"CHAPTER I—First Quarter.\n\n\nThere are not many people—and as it is desirable that a story-teller and\na story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as\npossible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither\nto young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of\npeople: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing\ndown again—there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a\nchurch.  I don’t mean at sermon-time in warm weather (when the thing has\nactually been done, once or twice), but in the night, and alone.  A great\nmultitude of persons will be violently astonished, I know, by this\nposition, in the broad bold Day.  But it applies to Night.  It must be\nargued by night, and I will undertake to maintain it successfully on any\ngusty winter’s night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent\nchosen from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old churchyard,\nbefore an old church-door; and will previously empower me to lock him in,\nif needful to his satisfaction, until morning.\n\nFor the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a\nbuilding of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its\nunseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by\nwhich to enter.  And when it has got in; as one not finding what it\nseeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again: and\nnot content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and round\nthe pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and\nstrives to rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the\nstones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults.  Anon, it comes up\nstealthily, and creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the\nInscriptions sacred to the Dead.  At some of these, it breaks out\nshrilly, as with laughter; and at others, moans and cries as if it were\nlamenting.  It has a ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar; where\nit seems to chaunt, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false\nGods worshipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair\nand smooth, but are so flawed and broken.  Ugh!  Heaven preserve us,\nsitting snugly round the fire!  It has an awful voice, that wind at\nMidnight, singing in a church!\n\nBut, high up in the steeple!  There the foul blast roars and whistles!\nHigh up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an\nairy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy\nstair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake\nand shiver!  High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails\nare ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the\nchanging weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and\nbirds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams; and\ndust grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long\nsecurity, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never\nloose their hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up\nsailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of\nnimble legs to save one life!  High up in the steeple of an old church,\nfar above the light and murmur of the town and far below the flying\nclouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up\nin the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of.\n\nThey were old Chimes, trust me.  Centuries ago, these Bells had been\nbaptized by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register of their\nbaptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew\ntheir names.  They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells\n(for my own part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of\nbeing Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had their silver mugs no\ndoubt, besides.  But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the\nEighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and\nmugless, in the church-tower.\n\nNot speechless, though.  Far from it.  They had clear, loud, lusty,\nsounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard\nupon the wind.  Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the\npleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when\nit took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a\nlistening ear right royally; and bent on being heard on stormy nights, by\nsome poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband\nwas at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat a blustering Nor’\nWester; aye, ‘all to fits,’ as Toby Veck said;—for though they chose to\ncall him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could make it\nanything else either (except Tobias) without a special act of parliament;\nhe having been as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been in\ntheirs, though with not quite so much of solemnity or public rejoicing.\n\nFor my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck’s belief, for I am sure he had\nopportunities enough of forming a correct one.  And whatever Toby Veck\nsaid, I say.  And I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he _did_ stand\nall day long (and weary work it was) just outside the church-door.  In\nfact he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for jobs.\n\nAnd a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed,\ntooth-chattering place it was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby\nVeck well knew.  The wind came tearing round the corner—especially the\neast wind—as if it had sallied forth, express, from the confines of the\nearth, to have a blow at Toby.  And oftentimes it seemed to come upon him\nsooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and passing\nToby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried ‘Why, here he\nis!’  Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up over his\nhead like a naughty boy’s garments, and his feeble little cane would be\nseen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would\nundergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now\nin this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and\ntouzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render\nit a state of things but one degree removed from a positive miracle, that\nhe wasn’t carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails\nor other very portable creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to\nthe great astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of the\nworld where ticket-porters are unknown.\n\nBut, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly, was, after all,\na sort of holiday for Toby.  That’s the fact.  He didn’t seem to wait so\nlong for a sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having to fight\nwith that boisterous element took off his attention, and quite freshened\nhim up, when he was getting hungry and low-spirited.  A hard frost too,\nor a fall of snow, was an Event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or\nother—it would have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby!  So\nwind and frost and snow, and perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were\nToby Veck’s red-letter days.\n\nWet weather was the worst; the cold, damp, clammy wet, that wrapped him\nup like a moist great-coat—the only kind of great-coat Toby owned, or\ncould have added to his comfort by dispensing with.  Wet days, when the\nrain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the street’s throat,\nlike his own, was choked with mist; when smoking umbrellas passed and\nre-passed, spinning round and round like so many teetotums, as they\nknocked against each other on the crowded footway, throwing off a little\nwhirlpool of uncomfortable sprinklings; when gutters brawled and\nwaterspouts were full and noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones\nand ledges of the church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp\nof straw on which he stood mere mud in no time; those were the days that\ntried him.  Then, indeed, you might see Toby looking anxiously out from\nhis shelter in an angle of the church wall—such a meagre shelter that in\nsummer time it never cast a shadow thicker than a good-sized walking\nstick upon the sunny pavement—with a disconsolate and lengthened face.\nBut coming out, a minute afterwards, to warm himself by exercise, and\ntrotting up and down some dozen times, he would brighten even then, and\ngo back more brightly to his niche.\n\nThey called him Trotty from his pace, which meant speed if it didn’t make\nit.  He could have walked faster perhaps; most likely; but rob him of his\ntrot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and died.  It bespattered him\nwith mud in dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble; he could have\nwalked with infinitely greater ease; but that was one reason for his\nclinging to it so tenaciously.  A weak, small, spare old man, he was a\nvery Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions.  He loved to earn his\nmoney.  He delighted to believe—Toby was very poor, and couldn’t well\nafford to part with a delight—that he was worth his salt.  With a\nshilling or an eighteenpenny message or small parcel in hand, his courage\nalways high, rose higher.  As he trotted on, he would call out to fast\nPostmen ahead of him, to get out of the way; devoutly believing that in\nthe natural course of things he must inevitably overtake and run them\ndown; and he had perfect faith—not often tested—in his being able to\ncarry anything that man could lift.\n\nThus, even when he came out of his nook to warm himself on a wet day,\nToby trotted.  Making, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy\nfootprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly hands and rubbing them\nagainst each other, poorly defended from the searching cold by threadbare\nmufflers of grey worsted, with a private apartment only for the thumb,\nand a common room or tap for the rest of the fingers; Toby, with his\nknees bent and his cane beneath his arm, still trotted.  Falling out into\nthe road to look up at the belfry when the Chimes resounded, Toby trotted\nstill.\n\nHe made this last excursion several times a day, for they were company to\nhim; and when he heard their voices, he had an interest in glancing at\ntheir lodging-place, and thinking how they were moved, and what hammers\nbeat upon them.  Perhaps he was the more curious about these Bells,\nbecause there were points of resemblance between themselves and him.\nThey hung there, in all weathers, with the wind and rain driving in upon\nthem; facing only the outsides of all those houses; never getting any\nnearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and shone upon the windows, or\ncame puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of participation in\nany of the good things that were constantly being handed through the\nstreet doors and the area railings, to prodigious cooks.  Faces came and\nwent at many windows: sometimes pretty faces, youthful faces, pleasant\nfaces: sometimes the reverse: but Toby knew no more (though he often\nspeculated on these trifles, standing idle in the streets) whence they\ncame, or where they went, or whether, when the lips moved, one kind word\nwas said of him in all the year, than did the Chimes themselves.\n\nToby was not a casuist—that he knew of, at least—and I don’t mean to say\nthat when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his first rough\nacquaintance with them into something of a closer and more delicate woof,\nhe passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal\nreview or great field-day in his thoughts.  But what I mean to say, and\ndo say is, that as the functions of Toby’s body, his digestive organs for\nexample, did of their own cunning, and by a great many operations of\nwhich he was altogether ignorant, and the knowledge of which would have\nastonished him very much, arrive at a certain end; so his mental\nfaculties, without his privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and\nsprings in motion, with a thousand others, when they worked to bring\nabout his liking for the Bells.\n\nAnd though I had said his love, I would not have recalled the word,\nthough it would scarcely have expressed his complicated feeling.  For,\nbeing but a simple man, he invested them with a strange and solemn\ncharacter.  They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high\nup, so far off, so full of such a deep strong melody, that he regarded\nthem with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at the dark\narched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by\nsomething which was not a Bell, and yet was what he had heard so often\nsounding in the Chimes.  For all this, Toby scouted with indignation a\ncertain flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted, as implying the\npossibility of their being connected with any Evil thing.  In short, they\nwere very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always\nin his good opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by\nstaring with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he\nwas fain to take an extra trot or two, afterwards, to cure it.\n\nThe very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, when the last\ndrowsy sound of Twelve o’clock, just struck, was humming like a melodious\nmonster of a Bee, and not by any means a busy bee, all through the\nsteeple!\n\n‘Dinner-time, eh!’ said Toby, trotting up and down before the church.\n‘Ah!’\n\nToby’s nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, and he winked\nvery much, and his shoulders were very near his ears, and his legs were\nvery stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long way upon the frosty\nside of cool.\n\n‘Dinner-time, eh!’ repeated Toby, using his right-hand muffler like an\ninfantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest for being cold.\n‘Ah-h-h-h!’\n\nHe took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or two.\n\n‘There’s nothing,’ said Toby, breaking forth afresh—but here he stopped\nshort in his trot, and with a face of great interest and some alarm, felt\nhis nose carefully all the way up.  It was but a little way (not being\nmuch of a nose) and he had soon finished.\n\n‘I thought it was gone,’ said Toby, trotting off again.  ‘It’s all right,\nhowever.  I am sure I couldn’t blame it if it was to go.  It has a\nprecious hard service of it in the bitter weather, and precious little to\nlook forward to; for I don’t take snuff myself.  It’s a good deal tried,\npoor creetur, at the best of times; for when it _does_ get hold of a\npleasant whiff or so (which an’t too often) it’s generally from somebody\nelse’s dinner, a-coming home from the baker’s.’\n\nThe reflection reminded him of that other reflection, which he had left\nunfinished.\n\n‘There’s nothing,’ said Toby, ‘more regular in its coming round than\ndinner-time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner.\nThat’s the great difference between ’em.  It’s took me a long time to\nfind it out.  I wonder whether it would be worth any gentleman’s while,\nnow, to buy that obserwation for the Papers; or the Parliament!’\n\nToby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-depreciation.\n\n‘Why! Lord!’ said Toby.  ‘The Papers is full of obserwations as it is;\nand so’s the Parliament.  Here’s last week’s paper, now;’ taking a very\ndirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm’s length; ‘full\nof obserwations!  Full of obserwations!  I like to know the news as well\nas any man,’ said Toby, slowly; folding it a little smaller, and putting\nit in his pocket again: ‘but it almost goes against the grain with me to\nread a paper now.  It frightens me almost.  I don’t know what we poor\npeople are coming to.  Lord send we may be coming to something better in\nthe New Year nigh upon us!’\n\n‘Why, father, father!’ said a pleasant voice, hard by.\n\nBut Toby, not hearing it, continued to trot backwards and forwards:\nmusing as he went, and talking to himself.\n\n‘It seems as if we can’t go right, or do right, or be righted,’ said\nToby.  ‘I hadn’t much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can’t\nmake out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not.\nSometimes I think we must have—a little; and sometimes I think we must be\nintruding.  I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up\nmy mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born\nbad.  We seem to be dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble;\nwe are always being complained of and guarded against.  One way or other,\nwe fill the papers.  Talk of a New Year!’ said Toby, mournfully.  ‘I can\nbear up as well as another man at most times; better than a good many,\nfor I am as strong as a lion, and all men an’t; but supposing it should\nreally be that we have no right to a New Year—supposing we really _are_\nintruding—’\n\n‘Why, father, father!’ said the pleasant voice again.\n\nToby heard it this time; started; stopped; and shortening his sight,\nwhich had been directed a long way off as seeking the enlightenment in\nthe very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to face with\nhis own child, and looking close into her eyes.\n\nBright eyes they were.  Eyes that would bear a world of looking in,\nbefore their depth was fathomed.  Dark eyes, that reflected back the eyes\nwhich searched them; not flashingly, or at the owner’s will, but with a\nclear, calm, honest, patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light\nwhich Heaven called into being.  Eyes that were beautiful and true, and\nbeaming with Hope.  With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so buoyant,\nvigorous, and bright, despite the twenty years of work and poverty on\nwhich they had looked; that they became a voice to Trotty Veck, and said:\n‘I think we have some business here—a little!’\n\nTrotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the blooming\nface between his hands.\n\n‘Why, Pet,’ said Trotty.  ‘What’s to do?  I didn’t expect you to-day,\nMeg.’\n\n‘Neither did I expect to come, father,’ cried the girl, nodding her head\nand smiling as she spoke.  ‘But here I am!  And not alone; not alone!’\n\n‘Why you don’t mean to say,’ observed Trotty, looking curiously at a\ncovered basket which she carried in her hand, ‘that you—’\n\n‘Smell it, father dear,’ said Meg.  ‘Only smell it!’\n\nTrotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when she\ngaily interposed her hand.\n\n‘No, no, no,’ said Meg, with the glee of a child.  ‘Lengthen it out a\nlittle.  Let me just lift up the corner; just the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner,\nyou know,’ said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost\ngentleness, and speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being\noverheard by something inside the basket; ‘there.  Now.  What’s that?’\n\nToby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket, and\ncried out in a rapture:\n\n‘Why, it’s hot!’\n\n‘It’s burning hot!’ cried Meg.  ‘Ha, ha, ha!  It’s scalding hot!’\n\n‘Ha, ha, ha!’ roared Toby, with a sort of kick.  ‘It’s scalding hot!’\n\n‘But what is it, father?’ said Meg.  ‘Come.  You haven’t guessed what it\nis.  And you must guess what it is.  I can’t think of taking it out, till\nyou guess what it is.  Don’t be in such a hurry!  Wait a minute!  A\nlittle bit more of the cover.  Now guess!’\n\nMeg was in a perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon;\nshrinking away, as she held the basket towards him; curling up her pretty\nshoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could\nkeep the right word out of Toby’s lips; and laughing softly the whole\ntime.\n\nMeanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each knee, bent down his nose to the\nbasket, and took a long inspiration at the lid; the grin upon his\nwithered face expanding in the process, as if he were inhaling laughing\ngas.\n\n‘Ah!  It’s very nice,’ said Toby.  ‘It an’t—I suppose it an’t Polonies?’\n\n‘No, no, no!’ cried Meg, delighted.  ‘Nothing like Polonies!’\n\n‘No,’ said Toby, after another sniff.  ‘It’s—it’s mellower than Polonies.\nIt’s very nice.  It improves every moment.  It’s too decided for\nTrotters.  An’t it?’\n\nMeg was in an ecstasy.  He could not have gone wider of the mark than\nTrotters—except Polonies.\n\n‘Liver?’ said Toby, communing with himself.  ‘No.  There’s a mildness\nabout it that don’t answer to liver.  Pettitoes?  No.  It an’t faint\nenough for pettitoes.  It wants the stringiness of Cocks’ heads.  And I\nknow it an’t sausages.  I’ll tell you what it is.  It’s chitterlings!’\n\n‘No, it an’t!’ cried Meg, in a burst of delight.  ‘No, it an’t!’\n\n‘Why, what am I a-thinking of!’ said Toby, suddenly recovering a position\nas near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume.  ‘I shall\nforget my own name next.  It’s tripe!’\n\nTripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, in half a\nminute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed.\n\n‘And so,’ said Meg, busying herself exultingly with the basket, ‘I’ll lay\nthe cloth at once, father; for I have brought the tripe in a basin, and\ntied the basin up in a pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for\nonce, and spread that for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there’s no law to\nprevent me; is there, father?’\n\n‘Not that I know of, my dear,’ said Toby.  ‘But they’re always a-bringing\nup some new law or other.’