THE NOVELIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 181, 6 August 1886, Page 30

THE NOVELIST.

' [NOW FIiJST PUBLISHED.] ®Ue $$ on of Sjjte Jaitav\ — 3, — BY MRS OLIPHANT. Author of "TJio ('lironii.-les ol Carlingford," Olive/s Erkle," •' Madam," A;c. [THB RIGUT Or TRANSLATION TS RESERVED.] CIIAPTEE 1. IV^en he was a Child, >NT say anything before the boy." This was one of the first things he remembered. In the confused recollections of thai early age he seemed to have hern always hearing- ir. Said between his molhov ami iiis sister, afterwards between grandparents, even by strangers one io another, always, " Don't say anything before the boy." What it was about which nothing had to be said, he had very little idea, and, indeed, grew up to be a man, before, in the light of sudden revelations, he began to put these scattered gleams together, and see what they meant. They confused his little soul from the beginning, throwing strange lights and stranger shadows across his path, keeping around him a .sort of unreality, a sense that things were not as they seemed. His name was John in those day; certainly John of that thevc was no "doubt; called Johnny when people were kind, sometimes Jack - but John he always \w.s. He had a fain^ sort of notion that it had not always been John Handford. B u t this was not clear in his mind. It was all confused with the lest of the bioken reminiscences

which concerned the time in which everybody was so anxious that nothing should be said before the boy.

In those days his recollection was of a little common-place house — a house in a street— with two parlours, one behind the other, kitchens below, bedrooms above, the most ordinary littls house. There was a little garden behind in which he played ; and in which sometimes he was vaguely conscious of being shut out on purpose to play, and doing so in an abortive, unwilling way which took all the pleasure out of it. Sometimes he only sat down and wondered, not even pretending to amuse himself, until a butterfly flew past and roused him, or his little spade showed itself temptingly at hand. At seven one is easily beguiled, whatever weight there may be on one's spirit. But now and then he would stop and look up at the windows, and see someone moving indoors, and wonder again what it was that the boy was not intended to know.

At this period of John's career his father was alive — and he was fond of his father. Sometimes papa would be very late, and would go up to John's little bed, aud bring him down in his nightgown only half awake, seeing the candles like stars through a mist of sleep and wonder, till he was roused to the fullest wakef ulness by cakes and sweatmeacs, and every kind of dainty which papa had brought. John became quite used to all the varying experiences of this midnight incident — the reluctance to be roused up, the glory of going downstairs, the delight of the feast. He sat on his father's knee, with his little bare feet wrapped in a shawl, and his eyes shining as brightly as the candles, munching and chattering, lie got quite nsed to it. He used to feel uncomfortable sometimes in the morning, and heard it said that something was very bad for him, and that the child's stomach as well as his morals would be spoiled. Johnnie knew as little about his stomach as about his morals. And he had a way of being well which greatly interfered with all f these prognostications. He was a very sturdy little boy.

He had a consciousness, through all these scenes, of his mother's face, very pale, without any smile in it, showing serious like the moon, among those lights. She gave him no cake or oranges, but it was she who wrapped up his feet in the shawl, and took care of him in the morning when his little head sometimes ached. Papa was never visible in the morning. Johnny was sometimes a little afraid of him, though he was so jolly in these midnight visits. The boy was frightened when he was being carried downstairs, and clung very close, though he did not say anything about his fears. Papa would lurch sometimes on those occasions, like the steamboat on which John had once gone to sea. The memory of the lighted table, the father who always made a noise, laughing, talking, sometimes singing, always so fond of bis little boy ; but mamma dreadfully quiet, scarcely saying anything, and the lights of the candles, nofc at all like the candles we have nowadays, but big and shining like stars, never faded from his memory even when he had grown a mail.

In the daytime it was rather dull. Susie was five years older than he, going on for twelve, and knowing everything. She got to saying "Go away, child," when he asked her to come and play. As he remembered her she never played, but was always at her needlework or something, almost worse than mamma— and there would be long conversations between those two in the winters afternoon while he was playing at a coach and horses made with chairs in the other room, the back parlour which was the place where they had their meals. Sometimes when he got tired of the obstinacy of Dobbin, who was tho big mahogany arm-chair, and who would have his own way, and jibbed abominably, he would catch a glimpse through the half-opened folding doors of thos&two over the fire. They always spoke very low and sometimes cried— and if he came a little near would give each other a frightened look and say, " Not a word before the boy." Johnnies ears got very quick to those words — he heard them when they were whispered, and sometimes he heard them through his sleep. Could they be talking of any thing naughty, or why was it so necessary that heViould not know ?

