Val Elster.

CHAPTER II.

WILLY GUM.

Had Percival Elster lingered ever so short a time near the clerk's house
that morning he would have met that functionary himself; for in less than
a minute after he had passed out of sight Jabez Gum's door opened, and
Jabez Gum glided out of it.

It is a term chiefly applied to ghosts; but Mr. Gum was a great deal more
like a ghost than like a man. He was remarkably tall and thin; a very
shadow; with a white shadow of a face, and a nose that might have served
as a model for a mask in a carnival of guys. A sharp nose, twice the
length and half the breadth of any ordinary nose--a very ferret of a
nose; its sharp tip standing straight out into the air. People said, with
such a nose Mr. Gum ought to have a great deal of curiosity. And they
were right; he _had_ a great deal in a quiet way.

A most respectable man was Mr. Gum, and he prided himself upon it. Mr.
Gum--more often called Clerk Gum in the village--had never done a wrong
thing in his life, or fallen into a scrape. He had been altogether a
pattern to Calne in general, and to its black sheep in particular. Dr.
Ashton himself could not have had less brought against him than Clerk
Gum; and it would just have broken Mr. Gum's heart had his good name been
tarnished in ever so slight a degree. Perhaps no man living had been born
with a larger share of self-esteem than Jabez Gum. Clerk of the parish
longer than Dr. Ashton had been its Rector, Jabez Gum had lived at his
ease in a pecuniary point of view. It was one of those parishes (I think
few of them remain now) where the clerk's emoluments are large. He also
held other offices; was an agent for one or two companies, and was looked
upon as an exceedingly substantial man for his station in life. Perhaps
he was less so than people imagined. The old saying is all too true:
"Nobody knows where the shoe pinches but he who wears it."

Jabez Gum had his thorn, as a great many more of us have ours, if the
outside world only knew it. And Jabez, at odd moments, when the thorn
pierced him very sharply, had been wont to compare his condition to St.
Paul's, and to wonder whether the pricks inflicted on that holy man could
have bled as his own did. He meant no irreverence when he thought this;
neither do I in writing it. We are generally wounded in the most
vulnerable spot about us, and Jabez Gum made no exception to the rule. He
had been assailed in his cherished respectability, hi