 8. Nothing could be further from Mr. Terrell's intention than to suffer his project to be thus terminated. No sooner was he freed from the fear of his housekeeper's interference than he changed the whole system of his conduct. He ordered Miss Melville to be closely confined to her apartment, and deprived of all means of communicating her situation to any one out of his own house. He placed over her a female servant, in whose discretion he could confide, and who, having formerly been honoured with the amorous notices of the squire, considered the distinctions that were paid to Emily at Terrell Place as an usurpation upon her more reasonable claims. The squire himself did everything in his power to blast the young lady's reputation, and represented to his attendance these precautions as necessary to prevent her from eloping to his neighbour and plunging herself in total ruin. As soon as Miss Melville had been twenty-four hours in endurance, and there was some reason to suppose that her spirit might be subdued to the emergency of her situation, Mr. Terrell thought proper to go to her, to explain the grounds of her present treatment, and acquaint her with the only means by which she could hope for a change. Emily no sooner saw him than she turned towards him with an air of greater firmness than perhaps she had ever assumed in her life, and accosted him thus. Well, sir, is it you? I wanted to see you. It seems I am shut up here by your orders. What does this mean? What right have you to make a prisoner of me? What do I owe you? Your mother left me a hundred pounds. Have you ever offered to make any addition to my fortune? But if you had, I do not want it. I do not pretend to be better than the children of other poor parents. I can maintain myself as they do. I prefer liberty to wealth. I see you are surprised at the resolution I exert. But ought I not to turn again when I am trampled upon? I should have left you before now, if Mrs. Jakeman had not over persuaded me, and if I had not thought better of you than by your present behaviour I find you deserve. But now, sir, I intend to leave your house this moment, and insist upon it, that you do not endeavour to prevent me." Thus saying she rose and went towards the door while Mr. Tyrell stood thunderstruck at her magnanimity, seeing, however, that she was upon the point of being out of the reach of his power he recovered himself and pulled her back. What is in the wind now? Do you think, strumpet, that you shall get the better of me by sheer impudence? Sit down! Rest you satisfied. So you want to know by what right you are here, do you? By the right of possession. This house is mine, and you are in my power. There is no Mrs. Jakeman now to spirit you away, nor no Falkland to bully for you. I have countermined you, dammy, and blown up your schemes. Do you think I will be contradicted and opposed for nothing? When did you ever know anybody resist my will without being made to repent? And shall I now be brow-beaten by a chitty-faced girl? I have not given you a fortune. Damn you! Who brought you up? I will make you a bill for clothing and lodging. Do not you know that every creditor has a right to stop his runaway debtor? You may think as you please, but here you are till you marry Grimes. Heaven and earth shall not prevent, but I will get the better of your obstinacy. Ungenerous, unmerciful man! And so it is enough for you that I have nobody to defend me. But I am not so helpless as you may imagine. You may imprison my body, but you cannot conquer my mind. Marry Mr. Grimes! And is this the way to bring me to your purpose? Every hardship I suffer puts still further distant the end for which I am thus unjustly treated. You are not used to have your will contradicted. When did I ever contradict it? And, in a concern that is so completely my own, shall my will go for nothing? Would you lay down this rule for yourself and suffer no other creature to take the benefit of it? I want nothing of you. How dare you refuse me the privilege of a reasonable being to live unmolested in poverty and innocence? What sort of man do you show yourself? You that lay claim to the respect and applause of every one that knows you. The spirited reproaches of Emily had at first the effect to fill Mr. Terrell with astonishment and make him feel abashed and overawed in the presence of this unprotected innocent. But his confusion was the result of surprise. When the first emotion wore off he cursed himself for being moved by her expostulations, and was ten times more exasperated against her for daring to defy his resentment at a time when she had everything to fear. His despotic and unforgiving propensities stimulated him to a degree little short of madness. At the same time his habits, which were pensive and gloomy, led him to meditate a variety of schemes to punish her obstinacy. He began to suspect that there was little hope of succeeding by open force, and therefore determined to have recourse to treachery. He found, in grimes, an instrument sufficiently adapted to his purpose. This fellow, without an atom of intentional malice, was fitted by the mere coarseness of his perceptions, for the perpetration of the greatest injuries. He regarded both injury and advantage merely as they related to the gratifications of appetite, and considered it an essential in true wisdom to treat with insult the effeminacy of those who suffer themselves to be tormented with ideal misfortunes. He believed that no happier destiny could befall a young woman than to be his wife, and he conceived that that termination would amply compensate for any calamities she might suppose herself to undergo in the interval. He was therefore easily profiled upon, by certain temptations which Mr. Terrell knew how to employ, to take part in the plot into which Miss Melville was meant to be betrayed. Matters being thus prepared, Mr. Terrell proceeded, through the means of the jailer, for the experience he already had of personal discussion did not incline him to repeat his visits, to play upon the fears of his prisoner. This woman, sometimes under the pretense of friendship and sometimes with open malice, informed Emily, from time to time, of the preparations that were making for her marriage. One day the squire had rode over to look at a neat little farm which was destined for the habitation of the new-married couple, and yet another, a quantity of livestock and household furniture was procured that everything might be ready for their reception. She then told her, of a license that was bought, a parson in readiness, and a day fixed for the nuptials. When Emily endeavored, though with increased misgivings, to ridicule these proceedings as absolutely nugatory without her consent, her artful governant related several stories of forced marriages, and assured her that neither protestations nor silence nor fainting would be of any avail, either to suspend the ceremony or to set it aside when performed. The situation of Miss Melville was in an eminent degree pitiable. She had no intercourse but with her persecutors. She had not a human being with whom to consult who might afford her the smallest degree of consolation and encouragement. She had fortitude, but it was neither confirmed nor directed by the dictates of experience. It could not therefore be expected to be so inflexible, as with better information it would, no doubt, have been found. She had a clear and noble spirit, but she had some of her sexes' errors. Her mind sunk under the uniform terrors with which she was assailed, and her health became visibly impaired. Her firmness, being thus far undermined, grimes in pursuance of his instructions, took care in his next interview to throw out an insinuation that, for his own part, he had never cared for the match, and since she was so averse to it, would be better pleased that it should never take place. Between one and the other, however, he was got into a scrape, and now he supposed he must marry, willy-nilly. The two squires would infallibly ruin him upon the least appearance of backwardness on his part, as they were accustomed to do every inferior that resisted their will. Emily was rejoiced to find her admirer in so favourable a disposition, and earnestly pressed him to give effect to this humane declaration. Her representations were full of eloquence and energy. Grimes appeared to be moved at the fervency of her manner, but objected the resentment of Mr. Tyrell and his landlord. At length, however, he suggested a project, in consequence of which he might assist her in her escape, but it's ever coming to their knowledge. As indeed, there was no likelihood that their suspicions would fix upon him. "'To be sure,' said he, "'you have refused me in a disdainful sort of way,' as a man may say, "'may have you thought I was no better than a brute? But I bear you no malice, and I will show you that I am more kind-hearted than you have been willing to think. It is a strange sort of a vagary you have taken to stand in your own light, and disoblige all your friends. But if you are resolute, do you see? I scorned to be the husband of a lass that is not every bit as willing as I, and so I will even help to put you in a condition to follow your own inclinations.'" Emily listened to these suggestions at first with eagerness and approbation, but her fervency somewhat abated when they came to discuss the minute parts of the undertaking. It was necessary, as Grimes informed her, that her escape should be affected in the dead of the night. He would conceal himself for that purpose in the garden, and be provided with false keys by which to deliver her from her prison. These circumstances were by no means adapted to calm her perturbed imagination. To throw herself into the arms of the man whose intercourse she was employing every method to avoid, and whom, under the idea of a partner for life, she could least of all men endure, was no doubt an extraordinary proceeding. The attendant circumstances of darkness and solitude aggravated the picture. The situation of Tyrell Place was uncommonly lonely. It was three miles from the nearest village, and not less than seven from that in which Mrs. Jakeman's sister resided, under