There came a time, at last when all this confused mystery came to a climax. There were hasty comings and goings, men at the door whose heavy loud knockings filled the house with dismay, stealthy entrances in tho dark — for Johnnie a succession of troubled dreams, of figures flitting into his room in the middle of night, but never papa in the old jovial way to carry him down to to the parlour with its big staring candles. No one thought of such indulgencies now. If they were wrong they wefe all over. When he woke he saw, half awake and half dreaming, sometimes his father, (though he had been told he was away), sometimes his mother, other strange visitors flitting like ghosts, all confusion and disorder, the night turned into day. He was himself kept in corners in tho daylight, or sent into the garden to play, or shut up in the back parlour with his toy's, It seemed to Johnnie that they must think he wanted nothing but those toys : and never could understand that to play without any companions, without anywbh for playing, was impossible ; but he was a dutiful child and tried to do what ho was told. It was at this strange and uncomfortable period that he learned how nice it is to have a book, after you have exhausted all your solitary inventions and played at everything you know. The fascination of the books, however, added to the confusion of everything. Johnnie mixed Eobinson Crusoe up with the agitating phantasmagoria of his little life. He thought perhaps that it was from the savages his father was hiding — for he was sure that it was his father he saw in those visions of the night, though everyone said ho had gone away. Then there came a lull in the agitation, and silence fell upon the house, Mamma and Susie cried a great deal, and were together more than ever, but Johnnies dreams stopped, and lie saw no more in the night through his half-closed eyes the flitting figures and moving lights.

Then there came a strange scene very clearly painted on bis memory, though ir. was not for many years after ' that he was

able to piece it into his life. Johnnie had been lelt alone in the house with the maid, the only servant that the family had, who was a simple-minded country-woman, and kind to the child, though not perhaps in a very judicious way. She was kind in the way of giving him sweetmeats and pieces of cake, and the remains of dainty dishes which upstairs were not supposed to be wholesome for Johnny, "as if the dear child shouldn't have everything of the best," Betty said. On this day Betty was full of excitement-, not capable of staying still in one place she herself said. She gave him his dinner, which he had to cat all by himself, a singular but not on the whole a disagreeable ceremony, bince Betty was about all the time, very anxious that Johnnie should eat and amusing him with stories. " Master Johnnie," she said, when the meal was over, "It do be very dull staying in the house with nothing at all to do. Missus won't bo back till late at night. I know she can't poor dear. It would be more cheerful if you and me went out for a \\\i !::."'

" But how conld you leave the house, Betty, all alone by itself ?" said the little boy.

"It won't run away, never fear, nor nobody couldn't steal the tables and chairs; and there ain't nothing left to steal, moro's the pity," said Betty. " We'll go afore it's dark, and it'll chcor us up a bit, for I can't sit still, not me, more than if I was one of the family : though you don't know nothing about that, yon pool- little darlin', Lord bless yon!" Butty, it is to be feared, would have told him readily enough, but the child was so used to heating that he must not be toll that he asked no questions. To go out, however, was certainly more cheerful than to pass another wintry afternoon in the back parlour without seeing any one but Betty. He allowed himself to be buttoned up in his little thick blue topcoat of pilot c^oth, which made him as broad as ho was long, and to have bis comforter wound round his neck, though he did not much like that ; and then they sallied forth, Betty putting in her pocket the great key of the house door. She did not talk much, being occupied profoundly with with interests of her own, of which Johnnie knew nothing, but she led him along past lines of cheerful shops all shilling with Christmas presents ; for Christmas was coming on, and there was an unusual traffic in the toy shops and the book shops, and all the places where pleasant things for Christmas were. Johnnie stopped and gazed, dragging at her hand, and wondered if any of the picture books would fall to his share. His mother did not buy many pleasant things for him; but if papa came back, he never forgot Johnnie — he thought to himself that surely for Christmas papa would conic back, unless indeed the savages had got him. But a certain big policeman strolled by, while this thought passed through the child's mind, and even at seven years old one can't but feel that savages are ineffectual creatures where such policemen are. But the thought of papa gave Johnnie a pense of mystery and alarm, since his father had disappeared in the day time, only to be seen fitfully through half shut eyes at night.

