n the morning sunshine at the
aperture of the window and listened.

"Nay!" said Big James, after an eternity. "He's saved it! He's saved
th' old shop! But by gum--by gum--"

Darius turned to Edwin, and tried to say something; and then Edwin saw
his father's face working into monstrous angular shapes, and saw the
tears spurt out of his eyes, and was clutched convulsively in his
father's shirt-sleeved arms. He was very proud, very pleased, but he
did not like this embrace; it made him feel ashamed. He thought how
Clara would have sniggered about it and caricatured it afterwards, had
she witnessed it. And although he had incontestably done something
which was very wonderful and very heroic, and which proved in him the
most extraordinary presence of mind, he could not honestly glorify
himself in his own heart, because it appeared to him that he had acted
exactly like an automaton. He blankly marvelled, and thought the
situation agreeably thrilling, if somewhat awkward. His father let him
go. Then all Edwin's feelings gave place to an immense stupefaction at
his father's truly remarkable behaviour. What! His father emotional!
He had to begin to revise again his settled views.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

ONE RESULT OF COURAGE.

By the next morning a certain tranquillity was restored.

It was only in this relative calm that the Clayhanger family and its
dependants began to realise the intensity of the experience through
which they had passed, and, in particular, the strain of waiting for
events after the printing office had been abandoned by its denizens, The
rumour of what had happened, and of what might have happened, had spread
about the premises in an instant, and in another instant all the women
had collected in the yard; even Miss Ingamells had betrayed the sacred
charge of the shop. Ten people were in the yard, staring at the window
aperture on the first-floor and listening for ruin. Some time had
elapsed before Darius would allow anybody even to mount the steps. Then
the baker, the tenant of the ground-floor, had had to be fetched. A
pleasant, bland man, he had consented in advance to every suggestion; he
had practically made Darius a present of the ground-floor, if Darius
possessed the courage to go into it, or to send others into it, The seat
of deliberation had then been transferred to the alley behind. And the
jobbing builder and carpenters had been fetched, and there was a palaver
of