whose protection Miss Melville was desirous of placing herself. The ingenuous character of Emily did not allow her once to suspect Grimes of intending to make an ungenerous and brutal advantage of these circumstances, but her mind involuntarily revolted against the idea of committing herself, alone, to the disposal of a man whom she had lately been accustomed to consider as the instrument of her treacherous relation. After having for some time revolved these considerations, she thought of the expedient of desiring Grimes to engage Mrs. Jakeman's sister to wait for her at the outside of the garden. But this Grimes peremptrally refused. He even flew into a passion at the proposal. It showed very little gratitude to desire him to disclose to other people his concern in this dangerous affair. For his part he was determined in consideration of his own safety never to appear in it to any living soul. If Miss did not believe him when he made this proposal out of pure good nature, and would not trust him a single inch, she might even see to the consequences herself. He was resolved to condescend no further to the whims of a person who, in her treatment of him, had shown herself as proud as Lucifer himself. Emily exerted herself to appease his resentment, but all the eloquence of her new confederate could not prevail upon her instantly to give up her objection. She desired till the next day to consider of it. The day after was fixed by Mr. Terrell for the marriage ceremony. In the meantime she was pestered with intimations in a thousand forms of the fate that so nearly awaited her. The preparations were so continued, methodical and regular, as to produce in her the most painful and aching anxiety. If her heart attained a moment's intermission upon the subject, her female attendant was sure, by some sly hint or sarcastical remark, to put a speedy termination to her tranquillity. She felt herself, as she afterwards remarked, alone, uninstructed, just broken loose as it were from the trammels of infancy, without one single creature to concern himself in her fate. She, who till then never knew an enemy, had now for three weeks not seen the glimpse of a human countenance that she had not good reason to consider as wholly estranged to her at least, if not unrelentingly bent on her destruction. She now, for the first time, experienced the anguish of never having known her parents, and being cast upon the charity of people with whom she had too little equality, to hope to receive from them the offices of friendship. The succeeding night was filled with the most anxious thoughts, when a momentary oblivion stole upon her senses, her distempered imagination conjured up a thousand images of violence and falsehood. She saw herself in the hands of her determined enemies, who did not hesitate by the most daring treachery to complete her ruin. Her waking thoughts were not more consoling. The struggle was too great for her constitution. As morning approached, she resolved at all hazards to put herself into the hands of grimes. This determination was no sooner made than she felt her heart sensibly lightened. She could not conceive any evil which could result from this proceeding, that deserved to be put in the balance against those which, under the roof of her kinsmen, appeared unavoidable. When she communicated her determination to grimes, it was not possible to say whether he received pleasure or pain from the intimation. He smiled indeed, but his smile was accompanied by a certain abrupt ruggedness of countenance, so that it might equally well be the smile of sarcasm or of congratulation. He, however, renewed his assurances of fidelity to his engagements and punctuality of execution. Meanwhile the day was interspersed with nuptial presence and preparations, all indicating the firmness as well as security of the directors of the scene. Emily had hoped that as the crisis approached they might have remitted something of their usual diligence. She was resolved, in that case, if a fair opportunity had offered, to give the slip both to her jailers and to her new and reluctantly chosen confederate. But, though extremely vigilant for that purpose, she found the execution of the idea impracticable. At length the night so critical to her happiness approached. The mind of Emily could not fail on this occasion to be extremely agitated. She had first exerted all her perspicacity to elude the vigilance of her attendant. This insolent and unfeeling tyrant, instead of any relentings, had only sought to make sport of her anxiety. Accordingly, in one instance she hid herself, and, suffering Emily to suppose that the coast was clear, met her at the end of the gallery, near the top of the staircase. "'How do you do, my dear?' said she, with an insulting tone. "'And so the little deer thought itself cunning enough to outwit me, did it? Oh, it was a sly little gypsy. Go, go back, love, troop!' Emily felt deeply the trick that was played upon her. She sighed, but disdained to return any answer to this low vulgarity. Being once more in her chamber, she sat down in a chair and remained buried in reverie for more than two hours. After this she went to her drawers and turned over in a hurrying, confused way, her linen and clothes, having in her mind the provision it would be necessary to make for her elopement. Her jailer officiously followed her from place to place, and observed what she did for the present in silence. It was now the hour of rest. "'Good night, child!' said this saucy girl, in the act of retiring. "'It is time to lock up. For the next few hours the time is your own. Make the best use of it. Do you think he can creep out at the keyhole, lovey? At eight o'clock you see me again. And then—and then,' added she, clapping her hands, "'it is all over. The sun is not sure to rise, than you and your honest man to be made one.' There was something in the tone with which this slut uttered her farewell, that suggested the question to Emily. What does she mean? Is it possible that she should know what has been planned for the next few hours?' This was the first moment that suspicion had offered itself, and its continuance was short. With an aching heart she folded up the few necessaries she intended to take with her. She instinctively listened, with an anxiety that would almost have enabled her to hear the stirring of a leaf. From time to time she thought her ear was struck with the sound of feet, but the treading, if treading it were, was so soft that she could never ascertain whether it were a real sound or the mere creature of the fancy. Then all was still, as if the universal motion had been at rest. By and by she conceived she overheard a noise as a buzzing and low-muttered speech. Her heart palpitated, for a second time she began to doubt the honesty of grimes. The suggestion was now more anxious than before, but it was too late. Presently she heard the sound of a key in her chamber door, and the rustic made his appearance. She started and cried, "'Are we discovered? Did not I hear you speak?' Grimes advanced on tiptoe with his finger to his lip. "'No, no,' replied he, all is safe.' He took her by the hand, led her in silence out of the house, and then across the garden. Emily examined with her eye the doors and passages as they proceeded, and looked on all sides with fearful suspicion. But everything was as vacant and still as she herself could have wished. Grimes opened a back door of the garden, already unlocked, that led into an unfrequented lane. There stood two horses, ready equipped for the journey, and fastened by their bridles to a post not six yards distant from the garden. Grimes pushed the door after them. "'By Gemini,' said he, my heart was in my mouth. As I come along to you, I saw Munn, Kochi, pop along from the back door to the stables. He was without a hop-step and jump of me. But he had a lantern in his hand, and he did not see me being as I was darkling.' Saying this, he assisted Miss Melville to mount. He troubled her little during the route. On the contrary, he was remarkably silent and contemplative. A circumstance by no means disagreeable to Emily, to whom his conversation had never been acceptable. After having proceeded about two miles, they turned into a wood, through which the road led to the place of their destination. The night was extremely dark, at the same time that the air was soft and mild, it being now the middle of summer. Under pretense of exploring the way, Grimes contrived, when they had already penetrated into the midst of this gloomy solitude, to get his horse abreast with that of Miss Melville, and then suddenly reaching out his hand, seized hold of her bridle. "'I think we may as well stop here a bit,' said he. "'Stop!' exclaimed Emily, with surprise. Why should we stop? Mr. Grimes, what do you mean?' "'Come, come,' said he. Never trouble yourself to wonder. Did you think I were such a goose to take all this trouble merely to gratify your whim? A faith nobody shall find me a pack horse to go of other folks's errands without knowing a reason why. I cannot say that I much-minded to have you at first, but your ways are enough to stir the blood of my grandad. Far-fetched and dear-bought is always relishing. Your consent was so hard to gain that Squire thought it was surest asking in the dark. I said, however, I would have no such doings in his house, and so do you see we are come'd here. "'For God's sake, Mr. Grimes, think what you are about. You cannot be base enough to ruin a poor creature who has put herself under your protection.' "'Ruin? No, no, I will make an honest woman of you, when all is done. Nay, none of your heirs, no tricks upon travellers. I have you here as safe as a horse in a pound. There is not a house nor a shed within a mile of us. And if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith you are a delicate morsel, and there is no time to be lost.'" Miss Melville had but an instant in which to collect her thoughts. She felt that there was little hope of softening the obstinate and insensible brute in whose power she was placed. But the presence of mind and intrepidity annexed to her character did not now desert her. Grimes had scarcely finished