiser. His views of it were rusted over with the conservative prejudices of the past. Railways he hated, and against them waged a sonneteering war. Although they were rapidly increasing the commerce, comforts, intercourse, affluence, and happiness of the whole community, they invaded the selfish solitude of the one man; and single-handed he did battle against the armies of invading tourists, who came to share with him the heathful pleasures of the mountain and the lake, in which he would have almost preserved a patent right for the few.

This anti-natural spirit, however, did not always lead him astray from the right path. In the Excursion, were promulgated, for the first time, these views respecting the embruting tendency of the unintermitting toil of our factory labourers, the necessity of universal education by the State, and the vocation of the English race to colonise the earth, which have been so many zealous missionaries. We cannot better conclude these desultory remarks,—an imperfect prelude to the lip of a truly good and great man—than by quoting part of his weighty words in the Excursion, respecting National Education:—

‘Oh! for the coming of that glorious time
When, prizing Knowledge as her noblest wealth
And best protection, this Imperial Realm,
While she exacts allegiance, shall admit
An obligation, on her part, to _teach_
Them who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding herself by statute to secure
To all her children whom her soil maintains,
The rudiments of Letters, and to inform
The mind with moral and religious truth,
Both understood and practised—so that none,
However destitute, be left to droop
By timely culture unsustained; or run
Into a wild disorder; or be forced
To drudge through weary life without the aid
Of intellectual implements and tools;
A savage horde among the civilised,
A servile band among the lordly free!

· · · · ·

‘The discipline of slavery is unknown
Amongst us—hence the more do we require
The discipline of virtue; order else
Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace.
Thus duties rising out of good possess’d,
And prudent caution, needful to avert
Impending evil, do alike require
That permanent provision should be made
For the whole people to be taught and trained.
So shall licentiousness and black resolve
Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take
Their place; and genuine piety descend,
Like an inheritance, from age to age.’

These are indeed worthy to become Household words.

FATHER AND SON.

One evening in the month of March, 1798,—that dark time in Ireland’s annals whose memory (overlooking all minor subsequent _émeutes_) is still preserved among us, as ‘the year of the rebellion’—a lady and gentleman were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned dining-room of a large lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming gradually more vivid as the short Spring twilight faded into darkness.

At length the husband poured out a glass of wine, drank it off, and then broke silence, by saying—

“Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful times; there were ten men taken up to-day for burning Cotter’s house at Knockane; and Tom Dycer says that every magistrate in the country is a marked man.”

Mrs. Hewson cast a frightened glance towards the windows, which opened nearly to the ground, and gave a view of a wide tree-besprinkled lawn, through whose centre a long straight avenue led to the high-road. There was also a footpath at either side of the house, branching off through close thickets of trees, and reaching the road by a circuitous route.

“Listen, James!” she said, after a pause; “what noise is that?”

“Nothing but the sighing of the wind among the trees. Come, wife, you must not give way to imaginary fears.”

“But really I heard something like footsteps on the gravel, round the gable-end—I wish”—

A knock at the parlour door interrupted her.

“Come in.”

The door opened, and Tim Gahan, Mr. Hewson’s confidential steward and right-hand man, entered, followed by a fair-haired delicate-looking boy of six years’ old, dressed in deep mourning.

“Well, Gahan, what do you want?”

“I ask your Honour’s pardon for disturbing you and the mistress; but I thought it right to come tell you the bad news I heard.”

“Something about the rebels, I suppose?”

“Yes, Sir; I got a whisper just now that there’s going to be a great rising intirely, to-morrow; thousands are to gather before daybreak at Kilcrean bog, where I’m told they’ve a power of pikes hiding; and then they’re to march on and sack every house in the country. I’ll engage, when I heard it, I didn’t let grass grow under my feet, but came off straight to your Honour, thinking maybe you’d like to walk over this fine evening to Mr. Warren’s, and settle with him what’s best to be done.”

“Oh, James! I beseech you, don’t think of going.”

“Make your mind easy, Charlotte; I don’t intend it: not that I suppose there would be much risk; but, all things considered, I think I’m just as comfortable at home.”

