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PAUL CLIFFORD, Volume 7.

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton




CHAPTER XXXIV.

               O Fortuna, viris invida fortibus
               Quam non aqua bonis praemia dividis.
                                             SENECA.
                     . . . . . . . . . . . .
               And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
               Pants to the place from whence at first he flew.
                     . . . . . . . . . . . .
               Here, to the houseless child of want,
               My door is open still.
                                           GOLDSMITH.

Slowly for Lucy waned the weeks of a winter which to her was the most
dreary portion of life she had ever passed.  It became the time for the
judge to attend one of those periodical visitations so fraught with dread
and dismay to the miserable inmates of the dark abodes which the complex
laws of this country so bounteously supply,--those times of great
hilarity and eating to the legal gentry,--

              "Who feed on crimes and fatten on distress,
               And wring vile mirth from suffering's last excess."

Ah!  excellent order of the world, which it is so wicked to disturb!  How
miraculously beautiful must be that system which makes wine out of the
scorching tears of guilt; and from the suffocating suspense, the agonized
fear, the compelled and self-mocking bravery, the awful sentence, the
despairing death-pang of one man, furnishes the smirking expectation of
fees, the jovial meeting, and the mercenary holiday to another!  "Of Law,
nothing less can be said than that her seat is the bosom of God."--
[Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity.]--To be sure not; Richard Hooker, you
are perfectly right.  The divinity of a sessions and the inspiration of
the Old Bailey are undeniable!

The care of Sir William Brandon had effectually kept from Lucy's ear the
knowledge of her lover's ignominious situation.  Indeed, in her delicate
health even the hard eye of Brandon and the thoughtless glance of
Mauleverer perceived the danger of such a discovery.  The earl, now
waiting the main attack on Lucy till the curtain had forever dropped on
Clifford, proceeded with great caution and delicacy in his suit to his
purposed bride.  He waited with the more patience inasmuch as he had
drawn in advance on his friend Sir William for some portion of the
heiress's fortune; and he readily allowed that he could not in the mean
while have a better advocate than he found in Brandon.  So persuasive,
indeed, and so subtle was the eloquence of this able sophist, that often
in his artful conversations with his niece he left even on the unvitiated
and strong though simple mind of Lucy an uneasy and restless impression,
which time might have ripened into an inclination towards the worldly
advantages of the marriage at her command.  Brandon was no bungling
mediator or violent persecutor.  He seemed to acquiesce in her rejection
of Mauleverer.  He scarcely recurred to the event.  He rarely praised the
earl himself, save for the obvious qualities of liveliness and good-
nature.  But he spoke, with all the vivid colours he could infuse at will
into his words, of the pleasures and the duties of rank and wealth.  Well
could he appeal alike to all the prejudices and all the foibles of the
human breast, and govern virtue through its weaknesses.  Lucy had been
brought up, like the daughters of most country gentlemen of ancient
family, in an undue and idle consciousness of superior birth; and she was
far from inaccessible to the warmth and even feeling (for here Brandon
was sincere) with which her uncle spoke of the duty of raising a gallant
name sunk into disrepute, and sacrificing our own inclination for the
redecorating the mouldered splendour of those who have gone before us.
If the confusion of idea occasioned by a vague pomposity of phrase, or
the infant inculcation of a sentiment that is mistaken for a, virtue, so
often makes fools of the wise on the subject of ancestry; if it clouded
even the sarcastic and keen sense of Brandon himself, we may forgive its
influence over a girl so little versed in the arts of sound reasoning as
poor Lucy, who, it may be said, had never learned to think until she had
learned to love.  However, the impression made by Brandon, in his
happiest moments of persuasion, was as yet only transient; it vanished
before the first thought of Clifford, and never suggested to her even a
doubt as to the suit of Mauleverer.

When the day arrived for Sir William Brandon to set out on the circuit,
he called Barlow, and enjoined on that acute and intelligent servant the
strictest caution with respect to Lucy.  He bade him deny her to every
one, of whatever rank, and carefully to look into every newspaper that
was brought to her, as well as to withhold every letter, save such as
were addressed to her in the judge's own handwriting.  Lucy's maid
Brandon had already won over to silence; and the uncle now pleased
himself with thinking that he had put an effectual guard to every chance
of discovery.  The identity of Lovett with Clifford had not yet even been
rumoured; and Mauleverer had rightly judged of Clifford, when he believed
the prisoner would himself take every precaution against the detection of
that fact.  Clifford answered the earl's note, and promised, in a letter
couched in so affecting yet so manly a tone of gratitude that even
Brandon was touched when he read it.  And since his confinement and
partial recovery of health, the prisoner had kept himself closely
secluded, and refused all visitors.  Encouraged by this reflection, and
the belief in the safety of his precautions, Brandon took leave of Lucy.
"Farewell!" said he, as he embraced her affectionately.  "Be sure that
you write to me, and forgive me if I do not answer you punctually.  Take
care of yourself, my sweet niece, and let me see a fresher colour on that
soft cheek when I return!"

"Take care of yourself rather, my dear, dear uncle," said Lucy, clinging
to him and weeping, as of late her weakened nerves caused her to do at
the least agitation.  "Why may I not go with you?  You have seemed to me
paler than usual the last three or four days, and you complained
yesterday.  Do let me go with you.  I will be no trouble, none at all;
but I am sure you require a nurse."

"You want to frighten me, my pretty Lucy," said Brandon, shaking his head
with a smile.  "I am well, very well.  I felt a strange rush of blood
towards the head yesterday, it is true; but I feel to-day stronger and
lighter than I have done for years.  Once more, God bless you, my child!"

And Brandon tore himself away, and commenced his journey.

The wandering and dramatic course of our story now conducts us to an
obscure lane in the metropolis, leading to the Thames, and makes us
spectators of an affecting farewell between two persons, whom the
injustice of fate and the persecutions of men were about perhaps forever
to divide.

"Adieu, my friend!" said Augustus Tomlinson, as he stood looking full on
that segment of the face of Edward Pepper which was left unconcealed by a
huge hat and a red belcher handkerchief.  Tomlinson himself was attired
in the full costume of a dignified clergyman.  "Adieu, my friend, since
you will remain in England,--adieu!  I am, I exult to say, no less
sincere a patriot than you.  Heaven be my witness, how long I looked
repugnantly on poor Lovett's proposal to quit my beloved country.  But
all hope of life here is now over; and really, during the last ten days I
have been so hunted from corner to corner, so plagued with polite
invitations, similar to those given by a farmer's wife to her ducks,
'Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed!' that my patriotism has been
prodigiously cooled, and I no longer recoil from thoughts of self-
banishment.  'The earth,' my dear Ned, as a Greek sage has very well
observed,--'the earth is the same everywhere!' and if I am asked for my
home, I can point, like Anaxagoras, to heaven!"

"'Pon my soul, you affect  me!"  said Ned,  speaking thick, either from
grief or the pressure of the belcher handkerchief on his mouth; "it is
quite beautiful to hear you talk!"

"Bear up, my dear friend," continued Tomlinson; "bear up against your
present afflictions.  What, to a man who fortifies himself by reason and
by reflection on the shortness of life, are the little calamities of the
body?  What is imprisonment or persecution or cold or hunger?  By the by,
you did not forget to put the sandwiches into my coat-pocket!"

"Hush!" whispered Ned, and he moved on involuntarily; "I see a man at the
other end of the street."

"Let us quicken our pace," said Tomlinson; and the pair proceeded towards
the river.

"And now," began Ned, who thought he might as well say something about
himself; for hitherto Augustus, in the ardour of his friendship, had been
only discussing his own plans,--"and now,--that is to say, when I leave
you,--I shall hasten to dive for shelter, until the storm blows over.  I
don't much like living in a cellar and wearing a smock frock; but those
concealments have something interesting in them, after all!  The safest
and snuggest place I know of is the Pays Bas, about Thames Court; so I
think of hiring an apartment underground, and taking my meals at poor
Lovett's old quarters, the Mug,--the police will never dream of looking
in these vulgar haunts for a man of my fashion."

"You cannot then tear yourself from England?" said Tomlinson.

"No, hang it!  the fellows are so cursed unmanly on the other side of the
water.  I hate their wine and their parley woo.  Besides, there is no fun
there."

Tomlinson, who was absorbed in his own thoughts, made no comment on his
friend's excellent reasons against travel; and the pair now approached
the brink of the river.  A boat was in waiting to receive and conduct to
the vessel in which he had taken his place for Calais the illustrious
emigrant.  But as Tomlinson's eye fell suddenly on the rude boatmen and
the little boat which were to bear him away from his native land; as he
glanced, too, across the blue waters, which a brisk wind wildly agitated,
and thought how much rougher it would be at sea, where "his soul"
invariably "sickened at the heaving wave,"--a whole tide of deep and
sorrowful emotions rushed upon him.

He turned away.  The spot on which he stood was a piece of ground to be
let (as a board proclaimed) upon a building lease; below, descended the
steps which were to conduct him to the boat; around, the desolate space
allowed him to see in far and broad extent the spires and domes and
chimneys of the great city whose inhabitants he might never plunder more.
As he looked and looked, the tears started to his eyes, and with a gust
of enthusiasm, little consonant with his temperate and philosophical
character, he lifted his right hand from his black breeches-pocket, and
burst into the following farewell to the metropolis of his native
shores:--

"Farewell, my beloved London, farewell!  Where shall I ever find a city
like you?  Never, till now, did I feel how inexpressibly dear you were to
me.  You have been my father and my brother and my mistress and my tailor
and my shoemaker and my hatter and my cook and my wine-merchant!  You and
I never misunderstood each other.  I did not grumble when I saw what fine
houses and good strong boxes you gave to other men.  No! I rejoiced at
their prosperity.  I delighted to see a rich man,--my only disappointment
was in stumbling on a poor one.  You gave riches to my neighbours; but,
O generous London, you gave those neighbours to me!  Magnificent streets,
all Christian virtues abide within you!  Charity is as common as smoke!
Where, in what corner of the habitable world, shall I find human beings
with so many superfluities?  Where shall I so easily decoy, from
benevolent credulity, those superfluities to myself?  Heaven only knows,
my dear, dear, darling London, what I lose in you!  O public charities!
O public institutions!  O banks that belie mathematical axioms and make
lots out of nothing!  O ancient constitution always to be questioned!
O modern improvements that never answer!  O speculations!  O companies!
O usury laws which guard against usurers, by making as many as possible!
O churches in which no one profits, save the parson, and the old women
that let pews of an evening!  O superb theatres, too small for parks, too
enormous for houses, which exclude comedy and comfort, and have a
monopoly for performing nonsense gigantically!  O houses of plaster,
built in a day!  O palaces four yards high, with a dome in the middle,
meant to be invisible!

     [We must not suppose this apostrophe to be an anachronism.
     Tomlinson, Of course, refers to some palace of his day; one of the
     boxes--Christmas boxes--given to the king by his economical nation
     of shopkeepers.  We suppose it is either pulled down or blown down
     long ago; it is doubtless forgotten by this time, except by
     antiquaries.  Nothing is so ephemeral as great houses built by the
     people.  Your kings play the deuce with their playthings!]

"O shops worth thousands, and O shopkeepers not worth a shilling!  O
system of credit by which beggars are princes, and princes are beggars!
O imprisonment for debt, which lets the mare be stolen, and then locks up
the bridle!  O sharpers, bubbles, senators, beaux, taverns, brothels,
clubs, houses private and public!---O LONDON, in a word, receive my last
adieu!  Long may you flourish in peace and plenteousness!  May your
knaves be witty, and your fools be rich!  May you alter only two things,
--your damnable tricks of transportation and hanging!  Those are your sole
faults; but for those I would never desert you.  Adieu!"

Here Tomlinson averted his head, and then hastily shaking the hand of
Long Ned with a tremulous and warm grasp, he hurried down the stairs and
entered the boat.  Ned remained motionless for some moments, following
him with his eyes as he sat at the end of the boat, waving a white
pocket-handkerchief.  At length a line of barges snatched him from the
sight of the lingerer; and Ned, slowly turning away, muttered,--"Yes, I
have always heard that Dame Lobkins's was the safest asylum for
misfortune like mine.  I will go forthwith in search of a lodging, and
to-morrow I will make my breakfast at the Mug!"

Be it our pleasing task, dear reader, to forestall the good robber, and
return, at the hour of sunrise on the day following Tomlinson's
departure, to the scene at which our story commenced.  We are now once
more at the house of Mrs. Margery Lobkins.

The room which served so many purposes was still the same as when Paul
turned it into the arena of his mischievous pranks.  The dresser, with
its shelves of mingled delf and pewter, occupied its ancient and
important station.  Only it might be noticed that the pewter was more
dull than of yore, and that sundry cracks made their erratic wanderings
over the yellow surface of the delf.  The eye of the mistress had become
less keen than heretofore, and the care of the hand maid had, of
necessity, relaxed.  The tall clock still ticked in monotonous warning;
the blanket-screen, haply innocent of soap since we last described it,
many-storied and polyballaded, still unfolded its ample leaves "rich with
the spoils of time;" the spit and the musket yet hung from the wall in
amicable proximation.  And the long, smooth form, "with many a holy text
thereon bestrewn," still afforded rest to the weary traveller, and an
object to the vacant stare of Mrs. Margery Lobkins, as she lolled in her
opposite seat and forgot the world.  But poor Piggy Lob!---there was the
alteration!  The soul of the woman was gone; the spirit had evaporated
from the human bottle!  She sat, with open mouth and glassy eye, in her
chair, sidling herself to and fro, with the low, peevish sound of fretful
age and bodily pain; sometimes this querulous murmur sharpened into a
shrill but unmeaning scold: "There now, you gallows-bird! you has taken
the swipes without chalking; you wants to cheat the poor widow; but I
sees you, I does!  Providence protects the aged and the innocent--Oh, oh!
these twinges will be the death o' me.  Where's Martha?  You jade, you!
you wiperous hussy, bring the tape; does n't you see how I suffers?  Has
you no bowels, to let a poor Christian cretur perish for want o' help!
That's with 'em, that's the way!  No one cares for I now,--no one has
respect for the gray 'airs of the old!"  And then the voice dwindled into
the whimpering "tenor of its way."