his harangue when, with a strong and unexpected jerk, she disengaged the bridle from his grasp, and at the same time put her horse upon full speed. She had scarcely advanced twice the length of her horse, when Grimes recovered from his surprise, and pursued her, inexpressibly mortified at being so easily overreached. The sound of his horse behind served but to rouse more completely the metal of that of Emily. Whether by accident or sagacity, the animal pursued without a fault the narrow and winding way, and the chase continued the whole length of the wood. At the extremity of this wood there was a gate. The recollection of this softened a little the cutting disappointment of Grimes as he thought himself secure of putting an end by its assistance to the career of Emily. Nor was it very probable that anybody would appear to interrupt his designs in such a place, and in the dead and silence of the night. By the most extraordinary accident, however, they found a man on horseback in wait at this gate. Help! Help! exclaimed the affrighted Emily. Thieves! Murder! Help! A man was Mr. Falkland. Grimes knew his voice, and therefore, though he attempted a sort of sullen resistance, it was feebly made. Two other men, whom by reason of the darkness he had not at first seen, and who were Mr. Falkland's servants, hearing the bustle of their encounter, and alarmed for the safety of their master, rode up. And then Grimes disappointed at the loss of his gratification, and admonished by conscious guilt, shrunk from further parley, and rode off in silence. It may seem strange that Mr. Falkland should thus a second time have been the saviour of Miss Melville, and that under circumstances the most unexpected and singular. But in this instance it is easily to be accounted for. He had heard of a man who lurked about this wood for robbery, or some other bad design, and that it was conjectured this man was Hawkins, another of the victims of Mr. Terrell's rural tyranny, whom I shall immediately have occasion to introduce. Mr. Falkland's compassion had already been strongly excited in favour of Hawkins. He had in vain endeavoured to find him, and do him good, and he easily conceived that if the conjecture which had been made in this instance proved true, he might have it in his power not only to do what he had always intended, but further to save from a perilous offence against the laws and society a man who appeared to have strongly imbibed the principles of justice and virtue. He took with him two servants, because going with the express design of encountering robbers, if robbers should be found, he believed he should be inexcusable if he did not go provided against possible accidents. But he had directed them, at the same time that they kept within call, to be out of the reach of being seen, and it was only the eagerness of their zeal that had brought them up thus early in the present encounter. This new adventure promised something extraordinary. Mr. Falkland did not immediately recognise Miss Melville, and the person of Grimes was that of a total stranger whom he did not recollect to have ever seen. But it was easy to understand the merits of the case, and the propriety of interfering. The resolute manner of Mr. Falkland, conjoined with the dread which Grimes, oppressed with a sense of wrong, entertained of the opposition of so elevated a personage, speedily put the ravisher to flight. Emily was left alone with her deliverer. He found her much more collected and calm than could reasonably have been expected from a person who had been a moment before in the most alarming situation. She told him of the place to which she desired to be conveyed, and he immediately undertook to escort her. As they went along, she recovered that state of mind which inclined her to make a person to whom she had such repeated obligations, and who was so eminently the object of her admiration, acquainted with the events that had recently befallen her. Mr. Falkland listened with eagerness and surprise. Though he had already known various instances of Mr. Trell's mean jealousy and unfeeling tyranny, this surpassed them all, and he could scarcely credit his ears while he heard the tale. His brutal neighbor seemed to realize all that has been told of the passions of fiends. Miss Melville was obliged to repeat, in the course of her tale, her kinsman's rude accusation against her, of entertaining a passion for Mr. Falkland, and this she did with the most bewitching simplicity and charming confusion. Though this part of the tale was a source of real pain to her deliverer, yet it is not to be supposed but that the flattering partiality of this unhappy girl increased the interest he felt in her welfare, and the indignation he conceived against her infernal kinsman. They arrived without accident at the house of the good lady under whose protection Emily desired to place herself. Here Mr. Falkland willingly left her as in a place of security. Such conspiracies as that of which she was intended to have been the victim, depend for their success upon the person against whom they are formed, being out of the reach of help, and the moment they are detected they are annihilated. Such reasoning will, no doubt, be generally found sufficiently solid, and it appeared to Mr. Falkland perfectly applicable to the present case. But he was mistaken. CHAPTER IX Mr. Falkland had experienced the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Terrell, and was therefore content in the present case with confining his attention to the intended victim. The indignation with which he thought of his neighbour's character was now grown to such a height as to fill him with reluctance to the idea of a voluntary interview. There was indeed another affair which had been contemporary with this, that had once more brought these mortal enemies into a state of contest, and had contributed to raise into a temper little short of madness the already inflamed and corrosive bitterness of Mr. Terrell. There was a tenant of Mr. Terrell, Juan Hawkins. I cannot mention his name without recollecting the painful tragedies that are annexed to it. This Hawkins had originally been taken up by Mr. Terrell, with a view of protecting him from the arbitrary proceedings of a neighbouring squire, though he had now in his turn become an object of persecution to Mr. Terrell himself. The first ground of their connection was this. Hawkins, beside a farm which he rented under the above-mentioned square, had a small freehold estate that he inherited from his father. This, of course, entitled him to a vote in the county elections, and a warmly contested election having occurred, he was required by his landlord to vote for the candidate in whose favour he had himself engaged. Hawkins refused to obey the mandate, and soon after received notice to quit the farm he had at that time rented. It happened that Mr. Terrell had interested himself strongly in behalf of the opposite candidate, and, as Mr. Terrell's estate bordered upon the seat of Hawkins' present residence, the ejected countrymen could think of no better expedient than that of riding over to this gentleman's mansion and relating the case to him. Mr. Terrell heard him through with attention. "'Well, friend,' said he, "'it is very true that I wished Mr. Jackman to carry his election, but to know it is usual in these cases for tenants to vote just as their landlords please. I do not think proper to encourage rebellion.' "'All that is very right, and please you,' replied Hawkins, and I would have voted at my landlord's bidding for any other man in the kingdom but Squire Marlowe. You must know one day his huntsman rode over my fence and so through my best field of standing corn. It was not above a dozen yards about if he had kept the cart-road. The fellow had served me the same sauce and it, please your honour, three or four times before. So I only asked him what he did that for, and whether he had not more conscience than to spoil people's crops of that fashion. Presently the Squire came up. He is but a poor wheezing-faced chicken of a gentleman, saving your honour's reverence, and so he flew into a woundy passion and threatened to horse-whit me. I will do as much in reason to pleasure my landlord as air a tenant has, but I will not give my vote to a man that threatens to horse-whit me. And so, your honour, I, and my wife and three children are to be turned out of house and home, and what am I to do to maintain them, God knows. I have been a hardworking man and have always lived well, and I do think the case is main hard. Squire Underwood turns me out of my farm, and if your honour do not take me in, I know none of the neighbouring gentry will, for fear as they say, of encouraging their own tenants to run rusty too. This representation was not without its effect upon Mr. Terrell. Well, well, man, replied he, we will see what can be done. Order and subordination are very good things, but people should know how much to require. As you tell the story I cannot see that you are greatly to blame. Marlowe is a cox comical prig, that is the truth want, and if a man will expose himself, why he must even take what follows. I do hate a frenchified fop with all my soul, and I cannot say that I am much pleased with my neighbour Underwood for taking the part of such a rascal. Hawkins, I think, is your name? You may call on Barnes my steward to-morrow, and he shall speak to you." While Mr. Terrell was speaking, he recollected that he had a farm vacant, of nearly the same value, as that which Hawkins, at present, rented under Mr. Underwood. He immediately consulted his steward, and finding the things suitable in every respect, Hawkins was installed out of hand in the catalogue of Mr. Terrell's tenants. Mr. Underwood extremely resented this proceeding, which indeed, as being contrary to the understood conventions of the country gentlemen, few people but Mr. Terrell would have ventured upon. There was an end, said Mr. Underwood, to all regulation, if tenants were to be encouraged in such disobedience. It was not a question of this or that candidate, seeing that any gentleman, who was a true friend to his country, would rather lose his election than