William Howitt

“ And with what different feelings does the good Simon Degge look down from his lofty [Pg 305] eyrie over the princely expanse of meadows, and over the glittering river, and over the stately woods to where Great Castleborough still stretches farther and farther its red-brick walls, its red-tiled roofs, and its tall, smoke-emitting chimneys! There he sees no haunts of crowded men, enemies to himself or to any one. No upstarts, no envious opponents, but a vast family of human beings, all toiling for the good of their families and their country. ”

“ Thorsby, once the very black sheep of Castleborough, and hanging by his torn and mud-drenched fleece over an unfathomable abyss, gently seized and stoutly withdrawn by a loving hand, is now the most popular man of a great and busy community. He stands a monument of what may be done by seeking in order to save, rather than by the exercise of a bitter though not causeless resentment; and still, as he goes on his way, planning and diffusing benefits to others, he says in his own soul, “What can I do in retribution of my faults, in recompense of a deathless and redeeming love?” ”

“ There was a glow of flowers along the luxuriant hedge-row banks. There was a golden fire of flowers all over the pastures, and a spirit of tranquil joy lay over all the scene, the outward image of the peace and joy which had once more returned to that pleasant neighbourhood.
All at once the bells of Hillmartin burst out with a merry peal, as if they had caught the contagion of happy nature, and sent their [Pg 253] musical cadences over wood and valley, giving them the voice of delight, which seemed only wanting to communicate their full tide of new-born pleasure to the hearts of men. ”

“ And to see Letty Thorsby spring out of the porch of the Grange, and fly half down towards the garden-gate to meet her new sister, and such an embracing and kissing. And then, little Leonard Thorsby, with his flaxen locks, like a little burst of sunshine, scampering after his mother, and snatched up and kissed, and held out at arm’s-length, and admired, heavy as he was, by George! And then, Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn hurrying out, and then such hugging and kissing again, and all hurrying into the house, for George says, laughing, “Do just look! all the Green is out watching you!” ”

“ Well, time must decide.”
“There are messages of friendship to you all,” said George, “and to others; the rest we can read another time, but the surprising nature of this dream makes my head swim.”
“I believe every word of it,” said Letty, “is as true as gospel. The facts, as far as they are known, are as exact as if related by an eye-witness. Why should the rest not be equally exact? That Dr. Leroy should see in his dream Scammel and the Shalcrosses whom he does not know, is so extraordinary that it is to me a pledge of the truth. ”

“ To secure a murderer is every man’s bounden duty. To take a reward for getting a man put out of life—well, gentlemen, it may be all the same, but I’m an uneducated man, and can’t see it so. Excuse me, but I cannot accept the money—it would burn my pocket-bottom out in no time. ”

“ The violent death of so strong and active a man as Mr. Trant Drury, in passing that quiet ferry, never before stained by any human blood or witness to any human crime, on one of the loveliest evenings of summer, in brightest sunshine, and within a few hundred yards of Woodburn village. It would be equally impossible to express the great distress which existed within Woodburn Grange—the still more agonising and horrified affliction of the wife and daughter of the deceased. ”

“ As the giant oak lies coiled in the little, brown, burnished acorn that we pick up and pitch lightly into the thicket; as the Titan of the winds lies dreaming and poetising in the zephyr; as the little limpid, sun-bright brooklets inherit the fulness of the ocean, with its illimitable breadth and stupendous force; as the clouds and the rivers enshrine themselves in the diamond drops of morning dew, so in the light and sportive life of girlhood lie powers that can direct the course of human destiny more effectually than the little rudder can direct the colossal ship ”

“ There is the spirit and life of good, and the spirit and life of vanity, and the word to thee which arises in me is—Be prayerful and bewareful. Oh, I see a fire in thee which might be that of which I have lately heard in the so-called ‘Wild-fire Preacher,’ Oh, it is a quick, leaping, overleaping, perilous fire, capable of causing thee to spring out of the cool soberness of peace and wisdom, as it were, into the very pit of perdition. ”