Martha, a strapping wench with red hair streaming over her "hills of
snow," was not, however, inattentive to the wants of her mistress.  "Who
knows," said she to a man who sat by the hearth, drinking tea out of a
blue mug, and toasting with great care two or three huge rounds of bread
for his own private and especial nutriment,--"who knows," said she, "what
we may come to ourselves?"  And, so saying, she placed a glowing tumbler
by her mistress's elbow.

But in the sunken prostration of her intellect, the old woman was
insensible even to her consolation.  She sipped and drank, it is true;
but as if the stream warmed not the benumbed region through which it
passed, she continued muttering in a crazed and groaning key,--

"Is this your gratitude, you sarpent!  Why does not you bring the tape, I
tells you?  Am I of a age to drink water like a 'oss, you nasty thing!
Oh, to think as ever I should live to be desarted!"

Inattentive to these murmurs, which she felt unreasonable, the bouncing
Martha now quitted the room to repair to her "upper household"
avocations.  The man at the hearth was the only companion left to the
widow.  Gazing at her for a moment, as she sat whining, with a rude
compassion in his eye, and slowly munching his toast, which he had now
buttered and placed in a delf plate on the hob, this person thus
soothingly began:--

"Ah, Dame Lobkins, if so be as 'ow little Paul vas a vith you, it would
be a gallows comfort to you in your latter hend!"

The name of Paul made the good woman incline her bead towards the
speaker; a ray of consciousness shot through her bedulled brain.

"Little Paul,--eh, sirs!  where is Paul?  Paul, I say, my ben cull.
Alack!  he's gone,--left his poor old nurse to die like a cat in a
cellar.  Oh, Dummie, never live to be old, man!  They leaves us to
oursel's, and then takes away all the lush with 'em!  I has not a drop o'
comfort in the 'varsal world!"

Dummie, who at this moment had his own reasons for soothing the dame, and
was anxious to make the most of the opportunity of a conversation as
unwitnessed as the present, replied tenderly, and with a cunning likely
to promote his end, reproached Paul bitterly for never having informed
the dame of his whereabout and his proceedings.  "But come, dame," he
wound up, "come, I guess as how he is better nor all that, and that you
need not beat your hold brains to think where he lies, or vot he's a
doing.  Blow me tight, Mother Lob,--I ax pardon, Mrs. Margery, I should
say,--if I vould not give five bob, ay, and five to the tail o' that, to
know what the poor lad is about; I takes a mortal hinterest in that 'ere
chap!"

"Oh! oh!" groaned the old woman, on whose palsied sense the astute
inquiries of Dummie Dunnaker fell harmless; "my poor sinful carcass!
what a way it be in!"

Artfully again did Dummie Dunnaker, nothing defeated, renew his attack;
but fortune does not always favour the wise, and it failed Dummie now,
for a twofold reason,--first, because it was not possible for the dame to
comprehend him; secondly, because even if it had been, she had nothing to
reveal.  Some of Clifford's pecuniary gifts had been conveyed
anonymously, all without direction or date; and for the most part they
had been appropriated by the sage Martha, into whose hands they fell, to
her own private uses.  Nor did the dame require Clifford's grateful
charity; for she was a woman tolerably well off in this world,
considering how near she was waxing to another.  Longer, however, might
Dummie have tried his unavailing way, had not the door of the inn creaked
on its hinges, and the bulky form of a tall man in a smockfrock, but with
a remarkably fine head of hair, darkened the threshold.  He honoured the
dame, who cast on him a lacklustre eye, with a sulky yet ambrosial nod,
seized a bottle of spirits and a tumbler, lighted a candle, drew a small
German pipe and a tobacco-box from his pouch, placed these several
luxuries on a small table, wheeled it to a far corner of the room, and
throwing himself into one chair, and his legs into another, he enjoyed
the result of his pains in a moody and supercilious silence.  Long and
earnestly did the meek Dummie gaze on the face of the gentleman before
him.  It had been some years since he had last beheld it; but it was one
which did not easily escape the memory; and although its proprietor was a
man who had risen in the world, and had gained the height of his
profession (a station far beyond the diurnal sphere of Dummie Dunnaker),
and the humble purloiner was therefore astonished to encounter him in
these lower regions, yet Dummie's recollection carried him back to a day
when they had gone shares together without respect of persons, and been
right jolly partners in the practical game of beggar my neighbour.
While, however, Dummie Dunnaker, who was a little inclined to be shy,
deliberated as to the propriety of claiming acquaintanceship, a dirty
boy, with a face which betokened the frost, as Dummie himself said, like
a plum dying of the scarlet fever, entered the room, with a newspaper in
his dexter paw.

"Great news! great news!" cried the urchin, imitating his vociferous
originals in the street; "all about the famous Captain Lovett, as large
as life!"

"'Old your blarney, you blattergowl!" said Dummie, rebukingly, and
seizing the journal.

"Master says as how he must have it to send to Clapham, and can't spare
it for more than a 'our!" said the boy, as he withdrew.

"I 'members the day," said Dummie, with the zeal of a clansman, "when the
Mug took a paper all to itsel' instead o' 'iring it by the job like!"

Thereon he opened the paper with a fillip, and gave himself tip to the
lecture.  But the tall stranger, half rising with a start, exclaimed,--

"Can't you have the manners to be communicative?  Do you think nobody
cares about Captain Lovett but yourself?"  On this, Dummie turned round
on his chair, and, with a "Blow me tight, you're velcome, I'm sure,"
began as follows (we copy the paper, not the diction of the reader):--

     "The trial of the notorious Lovett commences this day.  Great
     exertions have been made by people of all classes to procure seats
     in the Town Hall, which will be full to a degree never before known
     in this peaceful province.  No less than seven indictments are said
     to await the prisoner; it has been agreed that the robbery of Lord
     Mauleverer should be the first to come on.  The principal witness in
     this case against the prisoner is understood to be the king's
     evidence, MacGrawler.  No news as yet have been circulated
     concerning the suspected accomplices, Augustus Tomlinson and Edward
     Pepper.  It is believed that the former has left the country, and
     that the latter is lurking among the low refuges of guilt with which
     the heart of the metropolis abounds.  Report speaks highly of the
     person and manners of Lovett.  He is also supposed to be a man of
     some talent, and was formerly engaged in an obscure periodical
     edited by MacGrawler, and termed the 'Althenaeum,' Or 'Asinaeum.'
     Nevertheless, we apprehend that his origin is remarkably low, and
     suitable to the nature of his pursuits.  The prisoner will be most
     fortunate in a judge.  Never did any one holding the same high
     office as Sir William Brandon earn an equal reputation in so short a
     time.  The Whigs are accustomed to sneer at us, when we insist on
     the private virtues of our public men.  Let them look to Sir William
     Brandon, and confess that the austerest morals maybe linked with the
     soundest knowledge and the most brilliant genius.  The opening
     address of the learned judge to the jury at-------is perhaps the
     most impressive and solemn piece of eloquence in the English
     language!"

A cause for this eulogium might haply be found in another part of the
paper, in which it was said,--

     "Among the higher circles, we understand, the rumour has gone forth
     that Sir William Brandon is to be recalled to his old parliamentary
     career in a more elevated scene.  So highly are this gentleman's
     talents respected by his Majesty and the ministers, that they are,
     it is reported, anxious to secure his assistance in the House of
     Lords!"

When Dummie had spelt his "toilsome march" through the first of the above
extracts he turned round to the tall stranger, and, eying him with a sort
of winking significance, said,--

"So MacGrawler peaches,--blows the gaff on his pals, eh!  Vel, now, I
always suspected that 'ere son of a gun!  Do you know, he used to be at
the Mug many 's a day, a teaching our little Paul, and says I to Piggy
Lob, says I, 'Blow me tight, but that cove is a queer one! and if he does
not come to be scragged,' says I, 'it vill only be because he'll turn a
rusty, and scrag one of his pals!'  So you sees" (here Dummie looked
round, and his voice sank into a whisper),--"so you sees, Meester Pepper,
I vas no fool there!"

Long Ned dropped his pipe, and said sourly and with a suspicious frown,
"What! you know me?"

"To be sure and sartin I does," answered little Dummie, walking to the
table where the robber sat.  "Does not you know I?"

Ned regarded the interrogator with a sullen glance, which gradually
brightened into knowledge.  "Ah!" said he, with the air of a Brummel,
"Mr. Bummie, or Dummie, I think, eh!  Shake a paw,--I'm glad to see you.
Recollect the last time I saw you, you rather affronted me.  Never mind.
I dare say you did not mean it."

Encouraged by this affable reception from the highwayman, though a little
embarrassed by Ned's allusion to former conduct on his part, which he
felt was just, Dummie grinned, pushed a stool near Ned, sat himself down,
and carefully avoiding any immediate answer to Ned's complaints,
rejoined,--

"Do you know, Meester Pepper, you struck I all of a heap?  I could not
have s'posed as how you'd condescend nowadays to come to the Mug, vhere I
never seed you but once afore.  Lord love ye, they says as 'ow you go to
all the fine places in ruffles, with a pair of silver pops in your
vaistcoat pocket!  Vy, the boys hereabout say that you and Meester
Tomlinson, and this 'ere poor devil in quod, vere the finest gemmen in
town; and, Lord, for to think of your ciwility to a pitiful ragmerchant,
like I!"

"Ah!" said Ned, gravely, "there are sad principles afloat now.  They want
to do away with all distinctions in ranks,--to make a duke no better than
his valet, and a gentleman highwayman class with a filcher of fogles.'
But, damme, if I don't think misfortune levels us all quite enough; and
misfortune brings me here, little Dummie."

"Ah!  you vants to keep out of the vay of the bulkies!" "Right.  Since
poor Lovett was laid by the heels, which I must say was the fault of his
own deuced gentlemanlike behaviour to me and Augustus (you've heard of
Guz, you say), the knot of us seems quite broken.  One's own friends look
inclined to play one false; and really, the queer cuffins hover so
sharply upon us that I thought it safe to duck for a time.  So I have
taken a lodging in a cellar, and I intend for the next three months to
board at the Mug.  I have heard that I may be sure of lying snug here.
Dummie, your health!  Give us the baccy."

"I say, Meester Pepper," said Dummie, clearing his throat, when he had
obeyed the request, "can you tell I, if so be you 'as met in your travels
our little Paul?  Poor chap!  You knows as 'ow and vy he was sent to quod
by Justice Burnflat.  Vel, ven he got out, he vent to the devil, or
summut like it, and ve have not 'card a vord of him since.  You 'members
the lad,--a 'nation fine cull, tall and straight as a harrow!"

"Why, you fool," said Ned, "don't you know"--then checking himself
suddenly, "Ah! by the by, that rigmarole oath!  I was not to tell; though
now it's past caring for, I fear!  It is no use looking after the seal
when the letter's burned."

"Blow me," cried Dunnaker, with unaffected vehemence, "I sees as how you
know vot's come of he!  Many's the good turn I'll do you, if you vill but
tell I."

"Why, does he owe you a dozen bobs; or what, Dummie?" said Ned.

"Not he,--not he," cried Dummie.

"What then, you want to do him a mischief of some sort?"

"Do little Paul a mischief!" ejaculated Dummie; "vy, I've known the cull
ever since he was that high!  No, but I vants to do him a great sarvice,
Meester Pepper, and myself too,--and you to boot, for aught that I know,
Meester Pepper."

"Humph!" said Ned,--"humph!  what do you mean?  I do, it is true, know
where Paul is; but you must tell me first why you wish to know, otherwise
you may ask your grandfather for me."

A long, sharp, wistful survey did Mr. Dummie Dunnaker cast around him
before he rejoined.  All seemed safe and convenient for confidential
communication.  The supine features of Mrs. Lobkins were hushed in a
drowsy stupor; even the gray cat that lay by the fire was curled in the
embrace of Morpheus.  Nevertheless, it was in a close whisper that Dummie
spoke.

"I dares be bound, Meester Pepper, that you 'members vell ven Harry Cook,
the great highvayman,--poor fellow!  he's gone vhere ve must all go,--
brought you, then quite a gossoon,' for the first time to the little back
parlour at the Cock and Hen, Dewereux Court?"

Ned nodded assent.

"And you 'members as how I met Harry and you there, and I vas all afeard
at you,--'cause vy?  I had never seen you afore, and ve vas a going to
crack a swell's crib.  And Harry spoke up for you, and said as 'ow though
you had just gone on the town, you was already prime up to gammon.  You
'members, eh?"

"Ay, I remember all," said Ned; "it was the first and only house I ever
had a hand in breaking into.  Harry was a fellow of low habits; so I
dropped his acquaintance, and took solely to the road, or a chance
ingenuity now and then.  I have no idea of a gentleman turning
cracksman."

"Vel, so you vent vith us, and ve slipped you through a pane in the
kitchen-vindow.  You vas the least of us, big as you be now; and you vent
round and opened the door for us; and ven you had opened the door, you
saw a voman had joined us, and you were a funked then, and stayed vithout
the crib, to keep vatch vhile ve vent in."

"Well, well," cried Ned, "what the devil has all this rigmarole got to do
with Paul?"

"Now don't be glimflashy, but let me go on smack right about.  Vell, ven
ve came out, you minds as 'ow the voman had a bundle in her arms, and you
spake to her; and she answered you roughly, and left us all, and vent
straight home; and ve vent and fenced the swag' that wery night and
afterwards napped the regulars.  And sure you made us laugh 'artily,
Meester Pepper, when you said, says you, 'That 'ere voman is a rum blo"
en.' So she vas, Meester Pepper!"

     [The reader has probably observed the use made by Dummie and Mrs.
     Lobkins of Irish phraseology or pronunciation, This is a remarkable
     trait in the dialect of the lowest orders in London, owing, we
     suppose, to their constant association with emigrants from "the
     first flower of the earth."  Perhaps it is a modish affectation
     among the gentry of St.  Giles's, just as we eke out our mother-
     tongue with French at Mayfair.]

"Oh, spare me," said Ned, affectedly, "and make haste; you keep me all in
the dark.  By the way, I remember that you joked me about the bundle; and
when I asked what the woman had wrapped in it, you swore it was a child.
Rather more likely that the girl, whoever she was, would have left a
child behind her than carried one off!"  The face of Dummie waxed big
with conscious importance.