\n\n‘And according to what I was reading you in the paper the other day,\nfather; what the Judge said, you know; we poor people are supposed to\nknow them all.  Ha ha!  What a mistake!  My goodness me, how clever they\nthink us!’\n\n‘Yes, my dear,’ cried Trotty; ‘and they’d be very fond of any one of us\nthat _did_ know ’em all.  He’d grow fat upon the work he’d get, that man,\nand be popular with the gentlefolks in his neighbourhood.  Very much so!’\n\n‘He’d eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt like\nthis,’ said Meg, cheerfully.  ‘Make haste, for there’s a hot potato\nbesides, and half a pint of fresh-drawn beer in a bottle.  Where will you\ndine, father?  On the Post, or on the Steps?  Dear, dear, how grand we\nare.  Two places to choose from!’\n\n‘The steps to-day, my Pet,’ said Trotty.  ‘Steps in dry weather.  Post in\nwet.  There’s a greater conveniency in the steps at all times, because of\nthe sitting down; but they’re rheumatic in the damp.’\n\n‘Then here,’ said Meg, clapping her hands, after a moment’s bustle; ‘here\nit is, all ready!  And beautiful it looks!  Come, father.  Come!’\n\nSince his discovery of the contents of the basket, Trotty had been\nstanding looking at her—and had been speaking too—in an abstracted\nmanner, which showed that though she was the object of his thoughts and\neyes, to the exclusion even of tripe, he neither saw nor thought about\nher as she was at that moment, but had before him some imaginary rough\nsketch or drama of her future life.  Roused, now, by her cheerful\nsummons, he shook off a melancholy shake of the head which was just\ncoming upon him, and trotted to her side.  As he was stooping to sit\ndown, the Chimes rang.\n\n‘Amen!’ said Trotty, pulling off his hat and looking up towards them.\n\n‘Amen to the Bells, father?’ cried Meg.\n\n‘They broke in like a grace, my dear,’ said Trotty, taking his seat.\n‘They’d say a good one, I am sure, if they could.  Many’s the kind thing\nthey say to me.’\n\n‘The Bells do, father!’ laughed Meg, as she set the basin, and a knife\nand fork, before him.  ‘Well!’\n\n‘Seem to, my Pet,’ said Trotty, falling to with great vigour.  ‘And\nwhere’s the difference?  If I hear ’em, what does it matter whether they\nspeak it or not?  Why bless you, my dear,’ said Toby, pointing at the\ntower with his fork, and becoming more animated under the influence of\ndinner, ‘how often have I heard them bells say, “Toby Veck, Toby Veck,\nkeep a good heart, Toby!  Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!”\nA million times?  More!’\n\n‘Well, I never!’ cried Meg.\n\nShe had, though—over and over again.  For it was Toby’s constant topic.\n\n‘When things is very bad,’ said Trotty; ‘very bad indeed, I mean; almost\nat the worst; then it’s “Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby!\nToby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby!”  That way.’\n\n‘And it comes—at last, father,’ said Meg, with a touch of sadness in her\npleasant voice.\n\n‘Always,’ answered the unconscious Toby.  ‘Never fails.’\n\nWhile this discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon\nthe savoury meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut\nand chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot\npotato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish.  But\nhappening now to look all round the street—in case anybody should be\nbeckoning from any door or window, for a porter—his eyes, in coming back\nagain, encountered Meg: sitting opposite to him, with her arms folded and\nonly busy in watching his progress with a smile of happiness.\n\n‘Why, Lord forgive me!’ said Trotty, dropping his knife and fork.  ‘My\ndove!  Meg! why didn’t you tell me what a beast I was?’\n\n‘Father?’\n\n‘Sitting here,’ said Trotty, in penitent explanation, ‘cramming, and\nstuffing, and gorging myself; and you before me there, never so much as\nbreaking your precious fast, nor wanting to, when—’\n\n‘But I have broken it, father,’ interposed his daughter, laughing, ‘all\nto bits.  I have had my dinner.’\n\n‘Nonsense,’ said Trotty.  ‘Two dinners in one day!  It an’t possible!\nYou might as well tell me that two New Year’s Days will come together, or\nthat I have had a gold head all my life, and never changed it.’\n\n‘I have had my dinner, father, for all that,’ said Meg, coming nearer to\nhim.  ‘And if you’ll go on with yours, I’ll tell you how and where; and\nhow your dinner came to be brought; and—and something else besides.’\n\nToby still appeared incredulous; but she looked into his face with her\nclear eyes, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, motioned him to go on\nwhile the meat was hot.  So Trotty took up his knife and fork again, and\nwent to work.  But much more slowly than before, and shaking his head, as\nif he were not at all pleased with himself.\n\n‘I had my dinner, father,’ said Meg, after a little hesitation,\n‘with—with Richard.  His dinner-time was early; and as he brought his\ndinner with him when he came to see me, we—we had it together, father.’\n\nTrotty took a little beer, and smacked his lips.  Then he said,\n‘Oh!’—because she waited.\n\n‘And Richard says, father—’ Meg resumed.  Then stopped.\n\n‘What does Richard say, Meg?’ asked Toby.\n\n‘Richard says, father—’  Another stoppage.\n\n‘Richard’s a long time saying it,’ said Toby.\n\n‘He says then, father,’ Meg continued, lifting up her eyes at last, and\nspeaking in a tremble, but quite plainly; ‘another year is nearly gone,\nand where is the use of waiting on from year to year, when it is so\nunlikely we shall ever be better off than we are now?  He says we are\npoor now, father, and we shall be poor then, but we are young now, and\nyears will make us old before we know it.  He says that if we wait:\npeople in our condition: until we see our way quite clearly, the way will\nbe a narrow one indeed—the common way—the Grave, father.’\n\nA bolder man than Trotty Veck must needs have drawn upon his boldness\nlargely, to deny it.  Trotty held his peace.\n\n‘And how hard, father, to grow old, and die, and think we might have\ncheered and helped each other!  How hard in all our lives to love each\nother; and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing, growing\nold and grey.  Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him (which I\nnever could), oh father dear, how hard to have a heart so full as mine is\nnow, and live to have it slowly drained out every drop, without the\nrecollection of one happy moment of a woman’s life, to stay behind and\ncomfort me, and make me better!’\n\nTrotty sat quite still.  Meg dried her eyes, and said more gaily: that is\nto say, with here a laugh, and there a sob, and here a laugh and sob\ntogether:\n\n‘So Richard says, father; as his work was yesterday made certain for some\ntime to come, and as I love him, and have loved him full three years—ah!\nlonger than that, if he knew it!—will I marry him on New Year’s Day; the\nbest and happiest day, he says, in the whole year, and one that is almost\nsure to bring good fortune with it.  It’s a short notice, father—isn’t\nit?—but I haven’t my fortune to be settled, or my wedding dresses to be\nmade, like the great ladies, father, have I?  And he said so much, and\nsaid it in his way; so strong and earnest, and all the time so kind and\ngentle; that I said I’d come and talk to you, father.  And as they paid\nthe money for that work of mine this morning (unexpectedly, I am sure!)\nand as you have fared very poorly for a whole week, and as I couldn’t\nhelp wishing there should be something to make this day a sort of holiday\nto you as well as a dear and happy day to me, father, I made a little\ntreat and brought it to surprise you.’\n\n‘And see how he leaves it cooling on the step!’ said another voice.\n\nIt was the voice of this same Richard, who had come upon them unobserved,\nand stood before the father and daughter; looking down upon them with a\nface as glowing as the iron on which his stout sledge-hammer daily rung.\nA handsome, well-made, powerful youngster he was; with eyes that sparkled\nlike the red-hot droppings from a furnace fire; black hair that curled\nabout his swarthy temples rarely; and a smile—a smile that bore out Meg’s\neulogium on his style of conversation.\n\n‘See how he leaves it cooling on the step!’ said Richard.  ‘Meg don’t\nknow what he likes.  Not she!’\n\nTrotty, all action and enthusiasm, immediately reached up his hand to\nRichard, and was going to address him in great hurry, when the house-door\nopened without any warning, and a footman very nearly put his foot into\nthe tripe.\n\n‘Out of the vays here, will you!  You must always go and be a-settin on\nour steps, must you!  You can’t go and give a turn to none of the\nneighbours never, can’t you!  _Will_ you clear the road, or won’t you?’\n\nStrictly speaking, the last question was irrelevant, as they had already\ndone it.\n\n‘What’s the matter, what’s the matter!’ said the gentleman for whom the\ndoor was opened; coming out of the house at that kind of light-heavy\npace—that peculiar compromise between a walk and a jog-trot—with which a\ngentleman upon the smooth down-hill of life, wearing creaking boots, a\nwatch-chain, and clean linen, _may_ come out of his house: not only\nwithout any abatement of his dignity, but with an expression of having\nimportant and wealthy engagements elsewhere.  ‘What’s the matter!  What’s\nthe matter!’\n\n‘You’re always a-being begged, and prayed, upon your bended knees you\nare,’ said the footman with great emphasis to Trotty Veck, ‘to let our\ndoor-steps be.  Why don’t you let ’em be?  CAN’T you let ’em be?’\n\n‘There!  That’ll do, that’ll do!’ said the gentleman.  ‘Halloa there!\nPorter!’ beckoning with his head to Trotty Veck.  ‘Come here.  What’s\nthat?  Your dinner?’\n\n‘Yes, sir,’ said Trotty, leaving it behind him in a corner.\n\n‘Don’t leave it there,’ exclaimed the gentleman.  ‘Bring it here, bring\nit here.  So!  This is your dinner, is it?’\n\n‘Yes, sir,’ repeated Trotty, looking with a fixed eye and a watery mouth,\nat the piece of tripe he had reserved for a last delicious tit-bit; which\nthe gentleman was now turning over and over on the end of the fork.\n\nTwo other gentlemen had come out with him.  One was a low-spirited\ngentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who\nkept his hands continually in the pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt\ntrousers, very large and dog’s-eared from that custom; and was not\nparticularly well brushed or washed.  The other, a full-sized, sleek,\nwell-conditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a\nwhite cravat.  This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue\nproportion of the blood in his body were squeezed up into his head; which\nperhaps accounted for his having also the appearance of being rather cold\nabout the heart.\n\nHe who had Toby’s meat upon the fork, called to the first one by the name\nof Filer; and they both drew near together.  Mr. Filer being exceedingly\nshort-sighted, was obliged to go so close to the remnant of Toby’s dinner\nbefore he could make out what it was, that Toby’s heart leaped up into\nhis mouth.  But Mr. Filer didn’t eat it.\n\n‘This is a description of animal food, Alderman,’ said Filer, making\nlittle punches in it with a pencil-case, ‘commonly known to the labouring\npopulation of this country, by the name of tripe.’\n\nThe Alderman laughed, and winked; for he was a merry fellow, Alderman\nCute.  Oh, and a sly fellow too!  A knowing fellow.  Up to everything.\nNot to be imposed upon.  Deep in the people’s hearts!  He knew them, Cute\ndid.  I believe you!\n\n‘But who eats tripe?’ said Mr. Filer, looking round.  ‘Tripe is without\nan exception the least economical, and the most wasteful article of\nconsumption that the markets of this country can by possibility produce.\nThe loss upon a pound of tripe has been found to be, in the boiling,\nseven-eights of a fifth more than the loss upon a pound of any other\nanimal substance whatever.  Tripe is more expensive, properly understood,\nthan the hothouse pine-apple.  Taking into account the number of animals\nslaughtered yearly within the bills of mortality alone; and forming a low\nestimate of the quantity of tripe which the carcases of those animals,\nreasonably well butchered, would yield; I find that the waste on that\namount of tripe, if boiled, would victual a garrison of five hundred men\nfor five months of thirty-one days each, and a February over.  The Waste,\nthe Waste!’\n\nTrotty stood aghast, and his legs shook under him.  He seemed to have\nstarved a garrison of five hundred men with his own hand.\n\n‘Who eats tripe?’ said Mr. Filer, warmly.  ‘Who eats tripe?’\n\nTrotty made a miserable bow.\n\n‘You do, do you?’ said Mr. Filer.  ‘Then I’ll tell you something.  You\nsnatch your tripe, my friend, out of the mouths of widows and orphans.’\n\n‘I hope not, sir,’ said Trotty, faintly.  ‘I’d sooner die of want!’\n\n‘Divide the amount of tripe before-mentioned, Alderman,’ said Mr. Filer,\n‘by the estimated number of existing widows and orphans, and the result\nwill be one pennyweight of tripe to each.  Not a grain is left for that\nman.  Consequently, he’s a robber.’\n\nTrotty was so shocked, that it gave him no concern to see the Alderman\nfinish the tripe himself.  It was a relief to get rid of it, anyhow.\n\n‘And what do you say?’ asked the Alderman, jocosely, of the red-faced\ngentleman in the blue coat.  ‘You have heard friend Filer.  What do _you\nsay_?’\n\n‘What’s it possible to say?’ returned the gentleman.  ‘What _is_ to be\nsaid?  Who can take any interest in a fellow like this,’ meaning Trotty;\n‘in such degenerate times as these?  Look at him.  What an object!  The\ngood old times, the grand old times, the great old times!  _Those_ were\nthe times for a bold peasantry, and all that sort of thing.  Those were\nthe times for every sort of thing, in fact.  There’s nothing now-a-days.\nAh!’ sighed the red-faced gentleman.  ‘The good old times, the good old\ntimes!’\n\nThe gentleman didn’t specify what particular times he alluded to; nor did\nhe say whether he objected to the present times, from a disinterested\nconsciousness that they had done nothing very remarkable in producing\nhimself.\n\n‘The good old times, the good old times,’ repeated the gentleman.  ‘What\ntimes they were!  They were the only times.  It’s of no use talking about\nany other times, or discussing what the people are in _these_ times.  You\ndon’t call these, times, do you?  I don’t.  Look into Strutt’s Costumes,\nand see what a Porter used to be, in any of the good old English reigns.’\n\n‘He hadn’t, in his very best circumstances, a shirt to his back, or a\nstocking to his foot; and there was scarcely a vegetable in all England\nfor him to put into his mouth,’ said Mr. Filer.  ‘I can prove it, by\ntables.’\n\nBut still the red-faced gentleman extolled the good old times, the grand\nold times, the great old times.  No matter what anybody else said, he\nstill went turning round and round in one set form of words concerning\nthem; as a poor squirrel turns and turns in its revolving cage; touching\nthe mechanism, and trick of which, it has probably quite as distinct\nperceptions, as ever this red-faced gentleman had of his deceased\nMillennium.\n\nIt is possible that poor Trotty’s faith in these very vague Old Times was\nnot entirely destroyed, for he felt vague enough at that moment.  One\nthing, however, was plain to him, in the midst of his distress; to wit,\nthat however these gentlemen might differ in details, his misgivings of\nthat morning, and of many other mornings, were well founded.  ‘No, no.\nWe can’t go right or do right,’ thought Trotty in despair.  ‘There is no\ngood in us.  We are born bad!’\n\nBut Trotty had a father’s heart within him; which had somehow got into\nhis breast in spite of this decree; and he could not bear that Meg, in\nthe blush of her brief joy, should have her fortune read by these wise\ngentlemen.  ‘God help her,’ thought poor Trotty.  ‘She will know it soon\nenough.’\n\nHe anxiously signed, therefore, to the young smith, to take her away.\nBut he was so busy, talking to her softly at a little distance, that he\nonly became conscious of this desire, simultaneously with Alderman Cute.\nNow, the Alderman had not yet had his say, but _he_ was a philosopher,\ntoo—practical, though!  Oh, very practical—and, as he had no idea of\nlosing any portion of his audience, he cried ‘Stop!’\n\n‘Now, you know,’ said the Alderman, addressing his two friends, with a\nself-complacent smile upon his face which was habitual to him, ‘I am a\nplain man, and a practical man; and I go to work in a plain practical\nway.  That’s my way.  There is not the least mystery or difficulty in\ndealing with this sort of people if you only understand ’em, and can talk\nto ’em in their own manner.  Now, you Porter!  Don’t you ever tell me, or\nanybody else, my friend, that you haven’t always enough to eat, and of\nthe best; because I know better.  I have tasted your tripe, you know, and\nyou can’t “chaff” me.  You understand what “chaff” means, eh?  That’s the\nright word, isn’t it?  Ha, ha, ha! Lord bless you,’ said the Alderman,\nturning to his friends again, ‘it’s the easiest thing on earth to deal\nwith this sort of people, if you understand ’em.’\n\nFamous man for the common people, Alderman Cute!  Never out of temper\nwith them!  Easy, affable, joking, knowing gentleman!\n\n‘You see, my friend,’ pursued the Alderman, ‘there’s a great deal of\nnonsense talked about Want—“hard up,” you know; that’s the phrase, isn’t\nit? ha! ha! ha!—and I intend to Put it Down.  There’s a certain amount of\ncant in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put it Down.  That’s all!\nLord bless you,’ said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, ‘you\nmay Put Down anything among this sort of people, if you only know the way\nto set about it.’\n\nTrotty took Meg’s hand and drew it through his arm.  He didn’t seem to\nknow what he was doing though.\n\n‘Your daughter, eh?’ said the Alderman, chucking her familiarly under the\nchin.\n\nAlways affable with the working classes, Alderman Cute!  Knew what\npleased them!  Not a bit of pride!\n\n‘Where’s her mother?’ asked that worthy gentleman.\n\n‘Dead,’ said Toby.  ‘Her mother got up linen; and was called to Heaven\nwhen She was born.’\n\n‘Not to get up linen _there_, I suppose,’ remarked the Alderman\npleasantly.\n\nToby might or might not have been able to separate his wife in Heaven\nfrom her old pursuits.  But query: If Mrs. Alderman Cute had gone to\nHeaven, would Mr. Alderman Cute have pictured her as holding any state or\nstation there?\n\n‘And you’re making love to her, are you?’ said Cute to the young smith.\n\n‘Yes,’ returned Richard quickly, for he was nettled by the question.\n‘And we are going to be married on New Year’s Day.’\n\n‘What do you mean!’ cried Filer sharply.  ‘Married!’\n\n‘Why, yes, we’re thinking of it, Master,’ said Richard.  ‘We’re rather in\na hurry, you see, in case it should be Put Down first.’\n\n‘Ah!’ cried Filer, with a groan.  ‘Put _that_ down indeed, Alderman, and\nyou’ll do something.  Married!  Married!!  The ignorance of the first\nprinciples of political economy on the part of these people; their\nimprovidence; their wickedness; is, by Heavens! enough to—Now look at\nthat couple, will you!’\n\nWell?  They were worth looking at.  And marriage seemed as reasonable and\nfair a deed as they need have in contemplation.\n\n‘A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,’ said Mr. Filer, ‘and may\nlabour all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap\nup facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high\nand dry; and he can no more hope to persuade ’em that they have no right\nor business to be married, than he can hope to persuade ’em that they\nhave no earthly right or business to be born.  And _that_ we know they\nhaven’t.  We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!’\n\nAlderman Cute was mightily diverted, and laid his right forefinger on the\nside of his nose, as much as to say to both his friends, ‘Observe me,\nwill you!  Keep your eye on the practical man!’—and called Meg to him.\n\n‘Come here, my girl!’ said Alderman Cute.\n\nThe young blood of her lover had been mounting, wrathfully, within the\nlast few minutes; and he was indisposed to let her come.  But, setting a\nconstraint upon himself, he came forward with a stride as Meg approached,\nand stood beside her.  Trotty kept her hand within his arm still, but\nlooked from face to face as wildly as a sleeper in a dream.\n\n‘Now, I’m going to give you a word or two of good advice, my girl,’ said\nthe Alderman, in his nice easy way.  ‘It’s my place to give advice, you\nknow, because I’m a Justice.  You know I’m a Justice, don’t you?’\n\nMeg timidly said, ‘Yes.’  But everybody knew Alderman Cute was a Justice!\nOh dear, so active a Justice always!  Who such a mote of brightness in\nthe public eye, as Cute!\n\n‘You are going to be married, you say,’ pursued the Alderman.  ‘Very\nunbecoming and indelicate in one of your sex!  But never mind that.\nAfter you are married, you’ll quarrel with your husband and come to be a\ndistressed wife.  You may think not; but you will, because I tell you so.\nNow, I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to Put\ndistressed wives Down.  So, don’t be brought before me.  You’ll have\nchildren—boys.  Those boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in\nthe streets, without shoes and stockings.  Mind, my young friend!  I’ll\nconvict ’em summarily, every one, for I am determined to Put boys without\nshoes and stockings, Down.  