 55 Smith to the rescue Now in the whole of Beckley Village scarcely a soul under eighty years of age, unless it were of some child under eight tucked up in rosy slumber, failed to discuss within half an hour the miracle about Grace O'Glander, that word was first set afoot in the parish by a man of settled habits, and therefore of sure authority, for Thomas Kale had been put upon a horse, when the carrier's leg would not go up, in order to ride for his life to tell squire overshoot all that was come to pass. This Kale was a man of large wondering power, gifted moreover with a faith of ghosts, which often detracted from his comfort. He had seen his young mistress in a half-light only, when the household was called to look at her, and now he was ordered to a house where a lady had died not more than a few weeks back, between Beckley Barton and Shotover Grange, there are two places known to be haunted. The necessity for priming Thomas before he started had occurred unluckily to himself alone, already as he rode out of the yard a gate-post in a tree shone spectrally. He felt a necessity for priming himself, and prudent man as he was he saw no mischief in affording it. The carrier overshoot could not give him less than a guinea for his tidings, therefore, though pledged to the utmost not to speak, he took the very turn which the prudent crypts had shunned, and pulling up at the window of the dusty anvil, gave a shout for a hot gin and water. The anvil was ringing with hilarity that night, and its dust, if heavy sprinkling could allay it, was subsiding, for Beckley having played a cricket match with Ilsep, and beaten the dalesmen by ten wickets, as needs must be with five crypts holding Willow. An equally invincible resolve arose to out-eat the losers at the supper. Ilsep defeated but not disgraced, was well represented both in flesh and cash, and, as Mr. Kale called for his modest class, a generous feeling awoke in the breasts of several young men to pay for it, for the wickets had been pitched in a meadow of the squires, where Kale had plied scythe and roller. Thomas Kale saw that it would be a most uncanted and illiberal act to open his mouth for a negative only. He firmly restricted good feeling, however, to three good bumpers, and a bottomer, pledging himself on compulsion to call on his way back and manage the duplicate. But his heart was so good that before he rode off with a flout at all ghosts and goblins, he took an old crony by the name upon his smock, and told him where to go for a miracle. Now who should this be, that old Daddy Wakeling, that ancient and valued friend of Cripps, and one of the best men in Ellsfield Parish? Daddy was forced to spend much of his time outside his own parish, for the best of reasons, and a melancholy one. There was no public house inside of it. Here he was now, with his fine white locks and patriarchal countenance, propounding attest to our finest qualities, a touchstone of one's lofty confidence or low cynicism, whether the subject should now be pronounced more venerable or more tipsy. But old Daddy Wakeling would be the very last, when getting near the middle of his third gallon, to conceal from his friends any gratifying news, and erever Kale's horse's heels turn the corner, Daddy's wise old lips were wagging into the ear of a crony, and less than two minutes Phil Hiss had got the news, a council was held in the long room of the inn, and a march upon the squire's house and a serenade by every one who could scrape, blow, twang, or halloa, was the resolution of a moment. In the thick of the rout, as with good intent they approached the old-fashioned coach doors, which led to the front where they meant to be musical, a short-square fellow slipped out of the crowd and without observation went his way. His way was to a little hut of a stable, fastened only with a prong outside, but holding a nice young horse, who had finished his supper, but was not sleepy. He knaved as John Smith came in, for he felt quite inclined for a little exercise, and he knew the value of the saying he had heard, after supper trot a mile. Numbers Cripps was his owner, and in that shameful age of ownership which soon will be abolished, now that its prime key is gone, the key of holy wedlock, and the butcher had offered Mr. Smith a ride whenever he should happen to want one. The night was well up in the sky, and a track of summer daylight star swept, the dim remembrance of a brighter hour that hangs round a tree like a halo, was gone, and only little twinkles shone through bays of leafage against the tidal power of the moon, and the long immeasurable stretch of silence spread faint avenues of fear. Mr. John