“ And when we call to mind that the peoples of Australia are almost entirely of our own race and kindred, bound to us by the closest ties of blood, commerce, and common fortunes, it is clear that a good sketch of their history must possess a deep and lasting interest for the public. Mr. Howitt is well fitted to be their historian, not simply by his natural gifts as a writer, but by his wide and varied experience as a traveller, and by the occupation of his two sons, one as an explorer in Australia and the other in New Zealand. ”

“ I cannot describe the horror that seized me, when I saw Sir Henry following so closely on the heels of that desperado. ‘He will turn on him and kill him!’ I exclaimed, ‘Oh! that some good angel could warn him of his danger.’”
“Well then, my dear, you had your wish: a good angel did warn me, and that was Tom Boddily.”
[Pg 166]
“God reward him for it!” said Ann; “and I must reward him, too, somehow.”
“That man,” said Mr. Degge, “has his wits about him if any man has. He is a treasure. I don’t covet my neighbour’s goods, but I do envy Mr. Heritage the possession of such a servant.” ”

“ Woodburn, “treat his servants worse than the devil and the world treat theirs? I see continually those who neither think nor care about religion flourishing like green bay trees, and the good left to all sorts of troubles.”
“Oh, don’t talk in that manner!” exclaimed Ann. “Shall we expect an eternity of good, and shall we shrink from a trial for a few years? Shall we serve and trust in God only for selfish ends? Oh, no, indeed; we do need refining by fire. ”

“ The winter is over. There were pleasant cheery times again at Woodburn Grange, at Hillmartin Hall, and at Cotmanhaye Manor. There were splendid dinners at Christmas; and many a one that we know seated at them; and faces as joyous as could be at the after games and dances. There were all the Woodburns, but with some of them also under other names. Mrs. Letty Thorsby, and fair Ann of Cotmanhaye Manor, and their loving husbands, and the worthy Thomas Clavering, as fond of a rubber at whist as ever. ”

“ Drury himself came riding down the lane. “Ah! my friend,” he said; “now you see the nuisance of these tall hedges and trees. You cannot get an atom of sun or breeze to your hay, and you must, with much extra labour, force it into the centre of the field. Even there it will still feel the effect of these barriers against free circulation of air and light.”
Mr. Woodburn showed instantly his great irritation. The blood rushed into his face, and with a dark, stern expression he said, “Mr. Drury, this is insolence—this is intolerable. ”

“ Woodburn, gloomily; “but what does it mean where it says that if any man lose houses or land or wife or children for Christ’s sake, he shall receive tenfold more in this world of houses, land, and the rest of it, and in the world to come life everlasting? Now, Ann, I have heard of thousands being ruined, and even burnt and killed for Christ’s sake, but I never yet heard of one who received tenfold property for what he lost. These things make one believe the whole to be a cunningly devised fable. If the Gospels are not true altogether, they may not be true at all.” ”

“ What does that mean, Letty? Do young bachelors require now-a-days such great houses?”
Letty laughed. “Young men are rather ambitious now-a-days, it must be confessed. Perhaps Dr. Leroy thinks he will secure thy little bird, which lured him back, in a fine cage before long.”
“That is just what I was thinking,” said Thorsby; “and somehow I have been continually meeting Mrs. Heritage and Millicent going about the town amongst the shops, and Millicent looks as spry as ever,—quite killing with those dark eyes and eyelashes of hers. It is really delightful.” ”

“ Then he was bending his course towards Leicestershire. Amongst poachers, where Scammel was a great leader but a few years ago, he was now missed, and many thought him dead; but Boddily found nowhere any news of his death. In the lodging-houses of tramps, who came across all sorts of people accustomed to ply their daily or nocturnal arts amongst the farms and villages, no news. Tom was puzzled, but not disheartened. The man, he felt, had stepped out of his ordinary haunts for concealment. No such persons as the Shalcrosses were, or had been, seen for a good while in all the regions of trampdom. ”

