o wait, like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save
or ruin him; the other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish
or be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are wrong. Either
way this step-child of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by
doing or not doing?"

"Fall, then, is what I would say," replied Nance. "Fall where you will,
but do it! For O, Mr. Archer," she continued, stooping to her work, "you
that are good and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go against my
heart to see you live on here like a sheep in a turnip-field! If you
were braver----" and here she paused, conscience-smitten.

"Do I, indeed, lack courage?" inquired Mr. Archer of himself. "Courage,
the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand? Courage, that a poor
private carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or
a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder? But what is
courage, then? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer?
The itch of ill-advised activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still
and patient? To inquire of the significance of words is to rob ourselves
of what we seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still
is the least heroic. Nance," he said, "did you ever hear of _Hamlet_?"

"Never," said Nance.

"'Tis an old play," returned Mr. Archer, "and frequently enacted. This
while I have been talking Hamlet. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince
among the Danes," and he told her the play in a very good style, here
and there quoting a verse or two with solemn emphasis.

"It is strange," said Nance; "he was then a very poor creature?"

"That was what he could not tell," said Mr. Archer. "Look at me, am I as
poor a creature?"

She looked, and what she saw was the familiar thought of all her hours;
the tall figure very plainly habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the
slim hands; the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide and
somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that were so full of depth and
change and colour. He was gazing at her with his brows a little knit,
his chin upon one hand and that elbow resting on his knee.

"Ye look a man!" she cried, "ay, and should be a great one! The more
shame to you to lie here idle like a dog before the fire."

"My fair Holdaway," quoth Mr. Archer, "you are much set on action. I
cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed." He continued, looking at her with a
half-absent fixity, "'Tis a strange