Perhaps your husband will die young (most\nlikely) and leave you with a baby.  Then you’ll be turned out of doors,\nand wander up and down the streets.  Now, don’t wander near me, my dear,\nfor I am resolved, to Put all wandering mothers Down.  All young mothers,\nof all sorts and kinds, it’s my determination to Put Down.  Don’t think\nto plead illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an excuse with me;\nfor all sick persons and young children (I hope you know the\nchurch-service, but I’m afraid not) I am determined to Put Down.  And if\nyou attempt, desperately, and ungratefully, and impiously, and\nfraudulently attempt, to drown yourself, or hang yourself, I’ll have no\npity for you, for I have made up my mind to Put all suicide Down!  If\nthere is one thing,’ said the Alderman, with his self-satisfied smile,\n‘on which I can be said to have made up my mind more than on another, it\nis to Put suicide Down.  So don’t try it on.  That’s the phrase, isn’t\nit?  Ha, ha! now we understand each other.’\n\nToby knew not whether to be agonised or glad, to see that Meg had turned\na deadly white, and dropped her lover’s hand.\n\n‘And as for you, you dull dog,’ said the Alderman, turning with even\nincreased cheerfulness and urbanity to the young smith, ‘what are you\nthinking of being married for?  What do you want to be married for, you\nsilly fellow?  If I was a fine, young, strapping chap like you, I should\nbe ashamed of being milksop enough to pin myself to a woman’s\napron-strings!  Why, she’ll be an old woman before you’re a middle-aged\nman!  And a pretty figure you’ll cut then, with a draggle-tailed wife and\na crowd of squalling children crying after you wherever you go!’\n\nO, he knew how to banter the common people, Alderman Cute!\n\n‘There!  Go along with you,’ said the Alderman, ‘and repent.  Don’t make\nsuch a fool of yourself as to get married on New Year’s Day.  You’ll\nthink very differently of it, long before next New Year’s Day: a trim\nyoung fellow like you, with all the girls looking after you.  There!  Go\nalong with you!’\n\nThey went along.  Not arm in arm, or hand in hand, or interchanging\nbright glances; but, she in tears; he, gloomy and down-looking.  Were\nthese the hearts that had so lately made old Toby’s leap up from its\nfaintness?  No, no.  The Alderman (a blessing on his head!) had Put\n_them_ Down.\n\n‘As you happen to be here,’ said the Alderman to Toby, ‘you shall carry a\nletter for me.  Can you be quick?  You’re an old man.’\n\nToby, who had been looking after Meg, quite stupidly, made shift to\nmurmur out that he was very quick, and very strong.\n\n‘How old are you?’ inquired the Alderman.\n\n‘I’m over sixty, sir,’ said Toby.\n\n‘O!  This man’s a great deal past the average age, you know,’ cried Mr.\nFiler breaking in as if his patience would bear some trying, but this\nreally was carrying matters a little too far.\n\n‘I feel I’m intruding, sir,’ said Toby.  ‘I—I misdoubted it this morning.\nOh dear me!’\n\nThe Alderman cut him short by giving him the letter from his pocket.\nToby would have got a shilling too; but Mr. Filer clearly showing that in\nthat case he would rob a certain given number of persons of\nninepence-halfpenny a-piece, he only got sixpence; and thought himself\nvery well off to get that.\n\nThen the Alderman gave an arm to each of his friends, and walked off in\nhigh feather; but, he immediately came hurrying back alone, as if he had\nforgotten something.\n\n‘Porter!’ said the Alderman.\n\n‘Sir!’ said Toby.\n\n‘Take care of that daughter of yours.  She’s much too handsome.’\n\n‘Even her good looks are stolen from somebody or other, I suppose,’\nthought Toby, looking at the sixpence in his hand, and thinking of the\ntripe.  ‘She’s been and robbed five hundred ladies of a bloom a-piece, I\nshouldn’t wonder.  It’s very dreadful!’\n\n‘She’s much too handsome, my man,’ repeated the Alderman.  ‘The chances\nare, that she’ll come to no good, I clearly see.  Observe what I say.\nTake care of her!’  With which, he hurried off again.\n\n‘Wrong every way.  Wrong every way!’ said Trotty, clasping his hands.\n‘Born bad.  No business here!’\n\nThe Chimes came clashing in upon him as he said the words.  Full, loud,\nand sounding—but with no encouragement.  No, not a drop.\n\n‘The tune’s changed,’ cried the old man, as he listened.  ‘There’s not a\nword of all that fancy in it.  Why should there be?  I have no business\nwith the New Year nor with the old one neither.  Let me die!’\n\nStill the Bells, pealing forth their changes, made the very air spin.\nPut ’em down, Put ’em down!  Good old Times, Good old Times!  Facts and\nFigures, Facts and Figures!  Put ’em down, Put ’em down!  If they said\nanything they said this, until the brain of Toby reeled.\n\nHe pressed his bewildered head between his hands, as if to keep it from\nsplitting asunder.  A well-timed action, as it happened; for finding the\nletter in one of them, and being by that means reminded of his charge, he\nfell, mechanically, into his usual trot, and trotted off.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II—The Second Quarter.\n\n\nThe letter Toby had received from Alderman Cute, was addressed to a great\nman in the great district of the town.  The greatest district of the\ntown.  It must have been the greatest district of the town, because it\nwas commonly called ‘the world’ by its inhabitants.  The letter\npositively seemed heavier in Toby’s hand, than another letter.  Not\nbecause the Alderman had sealed it with a very large coat of arms and no\nend of wax, but because of the weighty name on the superscription, and\nthe ponderous amount of gold and silver with which it was associated.\n\n‘How different from us!’ thought Toby, in all simplicity and earnestness,\nas he looked at the direction.  ‘Divide the lively turtles in the bills\nof mortality, by the number of gentlefolks able to buy ’em; and whose\nshare does he take but his own!  As to snatching tripe from anybody’s\nmouth—he’d scorn it!’\n\nWith the involuntary homage due to such an exalted character, Toby\ninterposed a corner of his apron between the letter and his fingers.\n\n‘His children,’ said Trotty, and a mist rose before his eyes; ‘his\ndaughters—Gentlemen may win their hearts and marry them; they may be\nhappy wives and mothers; they may be handsome like my darling M-e-’.\n\nHe couldn’t finish the name.  The final letter swelled in his throat, to\nthe size of the whole alphabet.\n\n‘Never mind,’ thought Trotty.  ‘I know what I mean.  That’s more than\nenough for me.’  And with this consolatory rumination, trotted on.\n\nIt was a hard frost, that day.  The air was bracing, crisp, and clear.\nThe wintry sun, though powerless for warmth, looked brightly down upon\nthe ice it was too weak to melt, and set a radiant glory there.  At other\ntimes, Trotty might have learned a poor man’s lesson from the wintry sun;\nbut, he was past that, now.\n\nThe Year was Old, that day.  The patient Year had lived through the\nreproaches and misuses of its slanderers, and faithfully performed its\nwork.  Spring, summer, autumn, winter.  It had laboured through the\ndestined round, and now laid down its weary head to die.  Shut out from\nhope, high impulse, active happiness, itself, but active messenger of\nmany joys to others, it made appeal in its decline to have its toiling\ndays and patient hours remembered, and to die in peace.  Trotty might\nhave read a poor man’s allegory in the fading year; but he was past that,\nnow.\n\nAnd only he?  Or has the like appeal been ever made, by seventy years at\nonce upon an English labourer’s head, and made in vain!\n\nThe streets were full of motion, and the shops were decked out gaily.\nThe New Year, like an Infant Heir to the whole world, was waited for,\nwith welcomes, presents, and rejoicings.  There were books and toys for\nthe New Year, glittering trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the New\nYear, schemes of fortune for the New Year; new inventions to beguile it.\nIts life was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket-books; the coming of\nits moons, and stars, and tides, was known beforehand to the moment; all\nthe workings of its seasons in their days and nights, were calculated\nwith as much precision as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and women.\n\nThe New Year, the New Year.  Everywhere the New Year!  The Old Year was\nalready looked upon as dead; and its effects were selling cheap, like\nsome drowned mariner’s aboardship.  Its patterns were Last Year’s, and\ngoing at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone.  Its treasures were\nmere dirt, beside the riches of its unborn successor!\n\nTrotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the New Year or the Old.\n\n‘Put ’em down, Put ’em down!  Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures!  Good\nold Times, Good old Times!  Put ’em down, Put ’em down!’—his trot went to\nthat measure, and would fit itself to nothing else.\n\nBut, even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in due time, to\nthe end of his journey.  To the mansion of Sir Joseph Bowley, Member of\nParliament.\n\nThe door was opened by a Porter.  Such a Porter!  Not of Toby’s order.\nQuite another thing.  His place was the ticket though; not Toby’s.\n\nThis Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having\nbreathed himself by coming incautiously out of his chair, without first\ntaking time to think about it and compose his mind.  When he had found\nhis voice—which it took him a long time to do, for it was a long way off,\nand hidden under a load of meat—he said in a fat whisper,\n\n‘Who’s it from?’\n\nToby told him.\n\n‘You’re to take it in, yourself,’ said the Porter, pointing to a room at\nthe end of a long passage, opening from the hall.  ‘Everything goes\nstraight in, on this day of the year.  You’re not a bit too soon; for the\ncarriage is at the door now, and they have only come to town for a couple\nof hours, a’ purpose.’\n\nToby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care, and\ntook the way pointed out to him; observing as he went that it was an\nawfully grand house, but hushed and covered up, as if the family were in\nthe country.  Knocking at the room-door, he was told to enter from\nwithin; and doing so found himself in a spacious library, where, at a\ntable strewn with files and papers, were a stately lady in a bonnet; and\na not very stately gentleman in black who wrote from her dictation; while\nanother, and an older, and a much statelier gentleman, whose hat and cane\nwere on the table, walked up and down, with one hand in his breast, and\nlooked complacently from time to time at his own picture—a full length; a\nvery full length—hanging over the fireplace.\n\n‘What is this?’ said the last-named gentleman.  ‘Mr. Fish, will you have\nthe goodness to attend?’\n\nMr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby, handed it, with\ngreat respect.\n\n‘From Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph.’\n\n‘Is this all?  Have you nothing else, Porter?’ inquired Sir Joseph.\n\nToby replied in the negative.\n\n‘You have no bill or demand upon me—my name is Bowley, Sir Joseph\nBowley—of any kind from anybody, have you?’ said Sir Joseph.  ‘If you\nhave, present it.  There is a cheque-book by the side of Mr. Fish.  I\nallow nothing to be carried into the New Year.  Every description of\naccount is settled in this house at the close of the old one.  So that if\ndeath was to—to—’\n\n‘To cut,’ suggested Mr. Fish.\n\n‘To sever, sir,’ returned Sir Joseph, with great asperity, ‘the cord of\nexistence—my affairs would be found, I hope, in a state of preparation.’\n\n‘My dear Sir Joseph!’ said the lady, who was greatly younger than the\ngentleman.  ‘How shocking!’\n\n‘My lady Bowley,’ returned Sir Joseph, floundering now and then, as in\nthe great depth of his observations, ‘at this season of the year we\nshould think of—of—ourselves.  We should look into our—our accounts.  We\nshould feel that every return of so eventful a period in human\ntransactions, involves a matter of deep moment between a man and his—and\nhis banker.’\n\nSir Joseph delivered these words as if he felt the full morality of what\nhe was saying; and desired that even Trotty should have an opportunity of\nbeing improved by such discourse.  Possibly he had this end before him in\nstill forbearing to break the seal of the letter, and in telling Trotty\nto wait where he was, a minute.\n\n‘You were desiring Mr. Fish to say, my lady—’ observed Sir Joseph.\n\n‘Mr. Fish has said that, I believe,’ returned his lady, glancing at the\nletter.  ‘But, upon my word, Sir Joseph, I don’t think I can let it go\nafter all.  It is so very dear.’\n\n‘What is dear?’ inquired Sir Joseph.\n\n‘That Charity, my love.  They only allow two votes for a subscription of\nfive pounds.  Really monstrous!’\n\n‘My lady Bowley,’ returned Sir Joseph, ‘you surprise me.  Is the luxury\nof feeling in proportion to the number of votes; or is it, to a rightly\nconstituted mind, in proportion to the number of applicants, and the\nwholesome state of mind to which their canvassing reduces them?  Is there\nno excitement of the purest kind in having two votes to dispose of among\nfifty people?’\n\n‘Not to me, I acknowledge,’ replied the lady.  ‘It bores one.  Besides,\none can’t oblige one’s acquaintance.  But you are the Poor Man’s Friend,\nyou know, Sir Joseph.  You think otherwise.’\n\n‘I _am_ the Poor Man’s Friend,’ observed Sir Joseph, glancing at the poor\nman present.  ‘As such I may be taunted.  As such I have been taunted.\nBut I ask no other title.’\n\n‘Bless him for a noble gentleman!’ thought Trotty.\n\n‘I don’t agree with Cute here, for instance,’ said Sir Joseph, holding\nout the letter.  ‘I don’t agree with the Filer party.  I don’t agree with\nany party.  My friend the Poor Man, has no business with anything of that\nsort, and nothing of that sort has any business with him.  My friend the\nPoor Man, in my district, is my business.  No man or body of men has any\nright to interfere between my friend and me.  That is the ground I take.\nI assume a—a paternal character towards my friend.  I say, “My good\nfellow, I will treat you paternally.”’\n\nToby listened with great gravity, and began to feel more comfortable.\n\n‘Your only business, my good fellow,’ pursued Sir Joseph, looking\nabstractedly at Toby; ‘your only business in life is with me.  You\nneedn’t trouble yourself to think about anything.  I will think for you;\nI know what is good for you; I am your perpetual parent.  Such is the\ndispensation of an all-wise Providence!  Now, the design of your creation\nis—not that you should swill, and guzzle, and associate your enjoyments,\nbrutally, with food; Toby thought remorsefully of the tripe; ‘but that\nyou should feel the Dignity of Labour.  Go forth erect into the cheerful\nmorning air, and—and stop there.  Live hard and temperately, be\nrespectful, exercise your self-denial, bring up your family on next to\nnothing, pay your rent as regularly as the clock strikes, be punctual in\nyour dealings (I set you a good example; you will find Mr. Fish, my\nconfidential secretary, with a cash-box before him at all times); and you\nmay trust to me to be your Friend and Father.’\n\n‘Nice children, indeed, Sir Joseph!’ said the lady, with a shudder.\n‘Rheumatisms, and fevers, and crooked legs, and asthmas, and all kinds of\nhorrors!’\n\n‘My lady,’ returned Sir Joseph, with solemnity, ‘not the less am I the\nPoor Man’s Friend and Father.  Not the less shall he receive\nencouragement at my hands.  Every quarter-day he will be put in\ncommunication with Mr. Fish.  Every New Year’s Day, myself and friends\nwill drink his health.  Once every year, myself and friends will address\nhim with the deepest feeling.  Once in his life, he may even perhaps\nreceive; in public, in the presence of the gentry; a Trifle from a\nFriend.  And when, upheld no more by these stimulants, and the Dignity of\nLabour, he sinks into his comfortable grave, then, my lady’—here Sir\nJoseph blew his nose—‘I will be a Friend and a Father—on the same\nterms—to his children.’\n\nToby was greatly moved.\n\n‘O! You have a thankful family, Sir Joseph!’ cried his wife.\n\n‘My lady,’ said Sir Joseph, quite majestically, ‘Ingratitude is known to\nbe the sin of that class.  I expect no other return.’\n\n‘Ah!  Born bad!’ thought Toby.  ‘Nothing melts us.’\n\n‘What man can do, _I_ do,’ pursued Sir Joseph.  ‘I do my duty as the Poor\nMan’s Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his mind, by\ninculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that class\nrequires.  That is, entire Dependence on myself.  They have no business\nwhatever with—with themselves.  If wicked and designing persons tell them\notherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of\ninsubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude; which is undoubtedly\nthe case; I am their Friend and Father still.  It is so Ordained.  It is\nin the nature of things.’\n\nWith that great sentiment, he opened the Alderman’s letter; and read it.\n\n‘Very polite and attentive, I am sure!’ exclaimed Sir Joseph.  ‘My lady,\nthe Alderman is so obliging as to remind me that he has had “the\ndistinguished honour”—he is very good—of meeting me at the house of our\nmutual friend Deedles, the banker; and he does me the favour to inquire\nwhether it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down.’\n\n‘_Most_ agreeable!’ replied my Lady Bowley.  ‘The worst man among them!\nHe has been committing a robbery, I hope?’\n\n‘Why no,’ said Sir Joseph’, referring to the letter.  ‘Not quite.  Very\nnear.  Not quite.  He came up to London, it seems, to look for employment\n(trying to better himself—that’s his story), and being found at night\nasleep in a shed, was taken into custody, and carried next morning before\nthe Alderman.  The Alderman observes (very properly) that he is\ndetermined to put this sort of thing down; and that if it will be\nagreeable to me to have Will Fern put down, he will be happy to begin\nwith him.’\n\n‘Let him be made an example of, by all means,’ returned the lady.  ‘Last\nwinter, when I introduced pinking and eyelet-holing among the men and\nboys in the village, as a nice evening employment, and had the lines,\n\n    O let us love our occupations,\n    Bless the squire and his relations,\n    Live upon our daily rations,\n    And always know our proper stations,\n\nset to music on the new system, for them to sing the while; this very\nFern—I see him now—touched that hat of his, and said, “I humbly ask your\npardon, my lady, but _an’t_ I something different from a great girl?”  I\nexpected it, of course; who can expect anything but insolence and\ningratitude from that class of people!  That is not to the purpose,\nhowever.  Sir Joseph!  Make an example of him!’\n\n‘Hem!’ coughed Sir Joseph.  ‘Mr. Fish, if you’ll have the goodness to\nattend—’\n\nMr. Fish immediately seized his pen, and wrote from Sir Joseph’s\ndictation.\n\n‘Private.  My dear Sir.  I am very much indebted to you for your courtesy\nin the matter of the man William Fern, of whom, I regret to add, I can\nsay nothing favourable.  I have uniformly considered myself in the light\nof his Friend and Father, but have been repaid (a common case, I grieve\nto say) with ingratitude, and constant opposition to my plans.  He is a\nturbulent and rebellious spirit.  His character will not bear\ninvestigation.  Nothing will persuade him to be happy when he might.\nUnder these circumstances, it appears to me, I own, that when he comes\nbefore you again (as you informed me he promised to do to-morrow, pending\nyour inquiries, and I think he may be so far relied upon), his committal\nfor some short term as a Vagabond, would be a service to society, and\nwould be a salutary example in a country where—for the sake of those who\nare, through good and evil report, the Friends and Fathers of the Poor,\nas well as with a view to that, generally speaking, misguided class\nthemselves—examples are greatly needed.  And I am,’ and so forth.\n\n‘It appears,’ remarked Sir Joseph when he had signed this letter, and Mr.\nFish was sealing it, ‘as if this were Ordained: really.  At the close of\nthe year, I wind up my account and strike my balance, even with William\nFern!’\n\nTrotty, who had long ago relapsed, and was very low-spirited, stepped\nforward with a rueful face to take the letter.\n\n‘With my compliments and thanks,’ said Sir Joseph.  ‘Stop!’\n\n‘Stop!’ echoed Mr. Fish.\n\n‘You have heard, perhaps,’ said Sir Joseph, oracularly, ‘certain remarks\ninto which I have been led respecting the solemn period of time at which\nwe have arrived, and the duty imposed upon us of settling our affairs,\nand being prepared.  You have observed that I don’t shelter myself behind\nmy superior standing in society, but that Mr. Fish—that gentleman—has a\ncheque-book at his elbow, and is in fact here, to enable me to turn over\na perfectly new leaf, and enter on the epoch before us with a clean\naccount.  Now, my friend, can you lay your hand upon your heart, and say,\nthat you also have made preparations for a New Year?’\n\n‘I am afraid, sir,’ stammered Trotty, looking meekly at him, ‘that I am\na—a—little behind-hand with the world.’\n\n‘Behind-hand with the world!’ repeated Sir Joseph Bowley, in a tone of\nterrible distinctness.\n\n‘I am afraid, sir,’ faltered Trotty, ‘that there’s a matter of ten or\ntwelve shillings owing to Mrs. Chickenstalker.’\n\n‘To Mrs. Chickenstalker!’ repeated Sir Joseph, in the same tone as\nbefore.\n\n‘A shop, sir,’ exclaimed Toby, ‘in the general line.  