LITMIR.BIZ

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watched every look of George, but he said nothing at the time.

      “Good-by, little village church, where I went to church man and boy; good-by, churchyard, where my mother lies; there will be no church bells, Susan, where I am going; no Sunday bells to remind me of my soul and home.”

      These words, which he spoke with great difficulty, were hardly out of young Fielding's mouth when a very painful circumstance occurred; one of those things that seem the contrivance of some malignant spirit. The church bells in a moment struck up their merriest peal!

      George Fielding started, he turned pale and his lips trembled. “Are they mocking me?” he cried. “Do they take a thought what I am going through this moment, the hard-hearted—”

      “No, no, no!” cried William; “don't think it, George; I know what 'tis—I'll tell ye.”

      “What's it?”

      “Well, it is—well, George, it is Tom Clarke and Esther Borgherst married to-day. Only they couldn't have the ringers till the afternoon.”

      “Why, Will, they have only kept company a year, and Susan and I have kept company three years; and Tom and Esther are married to-day; and what are George and Susan doing to-day? God help me! Oh, God help me! What shall I do? what shall I do?” And the stout heart gave way, and George Fielding covered his face with his hands and burst out sobbing and crying.

      Susan flung her arms round his neck. “Oh! George, my pride is all gone; don't go, don't think to go; have pity on us both, and don't go.” And she clung to him—her bonnet fallen off, her hair disheveled—and they sobbed and wept in one another's arms.

      Meadows writhed with the jealous anguish this sad sight gave him, and at that moment he could have cursed the whole creation. He tried to fly, but he was rooted to the spot. He leaned sick as death against the palings.

      George and Susan cried together, and then they wiped one another's eyes like simple country folk with one pocket-handkerchief; and then they kissed one another in turn, and made each other's tears flow fast again; and again wiped one another's eyes with one handkerchief.

      Meadows griped the palings convulsively—hell was in his heart.

      “Poor souls, God help them!” said William to himself in his purified heart.

      The silence their sorrow caused all around was suddenly invaded by a voice that seemed to come from another world—it was Grandfather Fielding. “The autumn sun is not so warm as she used to be!”

      Yes, there was the whole map of humanity on that little spot in the county of Berks. The middle-aged man, a schemer, watching the success of his able scheme, and stunned and wounded by its recoil. And old age, callous to noble pain, all alive to discomfort, yet man to the last—blaming any one but Number One, cackling against heavenly bodies, accusing the sun and the kitchen fire of frigidity—not his own empty veins! And the two poor young things sobbing as if their hearts would break over their first great earthly sorrow.

      George was the first to recover himself.

      “Shame upon me!” he cried; he drew Susan to his bosom, and pressed a long, burning kiss upon her brow.

      And now all felt the wrench was coming. George, with a wild, half-terrified look, signaled William to come to him.

      “Help me, Will! you see I have no more manhood than a girl.”

      Susan instinctively trembled. George once more pressed his lips to her, as if they would grow there. William took her hand. She trembled more and more.

      “Take my hand; take your brother's hand, my poor lass,” said he.

      She trembled violently; and then George gave a cry that seemed to tear his heart, and darted from them in a moment.

      Poor Susan uttered more than one despairing scream, and stretched out both her hands for George. He did not see her, for he dared not look back.

      “Bob, loose the dog,” muttered William hastily, in a broken voice.

      The dog was loosed, and ran after George, who, he thought, was only going for a walk. Susan was sinking pale and helpless upon her brother's bosom.

      “Pray, sister,” said gentle William; “pray, sister, as I must.”

      A faint shiver was all the answer; her senses had almost left her.

      When George was a little way up the hill, something ran suddenly against his legs——he started—it was Carlo. He turned and lifted up his hands to Heaven; and William could see that George was blessing him for this. Carlo was more than a dog to poor George at that cruel moment. Soon after that, George and Carlo reached the crown of the hill. George's figure stood alone a moment between them and the sky. He was seen to take his hat off, and raise his hands once more to Heaven, while he looked down upon all he loved and left; and then he turned his sorrowful face again toward that distant land—and they saw him no more!

      CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      The world is full of trouble.

      While we are young we do not see how true this ancient homely saying is.

      That wonderful dramatic prologue, the first chapter of Job, is but a great condensation of the sorrows that fall like hail upon many a mortal house. Job's black day, like the day of the poetic prophets—the true sacri vates of the ancient world—is a type of a year—a bitter human year. It is terrible how quickly a human landscape all gilded meadow, silver river and blue sky can cloud and darken.

      George Fielding had compared himself this very day to an oak tree, “Even so am I rooted to my native soil.” His fate accepted his simile. The oak of centuries yields to an impalpable antagonist, whose very name stands in proverbs for weakness and insignificance. This thin, light trifle, rendered impetuous by motion, buffets the king of the forest, tears his roots with fury out of the earth, and lays his towering head in the dust; and even so circumstances, none of them singly irresistible, converging to one point, buffeted sore another oak pride of our fields, and, for aught I know, of our whole island—an honest English yeoman; and tore him from his farm, from his house hard by his mother's grave, from the joy of his heart, his Susan, and sent him who had never traveled a hundred miles in his life across a world of waters to keep sheep at the Antipodes. A bereaved and desolate heart went with Farmer Dodd in the gig to Newborough; sad, desolate and stricken hearts remained behind. When two loving hearts are torn bleeding asunder it is a shade better to be the one that is driven away into action, than the bereaved twin that petrifies at home.

      The bustle, the occupation, the active annoyances are some sort of bitter distraction to the unfathomable grief—it is one little shade worse to lie solitary and motionless in the old scenes from which the sunlight is now fled.

      It needed but a look at Susan Merton, as she sat moaning and quivering from head to foot in George's kitchen, to see that she was in no condition to walk back to Grassmere Farm to-night.

      So as she refused—almost violently refused—to stay at “The Grove,” William harnessed one of the farm-horses to a cart and took her home round by the road.

      “It is six miles that way 'stead of three, but then we shan't jolt her going that way,” thought William.

      He walked by the side of the cart in silence.

      She never spoke but once all the journey, and that was about half way, to complain in a sort of hopeless, pitiful tone that she was cold. It was a burning afternoon.

      William took off his coat, and began to tie it round her by means of the sleeves; Susan made a little, silent, peevish and not very rational resistance; William tied it round her by brotherly force.

      They reached her home; when she got out of the cart her eye was fixed, her cheek white, she seemed like one in a dream.

      She

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