"Vell, now, you would not believe us; but it vas all true.  That 'ere
bundle vas the voman's child,--I s'pose an unnatural von by the gemman;
she let us into the 'ouse on condition we helped her off vith it.  And,
blow me tight, but ve paid ourselves vel for our trouble.  That 'ere
voman vas a strange cretur; they say she had been a lord's blowen; but
howsomever, she was as 'ot-'eaded and hodd as if she had been.  There vas
old Nick's hown row made on the matter, and the revard for our
[de]tection vas so great, that as you vas not much tried yet, Harry
thought it best for to take you vith 'im down to the country, and told
you as 'ow it vas all a flam about the child in the bundle!"

"Faith," said Ned, "I believed him readily enough; and poor Harry was
twisted shortly after, and I went into Ireland for safety, where I stayed
two years,--and deuced good claret I got there!"

"So, vhiles you vas there," continued Dummie, "poor Judy, the voman,
died,--she died in this very 'ouse, and left the horphan to the
[af]fection of Piggy Lob, who was 'nation fond of it surely!  Oh!  but I
'members vot a night it vas ven poor Judy died; the vind vistled like
mad, and the rain tumbled about as if it had got a holiday; and there the
poor creature lay raving just over 'ed of this room we sits in!  Laus-a-
me, vat a sight it vas!"

Here Dummie paused, and seemed to recall in imagination the scene he had
witnessed; but over the mind of Long Ned a ray of light broke slowly.

"Whew!" said he, lifting up his forefinger, "whew!  I smell a rat; this
stolen child, then, was no other than Paul.  But, pray, to whom did the
house belong?  For that fact Harry never communicated to me.  I only
heard the owner was a lawyer, or parson, or some such thing."

"Vy now, I'll tell you, but don't be glimflashy.  So, you see, ven Judy
died, and Harry was scragged, I vas the only von living who vas up to the
secret; and vhen Mother Lob vas a taking a drop to comfort her vhen Judy
vent off, I hopens a great box in which poor Judy kept her duds and
rattletraps, and surely I finds at the bottom of the box hever so many
letters and sick like,--for I knew as 'ow they vas there; so I vhips
these off and carries 'em 'ome with me, and soon arter, Mother Lob sold
me the box o' duds for two quids--'cause vy?  I vas a rag-merchant.  So
now I 'solved, since the secret vas all in my hown keeping, to keep it as
tight as vinkey; for first, you sees as 'ow I vas afeard I should be
hanged if I vent for to tell,--'cause vy?  I stole a vatch, and lots
more, as vell as the hurchin; and next I vas afeard as 'ow the mother
might come back and haunt me the same as Sall haunted Villy, for it vas a
'orrid night ven her soul took ving.  And hover and above this, Meester
Pepper, I thought summut might turn hup by and by, in vhich it vould be
best for I to keep my hown counsel and nab the revard, if I hever durst
make myself known."

Here Dummie proceeded to narrate how frightened he had been lest Ned
should discover all, when (as it may be remembered, Pepper informed Paul
at the beginning of this history) he encountered that worthy at Dame
Lobkins's house; how this fear had induced him to testify to Pepper that
coldness and rudeness which had so enraged the haughty highwayman; and
how great had been his relief and delight at finding that Ned returned to
the Mug no more.  He next proceeded to inform his new confidant of his
meeting with the father (the sagacious reader knows where and when), and
of what took place at that event.  He said how, in his first negotiation
with the father, prudently resolving to communicate drop by drop such
information as he possessed, he merely, besides confessing to a share in
the robbery, stated that he thought he knew the house, etc., to which the
infant had been consigned,--and that, if so, it was still alive; but that
he would inquire.  He then related how the sanguine father, who saw that
hanging Dummie for the robbery of his house might not be half so likely a
method to recover his son as bribery and conciliation, not only forgave
him his former outrage, but whetted his appetite to the search by
rewarding him for his disclosure.  He then proceeded to state how, unable
anywhere to find Paul, or any trace of him, he amused the sire from time
to time with forged excuses; how, at first, the sums he received made him
by no means desirous to expedite a discovery that would terminate such
satisfactory receipts; how at length the magnitude of the proffered
reward, joined to the threats of the sire, had made him become seriously
anxious to learn the real fate and present "whereabout" of Paul; how, the
last time he had seen the father, he had, by way of propitiation and
first fruit, taken to him all the papers left by the unhappy mother and
secreted by himself; and how he was now delighted to find that Ned was
acquainted with Paul's address.  Since he despaired of finding Paul by
his own exertions alone, he became less tenacious of his secret; and he
now proffered Ned, on discovery of Paul, a third of that reward the whole
of which he had once hoped to engross.

Ned's eyes and mouth opened at this proposition.  "But the name,--the
name of the father?  You have not told me that yet!" cried he,
impatiently.

"Noa, noa!" said Dummie, archly, "I does n't tell you all, till you tells
I summut.  Vhere's little Paul, I say; and vhere be us to get at him?"

Ned heaved a sigh.

"As for the oath," said he, musingly, "it would be a sin to keep it, now
that to break it can do him no harm, and may do him good, especially as,
in case of imprisonment or death, the oath is not held to be binding; yet
I fear it is too late for the reward.  The father will scarcely thank you
for finding his son!---Know, Dummie, that Paul is in  jail, and that he
is one and the same person as Captain Lovett!"  Astonishment never wrote
in more legible characters than she now displayed on the rough features
of Dummie Dunnaker.  So strong are the sympathies of a profession
compared with all others, that Dummie's first confused thought was that
of pride.  "The great Captain Lovett!" he faltered.

"Little Paul at the top of the profession!  Lord, Lord!  I always said as
how he'd the hambition to rise!"

"Well, well, but the father's name?"

At this question the expression of Dummie's face fell; a sudden horror
struggled to his eyes--




CHAPTER XXXV.

     Why is it that at moments there creeps over us an awe, a terror,
     overpowering but undefined?  Why is it that we shudder without a
     cause, and feel the warm life-blood stand still in its courses?
     Are the dead too near?
                                                   FALKLAND

          Ha! sayest thou!  Hideous thought, I feel it twine
          O'er my iced heart, as curls around his prey
          The sure and deadly serpent!
              . . . . . . . . . . . .
          What!  in the hush and in the solitude
          Passed that dread soul away?
                                               Love and Hatred.

The evening prior to that morning in which the above conversation
occurred, Brandon passed alone in his lodging at --------.  He had felt
himself too unwell to attend the customary wassail, and he sat indolently
musing in the solitude of the old-fashioned chamber to which he was
consigned.  There, two wax-candles on the smooth, quaint table dimly
struggled against the gloom of heavy panels, which were relieved at
unfrequent intervals by portraits in oaken frames, dingy, harsh, and
important with the pomp of laced garments and flowing wigs.  The
predilection of the landlady for modern tastes had, indeed, on each side
of the huge fireplace suspended more novel masterpieces of the fine arts.
In emblematic gorgeousness hung the pictures of the four Seasons, buxom
wenches all, save Winter, who was deformedly bodied forth in the likeness
of an aged carle.  These were interspersed by an engraving of Lord
Mauleverer, the lieutenant of the neighbouring county, looking extremely
majestical in his peer's robes; and by three typifications of Faith,
Hope, and Charity,--ladies with whom it may be doubted if the gay earl
ever before cultivated so close an intimacy.  Curtains, of that antique
chintz in which fasces of stripes are alternated by rows of flowers,
filled the interstices of three windows; a heavy sideboard occupied the
greater portion of one side of the room; and on the opposite side, in the
rear of Brandon, a vast screen stretched its slow length along, and
relieved the unpopulated and as it were desolate comfort of the
apartment.

Pale and imperfectly streamed the light upon Brandon's face, as he sat in
his large chair, leaning his cheek on one hand, and gazing with the
unconscious earnestness of abstraction on the clear fire.  At that moment
a whole phalanx of gloomy thought was sweeping in successive array across
his mind.  His early ambition, his ill-omened marriage, the causes of his
after-rise in the wrong-judging world, the first dawn of his reputation,
his rapid and flattering successes, his present elevation, his aspiring
hope of far higher office, and more patrician honours,--all these
phantoms passed before him in checkered shadow and light; but ever with
each stalked one disquieting and dark remembrance,--the loss of his only
son.

Weaving his ambition with the wish to revive the pride of his hereditary
name, every acquisition of fortune or of fame rendered him yet more
anxious to find the only one who could perpetuate these hollow
distinctions to his race.

"I shall recover him yet!" he broke out suddenly and aloud.  As he spoke,
a quick, darting, spasmodic pain ran shivering through his whole frame,
and then fixed for one instant on his heart with a gripe like the talons
of a bird; it passed away, and was followed by a deadly sickness.
Brandon rose, and filling himself a large tumbler of water, drank with
avidity.  The sickness passed off like the preceding pain; but the
sensation had of late been often felt by Brandon, and disregarded,--for
few persons were less afflicted with the self-torture of hypochondria;
but now, that night, whether it was more keen than usual, or whether his
thought had touched on the string that jars naturally on the most
startling of human anticipations, we know not, but, as he resumed his
seat, the idea of his approaching dissolution shot like an ice-bolt
through his breast.

So intent was this scheming man upon the living objects of the world, and
so little were his thoughts accustomed to turn toward the ultimate goal
of all things, that this idea obtruding itself abruptly upon him,
startled him with a ghastly awe.  He felt the colour rush from his cheek,
and a tingling and involuntary pain ran wandering through the channels of
his blood, even from the roots of the hair to the soles of his feet.  But
the stern soul of Brandon was not one which shadows could long affright.
He nerved himself to meet the grim thought thus forced upon his mental
eye, and he gazed on it with a steady and enduring look.

"Well," thought he, "is my hour coming, or have I yet the ordinary term
of mortal nature to expect?  It is true, I have lately suffered these
strange revulsions of the frame with somewhat of an alarming frequency;
perhaps this medicine, which healed the anguish of one infirmity, has
produced another more immediately deadly.  Yet why should I think this?
My sleep is sound and calm, my habits temperate, my mind active and clear
as in its best days.  In my youth I never played the traitor with my
constitution; why should it desert me at the very threshold of my age?
Nay, nay, these are but passing twitches, chills of the blood that begins
to wax thin.  Shall I learn to be less rigorous in my diet?  Perhaps wine
may reward my abstinence in avoiding it for my luxuries, by becoming a
cordial to my necessities!  Ay, I will consult,--I will consult, I must
not die yet.  I have--let me see, three--four grades to gain before the
ladder is scaled.  And, above all, I must regain my child!  Lucy married
to Mauleverer, myself a peer, my son wedded to-whom?  Pray God he be not
married already!  My nephews and my children nobles! the house of Brandon
restored, my power high in the upward gaze of men, my fame set on a more
lasting basis than a skill in the quirks of law,--these are yet to come;
these I will not die till I have enjoyed!  Men die not till their
destinies are fulfilled.  The spirit that swells and soars within me says
that the destiny of William Brandon is but half begun!"

With this conclusion, Brandon sought his pillow.  What were the
reflections of the prisoner whom he was to judge?  Need we ask?  Let us
picture to ourselves his shattered health, the languor of sickness
heightening the gloom which makes the very air of a jail; his certainty
of the doom to be passed against him; his knowledge that the uncle of
Lucy Brandon was to be his judge, that Mauleverer was to be his accuser,
and that in all human probability the only woman he had ever loved must
sooner or later learn the criminality of his life and the ignominy of his
death; let us but glance at the above blackness of circumstances that
surrounded him, and it would seem that there is but little doubt as to
the complexion of his thoughts!  Perhaps, indeed, even in that terrible
and desolate hour one sweet face shone on him, "and dashed the darkness
all away."  Perhaps, too, whatever might be the stings of his conscience,
one thought, one remembrance of a temptation mastered and a sin escaped,
brought to his eyes tears that were sweet and healing in their source.
But the heart of a man in Clifford's awful situation is dark and
inscrutable; and often when the wildest and gloomiest external
circumstances surround us, their reflection sleeps like a shadow, calm
and still upon the mind.

The next morning, the whole town of  (a town in which, we regret to say,
an accident once detained ourself for three wretched days, and which we
can, speaking therefore from profound experience, assert to be in
ordinary times the most melancholy and peopleless-looking congregation of
houses that a sober imagination can conceive) exhibited a scene of such
bustle, animation, and jovial anxiety as the trial for life or death to a
fellow-creature can alone excite in the phlegmatic breasts of the
English.  Around the court the crowd thickened with every moment, until
the whole marketplace in which the townhall was situated became one
living mass.  The windows of the houses were filled with women, some of
whom had taken that opportunity to make parties to breakfast; and little
round tables, with tea and toast on them, caught the eyes of the grinning
mobists as they gaped impatiently upwards.

"Ben," said a stout yeoman, tossing up a halfpenny, and catching the said
coin in his right hand, which he immediately covered with the left,--
"Ben, heads or tails that Lovett is hanged; heads hanged, tails not, for
a crown."

"Petticoats, to be sure," quoth Ben, eating an apple; and it was heads!

"Damme, you've lost!" cried the yeoman, rubbing his rough hands with
glee.

It would have been a fine sight for Asmodeus, could he have perched on
one of the house tops of the market-place of --------, and looked on the
murmuring and heaving sea of mortality below.  Oh! the sight of a crowd
round a court of law or a gibbet ought to make the devil split himself
with laughter.

While the mob was fretting, and pushing, and swearing, and grinning, and
betting, and picking pockets, and trampling feet, and tearing gowns, and
scrambling nearer and nearer to the doors and windows of the court,
Brandon was slowly concluding his abstemious repast, preparatory to
attendance on his judicial duties.  His footman entered with a letter.
Sir William glanced rapidly over the seal (one of those immense
sacrifices of wax used at that day), adorned with a huge coat-of-arms,
surmounted with an earl's coronet, and decorated on either side with
those supporters so dear to heraldic taste.  He then tore open the
letter, and read as follows:--

     MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--You know that in the last conversation I had
     the Honour to hold with you I alluded, though perhaps somewhat
     distantly, to the esteem which his Majesty had personally expressed
     for your principles and talents, and his wish to testify it at the
     earliest opportunity.  There will be, as you are doubtless aware, an
     immediate creation of four peerages.  Your name stands second on the
     list.  The choice of title his Majesty graciously leaves to you; but
     he has hinted that the respectable antiquity of your family would
     make him best pleased were you to select the name of your own
     family-seat, which, if I mistake not, is Warlock.  You will instruct
     me at your leisure as to the manner in which the patent should be
     made out, touching the succession, etc.  Perhaps (excuse the license
     of an old friend) this event may induce you to forsake your long-
     cherished celibacy.  I need not add that this accession of rank will
     be accompanied by professional elevation.  You will see by the
     papers that the death of --------leaves vacant the dignity of Chief
     Baron; and I am at length empowered to offer you a station
     proportioned to your character and talents.