do a thing which, if once established into a practice, would deprive them forever of the power of managing any election. The laboring people were sturdy and resolute enough of their own accord. It became every day more difficult to keep them under any subordination. And if the gentlemen were so ill-advised as to neglect the public good, and encourage them in their insolence, there was no foreseeing where it would end. Mr. Terrell was not of a stamp to be influenced by these remonstrances. Their general spirit was sufficiently conformable to the sentiments he himself entertained, but he was of too vehement a temper to maintain the character of a consistent politician. And however wrong his conduct might be, he would by no means admit of its being set right by the suggestions of others. The more his patronage of Hawkins was criticized, the more inflexibly he adhered to it. And he was at no loss in clubs and other assemblies to overbear and silence, if not to confute his censures. Besides which Hawkins had certain accomplishments which qualified him to be a favourite with Mr. Terrell. The bluntness of his manner and the ruggedness of his temper gave him some resemblance to his landlord. And as these qualities were likely to be more frequently exercised on such persons as had incurred Mr. Terrell's displeasure then upon Mr. Terrell himself, they were not observed without some degree of complacency. In a word he every day received new marks of distinction from his patron, and after some time was appointed co-agitor to Mr. Barnes under the denomination of Bayliff. It was about the same period that he obtained a lease of the farm of which he was tenant. Mr. Terrell determined, as occasion offered, to promote every part of the family of this favoured dependent. Hawkins had a son, a lad of seventeen of an agreeable person, a ruddy complexion, and of quick and lively parts. This lad was in an uncommon degree the favourite of his father, who seemed to have nothing so much at heart as the future welfare of his son. Mr. Terrell had noticed him two or three times with approbation, and the boy, being fond of the sports of the field, had occasionally followed the hounds and displayed various instances, both of agility and sagacity, in presence of the squire. One day in particular he exhibited himself with uncommon advantage, and Mr. Terrell, without further delay, proposed to his father to take him into his family, and make him whip her in to his hounds, till he could provide him with some more lucrative appointment in his service. This proposal was received by Hawkins with various marks of mortification. He excused himself with hesitation for not accepting the offered favour, said the lad was in many ways useful to him, and hoped his honour would not insist upon depriving him of his assistance. This apology might perhaps have been sufficient with any other man than Mr. Terrell, but it was frequently observed of this gentleman that when he had once formed a determination, however slight, in favour of any measure, he was never afterwards known to give it up, and that the only effect of opposition was to make him eager and inflexible in pursuit of that to which he had before been nearly indifferent. At first he seemed to receive the apology of Hawkins with good humour, and to see nothing in it but what was reasonable. But afterwards, every time he saw the boy, his desire of retaining him in his service was increased, and he more than once repeated to his father the good disposition in which he felt himself towards him. At length he observed that the lad was no more to be seen mingling in his favourite sports, and he began to suspect that this originated in a determination to thwart him in his projects. Roused by this suspicion, which, to a man of Mr. Terrell's character, was not of a nature to brook delay, he sent for Hawkins to confer with him. Hawkins! said he, in a tone of displeasure, I am not satisfied with you. I have spoken to you two or three times about this lad of yours, whom I am desirous of taking into favour. What is the reason, sir, that you seem unthankful and averse to my kindness? You ought to know that I am not to be trifled with. I shall not be contented when I offer my favours to have them rejected by such fellows as you. I made you what you are, and, if I please, can make you more helpless and miserable than you were when I found you. Have a care! And it please your honour, said Hawkins, you have been a very good master to me, and I will tell you the whole truth. I hope you will not be angry. This lad is my favourite, my comfort and the stay of my age. Well, and what, then? Is that a reason you should hinder his preferment? Nay, pray your honour, hear me. I may be very weak for ought I know in this case, but I cannot help it. My father was a clergyman. We have all of us lived in a creditable way, and I cannot bear to think that this poor lad of mine should go to service. For my part, I do not see any good that comes by servants. I do not know your honour, but I think I should not like my Leonard to be such as they. God forgive me if I wrong them. But this is a very dear case, and I cannot bear to risk my poor boy's welfare, when I can so easily, if you please, keep him out of harm's way. At present he is sober and industrious, and without being pert or surly knows what is due to him. I know, your honour, that it is main foolish of me to talk to you thus. But your honour has been a good master to me, and I cannot bear to tell you a lie. Mr. Terrell had heard the whole of this harang in silence, because he was too much astonished to open his mouth. If a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet he could not have testified greater surprise. He had thought that Hawkins was so foolishly fond of his son that he could not bear to trust him out of his presence, but had never in the slightest degree suspected what he now found to be the truth. Oh, you are a gentleman, are you? A pretty gentleman truly. Your father was a clergyman. Your family is too good to enter into my service. Why, you impudent rascal! Was it for this that I took you up, when Mr. Underwood dismissed you for your insolence to him? Have I been nursing a viper in my bosom? Pretty master's manners will be contaminated truly. He will not know what is due to him but will be accustomed to obey orders. You insufferable villain! Get out of my sight! Depend upon it I will have no gentleman on my estate. I will off with them, root and branch, bag and baggage. So do you hear me, sir? Come to me to-morrow morning, bring your son and ask my pardon. Or take my word for it. I will make you so miserable you shall wish you had never been born. This treatment was too much for Hawkins's patience. There is no need, your honour, that I should come to you again about this affair. I have taken up my determination and no time can make any change in it. I am main sorry to displease your worship, and I know that you can do me a great deal of mischief. But I hope you will not be so hard-hearted as to ruin a father only for being fond of his child, even if so be that his fondness should make him do a foolish thing. But I cannot help it, your honour. You must do as you please. The poorest nigger, as a man may say, has some point that he will not part with. I will lose all that I have and go to day labour and my son too if needs must, but I will not make a gentleman servant of him. Very well, friend, very well," replied Mr. Terrell, foaming with rage. Depend upon it, I will remember you. Your pride shall have a downfall. God dammit! Is it come to this? Shall a rascal that farms his forty acres pretend to bear the lord of the manor? I will tread you into paste. Let me advise you scoundrel to shut up your house and fly as if the devil was behind you. You may think yourself happy, if I be not too quick for you yet, if you escape in a whole skin. I would not suffer such a villain to remain upon my land a day longer if I could gain the indies by it. Not so fast, your honour! answered Hawkins sturdily. I hope you will think better of it and see that I have not been to blame. But if you should not, there is some harm that you can do me and some harm that you cannot. Though I am a plain working man, your honour, do you see? Yet I am a man still. No! I have got a lease of my farm, and I shall not quit it a-thatten. I hope there is some law for poor folk, as well as for rich. Mr. Terrell, unused to contradiction, was provoked beyond bearing at that courage and independent spirit of his retainer. There was not a tenant upon his estate, or at least not one of Hawkins' mediocrity of fortune, whom the general policy of landowners, and still more the arbitrary and uncontrollable temper of Mr. Terrell, did not effectually restrain from acts of open defiance. Excellent upon my soul! God damn my blood, but you are a rare fellow. You have a lease, have you? You will not quit, not you. A pretty past things are come to, if a lease can protect such fellows as you against the lord of a manor. But you are for a trial of skill? Oh, very well, friend, very well. With all my soul. Since it has come to that, we will show you some pretty sport before we have done. But get out of my sight, you rascal. I have not another word to say to you. Never darken my doors again. Hawkins, to borrow the language of the world, was guilty in this affair of a double imprudence. He talked to his landlord in a more peremptory manner than the constitution and practices of this country allow, a dependent to assume. But above all, having been thus hurried away by his resentment, he ought to have foreseen the consequences. It was mere madness in him to think of contesting with a man of Mr. Terrell's eminence and fortune. It was a fawn contending with a lion. Nothing could have been more easy to predict than that it was of no avail for him to have right on his side when his adversary had influence and wealth, and therefore could so victoriously justify any extravagancies that he might think proper to commit. This maxim was completely frustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as the co-agitors of their oppression, which were perhaps at first intended, witless