Smith was a very brave man, imagination never stirred the corpulence of his comfort, what he either saw or sifted out by his own process that he believed, and very little else, and so he rode through light and shade and the grain of the air which is neither, while the forest grew deeper with phantasm and the depth of night made way for him. Suddenly even he was startled, in a dark, narrow place where he kept a track and stuck his heels under his horse's belly, for fear of being taken sideways, something dashed by him with a pant and roar and fire flying out of it. Mr. Smith blessed his stars that he was not rolled over, as he very well might have been, for that which flew by him like a streak of meteor was a strong horse frantic. Smith turned round and his saddle and stared, but the runaway sped the faster as if he were rushing away from the forest with a pack of wolves behind him. The stirrups of his empty saddle struck fire, clashing under him, and his swift flight scarcely left a sound of breath or hoof to follow him. The devil is after him, said John Smith. I never saw a horse in such a state of mind. I may as well mark the spot where he came out. He is left as sure as I sit here, a tale to be told in the background. Without dismounting he broke off a branch of young white poplar and cast it so that by daylight he could find it, and then with a very uneasy mind he strode on to trace the rest of it. He was not by any means in Luke Sharpe's pay, as one or two persons had suspected. Neither was he even of his privy counsel, and yet he was bound hand and foot to him, partly by fealty of a conquered mind, and partly by sense of his brother Joe's complicity to subservience. John Smith, in his own way, was an honourable man, and money was no bribe to him. With quickened alarm he rode on at all speed towards the cottage of the swine-herd. Never in any way had he dealt with the sylvan schemes of Mr. Sharpe, or even from a distance watched them. It was long ere he had any clear suspicions, for his tall brother kept miles away from him, and seeking the remains of grace under the snow-drift he wrought out his duty with blind honesty. John Smith's nerves were of iron, and even the riderless horse had not scattered them, but though he rode on bravely still a cloud of gloom fell over him, it would make a sad difference to his life if anything had happened to Mr. Sharpe, for Smith had invested a little money under the lawyer's guidance, and knowing Luke Sharpe as he did he feared that evil had befallen him. Hence with dark misgiving, and a set resolve to face it, he lashed his horse on at a perilous rate, through the waddled ways of moonlight. The glance and glimpse of light and shade flew past him like a cataract, till suddenly even he was scared by the sound of his name in a sad, clear voice. He pulled up his horse and laid his hand on the butt of a pistol beneath his cape, till a woman came forth into the light and said, I was sure you would come, but too late. It is too late! Sinementa, show me! He answered very softly, knowing by her gesture that the mischief was at hand, as soon as he was off his horse and had made him fast by the bridle, she led him round some shadowy corners into a little dingle, as had no great trees to crowd it, and though it laid below a level of the wood around, the moon was high enough now to throw a broad gangway of light along it. The sides were fringed or jagged with darkness, cumbrous tree or mantled ivy jutting forth black elbows, but in the middle lay and spread fair swat of dewy emblemants, swept with brightness and garnished for a witsom dance of fairies. But now, instead of skip and music, sigh and sob and wailing noises of the human heart were heard. A fine young form of the Oxford build lay heavily girted with molehills, enfolded vainly in a velvet cloak, and vainly on every side adjured to open its eyes and come back again. It was not at all the fellow thus to be addressed in vain, if he only could have heard the living voices challenge him. His love of sport had been love of pluck, as it generally is with Englishmen, and all his dogs of different sizes must have taught him something, as mother now was pulling at him, in a storm of fear and hope. She felt that he could not be dead, because it would be so outrageous, and yet her feeble heart was fearful that such things had been before. Happily for herself she knew not what had happened to him, but took it for an accident of the woods, for the gypsy woman who alone had seen it had been too kind to tell the truth. Oh, Kit, Kit, now only look! The poor fond mother was going on. Only lift one eye, little darling, only move one little