“Well, and I am without a mother." "That's a different matter altogether. He's a good-for-nothing chap, and I won't have it." "Every one is against him," said Jael; "every one has something hard, and unkind, and unjust to say of him; but you know he was head boy in the school."

“Oh, yes, and that spoiled him for hard work. Look at his hands, they are soft as a girl's. I tell you he don't like work. He likes to be in the Anchor,' smoking and drinking, and--" with concentrated wrath"it's the likes of he as can go all round the globe and see niggers, and rub them and see if it be burnt cork or not, and I am forced to stay at home. Talk of slaves, do you?-get along."

"I thought, father," said Jael, "that if I married Jeremiah he'd be useful to you. He might attend to the bridge, and pilot the trains over, and allow you sometimes to get away."

"Indeed! bring him into my little cabin, would you? Let him take some of my work! I'd see him hanged first, for I never could trust that chap. He'd let engine and train run into the Fleet. If that happened, on whom would the blame lie but on me? I won't hear of it. That's flat, flat as turbot."

"But, father, I love him, and I care for no one else, and I want him. Besides, we have arranged about the Cordelia. If he is not to have me, I think I should let him have some of the money out of the pot, to start him in life, to make up to him for the disappointment."

"Do you!" roared old Tapp. "Lord! what did Clementina mean with leaving me saddled with such an incumbrance. Hold your tongue, you make me mad. I shall strike you if you say more. Jeremiah!-all Brightlingsea knows he is an idle fellow, with no good in him, never sticks regularly to one trade. He's drove an engine; he's been at seaWhat do you mean, trying to interrupt me. I know what I'll do I'll go to Fingrinhoe after Mrs. Bagg. She shall be a mother to you; she shall comb your hair; she shall put you in traces and set blinkers over your eyes, that you look straight afore you at the road where your best interests lie, and don't be peering all about you at the boys. I'll pull on my best coat- let's see, there won't be a train till 5.35-and I'll go to Fingrinhoe and propose to Mrs. Bagg, and come and be a mother to you."

"Father, you do not mean it!" Jael's veins swelled.

"Ay, I do; I'll go at once.

Get your

room ready, she shall share it with you, and see how she likes the situation, and the whipping and the driving of such a colt as you. I'll have you broken in, I will."

66

Father, if you do that I shall run away." "Will you? Where will you run to? See here, Jael. Did you ever know boys play at dobb-nuts? Two does it; each has a chestnut with a string through it, and one strikes at the other nut, and if he splits it he conquers. I take it your head and mine are set against each other, and we'll see which cracks first, which proves hardest. Dobbnuts it is! I pity your skull, I do, for my head is hard, uncommon hard."

Mr. Shamgar Tapp put on his best coat, and went down to the water's edge, where he got into a boat; and at once took off his coat again and laid it in the bows. Then he began to row.

"Drat the girl!" he said. "What do I know of the management of girls, that Providence should have given me one, and left me to manage her? Providence might just as well have dropped an elephant down my chimney, and told me to rear that, and given me no instructions what victuals to give it, or what diseases it was troubled with, and when and how it might become dangerous. But there-I won't think of that Jael any more. I'll change the subject. When I think of her taking up with that loafer, Jeremiah Mustard, it makes my blood boil. Talking of boiling too," he pulled long strokes, "talking of boiling, don't I know by experience that a black kettle takes half the time to bring to the boil as does a polished tin one? Don't it, so to speak, suck in the heat? Very well. What is the human reason and experience given to a man for if he ain't to apply his experience and exercise his reason. Don't tell me that African niggers are by nature black. Why, bless me! if a nigger were by nature black, and was to sit down on the burning desert he'd begin to boil at once, and the steam come out of his nose. He'd take in the heat and suffer from it twice as fast as if he were white. It's with niggers as with kettles. I don't believe, I won't believe, that there is one law of nature for kettles, and another for human beings get along."

Presently his boat touched the land, and he drew it up the slope from the shore to Fingrinhoe, where was the cottage now occupied by the widow Bagg. Mr. Tapp

came in.

"'Do, Mrs. Bagg, 'do?" He took a seat. "How do you feel yourself?"

Mrs. Bagg was a fine woman of about

D

forty-five, fresh for her age, with an aquiline nose, fine dark eyes, her hair, parted on one side, was drawn over to the other; a tidy woman, who kept her cottage scrupulously clean, and her person scrupulously neat. Folks said she had a temper, but tidy women, and good housewives generally have tempers, there is energy, go, in them; they have no patience with slovenly people, and work half done.

"Mrs. Bagg," said Tapp, "I've come to call you to task. Why didn't you smother it?" "Smother what?"

"The baby-my Jael. It is nigh on eighteen years ago you were in my house, and was almost a mother to that creature. You never considered my wishes, you never had a spark of human feeling and neighbourly consideration for me. You might as well have gone and sown tares in my field, or thrown a firebrand in at my window, or let loose a hyæna in my kitchen. It was your duty to have smothered it."