As the afternoon wore on, and the lights were lighted in all the shop windows, Johnnie thought this better than ever; but Betty was no longer disposed to let him gaze. She said it was'time to go homo, and then led led him away through little dark and dingy streets which he did not know, and which tired him, both in his little lags and in his mind. At last they camrs to a row of houses which ran along one side of a street, the other side of which was occupied by a large and lofty building. Here Betty paused a moment pondering. "Master Johnnie,' she said at last, "if you'll be a good boy and don't say a word to anyone, I'll take you to see the most wonderful place you ever saw, something which you will never, never i'orget all your life." "What is it Betty?" said Johnnie. " Oh, you would not understand if I was to tell you its name. But its something that you will always remember, and be glad you went there. But you must never, never tell ; for if you were i o toll anyone they would be angry, and it's not known what they would do to me." " I will never tell," said Johnnie, upon which Betty gave him a kiss and called him a poor darlin' as knew nothing, and knocked at the door before which they were standing, and took 'him up a long, long, narrow stair. Johnnie saw nothing of 'any importance when he was taken into a little ordinary room at the top, where two women were sitting beside a little fire, where a kettle was boiling and the table set all ready for tea, "This is the poor little boy," Betty said after a while, and both the women looked at him, and patted him on the head and said " Poor little gentleman," and that he must have some tea first. He did not mind having his tea, for he was tired with his walk, and the bread and butter they gave him was sprinkled thinly over with little sweetmeats, very little tiny things, red and white, which were quite new to Johnnie. He was used to jam and honey and other things of this kind, but to eat bread and butter sprinkled with sugar-plums was quite a novelty. While he was busy in this agreeable way, one of the women put out the candles and drew up the blind from the window. And then Johnnie saw the wonderful thing which he was never to forget all his life. Out of the little dark room there was a view into a great hall, all lighted up and crammed full of people all sifting round and round in endless lines. Even in church he had never seen so many people together before. Some were seated in red dresses quite high up where everybody could see them, but the others were quite like people at church. It was very strange to see all that assembly, busy about something, sitting in rows and looking at each other, and not a word to be heard. Johnnie gazed and eat his bread and butter with the sugar-plums, and was not quite sure what was the most wonderful.

"What are they doing?" he asked Betsy. But Betsy only put her arm round him and began lo sob and cry. " Oh, bless the child, Lord bless the child. Oh, listen to him, the little innocent."

He did not like to be held to Betsy's breast, nor to bo, wept over in that unpleasant way. Ec shook himself free, and said to the

other woman, " Will you tell me 1 What arc they doing ;>ll staring at each other /"

" It's a trial, my poor, dear, little gentleman. - They arc trying a man for his life."

"No, no, not for his life : though it would have been for his life a little time ago,"' said the other.

Johnnie did not know what it monnfcto try a man for his life; bat lie acccprcd the descripLiou, as a child often does, without further inquiry, and stood and looked at it wondering. But it did not seem to him the extraordinary thing that Betsy had pointed out, and presently he began to pull at her skirts, and asked to go home. That was a very dismal night for Johnnie. They got home, and his things were taken off, and he returned to his toys. To see him playing 1 in his forlorn wjy, all alone with his little serious face was too much for Betsy. But he got very tired of her caresses and attempis at consolation. The night passed on, and bedtime came, but his mother never came homo. He sat and listened for the stops coming along the street, and dozed and woke up fi!>,rtin, and felt as if all the world was empty round him, and only lie and Betsy left, lie began to cry, but he felt as if he dared not make a noise, and sat with his little hoad in his hands trying to keep quiet, though now and (hen breaking into sobs. 0!), whore was mamma? Why didn't .she come'/ Where wai Susie? What had happened that they did not come home ? And i hen the picture books in the shop windows, and the great place full of people, who sat all silent under the light in (hose rows and rows oC seats, and the little sugar-plums upon the bread and butter, all circled confusedly in his mind. And in the end he fell asleep, and was carried up to bed by Batsy, and undressed without knowing it ; but yet even in his sleep seemed to know and feel that there was nobody in the house but Betsy and himself. Nobody but the servant and the little boy ? What a strange, miserable thing in a house that it should be left alone with only the serva.it and the little boy.

