adesman at Warminster, and was also doing well. A second son who
had once been sickly and weak, was a scholar in his way, and was now
a schoolmaster, also at Warminster, and in great repute with the
parson of the parish there. There was a second daughter, Fanny, at
home, a girl as good as gold, the glory and joy and mainstay of her
mother, whom even the miller could not scold,--whom all Bullhampton
loved. But she was a plain girl, brown, and somewhat hard-visaged;--a
morsel of fruit as sweet as any in the garden, but one that the eye
would not select for its outside grace, colour, and roundness. Then
there were the two younger. Of Sam, the youngest of all, who was now
twenty-one, something has already been said. Between him and Fanny
there was,--perhaps it will be better to say there had been,--another
daughter. Of all the flock Carry had been her father's darling. She
had not been brown or hard-visaged. She was such a morsel of fruit
as men do choose, when allowed to range and pick through the whole
length of the garden wall. Fair she had been, with laughing eyes,
and floating curls; strong in health, generous in temper, though now
and again with something of her father's humour. To her mother's eye
she had never been as sweet as Fanny; but to her father she had been
as bright and beautiful as the harvest moon. Now she was a thing,
somewhere, never to be mentioned! Any man who would have named her
to her father's ears, would have encountered instantly the force of
his wrath. This was so well known in Bullhampton that there was not
one who would dare to suggest to him even that she might be saved.
But her mother prayed for her daily, and her father thought of her
always. It was a great lump upon him, which he must bear to his
grave; and for which there could be no release. He did not know
whether it was his mind, his heart, or his body that suffered. He
only knew that it was there,--a load that could never be lightened.
What comfort was it to him now, that he had beaten a miscreant to
death's door--that he, with his old hands, had nearly torn the wretch
limb from limb--that he had left him all but lifeless, and had walked
off scatheless, nobody daring to put a finger on him? The man had
been pieced up by some doctor, and was away in Asia, in Africa, in
America--soldiering somewhere. He had been a lieutenant in those
days, and was probably a lieutenant still. It was nothing to old
Brattle where he was. Had he been able to