hand. His hands were a very considerable size. Or do anything, anything you like, dear, just to show that you are coming back, back to your own mother. Kit, Kit, oh my Kit, my own and ever only Kit, or Christopher, if you like it better, darling, here I have been for whole hours and hours, and not one word will you say to me. If ever I laughed at you, Kit, in my life you must have felt how proud I was. There is not anything in all the world or anybody to come near you, Kit. Only come, only be near me, instead of breaking all my heart like this. Worn out with misery she fell back, in cinementa with a short, quick sigh knelt down on the turf and supported her. Four times I have had to bear it, and every time worse than the time before, she said in her soft, clear tone to herself, but only to remind herself of the tenderness she was sure to show. And this was her only one, and grown up, her face still beautiful and lovely with the sad love in her eyes, the memory of the time when still there was somebody to live for, shone in the gentle light, now poured abundantly on all of them, all of who had lived and loved and suffered and now made shadows and moonshine. Not one had been down to the holy depths of sorrow as this woman had. Catching up now, cried John Smith, who never knew how his ideas were timed. Catching up by the heels, won't he, while I'd taken him by the head. This ear basely whole, being out to fetch the ghost of his life out. He hath God life in him. Don't tell me. His ears be like a shell, and no dead man's is. Wrap on the knob, Lord bless my heart, I'd sooner have fifty than one on the basket. What all on you are feared to heckle him? Oh, no, sir. Oh, no, sir," cried poor Mrs. Sharp as Tickus and another man fell away. I am not very strong, but I can help my child. Ma'am, you are a lady," said John Smith, that being his very highest crown of praise. But as for you, a d-set of cowards, go to the devil all of you. Now, ma'am, I will not trouble you except to follow after us. Sin you will clear the way in front. It comes more natural to her. And you, ma'am, so follow me as you please. And sorry I'm not to help you. A little shaking will do him a world of good. He was taking up kit, with a well-adjusted balance, while he spoke to her, and he wasted his breath in nothing, except in telling her to follow him. As the hind comes after the poor slain fawn, or the cow runs after the nettle cart where the white face of her calf weeps out, even so Mrs. Sharp, of her dress, thought nothing, though cut up like a carrot in the latest London style and trimmed with almost every flower nature ever saw, anyhow, after kit she went and knew not light from darkness. Mr. Smith sturdily managed to get on. He was thickly built and had well-set reins, and though poor kit was no feather-weight, his beard did not flag with him, then, setting the body of the lad on a mound, where the moon shone clearly upon his face, and the night air fanned him quietly, John Smith very calmly pulled out a bright weapon, and flourished it, and felt the edge. Oh, sir! Oh, pray, sir! cried Mrs. Sharp, falling on her knees and clasping her poor boy. Sinny just lead her behind that bush, to either death or blood with him. Oh, no! I could never bear to be out of sight. If it really must be done, I will not shriek, I will not even sigh, only let me stay by his side. John Smith sighed to his sister-in-law who took the mother's trembling hands and turned her away for a moment. Now, fetch cold water! That vein must not be allowed to bleed too long, ma'am. It is a ticklish one to manage for a surgeon, even, and at present it is sulky. But it only wants a little air, and just the least little touch again. If you could just manage to go and say your prayers, ma'am, we could get on a long sight better. Oh, I never thought of that. How sinful of me! Kind good man, I implore of you. Not of me, ma'am, pray to God in heaven, unless you wish to see me run away, and if I do, he slips right off the hooks. She turned away, with her weak hands clasped, but whether she prayed or not never could she tell, but one thing she bore in mind as long as soul abode with it, and that was the leap of her heart when Smith shouted in a good, loud voice, All right. End of Chapter fifty-five. Chapter fifty-six of Cripps the Carrier, by Richard Dodridge Blackmore, this LibriVox recording is in a public domain. Chapter fifty-six. Fatal Accident to the Carrier. Now that little maid who, with such strength, alike of mind and body, had opened the paternal gate, and then bewailed her prowess, happened to be the especial favorite of her good ancestor. Therefore no sooner had the Carrier