     With great consideration, believe me, my dear Sir, Very truly yours,

     Private and Confidential.


Brandon's dark eye glanced quickly from the signature of the premier,
affixed to this communication, towards the mirror opposite him.  He
strode to it, and examined his own countenance with a long and wistful
gaze.  Never, we think, did youthful gallant about to repair to the
trysting-spot, in which fair looks make the greatest of earthly
advantages, gaze more anxiously on the impartial glass than now did the
ascetic and scornful judge; and never, we ween, did the eye of the said
gallant retire with a more satisfied and triumphant expression.

"Yes, yes!" muttered the judge, "no sign of infirmity is yet written
here; the blood flows clear and warm enough; the cheek looks firm too,
and passing full, for one who was always of the lean kine.  Aha! this
letter is a cordial, an elixir vitro.  I feel as if a new lease were
granted to the reluctant tenant.  Lord Warlock, the first Baron of
Warlock, Lord Chief Baron,--what next?"

As he spoke, he strode unconsciously away, folding his arms with that
sort of joyous and complacent gesture which implies the idea of a man
hugging himself in a silent delight.  Assuredly had the most skilful
physician then looked upon the ardent and all-lighted face, the firm
step, the elastic and muscular frame, the vigorous air of Brandon, as he
mentally continued his soliloquy, he would have predicted for him as fair
a grasp on longevity as the chances of mortal life will allow.  He was
interrupted by the servant entering.

"It is twenty-five minutes after nine, sir," said he, respectfully.

"Sir,--sir!" repeated Brandon.  "Ah, well! so late!"

"Yes, sir, and the sheriff's carriage is almost at the door."

"Humph!  Minister,--Peer,--Warlock,--succession.  My son, my son! would
to God that I could find thee!"

Such were Brandon's last thoughts as he left the room.  It was with great
difficulty, so dense was the crowd, that the judge drove up to the court.
As the carriage slowly passed, the spectators pressed to the windows of
the vehicle, and stood on tiptoe to catch a view of the celebrated
lawyer.  Brandon's face, never long indicative of his feelings, had now
settled into its usual gravity; and the severe loftiness of his look
chilled, while it satisfied, the curiosity of the vulgar.  It had been
ordered that no person should be admitted until the judge had taken his
seat on the bench; and this order occasioned so much delay, owing to the
accumulated pressure of the vast and miscellaneous group, that it was
more than half an hour before the court was able to obtain that decent
order suiting the solemnity of the occasion.  At five minutes before ten
a universal and indescribable movement announced that the prisoner was
put to the bar.  We read in one of the journals of that day, that "on
being put to the bar, the prisoner looked round with a long and anxious
gaze, which at length settled on the judge, and then dropped, while the
prisoner was observed to change countenance slightly.  Lovett was dressed
in a plain dark suit; he seemed to be about six feet high; and though
thin and worn, probably from the effect of his wound and imprisonment, he
is remarkably well made, and exhibits the outward appearance of that
great personal strength which he is said to possess, and which is not
unfrequently the characteristic of daring criminals.  His face is
handsome and prepossessing, his eyes and hair dark, and his complexion
pale, possibly from the effects of his confinement; there was a certain
sternness in his countenance during the greater part of the trial.  His
behaviour was remarkably collected and composed.  The prisoner listened
with the greatest attention to the indictment, which the reader will find
in another part of our paper, charging him with the highway robbery of
Lord Mauleverer, on the night of the of last.  He occasionally inclined
his body forward, and turned his ear towards the court; and he was
observed, as the jury were sworn, to look steadily in the face of each.
He breathed thick and hard when the various aliases he had assumed--
Howard, Cavendish, Jackson, etc.,--were read; but smiled with an
unaccountable expression when the list was completed, as if exulting at
the varieties of his ingenuity.  At twenty-five minutes past ten Mr.
Dyebright, the counsel for the crown, stated the case to the jury."

Mr. Dyebright was a lawyer of great eminence; he had been a Whig all his
life, but had latterly become remarkable for his insincerity, and
subservience to the wishes of the higher powers.  His talents were
peculiar and effective.  If he had little eloquence, he had much power;
and his legal knowledge, was sound and extensive.  Many of his brethren
excelled him in display; but no one, like him, possessed the secret of
addressing a jury.  Winningly familiar; seemingly candid to a degree that
scarcely did justice to his cause, as if he were in an agony lest he
should persuade you to lean a hair-breadth more on his side of the case
than justice would allow; apparently all made up of good, homely,
virtuous feeling, a disinterested regard for truth, a blunt yet tender
honesty, seasoned with a few amiable fireside prejudices, which always
come home to the hearts of your fathers of families and thorough-bred
Britons; versed in all the niceties of language, and the magic of names;
if he were defending crime, carefully calling it misfortune; if attacking
misfortune, constantly calling it crime,--Mr. Dyebright was exactly the
man born to pervert justice, to tickle jurors, to cozen truth with a
friendly smile, and to obtain a vast reputation as an excellent advocate.
He began with a long preliminary flourish on the importance of the case.
He said that he should with the most scrupulous delicacy avoid every
remark calculated to raise unnecessary prejudice against the prisoner.
He should not allude to his unhappy notoriety, his associations with the
lowest dregs.  (Here up jumped the counsel for the prisoner, and Mr.
Dyebright was called to order.)  "God knows," resumed the learned
gentleman, looking wistfully at the jury, "that my learned friend might
have spared himself this warning.  God knows that I would rather fifty of
the wretched inmates of this county jail were to escape unharmed than
that a hair of the prisoner you behold at the bar should be unjustly
touched.  The life of a human being is at stake; we should be guilty
ourselves of a crime which on our deathbeds we should tremble to recall,
were we to suffer any consideration, whether of interest or of prejudice,
or of undue fear for our own properties and lives, to bias us even to the
turning of a straw against the unfortunate prisoner.  Gentlemen, if you
find me travelling a single inch from my case,--if you find me saying a
single word calculated to harm the prisoner in your eyes, and unsupported
by the evidence I shall call,--then I implore you not to depend upon the
vigilance of my learned friend, but to treasure these my errors in your
recollection, and to consider them as so many arguments in favour of the
prisoner.  If, gentlemen, I could by any possibility imagine that your
verdict would be favourable to the prisoner, I can, unaffectedly and from
the bottom of my heart, declare to you that I should rejoice; a case
might be lost, but a fellow-creature would be saved!  Callous as we of
the legal profession are believed, we have feelings like you; and I ask
any one of you, gentlemen of the jury, any one who has ever felt the
pleasures of social intercourse, the joy of charity, the heart's reward
of benevolence,--I ask any one of you, whether, if he were placed in the
arduous situation I now hold, all the persuasions of vanity would not
vanish at once from his mind, and whether his defeat as an advocate would
not be rendered dear to him by the common and fleshly sympathies of a
man.  But, gentlemen" (Mr. Dyebright's voice at once deepened and
faltered), "there is a duty, a painful duty, we owe to our country; and
never, in the long course of my professional experience, do I remember an
instance in which it was more called forth than in the present.  Mercy,
gentlemen, is dear, very dear to us all; but it is the deadliest injury
we can inflict on mankind when it is bought at the expense of justice."

The learned gentleman then, after a few further prefatory observations,
proceeded to state how, on the night of ------- last, Lord Mauleverer was
stopped and robbed by three men masked, of a sum of money amounting to
above L350, a diamond snuff-box, rings, watch, and a case of most
valuable jewels,--how Lord Mauleverer, in endeavouring to defend himself,
had passed a bullet through the clothes of one of the robbers,--how it
would be proved that the garments of the prisoner, found in a cave in
Oxfordshire, and positively sworn to by a witness he should produce,
exhibited a rent similar to such a one as a bullet would produce,--how,
moreover, it would be positively sworn to by the same witness, that the
prisoner Lovett had come to the cavern with two accomplices not since
taken up, since their rescue by the prisoner, and boasted of the robbery
he had just committed; that in the clothes and sleeping apartment of the
robber the articles stolen from Lord Mauleverer were found; and that the
purse containing the notes for L300, the only thing the prisoner could
probably have obtained time to carry off with him, on the morning on
which the cave was entered by the policemen, was found on his person on
the day on which be had attempted the rescue of his comrades, and had
been apprehended in that attempt.  He stated, moreover, that the dress
found in the cavern, and sworn to by one witness he should produce as
belonging to the prisoner, answered exactly to the description of the
clothes worn by the principal robber, and sworn to by Lord Mauleverer,
his servant, and the postilions.  In like manner the colour of one of the
horses found in the cavern corresponded with that rode by the highwayman.
On these circumstantial proofs, aided by the immediate testimony of the
king's evidence (that witness whom he should produce) he rested a case
which could, he averred, leave no doubt on the minds of an impartial
jury.  Such, briefly and plainly alleged, made the substance of the
details entered into by the learned counsel, who then proceeded to call
his witnesses.  The evidence of Lord Mauleverer (who was staying at
Mauleverer Park, which was within a few miles of--) was short and clear
(it was noticed as a singular circumstance, that at the end of the
evidence the prisoner bowed respectfully to his lordship).  The witness
of the postilions and of the valet was no less concise; nor could all the
ingenuity of Clifford's counsel shake any part of their evidence in his
cross-examination.  The main witness depended on by the crown was now
summoned, and the solemn countenance of Peter MacGrawler rose on the eyes
of the jury.  One look of cold and blighting contempt fell on him from
the eye of the prisoner, who did not again deign to regard him during the
whole of his examination.

The witness of MacGrawler was delivered with a pomposity worthy of the
ex-editor of the "Asinaeum."  Nevertheless, by the skill of Mr.
Dyebright, it was rendered sufficiently clear a story to leave an
impression on the jury damnatory to the interests of the prisoner.  The
counsel on the opposite side was not slow in perceiving the ground
acquired by the adverse party; so, clearing his throat, he rose with a
sneering air to the cross-examination.

"So, so," began Mr. Botheram, putting on a pair of remarkably large
spectacles, wherewith he truculently regarded the witness,--"so, so, Mr.
MacGrawler,--is that your name, eh, eh?  Ah, it is, is it?  A very
respectable name it is too, I warrant.  Well, sir, look at me.  Now, on
your oath, remember, were you ever the editor of a certain thing
published every Wednesday, and called the 'Athenaeum,' or the 'Asinaeum,'
or some such name?"

Commencing with this insidious and self-damnatory question, the learned
counsel then proceeded, as artfully as he was able, through a series of
interrogatories calculated to injure the character, the respectable
character, of MacGrawler, and weaken his testimony in the eyes of the
jury.  He succeeded in exciting in the audience that feeling of merriment
wherewith the vulgar are always so delighted to intersperse the dull
seriousness of hanging a human being.  But though the jury themselves
grinned, they were not convinced.  The Scotsman retired from the witness-
box "scotched," perhaps, in reputation, but not "killed" as to testimony.
It was just before this witness concluded, that Lord Mauleverer caused to
be handed to the judge a small slip of paper, containing merely these
words in pencil:--

     DEAR BRANDON,--A dinner waits you at Mauleverer Park, only three
     miles hence.  Lord--and the Bishop of--meet you.  Plenty of news
     from London, and a letter about you, which I will show to no one
     till we meet.  Make haste and hang this poor fellow, that I may see
     you the sooner; and it is bad for both of us to wait long for a
     regular meal like dinner.  I can't stay longer, it is so hot, and my
     nerves were always susceptible.

                                        Yours,  MAULEVERER.

     If you will come, give me a nod.  You know my hour,--it is always
     the same.


The judge, glancing over the note, inclined his head gravely to the earl,
who withdrew; and in one minute afterwards, a heavy and breathless
silence fell over the whole court.  The prisoner was called upon for his
defence: it was singular what a different sensation to that existing in
their breasts the moment before crept thrillingly through the audience.
Hushed was every whisper, vanished was every smile that the late cross-
examination had excited; a sudden and chilling sense of the dread
importance of the tribunal made itself abruptly felt in the minds of
every one present.

Perhaps, as in the gloomy satire of Hogarth (the moral Mephistopheles of
painters), the close neighbourhood of pain to mirth made the former come
with the homelier shock to the heart; be that as it may, a freezing
anxiety, numbing the pulse and stirring through the air, made every man
in that various crowd feel a sympathy of awe with his neighbour,
excepting only the hardened judge and the hackneyed lawyers, and one
spectator,--an idiot who had thrust himself in with the general press,
and stood, within a few paces of the prisoner, grinning unconsciously,
and every now and then winking with a glassy eye at some one at a
distance, whose vigilance he had probably eluded.

The face and aspect, even the attitude, of the prisoner were well fitted
to heighten the effect which would naturally have been created by any man
under the same fearful doom.  He stood at the very front of the bar, and
his tall and noble figure was drawn up to its full height; a glow of
excitement spread itself gradually over features at all times striking,
and lighted an eye naturally eloquent, and to which various emotions at
that time gave a more than commonly deep and impressive expression.  He
began thus:--

"My lord, I have little to say, and I may at once relieve the anxiety of
my counsel, who now looks wistfully upon me, and add that that little
will scarcely embrace the object of defence.  Why should I defend myself?
Why should I endeavour to protract a life that a few days, more or less,
will terminate, according to the ordinary calculations of chance?  Such
as it is and has been, my life is vowed to the law, and the law will have
the offering.  Could I escape from this indictment, I know that seven
others await me, and that by one or the other of these my conviction and
my sentence must come.  Life may be sweet to all of us, my lord; and were
it possible that mine could be spared yet a while, that continued life
might make a better atonement for past actions than a death which, abrupt
and premature, calls for repentance while it forbids redress.