"But, Master Tapp, I did not think-" "No. In course you did not think. Women never do think. If you'd have thought you'd have known how inconvenient it would have been to me with a she-baby yowling for its meat, and I called away to open the bridge, or to leave it alone, after it could toddle, with the lamp on the table burning, and the fire in the grate blazing, and me off closing the bridge over the Fleet. No, you never thought, not you."

66

But, Master Tapp, surely-"

"You never asked me my opinion. You treated me as if I were a cipher in the house, as if that baby was everything, and I must have no will of my own, no wishes concerning it, no chance for myself. I did not think you was that unfeeling and ungenerous-but so you acted, and it has left me as tangled as twine."

"I couldn't do it, you know, Master Tapp." "In course you couldn't," he said sarcastically; "just you come over and see the consequence. There's that girl grown up, and tearing over the marshes after the young men. What am I to do? What can I do? She is that daring and audacious, that she defies me. You should have smothered her when she was born. You'd have done it if you'd had any Christian and womanly feelings in your bosom, Mrs. Bagg.”

That lady was so disconcerted at the sudden and unexpected attack that she was incapable of defending herself. She looked about her, and for lack of something else to

say, asked, "Will you have a cup of tea, Master Tapp?"

"I don't mind if I do," he replied. "It'll soothe the inflammation I feel within me. Ah! Mistress Bagg, did you ever reckon on changing your name?"

"Well, master," answered the widow, "I can't say I have never thought on it, because the men press it so on me. The offers I've had since my dear man died would dress a potato field; but I put them from me—I waited for better offers."

"Now, see this," said Shamgar, "I change my shirt once a week, so there's washing to do. And I wear a hole in the foot of my worsted socks once a week, so there's darning to do. And I like my victuals hot and reg'lar, so there's cooking to do—a chop or a steak on Sundays, and a bit of pudding and gravy on Tuesday. Then with these sewingmachines come in all one's coats and trousers and waistcoats go to pieces at the seams."

"I know they do," said Mrs. Bagg.

"How do you know?" asked Shamgar. "Have you been overhauling my chest of drawers?"

"I was speaking promiscuous," explained the widow, "of work done by sewing machines. You see they don't knot the ends of the thread."

"I don't know nor care how it comes about, but I know my garments are ever giving way at the seams and letting in airand it's a windy place is Gull-Fleet Bridge. So there's tailoring to be done. And then, and above all, there's that Jael, that girl, to be kept under, and held in tight, and taught her duties, and made to stay at home, and held from the boys, and so," said Mr. Tapp, "there's also Jaeloring to be done."

"There must be," agreed Mrs. Bagg.

"Now, if she goes off, I'll want some one to manage for me, and if she don't go off, still I want some one. So if you please, you can come and try it, and I'll see what you're like, and there's no saying-more wonderful things have happened-but you may come in the end to changing your name. depends, you see, mistress, on how you get on with the washing, and the mending, and the cooking, and the tailoring, and the Jaeloring."

That

"I don't mind, I'm no ways particular," said Mrs. Bagg, "I'll come and try it."

"Very well," said Mr. Tapp. "Then I'll wait here whilst you put your few things together, and I'll row you back. That girl wants looking after continually and regularly as Gull-Fleet Bridge."

HE brown Barle river running over red rocks aslant its course is pushed aside, and races round curving slopes. The first shoot of the rapid is smooth and polished like a gem by the lapidary's art, rounded and smooth as a fragment of torso, and this convex undulation maintains a solid outline. Then the following scoop under is furrowed as if ploughed across, and the ridge of each furrow, where the particles move a little less swiftly than in the hollow of the groove, falls backwards as foam blown from a wave. At the foot of the furrowed decline the current rises over a rock in a broad white sheet-white because as it is dashed to pieces the air mingles with it. After this furious haste the stream does but just overtake those bubbles which have been carried along on another division of the water flowing steadily but straight. Sometimes there are two streams like this between the same banks, sometimes three or even more, each running at a different rate, and each gliding above a floor differently inclined. The surface of each of these streams slopes in a separate direction, and though under the same light they reflect it at varying angles. The river is animated and alive, rushing here, gliding there, foaming yonder; its separate and yet component parallels striving together, and talking loudly in incomplete sentences. Those rivers that move through midland meads present a broad, calm surface, at the

same level from side to side; they flow without sound, and if you stood behind a thick hedge you would not know that a river was near. They dream along the meads, toying with their forget-me-nots, too idle even to make love to their flowers vigorously. The brown Barle enjoys his life, and splashes in the sunshine like boys bathing-like them he is sunburnt and brown. He throws the wanton spray over the ferns that bow and bend as the cool breeze his current brings sways them in the shade. He laughs and talks, and sings louder than the wind in his woods.