“ There were moments in which the very idea that it had been possible for any man who had ever known him in the least degree to believe such a thing of him, made his blood glow with indignation. But all the world now knew and acknowledged that he had been falsely accused, and thus most injuriously treated, and that gave him again the possession of equanimity and of a healthy enjoyment of life. ”

“ At the mention of the prisoner, Hopcraft cried out in a voice of terror, “No, sir, it wor na me—it wor Scammel!”
The counsel paused a moment, gave a glance at the prisoner,—the jailer who stood by the dock told Hopcraft not to interrupt,—and the barrister went on. He painted in strong colours the desperate character of Scammel; showed the causes, all now fully brought to light on the clearest evidence; Scammel’s spirit of revenge against Mr. Drury; and then described the scene minutely at Wink’s Ferry. ”

“ Stranger and yet friend, I am drawn by that life which wells up in the heart like the spring in the desert, and the soft breeze on the solitary plain, in tenderness and loving concern towards thee. Of thy past life or outward circumstances I know nothing but what thou hast said, that thou art from the old country ”

“ By his side he still sees that gentle embodiment of unpretending wisdom and domestic sunshine, whose kind glance, if he is low, re-inspires him; if he is ready, in some momentary flush of his once excitable spirits, to say or do anything too prominent, steadies and sobers him. With such a pilot and such a sheet-anchor, we will venture to predict a safe voyage of [Pg 288] life to his mortal bark, and that never again will the sunshine of peace now lying on Woodburn, on Cotmanhaye Manor, on Bilts’ Farm, and on Fair Manor be disturbed on his account. ”

“ Yet mighty as is the power which says in the heart of woman, “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God [Pg 258] my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me,”—yet it was many a long day, yea, long year, before Elizabeth Woodburn could descend to the river-side below the Grange. ”

“ Why, that was wisdom enough for the Jews of those semi-barbarous ages, who massacred all the nations round, and stoned to death any old woman who gathered a few sticks on a Sabbath; but it is not wisdom enough for Christians who are to do as they would be done by. Would any of these great, cowardly schoolmasters, who clutch little, shrinking children, and flog them brutally, like some one twice or three times their own size and strength to treat them so? ”

“ A more painful state of things cannot be conceived. To George Woodburn and Elizabeth Drury it was a state of perpetual torture. Mr. Woodburn wished George to take a house somewhere not far off, get married, and manage the paternal property. He named to him a handsome income, which he would appropriate to him; but George knew that at such a wedding his father would never meet Mr. Drury, and to such a scandal neither he nor Elizabeth would consent. ”

“ Tom pondered this point long and anxiously as he strode along. “How shall I bring Latter, and, say, Ralph Chaddick, Sir Henry’s powerful head-keeper, to this camp, without starting the game and seeing Scammel run for it into the next woods? If he were once up, he would put a couple of bullets from his double-barrel through any two of us as soon as look at us.” Tom sat on a hill and looked round. Every way were difficulties. They could not approach the camp in any direction without coming into full notice from it. Though to-day all the men were away, it might not be so every day. ”

“ The next instant, the three old jangling bells of Cotmanhaye broke out into the best music that they could make, which was but indifferent, but yet had a note of gladness in it, like the voice of some uncouth labourer, whom nature never meant for a musician, but who goes homeward over the dusky slopes of evening, chanting discordantly some rude country song,—there was a happy heart in its limping clangour, which made it welcome. ”

“ Letty was bravely working on with the business in Castleborough. Mrs. Thorsby was dead: and little Leonard, growing every day more interesting, was the great consolation of Letty’s life. Over Woodburn Grange lay a dark cloud of care and mortification, only relieved by the marriage of Ann and Sir Henry Clavering, which was at last fixed for the commencement of August, and was to be followed by a tour on the continent. ”