"But when the dark side of things is our only choice, it is useless to
regard the bright; idle to fix our eyes upon life, when death is at hand;
useless to speak of contrition, when we are denied its proof.  It is the
usual policy of prisoners in my situation to address the feelings and
flatter the prejudices of the jury; to descant on the excellence of our
laws, while they endeavour to disarm them; to praise justice, yet demand
mercy; to talk of expecting acquittal, yet boast of submitting without a
murmur to condemnation.  For me, to whom all earthly interests are dead,
this policy is idle and superfluous.  I hesitate not to tell you, my lord
judge,--to proclaim to you, gentlemen of the jury,--that the laws which I
have broken through my life I despise in death!  Your laws are but of two
classes; the one makes criminals, the other punishes them.  I have
suffered by the one; I am about to perish by the other.

"My lord, it was the turn of a straw which made me what I am.  Seven
years ago I was sent to the house of correction for an offence which I
did not commit.  I went thither, a boy who had never infringed a single
law; I came forth, in a few weeks, a man who was prepared to break all
laws!  Whence was this change?  Was it my fault, or that of my
condemners?  You had first wronged me by a punishment which I did not
deserve; you wronged me yet more deeply when (even had I been guilty of
the first offence) I was sentenced to herd with hardened offenders, and
graduates in vice and vice's methods of support.  The laws themselves
caused me to break the laws: first, by implanting within me the goading
sense of injustice; secondly, by submitting me to the corruption of
example.  Thus, I repeat,--and I trust my words will sink solemnly into
the hearts of all present,--your legislation made me what I am; and it
now destroys me, as it has destroyed thousands, for being what it made
me!  But for this, the first aggression on me, I might have been what the
world terms honest,--I might have advanced to old age and a peaceful
grave through the harmless cheateries of trade or the honoured falsehoods
of a profession.  Nay, I might have supported the laws which I have now
braved; like the counsel opposed to me, I might have grown sleek on the
vices of others, and advanced to honour by my ingenuity in hanging my
fellow-creatures!  The canting and prejudging part of the Press has
affected to set before you the merits of 'honest ability,' or 'laborious
trade,' in opposition to my offences.  What, I beseech you, are the props
of your 'honest' exertion,--the profits of 'trade'?  Are there no bribes
to menials?  Is there no adulteration of goods?  Are the rich never duped
in the price they pay?  Are the poor never wronged in the quality they
receive?  Is there honesty in the bread you eat, in a single necessity
which clothes or feeds or warms you?  Let those whom the law protects
consider it a protector: when did it ever protect me?  When did it ever
protect the poor man?  The government of a State, the institutions of
law, profess to provide for all those who 'obey.'  Mark! a man hungers,--
do you feed him?  He is naked,--do you clothe him?  If not, you break
your covenant, you drive him back to the first law of nature, and you
hang him, not because he is guilty, but because you have left him naked
and starving!  [A murmur among the mob below, with great difficulty
silenced.]  One thing only I will add, and that not to move your mercy,--
no, nor to invest my fate with an idle and momentary interest,--but
because there are some persons in this world who have not known me as
the criminal who stands before you, and whom the tidings of my fate may
hereafter reach; and I would not have those persons view me in blacker
colours than I deserve.  Among all the rumours, gentlemen, that have
reached you, through all the tales and fables kindled from my unhappy
notoriety and my approaching doom, I put it to you, if you have heard
that I have committed one sanguinary action or one ruinous and deliberate
fraud.  You have heard that I have lived by the plunder of the rich,--I
do not deny the charge.  From the grinding of the poor, the habitual
overreaching, or the systematic pilfering of my neighbours, my conscience
is as free as it is from the charge of cruelty and bloodshed.  Those
errors I leave to honest mediocrity or virtuous exertion!  You may
perhaps find, too, that my life has not passed through a career of
outrage without scattering some few benefits on the road.  In destroying
me, it is true that you will have the consolation to think that among the
benefits you derive from my sentence will be the salutary encouragement
you give to other offenders to offend to the last, degree, and to divest
outrage of no single aggravation!  But if this does not seem to you any
very powerful inducement, you may pause before you cut off from all
amendment a man who seems neither wholly hardened nor utterly beyond
atonement.  My lord, my counsel would have wished to summon witnesses,--
some to bear testimony to redeeming points in my own character, others to
invalidate the oath of the witness against me,--a man whom I saved from
destruction in order that he might destroy me.  I do not think either
necessary.  The public Press has already said of me what little good does
not shock the truth; and had I not possessed something of those qualities
which society does not disesteem, you would not have beheld me here at
this hour!  If I had saved myself as well as my companions, I should have
left this country, perhaps forever, and commenced a very different career
abroad.  I committed offences; I eluded you; I committed what, in my
case, was an act of duty: I am seized, and I perish.  But the weakness of
my body destroys me, not the strength of your malice.  Had I" (and as the
prisoner spake, the haughty and rapid motion, the enlarging of the form,
produced by the passion of the moment, made impressively conspicuous to
all the remarkable power of his frame),--"had I but my wonted health, my
wonted command over these limbs and these veins, I would have asked no
friend, no ally, to favour my escape.  I tell you, engines and guardians
of the law, that I would have mocked your chains and defied your walls,
as ye know that I have mocked and defied them before.  But my blood
creeps now only in drops through its courses; and the heart that I had of
old stirs feebly and heavily within me."  The prisoner paused a moment,
and resumed in an altered tone: "Leaving, then, my own character to the
ordeal of report, I cannot perhaps do better than leave to the same
criterion that of the witness against me.  I will candidly own that under
other circumstances it might have been otherwise.  I will candidly avow
that I might have then used such means as your law awards me to procure
an acquittal and to prolong my existence,--though in a new scene; as it
is, what matters the cause in which I receive my sentence?  Nay, it is
even better to suffer by the first than to linger to the last.  It is
some consolation not again to stand where I now stand; to go through the
humbling solemnities which I have this day endured; to see the smile of
some, and retort the frown of others; to wrestle with the anxiety of the
heart, and to depend on the caprice of the excited nerves.  It is
something to feel one part of the drama of disgrace is over, and that I
may wait unmolested in my den until, for one time only, I am again the
butt of the unthinking and the monster of the crowd.  My lord, I have now
done!  To you, whom the law deems the prisoner's counsel,--to you,
gentlemen of the jury, to whom it has delegated his fate,--I leave the
chances of my life."

The prisoner ceased; but the same heavy silence which, save when broken
by one solitary murmur, had lain over the court during his speech, still
continued even for several moments after that deep and firm voice had
died on the ear.  So different had been the defence of the prisoner from
that which had been expected; so assuredly did the more hackneyed part of
the audience, even as he had proceeded, imagine that by some artful turn
he would at length wind into the usual courses of defence,--that when his
unfaltering and almost stern accents paused, men were not prepared to
feel that his speech was finished, and the pause involuntarily jarred on
them as untimeous and abrupt.  At length, when each of the audience
slowly awoke to the conviction that the prisoner had indeed concluded his
harangue, a movement, eloquent of feelings released from a suspense,
which had been perhaps the more earnest and the more blended with awe,
from the boldness and novelty of the words on which it hung, circled
round the court.  The jurors looked confusedly at each other, but not one
of them spoke, even by a whisper; their feelings, which had been aroused
by the speech of the prisoner, had not from its shortness, its
singularity, and the haughty impolicy of its tone, been so far guided by
its course as to settle into any state of mind clearly favourable to him,
or the reverse; so that each man waited for his neighbour to speak first,
in order that he might find, as it were, in another, a kind of clew to
the indistinct and excited feelings which wanted utterance in himself.

The judge, who had been from the first attracted by the air and aspect of
the prisoner, had perhaps, notwithstanding the hardness of his mind, more
approvingly than any one present listened to the defence; for in the
scorn of the hollow institutions and the mock honesty of social life, so
defyingly manifested by the prisoner, Brandon recognized elements of mind
remarkably congenial to his own; and this sympathy was heightened by the
hardihood of physical nerve and moral intrepidity displayed by the
prisoner,--qualities which among men of a similar mould often form the
strongest motive of esteem, and sometimes (as we read of in the Imperial
Corsican and his chiefs) the only point of attraction!  Brandon was,
however, soon recalled to his cold self by a murmur of vague applause
circling throughout the common crowd, among whom the general impulse
always manifests itself first, and to whom the opinions of the prisoner,
though but imperfectly understood, came more immediately home than they
did to the better and richer classes of the audience.  Ever alive to the
decorums of form, Brandon instantly ordered silence in the court; and
when it was again restored, and it was fully understood that the
prisoner's defence had closed, the judge proceeded to sum up.

It is worthy of remark that many of the qualities of mind which seem most
unamiable in private life often conduce with a singular felicity to the
ends of public; and thus the stony firmness characteristic of Brandon was
a main cause which made him admirable as a judge,--for men in office err
no less from their feelings than their interests.

Glancing over his notes, the judge inclined himself to the jury, and
began with that silver ringing voice which particularly distinguished
Brandon's eloquence, and carried with it in high stations so majestic and
candid a tone of persuasion.  He pointed out, with a clear brevity, the
various points of the evidence; he dwelt for a moment on the attempt to
cast disrepute upon the testimony of MacGrawler, but called a proper
attention to the fact that the attempt had been unsupported by witnesses
or proof.  As he proceeded, the impression made by the prisoner on the
minds of the jury slowly melted away; and perhaps, so much do men soften
when they behold clearly the face of a fellow-man dependent on them for
life, it acted disadvantageously on the interests of Clifford, that
during the summing up he leaned back in the dock, and prevented his
countenance from being seen.  When the evidence had been gone through,
the judge concluded thus:--

"The prisoner, who in his defence (on the principles and opinions of
which I now forbear to comment) certainly exhibited the signs of a
superior education, and a high though perverted ability, has alluded to
the reports circulated by the public Press, and leaned some little stress
on the various anecdotes tending to his advantage, which he supposes have
reached your ears.  I am by no means willing that the prisoner should be
deprived of whatever benefit may be derivable from such a source; but it
is not in this place, nor at this moment, that it can avail him.  All you
have to consider is the evidence before you.  All on which you have to
decide is, whether the prisoner be or be not guilty of the robbery of
which he is charged.  You must not waste a thought on what redeems or
heightens a supposed crime,--you must only decide on the crime itself.
Put away from your minds, I beseech you, all that interferes with the
main case.  Put away also from your motives of decision all forethought
of other possible indictments to which the prisoner has alluded, but with
which you are necessarily unacquainted.  If you doubt the evidence,
whether of one witness or of all, the prisoner must receive from you the
benefit of that doubt.  If not, you are sworn to a solemn oath, which
ordains you to forego all minor considerations,--which compels you to
watch narrowly that you be not influenced by the infirmities natural to
us all, but criminal in you, to lean towards the side of a mercy that
would be rendered by your oath a perjury to God, and by your duty as
impartial citizens a treason to your country.  I dismiss you to the grave
consideration of the important case you have heard; and I trust that He
to whom all hearts are open and all secrets are known, will grant you the
temper and the judgment to form a right decision!"

There was in the majestic aspect and thrilling voice of Brandon something
which made the commonest form of words solemn and impressive; and the
hypocrite, aware of this felicity of manner, generally, as now, added
weight to his concluding words by a religious allusion or a Scriptural
phraseology.  He ceased; and the jury, recovering the effect of his
adjuration, consulted for a moment among themselves.  The foreman then,
addressing the court on behalf of his fellow-jurors, requested leave to
retire for deliberation.  An attendant bailiff being sworn in, we read in
the journals of the day, which noted the divisions of time with that
customary scrupulosity rendered terrible by the reflection how soon all
time and seasons may perish for the hero of the scene, that "it was at
twenty-five minutes to two that the jury withdrew."

Perhaps in the whole course of a criminal trial there is no period more
awful than that occupied by the deliberation of the jury.  In the present
case the prisoner, as if acutely sensible of his situation, remained in
the rear of the dock, and buried his face in his hands.  They who stood
near him observed, however, that his breast did not seem to swell with
the convulsive emotion customary to persons in his state, and that not
even a sigh or agitated movement escaped him.  The jury had been absent
about twenty minutes, when a confused noise was heard in the court.  The
face of the judge turned in commanding severity towards the quarter
whence it proceeded.  He perceived a man of a coarse garb and mean
appearance endeavouring rudely and violently to push his way through the
crowd towards the bench, and at the same instant he saw one of the
officers of the court approaching the disturber of its tranquillity with
no friendly intent.  The man, aware of the purpose of the constable,
exclaimed with great vehemence, "I vill give this to my lord the judge,
blow me if I von't!" and as he spoke he raised high above his head a
soiled scrap of paper folded awkwardly in the shape of a letter.  The
instant Brandon's eye caught the rugged features of the intrusive
stranger, he motioned with rather less than his usual slowness of gesture
to one of his official satellites.  "Bring me that paper instantly!" he
whispered.

The officer bowed and obeyed.  The man, who seemed a little intoxicated,
gave it with a look of ludicrous triumph and self-importance.

"Stand avay, man!" he added to the constable, who now laid hand on his
collar.  "You'll see vot the judge says to that 'ere bit of paper; and so
vill the prisoner, poor fellow!"

This scene, so unworthy the dignity of the court, attracted the notice
and (immediately around the intruder) the merriment of the crowd; and
many an eye was directed towards Brandon, as with calm gravity he opened
the note and glanced over the contents.  In a large school-boy hand-it
was the hand of Long Ned--were written these few words:

     MY LORD JUDGE,--I make bold to beg you will do all you can for the
     prisoner at the barre, as he is no other than the "Paul" I spoke to
     your Worship about.  You know what I mean.

                                        DUMMIE DUNNAKER.


As he read this note, the judge's head was observed to droop suddenly, as
if by a sickness or a spasm; but he recovered himself instantly, and
whispering the officer who brought him the note, said, "See that that
madman be immediately removed from the court, and lock him up alone.  He
is so deranged as to be dangerous!"

