here. Lord Fitzjocelyn cared for you so much, that I
should not wish for you to meet your deserts under present
circumstances. Go! I wish to have no more of your tongue!'

The boy was bounding off, while James walked slowly after to see him
beyond the grounds, and finding Warren the keeper, desired him to be on
the look-out. Warren replied with the tidings that Madison had run
away from his place, and that the police were looking out for him on
the suspicion of having stolen Mr. Calcott's parcel, moralizing further
on the depravity of such doings when my young Lord was so ill, but
accounting for the whole by pronouncing poaching to be bred in the bone
of the Marksedge people.

This little scene had done Jem a great deal of good, both by the
exhalation of bitterness and by the final exertion of forbearance. He
had, indeed, been under two great fallacies on this day,--soothing
Charlotte for the grief that was not caused by Fitzjocelyn's illness,
and driving to extremity the lad brimming over with sorrow not inferior
to his own. Little did he know what a gentle word might have done for
that poor, wild, tempestuous spirit!

Yet, James's heart smote him that evening, when, according to Louis's
earnest wish, Mr. Holdsworth came again, and they all were admitted to
the room, and he saw the feeble sign and summons to the Vicar to bend
down and listen. 'Tell poor Madison, it was wrong in me not to go to
see him. Give him one of my books, and tell him to go on well!'

That day had been one of rapid change, and the remedies and suffering
had so exhausted Louis that he could scarcely speak, and seemed hardly
conscious who was present. All his faculties were absorbed in the one
wish, which late in the evening was granted. The scene was like an
epitome of his life--the large irregular room, cumbered with the
disorderly apparatus of all his multifarious pursuits, while there he
lay on his little narrow iron bed, his features so fair and colourless
as to be strangely like his mother's marble effigy--his eyes closed,
and his brows often contracted with pain, so that there was a doubt how
far his attention was free, but still with a calm, pure sweetness, that
settled down more and more, as if he were being lulled into a sleep.

'He is asleep,' Mrs. Frost said, as they all rose up.

They felt what that sleep might become.

'We might as well wish to detain a snow-wreath,' thought Mr. Holdsworth.

CHAPTER VII.

GOS