Johnnie woke up suddenly out of his confused and broken bleep. His little bed was in the dressing-room that opened into his mother's bedroom. Ho woke ( o hear a sound of crying- and miserable voices, low and interrupted with tears. There was a light in his mother's room, and he could see Susie moving about her, taking off her outdoor dress, while mamma lay back in the easy chair before the little fire, as iC she had been taken ill. She lay there as if she could not move, till a sudden quick pang sprang up in the little boy's heart, and a coldness as of ice crept over him, even in the warmth of his little bed. Could mamma, too, be going to die. ? Mamma too 1 He did not know at all 'what he meant, and ypt he knew that something had happened which was more miserable than anything that ever had been before. He lay still, and gazed out from between the bars of his crib, and listened to the crying. That grown-up people should cry was dreadful. He wanted to get up and creep to his mother's knee, and so at least belong to them, rather than be left out in this dreadful solitude ; but he knew that if he did this they would immediately stop their talking, and tell each other that nothing must be said before the boy. So all that he could do was to lie still, and cry too, the silent tears dropping upon his little pillow, the sound of the low voices, too low to be intelligible, but not to betray the wretchedness that was in them, coming to him like sounds in a dream. Oh, what a different scene from the other awakings, when, half peevish, half frightened out of liis sleep, he had opened his eyes to the dazzling of the candle, and seen papa's laughing face bending over his, and then being carried off, with his little bare feet in papa's hands to keep them warm; even though there might be a lurching like the steamboat, which frightened yet made him laugh. And then the cakes, the oranges, the sip of papa's wine, and, best of all, papa's langh, and his merry face. That little vision out of the past got confused by and b3 r with the crying and the low talk in the next aoom, and then with the people sitting in the court, and the sugar-plums on the b>:ead and butter, till Johnnie, in a great bewilderment of images, not knowing which was which, at least out of that chaos, once more fell asleep.

Chapter 11. When he was a Child .-—(Continued.)

It was not very long after this, but how long his memory could not clearly made out, when Jo'.inuie was senr to the country to his grandfather and grandmother's who lived in a village some twenty miles away. He did not recollect being told about it, or at all prepared for his journey, but only that one morning the old people came in, driving in an old fashioned little light cart, called a shandry in the neighbourhood, and took him away. They were old people who were retired, living in the village in a nice little house of their own, without any particular occupation. The old lady kept poultry, and the old gentleman read the newspapers, and they were very comfortable and happy, with fresh, country complexions, and kind country ways. Grandmamma wore a little brown front with little curls under her crip, which had been the fashion in her day. But her husband looked much handsomer in his own white hair. They were neither of them very like Johnnies mother, who was tall and quiet and very serious, while the old people wore full of cheerfulness and jokes on the day when they came to carry off Johnnie. They came in, and kissed their daughter with scarcely a word, and then the old gentleman sat down in a chair by the fire, with a great many curves about his eyes, and wrinkles in his forehead— which had never been seen there before — while his wife dropped down upon the sofa and began to cry, saying, "Oh that we should have lived to sec this day !" rocking herself backwards and forwards in dreadful distress. "Don't cry, grandmamma," said Johnnie, stealing to her side, and stroking with his hands to consdle her, the skirts of her thick silk gown, Susie went to the other *ide, and put her firm round the old lady, and said the same thing, "Don't cry, grandmamma!" but Susie knew all about the trouble, whatever it was. She was not like her little brother, only unhappy and perplexed to see