The officer lost not a moment in seeing the order executed.  Three stout
constables dragged the astounded Dummie from the court in an instant, yet
the more ruthlessly for his ejaculating,--

"Eh, sirs, what's this?  I tells you I have saved the judge's hown flesh
and blood!  Vy, now, gently, there; you'll smart for this, my fine
fellow!  Never you mind, Paul, my 'arty; I 'se done you a pure good--"

"Silence!" proclaimed the voice of the judge; and that voice came forth
with so commanding a tone of power that it awed Dummie, despite his
intoxication.  In a moment more, and ere he had time to recover, he was
without the court.  During this strange hubbub, which nevertheless
scarcely lasted above two or three minutes, the prisoner had not once
lifted his head, nor appeared aroused in any manner from his revery; and
scarcely had the intruder been withdrawn before the jury returned.

The verdict was, as all had foreseen, "Guilty;" but it was coupled with a
strong recommendation to mercy.

The prisoner was then asked, in the usual form, whether he had to say
anything why sentence of death should not be passed against him.

As these dread words struck upon his ear, slowly the prisoner rose.  He
directed first towards the jury a brief and keen glance, and his eyes
then rested full, and with a stern significance, on the face of his
judge.

"My lord," he began, "I have but one reason to advance against the
sentence of the law.  If you have interest to prevent or mitigate it,
that reason will, I think, suffice to enlist you on my behalf.  I said
that the first cause of those offences against the law which brings me to
this bar was the committing me to prison on a charge of which I was
wholly innocent!  My lord judge, you were the man who accused me of that
charge, and subjected me to that imprisonment!  Look at me well, my lord,
and you may trace in the countenance of the hardened felon you are about
to adjudge to death the features of a boy whom, some seven years ago, you
accused before a London magistrate of the theft of your watch.  On the
oath of a man who has one step on the threshold of death, the accusation
was unjust.  And, fit minister of the laws you represent! you, who will
now pass my doom,--You were the cause of my crimes!  My lord, I have
done.  I am ready to add another to the long and dark list of victims who
are first polluted and then sacrificed by the blindness and the injustice
of human codes!"

While Clifford spoke, every eye turned from him to the judge, and every
one was appalled by the ghastly and fearful change which had fallen over
Brandon's face.  Men said, afterwards, that they saw written there, in
terrible distinctness, the characters of death; and there certainly
seemed something awful and preternatural in the bloodless and haggard
calmness of his proud features.  Yet his eye did not quail, nor the
muscles of his lip quiver; and with even more than his wonted loftiness,
he met the regard of the prisoner.  But, as alone conspicuous throughout
the motionless and breathless crowd the judge and criminal gazed upon
each other, and as the eyes of the spectators wandered on each, a
thrilling and electric impression of a powerful likeness between the
doomed and the doomer, for the first time in the trial, struck upon the
audience, and increased, though they scarcely knew why, the sensation of
pain and dread which the prisoner's last words excited.  Perhaps it might
have chiefly arisen from a common expression of fierce emotion conquered
by an iron and stern character of mind; or perhaps, now that the ashy
paleness of exhaustion had succeeded the excited flush on the prisoner's
face, the similarity of complexion thus obtained made the likeness more
obvious than before; or perhaps the spectators had not hitherto fixed so
searching, or, if we may so speak, so alternating a gaze upon the two.
However that be, the resemblance between the men, placed as they were in
such widely different circumstances,--that resemblance which, as we have
hinted, had at certain moments occurred startlingly to Lucy,--was plain
and unavoidably striking: the same the dark hue of their complexions; the
same the haughty and Roman outline of their faces; the same the height of
the forehead; the same even a displeasing and sarcastic rigidity of
mouth, which made the most conspicuous feature in Brandon, and which was
the only point that deteriorated from the singular beauty of Clifford.
But, above all, the same inflexible, defying, stubborn spirit, though in
Brandon it assumed the stately cast of majesty, and in Clifford it seemed
the desperate sternness of the bravo, stamped itself in both.  Though
Clifford ceased, he did not resume his seat, but stood in the same
attitude as that in which he had reversed the order of things, and merged
the petitioner in the accuser; and Brandon himself, without speaking or
moving, continued still to survey him; so, with erect fronts and marble
countenances, in which what was defying and resolute did not altogether
quell the mortal leaven of pain and dread, they looked as might have
looked the two men in the Eastern story who had the power of gazing each
other unto death.

What at that moment was raging in Brandon's heart, it is in vain to
guess.  He doubted not for a moment that he beheld before him his long
lost, his anxiously demanded son!  Every fibre, every corner of his
complex and gloomy soul, that certainly reached, and blasted with a
hideous and irresistible glare.  The earliest, perhaps the strongest,
though often the least acknowledged principle of his mind was the desire
to rebuild the fallen honours of his house; its last scion he now beheld
before him, covered with the darkest ignominies of the law!  He had
coveted worldly honours; he beheld their legitimate successor in a
convicted felon!  He had garnered the few affections he had spared from
the objects of pride and ambition, in his son.  That son he was about to
adjudge to the gibbet and the hangman!  Of late he had increased the
hopes of regaining his lost treasure, even to an exultant certainty.  Lo!
the hopes were accomplished!  How?  With these thoughts warring, in what
manner we dare not even by an epithet express, within him, we may cast
one hasty glance on the horror of aggravation they endured, when he heard
the prisoner accuse Him as the cause of his present doom, and felt
himself at once the murderer and the judge of his son!

Minutes had elapsed since the voice of the prisoner ceased; and Brandon
now drew forth the black cap.  As he placed it slowly over his brows, the
increasing and corpse-like whiteness of his face became more glaringly
visible, by the contrast which this dread head-gear presented.  Twice as
he essayed to speak his voice failed him, and an indistinct murmur came
forth from his hueless lips, and died away like a fitful and feeble wind.
But with the third effort the resolution and long self-tyranny of the man
conquered, and his voice went clear and unfaltering through the crowd,
although the severe sweetness of its wonted tones was gone, and it
sounded strange and hollow on the ears that drank it.

"Prisoner at the bar! it has become my duty to announce to you the close
of your mortal career.  You have been accused of a daring robbery, and
after an impartial trial a jury of your countrymen and the laws of your
country have decided against you.  The recommendation to mercy" (here,
only throughout his speech, Brandon gasped convulsively for breath) "so
humanely added by the jury, shall be forwarded to the supreme power; but
I cannot flatter you with much hope of its success."  (The lawyers looked
with some surprise at each other; they had expected a far more
unqualified mandate, to abjure all hope from the jury's recommendation.)
"Prisoner, for the opinions you have expressed, you are now only
answerable to your God; I forbear to arraign them.  For the charge you
have made against me, whether true or false, and for the anguish it has
given me, may you find pardon at another tribunal!  It remains for me
only--under a reserve too slight, as I have said, to afford you a fair
promise of hope--only to--to" (all eyes were on Brandon; he felt it,
exerted himself for a last effort, and proceeded)--"to pronounce on you
the sharp sentence of the law!  It is, that you be taken back to the
prison whence you came, and thence (when the supreme authority shall
appoint) to the place of execution, to be there hanged by the neck till
you are dead; and the Lord God Almighty have mercy on your soul!"

With this address concluded that eventful trial; and while the crowd, in
rushing and noisy tumult, bore towards the door, Brandon, concealing to
the last with a Spartan bravery the anguish which was gnawing at his
entrails, retired from the awful pageant.  For the next half-hour he was
locked up with the strange intruder on the proceedings of the court.  At
the end of that time the stranger was dismissed; and in about double the
same period Brandon's servant re-admitted him, accompanied by another
man, with a slouched hat and in a carman's frock.  The reader need not be
told that the new comer was the friendly Ned, whose testimony was indeed
a valuable corroborative to Dummie's, and whose regard for Clifford,
aided by an appetite for rewards, had induced him to venture to the town
of -----, although he tarried concealed in a safe suburb, until reassured
by a written promise from Brandon of safety to his person, and a sum for
which we might almost doubt whether he would not have consented (so long
had he been mistaking means for an end) to be hanged himself.  Brandon
listened to the details of these confederates; and when they had
finished, he addressed them thus: "I have heard you, and am convinced you
are liars and impostors.  There is the money I promised you" (throwing
down a pocket-book),--"take it; and, hark you, if ever you dare whisper,
ay, but a breath of the atrocious lie you have now forged, be sure I will
have you dragged from the recess or nook of infamy in which you may hide
your heads, and hanged for the crimes you have already committed.  I am
not the man to break my word.  Begone! quit this town instantly!  If in
two hours hence you are found here, your blood be on your own heads!
Begone, I say!"

These words, aided by a countenance well adapted at all times to
expressions of a menacing and ruthless character, at once astounded and
appalled the accomplices.  They left the room in hasty confusion; and
Brandon, now alone, walked with uneven steps (the alarming weakness and
vacillation of which he did not himself feel) to and fro the apartment.
The hell of his breast was stamped upon his features, but he uttered only
one thought aloud,--

"I may,--yes, yes,--I may yet conceal this disgrace to my name!"

His servant tapped at the door to say that the carriage was ready, and
that Lord Mauleverer had bid him remind his master that they dined
punctually at the hour appointed.

"I am coming!" said Brandon, with a slow and startling emphasis on each
word.  But he first sat down and wrote a letter to the official quarter,
strongly aiding the recommendation of the Jury; and we may conceive how
pride clung to him to the last, when he urged the substitution for death
of transportation for life!  As soon as he had sealed this letter, he
summoned an express, gave his orders coolly and distinctly, and attempted
with his usual stateliness of step to walk through a long passage which
led to the outer door.  He found himself fail.  "Come hither," he said to
his servant, "give me your arm!"

All Brandon's domestics, save the one left with Lucy, stood in awe of
him; and it was with some hesitation that his servant ventured to inquire
if his master felt well.

Brandon looked at him, but made no reply.  He entered his carriage with
slight difficulty, and telling the coachman to drive as fast as possible,
pulled down (a general custom with him) all the blinds of the windows.

Meanwhile Lord Mauleverer, with six friends, was impatiently awaiting the
arrival of the seventh guest.

"Our August friend tarries!" quoth the Bishop of -------, with his hands
folded across his capacious stomach.  "I fear the turbot your lordship
spoke of may not be the better for the length of the trial."

"Poor fellow!" said the Earl of --------, slightly yawning.

"Whom do you mean?" asked Lord Mauleverer, with a smile,--"the bishop,
the judge, or the turbot?"

"Not one of the three, Mauleverer,--I spoke of the prisoner."

"Ah, the fine dog!  I forgot him," said Mauleverer.  "Really, now you
mention him, I must confess that he inspires me with great compassion;
but, indeed, it is very wrong in him to keep the judge so long!"

"Those hardened wretches have such a great deal to say," mumbled the
bishop, sourly.

"True!" said Mauleverer; "a religious rogue would have had some bowels
for the state of the church esurient."

"Is it really true, Mauleverer," asked the Earl of ------, "that Brandon
is to succeed?"

"So I hear," said Mauleverer.  "Heavens, how hungry I am!"

A groan from the bishop echoed the complaint.

"I suppose it would be against all decorum to sit down to dinner without
him?" said Lord --------.

"Why, really, I fear so," returned Mauleverer.  "But our health--our
health is at stake; we will only wait five minutes more.  By Jove,
there's the carriage!  I beg your pardon for my heathen oath, my lord
bishop."

"I forgive you!" said the good bishop, smiling.

The party thus engaged in colloquy were stationed at a window opening on
the gravel road, along which the judge's carriage was now seen rapidly
approaching; this window was but a few yards from the porch, and had been
partially opened for the better reconnoitring the approach of the
expected guest.

"He keeps the blinds down still!  Absence of mind, or shame at
unpunctuality,--which is the cause, Mauleverer?" said one of the party.

"Not shame, I fear!" answered Mauleverer.  "Even the indecent immorality
of delaying our dinner could scarcely bring a blush to the parchment skin
of my learned friend."

Here the carriage stopped at the porch; the carriage door was opened.

"There seems a strange delay," said Mauleverer, peevishly.  "Why does not
he get out?"

As he spoke, a murmur among the attendants, who appeared somewhat
strangely to crowd around the carriage, smote the ears of the party.

"What do they say,--what?" said Mauleverer, putting his hand to his ear.

The bishop answered hastily; and Mauleverer, as he heard the reply,
forgot for once his susceptibility to cold, and hurried out to the
carriage door.  His guests followed.

They found Brandon leaning against the farther corner of the carriage,--a
corpse.  One hand held the check-string, as if he had endeavoured
involuntarily but ineffectually to pull it.  The right side of his face
was partially distorted, as by convulsion or paralysis; but not
sufficiently so to destroy that remarkable expression of loftiness and
severity which had characterized the features in life.  At the same time
the distortion which had drawn up on one side the muscles of the mouth
had deepened into a startling broadness the half sneer of derision that
usually lurked around the lower part of his face.  Thus unwitnessed and
abrupt had been the disunion of the clay and spirit of a man who, if he
passed through life a bold, scheming, stubborn, unwavering hypocrite, was
not without something high even amidst his baseness, his selfishness, and
his vices; who seemed less to have loved sin than by some strange
perversion of reason to have disdained virtue, and who, by a solemn and
awful suddenness of fate (for who shall venture to indicate the judgment
of the arch and unseen Providence, even when it appears to mortal eye the
least obscured?), won the dreams, the objects, the triumphs of hope, to
be blasted by them at the moment of acquisition!





CHAPTER XXXVI.

AND LAST.

                    Subtle, Surly,--Mammon, Dol,
                    Hot Ananias, Dapper, Dragger,--all
                    With whom I traded.
                                           The Alchemist.

