r injurious severity on the part of
the magistrates; but, in Butler's circumstances, it pressed cruelly hard.
He felt he must be suffering under the bad opinion of the person who was
dearest to him, from an imputation of unkind desertion, the most alien to
his nature.

This painful thought, pressing on a frame already injured, brought on a
succession of slow and lingering feverish attacks, which greatly impaired
his health, and at length rendered him incapable even of the sedentary
duties of the school, on which his bread depended. Fortunately, old Mr.
Whackbairn, who was the principal teacher of the little parochial
establishment, was sincerely attached to Butler. Besides that he was
sensible of his merits and value as an assistant, which had greatly
raised the credit of his little school, the ancient pedagogue, who had
himself been tolerably educated, retained some taste for classical lore,
and would gladly relax, after the drudgery of the school was over, by
conning over a few pages of Horace or Juvenal with his usher. A
similarity of taste begot kindness, and accordingly he saw Butler's
increasing debility with great compassion, roused up his own energies to
teaching the school in the morning hours, insisted upon his assistant's
reposing himself at that period, and, besides, supplied him with such
comforts as the patient's situation required, and his own means were
inadequate to compass.

Such was Butler's situation, scarce able to drag himself to the place
where his daily drudgery must gain his daily bread, and racked with a
thousand fearful anticipations concerning the fate of those who were
dearest to him in the world, when the trial and condemnation of Effie
Deans put the copestone upon his mental misery.

He had a particular account of these events, from a fellow-student who
resided in the same village, and who, having been present on the
melancholy occasion, was able to place it in all its agony of horrors
before his excruciated imagination. That sleep should have visited his
eyes after such a curfew-note, was impossible. A thousand dreadful
visions haunted his imagination all night, and in the morning he was
awaked from a feverish slumber, by the only circumstance which could have
added to his distress,--the visit of an intrusive ass.

This unwelcome visitant was no other than Bartoline Saddletree. The
worthy and sapient burgher had kept his appointment at MacCroskie's with
Plumdamas and some other neighb