The steward’s brow darkened, as he glanced nervously towards the end window, which jutting out in the gable, formed a deep angle in the outer wall.

“Of course ’tis just as your Honour pleases, but I’ll warrant you there would be no harm in going. Come, Billy,” he added, addressing the child, who by this time was standing close to Mrs. Hewson, “make your bow, and bid good night to master and mistress.”

The boy did not stir, and Mrs. Hewson taking his little hand in hers, said—

“You need not go home for half-an-hour, Gahan; stay and have a chat with the servants in the kitchen, and leave little Billy with me—and with the apples and nuts”—she added, smiling as she filled the child’s hands with fruit.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” said the steward hastily. “I can’t stop—I’m in a hurry home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night; but he _would_ follow me. Come, Billy; come this minute, you young rogue.”

Still the child looked reluctant, and Mr. Hewson said peremptorily—

“Don’t go yet, Gahan; I want to speak to you by and by; and you know the mistress always likes to pet little Billy.”

Without replying, the steward left the room; and the next moment his hasty footsteps resounded through the long flagged passage that led to the offices.

“There’s something strange about Gahan, since his wife died,” remarked Mrs. Hewson. “I suppose ’tis grief for her that makes him look so darkly, and seem almost jealous when any one speaks to his child. Poor little Billy! your mother was a sore loss to you.”

The child’s blue eyes filled with tears, and pressing closer to the lady’s side, he said:—

“Old Peggy doesn’t wash and dress me as nicely as mammy used.”

“But your father is good to you?”

“Oh, yes, Ma’am, but he’s out all day busy, and I’ve no one to talk to me as mammy used; for Peggy is quite deaf, and besides she’s always busy with the pigs and chickens.”

“I wish I had you, Billy, to take care of and to teach, for your poor mother’s sake.”

“And so you may, Charlotte,” said her husband. “I’m sure Gahan, with all his odd ways, is too sensible a fellow not to know how much it would be for his child’s benefit to be brought up and educated by us, and the boy would be an amusement to us in this lonely house. I’ll speak to him about it before he goes home. Billy, my fine fellow, come here,” he continued, “jump up on my knee, and tell me if you’d like to live here always and learn to read and write.”

“I would, Sir, if I could be with father too.”

“So you shall;—and what about old Peggy?”

The child paused—

“I’d like to give her a pen’north of snuff and a piece of tobacco every week, for she said the other day that _that_ would make her quite happy.”

Mr. Hewson laughed, and Billy prattled on, still seated on his knee; when a noise of footsteps on the ground, mingled with low suppressed talking was heard outside.

“James, listen! there’s the noise again.”

It was now nearly dark, but Mr. Hewson, still holding the boy in his arms, walked towards the window and looked out.

“I can see nothing,” he said,—“stay—there are figures moving off among the trees, and a man running round to the back of the house—very like Gahan he is too!”

Seizing the bell-rope, he rang it loudly, and said to the servant who answered his summons:—

“Fasten the shutters and put up the bars, Connell; and then tell Gahan I want to see him.”

The man obeyed; candles were brought, and Gahan entered the room.

Mr. Hewson remarked that, though his cheeks were flushed, his lips were very white, and his bold dark eyes were cast on the ground.

“What took you round the house just now, Tim?” asked his master, in a careless manner.

“What took me round the house, is it? Why, then, nothing in life, Sir, but that just as I went outside the kitchen door to take a smoke, I saw the pigs, that Shaneen forgot to put up in their stye, making right for the mistress’s flower-garden; so I just put my _dudheen_, lighting as it was, into my pocket, and ran after them. I caught them on the grand walk under the end window, and indeed, Ma’am, I had my own share of work turning them back to their proper spear.”

Gahan spoke with unusual volubility, but without raising his eyes from the ground.

“Who were the people,” asked his master, “whom I saw moving through the western grove?”

“People! your Honour—not a sign of any people moving there, I’ll be bound, barring the pigs.”