begun his eventful homeward course, as here to fore related, the netty, who loved a forest walk and felt rather dull without Zachary, took Peggy's fat red hand, and, after a good tea with Susanna, set forth for an evening stroll, to gather flowers and hear the birds sing. Almost before they had got well into the wooded places, Peggy shrank away from a black timber shed, partly overhung by trees. Peggy, not go there, Aunt Eddie, she said. Goose in there, a great white goose. A ghost, you little goose? Hansard asked her, laughing, for still there was good sunset. Come and show me, I want to see a ghost. No, no, no! cried the child, pulling backward and struggling as hard as she had struggled with the gate. Do you see white goose in a black hole there all day? Then, Peggy, stop here while I go and look. You won't be afraid to do that, will you? Running bravely up to the hole in the boards, Esther saw to her great amazement the form, perhaps the corpse, of a man. Stretched at length on the ground inside, it lay too much in the dark for the face to be seen, and a dress was so swaddled with netting, and earthy, that little could be made of it. A torn strip of cambrick, that once had been white, lay partly on the body and partly on the board. Esther caught it up, and she remembered having ironed something of this shape for somebody once, who was going to be examined. She knew where to look for the mark, and there she saw in small letters, T. Hardenow. Surprised as she was she did not lose her wits or courage as she used to do. She ran to the door of the shed, tried the padlock and finding it fastened, as she had feared, made haste to the grain-house, and seized a bunch of keys. Not one of them truly was born with the lock, but one was soon found to serve the turn, then Esther pushed back the creaking door, and timidly gazed round the shadowy shed. She was quite alone now, for her little niece with short sobs of terror had set off for home. When the light admitted by the open door, young Esther described a poor, miserable thing, helpless, still as a log and senseless, yet to her faithful heart the idle of her adoration. Gently, step by step, she stole to the prostrate form, and knelt down softly, and reverently touched it. She feared to seem to take advantage of a helpless moment, and yet a keen joy mixed with terror shone in the eagerness of her eyes. She is alive, I'm sure of that, she said to herself, and she pulled forth a pair of strong scissors which she always carried. He is alive, but very, very nearly dead. What wretches can have treated him like this? In two minutes Ardnell was free from every cord and throng of bondage. His lax arms fell at his sides, his legs, that had saved his life by kicking, slowly sank back to their native angles, like a lobster's claw untied, and his small and dismally empty stomach quivered almost invisibly. Oh, he is starving, or downright starved, cried Esther watching his white lips, which trembled with some glad memory of suction, and stiffened again to some Anglican dream. After all I have blamed other folk quite amiss. He hath corded himself away from his vitals to give way to his noble principles. But how could he lock himself in? The Lord must have sent a bad angel to tempt him, and then to turn the key on him. Before she had finished this reasoning process, the girl was halfway towards the cot of Ticcus, her heart outweighing her mind according to all true feminine proportions. She ran swiftly upon Susanna, sitting in the dusky kitchen, and pondering over a very slow fire the cookery of the children's supper. These good young children never failed to go to see the pigs fed, and down at the styes they all were at this moment, with no vitals come, and the pigs all squeaking, because the pig-master was not at home. This was most sad, and the children felt it, nevertheless they bore it, knowing that their own pot was warming, but they too might have squeaked if they had known that out of their own pot and Eddie was stealing half the meat and all the little cobs of jelly. It was as fine a pot of stuff as ever Susanna Cripps had made, where she did not hold at all with fattening the pigs and starving her own children, and she argued most justly while Esther all the while was ladling all the virtue out. Eddie had never been known to do anything violent or hay-handed, yet now, without entering into even the very shortest train of reasoning, a way she went swifter than any train, pairing in her right hand the best dresser jug, filled with the children's tid-bits of nurture, and in her left hand flourishing Susanna's own darling silver wedding-spoon. Mrs. Leviticus longed to rush and chase