the grown-up people cry. " Run away, dear, and pla}'," his mother said, and the poor little boy obeyed, very forlorn and miserable to bealways sent away. But he only went to the back parlour, where his box of bricks was standing on the Jloor, and where he began to build a house, oh, so seriously, as if it were a matter of life and death. The foldiug doors were half open, and he still could see grandmamma crying and wrinkles on grandpapa's face, and hear the murmur of the talk, very serious, and broken now and then with a sob. They were in great trouble —that Johnnie could easily make out : and by this time he was as sure as if some one had told him all about it, that their trouble had something to do with his father — his merry laughing father, who spoilt him so— who was never now to be seen even in the" middle of the night through half shut eyes. The conversation that went on was not much. Grandpapa for his part only sat and stared before him, and occasionally shook his head, and drew his brows together as if it was somebody's fault ; while grandmamma cried and sometimes exclaimed " Oh, how could he do it 1 Had he no thought of you or the children, or how dreadfully you would feel it ?" A- '• If he di J. not think of himself, mother, x how should he think of me?" said Johnnies mother, with a sort of stern smile. "He knew better than any one what the penalty was."

"He was a fool, always a fool," said grandpapa hastily.

" Oh," said grandmamma, " when he was young he was very dear. There never was any one nicer than he was — instead of thinking harm of his mother-in-law, as so many foolish fellows do "

" Hush, mother ! don't speak so that the child can understand. I don't want him to know."

" How can you keep it from him ? It isn'fc possible. Why, everybody ( knows, even the people at the turnpike. They looked at your father and me so pitifully as we came through."

" That for their pity !" said grandpapa, with an angry snap of his fingers, and the colour mounted up to the very edge of his white, hair. Johnnie, peeping timidly out between the legs of the table, thought his mother too, was very angry with grand-; mamma. She was standing in the middle of the room, looking very tall and grand, enough to strike terror into any little shrinking breast, whether it belonged to a child of seven or one of seventy. She said: " Mother 1 Pity, is what I cannot bear. Let them crush us as bad as — but pity, never ! That T cannot bear."

" Oh, my deai\" said grandmamma, " try to be softened and not hardened by this great trouble. These were things which Johnnnie heard partially. Sometimes a few words would get lost as the corner of the table cover fell down between him and the other parlour, like a curtain in a theatre, which was what happened from time to time: and there would be long pauses in which nothing at all was said, but only a little sob from grandmamma, or the tchick, tchick of inarticulate comment which the old man made, or the mother or Susie moving across the room. There is nothing more terrible than those long pauses in which those who have come to console the sufferers can find nothing to say, when words are impossible and the silence of -the little company which cannot be broken save on one subject, becomes more intolerable than if no consolation had been attempted at all.

Then they had a sort of dreary dinner, to prepare for which Johnnie and his bricks had to be removed into one corner. They all sat down round the table, grandpapa still giving a tchick, tchick from time to time, and grandmamma stopping in the midst of a mouthful to dry her eyes. Johnnie himself was hungry, but it was'difficult to eat when everybody was so miserable, and when he asked for a little more they all looked at him as if he had said something wrong.

" Poor child, he had always a good appetite, bless him," grandmamma said, laying down her knife and fork with a little 'sob. "What a good thing it is that nothing matters very much at his age."' Johnnie did not say that it mattered very much — indeed he had no words to use : but his little heart throbbed up, in his throat, and he could not eat a morsel of'his second help. Oh, if anyone had know how forlorn that little heart was, groping among the mysteries with- which he was surrounded, which he could not understand I All he could do was to gaze at the grown-up people who were so hnrd upon him, who did not understand him, any more than he understood them. Grandpapa, though he went on with his tchick, tchick at intervals, made a tolerable meal, and thought he could taste a bit of cheese after all the rest had done.

" Meat has no savour to people in trouble," he said, " but sometimes you can taste a bit of cheese when j r ou can take nothing else." All the same, however, he made a vers^ good meal. Cv

Home time after this it was suddenly intimated to Johnnie that he was going "back" withthe old people," "Grandpapa and grandmamma are going to take you with them," " Susie said, seeking him out in the back parlour where he had relinquished the bricks and taken to Robinson Crusoe, and began again to wonder whether, in spite of the placid policeman, the savages, after all, might not have something to do with the disappearance of papa.

" Oh, what a lucky boy you are, Jack ! You are going to thivc back between them, in the shandry and stay there for a change —for mamma thinks you are not looking very well. 0 you lucky little boy !"

