ed me on to the bank, just as I had found it useless to
try any longer to rise above the broad leaves that floated on the top,
and made up my mind to give it up as a bad job. When I came to myself my
preserver was gone, but Martha was supporting my head.

"Oh, you double-faced, deceitful gipsy!" I began. "Who would have
thought you would be sitting, hand locked in hand, with a horrid fellow
like the ruffian that was with you in the bower?"

"The ruffian! My dear guardian, don't you know him?"

"How should I? I never saw the vagabond's ugly face before."

"Why, it's William Morgan--how strange you shouldn't recognise him!"

"Well, if it were twenty William Morgans, that's no reason you should
sit with your hand in his like the sign of the fire-office over our
stable-door."

"Oh, he's such an old friend! Recollect, sir, we grew up together, and
now how can you keep your anger against him? He has saved your life."

"After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the
Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was
going to tell you when Morgan came to the door."

I was inflexible; I wouldn't let one of the Morgans into my house. Miss
Letitia wrote a letter of four pages, and Miss Sophia enclosed a sonnet.
Nothing would do. I resolved to keep Martha all to myself; and, for fear
of other adventures in the bower, I gave her positive orders not to
leave the house. I set people to watch her. I threatened to hang her
Ayah with my own hands, and showed her the very bough of the tree I
would do it on, if Martha was allowed to speak to any body but myself. I
resolved to marry her in a week; and, merely to prevent her being
harassed by the Morgans in the interval, I took all these precautions.
After that, I determined to pardon the whole family, and had even
prepared a letter asking them all to dinner on our wedding-day. Martha
did not seem inconsolable. Day after day passed away; and, to show how
easy I was in my mind, I went on with the last chapter of my novel,
leaving all the middle part to be filled up at my leisure.

One morning--it was last Wednesday--I went into the study, and had just
taken pen in hand, when I recollected that that was the very day I had
summoned all the labourers on the estate to resist the approach of the
levellers and engineers of a disgusting railway that was determined to
force itself right through my garden and close under the dining-room
windows. I w