of her, but ere her slowly startled nerves could send a necessary tingle to her ruminating knees. The girl was out of sight, and for her vestige lingered not but a very provoking smell of soup. Now in so advanced a stage of the world's existence, and of this narrative, it is needful, judicious, or even becoming to describe spoonful by spoonful, however grateful, delicious in absorbing, the process of administering and receiving soup, to give and take, as said, by people of large experience in life, to be about the latest and most consummate lesson of humanity. Being even after that extreme of wisdom which teaches us to grin and bear it, but in the present trifling instance, two young people very soon began to be comparatively at home with the subject. The opening of the eyes, and all countries and creatures, is done a good deal later than the opening of the mouth, a latter being essential, the former quite a fortuitous proceeding. After six spoonfuls, as counted by Esther, hard now open both his eyes. After two or three more, he knew where he was, and when he had swallowed a dozen and a bonus, scarcely any of his wits were wanting. Still Esther, for fear of her relapse, went on, though her hand trembled dreadfully when he sat up, with his poor bones creaking sadly, and tried to be steady upon her arm, but was overbalanced by his weight of brain. Instead of shrieking or screaming, she took advantage of this opportunity, and his bony chin dropping afforded the first opening towards his interior. To boot up briefly, he quite came round, and after twenty spoonfuls vowed, with the concise rushing of the movement into the arms of common sense, that never could he fast again, and after thirty were absorbed and beginning to assimilate, he gazed at Esther's smiling eyes, and saw the clearest and truest solution of his postulates on celibacy. Esther dropped her eyes in terror, and made him drink the drags and bottom, with a covert zealous gulp, and as it happened this was wise. If any malignant persons charge him with having sold for a mess of potage, man's noblest birthright celibacy, let every such person be courted up at the longest possible date after breakfast, and the shortest before dinner, or rather, alas, before dinnertime, let him stay courted and rolling about in a hog-house, as long as role he can, which never would approach Mr. Hardenow's cycle. Let him, throughout his whole period, instead of eating, expect to be eaten, and then, with a wolf in his stomach, if he has one, let him loose his wits, if he has any, and then let a lovely girl come and free him, and feed him, and cry over him, and regard him, with his clothes at their very worst, and cakes of dirt in his eyes and mouth, as the imperial jove in some dictane cavern dormant, and then, as the light and new life flow back, and the power of his heart awakes, let there manifestly accrue thereto a better, gentler, and sweeter heart, timid even of its own pulse, and ashamed of its own veracity, and then, if he takes all this unmoved, why, let him be courted up again, and nobody come to deliver him. Esther only smiled and wept at her patient's ardent words and impassioned gratitude. She knew the between them was a great gulf fixed, and that the leap across it seldom was a happy landing, and when poor Hardenow fell back, in the weak reaction of a heart more fit for pain and depression, she knelt at his side, and nursed and cheered him, less with the air of a courted maiden than of a careful handmaid. In the end, however, this feeling, like most of those which are adverse to our wishes, was prevailed upon to subside, and Esther, although the least revolutionary and longest established stock in England, that of the genuine Cripses, whose name originally no doubt, Chrysippus, indicates the possession of a golden horse. Eddie Crips, finding that the heart of her adored one had, in Splinter's opinion, a perilous fissure requiring change of climate, consented at last having no house of her own, to come down from the tilt and go to Africa. For Hardenow, as he grew older and able to regard mankind more largely, came out from many of the narrow ways, which, like the lanes of Beckley, satisfy their final cause by leading into one another. With the growth of his learning, his candor grew, and he strove to bind others by his own strap and buckle, as little as he offered to be bound by theirs. Therefore when two of his very best friends made a bona fide job of it, and being unable to think their thoughts out, got it done by deputy and sang to infallible happiness, Thomas Hardenow pulled up, and set his heels into the ground of common sense, like a horse at the brink of