and miserable precaution, for the safeguards of the poor. From this moment Mr. Terrell was bent upon Hawkins's destruction, and he left no means unemployed that could either harass or injure the object of his persecution. He deprived him of his appointment of bailiff, and directed Barnes and his other dependents to do him ill offices upon all occasions. Mr. Terrell, by the tenure of his manner, was improprieter of the great tithes, and this circumstance afforded him frequent opportunities of petty altercation. The land of one part of Hawkins's farm, though covered with corn, was lower than the rest, and consequently exposed to occasional inundations from a river by which it was bounded. Mr. Terrell had a dam belonging to this river privately cut, about a fortnight before the season of harvest, and laid the whole under water. He ordered his servants to pull away the fences of the higher ground during the night, and to turn in his cattle to the utter destruction of the crop. These expedients, however, applied to only one part of the property of this unfortunate man. But Mr. Terrell did not stop here. A sudden mortality took place among Hawkins's livestock, attended with very suspicious circumstances. Hawkins's vigilance was strongly excited by this event, and he at length succeeded in tracing the matter so accurately that he conceived he could bring it home to Mr. Terrell himself. Hawkins had hitherto carefully avoided, notwithstanding the injuries he had suffered, the attempting to write himself by legal process, being of opinion that law was better adapted for a weapon of tyranny in the hands of the rich, than for a shield to protect the humbler part of the community against their usurpations. In this last instance however, he conceived that the offence was so atrocious, so to make it impossible that any rank could protect the culprit against the severity of justice. In the sequel he saw reason to applaud himself for his former inactivity in this respect, and to repent that any motive had been strong enough to persuade him into a contrary system. This was the very point to which Mr. Terrell wanted to bring him, and he could scarcely credit his good fortune when he was told that Hawkins had entered an action. His congratulation upon this occasion was immoderate, as he now conceived that the ruin of his late favourite was irretrievable. He consulted his attorney and urged him by every motive he could devise to employ the whole series of his subterfuges in the present affair. The direct repelling of the charge exhibited against him was the least part of his care. The business was, by affidavits, motions, pleas, demurrers, flaws, and appeals, to protract the question from term to term and from court to court. It would, as Mr. Terrell argued, be the disgrace of a civilised country if a gentleman, when insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert the cause into a question of the longest purse and stick in the skirts of his adversary till he had reduced him to beggary. Mr. Terrell, however, was by no means so far engrossed by his lawsuit as to neglect other methods of proceeding offensively against his tenant. Among the various expedients that suggested themselves there was one which, though it tended rather to torment, than irreparably injure the sufferer, was not rejected. This was derived from the particular situation of Hawkins's house, barns, stacks, and outhouses. They were placed at the extremity of a slip of land connecting them with the rest of the farm, and were surrounded on three sides by fields, in the occupation of one of Mr. Terrell's tenants most devoted to the pleasures of his landlord. The road to the market-town ran at the bottom of the largest of these fields, and was directly in view of the front of the house. No inconvenience had yet arisen from that circumstance, as there had always been a broad path that intersected this field, and led directly from Hawkins's house to the road. This path, or private road, was now, by concert of Mr. Terrell and his obliging tenant, shut up so as to make Hawkins a sort of prisoner in his own domains, and oblige him to go near a mile about for the purposes of his traffic. Young Hawkins, the lad who had been the original subject of dispute between his father and the squire, had much of his father's spirit, and felt an uncontrollable indignation against the successive acts of despotism of which he was a witness. His resentment was the greater, because the sufferings to which his parent was exposed, all of them flowed from affection to him, at the same time that he could not propose removing the ground of dispute, as by so doing he would seem to fly in the face of his father's paternal kindness. Upon the present occasion, without asking any counsel but of his own impatient resentment, he went in the middle of the night and moved all the obstructions that had been placed in the way of the old path, broke the padlocks that had been fixed, and threw open the gates. In these operations he did not proceed unobserved, and the next day a warrant was issued for apprehending him. He was accordingly carried before a meeting of justices, and by them committed to the county jail to take his trial for the felony at the next sizes. Mr. Terrell was determined to prosecute the offence with the greatest severity, and his attorney, having made the proper inquiries for that purpose, undertook to bring it under that clause of the Act 9 G-01, commonly called the Black Act, which declares that any person armed with a sword or other offensive weapon, and having his face blackened or being otherwise disguised, appearing in any warren or place where hairs or conies have been or shall be usually kept, and being thereof duly convicted, shall be a judged guilty of felony and shall suffer death, as in the cases of felony, without benefit of clergy. Young Hawkins, it seemed, had buttoned the cape of his great coat over his face, as soon as he perceived himself to be observed, and he was furnished with a wrenching iron for the purpose of setting the padlocks. The attorney further undertook to prove, by sufficient witnesses, that the field in question was a warren in which hairs were regularly fed. Mr. Terrell seized upon these pretenses with inexpressible satisfaction. He prevailed upon the justices, by the picture he drew of the obstinacy and insolent of the Hawkinses, fully to commit the lad upon this miserable charge, and it was by no means so certain as paternal affection would have desired that the same overpowering influence would not cause in the sequel the penal clause to be executed in all its strictness. This was the finishing stroke to Hawkins's miseries. As he was not deficient in courage he had stood up against his other persecutions without flinching. He was not unaware of the advantages which our laws and customs give to the rich over the poor in contentions of this kind. But being once involved there was a stubbornness in his nature that would not allow him to retract, and he suffered himself to hope rather than expect a favourable issue. But in this last event he was wounded in the point that was nearest his heart. He had feared to have his son contaminated and debased by a servile station, and he now saw him transferred to the seminary of a jail. He was even uncertain as to the issue of his imprisonment, and trembled to think what the tyranny of wealth might affect to blast his hopes for ever. From this moment his heart died within him. He had trusted to persevering industry and skill to save the wreck of his little property from the vulgar spite of his landlord. But he had now no longer any spirit to exert those efforts which his situation more than ever required. Mr. Terrell proceeded without remission in his machinations. Hawkins's affairs every day grew more desperate, and the squire, watching the occasion, took the earliest opportunity of seizing upon his remaining property in the mode of a distress for rent. It was precisely in this stage of the affair that Mr. Falkland and Mr. Terrell accidentally met in a private road near the habitation of the latter. They were on horseback, and Mr. Falkland was going to the house of the unfortunate tenant, who seemed upon the point of perishing under his landlord's malice. He had been just made acquainted with the tale of this persecution. It had indeed been an additional aggravation of Hawkins's calamity that Mr. Falkland, whose interference might otherwise have saved him, had been absent from the neighbourhood for a considerable time. He had been three months in London, and from thence had gone to visit his estates in another part of the island. The proud and self-confident spirit of this poor fellow always disposed him to depend, as long as possible, upon his own exertions. He had avoided applying to Mr. Falkland, or indeed indulging himself in any manner in communicating and bewailing his hard hap in the beginning of the contention. And when the extremity grew more urgent, and he would have been willing to recede in some degree from the stubbornness of his measures, he found it no longer in his power. After an absence of considerable duration, Mr. Falkland at length returned somewhat unexpectedly, and having learned, among the first articles of country intelligence, the distresses of this unfortunate yeoman, he resolved to ride over to his house the next morning and surprise him with all the relief it was in his power to bestow. At sight of Mr. Terrell in this unexpected encounter, his face reddened with indignation. His first feeling, as he afterwards said, was to avoid him, but finding that he must pass him, he conceived that it would be want of spirit not to acquaint him with his feelings on the present occasion. Mr. Terrell, said he somewhat abruptly, I am sorry for a piece of news which I have just heard. And pray, sir, what is your sorrow to me? A great deal, sir. It is caused by the distresses of a poor tenant of yours, Hawkins. If your steward have proceeded without your authority, I think it right to inform you what he has done. And if he have had your authority, I would gladly persuade you to think better of it. Mr. Falkland, it would be quite as well if you would take