Also a—a little\nmoney on account of rent.  A very little, sir.  It oughtn’t to be owing,\nI know, but we have been hard put to it, indeed!’\n\nSir Joseph looked at his lady, and at Mr. Fish, and at Trotty, one after\nanother, twice all round.  He then made a despondent gesture with both\nhands at once, as if he gave the thing up altogether.\n\n‘How a man, even among this improvident and impracticable race; an old\nman; a man grown grey; can look a New Year in the face, with his affairs\nin this condition; how he can lie down on his bed at night, and get up\nagain in the morning, and—There!’ he said, turning his back on Trotty.\n‘Take the letter.  Take the letter!’\n\n‘I heartily wish it was otherwise, sir,’ said Trotty, anxious to excuse\nhimself.  ‘We have been tried very hard.’\n\nSir Joseph still repeating ‘Take the letter, take the letter!’ and Mr.\nFish not only saying the same thing, but giving additional force to the\nrequest by motioning the bearer to the door, he had nothing for it but to\nmake his bow and leave the house.  And in the street, poor Trotty pulled\nhis worn old hat down on his head, to hide the grief he felt at getting\nno hold on the New Year, anywhere.\n\nHe didn’t even lift his hat to look up at the Bell tower when he came to\nthe old church on his return.  He halted there a moment, from habit: and\nknew that it was growing dark, and that the steeple rose above him,\nindistinct and faint, in the murky air.  He knew, too, that the Chimes\nwould ring immediately; and that they sounded to his fancy, at such a\ntime, like voices in the clouds.  But he only made the more haste to\ndeliver the Alderman’s letter, and get out of the way before they began;\nfor he dreaded to hear them tagging ‘Friends and Fathers, Friends and\nFathers,’ to the burden they had rung out last.\n\nToby discharged himself of his commission, therefore, with all possible\nspeed, and set off trotting homeward.  But what with his pace, which was\nat best an awkward one in the street; and what with his hat, which didn’t\nimprove it; he trotted against somebody in less than no time, and was\nsent staggering out into the road.\n\n‘I beg your pardon, I’m sure!’ said Trotty, pulling up his hat in great\nconfusion, and between the hat and the torn lining, fixing his head into\na kind of bee-hive.  ‘I hope I haven’t hurt you.’\n\nAs to hurting anybody, Toby was not such an absolute Samson, but that he\nwas much more likely to be hurt himself: and indeed, he had flown out\ninto the road, like a shuttlecock.  He had such an opinion of his own\nstrength, however, that he was in real concern for the other party: and\nsaid again,\n\n‘I hope I haven’t hurt you?’\n\nThe man against whom he had run; a sun-browned, sinewy, country-looking\nman, with grizzled hair, and a rough chin; stared at him for a moment, as\nif he suspected him to be in jest.  But, satisfied of his good faith, he\nanswered:\n\n‘No, friend.  You have not hurt me.’\n\n‘Nor the child, I hope?’ said Trotty.\n\n‘Nor the child,’ returned the man.  ‘I thank you kindly.’\n\nAs he said so, he glanced at a little girl he carried in his arms,\nasleep: and shading her face with the long end of the poor handkerchief\nhe wore about his throat, went slowly on.\n\nThe tone in which he said ‘I thank you kindly,’ penetrated Trotty’s\nheart.  He was so jaded and foot-sore, and so soiled with travel, and\nlooked about him so forlorn and strange, that it was a comfort to him to\nbe able to thank any one: no matter for how little.  Toby stood gazing\nafter him as he plodded wearily away, with the child’s arm clinging round\nhis neck.\n\nAt the figure in the worn shoes—now the very shade and ghost of\nshoes—rough leather leggings, common frock, and broad slouched hat,\nTrotty stood gazing, blind to the whole street.  And at the child’s arm,\nclinging round its neck.\n\nBefore he merged into the darkness the traveller stopped; and looking\nround, and seeing Trotty standing there yet, seemed undecided whether to\nreturn or go on.  After doing first the one and then the other, he came\nback, and Trotty went half-way to meet him.\n\n‘You can tell me, perhaps,’ said the man with a faint smile, ‘and if you\ncan I am sure you will, and I’d rather ask you than another—where\nAlderman Cute lives.’\n\n‘Close at hand,’ replied Toby.  ‘I’ll show you his house with pleasure.’\n\n‘I was to have gone to him elsewhere to-morrow,’ said the man,\naccompanying Toby, ‘but I’m uneasy under suspicion, and want to clear\nmyself, and to be free to go and seek my bread—I don’t know where.  So,\nmaybe he’ll forgive my going to his house to-night.’\n\n‘It’s impossible,’ cried Toby with a start, ‘that your name’s Fern!’\n\n‘Eh!’ cried the other, turning on him in astonishment.\n\n‘Fern!  Will Fern!’ said Trotty.\n\n‘That’s my name,’ replied the other.\n\n‘Why then,’ said Trotty, seizing him by the arm, and looking cautiously\nround, ‘for Heaven’s sake don’t go to him!  Don’t go to him!  He’ll put\nyou down as sure as ever you were born.  Here! come up this alley, and\nI’ll tell you what I mean.  Don’t go to _him_.’\n\nHis new acquaintance looked as if he thought him mad; but he bore him\ncompany nevertheless.  When they were shrouded from observation, Trotty\ntold him what he knew, and what character he had received, and all about\nit.\n\nThe subject of his history listened to it with a calmness that surprised\nhim.  He did not contradict or interrupt it, once.  He nodded his head\nnow and then—more in corroboration of an old and worn-out story, it\nappeared, than in refutation of it; and once or twice threw back his hat,\nand passed his freckled hand over a brow, where every furrow he had\nploughed seemed to have set its image in little.  But he did no more.\n\n‘It’s true enough in the main,’ he said, ‘master, I could sift grain from\nhusk here and there, but let it be as ’tis.  What odds?  I have gone\nagainst his plans; to my misfortun’.  I can’t help it; I should do the\nlike to-morrow.  As to character, them gentlefolks will search and\nsearch, and pry and pry, and have it as free from spot or speck in us,\nafore they’ll help us to a dry good word!—Well! I hope they don’t lose\ngood opinion as easy as we do, or their lives is strict indeed, and\nhardly worth the keeping.  For myself, master, I never took with that\nhand’—holding it before him—‘what wasn’t my own; and never held it back\nfrom work, however hard, or poorly paid.  Whoever can deny it, let him\nchop it off!  But when work won’t maintain me like a human creetur; when\nmy living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of doors and in; when I see a\nwhole working life begin that way, go on that way, and end that way,\nwithout a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks “Keep away from\nme!  Let my cottage be.  My doors is dark enough without your darkening\nof ’em more.  Don’t look for me to come up into the Park to help the show\nwhen there’s a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking, or what not.  Act your\nPlays and Games without me, and be welcome to ’em, and enjoy ’em.  We’ve\nnowt to do with one another.  I’m best let alone!”’\n\nSeeing that the child in his arms had opened her eyes, and was looking\nabout her in wonder, he checked himself to say a word or two of foolish\nprattle in her ear, and stand her on the ground beside him.  Then slowly\nwinding one of her long tresses round and round his rough forefinger like\na ring, while she hung about his dusty leg, he said to Trotty:\n\n‘I’m not a cross-grained man by natu’, I believe; and easy satisfied, I’m\nsure.  I bear no ill-will against none of ’em.  I only want to live like\none of the Almighty’s creeturs.  I can’t—I don’t—and so there’s a pit dug\nbetween me, and them that can and do.  There’s others like me.  You might\ntell ’em off by hundreds and by thousands, sooner than by ones.’\n\nTrotty knew he spoke the Truth in this, and shook his head to signify as\nmuch.\n\n‘I’ve got a bad name this way,’ said Fern; ‘and I’m not likely, I’m\nafeared, to get a better.  ’Tan’t lawful to be out of sorts, and I AM out\nof sorts, though God knows I’d sooner bear a cheerful spirit if I could.\nWell!  I don’t know as this Alderman could hurt _me_ much by sending me\nto jail; but without a friend to speak a word for me, he might do it; and\nyou see—!’ pointing downward with his finger, at the child.\n\n‘She has a beautiful face,’ said Trotty.\n\n‘Why yes!’ replied the other in a low voice, as he gently turned it up\nwith both his hands towards his own, and looked upon it steadfastly.\n‘I’ve thought so, many times.  I’ve thought so, when my hearth was very\ncold, and cupboard very bare.  I thought so t’other night, when we were\ntaken like two thieves.  But they—they shouldn’t try the little face too\noften, should they, Lilian?  That’s hardly fair upon a man!’\n\nHe sunk his voice so low, and gazed upon her with an air so stern and\nstrange, that Toby, to divert the current of his thoughts, inquired if\nhis wife were living.\n\n‘I never had one,’ he returned, shaking his head.  ‘She’s my brother’s\nchild: a orphan.  Nine year old, though you’d hardly think it; but she’s\ntired and worn out now.  They’d have taken care on her, the\nUnion—eight-and-twenty mile away from where we live—between four walls\n(as they took care of my old father when he couldn’t work no more, though\nhe didn’t trouble ’em long); but I took her instead, and she’s lived with\nme ever since.  Her mother had a friend once, in London here.  We are\ntrying to find her, and to find work too; but it’s a large place.  Never\nmind.  More room for us to walk about in, Lilly!’\n\nMeeting the child’s eyes with a smile which melted Toby more than tears,\nhe shook him by the hand.\n\n‘I don’t so much as know your name,’ he said, ‘but I’ve opened my heart\nfree to you, for I’m thankful to you; with good reason.  I’ll take your\nadvice, and keep clear of this—’\n\n‘Justice,’ suggested Toby.\n\n‘Ah!’ he said.  ‘If that’s the name they give him.  This Justice.  And\nto-morrow will try whether there’s better fortun’ to be met with,\nsomewheres near London.  Good night.  A Happy New Year!’\n\n‘Stay!’ cried Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed his grip.\n‘Stay!  The New Year never can be happy to me, if we part like this.  The\nNew Year never can be happy to me, if I see the child and you go\nwandering away, you don’t know where, without a shelter for your heads.\nCome home with me!  I’m a poor man, living in a poor place; but I can\ngive you lodging for one night and never miss it.  Come home with me!\nHere!  I’ll take her!’ cried Trotty, lifting up the child.  ‘A pretty\none!  I’d carry twenty times her weight, and never know I’d got it.  Tell\nme if I go too quick for you.  I’m very fast.  I always was!’  Trotty\nsaid this, taking about six of his trotting paces to one stride of his\nfatigued companion; and with his thin legs quivering again, beneath the\nload he bore.\n\n‘Why, she’s as light,’ said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as in\nhis gait; for he couldn’t bear to be thanked, and dreaded a moment’s\npause; ‘as light as a feather.  Lighter than a Peacock’s feather—a great\ndeal lighter.  Here we are and here we go!  Round this first turning to\nthe right, Uncle Will, and past the pump, and sharp off up the passage to\nthe left, right opposite the public-house.  Here we are and here we go!\nCross over, Uncle Will, and mind the kidney pieman at the corner!  Here\nwe are and here we go!  Down the Mews here, Uncle Will, and stop at the\nblack door, with “T. Veck, Ticket Porter,” wrote upon a board; and here\nwe are and here we go, and here we are indeed, my precious.  Meg,\nsurprising you!’\n\nWith which words Trotty, in a breathless state, set the child down before\nhis daughter in the middle of the floor.  The little visitor looked once\nat Meg; and doubting nothing in that face, but trusting everything she\nsaw there; ran into her arms.\n\n‘Here we are and here we go!’ cried Trotty, running round the room, and\nchoking audibly.  ‘Here, Uncle Will, here’s a fire you know!  Why don’t\nyou come to the fire?  Oh here we are and here we go!  Meg, my precious\ndarling, where’s the kettle?  Here it is and here it goes, and it’ll bile\nin no time!’\n\nTrotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other in the course\nof his wild career and now put it on the fire: while Meg, seating the\nchild in a warm corner, knelt down on the ground before her, and pulled\noff her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a cloth.  Ay, and she laughed at\nTrotty too—so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that Trotty could have blessed\nher where she kneeled; for he had seen that, when they entered, she was\nsitting by the fire in tears.\n\n‘Why, father!’ said Meg.  ‘You’re crazy to-night, I think.  I don’t know\nwhat the Bells would say to that.  Poor little feet.  How cold they are!’\n\n‘Oh, they’re warmer now!’ exclaimed the child.  ‘They’re quite warm now!’\n\n‘No, no, no,’ said Meg.  ‘We haven’t rubbed ’em half enough.  We’re so\nbusy.  So busy!  And when they’re done, we’ll brush out the damp hair;\nand when that’s done, we’ll bring some colour to the poor pale face with\nfresh water; and when that’s done, we’ll be so gay, and brisk, and\nhappy—!’\n\nThe child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck; caressed\nher fair cheek with its hand; and said, ‘Oh Meg! oh dear Meg!’\n\nToby’s blessing could have done no more.  Who could do more!\n\n‘Why, father!’ cried Meg, after a pause.\n\n‘Here I am and here I go, my dear!’ said Trotty.\n\n‘Good Gracious me!’ cried Meg.  ‘He’s crazy!  He’s put the dear child’s\nbonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!’\n\n‘I didn’t go for to do it, my love,’ said Trotty, hastily repairing this\nmistake.  ‘Meg, my dear?’\n\nMeg looked towards him and saw that he had elaborately stationed himself\nbehind the chair of their male visitor, where with many mysterious\ngestures he was holding up the sixpence he had earned.\n\n‘I see, my dear,’ said Trotty, ‘as I was coming in, half an ounce of tea\nlying somewhere on the stairs; and I’m pretty sure there was a bit of\nbacon too.  As I don’t remember where it was exactly, I’ll go myself and\ntry to find ’em.’\n\nWith this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to purchase the viands he\nhad spoken of, for ready money, at Mrs. Chickenstalker’s; and presently\ncame back, pretending he had not been able to find them, at first, in the\ndark.\n\n‘But here they are at last,’ said Trotty, setting out the tea-things,\n‘all correct!  I was pretty sure it was tea, and a rasher.  So it is.\nMeg, my pet, if you’ll just make the tea, while your unworthy father\ntoasts the bacon, we shall be ready, immediate.  It’s a curious\ncircumstance,’ said Trotty, proceeding in his cookery, with the\nassistance of the toasting-fork, ‘curious, but well known to my friends,\nthat I never care, myself, for rashers, nor for tea.  I like to see other\npeople enjoy ’em,’ said Trotty, speaking very loud, to impress the fact\nupon his guest, ‘but to me, as food, they’re disagreeable.’\n\nYet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon—ah!—as if he liked it;\nand when he poured the boiling water in the tea-pot, looked lovingly down\ninto the depths of that snug cauldron, and suffered the fragrant steam to\ncurl about his nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud.\nHowever, for all this, he neither ate nor drank, except at the very\nbeginning, a mere morsel for form’s sake, which he appeared to eat with\ninfinite relish, but declared was perfectly uninteresting to him.\n\nNo.  Trotty’s occupation was, to see Will Fern and Lilian eat and drink;\nand so was Meg’s.  And never did spectators at a city dinner or court\nbanquet find such high delight in seeing others feast: although it were a\nmonarch or a pope: as those two did, in looking on that night.  Meg\nsmiled at Trotty, Trotty laughed at Meg.  Meg shook her head, and made\nbelief to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in\ndumb-show, unintelligible narratives of how and when and where he had\nfound their visitors, to Meg; and they were happy.  Very happy.\n\n‘Although,’ thought Trotty, sorrowfully, as he watched Meg’s face; ‘that\nmatch is broken off, I see!’\n\n‘Now, I’ll tell you what,’ said Trotty after tea.  ‘The little one, she\nsleeps with Meg, I know.’\n\n‘With good Meg!’ cried the child, caressing her.  ‘With Meg.’\n\n‘That’s right,’ said Trotty.  ‘And I shouldn’t wonder if she kiss Meg’s\nfather, won’t she?  _I’m_ Meg’s father.’\n\nMightily delighted Trotty was, when the child went timidly towards him,\nand having kissed him, fell back upon Meg again.\n\n‘She’s as sensible as Solomon,’ said Trotty.  ‘Here we come and here\nwe—no, we don’t—I don’t mean that—I—what was I saying, Meg, my precious?’\n\nMeg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with his\nface turned from her, fondled the child’s head, half hidden in her lap.\n\n‘To be sure,’ said Toby.  ‘To be sure!  I don’t know what I’m rambling on\nabout, to-night.  My wits are wool-gathering, I think.  Will Fern, you\ncome along with me.  You’re tired to death, and broken down for want of\nrest.  You come along with me.’  The man still played with the child’s\ncurls, still leaned upon Meg’s chair, still turned away his face.  He\ndidn’t speak, but in his rough coarse fingers, clenching and expanding in\nthe fair hair of the child, there was an eloquence that said enough.\n\n‘Yes, yes,’ said Trotty, answering unconsciously what he saw expressed in\nhis daughter’s face.  ‘Take her with you, Meg.  Get her to bed.  There!\nNow, Will, I’ll show you where you lie.  It’s not much of a place: only a\nloft; but, having a loft, I always say, is one of the great conveniences\nof living in a mews; and till this coach-house and stable gets a better\nlet, we live here cheap.  There’s plenty of sweet hay up there, belonging\nto a neighbour; and it’s as clean as hands, and Meg, can make it.  Cheer\nup!  Don’t give way.  A new heart for a New Year, always!’\n\nThe hand released from the child’s hair, had fallen, trembling, into\nTrotty’s hand.  So Trotty, talking without intermission, led him out as\ntenderly and easily as if he had been a child himself.  Returning before\nMeg, he listened for an instant at the door of her little chamber; an\nadjoining room.  The child was murmuring a simple Prayer before lying\ndown to sleep; and when she had remembered Meg’s name, ‘Dearly,\nDearly’—so her words ran—Trotty heard her stop and ask for his.\n\nIt was some short time before the foolish little old fellow could compose\nhimself to mend the fire, and draw his chair to the warm hearth.  But,\nwhen he had done so, and had trimmed the light, he took his newspaper\nfrom his pocket, and began to read.  Carelessly at first, and skimming up\nand down the columns; but with an earnest and a sad attention, very soon.\n\nFor this same dreaded paper re-directed Trotty’s thoughts into the\nchannel they had taken all that day, and which the day’s events had so\nmarked out and shaped.  His interest in the two wanderers had set him on\nanother course of thinking, and a happier one, for the time; but being\nalone again, and reading of the crimes and violences of the people, he\nrelapsed into his former train.\n\nIn this mood, he came to an account (and it was not the first he had ever\nread) of a woman who had laid her desperate hands not only on her own\nlife but on that of her young child.  A crime so terrible, and so\nrevolting to his soul, dilated with the love of Meg, that he let the\njournal drop, and fell back in his chair, appalled!\n\n‘Unnatural and cruel!’ Toby cried.  ‘Unnatural and cruel!  None but\npeople who were bad at heart, born bad, who had no business on the earth,\ncould do such deeds.  It’s too true, all I’ve heard to-day; too just, too\nfull of proof.  We’re Bad!’\n\nThe Chimes took up the words so suddenly—burst out so loud, and clear,\nand sonorous—that the Bells seemed to strike him in his chair.\n\nAnd what was that, they said?\n\n‘Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby!  Toby Veck, Toby Veck,\nwaiting for you Toby!  Come and see us, come and see us, Drag him to us,\ndrag him to us, Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Break his\nslumbers, break his slumbers!  Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby,\nToby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby—’ then fiercely back to their\nimpetuous strain again, and ringing in the very bricks and plaster on the\nwalls.\n\nToby listened.  Fancy, fancy!  His remorse for having run away from them\nthat afternoon!  No, no.  Nothing of the kind.  Again, again, and yet a\ndozen times again.  ‘Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Drag him to\nus, drag him to us!’  Deafening the whole town!\n\n‘Meg,’ said Trotty softly: tapping at her door.  ‘Do you hear anything?’\n\n‘I hear the Bells, father.  Surely they’re very loud to-night.’\n\n‘Is she asleep?’ said Toby, making an excuse for peeping in.\n\n‘So peacefully and happily!  I can’t leave her yet though, father.  Look\nhow she holds my hand!’\n\n‘Meg,’ whispered Trotty.  ‘Listen to the Bells!’\n\nShe listened, with her face towards him all the time.  But it underwent\nno change.  She didn’t understand them.\n\nTrotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire, and once more listened by\nhimself.  He remained here a little time.\n\nIt was impossible to bear it; their energy was dreadful.