“Then,” said Mr. Hewson, smiling, to his wife, “the miracle of Circe must have been reversed, and swine turned into men; for, undoubtedly, the dark figures I saw were human beings.”

“Come, Billy,” said Gahan, anxious to turn the conversation, “will you come home with me now? I am sure ’twas very good of the mistress to give you all them fine apples.”

Mrs. Hewson was going to propose Billy’s remaining, but her husband whispered:—“Wait till to-morrow.” So Gahan and his child were allowed to depart.

Next morning the magistrates of the district were on the alert, and several suspicious looking men found lurking about, were taken up. A hat which fitted one of them was picked up in Mr. Hewson’s grove; the gravel under the end window bore many signs of trampling feet; and there were marks on the wall as if guns had rested against it. Gahan’s information touching the intended meeting at Kilcrean bog proved to be totally without foundation; and after a careful search not a single pike or weapon of any description could be found there. All these circumstances combined certainly looked suspicious; but, after a prolonged investigation, as no guilt could be actually brought home to Gahan, he was dismissed. One of his examiners, however, said privately, “I advise you take care of that fellow, Hewson. If I were in your place, I’d just trust him as far as I could throw him, and not an inch beyond.”

An indolent hospitable Irish country gentleman, such as Mr. Hewson, is never without an always shrewd and often roguish prime minister, who saves his master the trouble of looking after his own affairs, and manages everything that is to be done in both the home and foreign departments,—from putting a new door on the pig-stye, to letting a farm of an hundred acres on lease. Now in this, or rather these capacities, Gahan had long served Mr. Hewson; and some seven years previous to the evening on which our story commences, he had strengthened the tie and increased his influence considerably by marrying Mrs. Hewson’s favourite and faithful maid. One child was the result of this union; and Mrs. Hewson, who had no family of her own, took much interest in little Billy,—more especially after the death of his mother, who, poor thing! the neighbours said, was not very happy, and would gladly, if she dared, have exchanged her lonely cottage for the easy service of her former mistress.

Thus, though for a time Mr. and Mrs. Hewson regarded Gahan with some doubt, the feeling gradually wore away, and the steward regained his former influence.

After the lapse of a few stormy months the rebellion was quelled: all the prisoners taken up were severally disposed of by hanging, transportation or acquittal, according to the nature and amount of the evidence brought against them; and the country became as peaceful as it is in the volcanic nature of our Irish soil ever to be.

The Hewsons’ kindness towards Gahan’s child was steady and unchanged. They took him into their house, and gave him a plain but solid education; so that William, while yet a boy, was enabled to be of some use to his patron, and daily enjoyed more and more of his confidence.

* * * * *

Another Evening, the twentieth anniversary of that with which this narrative commenced, came round. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson were still hale and active, dwelling in their hospitable home. About eight o’clock at night, Tim Gahan, now a stooping, grey-haired man, entered Mr. Hewson’s kitchen, and took his seat on the corner of the settle next the fire.

The cook, directing a silent significant glance of compassion towards her fellow-servants, said:

“Would you like a drink of cider, Tim, or will you wait and take a cup of tay with myself and Kitty?”

The old man’s eyes were fixed on the fire, and a wrinkled hand was planted firmly on each knee, as if to check their involuntary trembling. “I’ll not drink anything this night, thank you kindly, Nelly,” he said, in a slow musing manner, dwelling long on each word.

“Where’s Billy?” he asked, after a pause, in a quick hurried tone, looking up suddenly at the cook, with an expression in his eyes, which, as she afterwards said, ‘took away her breath.’

“Oh, never heed Billy! I suppose he’s busy with the master.”

“Where’s the use, Nelly,” said the coachman, “in hiding it from him? Sure, sooner or later he must know it. Tim,” he continued, “God knows ’tis sorrow to my heart this blessed night to make yours sore,—but the truth is, that William has done what he oughtn’t to do to the man that was all one as a father to him.”

“What has he done? what will you _dar_ say again my boy?”

“Taken money, then,” replied the coachman, “that the master had marked and put by in his desk; for he suspected this some time past that gold was missing. This morning ’twas gone; a search was made, and the marked guineas were found with your son William.”