your own business and leave me to mind mine. I want no monitor and I will have none. You mistake, Mr. Terrell, I am minding my own business. If I see you fall into a pit, it is my business to draw you out and save your life. If I see you pursuing a wrong mode of conduct, it is my business to set you right and save your honour. Zounds, sir, do not think to put your conundrums upon me. Is not the man my tenant? Is not my estate my own? What signifies calling it mine if I am not to have the direction of it? Sir, I pay for what I have. I owe no man a penny and I will not put my estate to nurse to you, nor the best he that wears ahead. It is very true, said Mr. Falkland, avoiding any direct notice of the last words of Mr. Terrell, that there is a distinction of ranks. I believe that distinction is a good thing and necessary to the peace of mankind. But however necessary it may be, we must acknowledge that it puts some hardship upon the lower orders of society. It makes one's heart ache to think that one man is born of the inheritance of every superfluity, while the whole share of another, without any demerit of his, is drudgery and starving. And all this is indispensable. We that are rich, Mr. Terrell, must do everything in our power to lighten the yoke of these unfortunate people. We must not use the advantage that accident has given us with an unmerciful hand. Poor riches! They are pressed almost beyond bearing as it is. And if we, unfeelingly, give another turn to the machine, they will be crushed into atoms. This picture was not without its effect, even upon the obdurate mind of Mr. Terrell. Well, sir, I am no tyrant. I know very well that tyranny is a bad thing. But you do not infer from thence that these people are to do as they please, and never meet with their desserts? Mr. Terrell, I see that you are shaken in your animosity. Suffer me to hail the newborn benevolence of your nature. Go with me to Hawkins. Do not let us talk of his desserts, poor fellow. He has suffered almost all that human nature can endure. Let your forgiveness upon this occasion be the earnest of good neighbourhood and friendship between you and me. No, sir, I will not go. I own there is something in what you say. I always knew you had the wit to make good your own story and tell a plausible tale. But I will not be come over thus. It has been my character when I had once conceived a scheme of vengeance never to forego it. And I will not change that character. I took up Hawkins when everybody foresuck him and made a man of him, and the ungrateful rascal has only insulted me for my pains. Curse me if I ever forgive him. It would be a good jest indeed if I were to forgive the insolence of my own creature at the desire of a man like you that has been my perpetual plague. For God's sake, Mr. Terrell, have some reason in your resentment that has supposed that Hawkins has behaved unjustifiably and insulted you. Is that an offence that never can be expiated? Must the father be ruined and the son hanged to glut your resentment? Damn me, sir, you may talk your heart out. You shall get nothing of me. I shall never forgive myself for having listened to you for a moment. I will suffer nobody to stop the stream of my resentment. If I ever were to forgive him, it should be at nobody's entreaty but my own. But, sir, I never will. If he and all his family were at my feet, I would order them all to be hanged the next minute if my power were as good as my will. And this is your decision, is it? Mr. Terrell, I am ashamed of you. Almighty God, to hear you talk gives one a loathing for the institutions and regulations of society and would induce one to fly the very face of man. But no, society casts you out. Man abominates you. No wealth, no rank, can buy out your stain. You will live deserted in the midst of your species. You will go into crowded societies and no one will dame so much as to salute you. They will fly from your glance as they would from the gaze of a basilisk. Where do you expect to find the hearts of Flint that shall sympathize with yours? You have the stamp of misery, incessant, undivided, unpitted misery. Thus saying Mr. Falkland gave spurs to his horse, rudely pushed beside Mr. Terrell, and was presently out of sight, flaming indignation annihilated even his favourite sense of honour, and he regarded his neighbour as a wretch, with whom it was impossible even to enter into contention. For the latter he remained for the present motionless and petrified. The glowing enthusiasm of Mr. Falkland was such as might well have unnerved the stoutest foe. Mr. Terrell, in spite of himself, was blasted with the compunctions of guilt, and unable to string himself for the contest. The picture Mr. Falkland had drawn was prophetic. It described what Mr. Terrell chiefly feared, and what in its commencements he thought he already felt. It was responsive to the whispering of his own meditations. It simply gave body and voice to the spectre that haunted him, and to the terrors of which he was an hourly prey. By and by, however, he recovered. The more he had been temporarily confounded, the fiercer was his resentment when he came to himself. Such hatred never existed in a human bosom without marking its progress with violence and death. Mr. Terrell, however, felt no inclination to have recourse to personal defiance. He was the furthest in the world from a coward, but his genius sunk before the genius of Falkland. He left his vengeance to the disposal of circumstances. He was secure that his animosity would never be forgotten, nor diminished by the interposition of any time or events. Vengeance was his nightly dream, and the uppermost of his waking thoughts. Mr. Falkland had departed from this conference with a confirmed disapprobation of the conduct of his neighbour, and an unalterable resolution to do everything in his power to relieve the distresses of Hawkins. But he was too late. When he arrived, he found the house already evacuated by its master. The family was removed, nobody knew with her. Hawkins had absconded, and what was still more extraordinary, the boy Hawkins had escaped on the very same day from the county jail. The enquiries Mr. Falkland set on foot after them were fruitless. No traces could be found of the catastrophe of these unhappy people. That catastrophe I shall shortly have occasion to relate, and it will be found pregnant with horror beyond what the blackest misanthropy could readily have suggested. I go on with my tale. I go on to relate those incidents in which my own fate was so mysteriously involved. I lift the curtain, and bring forward the last act of the tragedy. CHAPTER X It may easily be supposed that the ill-temper cherished by Mr. Trell in his contention with Hawkins and the increasing animosity between him and Mr. Falkland added to the impatience with which he thought of the escape of Emily. Mr. Trell heard with astonishment of the miscarriage of an expedient of the success of which he had not previously entertained the slightest suspicion. He became frantic with vexation. Grimes had not dared to signify the event of his expedition in person and the footman whom he desired to announce to his master that Miss Melville was lost the moment after fled from his presence with the most dreadful apprehensions. Presently he bellowed for Grimes, and the young man at last appeared before him, more dead than alive. Grimes he compelled to repeat the particulars of the tale, which he had no sooner done than he once again slunk away, shocked at the execrations with which Mr. Trell overwhelmed him. Grimes was no coward, but he reverenced the inborn divinity that attends upon rank, as Indians worship the devil. Nor was this all. The rage of Mr. Trell was so ungovernable and fierce that few hearts could have been found so stout as not to have trembled before it with a sort of unconquerable inferiority. He no sooner obtained a moment's pause than he began to recall to his tempestuous mind the various circumstances of the case. His complaints were bitter, and in a tranquil observer might have produced the united feeling of pity for his sufferings and horror at his depravity. He recollected all the precautions he had used. He could scarcely find a flaw in the process, and he cursed that blind and malicious power which delighted to cross his most deep-laid schemes. Of this malice he was beyond all other human beings the object. He was mocked with the shadow of power, and when he lifted his hand to smite it was struck with sudden palsy. In the bitterness of his anguish he forgot his recent triumph over Hawkins, or perhaps he regarded it less as a triumph than an overthrow, because it had failed of coming up to the extent of his malice. To what purpose had Heaven given him a feeling of injury and an instinct to resent while he could in no case make his resentment felt? It was only necessary for him to be the enemy of any person to ensure that persons being safe against the reach of misfortune. What insults, the most shocking and repeated, had he received from this paltry girl? And by whom was she now torn from his indignation? By that devil that haunted him at every moment, that crossed him at every step, that fixed at pleasure his arrows in his heart, and made mose and mockery at his insufferable tortures. There was one other reflection that increased his anguish and made him careless and desperate as to his future conduct. It was in vain to conceal from himself that his reputation would be cruelly wounded by this event. He had imagined that, while Emily was forced into this odious marriage, she would be obliged by decorum as soon as the event was decided to draw a veil over the compulsion she had suffered. But this security was now lost, and Mr. Falkland would take a pride in publishing his dishonour. Though the provocations he had received from Miss Melville Wood, in his own opinion, have justified him in any treatment he should have thought proper to inflict, he was sensible the world would see the matter in a different light. This reflection augmented the violence of his resolutions and determined him to refuse no means by which he could transfer the anguish that now preyed upon his own mind to that of