a quarry pit, and the field of reason rich and generous opened its gates again to him. Herein he cut no capers, as so many of the wilder spirits did, but made himself ready for some true work and solid advantage to his race, and so, before any university mission, or plough and Bible enterprise, Hardenow set forth to open a tract for commerce and civilization, and to fight the devil and slavery in the rich, rude heart of Africa. Besides his extraordinary gift of tongues, he had many other qualifications, the witness of his legs and stomach, his quiet style of listening to that, so that even a nigger need not be snubbed, his magnificent freedom from humor, an element fatal to stern convictions, and, last but not least, as he said to Eddie for a clenching argument, his wife's acquaintance with the carrying trade. Happy exile, how much better than home misery it is, but the house of crypts sent forth another member into banishment, with little choice or chance of much felicity on his part, as there are woes more strong than tears, so are their crimes beyond the lash. When the doings of Leviticus were brought to light, and shown to be unsuccessful, a council of crypts was held in his hog-house, and a stern degree passed to expatriate him. Ticcus was offered his fair say, and did his very best to defend himself, but the case from the first was hopeless. If he had wronged any other parish than Beckley, or even any other as well, there might have been some escape for him. Cruelty cowardice, treason high and low, perjury to his own elder brother, an eternal disgrace to his birthplace. There was not a word in the mouth of any one half bad enough to use to him. The carrier rose and said all he could say for the sake of the many children, but weighty with piety as he was, he could not stem the many fountain torrent of the cryptic wrath. The pigs of Leviticus were divided among all the nephews and nieces and cousins. Here ever a creditor got a hawk-rope or a flick-whip ready, and Ticcus himself, unhoused, unstied, unlardered and unsmocked, wandered forth with his business gone, like a geridine's swine-herd void of swine. For years and years a fine old hog farm was a haunt of rats and rabbits, never a grunt or squeak of porker ringing or rung eloquently, shook the fringe of ivied shade, or jarred the acorn in its cup, until a third sun arose and grew up to Zachary Cripps hereafter. All the neighborhood lay under a cloud of fear and sadness because of what Luke Sharp had done, not to others, but to himself. Luke Sharp, the greatest of all lawyers, so the affrighted woodman says, may and must alas be seen at certain moments of the forest moon rising on horseback from the black pool where his black life ended, aining the shore with a silent bound and galloping, with his arm held forth as straight as any signpost, to the nook of dark lane where he smote his son, and then to the ruined hut wherein he imprisoned the fair lady, and then to the rotting shed in which he courted and starved the great Oxford scholar. Further for the assertion of the law Luke Sharp is allowed by some evil power thus to revisit the glimpses of the moon, or whether he lies in silent blackness, ignorant of evil, sure it is that no one cares to stay beyond the fall of dusk in that part of the forest. But as soon as a lawyer's wife and son, by virtue of the popular mark, had found and quietly buried his disappointed corpse, they made the very best of a broken business as cheerfully as could be hoped for, each of them sighed very heavily at times, especially when they were almost certain of hearing again, round the corner or downstairs, a masterful and very memorable tread. Therefore, with what speed they might, they let their fine old cross-duck house, and fleeing all low courtesy, unpleasant remark and significant glance, took refuge under the quiet roof of Kitt's Aunt Peggy, near High Wycombe, where he had hoped to lodge and woo his timid forest angel. Here Kitt found tardy comfort, and recovered health quite rapidly by writing his own dirge in many admirable meters, till being at length made laureate of a strictly local paper, and a salary of nil per annum, and some quartz of ale to stand, he swung his cloak and lit his pipe in the style of better days, from those whom his father had wronged so deeply he would accept no help whatever, much as a desire to show their sense of his good behavior, and when the second best ambition of his life arrived by coach, that notable dog, Pablo, if Christopher could have sniffed lightest scent of Beckley or shot over in the black dog wrinkles of his nostrils, the odds are ten to one that Oxford never would have sighed, as