The old man covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and fro.

“Where is he now?” at length he asked, in a hoarse voice.

“Locked up safe in the inner store-room; the master intends sending him to gaol early to-morrow morning.”

“He will not,” said Gahan slowly. “Kill the boy that saved his life!—no, no.”

“Poor fellow! the grief is setting his mind astray—and sure no wonder!” said the cook, compassionately.

“I’m not astray!” cried the old man, fiercely. “Where’s the master?—take me to him.”

“Come with me,” said the butler, “and I’ll ask him will he see you?”

With faltering steps the father complied; and when they reached the parlour, he trembled exceedingly, and leant against the wall for support, while the butler opened the door, and said:

“Gahan is here, Sir, and wants to know will you let him speak to you for a minute?”

“Tell him to come in,” said Mr. Hewson, in a solemn tone of sorrow, very different from his ordinary cheerful voice.

“Sir,” said the steward, advancing, “they tell me you are going to send my boy to prison,—is it true?”

“Too true, indeed, Gahan. The lad who was reared in my house, whom my wife watched over in health, and nursed in sickness—whom we loved almost as if he were our own, has _robbed_ us, and that not once or twice, but many times. He is silent and sullen, too, and refuses to tell why he stole the money, which was never withheld from him when he wanted it. I can make nothing of him, and must only give him up to justice in the morning.”

“No, Sir, no. The boy saved your life; you can’t take his.”

“You’re raving, Gahan.”

“Listen to me, Sir, and you won’t say so. You remember this night twenty years? I came here with my motherless child, and yourself and the mistress pitied us, and spoke loving words to him. Well for us all you did so! That night—little you thought it!—I was banded with them that were sworn to take your life. They were watching you outside the window, and I was sent to inveigle you out, that they might shoot you. A faint heart I had for the bloody business, for you were ever and always a good master to me; but I was under an oath to them that I darn’t break, supposing they ordered me to shoot my own mother. Well! the hand of God was over you, and you wouldn’t come with me. I ran out to them, and I said—‘Boys, if you want to shoot him, you must do it through the window,’ thinking they’d be afeard of that; but they weren’t—they were daring fellows, and one of them, sheltered by the angle of the window, took deadly aim at you. That very moment you took Billy on your knee, and I saw his fair head in a line with the musket. I don’t know exactly then what I said or did, but I remember I caught the man’s hand, threw it up, and pointed to the child. Knowing I was a determined man, I believe they didn’t wish to provoke me; so they watched you for a while, and when you didn’t put him down they got daunted, hearing the sound of soldiers riding by the road, and they stole away through the grove. Most of that gang swung on the gallows, but the last of them died this morning quietly in his bed. Up to yesterday he used to make me give him money,—sums of money to buy his silence—and it was for that I made my boy a thief. It was wearing out his very life. Often he went down on his knees to me, and said: ‘Father, I’d die myself sooner than rob my master, but I can’t see _you_ disgraced. Oh, let us fly the country!’ Now, Sir, I have told you all—do what you like with me—send me to gaol, I deserve it—but spare my poor deluded innocent boy!”

It would be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson’s feelings, but his wife’s first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few incoherent words of explanation she led him into the presence of his master, who, looking at him sorrowfully but kindly, said:

“William, you have erred deeply, but not so deeply as I supposed. Your father has told me everything. I forgive him freely and you also.”

The young man covered his face with his hands, and wept tears more bitter and abundant than he had ever shed since the day when he followed his mother to the grave. He could say little, but he knelt on the ground, and clasping the kind hand of her who had supplied to him that mother’s place, he murmured;

“Will _you_ tell him I would rather die than sin again.”

Old Gahan died two years afterwards, truly penitent, invoking blessings on his son and on his benefactors; and the young man’s conduct, now no longer under evil influence, was so steady and so upright, that his adopted parents felt that their pious work was rewarded, and that, in William Gahan, they had indeed a son.

* * * * *

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THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
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with the Magazines._

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).