\n\n‘If the tower-door is really open,’ said Toby, hastily laying aside his\napron, but never thinking of his hat, ‘what’s to hinder me from going up\ninto the steeple and satisfying myself?  If it’s shut, I don’t want any\nother satisfaction.  That’s enough.’\n\nHe was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the street that he\nshould find it shut and locked, for he knew the door well, and had so\nrarely seen it open, that he couldn’t reckon above three times in all.\nIt was a low arched portal, outside the church, in a dark nook behind a\ncolumn; and had such great iron hinges, and such a monstrous lock, that\nthere was more hinge and lock than door.\n\nBut what was his astonishment when, coming bare-headed to the church; and\nputting his hand into this dark nook, with a certain misgiving that it\nmight be unexpectedly seized, and a shivering propensity to draw it back\nagain; he found that the door, which opened outwards, actually stood\najar!\n\nHe thought, on the first surprise, of going back; or of getting a light,\nor a companion, but his courage aided him immediately, and he determined\nto ascend alone.\n\n‘What have I to fear?’ said Trotty.  ‘It’s a church!  Besides, the\nringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut the door.’  So he went\nin, feeling his way as he went, like a blind man; for it was very dark.\nAnd very quiet, for the Chimes were silent.\n\nThe dust from the street had blown into the recess; and lying there,\nheaped up, made it so soft and velvet-like to the foot, that there was\nsomething startling, even in that.  The narrow stair was so close to the\ndoor, too, that he stumbled at the very first; and shutting the door upon\nhimself, by striking it with his foot, and causing it to rebound back\nheavily, he couldn’t open it again.\n\nThis was another reason, however, for going on.  Trotty groped his way,\nand went on.  Up, up, up, and round, and round; and up, up, up; higher,\nhigher, higher up!\n\nIt was a disagreeable staircase for that groping work; so low and narrow,\nthat his groping hand was always touching something; and it often felt so\nlike a man or ghostly figure standing up erect and making room for him to\npass without discovery, that he would rub the smooth wall upward\nsearching for its face, and downward searching for its feet, while a\nchill tingling crept all over him.  Twice or thrice, a door or niche\nbroke the monotonous surface; and then it seemed a gap as wide as the\nwhole church; and he felt on the brink of an abyss, and going to tumble\nheadlong down, until he found the wall again.\n\nStill up, up, up; and round and round; and up, up, up; higher, higher,\nhigher up!\n\nAt length, the dull and stifling atmosphere began to freshen: presently\nto feel quite windy: presently it blew so strong, that he could hardly\nkeep his legs.  But, he got to an arched window in the tower, breast\nhigh, and holding tight, looked down upon the house-tops, on the smoking\nchimneys, on the blur and blotch of lights (towards the place where Meg\nwas wondering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up\ntogether in a leaven of mist and darkness.\n\nThis was the belfry, where the ringers came.  He had caught hold of one\nof the frayed ropes which hung down through apertures in the oaken roof.\nAt first he started, thinking it was hair; then trembled at the very\nthought of waking the deep Bell.  The Bells themselves were higher.\nHigher, Trotty, in his fascination, or in working out the spell upon him,\ngroped his way.  By ladders now, and toilsomely, for it was steep, and\nnot too certain holding for the feet.\n\nUp, up, up; and climb and clamber; up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up!\n\nUntil, ascending through the floor, and pausing with his head just raised\nabove its beams, he came among the Bells.  It was barely possible to make\nout their great shapes in the gloom; but there they were.  Shadowy, and\ndark, and dumb.\n\nA heavy sense of dread and loneliness fell instantly upon him, as he\nclimbed into this airy nest of stone and metal.  His head went round and\nround.  He listened, and then raised a wild ‘Holloa!’  Holloa! was\nmournfully protracted by the echoes.\n\nGiddy, confused, and out of breath, and frightened, Toby looked about him\nvacantly, and sunk down in a swoon.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III—Third Quarter.\n\n\nBlack are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea\nof Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead.  Monsters\nuncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect resurrection; the several\nparts and shapes of different things are joined and mixed by chance; and\nwhen, and how, and by what wonderful degrees, each separates from each,\nand every sense and object of the mind resumes its usual form and lives\nagain, no man—though every man is every day the casket of this type of\nthe Great Mystery—can tell.\n\nSo, when and how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed to\nshining light; when and how the solitary tower was peopled with a myriad\nfigures; when and how the whispered ‘Haunt and hunt him,’ breathing\nmonotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice exclaiming in the\nwaking ears of Trotty, ‘Break his slumbers;’ when and how he ceased to\nhave a sluggish and confused idea that such things were, companioning a\nhost of others that were not; there are no dates or means to tell.  But,\nawake and standing on his feet upon the boards where he had lately lain,\nhe saw this Goblin Sight.\n\nHe saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him, swarming\nwith dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells.  He saw them\nleaping, flying, dropping, pouring from the Bells without a pause.  He\nsaw them, round him on the ground; above him, in the air; clambering from\nhim, by the ropes below; looking down upon him, from the massive\niron-girded beams; peeping in upon him, through the chinks and loopholes\nin the walls; spreading away and away from him in enlarging circles, as\nthe water ripples give way to a huge stone that suddenly comes plashing\nin among them.  He saw them, of all aspects and all shapes.  He saw them\nugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed.  He saw them young, he saw\nthem old, he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them merry, he saw\nthem grim; he saw them dance, and heard them sing; he saw them tear their\nhair, and heard them howl.  He saw the air thick with them.  He saw them\ncome and go, incessantly.  He saw them riding downward, soaring upward,\nsailing off afar, perching near at hand, all restless and all violently\nactive.  Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became transparent to him\nas to them.  He saw them _in_ the houses, busy at the sleepers’ beds.  He\nsaw them soothing people in their dreams; he saw them beating them with\nknotted whips; he saw them yelling in their ears; he saw them playing\nsoftest music on their pillows; he saw them cheering some with the songs\nof birds and the perfume of flowers; he saw them flashing awful faces on\nthe troubled rest of others, from enchanted mirrors which they carried in\ntheir hands.\n\nHe saw these creatures, not only among sleeping men but waking also,\nactive in pursuits irreconcilable with one another, and possessing or\nassuming natures the most opposite.  He saw one buckling on innumerable\nwings to increase his speed; another loading himself with chains and\nweights, to retard his.  He saw some putting the hands of clocks forward,\nsome putting the hands of clocks backward, some endeavouring to stop the\nclock entirely.  He saw them representing, here a marriage ceremony,\nthere a funeral; in this chamber an election, in that a ball he saw,\neverywhere, restless and untiring motion.\n\nBewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary figures, as well as\nby the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were ringing, Trotty\nclung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned his white face here and\nthere, in mute and stunned astonishment.\n\nAs he gazed, the Chimes stopped.  Instantaneous change!  The whole swarm\nfainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to\nfly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air.  No fresh supply\nsucceeded them.  One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the\nsurface of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and\ngone before he could turn round.  Some few of the late company who had\ngambolled in the tower, remained there, spinning over and over a little\nlonger; but these became at every turn more faint, and few, and feeble,\nand soon went the way of the rest.  The last of all was one small\nhunchback, who had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and\ntwirled, and floated by himself a long time; showing such perseverance,\nthat at last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally\nretired; but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent.\n\nThen and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded figure of the\nbulk and stature of the Bell—incomprehensibly, a figure and the Bell\nitself.  Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful of him, as he stood rooted\nto the ground.\n\nMysterious and awful figures!  Resting on nothing; poised in the night\nair of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged in the dim\nroof; motionless and shadowy.  Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by\nsome light belonging to themselves—none else was there—each with its\nmuffled hand upon its goblin mouth.\n\nHe could not plunge down wildly through the opening in the floor; for all\npower of motion had deserted him.  Otherwise he would have done so—aye,\nwould have thrown himself, headforemost, from the steeple-top, rather\nthan have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked and\nwatched although the pupils had been taken out.\n\nAgain, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and of the wild\nand fearful night that reigned there, touched him like a spectral hand.\nHis distance from all help; the long, dark, winding, ghost-beleaguered\nway that lay between him and the earth on which men lived; his being\nhigh, high, high, up there, where it had made him dizzy to see the birds\nfly in the day; cut off from all good people, who at such an hour were\nsafe at home and sleeping in their beds; all this struck coldly through\nhim, not as a reflection but a bodily sensation.  Meantime his eyes and\nthoughts and fears, were fixed upon the watchful figures; which, rendered\nunlike any figures of this world by the deep gloom and shade enwrapping\nand enfolding them, as well as by their looks and forms and supernatural\nhovering above the floor, were nevertheless as plainly to be seen as were\nthe stalwart oaken frames, cross-pieces, bars and beams, set up there to\nsupport the Bells.  These hemmed them, in a very forest of hewn timber;\nfrom the entanglements, intricacies, and depths of which, as from among\nthe boughs of a dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their\ndarksome and unwinking watch.\n\nA blast of air—how cold and shrill!—came moaning through the tower.  As\nit died away, the Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great Bell, spoke.\n\n‘What visitor is this!’ it said.  The voice was low and deep, and Trotty\nfancied that it sounded in the other figures as well.\n\n‘I thought my name was called by the Chimes!’ said Trotty, raising his\nhands in an attitude of supplication.  ‘I hardly know why I am here, or\nhow I came.  I have listened to the Chimes these many years.  They have\ncheered me often.’\n\n‘And you have thanked them?’ said the Bell.\n\n‘A thousand times!’ cried Trotty.\n\n‘How?’\n\n‘I am a poor man,’ faltered Trotty, ‘and could only thank them in words.’\n\n‘And always so?’ inquired the Goblin of the Bell.  ‘Have you never done\nus wrong in words?’\n\n‘No!’ cried Trotty eagerly.\n\n‘Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?’ pursued the\nGoblin of the Bell.\n\nTrotty was about to answer, ‘Never!’  But he stopped, and was confused.\n\n‘The voice of Time,’ said the Phantom, ‘cries to man, Advance!  Time is\nfor his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater\nhappiness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its\nknowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He\nbegan.  Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and\ngone—millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died—to point the\nway before him.  Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course,\narrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the\nfiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!’\n\n‘I never did so to my knowledge, sir,’ said Trotty.  ‘It was quite by\naccident if I did.  I wouldn’t go to do it, I’m sure.’\n\n‘Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its servants,’ said the Goblin of\nthe Bell, ‘a cry of lamentation for days which have had their trial and\ntheir failure, and have left deep traces of it which the blind may see—a\ncry that only serves the present time, by showing men how much it needs\ntheir help when any ears can listen to regrets for such a past—who does\nthis, does a wrong.  And you have done that wrong, to us, the Chimes.’\n\nTrotty’s first excess of fear was gone.  But he had felt tenderly and\ngratefully towards the Bells, as you have seen; and when he heard himself\narraigned as one who had offended them so weightily, his heart was\ntouched with penitence and grief.\n\n‘If you knew,’ said Trotty, clasping his hands earnestly—‘or perhaps you\ndo know—if you know how often you have kept me company; how often you\nhave cheered me up when I’ve been low; how you were quite the plaything\nof my little daughter Meg (almost the only one she ever had) when first\nher mother died, and she and me were left alone; you won’t bear malice\nfor a hasty word!’\n\n‘Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking disregard, or stern\nregard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, of the many-sorrowed\nthrong; who hears us make response to any creed that gauges human\npassions and affections, as it gauges the amount of miserable food on\nwhich humanity may pine and wither; does us wrong.  That wrong you have\ndone us!’ said the Bell.\n\n‘I have!’ said Trotty.  ‘Oh forgive me!’\n\n‘Who hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters Down of\ncrushed and broken natures, formed to be raised up higher than such\nmaggots of the time can crawl or can conceive,’ pursued the Goblin of the\nBell; ‘who does so, does us wrong.  And you have done us wrong!’\n\n‘Not meaning it,’ said Trotty.  ‘In my ignorance.  Not meaning it!’\n\n‘Lastly, and most of all,’ pursued the Bell.  ‘Who turns his back upon\nthe fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does\nnot trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which\nthey fell from good—grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that\nlost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf\nbelow; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity.  And you\nhave done that wrong!’\n\n‘Spare me!’ cried Trotty, falling on his knees; ‘for Mercy’s sake!’\n\n‘Listen!’ said the Shadow.\n\n‘Listen!’ cried the other Shadows.\n\n‘Listen!’ said a clear and childlike voice, which Trotty thought he\nrecognised as having heard before.\n\nThe organ sounded faintly in the church below.  Swelling by degrees, the\nmelody ascended to the roof, and filled the choir and nave.  Expanding\nmore and more, it rose up, up; up, up; higher, higher, higher up;\nawakening agitated hearts within the burly piles of oak: the hollow\nbells, the iron-bound doors, the stairs of solid stone; until the tower\nwalls were insufficient to contain it, and it soared into the sky.\n\nNo wonder that an old man’s breast could not contain a sound so vast and\nmighty.  It broke from that weak prison in a rush of tears; and Trotty\nput his hands before his face.\n\n‘Listen!’ said the Shadow.\n\n‘Listen!’ said the other Shadows.\n\n‘Listen!’ said the child’s voice.\n\nA solemn strain of blended voices, rose into the tower.\n\nIt was a very low and mournful strain—a Dirge—and as he listened, Trotty\nheard his child among the singers.\n\n‘She is dead!’ exclaimed the old man.  ‘Meg is dead!  Her Spirit calls to\nme.  I hear it!’\n\n‘The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and mingles with the\ndead—dead hopes, dead fancies, dead imaginings of youth,’ returned the\nBell, ‘but she is living.  Learn from her life, a living truth.  Learn\nfrom the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born.  See\nevery bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know\nhow bare and wretched it may be.  Follow her!  To desperation!’\n\nEach of the shadowy figures stretched its right arm forth, and pointed\ndownward.\n\n‘The Spirit of the Chimes is your companion,’ said the figure.\n\n‘Go!  It stands behind you!’\n\nTrotty turned, and saw—the child!  The child Will Fern had carried in the\nstreet; the child whom Meg had watched, but now, asleep!\n\n‘I carried her myself, to-night,’ said Trotty.  ‘In these arms!’\n\n‘Show him what he calls himself,’ said the dark figures, one and all.\n\nThe tower opened at his feet.  He looked down, and beheld his own form,\nlying at the bottom, on the outside: crushed and motionless.\n\n‘No more a living man!’ cried Trotty.  ‘Dead!’\n\n‘Dead!’ said the figures all together.\n\n‘Gracious Heaven!  And the New Year—’\n\n‘Past,’ said the figures.\n\n‘What!’ he cried, shuddering.  ‘I missed my way, and coming on the\noutside of this tower in the dark, fell down—a year ago?’\n\n‘Nine years ago!’ replied the figures.\n\nAs they gave the answer, they recalled their outstretched hands; and\nwhere their figures had been, there the Bells were.\n\nAnd they rung; their time being come again.  And once again, vast\nmultitudes of phantoms sprung into existence; once again, were\nincoherently engaged, as they had been before; once again, faded on the\nstopping of the Chimes; and dwindled into nothing.\n\n‘What are these?’ he asked his guide.  ‘If I am not mad, what are these?’\n\n‘Spirits of the Bells.  Their sound upon the air,’ returned the child.\n‘They take such shapes and occupations as the hopes and thoughts of\nmortals, and the recollections they have stored up, give them.’\n\n‘And you,’ said Trotty wildly.  ‘What are you?’\n\n‘Hush, hush!’ returned the child.  ‘Look here!’\n\nIn a poor, mean room; working at the same kind of embroidery which he had\noften, often seen before her; Meg, his own dear daughter, was presented\nto his view.  He made no effort to imprint his kisses on her face; he did\nnot strive to clasp her to his loving heart; he knew that such\nendearments were, for him, no more.  But, he held his trembling breath,\nand brushed away the blinding tears, that he might look upon her; that he\nmight only see her.\n\nAh!  Changed.  Changed.  The light of the clear eye, how dimmed.  The\nbloom, how faded from the cheek.  Beautiful she was, as she had ever\nbeen, but Hope, Hope, Hope, oh where was the fresh Hope that had spoken\nto him like a voice!\n\nShe looked up from her work, at a companion.  Following her eyes, the old\nman started back.\n\nIn the woman grown, he recognised her at a glance.  In the long silken\nhair, he saw the self-same curls; around the lips, the child’s expression\nlingering still.  See!  In the eyes, now turned inquiringly on Meg, there\nshone the very look that scanned those features when he brought her home!\n\nThen what was this, beside him!\n\nLooking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning there: a\nlofty something, undefined and indistinct, which made it hardly more than\na remembrance of that child—as yonder figure might be—yet it was the\nsame: the same: and wore the dress.\n\nHark.  They were speaking!\n\n‘Meg,’ said Lilian, hesitating.  ‘How often you raise your head from your\nwork to look at me!’\n\n‘Are my looks so altered, that they frighten you?’ asked Meg.\n\n‘Nay, dear!  But you smile at that, yourself!  Why not smile, when you\nlook at me, Meg?’\n\n‘I do so.  Do I not?’ she answered: smiling on her.\n\n‘Now you do,’ said Lilian, ‘but not usually.  When you think I’m busy,\nand don’t see you, you look so anxious and so doubtful, that I hardly\nlike to raise my eyes.  There is little cause for smiling in this hard\nand toilsome life, but you were once so cheerful.’\n\n‘Am I not now!’ cried Meg, speaking in a tone of strange alarm, and\nrising to embrace her.  ‘Do I make our weary life more weary to you,\nLilian!’\n\n‘You have been the only thing that made it life,’ said Lilian, fervently\nkissing her; ‘sometimes the only thing that made me care to live so, Meg.\nSuch work, such work!  So many hours, so many days, so many long, long\nnights of hopeless, cheerless, never-ending work—not to heap up riches,\nnot to live grandly or gaily, not to live upon enough, however coarse;\nbut to earn bare bread; to scrape together just enough to toil upon, and\nwant upon, and keep alive in us the consciousness of our hard fate!  Oh\nMeg, Meg!’ she raised her voice and twined her arms about her as she\nspoke, like one in pain.  ‘How can the cruel world go round, and bear to\nlook upon such lives!’\n\n‘Lilly!’ said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from her wet\nface.  ‘Why, Lilly!  You!  So pretty and so young!’\n\n‘Oh Meg!’ she interrupted, holding her at arm’s-length, and looking in\nher face imploringly.  ‘The worst of all, the worst of all!  Strike me\nold, Meg!  Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful\nthoughts that tempt me in my youth!’\n\nTrotty turned to look upon his guide.  But the Spirit of the child had\ntaken flight.  Was gone.\n\nNeither did he himself remain in the same place; for, Sir Joseph Bowley,\nFriend and Father of the Poor, held a great festivity at Bowley Hall, in\nhonour of the natal day of Lady Bowley.  And as Lady Bowley had been born\non New Year’s Day (which the local newspapers considered an especial\npointing of the finger of Providence to number One, as Lady Bowley’s\ndestined figure in Creation), it was on a New Year’s Day that this\nfestivity took place.\n\nBowley Hall was full of visitors.  The red-faced gentleman was there, Mr.\nFiler was there, the great Alderman Cute was there—Alderman Cute had a\nsympathetic feeling with great people, and had considerably improved his\nacquaintance with Sir Joseph Bowley on the strength of his attentive\nletter: indeed had become quite a friend of the family since then—and\nmany guests were there.  Trotty’s ghost was there, wandering about, poor\nphantom, drearily; and looking for its guide.\n\nThere was to be a great dinner in the Great Hall.  At which Sir Joseph\nBowley, in his celebrated character of Friend and Father of the Poor, was\nto make his great speech.  Certain plum-puddings were to be eaten by his\nFriends and Children in another Hall first; and, at a given signal,\nFriends and Children flocking in among their Friends and Fathers, were to\nform a family assemblage, with not one manly eye therein unmoistened by\nemotion.\n\nBut, there was more than this to happen.  Even more than this.  Sir\nJoseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of Parliament, was to play a match at\nskittles—real skittles—with his tenants!\n\n‘Which quite reminds me,’ said Alderman Cute, ‘of the days of old King\nHal, stout King Hal, bluff King Hal.  Ah!  Fine character!’\n\n‘Very,’ said Mr. Filer, dryly.  ‘For marrying women and murdering ’em.\nConsiderably more than the average number of wives by the bye.’\n\n‘You’ll marry the beautiful ladies, and not murder ’em, eh?’ said\nAlderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve.  ‘Sweet boy!  We shall\nhave this little gentleman in Parliament now,’ said the Alderman, holding\nhim by the shoulders, and looking as reflective as he could, ‘before we\nknow where we are.  We shall hear of his successes at the poll; his\nspeeches in the House; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant\nachievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make our little orations about\nhim in the Common Council, I’ll be bound; before we have time to look\nabout us!’\n\n‘Oh, the difference of shoes and stockings!’ Trotty thought.  But his\nheart yearned towards the child, for the love of those same shoeless and\nstockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn out bad, who\nmight have been the children of poor Meg.\n\n‘Richard,’ moaned Trotty, roaming among the company, to and fro; ‘where\nis he?  I can’t find Richard!  Where is Richard?’  Not likely to be\nthere, if still alive!  But Trotty’s grief and solitude confused him; and\nhe still went wandering among the gallant company, looking for his guide,\nand saying, ‘Where is Richard?  Show me Richard!’\n\nHe was wandering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, the confidential\nSecretary: in great agitation.\n\n‘Bless my heart and soul!’ cried Mr. Fish.  ‘Where’s Alderman Cute?  Has\nanybody seen the Alderman?’\n\nSeen the Alderman?  Oh dear!  Who could ever help seeing the Alderman?\nHe was so considerate, so affable, he bore so much in mind the natural\ndesires of folks to see him, that if he had a fault, it was the being\nconstantly On View.  And wherever the great people were, there, to be\nsure, attracted by the kindred sympathy between great souls, was Cute.\n\nSeveral voices cried that he was in the circle round Sir Joseph.  Mr.\nFish made way there; found him; and took him secretly into a window near\nat hand.  Trotty joined them.  Not of his own accord.  He felt that his\nsteps were led in that direction.\n\n‘My dear Alderman Cute,’ said Mr. Fish.  ‘A little more this way.  The\nmost dreadful circumstance has occurred.  I have this moment received the\nintelligence.  I think it will be best not to acquaint Sir Joseph with it\ntill the day is over.  You understand Sir Joseph, and will give me your\nopinion.  The most frightful and deplorable event!’\n\n‘Fish!’ returned the Alderman.  ‘Fish!  My good fellow, what is the\nmatter?  Nothing revolutionary, I hope!  No—no attempted interference\nwith the magistrates?’\n\n‘Deedles, the banker,’ gasped the Secretary.  ‘Deedles Brothers—who was\nto have been here to-day—high in office in the Goldsmiths’ Company—’\n\n‘Not stopped!’ exclaimed the Alderman, ‘It can’t be!’\n\n‘Shot himself.’\n\n‘Good God!’\n\n‘Put a double-barrelled pistol to his mouth, in his own counting house,’\nsaid Mr. Fish, ‘and blew his brains out.  No motive.  Princely\ncircumstances!’\n\n‘Circumstances!’ exclaimed the Alderman.  ‘A man of noble fortune.  One\nof the most respectable of men.  Suicide, Mr. Fish!  By his own hand!’\n\n‘This very morning,’ returned Mr. Fish.\n\n‘Oh the brain, the brain!’ exclaimed the pious Alderman, lifting up his\nhands.  ‘Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called\nMan!  Oh the little that unhinges it: poor creatures that we are!\nPerhaps a dinner, Mr. Fish.  Perhaps the conduct of his son, who, I have\nheard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of drawing bills upon him\nwithout the least authority!  A most respectable man.  One of the most\nrespectable men I ever knew!  A lamentable instance, Mr. Fish.  A public\ncalamity!  I shall make a point of wearing the deepest mourning.  A most\nrespectable man!  But there is One above.  We must submit, Mr. Fish.  We\nmust submit!’\n\nWhat, Alderman!  No word of Putting Down?  Remember, Justice, your high\nmoral boast and pride.  Come, Alderman!  Balance those scales.  Throw me\ninto this, the empty one, no dinner, and Nature’s founts in some poor\nwoman, dried by starving misery and rendered obdurate to claims for which\nher offspring _has_ authority in holy mother Eve.  Weigh me the two, you\nDaniel, going to judgment, when your day shall come!  Weigh them, in the\neyes of suffering thousands, audience (not unmindful) of the grim farce\nyou play.  Or supposing that you strayed from your five wits—it’s not so\nfar to go, but that it might be—and laid hands upon that throat of yours,\nwarning your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they croak their\ncomfortable wickedness to raving heads and stricken hearts.  What then?\n\nThe words rose up in Trotty’s breast, as if they had been spoken by some\nother voice within him.  Alderman Cute pledged himself to Mr. Fish that\nhe would assist him in breaking the melancholy catastrophe to Sir Joseph\nwhen the day was over.  Then, before they parted, wringing Mr. Fish’s\nhand in bitterness of soul, he said, ‘The most respectable of men!’  And\nadded that he hardly knew (not even he), why such afflictions were\nallowed on earth.\n\n‘It’s almost enough to make one think, if one didn’t know better,’ said\nAlderman Cute, ‘that at times some motion of a capsizing nature was going\non in things, which affected the general economy of the social fabric.\nDeedles Brothers!’\n\nThe skittle-playing came off with immense success.  Sir Joseph knocked\nthe pins about quite skilfully; Master Bowley took an innings at a\nshorter distance also; and everybody said that now, when a Baronet and\nthe Son of a Baronet played at skittles, the country was coming round\nagain, as fast as it could come.\n\nAt its proper time, the Banquet was served up.  Trotty involuntarily\nrepaired to the Hall with the rest, for he felt himself conducted thither\nby some stronger impulse than his own free will.  The sight was gay in\nthe extreme; the ladies were very handsome; the visitors delighted,\ncheerful, and good-tempered.  When the lower doors were opened, and the\npeople flocked in, in their rustic dresses, the beauty of the spectacle\nwas at its height; but Trotty only murmured more and more, ‘Where is\nRichard!  He should help and comfort her!  I can’t see Richard!’\n\nThere had been some speeches made; and Lady Bowley’s health had been\nproposed; and Sir Joseph Bowley had returned thanks, and had made his\ngreat speech, showing by various pieces of evidence that he was the born\nFriend and Father, and so forth; and had given as a Toast, his Friends\nand Children, and the Dignity of Labour; when a slight disturbance at the\nbottom of the Hall attracted Toby’s notice.  After some confusion, noise,\nand opposition, one man broke through the rest, and stood forward by\nhimself.\n\nNot Richard.  No.  But one whom he had thought of, and had looked for,\nmany times.  In a scantier supply of light, he might have doubted the\nidentity of that worn man, so old, and grey, and bent; but with a blaze\nof lamps upon his gnarled and knotted head, he knew Will Fern as soon as\nhe stepped forth.\n\n‘What is this!’ exclaimed Sir Joseph, rising.  ‘Who gave this man\nadmittance?  This is a criminal from prison!  Mr. Fish, sir, _will_ you\nhave the goodness—’\n\n‘A minute!’ said Will Fern.  ‘A minute!  My Lady, you was born on this\nday along with a New Year.  Get me a minute’s leave to speak.’\n\nShe made some intercession for him.  Sir Joseph took his seat again, with\nnative dignity.\n\nThe ragged visitor—for he was miserably dressed—looked round upon the\ncompany, and made his homage to them with a humble bow.\n\n‘Gentlefolks!’ he said.  ‘You’ve drunk the Labourer.  Look at me!’\n\n‘Just come from jail,’ said Mr. Fish.\n\n‘Just come from jail,’ said Will.  ‘And neither for the first time, nor\nthe second, nor the third, nor yet the fourth.’\n\nMr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was over the\naverage; and he ought to be ashamed of himself.\n\n‘Gentlefolks!’ repeated Will Fern.  ‘Look at me!  You see I’m at the\nworst.  Beyond all hurt or harm; beyond your help; for the time when your\nkind words or kind actions could have done me good,’—he struck his hand\nupon his breast, and shook his head, ‘is gone, with the scent of last\nyear’s beans or clover on the air.  Let me say a word for these,’\npointing to the labouring people in the Hall; ‘and when you’re met\ntogether, hear the real Truth spoke out for once.’\n\n‘There’s not a man here,’ said the host, ‘who would have him for a\nspokesman.’\n\n‘Like enough, Sir Joseph.  I believe it.  Not the less true, perhaps, is\nwhat I say.  Perhaps that’s a proof on it.  Gentlefolks, I’ve lived many\na year in this place.  You may see the cottage from the sunk fence over\nyonder.  I’ve seen the ladies draw it in their books, a hundred times.\nIt looks well in a picter, I’ve heerd say; but there an’t weather in\npicters, and maybe ’tis fitter for that, than for a place to live in.\nWell!  I lived there.  How hard—how bitter hard, I lived there, I won’t\nsay.  Any day in the year, and every day, you can judge for your own\nselves.’\n\nHe spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found him in the\nstreet.  His voice was deeper and more husky, and had a trembling in it\nnow and then; but he never raised it passionately, and seldom lifted it\nabove the firm stern level of the homely facts he stated.\n\n‘’Tis harder than you think for, gentlefolks, to grow up decent, commonly\ndecent, in such a place.  That I growed up a man and not a brute, says\nsomething for me—as I was then.  As I am now, there’s nothing can be said\nfor me or done for me.  I’m past it.’\n\n‘I am glad this man has entered,’ observed Sir Joseph, looking round\nserenely.  ‘Don’t disturb him.  It appears to be Ordained.  He is an\nexample: a living example.  I hope and trust, and confidently expect,\nthat it will not be lost upon my Friends here.’\n\n‘I dragged on,’ said Fern, after a moment’s silence, ‘somehow.  Neither\nme nor any other man knows how; but so heavy, that I couldn’t put a\ncheerful face upon it, or make believe that I was anything but what I\nwas.  Now, gentlemen—you gentlemen that sits at Sessions—when you see a\nman with discontent writ on his face, you says to one another, “He’s\nsuspicious.  I has my doubts,” says you, “about Will Fern.  Watch that\nfellow!”  I don’t say, gentlemen, it ain’t quite nat’ral, but I say ’tis\nso; and from that hour, whatever Will Fern does, or lets alone—all one—it\ngoes against him.’\n\nAlderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, and leaning back\nin his chair, and smiling, winked at a neighbouring chandelier.  As much\nas to say, ‘Of course!  I told you so.  The common cry!  Lord bless you,\nwe are up to all this sort of thing—myself and human nature.’\n\n‘Now, gentlemen,’ said Will Fern, holding out his hands, and flushing for\nan instant in his haggard face, ‘see how your laws are made to trap and\nhunt us when we’re brought to this.  I tries to live elsewhere.  And I’m\na vagabond.  To jail with him!  I comes back here.  I goes a-nutting in\nyour woods, and breaks—who don’t?—a limber branch or two.  To jail with\nhim!  One of your keepers sees me in the broad day, near my own patch of\ngarden, with a gun.  To jail with him!  I has a nat’ral angry word with\nthat man, when I’m free again.  To jail with him!  I cuts a stick.  To\njail with him!  I eats a rotten apple or a turnip.  To jail with him!\nIt’s twenty mile away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road.  To\njail with him!  At last, the constable, the keeper—anybody—finds me\nanywhere, a-doing anything.  To jail with him, for he’s a vagrant, and a\njail-bird known; and jail’s the only home he’s got.’\n\nThe Alderman nodded sagaciously, as who should say, ‘A very good home\ntoo!’\n\n‘Do I say this to serve MY cause!’ cried Fern.  ‘Who can give me back my\nliberty, who can give me back my good name, who can give me back my\ninnocent niece?  Not all the Lords and Ladies in wide England.  But,\ngentlemen, gentlemen, dealing with other men like me, begin at the right\nend.  Give us, in mercy, better homes when we’re a-lying in our cradles;\ngive us better food when we’re a-working for our lives; give us kinder\nlaws to bring us back when we're a-going wrong; and don’t set jail, jail,\njail, afore us, everywhere we turn.  There an’t a condescension you can\nshow the Labourer then, that he won’t take, as ready and as grateful as a\nman can be; for, he has a patient, peaceful, willing heart.  But you must\nput his rightful spirit in him first; for, whether he’s a wreck and ruin\nsuch as me, or is like one of them that stand here now, his spirit is\ndivided from you at this time.  Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it\nback!  Bring it back, afore the day comes when even his Bible changes in\nhis altered mind, and the words seem to him to read, as they have\nsometimes read in my own eyes—in jail: “Whither thou goest, I can Not go;\nwhere thou lodgest, I do Not lodge; thy people are Not my people; Nor thy\nGod my God!”’\n\nA sudden stir and agitation took place in Hall.  Trotty thought at first,\nthat several had risen to eject the man; and hence this change in its\nappearance.  But, another moment showed him that the room and all the\ncompany had vanished from his sight, and that his daughter was again\nbefore him, seated at her work.  But in a poorer, meaner garret than\nbefore; and with no Lilian by her side.\n\nThe frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a shelf and covered\nup.  The chair in which she had sat, was turned against the wall.  A\nhistory was written in these little things, and in Meg’s grief-worn face.\nOh! who could fail to read it!\n\nMeg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to see the\nthreads; and when the night closed in, she lighted her feeble candle and\nworked on.  Still her old father was invisible about her; looking down\nupon her; loving her—how dearly loving her!—and talking to her in a\ntender voice about the old times, and the Bells.  Though he knew, poor\nTrotty, though he knew she could not hear him.\n\nA great part of the evening had worn away, when a knock came at her door.\nShe opened it.  A man was on the threshold.  A slouching, moody, drunken\nsloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his matted hair and\nunshorn beard in wild disorder; but, with some traces on him, too, of\nhaving been a man of good proportion and good features in his youth.\n\nHe stopped until he had her leave to enter; and she, retiring a pace or\ntwo from the open door, silently and sorrowfully looked upon him.  Trotty\nhad his wish.  He saw Richard.\n\n‘May I come in, Margaret?’\n\n‘Yes!  Come in.  Come in!’\n\nIt was well that Trotty knew him before he spoke; for with any doubt\nremaining on his mind, the harsh discordant voice would have persuaded\nhim that it was not Richard but some other man.\n\nThere were but two chairs in the room.  She gave him hers, and stood at\nsome short distance from him, waiting to hear what he had to say.\n\nHe sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and\nstupid smile.  A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject\nhopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she put her hands before\nher face and turned away, lest he should see how much it moved her.\n\nRoused by the rustling of her dress, or some such trifling sound, he\nlifted his head, and began to speak as if there had been no pause since\nhe entered.\n\n‘Still at work, Margaret?  You work late.’\n\n‘I generally do.’\n\n‘And early?’\n\n‘And early.’\n\n‘So she said.  She said you never tired; or never owned that you tired.\nNot all the time you lived together.  Not even when you fainted, between\nwork and fasting.  But I told you that, the last time I came.’\n\n‘You did,’ she answered.  ‘And I implored you to tell me nothing more;\nand you made me a solemn promise, Richard, that you never would.’\n\n‘A solemn promise,’ he repeated, with a drivelling laugh and vacant\nstare.  ‘A solemn promise.  To be sure.  A solemn promise!’  Awakening,\nas it were, after a time; in the same manner as before; he said with\nsudden animation:\n\n‘How can I help it, Margaret?  What am I to do?  She has been to me\nagain!’\n\n‘Again!’ cried Meg, clasping her hands.  ‘O, does she think of me so\noften!  Has she been again!’\n\n‘Twenty times again,’ said Richard.  ‘Margaret, she haunts me.  She comes\nbehind me in the street, and thrusts it in my hand.  I hear her foot upon\nthe ashes when I’m at my work (ha, ha! that an’t often), and before I can\nturn my head, her voice is in my ear, saying, “Richard, don’t look round.\nFor Heaven’s love, give her this!”  She brings it where I live: she sends\nit in letters; she taps at the window and lays it on the sill.  What\n_can_ I do?  Look at it!’\n\nHe held out in his hand a little purse, and chinked the money it\nenclosed.\n\n‘Hide it,’ said Meg.  ‘Hide it!  When she comes again, tell her, Richard,\nthat I love her in my soul.  That I never lie down to sleep, but I bless\nher, and pray for her.  That, in my solitary work, I never cease to have\nher in my thoughts.  That she is with me, night and day.  That if I died\nto-morrow, I would remember her with my last breath.  But, that I cannot\nlook upon it!’\n\nHe slowly recalled his hand, and crushing the purse together, said with a\nkind of drowsy thoughtfulness:\n\n‘I told her so.  I told her so, as plain as words could speak.  I’ve\ntaken this gift back and left it at her door, a dozen times since then.\nBut when she came at last, and stood before me, face to face, what could\nI do?’\n\n‘You saw her!’ exclaimed Meg.  ‘You saw her!  O, Lilian, my sweet girl!\nO, Lilian, Lilian!’\n\n‘I saw her,’ he went on to say, not answering, but engaged in the same\nslow pursuit of his own thoughts.  ‘There she stood: trembling!  “How\ndoes she look, Richard?  Does she ever speak of me?  Is she thinner?  My\nold place at the table: what’s in my old place?  And the frame she taught\nme our old work on—has she burnt it, Richard!”  There she was.  I heard\nher say it.’\n\nMeg checked her sobs, and with the tears streaming from her eyes, bent\nover him to listen.  Not to lose a breath.\n\nWith his arms resting on his knees; and stooping forward in his chair, as\nif what he said were written on the ground in some half legible\ncharacter, which it was his occupation to decipher and connect; he went\non.\n\n‘“Richard, I have fallen very low; and you may guess how much I have\nsuffered in having this sent back, when I can bear to bring it in my hand\nto you.  But you loved her once, even in my memory, dearly.  Others\nstepped in between you; fears, and jealousies, and doubts, and vanities,\nestranged you from her; but you did love her, even in my memory!”  I\nsuppose I did,’ he said, interrupting himself for a moment.  ‘I did!\nThat’s neither here nor there—“O Richard, if you ever did; if you have\nany memory for what is gone and lost, take it to her once more.  Once\nmore!  Tell her how I laid my head upon your shoulder, where her own head\nmight have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard.  Tell her that you\nlooked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all\ngone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she\nwould weep to see.  Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will\nnot refuse again.  She will not have the heart!”’\n\nSo he sat musing, and repeating the last words, until he woke again, and\nrose.\n\n‘You won’t take it, Margaret?’\n\nShe shook her head, and motioned an entreaty to him to leave her.\n\n‘Good night, Margaret.’