another. Meanwhile the composure and magnanimity of Emily had considerably subsided, the moment she believed herself in a place of safety. While danger and injustice assailed her with their menaces, she found in herself a courage that disdained to yield. The succeeding appearance of calm was more fatal to her. There was nothing now, powerfully, to foster her courage or excite her energy. She looked back at the trials she had passed, and her soul sickened at the recollection of that, which, while it was inact, she had had the fortitude to endure. Till the period at which Mr. Terrell had been inspired with this cruel antipathy, she had been in all instances a stranger to anxiety and fear. Uninured to misfortune, she had suddenly, and without preparation, been made the subject of the most infernal malignity. When a man of robust and vigorous constitution has a fit of sickness, it produces a more powerful effect than the same in disposition upon a delicate valitudinarian. Such was the case with Miss Melville. She passed the succeeding night sleepless and uneasy, and was found in the morning with a high fever. Her distemper resisted for the present all attempts to assuage it. Though there was reason to hope that the goodness of her constitution, assisted by tranquility and the kindness of those about her, would ultimately surmount it. On the second day she was delirious. The night of that day she was arrested at the suit of Mr. Terrell, for a debt contracted for board and necessaries for the last fourteen years. The idea of this arrest, as the reader will perhaps recollect, first occurred in the conversation between Mr. Terrell and Miss Melville, soon after he had thought proper to confine her to her chamber. But at that time he had probably no serious conception of ever being induced to carry it into execution. It had merely been mentioned by way of threat, and as the suggestion of a mind whose habits had long been accustomed to contemplate every possible instrument of tyranny and revenge. But now that the unlooked-for rescue and escape of his poor kin's woman had wrought up his thoughts to a degree of insanity, and that he revolved in the gloomy recesses of his mind how he might best shake off the load of disappointment which oppressed him, the idea recurred with double force. He was not long informing his resolution, and calling for Barnes, his steward, immediately gave him directions in what manner to proceed. Barnes had been for several years the instrument of Mr. Terrell's injustice. His mind was hardened by use, and he could, without remorse, officiate as the spectator or even as the author and director of a scene of vulgar distress. But even he was somewhat startled upon the present occasion. The character and conduct of Emily in Mr. Terrell's family had been without a blot. She had not a single enemy, and it was impossible to contemplate her youth, her vivacity, and her guileless innocence, without emotions of sympathy and compassion. Your worship, I do not understand you. Arrest Miss... Miss Emily? Yes, I tell you, what is the matter with you? Go instantly to Swinard, the lawyer, and bid him finish the business out of hand. Lord, love your honour. Arrest her. She does not owe you a brass farthing. She always lived upon your charity. Ass! Scoundrel! I tell you she does owe me, owes me eleven hundred pounds. The law justifies it. What do you think laws were made for? I do nothing but right, and right I will have. Your honour, I never questioned your orders in my life, but I must now. I cannot see you ruin Miss Emily, poor girl. Nay, and yourself, too, for the matter of that, and not say which way you are going. I hope you will bear with me. Why, if she owed you ever so much, she cannot be arrested. She is not of age. Will you have done? Do not tell me of it cannot, and it can. It has been done before, and it shall be done again. Let him dispute it that dares. I will do it now, and stand to it afterwards. Tell Swinard, if he make the least boggling, it is as much as his life is worth. He shall starve by inches. Pray, your honour, think better of it. Upon my life the whole country will cry shame of it. Barnes, what do you mean? I am not used to be talked to, and I cannot hear it. You have been a good fellow to me upon many occasions. But if I find you out for making one with them that dispute my authority, damn my soul if I do not make you sick of your life. I have done, your honour. I will not say another word except this. I have heard as how that Miss Emily is sick a bed. You are determined, you say, to put her in jail. You do not mean to kill her, I take it? Let her die. I will not spare her for an hour. I will not always be insulted. She had no consideration for me, and I have no mercy for her. I am in for it. They have provoked me past bearing, and they shall feel me. Tell Swinard, in bed or up day or night I will not hear of an instance delay. Such were the directions of Mr. Turrell, and in strict conformity to his directions were the proceedings of that respectable limb of the law he employed upon the present occasion. Miss Melville had been delirious, through a considerable part of the day, on the evening of which the bailiff and his follower arrived. By the direction of the physician whom Mr. Falkland had ordered to attend her a composing draft was administered, and, exhausted as she was by the wild and distracted images that for several hours had haunted her fancy, she was now sunk into a refreshing slumber. Mrs. Hammond, the sister of Mrs. Jakeman, was sitting by her bedside, full of compassion for the lovely sufferer, and rejoicing in the calm tranquility that had just taken possession of her, when a little girl, the only child of Mrs. Hammond, opened the street door to the wrap of the bailiff. He said he wanted to speak with Miss Melville, and the child answered that she would go tell her mother. So saying, she advanced to the door of the back room upon the ground floor, in which Emily lay. But the moment it was opened, instead of waiting for the appearance of the mother, the bailiff entered along with the girl. Mrs. Hammond looked up. Who are you? said she. Why do you come in here? Hush! Be quiet. I must speak with Miss Melville. Indeed, but you must not. Tell me your business. The poor child has been lightheaded all day. She has just fallen asleep and must not be disturbed. That is no business of mine. I must obey orders. Orders? Whose orders? What is it you mean? At this moment Emily opened her eyes. What noise is that? Pray let me be quiet. Miss, I want to speak with you. I have got a writ against you for eleven hundred pounds at the suit of Squire Tyrell. At these words both Mrs. Hammond and Emily were dumb. The latter was scarcely able to annex any meaning to the intelligence. And though Mrs. Hammond was somewhat better acquainted with the sort of language that was employed, yet in this strange and unexpected connection it was almost as mysterious to her as to poor Emily herself. A writ? How can she be in Mr. Tyrell's debt? A writ against a child? It is no signification putting your questions to us. We only do as we are directed. This is our authority. Look at it. Lord Almighty exclaimed Mrs. Hammond. What does this mean? It is impossible Mr. Tyrell should have sent you. Good woman, none of your jabber to us. Cannot you read? This is all a trick. The paper is forged. It is a vile contrivance to get the poor orphan out of the hands of those with whom only she can be safe. Proceed upon it at your peril. Rest you content, that is exactly what we mean to do. Take my word we know very well what we are about. Why you would not tear her from her bed? I tell you she is in a high fever. She is lightheaded it would be death to remove her. You are bailiffs are not you? You are not murderers? The law says nothing about that. We have orders to take her, sick or well. We will do her no harm except so far as we must perform our office. Be it how it will. Where would you take her? What is it you mean to do? To the county jail. Bullock, go, order a post-cheese from the griffin. Stay, I say, give no such orders. Wait only three hours. I will send off a messenger expressed to Squire Falkland, and I am sure he will satisfy you as to any harm that can come to you without its being necessary to take the poor child to jail. We have particular directions against that. We are not at liberty to lose a minute. Why are not you gone? Order the horses to be put to immediately. Emily had listened to the course of this conversation which had sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatic in the first appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was thus presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which she had just been a prey. My dear madam, said she to Mrs. Hammond, do not harass yourself with useless efforts. I am very sorry for all the trouble I have given you, but my misfortune is inevitable. Sir, if you will step into the next room I will dress myself and attend you immediately. Mrs. Hammond began to be equally aware that her struggles were to no purpose, but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved upon the brutality of Mr. Terrell, whom she affirmed to be a devil incarnate and not a man. At another she expostulated with bitter invective, against the hard-heartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function. But he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the meanwhile Emily yielded with the sweetest resignation to an inevitable evil. Mrs. Hammond insisted that, at least, they should permit her to attend her young lady in the chaise, and the bailiff, though the orders he had received were so peremptory that he dared not exercise his discretion as to the execution of the writ, began to have some apprehensions of danger, and was willing to admit of any precaution that was not in direct hostility to his functions. For the rest he understood that it was in all cases dangerous to allow sickness or apparent unfitness for removal as a sufficient cause to interrupt a direct process. And that accordingly, in all doubtful questions and presumptive murders, the practice of the law inclined, with a laudable