and then I'll go up to the palace, and answer
this petition of theirs."

The warden's mind was very full,--full nearly to overcharging itself;
and had it done so,--had he allowed himself to speak the thoughts
which were working within him, he would indeed have astonished the
archdeacon by the reprobation he would have expressed as to the
proceeding of which he had been so unwilling a witness. But different
feelings kept him silent; he was as yet afraid of differing from his
son-in-law;--he was anxious beyond measure to avoid even a semblance
of rupture with any of his order, and was painfully fearful of having
to come to an open quarrel with any person on any subject. His life
had hitherto been so quiet, so free from strife; his little early
troubles had required nothing but passive fortitude; his subsequent
prosperity had never forced upon him any active cares,--had never
brought him into disagreeable contact with anyone. He felt that
he would give almost anything,--much more than he knew he ought to
do,--to relieve himself from the storm which he feared was coming.
It was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little stream should be
disturbed and muddied by rough hands; that his quiet paths should be
made a battlefield; that the unobtrusive corner of the world which had
been allotted to him, as though by Providence, should be invaded and
desecrated, and all within it made miserable and unsound.

Money he had none to give; the knack of putting guineas together
had never belonged to him; but how willingly, with what a foolish
easiness, with what happy alacrity, would he have abandoned the half
of his income for all time to come, could he by so doing have quietly
dispelled the clouds that were gathering over him,--could he have thus
compromised the matter between the reformer and the conservative,
between his possible son-in-law, Bold, and his positive son-in-law,
the archdeacon.

And this compromise would not have been made from any prudential
motive of saving what would yet remain, for Mr Harding still felt
little doubt but he should be left for life in quiet possession of the
good things he had, if he chose to retain them. No; he would have
done so from the sheer love of quiet, and from a horror of being made
the subject of public talk. He had very often been moved to pity.--to
that inward weeping of the heart for others' woes; but none had he
ever pitied more than that old lord, whose almost fabulous wealt