\n\n‘Good night!’\n\nHe turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by the pity\nfor himself which trembled in her voice.  It was a quick and rapid\naction; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing kindled in his\nform.  In the next he went as he had come.  Nor did this glimmer of a\nquenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement.\n\nIn any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body, Meg’s work\nmust be done.  She sat down to her task, and plied it.  Night, midnight.\nStill she worked.\n\nShe had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at intervals\nto mend it.  The Chimes rang half-past twelve while she was thus engaged;\nand when they ceased she heard a gentle knocking at the door.  Before she\ncould so much as wonder who was there, at that unusual hour, it opened.\n\nO Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this.  O Youth and\nBeauty, blest and blessing all within your reach, and working out the\nends of your Beneficent Creator, look at this!\n\nShe saw the entering figure; screamed its name; cried ‘Lilian!’\n\nIt was swift, and fell upon its knees before her: clinging to her dress.\n\n‘Up, dear!  Up!  Lilian!  My own dearest!’\n\n‘Never more, Meg; never more!  Here!  Here!  Close to you, holding to\nyou, feeling your dear breath upon my face!’\n\n‘Sweet Lilian!  Darling Lilian!  Child of my heart—no mother’s love can\nbe more tender—lay your head upon my breast!’\n\n‘Never more, Meg.  Never more!  When I first looked into your face, you\nknelt before me.  On my knees before you, let me die.  Let it be here!’\n\n‘You have come back.  My Treasure!  We will live together, work together,\nhope together, die together!’\n\n‘Ah!  Kiss my lips, Meg; fold your arms about me; press me to your bosom;\nlook kindly on me; but don’t raise me.  Let it be here.  Let me see the\nlast of your dear face upon my knees!’\n\nO Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this!  O Youth and\nBeauty, working out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, look at this!\n\n‘Forgive me, Meg!  So dear, so dear!  Forgive me!  I know you do, I see\nyou do, but say so, Meg!’\n\nShe said so, with her lips on Lilian’s cheek.  And with her arms twined\nround—she knew it now—a broken heart.\n\n‘His blessing on you, dearest love.  Kiss me once more!  He suffered her\nto sit beside His feet, and dry them with her hair.  O Meg, what Mercy\nand Compassion!’\n\nAs she died, the Spirit of the child returning, innocent and radiant,\ntouched the old man with its hand, and beckoned him away.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV—Fourth Quarter.\n\n\nSome new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bells; some faint\nimpression of the ringing of the Chimes; some giddy consciousness of\nhaving seen the swarm of phantoms reproduced and reproduced until the\nrecollection of them lost itself in the confusion of their numbers; some\nhurried knowledge, how conveyed to him he knew not, that more years had\npassed; and Trotty, with the Spirit of the child attending him, stood\nlooking on at mortal company.\n\nFat company, rosy-cheeked company, comfortable company.  They were but\ntwo, but they were red enough for ten.  They sat before a bright fire,\nwith a small low table between them; and unless the fragrance of hot tea\nand muffins lingered longer in that room than in most others, the table\nhad seen service very lately.  But all the cups and saucers being clean,\nand in their proper places in the corner-cupboard; and the brass\ntoasting-fork hanging in its usual nook and spreading its four idle\nfingers out as if it wanted to be measured for a glove; there remained no\nother visible tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred and\nwashed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and glistened in\nthe gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of her patrons.\n\nThis cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair division of the\nfire between them, and sat looking at the glowing sparks that dropped\ninto the grate; now nodding off into a doze; now waking up again when\nsome hot fragment, larger than the rest, came rattling down, as if the\nfire were coming with it.\n\nIt was in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it gleamed not\nonly in the little room, and on the panes of window-glass in the door,\nand on the curtain half drawn across them, but in the little shop beyond.\nA little shop, quite crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock;\na perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full\nas any shark’s.  Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon,\ntable-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys’ kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch\nbrooms, hearth-stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery,\nlard, mushroom-ketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs,\nand slate pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy\nlittle shop, and all articles were in its net.  How many other kinds of\npetty merchandise were there, it would be difficult to say; but balls of\npackthread, ropes of onions, pounds of candles, cabbage-nets, and\nbrushes, hung in bunches from the ceiling, like extraordinary fruit;\nwhile various odd canisters emitting aromatic smells, established the\nveracity of the inscription over the outer door, which informed the\npublic that the keeper of this little shop was a licensed dealer in tea,\ncoffee, tobacco, pepper, and snuff.\n\nGlancing at such of these articles as were visible in the shining of the\nblaze, and the less cheerful radiance of two smoky lamps which burnt but\ndimly in the shop itself, as though its plethora sat heavy on their\nlungs; and glancing, then, at one of the two faces by the parlour-fire;\nTrotty had small difficulty in recognising in the stout old lady, Mrs.\nChickenstalker: always inclined to corpulency, even in the days when he\nhad known her as established in the general line, and having a small\nbalance against him in her books.\n\nThe features of her companion were less easy to him.  The great broad\nchin, with creases in it large enough to hide a finger in; the astonished\neyes, that seemed to expostulate with themselves for sinking deeper and\ndeeper into the yielding fat of the soft face; the nose afflicted with\nthat disordered action of its functions which is generally termed The\nSnuffles; the short thick throat and labouring chest, with other beauties\nof the like description; though calculated to impress the memory, Trotty\ncould at first allot to nobody he had ever known: and yet he had some\nrecollection of them too.  At length, in Mrs. Chickenstalker’s partner in\nthe general line, and in the crooked and eccentric line of life, he\nrecognised the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley; an apoplectic\ninnocent, who had connected himself in Trotty’s mind with Mrs.\nChickenstalker years ago, by giving him admission to the mansion where he\nhad confessed his obligations to that lady, and drawn on his unlucky head\nsuch grave reproach.\n\nTrotty had little interest in a change like this, after the changes he\nhad seen; but association is very strong sometimes; and he looked\ninvoluntarily behind the parlour-door, where the accounts of credit\ncustomers were usually kept in chalk.  There was no record of his name.\nSome names were there, but they were strange to him, and infinitely fewer\nthan of old; from which he argued that the porter was an advocate of\nready-money transactions, and on coming into the business had looked\npretty sharp after the Chickenstalker defaulters.\n\nSo desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth and promise of his\nblighted child, that it was a sorrow to him, even to have no place in\nMrs. Chickenstalker’s ledger.\n\n‘What sort of a night is it, Anne?’ inquired the former porter of Sir\nJoseph Bowley, stretching out his legs before the fire, and rubbing as\nmuch of them as his short arms could reach; with an air that added, ‘Here\nI am if it’s bad, and I don’t want to go out if it’s good.’\n\n‘Blowing and sleeting hard,’ returned his wife; ‘and threatening snow.\nDark.  And very cold.’\n\n‘I’m glad to think we had muffins,’ said the former porter, in the tone\nof one who had set his conscience at rest.  ‘It’s a sort of night that’s\nmeant for muffins.  Likewise crumpets.  Also Sally Lunns.’\n\nThe former porter mentioned each successive kind of eatable, as if he\nwere musingly summing up his good actions.  After which he rubbed his fat\nlegs as before, and jerking them at the knees to get the fire upon the\nyet unroasted parts, laughed as if somebody had tickled him.\n\n‘You’re in spirits, Tugby, my dear,’ observed his wife.\n\nThe firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker.\n\n‘No,’ said Tugby.  ‘No.  Not particular.  I’m a little elewated.  The\nmuffins came so pat!’\n\nWith that he chuckled until he was black in the face; and had so much ado\nto become any other colour, that his fat legs took the strangest\nexcursions into the air.  Nor were they reduced to anything like decorum\nuntil Mrs. Tugby had thumped him violently on the back, and shaken him as\nif he were a great bottle.\n\n‘Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless and save the man!’ cried\nMrs. Tugby, in great terror.  ‘What’s he doing?’\n\nMr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and faintly repeated that he found himself a\nlittle elewated.\n\n‘Then don’t be so again, that’s a dear good soul,’ said Mrs. Tugby, ‘if\nyou don’t want to frighten me to death, with your struggling and\nfighting!’\n\nMr. Tugby said he wouldn’t; but, his whole existence was a fight, in\nwhich, if any judgment might be founded on the constantly-increasing\nshortness of his breath, and the deepening purple of his face, he was\nalways getting the worst of it.\n\n‘So it’s blowing, and sleeting, and threatening snow; and it’s dark, and\nvery cold, is it, my dear?’ said Mr. Tugby, looking at the fire, and\nreverting to the cream and marrow of his temporary elevation.\n\n‘Hard weather indeed,’ returned his wife, shaking her head.\n\n‘Aye, aye!  Years,’ said Mr. Tugby, ‘are like Christians in that respect.\nSome of ’em die hard; some of ’em die easy.  This one hasn’t many days to\nrun, and is making a fight for it.  I like him all the better.  There’s a\ncustomer, my love!’\n\nAttentive to the rattling door, Mrs. Tugby had already risen.\n\n‘Now then!’ said that lady, passing out into the little shop.  ‘What’s\nwanted?  Oh!  I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure.  I didn’t think it was\nyou.’\n\nShe made this apology to a gentleman in black, who, with his wristbands\ntucked up, and his hat cocked loungingly on one side, and his hands in\nhis pockets, sat down astride on the table-beer barrel, and nodded in\nreturn.\n\n‘This is a bad business up-stairs, Mrs. Tugby,’ said the gentleman.  ‘The\nman can’t live.’\n\n‘Not the back-attic can’t!’ cried Tugby, coming out into the shop to join\nthe conference.\n\n‘The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,’ said the gentleman, ‘is coming down-stairs\nfast, and will be below the basement very soon.’\n\nLooking by turns at Tugby and his wife, he sounded the barrel with his\nknuckles for the depth of beer, and having found it, played a tune upon\nthe empty part.\n\n‘The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,’ said the gentleman: Tugby having stood in\nsilent consternation for some time: ‘is Going.’\n\n‘Then,’ said Tugby, turning to his wife, ‘he must Go, you know, before\nhe’s Gone.’\n\n‘I don’t think you can move him,’ said the gentleman, shaking his head.\n‘I wouldn’t take the responsibility of saying it could be done, myself.\nYou had better leave him where he is.  He can’t live long.’\n\n‘It’s the only subject,’ said Tugby, bringing the butter-scale down upon\nthe counter with a crash, by weighing his fist on it, ‘that we’ve ever\nhad a word upon; she and me; and look what it comes to!  He’s going to\ndie here, after all.  Going to die upon the premises.  Going to die in\nour house!’\n\n‘And where should he have died, Tugby?’ cried his wife.\n\n‘In the workhouse,’ he returned.  ‘What are workhouses made for?’\n\n‘Not for that,’ said Mrs. Tugby, with great energy.  ‘Not for that!\nNeither did I marry you for that.  Don’t think it, Tugby.  I won’t have\nit.  I won’t allow it.  I’d be separated first, and never see your face\nagain.  When my widow’s name stood over that door, as it did for many\nyears: this house being known as Mrs. Chickenstalker’s far and wide, and\nnever known but to its honest credit and its good report: when my widow’s\nname stood over that door, Tugby, I knew him as a handsome, steady,\nmanly, independent youth; I knew her as the sweetest-looking,\nsweetest-tempered girl, eyes ever saw; I knew her father (poor old\ncreetur, he fell down from the steeple walking in his sleep, and killed\nhimself), for the simplest, hardest-working, childest-hearted man, that\never drew the breath of life; and when I turn them out of house and home,\nmay angels turn me out of Heaven.  As they would!  And serve me right!’\n\nHer old face, which had been a plump and dimpled one before the changes\nwhich had come to pass, seemed to shine out of her as she said these\nwords; and when she dried her eyes, and shook her head and her\nhandkerchief at Tugby, with an expression of firmness which it was quite\nclear was not to be easily resisted, Trotty said, ‘Bless her!  Bless\nher!’\n\nThen he listened, with a panting heart, for what should follow.  Knowing\nnothing yet, but that they spoke of Meg.\n\nIf Tugby had been a little elevated in the parlour, he more than balanced\nthat account by being not a little depressed in the shop, where he now\nstood staring at his wife, without attempting a reply; secretly\nconveying, however—either in a fit of abstraction or as a precautionary\nmeasure—all the money from the till into his own pockets, as he looked at\nher.\n\nThe gentleman upon the table-beer cask, who appeared to be some\nauthorised medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed,\nevidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to\ninterpose any remark in this instance.  He sat softly whistling, and\nturning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there\nwas a perfect calm: when he raised his head, and said to Mrs. Tugby, late\nChickenstalker:\n\n‘There’s something interesting about the woman, even now.  How did she\ncome to marry him?’\n\n‘Why that,’ said Mrs. Tugby, taking a seat near him, ‘is not the least\ncruel part of her story, sir.  You see they kept company, she and\nRichard, many years ago.  When they were a young and beautiful couple,\neverything was settled, and they were to have been married on a New\nYear’s Day.  But, somehow, Richard got it into his head, through what the\ngentlemen told him, that he might do better, and that he’d soon repent\nit, and that she wasn’t good enough for him, and that a young man of\nspirit had no business to be married.  And the gentlemen frightened her,\nand made her melancholy, and timid of his deserting her, and of her\nchildren coming to the gallows, and of its being wicked to be man and\nwife, and a good deal more of it.  And in short, they lingered and\nlingered, and their trust in one another was broken, and so at last was\nthe match.  But the fault was his.  She would have married him, sir,\njoyfully.  I’ve seen her heart swell many times afterwards, when he\npassed her in a proud and careless way; and never did a woman grieve more\ntruly for a man, than she for Richard when he first went wrong.’\n\n‘Oh! he went wrong, did he?’ said the gentleman, pulling out the vent-peg\nof the table-beer, and trying to peep down into the barrel through the\nhole.\n\n‘Well, sir, I don’t know that he rightly understood himself, you see.  I\nthink his mind was troubled by their having broke with one another; and\nthat but for being ashamed before the gentlemen, and perhaps for being\nuncertain too, how she might take it, he’d have gone through any\nsuffering or trial to have had Meg’s promise and Meg’s hand again.\nThat’s my belief.  He never said so; more’s the pity!  He took to\ndrinking, idling, bad companions: all the fine resources that were to be\nso much better for him than the Home he might have had.  He lost his\nlooks, his character, his health, his strength, his friends, his work:\neverything!’\n\n‘He didn’t lose everything, Mrs. Tugby,’ returned the gentleman, ‘because\nhe gained a wife; and I want to know how he gained her.’\n\n‘I’m coming to it, sir, in a moment.  This went on for years and years;\nhe sinking lower and lower; she enduring, poor thing, miseries enough to\nwear her life away.  At last, he was so cast down, and cast out, that no\none would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he\nwould.  Applying from place to place, and door to door; and coming for\nthe hundredth time to one gentleman who had often and often tried him (he\nwas a good workman to the very end); that gentleman, who knew his\nhistory, said, “I believe you are incorrigible; there is only one person\nin the world who has a chance of reclaiming you; ask me to trust you no\nmore, until she tries to do it.”  Something like that, in his anger and\nvexation.’\n\n‘Ah!’ said the gentleman.  ‘Well?’\n\n‘Well, sir, he went to her, and kneeled to her; said it was so; said it\never had been so; and made a prayer to her to save him.’\n\n‘And she?—Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Tugby.’\n\n‘She came to me that night to ask me about living here.  “What he was\nonce to me,” she said, “is buried in a grave, side by side with what I\nwas to him.  But I have thought of this; and I will make the trial.  In\nthe hope of saving him; for the love of the light-hearted girl (you\nremember her) who was to have been married on a New Year’s Day; and for\nthe love of her Richard.”  And she said he had come to her from Lilian,\nand Lilian had trusted to him, and she never could forget that.  So they\nwere married; and when they came home here, and I saw them, I hoped that\nsuch prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not often fulfil\nthemselves as they did in this case, or I wouldn’t be the makers of them\nfor a Mine of Gold.’\n\nThe gentleman got off the cask, and stretched himself, observing:\n\n‘I suppose he used her ill, as soon as they were married?’\n\n‘I don’t think he ever did that,’ said Mrs. Tugby, shaking her head, and\nwiping her eyes.  ‘He went on better for a short time; but, his habits\nwere too old and strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and\nwas falling fast back, when his illness came so strong upon him.  I think\nhe has always felt for her.  I am sure he has.  I have seen him, in his\ncrying fits and tremblings, try to kiss her hand; and I have heard him\ncall her “Meg,” and say it was her nineteenth birthday.  There he has\nbeen lying, now, these weeks and months.  Between him and her baby, she\nhas not been able to do her old work; and by not being able to be\nregular, she has lost it, even if she could have done it.  How they have\nlived, I hardly know!’\n\n‘I know,’ muttered Mr. Tugby; looking at the till, and round the shop,\nand at his wife; and rolling his head with immense intelligence.  ‘Like\nFighting Cocks!’\n\nHe was interrupted by a cry—a sound of lamentation—from the upper story\nof the house.  The gentleman moved hurriedly to the door.\n\n‘My friend,’ he said, looking back, ‘you needn’t discuss whether he shall\nbe removed or not.  He has spared you that trouble, I believe.’\n\nSaying so, he ran up-stairs, followed by Mrs. Tugby; while Mr. Tugby\npanted and grumbled after them at leisure: being rendered more than\ncommonly short-winded by the weight of the till, in which there had been\nan inconvenient quantity of copper.  Trotty, with the child beside him,\nfloated up the staircase like mere air.\n\n‘Follow her!  Follow her!  Follow her!’  He heard the ghostly voices in\nthe Bells repeat their words as he ascended.  ‘Learn it, from the\ncreature dearest to your heart!’\n\nIt was over.  It was over.  And this was she, her father’s pride and joy!\nThis haggard, wretched woman, weeping by the bed, if it deserved that\nname, and pressing to her breast, and hanging down her head upon, an\ninfant.  Who can tell how spare, how sickly, and how poor an infant!  Who\ncan tell how dear!\n\n‘Thank God!’ cried Trotty, holding up his folded hands.  ‘O, God be\nthanked!  She loves her child!’\n\nThe gentleman, not otherwise hard-hearted or indifferent to such scenes,\nthan that he saw them every day, and knew that they were figures of no\nmoment in the Filer sums—mere scratches in the working of these\ncalculations—laid his hand upon the heart that beat no more, and listened\nfor the breath, and said, ‘His pain is over.  It’s better as it is!’\nMrs. Tugby tried to comfort her with kindness.  Mr. Tugby tried\nphilosophy.\n\n‘Come, come!’ he said, with his hands in his pockets, ‘you mustn’t give\nway, you know.  That won’t do.  You must fight up.  What would have\nbecome of me if _I_ had given way when I was porter, and we had as many\nas six runaway carriage-doubles at our door in one night!  But, I fell\nback upon my strength of mind, and didn’t open it!’\n\nAgain Trotty heard the voices saying, ‘Follow her!’  He turned towards\nhis guide, and saw it rising from him, passing through the air.  ‘Follow\nher!’ it said.  And vanished.\n\nHe hovered round her; sat down at her feet; looked up into her face for\none trace of her old self; listened for one note of her old pleasant\nvoice.  