As when some rural citizen-retired for a fleeting holiday, far from the
cares of the world _strepitumque Romae_,--[" And the roar of Rome."]--
to the sweet shades of Pentonville or the remoter plains of Clapham--
conducts some delighted visitor over the intricacies of that Daedalian
masterpiece which he is pleased to call his labyrinth or maze,--now
smiling furtively at his guest's perplexity, now listening with calm
superiority to his futile and erring conjectures, now maliciously
accompanying him through a flattering path in which the baffled
adventurer is suddenly checked by the blank features of a
thoroughfareless hedge, now trembling as he sees the guest stumbling
unawares into the right track, and now relieved as he beholds him after
a pause of deliberation wind into the wrong,--even so, O pleasant reader!
doth the sage novelist conduct thee through the labyrinth of his tale,
amusing himself with thy self-deceits, and spinning forth, in prolix
pleasure, the quiet yarn of his entertainment from the involutions which
occasion thy fretting eagerness and perplexity.  But as when, thanks to
the host's good-nature or fatigue, the mystery is once unravelled, and
the guest permitted to penetrate even into the concealed end of the leafy
maze, the honest cit, satisfied with the pleasant pains he has already
bestowed upon his visitor, puts him not to the labour of retracing the
steps he hath so erratically trod, but leads him in three strides, and
through a simpler path, at once to the mouth of the maze, and dismisseth
him elsewhere for entertainment; even so will the prudent narrator, when
the intricacies of his plot are once unfolded, occasion no stale and
profitless delays to his wearied reader, but conduct him, with as much
brevity as convenient, without the labyrinth which has ceased to retain
the interest of a secret.

We shall therefore, in pursuance of the tit's policy, relate as rapidly
as possible that part of our narrative which yet remains untold.  On
Brandon's person was found the paper which had contained so fatal an
intelligence of his son; and when brought to Lord Mauleverer, the words
struck that person (who knew Brandon had been in search of his lost son,
whom we have seen that he had been taught however to suppose
illegitimate, though it is probable that many doubts whether he had not
been deceived must have occurred to his natural sagacity) as sufficiently
important to be worth an inquiry after the writer.  Dummie was easily
found, for he had not yet turned his back on the town when the news of
the judge's sudden death was brought back to it; and taking advantage of
that circumstance, the friendly Dunnaker remained altogether in the town
(albeit his long companion deserted it as hastily as might be), and
whiled the time by presenting himself at the jail, and after some
ineffectual efforts winning his way to Clifford.  Easily tracked by the
name he had given to the governor of the jail, he was conducted the same
day to Lord Mauleverer; and his narrative, confused as it was, and
proceeding even from so suspicious a quarter, thrilled those digestive
organs, which in Mauleverer stood proxy for a heart, with feelings as
much resembling awe and horror as our good peer was capable of
experiencing.  Already shocked from his worldly philosophy of
indifference by the death of Brandon, he was more susceptible to a
remorseful and salutary impression at this moment than he might have been
at any other; and he could not, without some twinges of conscience, think
of the ruin he had brought on the mother of the being he had but just
prosecuted to the death.  He dismissed Dummie, and after a little
consideration he ordered his carriage, and leaving the funeral
preparations for his friend to the care of his man of business, he set
off for London, and the house, in particular, of the Secretary of the
Home Department.  We would not willingly wrong the noble penitent;
but we venture a suspicion that he might not have preferred a personal
application for mercy to the prisoner to a written one, had he not felt
certain unpleasant qualms in remaining in a country-house overshadowed by
ceremonies so gloomy as those of death.  The letter of Brandon and the
application of Mauleverer obtained for Clifford a relaxation of his
sentence.  He was left for perpetual transportation.  A ship was already
about to sail; and Mauleverer, content with having saved his life, was by
no means anxious that his departure from the country should be saddled
with any superfluous delay.

Meanwhile the first rumour that reached London respecting Brandon's fate
was that he had been found in a fit, and was lying dangerously ill at
Mauleverer's; and before the second and more fatally sure report arrived,
Lucy had gathered from the visible dismay of Barlow, whom she anxiously
cross-questioned, and who, really loving his master, was easily affected
into communication, the first and more flattering intelligence.  To
Barlow's secret delight, she insisted instantly on setting off to the
supposed sick man; and accompanied by Barlow and her woman, the
affectionate girl hastened to Mauleverer's house on the evening after the
day the earl left it.  Lucy had not proceeded far before Barlow learned,
from the gossip of the road, the real state of the case.  Indeed, it was
at the first stage that with a mournful countenance he approached the
door of the carriage, and announcing the inutility of proceeding farther,
begged of Lucy to turn back.  So soon as Miss Brandon had overcome the
first shock which this intelligence gave her, she said with calmness,--

"Well, Barlow, if it be so, we have still a duty to perform.  Tell the
postboys to drive on!"

"Indeed, madam, I cannot see what use it can be fretting yourself,--and
you so poorly.  If you will let me go, I will see every attention paid to
the remains of my poor master."

"When my father lay dead," said Lucy, with a grave and sad sternness in
her manner, "he who is now no more sent no proxy to perform the last
duties of a brother; neither will I send one to discharge those of a
niece, and prove that I have forgotten the gratitude of a daughter.
Drive on!"

We have said that there were times when a spirit was stricken from Lucy
little common to her in general; and now the command of her uncle sat
upon her brow.  On sped the horses, and for several minutes Lucy remained
silent.  Her woman did not dare to speak.  At length Miss Brandon turned,
and, covering her face with her hands, burst into tears so violent that
they alarmed her attendant even more than her previous stillness.  "My
poor, poor uncle!" she sobbed; and those were all her words.

We must pass over Lucy's arrival at Lord Mauleverer's house; we must
pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was
consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of its
haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms.  She had loved
the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all
remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she
witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains
of William Brandon to repose and to the worm.  On that same day Clifford
received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial
awaited Lucy.  We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene
was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great love
for little Paul, whom he delightedly said he found not the least "stuck
up by his great fame and helewation," still lingered in the town, and was
not only aware of the relationship of the cousins, but had gleaned from
Long Ned, as they journeyed down to ------, the affection entertained by
Clifford for Lucy.  Of the manner in which the communication reached
Lucy, we need not speak; suffice it to say, that on the day in which she
had performed the last duty to her uncle, she learned for the first time
her lover's situation.

On that evening, in the convict's cell, the cousins met.

Their conference was low, for the jailer stood within hearing; and it was
broken by Lucy's convulsive sobs.  But the voice of one whose iron nerves
were not unworthy of the offspring of William Brandon, was clear and
audible to her ear, even though uttered in a whisper that scarcely
stirred his lips.  It seemed as if Lucy, smitten to the inmost heart by
the generosity with which her lover had torn himself from her at the time
that her wealth might have raised him in any other country far above the
perils and the crimes of his career in this; perceiving now, for the
first time, and in all their force, the causes of his mysterious conduct;
melted by their relationship, and forgetting herself utterly in the
desolation and dark situation in which she beheld one who, whatever his
crimes, had not been criminal towards her;--it seemed as if, carried away
by these emotions, she had yielded altogether to the fondness and
devotion of her nature,--that she had wished to leave home and friends
and fortune, and share with him his punishment and his shame.

"Why," she faltered,--"why--why not?  We are all that is left to each
other in the world!  Your father and mine were brothers; let me be to you
as a sister.  What is there left for me here?  Not one being whom I love,
or who cares for me,--not one!"

It was then that Clifford summoned all his courage, as he answered.
Perhaps, now that he felt (though here his knowledge was necessarily
confused and imperfect) his birth was not unequal to hers; now that he
read, or believed he read, in her wan cheek and attenuated frame that
desertion to her was death, and that generosity and self-sacrifice had
become too late,--perhaps these thoughts, concurring with a love in
himself beyond all words, and a love in her which it was above humanity
to resist, altogether conquered and subdued him.  Yet, as we have said,
his voice breathed calmly in her ear; and his eye only, which brightened
with a steady and resolute hope, betrayed his mind.  "Live, then!" said
he, as he concluded.  "My sister, my mistress, my bride, live!  In one
year from this day--I repeat--I promise it thee!"

The interview was over, and Lucy returned home with a firm step.  She was
on foot.  The rain fell in torrents, yet even in her precarious state her
health suffered not; and when within a week from that time she read that
Clifford had departed to the bourne of his punishment, she read the news
with a steady eye and a lip that, if it grew paler, did not quiver.

Shortly after that time Miss Brandon departed to an obscure town by the
seaside; and there, refusing all society, she continued to reside.  As
the birth of Clifford was known but to few, and his legitimacy was
unsuspected by all except, perhaps, by Mauleverer, Lucy succeeded to the
great wealth of her uncle; and this circumstance made her more than ever
an object of attraction in the eyes of her noble adorer.  Finding himself
unable to see her, he wrote to her more than one moving epistle; but as
Lucy continued inflexible, he at length, disgusted by her want of taste,
ceased his pursuit, and resigned himself to the continued sterility of
unwedded life.  As the months waned, Miss Brandon seemed to grow weary of
her retreat; and immediately on attaining her majority, which she did
about eight months after Brandon's death, she transferred the bulk of her
wealth to France, where it was understood (for it was impossible that
rumour should sleep upon an heiress and a beauty) that she intended in
future to reside.  Even Warlock (that spell to the proud heart of her
uncle) she ceased to retain.  It was offered to the nearest relation of
the family at a sum which he did not hesitate to close with; and by the
common vicissitudes of Fortune, the estate of the ancient Brandons has
now, we perceive by a weekly journal, just passed into the hands of a
wealthy alderman.

It was nearly a year since Brandon's death when a letter bearing a
foreign postmark came to Lucy.  From that time her spirits--which before,
though subject to fits of abstraction, had been even and subdued, not
sad--rose into all the cheerfulness and vivacity of her earliest youth.
She busied herself actively in preparations for her departure from this
country; and at length the day was fixed, and the vessel was engaged.
Every day till that one, did Lucy walk to the seaside, and ascending the
highest cliff, spend hours, till the evening closed, in watching, with
seemingly idle gaze, the vessels that interspersed the sea; and with
every day her health seemed to strengthen, and the soft and lucid colour
she had once worn, to rebloom upon her cheek.

Previous to her departure Miss Brandon dismissed her servants, and only
engaged one female, a foreigner, to accompany her.  A certain tone of
quiet command, formerly unknown to her, characterized these measures, so
daringly independent for one of her sex and age.  The day arrived,--it
was the anniversary of her last interview with Clifford.  On entering the
vessel it was observed that she trembled violently, and that her face was
as pale as death.  A stranger, who had stood aloof wrapped in his cloak,
darted forward to assist her; that was the last which her discarded and
weeping servants beheld of her from the pier where they stood to gaze.

Nothing more in this country was ever known of the fate of Lucy Brandon;
and as her circle of acquaintances was narrow, and interest in her fate
existed vividly in none save a few humble breasts, conjecture was never
keenly awakened, and soon cooled into forgetfulness.  If it favoured,
after the lapse of years, any one notion more than another, it was that
she had perished among the victims of the French Revolution.

Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate
acquaintances.

Augustus Tomlinson, on parting from Long Ned, had succeeded in reaching
Calais; and after a rapid tour through the Continent, he ultimately
betook himself to a certain literary city in Germany, where he became
distinguished for his metaphysical acumen, and opened a school of morals
on the Grecian model, taught in the French tongue.  He managed, by the
patronage he received and the pupils he enlightened, to obtain a very
decent income; and as he wrote a folio against Locke, proved that men had
innate feelings, and affirmed that we should refer everything not to
reason, but to the sentiments of the soul, he became greatly respected
for his extraordinary virtue.  Some little discoveries were made after
his death, which perhaps would have somewhat diminished the general odour
of his sanctity, had not the admirers of his school carefully hushed up
the matter, probably out of respect for the "sentiments of the soul!"

Pepper, whom the police did not so anxiously desire to destroy as they
did his two companions, might have managed, perhaps many years longer,
to graze upon the public commons, had not a letter, written somewhat
imprudently, fallen into wrong hands.  This, though after creating a
certain stir it apparently died away, lived in the memory of the police,
and finally conspired, with various peccadilloes, to produce his
downfall.  He was seized, tried, and sentenced to seven years'
transportation.  He so advantageously employed his time at Botany Bay,
and arranged things there so comfortably to himself, that at the
expiration of his sentence he refused to return home.  He made an
excellent match, built himself an excellent house, and remained in "the
land of the blest" to the end of his days, noted to the last for the
redundance of his hair and a certain ferocious coxcombry of aspect.

As for Fighting Attie and Gentleman George, for Scarlet Jem and for Old
Bags, we confess ourselves destitute of any certain information of their
latter ends.  We can only add, with regard to Fighting Attie, "Good luck
be with him wherever he goes!" and for mine host of the Jolly Angler,
that, though we have not the physical constitution to quaff "a bumper of
blue ruin," we shall be very happy, over any tolerable wine and in
company with any agreeable convivialist, to bear our part in the polished
chorus of--

               "Here's to Gentleman George, God bless him!"

Mrs. Lobkins departed this life like a lamb; and Dummie Dunnaker obtained
a license to carry on the business at Thames Court.  He boasted, to the
last, of his acquaintance with the great Captain Lovett, and of the
affability with which that distinguished personage treated him.  Stories
he had, too, about Judge Brandon, but no one believed a syllable of them;
and Dummie, indignant at the disbelief, increased, out of vehemence, the
marvel of the stories, so that, at length, what was added almost
swallowed up what was original, and Dummie himself might have been
puzzled to satisfy his own conscience as to what was false and what was
true.

The erudite Peter MacGrawler, returning to Scotland, disappeared by the
road.  A person singularly resembling the sage was afterward seen at
Carlisle, where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack
Ketch.  But whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical
Simon Pure, our ex-editor of "The Asinaeum," we will not take upon
ourselves to assert.

Lord Mauleverer, finally resolving on a single life, passed the remainder
of his years in indolent tranquillity.  When he died, the newspapers
asserted that his Majesty was deeply affected by the loss of so old and
valued a friend.  His furniture and wines sold remarkably high; and a
Great Man, his particular intimate, who purchased his books, startled to
find, by pencil marks, that the noble deceased had read some of them,
exclaimed, not altogether without truth,

"Ah! Mauleverer might have been a deuced clever fellow--if he had liked
it!"

The earl was accustomed to show as a curiosity a ring of great value,
which he had received in rather a singular manner.  One morning a packet
was brought him which he found to contain a sum of money, the ring
mentioned, and a letter from the notorious Lovett, in which that person
in begging to return his lordship the sums of which he had twice assisted
to rob him, thanked him, with earnest warmth, for the consideration
testified towards him in not revealing his identity with Captain
Clifford; and ventured, as a slight testimony of respect, to inclose the
aforesaid ring with the sum returned.