Here is a pool by the bank under an ash -a deep green pool inclosed by massive rocks, which the stream has to brim over. The water is green- or is it the ferns, and the moss, and the oaks, and the pale ash reflected? This rock has a purple tint, dotted with moss spots almost black; the green water laps at the purple stone, and there is one place where a thin line of scarlet is visible, though I do not know what causes it. Another stone the spray does not touch has been dried to a bright white by the sun. Enclosed, the green water slowly swirls round till it finds crevices, and slips through. A few paces farther up there is a red rapidreddened stones, and reddened growths beneath the water, a light that lets the red hues overcome the others a wild rush of crowded waters rotating as they go, shrill voices calling. This next bend upwards dazzles the eyes, for every inclined surface and striving parallel, every swirl, and bubble,

a

and eddy and rush around a rock chances to reflect the sunlight. Not one long pathway of quiet sheen, such as stretches across rippled lake, each wavelet throwing back its ray in just proportion, but a hundred separate mirrors vibrating, each inclined at a different angle, each casting a tremulous flash into the face. The eyelids involuntarily droop to shield the gaze from a hundred arrows; they are too strong-nothing can be distinguished but a Woven surface of brilliance, a mesh of light, under which the water runs, itself invisible. I will go back to the deep green pool, and walking now with the sun behind, how the river has changed!

Soft, cool shadows reach over it, which I did not see before; green surfaces are calm under trees; the rocks are less hard; the stream runs more gently, and the oaks come down nearer; the delicious sound of the rushing water almost quenches my thirst. My eyes have less work to do to meet the changing features of the current which now seems smooth as my glance accompanies its movement. The sky, which was not noticed before, now appears reaching in rich azure across the deep hollow, from the oaks on one side to the oaks on the other. These woods, which cover the steep and rocky walls of the gorge from river to summit, are filled with the June colour of oak. It is not green, nor russet, nor yellow; I think it may be called a glow of yellow under green. It is warmer than green; the glow is not on the outer leaves, but comes up beneath from the depth of the branches. The rush of the river soothes the mind, the broad descending surfaces of yellow-green oak carry the glance downwards from the blue over to the stream in the hollow. Rush! rush!-it is the river, like a mighty wind in the wood. A pheasant crows, and once and again falls the tap, tap of woodmen's axes- scarce heard, for they are high above. They strip the young oaks of their bark as far as they can while the saplings stand, then fell them, and as they all lie down hill there are parallel streaks of buff (where the sap has dried) drawn between the yellow-green masses of living leaf. The pathway winds in among the trees at the base of the rocky hill; light green whortleberries fill every interstice, bearing tiny red globes of flower-flower-lamps-open at the top. Wood-sorrel lifts its delicate veined petals; the leaf is rounded like the shadow of a bubble on a stone under clear water. I like to stay by the wood-sorrel a little while it is so chastely beautiful; like the purest verse, it speaks to the inmost heart.

Staying, I hear unconsciously-listen! Rush! rush! like a mighty wind in the wood.

It draws me on to the deep green pool enclosed about by rocks-a pool to stand near and think into. The purple rock, dotted with black moss; the white rock; the thin scarlet line; the green water; the overhanging tree; the verdant moss upon the bank; the lady fern- -are there still. But I see also now a little pink somewhere in the water, much brown too, and shades I know no name for. The water is not green, but holds in solution three separate sets of colours. The confervæ on the stones, the growths beneath at the bottom waving a little as the water swirls like minute seaweeds-these are brown and green and somewhat reddish too. Under water the red rock is toned and paler, but has deep black cavities. Next, the surface, continually changing as it rotates, throws back a different light, and, thirdly, the oaks' yellow-green high up, the pale ash, the tender ferns drooping over low down confer their tints on the stream. So from the floor of the pool, from the surface, and from the adjacent bank, three sets of colours mingle. Washed together by the slow swirl, they produce a shade the brown of the Barle lost in darkness where the bank overhangs.

Following the current downwards at last the river for a while flows in quietness, broad and smooth. A trout leaps for a fly with his tail curved in the air, full a foot out of water. Trout watch behind sunken stones, and shoot to and fro as insects droop in their flight and appear about to fall. So clear is the water and so brightly illuminated that the fish are not easily seen-for vision depends on contrast but in a minute I find a way to discover them by their shadows. The black shadow of a trout is distinct upon the bottom of the river, and guides the eye to the spot, then looking higher in the transparent water there is the fish. It was curious to see these black shadows darting to and fro as if themselves animated and without bodies, for if the trout darted before being observed the light concealed him in motion. Some of the trout came up from under Torre-steps, a singular structure which here connects the shores of the stream. Every one has seen a row of stepping stones across a shallow brook; now pile other stones on each of these, forming buttresses, and lay flat stones like unhewn planks from buttress to buttress, and you have the plan of this primitive bridge. It has a megalithic appearance, as if associated with the age of rude stone monuments. They say its origin is doubtful; there can be no doubt of the loveli