partiality, to the vindication of its own officers. In addition to these general rules, he was influenced by the positive injunctions and assurances of Swinard, and the terror which, through a circle of many miles, was annexed to the name of Terrell. Before they departed Mrs. Hammond dispatched a messenger with a letter of three lines to Mr. Falkland, informing him of this extraordinary event. Mr. Falkland was from home when the messenger arrived, and not expected to return till the second day. Accident seemed in this instance to favour the vengeance of Mr. Terrell, for he had himself been too much under the dominion of an uncontrollable fury to take a circumstance of this sort into his estimate. The forlorn state of these poor women, who were conducted, the one by compulsion, the other a volunteer, to a scene so little adapted to their accommodation as that of a common jail, may easily be imagined. Mrs. Hammond, however, was endowed with a masculine courage and impetuosity of spirit, eminently necessary in the difficulties they had to encounter. She was in some degree fitted by a sanguine temper and an impassioned sense of injustice for the discharge of those very offices which sobriety and calm reflection might have prescribed. The health of Miss Melville was materially affected by the surprise and removal she had undergone at the very time that repose was most necessary for her preservation. Her fever became more violent, her delirium was stronger, and the tortures of her imagination were proportioned to the unfavourableness of the state in which the removal had been affected. It was highly improbable that she could recover. In the moments of suspended reason she was perpetually calling on the name of Falkland. Mr. Falkland, she said, was her first and only love, and he should be her husband. A moment after she exclaimed upon him in a disconsolate yet reproachful tone for his unworthy deference to the prejudices of the world. It was very cruel of him to show himself so proud, and tell her that he would never consent to Mary a beggar, but if he were proud she was determined to be proud too. He should see that she would not conduct herself like a slighted maiden, and that, though he could reject her, it was not in his power to break her heart. At another time she imagined she saw Mr. Terrell and his engine grimes, their hands and garments dripping with blood, and the pathetic reproaches she vented against them might have affected a heart of stone. Then the figure of Falkland presented itself to her distracted fancy, deformed with wounds and of a deadly paleness, and she shrieked with agony, while she exclaimed that such was the general hard-heartedness, that no one would make the smallest exertion for his rescue. In such vicissitudes of pain, perpetually imagining to herself unkindness, insult, conspiracy and murder, she passed a considerable part of two days. On the evening of the second Mr. Falkland arrived, accompanied by Dr. Wilson, the physician by whom she had previously been attended. The scene he was called upon to witness was such as to be most exquisitely agonizing to a man of his acute sensibility. The news of the arrest had given him an inexpressible shock. He was transported out of himself at this unexampled malignity of its author. But when he saw the figure of Miss Melville, Haggard and a warrant of death written in her countenance, a victim to the diabolical passions of her kinsmen, it seemed too much to be endured. When he entered, she was in the midst of one of her fits of delirium, and immediately mistook her visitors for two assassins. She asked where they had hid her Falkland, her lord, her life, her husband, and demanded that they should restore to her his mangled corpse, that she might embrace him with her dying arms, breathe her last upon his lips, and be buried in the same grave. She reproached them with the sordidness of their conduct in becoming the tools of her vile cousin, who had deprived her of her reason, and would never be contented till he had murdered her. Mr. Falkland tore himself away from this painful scene, and leaving Dr. Wilson with his patient, desired him when he had given the necessary directions, to follow him to his inn. The perpetual hurry of spirits in which Miss Melville had been kept for several days, by the nature of her indisposition, was extremely exhausting to her, and in about an hour from the visit of Mr. Falkland her delirium subsided, and left her in so low a state as to render it difficult to perceive any signs of life. Dr. Wilson, who had withdrawn, to soothe, if possible, the disturbed and impatient thoughts of Mr. Falkland, was summoned afresh upon this change of symptoms, and sat by the bedside during the remainder of the night. The situation of his patient was such as to keep him in momentary apprehension of her decease. While Miss Melville lay in this feeble and exhausted condition, Mrs. Hammond betrayed every token of the tenderest anxiety. Her sensibility was habitually of the acutist sort, and the qualities of Emily were such, as powerfully, to fix her affection. She loved her like a mother. Upon the present occasion, every sound, every motion, made her tremble. Dr. Wilson had introduced another nurse in consideration of the incessant fatigue Mrs. Hammond had undergone, and he endeavored, by representations, and even by authority, to compel her to quit the apartment of the patient. But she was uncontrollable, and he at length found that he should probably do her more injury by the violence that would be necessary to separate her from the suffering innocent, than by allowing her to follow her inclination. Her eye was a thousand times turned, with the most eager curiosity, upon the countenance of Dr. Wilson. Without her daring to breathe a question respecting his opinion, lest he should answer her by a communication of the most fatal tidings. In the meantime she listened with the deepest attention to everything that dropped, either from the physician or the nurse, hoping to collect, as it were, from some oblique hint, the intelligence which she had not courage expressly to require. Towards morning the state of the patient seemed to take a favourable turn. She dozed for near two hours, and when she awoke appeared perfectly calm and sensible. Understanding that Mr. Falkland had brought the physician to attend her, and was himself in her neighbourhood, she requested to see him. Mr. Falkland had gone in the meantime, with one of his tenants, to bail the debt, and now entered the prison to inquire whether the young lady might be safely removed from her present, miserable residence, to a more airy and commodious apartment. When he appeared, the sight of him revived in the mind of Miss Melville, an imperfect recollection of the wanderings of her delirium. She covered her face with her fingers and betrayed the most expressive confusion, while she thanked him with her usual unaffected simplicity for the trouble he had taken. She hoped she should not give him much more, she thought she should get better. It was a shame, she said, if a young and lively girl as she was, could not contrive to outlive the trifling misfortunes to which she had been subjected. But while she said this, she was still extremely weak. She tried to assume a cheerful countenance, but it was a faint effort, which the feeble state of her frame did not seem sufficient to support. Mr. Falkland and the doctor joined to request her to keep herself quiet, and avoid for the present all occasions of exertion. Encouraged by these appearances, Mrs. Hammond ventured to follow the two gentlemen out of the room, in order to learn from the physician what hoax he entertained. Dr. Wilson acknowledged that he found his patient at first in a very unfavorable situation, that the symptoms were changed for the better, and that he was not without some expectation of her recovery. He added, however, that he could answer for nothing, that the next twelve hours would be exceedingly critical, but that if she did not grow worse before morning he would then undertake for her life. Mrs. Hammond, who had hitherto seen nothing but despair, now became frantic with joy. She burst into tears of transport, blessed the physician in the most emphatic and impassioned terms, and uttered a thousand extravagancies. Dr. Wilson seized this opportunity to press her to give herself a little repose, to which she consented, a bed being first procured for her in the room next to Miss Melville's, she having charged the nurse to give her notice of any alteration in the state of the patient. Mrs. Hammond enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep of several hours. It was already night, when she was awaked by an unusual bustle in the next room. She listened for a few moments, and then determined to go and discover the occasion of it. As she opened her door for that purpose she met the nurse coming to her. Accountants of the messenger told her what it was she had to communicate, without the use of words. She hurried to the bedside, and found Miss Melville expiring. The appearances that had at first been so encouraging were of short duration. The calm of the morning proved to be only a sort of lightning before death. In a few hours the patient grew worse. The bloom of her countenance faded. She drew her breath with difficulty, and her eyes became fixed. Dr. Wilson came in at this period, and immediately perceived that all was over. She was for some time in convulsions, but these subsiding she addressed the physician with a composed, though feeble voice. She thanked him for his attention, and expressed the most lively sense of her obligations to Mr. Falkland. She sincerely forgave her cousin, and hoped he might never be visited by too acute a recollection of his barbarity to her. She would have been contented to live. Few persons had a sincere relish of the pleasures of life, but she was well pleased to die, rather than have become the wife of grimes. As Mrs. Hammond entered, she turned her countenance towards her, and with an affectionate expression repeated her name. This was her last word. In less than two hours from that time she breathed her last in the arms of this faithful friend.