About the time Mauleverer received this curious packet, several anecdotes
of a similar nature appeared in the public journals; and it seemed that
Lovett had acted upon a general principle of restitution,--not always, it
must be allowed, the offspring of a robber's repentance.  While the idle
were marvelling at these anecdotes, came the tardy news that Lovett,
after a single month's sojourn at his place of condemnation, had, in the
most daring and singular manner, effected his escape.  Whether, in his
progress up the country, he had been starved or slain by the natives, or
whether, more fortunate, he had ultimately found the means of crossing
seas, was as yet unknown.  There ended the adventures of the gallant
robber; and thus, by a strange coincidence, the same mystery which
wrapped the fate of Lucy involved also that of her lover.  And here, kind
reader, might we drop the curtain on our closing scene, did we not think
it might please thee to hold it up yet one moment, and give thee another
view of the world behind.

In a certain town of that Great Country where shoes are imperfectly
polished--[See Captain Hall's late work on America]--and opinions are not
prosecuted, there resided, twenty years after the date of Lucy Brandon's
departure from England, a man held in high and universal respect, not
only for the rectitude of his conduct, but for the energies of his mind,
and the purposes to which they were directed.  If you asked who
cultivated that waste, the answer was, "Clifford!" who procured the
establishment of that hospital, "Clifford!" who obtained the redress of
such a public grievance, "Clifford!" who struggled for and won such a
popular benefit, "Clifford!"  In the gentler part of his projects and his
undertakings--in that part, above all, which concerned the sick or the
necessitous--this useful citizen was seconded, or rather excelled, by a
being over whose surpassing loveliness Time seemed to have flown with a
gentle and charming wing.  There was something remarkable and touching in
the love which this couple (for the woman we refer to was Clifford's
wife) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the
time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it also
a softer and a fresher verdure.  Although their present neighbours were
unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to their
settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy at the
time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series of
fatalities, they had lost all.  But Clifford had borne up manfully
against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to
dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward
through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and
vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for
every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever
have acquired him.  His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but
sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned
with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly
benevolence.  A trace of the trials they had passed through was
discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's
cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.
There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter sank
from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a gloomy
and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a jealous
and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the power to
dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes, and glanced
from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing children, or
beheld through the very windows of his room the public benefits he had
created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his countenance, and
he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice, as his looks
returned once more to his wife, "I owe these to thee!"

One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the
faults of others.  "Circumstances make guilt," he was wont to say; "let
us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the
guilt!"  His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable
path that he trod himself.  Happy was considered that family which had
the hope to ally itself with his.

Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy.  Who will condemn us for
preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the
gibbet and the hulks,--which makes scarecrows, not beacons; terrifies our
weakness, not warms our reason.  Who does not allow that it is better to
repair than to perish,--better, too, to atone as the citizen than to
repent as the hermit?  Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of London, and
Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect,--your
patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals would have
admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite with us or with
the rest of the world,--but you said one excellent thing, for which we
look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with respect.  We scarcely know
whether to smile at its wit or to sigh at its wisdom.  Mark this truth,
all ye gentlemen of England who would make law as the Romans made
fasces,--a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle,--mark it, and
remember! long may it live, allied with hope in ourselves, but with
gratitude in our children,--long after the book which it now "adorns" and
"points" has gone to its dusty slumber,--long, long after the feverish
hand which now writes it down can defend or enforce it no more: "THE VERY
WORST USE TO WHICH YOU CAN PUT A MAN IS TO HANG HIM!"





                                  NOTE.

In the second edition of this novel there were here inserted two
"characters" of "Fighting Attie" and "Gentleman George," omitted in the
subsequent edition published by Mr. Bentley in the "Standard Novels."  At
the request of some admirers of those eminent personages, who considered
the biographical sketches referred to impartial in themselves, and
contributing to the completeness of the design for which men so
illustrious were introduced, they are here retained, though in the more
honourable form of a separate and supplementary notice.



                             FIGHTING ATTIE.

When be dies, the road will have lost a great man, whose foot was rarely
out of his stirrup, and whose clear head guided a bold hand.  He carried
common-sense to its perfection, and he made the straight path the
sublimest.  His words were few, his actions were many.  He was the
Spartan of Tobymen, and laconism was the short soul of his professional
legislation!

Whatever way you view him, you see those properties of mind which command
fortune; few thoughts not confusing each other,--simple elements, and
bold.  His character in action maybe summed in two phrases,--"a fact
seized, and a stroke made."  Had his intellect been more luxurious, his
resolution might have been less hardy; and his hardiness made his
greatness.  He was one of those who shine but in action,--chimneys (to
adapt the simile of Sir Thomas More) that seem useless till you light
your fire.  So in calm moments you dreamed not of his utility, and only
on the road you were struck dumb with the outbreaking of his genius.
Whatever situation he was called to, you found in hire what you looked
for in vain in others; for his strong sense gave to Attie what long
experience ought, but often fails, to give to its possessors.  His energy
triumphed over the sense of novel circumstance, and be broke in a moment
through the cobwebs which entangled lesser natures for years.  His eye
saw a final result, and disregarded the detail.  He robbed his man.
without chicanery; and took his purse by applying for it rather than
scheming.  If his enemies wish to detract from his merit,--a merit great,
dazzling, and yet solid,--they may, perhaps, say that his genius fitted
him better to continue exploits than to devise them; and thus that,
besides the renown which he may justly claim, he often wholly engrossed
that fame which should have been shared by others: he took up the
enterprise where it ceased at Labour, and carried it onwards, where it
was rewarded with Glory.  Even this charge proves a new merit of address,
and lessens not the merit less complicated the have allowed him before.
The fame he has acquired may excite our emulation; the envy he has not
appeased may console us for obscurity.

A stanza of Greek poetry--Thus, not too vigorously, translated by Mr.
West,--

"But wrapped in error is the human mind,
And human bliss is ever insecure--
Know we what fortune shall remain behind?
Know we how long the present shall endure?"




                            GENTLEMAN GEORGE.

For thee, Gentleman George, for thee, what conclusive valediction
remains?  Alas! since we began the strange and mumming scene wherein
first thou went introduced, the grim foe hath knocked thrice at thy
gates; and now, as we write,--[In 1830]--thou art departed thence,--thou
art no more!  A new lord presides to thine easy-chair, a new voice rings
from thy merry board,--thou art forgotten! thou art already, like these
pages, a tale that is told to a memory that retaineth not!  Where are thy
quips and cranks; where thy stately coxcombries and thy regal gauds?
Thine house and thy pagoda, thy Gothic chimney and thy Chinese sign-
post,--these yet ask the concluding hand.  Thy hand is cold; their
completion, and the enjoyment the completion yields, are for another!
Thou sowest, and thy follower reaps; thou buildest, thy successor holds;
thou plantest, and thine heir sits beneath the shadow of thy trees,--

                    "Neque harum, quas colis, arborum
                    Te, praeter invisas cupressos,
                    Ulla brevem dominum sequetur!"

     ["Nor will any of these trees thou didst cultivate follow thee,
     the shortlived lord, save the hateful Cyprus."]

At this moment thy life,--for thou veert a Great Man to thine order, and
they have added thy biography to that of Abershaw and Sheppard,--thy life
is before us.  What a homily in its events!  Gayly didst thou laugh into
thy youth, and run through the courses of thy manhood.  Wit sat at thy
table, and Genius was thy comrade.  Beauty was thy handmaid; and
Frivolity played around thee,--a buffoon that thou didst ridicule, and
ridiculing enjoy!  Who among us can look back to thy brilliant era, and
not sigh to think that the wonderful men who surrounded thee, and amidst
whom thou wert a centre and a nucleus, are for him but the things of
history, and the phantoms of a bodiless tradition?  Those brilliant.
suppers, glittering with beauty, the memory of which makes one spot (yet
inherited by Bachelor Bill) a haunted and a fairy ground; all who
gathered to that Armida's circle,--the Grammonts and the Beauvilliers and
the Rochefoucaulds of England and the Road,--who does not feel that to
have seen these, though but as Gil Blas saw the festivities of his
actors, from the sideboard and behind the chair, would have been a
triumph for the earthlier feelings of his old age to recall?  What,
then, must it have been to have seen them as thou didst see,--thou, the
deceased and the forgotten!---seen them from the height of thy youth and
power and rank (for early wert thou keeper to a public), and reckless
spirits, and lusty capacities of joy?  What pleasures where sense
lavished its uncounted varieties?  What revellings where wine was the
least excitement?

Let the scene shift.  How stirring is the change!  Triumph and glitter
and conquest!  For thy public was a public of renown; thither came the
Warriors of the Ring,--the Heroes of the Cross,--and thou, their patron,
wert elevated on their fame!  "Principes pro victoria pugnant, comites
pro Principe."--[Chiefs for the victory fight,--for chiefs the soldiers]
--What visions sweep across us!  What glories didst thou witness!  Over
what conquests didst thou preside!  The mightiest epoch, the most
wonderful events which the world, _thy_ world, ever knew,--of these was
it not indeed, and dazzlingly thine,--

          "To share the triumph and partake the gale"?

Let the scene shift.  Manhood is touched by age; but Lust is "heeled" by
Luxury, and Pomp is the heir of Pleasure; gewgaws and gaud, instead of
glory, surround, rejoice, and flatter thee to the last.  There rise thy
buildings; there lie, secret but gorgeous, the tabernacles of thine ease;
and the earnings of thy friends, and the riches of the people whom they
plunder, are waters to thine imperial whirlpool.  Thou art lapped in
ease, as is a silkworm; and profusion flows from thy high and unseen
asylum as the rain poureth from a cloud.--Much didst thou do to beautify
chimney-tops, much to adorn the snuggeries where thou didst dwell.
Thieving with thee took a substantial shape; and the robberies Of the
public passed into a metempsychosis of mortar, and became public-houses.
So there and thus, building and planning, didst thou spin out thy latter
yarn, till Death came upon thee; and when we looked around, lo! thy
brother was on thy hearth.  And thy parasites and thy comrades and thine
ancient pals and thy portly blowens, they made a murmur, and they packed
up their goods; but they turned ere they departed, and they would have
worshipped thy brother as they worshipped thee,--but he would not!  And
thy sign-post is gone and mouldered already; and to the Jolly Angler has
succeeded the Jolly Tar!  And thy picture is disappearing fast from the
print-shops, and thy name from the mouths of men!  And thy brother, whom
no one praised while thou didst live, is on a steeple of panegyric built
above the churchyard that contains thy grave.  O shifting and volatile
hearts of men!  Who would be keeper of a public?  Who dispense the wine
and the juices that gladden, when the moment the pulse of the band
ceases, the wine and the juices are forgotten?

To History,--for thy name will be preserved in that record which, whether
it be the calendar of Newgate or of nations, telleth its alike how men
suffer and sin and perish,--to History we leave the sum and balance of
thy merits and thy faults.  The sins that were thine were those of the
man to whom pleasure is all in all: thou wert, from root to branch, sap
and in heart, what moralists term the libertine; hence the light wooing,
the quick desertion, the broken faith, the organized perfidy, that
manifested thy bearing to those gentler creatures who called thee
'Gentleman George.'  Never to one solitary woman, until the last dull
flame of thy dotage, didst thou so behave as to give no foundation to
complaint and no voice to wrong.  But who shall say be honest to one, but
laugh at perfidy to another?  Who shall wholly confine treachery to one
sex, if to that sex he hold treachery no offence?  So in thee, as in all
thy tribe, there was a laxness of principle, an insincerity of faith,
even unto men: thy friends, when occasion suited, thou couldst forsake;
and thy luxuries were dearer to thee than justice to those who supplied
them.  Men who love and live for pleasure as thou, are usually good-
natured; for their devotion to pleasure arises from the strength of their
constitution, and the strength of their constitution preserves them from
the irritations of weaker nerves.  So went thou good-natured and often
generous; and often with thy generosity didst thou unite a delicacy that
showed thou hadst an original and a tender sympathy with men.  But as
those who pursue pleasure are above all others impatient of interruption,
so to such as interfered with thy main pursuit thou didst testify a deep,
a lasting, and a revengeful anger.  Yet let not such vices of temperament
be too severely judged!  For to thee were given man's two most persuasive
tempters, physical and moral,--Health and Power!  Thy talents, such as
they were,--and they were the talents of a man of the world,--misled
rather than guided thee, for they gave thy mind that demi-philosophy,
that indifference to exalted motives, which is generally found in a
clever rake.  Thy education was wretched; thou hadst a smattering of
Horace, but thou couldst not write English, and thy letters betray that
thou went wofully ignorant of logic.  The fineness of thy taste has been
exaggerated; thou wert unacquainted with the nobleness of simplicity; thy
idea of a whole was grotesque and overloaded, and thy fancy in details
was gaudy and meretricious.  But thou hadst thy hand constantly in the
public purse, and thou hadst plans and advisers forever before thee; more
than all, thou didst find the houses in that neighbourbood wherein thou
didst build, so preternaturally hideous that thou didst require but
little science to be less frightful in thy creations.  If thou didst not
improve thy native village and thy various homes with a solid, a lofty,
and a noble taste, thou didst nevertheless very singularly improve.  And
thy posterity, in avoiding the faults of thy masonry, will be grateful
for the effects of thy ambition.  The same demi-philosophy which
influenced thee in private life exercised a far benigner and happier
power over thee in public.  Thou wert not idly vexatious in vestries, nor
ordinarily tyrannic in thy parish; if thou wert ever arbitrary it was
only when thy pleasure was checked, or thy vanity wounded.  At other
times thou didst leave events to their legitimate course, so that in thy
latter years thou wert justly popular in thy parish; and in the grave thy
great good fortune will outshine thy few bad qualities, and men will say
of thee with a kindly, not an erring judgment, "In private life he was
not worse than the Rufers who came to this bar; in public life he was
better than those who kept a public before him."  Hark! those huzzas!
what is the burden of that chorus?  Oh, grateful and never time-serving
Britons, have ye modified already for another the song ye made so solely
in honour of Gentleman George: and must we, lest we lose the custom of
the public and the good things of the tap-room,--roust we roar with
throats yet hoarse with our fervour for the old words, our ardour for the
new--

              "Here's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!
               God bless him!
               God bless him!
               Here 's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!"