He flitted round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so\ndreadful in its gravity, so plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable\nwail.  He almost worshipped it.  He clung to it as her only safeguard; as\nthe last unbroken link that bound her to endurance.  He set his father’s\nhope and trust on the frail baby; watched her every look upon it as she\nheld it in her arms; and cried a thousand times, ‘She loves it!  God be\nthanked, she loves it!’\n\nHe saw the woman tend her in the night; return to her when her grudging\nhusband was asleep, and all was still; encourage her, shed tears with\nher, set nourishment before her.  He saw the day come, and the night\nagain; the day, the night; the time go by; the house of death relieved of\ndeath; the room left to herself and to the child; he heard it moan and\ncry; he saw it harass her, and tire her out, and when she slumbered in\nexhaustion, drag her back to consciousness, and hold her with its little\nhands upon the rack; but she was constant to it, gentle with it, patient\nwith it.  Patient!  Was its loving mother in her inmost heart and soul,\nand had its Being knitted up with hers as when she carried it unborn.\n\nAll this time, she was in want: languishing away, in dire and pining\nwant.  With the baby in her arms, she wandered here and there, in quest\nof occupation; and with its thin face lying in her lap, and looking up in\nhers, did any work for any wretched sum; a day and night of labour for as\nmany farthings as there were figures on the dial.  If she had quarrelled\nwith it; if she had neglected it; if she had looked upon it with a\nmoment’s hate; if, in the frenzy of an instant, she had struck it!  No.\nHis comfort was, She loved it always.\n\nShe told no one of her extremity, and wandered abroad in the day lest she\nshould be questioned by her only friend: for any help she received from\nher hands, occasioned fresh disputes between the good woman and her\nhusband; and it was new bitterness to be the daily cause of strife and\ndiscord, where she owed so much.\n\nShe loved it still.  She loved it more and more.  But a change fell on\nthe aspect of her love.  One night.\n\nShe was singing faintly to it in its sleep, and walking to and fro to\nhush it, when her door was softly opened, and a man looked in.\n\n‘For the last time,’ he said.\n\n‘William Fern!’\n\n‘For the last time.’\n\nHe listened like a man pursued: and spoke in whispers.\n\n‘Margaret, my race is nearly run.  I couldn’t finish it, without a\nparting word with you.  Without one grateful word.’\n\n‘What have you done?’ she asked: regarding him with terror.\n\nHe looked at her, but gave no answer.\n\nAfter a short silence, he made a gesture with his hand, as if he set her\nquestion by; as if he brushed it aside; and said:\n\n‘It’s long ago, Margaret, now: but that night is as fresh in my memory as\never ’twas.  We little thought, then,’ he added, looking round, ‘that we\nshould ever meet like this.  Your child, Margaret?  Let me have it in my\narms.  Let me hold your child.’\n\nHe put his hat upon the floor, and took it.  And he trembled as he took\nit, from head to foot.\n\n‘Is it a girl?’\n\n‘Yes.’\n\nHe put his hand before its little face.\n\n‘See how weak I’m grown, Margaret, when I want the courage to look at it!\nLet her be, a moment.  I won’t hurt her.  It’s long ago, but—What’s her\nname?’\n\n‘Margaret,’ she answered, quickly.\n\n‘I’m glad of that,’ he said.  ‘I’m glad of that!’  He seemed to breathe\nmore freely; and after pausing for an instant, took away his hand, and\nlooked upon the infant’s face.  But covered it again, immediately.\n\n‘Margaret!’ he said; and gave her back the child.  ‘It’s Lilian’s.’\n\n‘Lilian’s!’\n\n‘I held the same face in my arms when Lilian’s mother died and left her.’\n\n‘When Lilian’s mother died and left her!’ she repeated, wildly.\n\n‘How shrill you speak!  Why do you fix your eyes upon me so?  Margaret!’\n\nShe sunk down in a chair, and pressed the infant to her breast, and wept\nover it.  Sometimes, she released it from her embrace, to look anxiously\nin its face: then strained it to her bosom again.  At those times, when\nshe gazed upon it, then it was that something fierce and terrible began\nto mingle with her love.  Then it was that her old father quailed.\n\n‘Follow her!’ was sounded through the house.  ‘Learn it, from the\ncreature dearest to your heart!’\n\n‘Margaret,’ said Fern, bending over her, and kissing her upon the brow:\n‘I thank you for the last time.  Good night.  Good bye!  Put your hand in\nmine, and tell me you’ll forget me from this hour, and try to think the\nend of me was here.’\n\n‘What have you done?’ she asked again.\n\n‘There’ll be a Fire to-night,’ he said, removing from her.  ‘There’ll be\nFires this winter-time, to light the dark nights, East, West, North, and\nSouth.  When you see the distant sky red, they’ll be blazing.  When you\nsee the distant sky red, think of me no more; or, if you do, remember\nwhat a Hell was lighted up inside of me, and think you see its flames\nreflected in the clouds.  Good night.  Good bye!’  She called to him; but\nhe was gone.  She sat down stupefied, until her infant roused her to a\nsense of hunger, cold, and darkness.  She paced the room with it the\nlivelong night, hushing it and soothing it.  She said at intervals, ‘Like\nLilian, when her mother died and left her!’  Why was her step so quick,\nher eye so wild, her love so fierce and terrible, whenever she repeated\nthose words?\n\n‘But, it is Love,’ said Trotty.  ‘It is Love.  She’ll never cease to love\nit.  My poor Meg!’\n\nShe dressed the child next morning with unusual care—ah, vain expenditure\nof care upon such squalid robes!—and once more tried to find some means\nof life.  It was the last day of the Old Year.  She tried till night, and\nnever broke her fast.  She tried in vain.\n\nShe mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it\npleased some officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the lawful\ncharity; not that once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and\nquestion them, and say to this one, ‘Go to such a place,’ to that one,\n‘Come next week;’ to make a football of another wretch, and pass him here\nand there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he wearied and\nlay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a higher sort of\ncriminal, whose claims allowed of no delay.  Here, too, she failed.\n\nShe loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast.  And that\nwas quite enough.\n\nIt was night: a bleak, dark, cutting night: when, pressing the child\nclose to her for warmth, she arrived outside the house she called her\nhome.  She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one standing in the\ndoorway until she was close upon it, and about to enter.  Then, she\nrecognised the master of the house, who had so disposed himself—with his\nperson it was not difficult—as to fill up the whole entry.\n\n‘O!’ he said softly.  ‘You have come back?’\n\nShe looked at the child, and shook her head.\n\n‘Don’t you think you have lived here long enough without paying any rent?\nDon’t you think that, without any money, you’ve been a pretty constant\ncustomer at this shop, now?’ said Mr. Tugby.\n\nShe repeated the same mute appeal.\n\n‘Suppose you try and deal somewhere else,’ he said.  ‘And suppose you\nprovide yourself with another lodging.  Come!  Don’t you think you could\nmanage it?’\n\nShe said in a low voice, that it was very late.  To-morrow.\n\n‘Now I see what you want,’ said Tugby; ‘and what you mean.  You know\nthere are two parties in this house about you, and you delight in setting\n’em by the ears.  I don’t want any quarrels; I’m speaking softly to avoid\na quarrel; but if you don’t go away, I’ll speak out loud, and you shall\ncause words high enough to please you.  But you shan’t come in.  That I\nam determined.’\n\nShe put her hair back with her hand, and looked in a sudden manner at the\nsky, and the dark lowering distance.\n\n‘This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won’t carry ill-blood and\nquarrellings and disturbances into a New One, to please you nor anybody\nelse,’ said Tugby, who was quite a retail Friend and Father.  ‘I wonder\nyou an’t ashamed of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year.\nIf you haven’t any business in the world, but to be always giving way,\nand always making disturbances between man and wife, you’d be better out\nof it.  Go along with you.’\n\n‘Follow her!  To desperation!’\n\nAgain the old man heard the voices.  Looking up, he saw the figures\nhovering in the air, and pointing where she went, down the dark street.\n\n‘She loves it!’ he exclaimed, in agonised entreaty for her.  ‘Chimes! she\nloves it still!’\n\n‘Follow her!’  The shadow swept upon the track she had taken, like a\ncloud.\n\nHe joined in the pursuit; he kept close to her; he looked into her face.\nHe saw the same fierce and terrible expression mingling with her love,\nand kindling in her eyes.  He heard her say, ‘Like Lilian!  To be changed\nlike Lilian!’ and her speed redoubled.\n\nO, for something to awaken her!  For any sight, or sound, or scent, to\ncall up tender recollections in a brain on fire!  For any gentle image of\nthe Past, to rise before her!\n\n‘I was her father!  I was her father!’ cried the old man, stretching out\nhis hands to the dark shadows flying on above.  ‘Have mercy on her, and\non me!  Where does she go?  Turn her back!  I was her father!’\n\nBut they only pointed to her, as she hurried on; and said, ‘To\ndesperation!  Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!’  A\nhundred voices echoed it.  The air was made of breath expended in those\nwords.  He seemed to take them in, at every gasp he drew.  They were\neverywhere, and not to be escaped.  And still she hurried on; the same\nlight in her eyes, the same words in her mouth, ‘Like Lilian!  To be\nchanged like Lilian!’  All at once she stopped.\n\n‘Now, turn her back!’ exclaimed the old man, tearing his white hair.  ‘My\nchild!  Meg!  Turn her back!  Great Father, turn her back!’\n\nIn her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm.  With her fevered\nhands, she smoothed its limbs, composed its face, arranged its mean\nattire.  In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would\nresign it more.  And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and\nlast long agony of Love.\n\nPutting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, within her\ndress, next to her distracted heart, she set its sleeping face against\nher: closely, steadily, against her: and sped onward to the River.\n\nTo the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like\nthe last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before her.\nWhere scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as\ntorches that were burning there, to show the way to Death.  Where no\nabode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, impenetrable,\nmelancholy shade.\n\nTo the River!  To that portal of Eternity, her desperate footsteps tended\nwith the swiftness of its rapid waters running to the sea.  He tried to\ntouch her as she passed him, going down to its dark level: but, the wild\ndistempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had\nleft all human check or hold behind, swept by him like the wind.\n\nHe followed her.  She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful\nplunge.  He fell down on his knees, and in a shriek addressed the figures\nin the Bells now hovering above them.\n\n‘I have learnt it!’ cried the old man.  ‘From the creature dearest to my\nheart!  O, save her, save her!’\n\nHe could wind his fingers in her dress; could hold it!  As the words\nescaped his lips, he felt his sense of touch return, and knew that he\ndetained her.\n\nThe figures looked down steadfastly upon him.\n\n‘I have learnt it!’ cried the old man.  ‘O, have mercy on me in this\nhour, if, in my love for her, so young and good, I slandered Nature in\nthe breasts of mothers rendered desperate!  Pity my presumption,\nwickedness, and ignorance, and save her.’  He felt his hold relaxing.\nThey were silent still.\n\n‘Have mercy on her!’ he exclaimed, ‘as one in whom this dreadful crime\nhas sprung from Love perverted; from the strongest, deepest Love we\nfallen creatures know!  Think what her misery must have been, when such\nseed bears such fruit!  Heaven meant her to be good.  There is no loving\nmother on the earth who might not come to this, if such a life had gone\nbefore.  O, have mercy on my child, who, even at this pass, means mercy\nto her own, and dies herself, and perils her immortal soul, to save it!’\n\nShe was in his arms.  He held her now.  His strength was like a giant’s.\n\n‘I see the Spirit of the Chimes among you!’ cried the old man, singling\nout the child, and speaking in some inspiration, which their looks\nconveyed to him.  ‘I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by\nTime.  I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all\nwho wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves.  I see it, on\nthe flow!  I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt\nourselves, nor doubt the good in one another.  I have learnt it from the\ncreature dearest to my heart.  I clasp her in my arms again.  O Spirits,\nmerciful and good, I take your lesson to my breast along with her!  O\nSpirits, merciful and good, I am grateful!’\n\nHe might have said more; but, the Bells, the old familiar Bells, his own\ndear, constant, steady friends, the Chimes, began to ring the joy-peals\nfor a New Year: so lustily, so merrily, so happily, so gaily, that he\nleapt upon his feet, and broke the spell that bound him.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n‘And whatever you do, father,’ said Meg, ‘don’t eat tripe again, without\nasking some doctor whether it’s likely to agree with you; for how you\n_have_ been going on, Good gracious!’\n\nShe was working with her needle, at the little table by the fire;\ndressing her simple gown with ribbons for her wedding.  So quietly happy,\nso blooming and youthful, so full of beautiful promise, that he uttered a\ngreat cry as if it were an Angel in his house; then flew to clasp her in\nhis arms.\n\nBut, he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen on the hearth;\nand somebody came rushing in between them.\n\n‘No!’ cried the voice of this same somebody; a generous and jolly voice\nit was!  ‘Not even you.  Not even you.  The first kiss of Meg in the New\nYear is mine.  Mine!  I have been waiting outside the house, this hour,\nto hear the Bells and claim it.  Meg, my precious prize, a happy year!  A\nlife of happy years, my darling wife!’\n\nAnd Richard smothered her with kisses.\n\nYou never in all your life saw anything like Trotty after this.  I don’t\ncare where you have lived or what you have seen; you never in all your\nlife saw anything at all approaching him!  He sat down in his chair and\nbeat his knees and cried; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and\nlaughed; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and laughed and\ncried together; he got out of his chair and hugged Meg; he got out of his\nchair and hugged Richard; he got out of his chair and hugged them both at\nonce; he kept running up to Meg, and squeezing her fresh face between his\nhands and kissing it, going from her backwards not to lose sight of it,\nand running up again like a figure in a magic lantern; and whatever he\ndid, he was constantly sitting himself down in his chair, and never\nstopping in it for one single moment; being—that’s the truth—beside\nhimself with joy.\n\n‘And to-morrow’s your wedding-day, my pet!’ cried Trotty.  ‘Your real,\nhappy wedding-day!’\n\n‘To-day!’ cried Richard, shaking hands with him.  ‘To-day.  The Chimes\nare ringing in the New Year.  Hear them!’\n\nThey WERE ringing!  Bless their sturdy hearts, they WERE ringing!  Great\nBells as they were; melodious, deep-mouthed, noble Bells; cast in no\ncommon metal; made by no common founder; when had they ever chimed like\nthat, before!\n\n‘But, to-day, my pet,’ said Trotty.  ‘You and Richard had some words\nto-day.’\n\n‘Because he’s such a bad fellow, father,’ said Meg.  ‘An’t you, Richard?\nSuch a headstrong, violent man!  He’d have made no more of speaking his\nmind to that great Alderman, and putting _him_ down I don’t know where,\nthan he would of—’\n\n‘—Kissing Meg,’ suggested Richard.  Doing it too!\n\n‘No.  Not a bit more,’ said Meg.  ‘But I wouldn’t let him, father.  Where\nwould have been the use!’\n\n‘Richard my boy!’ cried Trotty.  ‘You was turned up Trumps originally;\nand Trumps you must be, till you die!  But, you were crying by the fire\nto-night, my pet, when I came home!  Why did you cry by the fire?’\n\n‘I was thinking of the years we’ve passed together, father.  Only that.\nAnd thinking that you might miss me, and be lonely.’\n\nTrotty was backing off to that extraordinary chair again, when the child,\nwho had been awakened by the noise, came running in half-dressed.\n\n‘Why, here she is!’ cried Trotty, catching her up.  ‘Here’s little\nLilian!  Ha ha ha!  Here we are and here we go!  O here we are and here\nwe go again!  And here we are and here we go! and Uncle Will too!’\nStopping in his trot to greet him heartily.  ‘O, Uncle Will, the vision\nthat I’ve had to-night, through lodging you!  O, Uncle Will, the\nobligations that you’ve laid me under, by your coming, my good friend!’\n\nBefore Will Fern could make the least reply, a band of music burst into\nthe room, attended by a lot of neighbours, screaming ‘A Happy New Year,\nMeg!’  ‘A Happy Wedding!’  ‘Many of ’em!’ and other fragmentary good\nwishes of that sort.  The Drum (who was a private friend of Trotty’s)\nthen stepped forward, and said:\n\n‘Trotty Veck, my boy!  It’s got about, that your daughter is going to be\nmarried to-morrow.  There an’t a soul that knows you that don’t wish you\nwell, or that knows her and don’t wish her well.  Or that knows you both,\nand don’t wish you both all the happiness the New Year can bring.  And\nhere we are, to play it in and dance it in, accordingly.’\n\nWhich was received with a general shout.  The Drum was rather drunk,\nby-the-bye; but, never mind.\n\n‘What a happiness it is, I’m sure,’ said Trotty, ‘to be so esteemed!  How\nkind and neighbourly you are!  It’s all along of my dear daughter.  She\ndeserves it!’\n\nThey were ready for a dance in half a second (Meg and Richard at the\ntop); and the Drum was on the very brink of feathering away with all his\npower; when a combination of prodigious sounds was heard outside, and a\ngood-humoured comely woman of some fifty years of age, or thereabouts,\ncame running in, attended by a man bearing a stone pitcher of terrific\nsize, and closely followed by the marrow-bones and cleavers, and the\nbells; not _the_ Bells, but a portable collection on a frame.\n\nTrotty said, ‘It’s Mrs. Chickenstalker!’  And sat down and beat his knees\nagain.\n\n‘Married, and not tell me, Meg!’ cried the good woman.  ‘Never!  I\ncouldn’t rest on the last night of the Old Year without coming to wish\nyou joy.  I couldn’t have done it, Meg.  Not if I had been bed-ridden.\nSo here I am; and as it’s New Year’s Eve, and the Eve of your wedding\ntoo, my dear, I had a little flip made, and brought it with me.’\n\nMrs. Chickenstalker’s notion of a little flip did honour to her\ncharacter.  The pitcher steamed and smoked and reeked like a volcano; and\nthe man who had carried it, was faint.\n\n‘Mrs. Tugby!’ said Trotty, who had been going round and round her, in an\necstasy.—‘I _should_ say, Chickenstalker—Bless your heart and soul!  A\nHappy New Year, and many of ’em!  Mrs. Tugby,’ said Trotty when he had\nsaluted her;—‘I _should_ say, Chickenstalker—This is William Fern and\nLilian.’\n\nThe worthy dame, to his surprise, turned very pale and very red.\n\n‘Not Lilian Fern whose mother died in Dorsetshire!’ said she.\n\nHer uncle answered ‘Yes,’ and meeting hastily, they exchanged some\nhurried words together; of which the upshot was, that Mrs. Chickenstalker\nshook him by both hands; saluted Trotty on his cheek again of her own\nfree will; and took the child to her capacious breast.\n\n‘Will Fern!’ said Trotty, pulling on his right-hand muffler.  ‘Not the\nfriend you was hoping to find?’\n\n‘Ay!’ returned Will, putting a hand on each of Trotty’s shoulders.  ‘And\nlike to prove a’most as good a friend, if that can be, as one I found.’\n\n‘O!’ said Trotty.  ‘Please to play up there.  Will you have the\ngoodness!’\n\nTo the music of the band, and, the bells, the marrow-bones and cleavers,\nall at once; and while the Chimes were yet in lusty operation out of\ndoors; Trotty, making Meg and Richard, second couple, led off Mrs.\nChickenstalker down the dance, and danced it in a step unknown before or\nsince; founded on his own peculiar trot.\n\nHad Trotty dreamed?  Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in\nthem, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer,\nwaking but now?  If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions,\ntry to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come;\nand in your sphere—none is too wide, and none too limited for such an\nend—endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them.  So may the New Year\nbe a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you!\nSo may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our\nbrethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great\nCreator formed them to enjoy."