all through the October term she did, at the last of her finest Badgerer. In spite of all this obscenancy, three people were resolved to make him come round and be comfortable, settled and respectable. To this they brought him in the end, and made him give up fugitive pieces, sonnets, stanzas to a left-hand glove, and epitaphs on a cenotaph. The squire and rustle and grace could not compose their own snug happiness without providing that Kit should be less miserable than his poetry, so they married him to a banker's daughter, and, better still, put him in the bank itself. The loyalty of Mrs. Firmitage to her distinguished husband's memory was never disturbed by any knowledge of that fatal go-to-seal. Poor Mrs. Sharp, as she slowly recovered from the sad grief wrought by greed, more and more reverently cherished her great husband's high repute. She rejoined him in a better world, or at least she set forth to do so, without any knowledge of the blow he had given to her son's head and her own heart. Kit, like a man, concealed that outrage, and like a good son, listened to his departed father's praises. But in her heart the widow felt that some of these might be imperiled if that go-to-seal turned up. Long time she kept it in reserve as a thunderbolt for Joan Firmitage, a Pablo's arrival improved her feelings, and so did the banker's daughter. And finally, on Kit's wedding day, with a sigh and a prayer, she took advantage of a clear fire and a rapid draft, and the go-to-seal flew through the chimney-pot. As a lawyer's daughter she revered such things, in the same capacity she knew that now it could make no great practical difference, for Grace was quite sure of her good aunt's money. And again, as a widow and mother, she felt what a stain must be cast on the name she loved best, if this little document ever came to light, other than good fire-light. But why should Esther have no house of her own, as darkly hinted of, so as to almost compel her to descend from tilt to tent? The reason is not far to seek, and he who runs may read it, without running out of Beckley. Gryps the carrier now being past the middle milestone of man's life, and seeing every day more and more the gray hairs on his horse's tail, lowered his whip in a shady place, and let his reins go slackly, and pulled his crooked sixpence out, and could not see to read it, and yet the summer sun was bright in the top of the bushes over him. I veer I must, I see no way out of him, Zachary said to his lonely self. It is as good as gone already, her cannot stand out again at their celibacy, and none else understandeth the frying-ban. The Lord knows how I have fought against the woman's is, seeing all as I has seen, and better I might have done if I must come to it, many a time in the last ten year, better at least for the brown, white, and yellow, though the woman is brought might as shattered him again. After all, Mary might be a deal worse, though I have a felt some doubt concerning her of her tongue, but her hath a proper respect for me in a forty puns to Oxford bank, if her mother speaketh right of her, and the squire hath given me a new horse, to come on when so Dobbin beginneth to wear out, therefore his domestics hath first claim, though I'd sooner drive Dobbin than ten of them. What shall us do now? Whatever shall us do? Zachary Cripps pulled off his hat in a slow perspiration of suspense, for if he once made up his mind there would be no way out of it. He looked at his horse with a sad misgiving, both on his own account and Dobbin's. The marriage of the master might wrong the horse, and the horse might no more be the master's. Suddenly a bright idea struck him, a bar of sunshine through the shade. Thou shalt settle it, Dobbin! He cried leaning over and stroking his gingerly loins. It concernedeth thee most, or leased ways quite as much. Never hath any man hath a better horse. The will of the Lord takes the strength out of all of us, but he leaveth and addeth to the wisdom therein. Dobbin, thou zeus things as never man can tell of. Now, thou waggest thy tail to the right, I will, and so be to the left, I won't. Mind with thou doest now. Call upon thy wisdom, nag, and give thy master honestly the sense of thy discretion. With a settled mind and no disturbance he awaited a delivery of Dobbin's tail. A fly, settled on the white foam of the harness, on the off side of his ancient horse, away went his tail with a sprightly flick at it, and Cripps accepted the result. The result was the satisfaction of Mary's long and faithful love for him and the happy continuance in the woodland roads of the loyal race and unpretentious course of Cripps the Carrier. The End.