Though Susie said this as though she envied him, Johnnie conld see that in her mind she thought it was a good thing that he should be going away. And his poor little heart which was so silent, gave a great throb and cry, " Why do you want to send me away ?"

"It is because mamma things you are so pale— ruid that a change will do you good," said Susie. She said it as if it was a lesson she had learnt, repeating the same words. "You .ire to make haste and get on your things, and not keep them waiting. You can take your book with you if you like,"

she said. And then Betsy came in with the little blue pilot cloth topcoat which was so thick and warm, and the comforter, and a fur cap which papa had bought for Johnnie in old days when he used to take the little boy out for drives. The sight of this was too much for the child. He rushed out to the front hall where mamma was standing watching her mother mount into the shandry, and caught hold of her by the skirts of her dress : — " I want papa !" I want papa t" said Johnnie, flinging himself upon his mother. The cry was so piercing that it went out into the street where old Mrs Standford was arranging her raps round her, and making a warm seat between herself and her husband for the child. "Tchick tchick!" said the old gentleman, standing on the pavement before the open door. Mamma caught Johnnie in her arms and gave him a hug which was almost fierce, to tomf ort him as well as to take goodbye of him and then she lifted him up beside his grandmother and tucked him in. " Mind you are a good boy, and dont trouble granny," she said, bnt took no notice of his crying or of the trouble on his little face. Looking back as they drove away he could see her standing, very pale in her black dress, and Susie by her, who was waving her hand, and calling out goodbye. Betsy stood behind them, crying, but neither his mother nor his sister seemed to be sorry to see him go away. He looked back at them with a dreadful choking iv his throat, and for years after saw it all like a picture— the two figures in the doorway and Betsy crying behind. Susie smiled and waved her hand, but his mother neither wept nor smiled. She was all black and white, like a woman cut out of marble, as though nothing would move her more. And that was the last that Johnnie saw of them for years.

The house to which he went at first was not the place in which he grew up : for the grand-parents it seemed were on the eve of a removal. Everything was new in the now house to which they took him,and which was a very neat little red brick house, with green shutters, like a house in a story book. It stood in the village street, with a little garden full of lilac and rose bushes in front, and a large garden with everything in it, from lilies to cabbages behind. Nothing could exceed the comforts, or the neatness, or the quiet of this little place. There was only one servant, as at home ; but probably she was a better servant than Betsy : and there was a gardener besides, who did a great many odd jobs in the house, and now and then, took Johnny out with him upon wonderful expeditions to the moor which lay just outside the last houses of the village. It was the most wonderful moor that ever was seen, sometimes golden with gorse, sometimes purple with heather, with wild little black pools in it, which looked as if they went down into the very heart of the earth, and here and there a little ragged tree, which the wind had blown into corners and elbows, and which stood and struggled for bare life with every storm that blew. The wind blew on the moors so fresh and keen that Johnnies cheeks got to be like two roses, and his little body strengthened and lengthened, and ho grew into a strong and likely lad without any fancies or delicacies, or anything at all out of the way about him. The grandparents were more kind than words could say ; that is they were not kind, but only loved the child with all their hearts, which is the one thing in the world which is better than kindness. He did nothing but play for a year or two, and then he had lessons from the curate, and learnt a great deal, and was trained up in all the duties which can be required from a boy. There could not have been a happier child ; he was the king of the littlehouse, and of the two old people's hearts, and of Sarah the maid and Benjamin the gardener, and of the donkey and cart. And in the village itself he was quite a considerable person, ranking next after the Rector's boys, and above the doctor's son, who was delicate and spoilt.

