ction of being in great peril of the law--a friendly watch had
been expecting him all night, and was even now on the look-out for his
coming.

'Go thy ways, Sim, go thy ways,' said the locksmith, as soon as he could
speak. 'I have done my best for thee, poor lad, and would have saved
thee, but the rope is round thy neck, I fear.'

So saying, and shaking his head in a very sorrowful and disconsolate
manner, he turned back, and soon re-entered his own house, where Mrs
Varden and the faithful Miggs had been anxiously expecting his return.

Now Mrs Varden (and by consequence Miss Miggs likewise) was impressed
with a secret misgiving that she had done wrong; that she had, to the
utmost of her small means, aided and abetted the growth of disturbances,
the end of which it was impossible to foresee; that she had led remotely
to the scene which had just passed; and that the locksmith's time for
triumph and reproach had now arrived indeed. And so strongly did Mrs
Varden feel this, and so crestfallen was she in consequence, that while
her husband was pursuing their lost journeyman, she secreted under her
chair the little red-brick dwelling-house with the yellow roof, lest it
should furnish new occasion for reference to the painful theme; and now
hid the same still more, with the skirts of her dress.

But it happened that the locksmith had been thinking of this very
article on his way home, and that, coming into the room and not seeing
it, he at once demanded where it was.

Mrs Varden had no resource but to produce it, which she did with many
tears, and broken protestations that if she could have known--

'Yes, yes,' said Varden, 'of course--I know that. I don't mean to
reproach you, my dear. But recollect from this time that all good things
perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are naturally
bad. A thoroughly wicked woman, is wicked indeed. When religion goes
wrong, she is very wrong, for the same reason. Let us say no more about
it, my dear.'

So he dropped the red-brick dwelling-house on the floor, and setting his
heel upon it, crushed it into pieces. The halfpence, and sixpences,
and other voluntary contributions, rolled about in all directions, but
nobody offered to touch them, or to take them up.

'That,' said the locksmith, 'is easily disposed of, and I would to
Heaven that everything growing out of the same society could be settled
as easily.'

'It happens very fortunately, Varden,' said his wife,