This change of life worked a great change in every way in the boy. He was removed altogether from his own childish beginnings and all those scenes which had impressed themselves on his mind in the mists of early recollection. He had become the son of his grandfather and grandmother, who were old aud comfortable, and quiet, and never stepped beyond their routine or did differently to-day from Avhat they had done yesterday. The vision of his father had gone altogether from his life, and his mother was as much or even more lost, for her aspect was completely changed to him. She had ceased to be his mother, and become Emily, which wasthenameby which he always heard her called, a person found fault with sometimes, discussed and N criticised, about whom there were shakings of the head between the grandparents, complaints that she liked her own will and would have her own way. By dint of hearing her spoken of like this for years, and hearing very little of her in any other way, John came to have a sort of impression that she was only an elder sister, whom he too might call Emily, who had been very long auiay from home, and who had departed from all their traditions. In his mind he came to feel himself a sort of little uncle to Susie, which, of course, being grandmother's son, was what he would naturally be. He fell into all the old people's ways of thinking, feeling sorry in a disapproving way that Emily and her daughter never came to see them, yet feeling this more as a fault in them than as anything that told upon himself. Children and old people are more near to each other than the old and tho middle aged, and Johnny made a far better child than Emily, who herself was older than her father and mother. He redressed the balance, and by skipping:, as it were, a generation, set them ri^ht ae;ain in their parental place. But the effect upon him was very confusing. Emily did not write very often, and scarcely at all to the boy. When she did send him a little letter to himself at Christmas, or on his birthday, it was without any appreciation of the fact that Johnnie had grown into John, and was no longer a child: and her letters fco the old people were bulletins of life rather than familiar letters. She told them what she was doing, and how Susie was getting on, and what sort of weather it was— hot or cold—and that she

was quite wellin health, or else had little ailments, of which she soon hoped to be well : but there was nothing in these epistles to interest the boy. "As a matter of fact he was much disposed" in his heart to the conclusion that Emily, was not sympathetic, and was very fond of having her own way. His way was that of the elder world, and was quite different from hers, and for years he had ceased to wonder why it was the letters were addressed to Mrs Sandford, and he too bore that name. lie was so little when these changes happened that he was very hazy in. his mind about the circumstances, and very far from clear that he had ever been anything but John Sandford. As a matter of fact he never discussed this matter with himself. One does not naturally enter into discussions about one's self. Even the most strained of circumstances appear to us all quite simple and easy when they concern ourselves. He was quite natural—everything about him was quite natural, he felt no mystery in his own being or surroundings, and — whatever might have been said or felt at the time when he came to his grandfather's — neither did anyone else. Indeed in the new place where they had settled, nobody knew anything of Mr Sandford's daughter, nor of their previous history at all.

And yet at the bottom of his heart John had forgotten nothing. Those far distant scenes were to him like a dream, like a play he had seen sometimes (though he had never been at the theatre in his life) like a story that had been told him, but far more vivid than any story. He recollected those wakings in the middle of the night, and the dazzling of the candle in his eyes, and his father's face — and how he was carried down to the parlour in his nightgown, and the table in all the disorder of supper, with oranges and cake, and a little wine out of his father's glass — and of the other face on the other side of the fire which would look on disapprovingly, and as soon as possible bear him off again into the darkness of bed. The look on that other face was quite what he would have expected from Emily, that grownup uncomfortable child of whom the grandparents disapproved. The other scene of the diama came also fitfully to John's mind from time to time — the back parlour where he was sent to play with his bricks, and then Robinson Crusoe, and the trouble in his mind lest the savages should have got papa ; and then that strange silent spectacle of the lighted court with the judges sitting (as he "knew, now) and the little sugarplums sprinkled upon the bread and butter : and then the old people coming to dinner, and grandmamma crying and grandfather with his "tchicktchick," and the shandry in- which he was carried, away, with Betsy crying and Susie waving her hand, and mamma neither smiling nor crying (always so like Emily !) at the open door : and the impression through everything that nothing was to be said before the boy. All this was as distinct in his mind as' it ever had been — which perhaps was not saying much : for all was misty with childhood, imperfect in outline, running into such wildernesses of ignorance on either side; but yet so very certain, never forgotten, always at the same point. His mind varied upon matters of every day, and he got to see what happened last year in a different light after passing through the experiences of this year. But nothing changed for him those early scenes : they were beyond the action of experience ; they were the same to him at fifteen as they had been when they happened — misty, incomprehensible, yet quite certain and true.

He was the son of his grandparents, as has been said. He was like a boy who had never had either father or mother when he set out upon the active way of his life. And how he came to work in that early drama of the beginning, with all the later incidents, and how he was affected by it for good and evil, has now to be shown in the story of John Sandford, who was his father's son, though he knew nothing of him, and did not even bear his name.

(To he continued)