meet: and my father's brow grew continually heavier, graver,
sterner; sometimes so stern that I dared not wage, what was, openly or
secretly, the quiet but incessant crusade of my existence--the bringing
back of John Halifax.

He still remained my father's clerk--nay, I sometimes thought he was
even advancing in duties and trusts, for I heard of his being sent long
journeys up and down England to buy grain--Abel Fletcher having added
to his tanning business the flour-mill hard by, whose lazy whirr was so
familiar to John and me in our boyhood. But of these journeys my
father never spoke; indeed, he rarely mentioned John at all. However
he might employ and even trust him in business relations, I knew that
in every other way he was inexorable.

And John Halifax was as inexorable as he. No under-hand or clandestine
friendship would he admit--no, not even for my sake. I knew quite
well, that until he could walk in openly, honourably, proudly, he never
would re-enter my father's doors. Twice only he had written to me--on
my two birthdays--my father himself giving me in silence the unsealed
letters. They told me what I already was sure of--that I held, and
always should hold, my steadfast place in his friendship. Nothing more.

One other fact I noticed: that a little lad, afterward discovered to
be Jem Watkins, to whom had fallen the hard-working lot of the lost
Bill, had somehow crept into our household as errand-boy, or gardener's
boy; and being "cute," and a "scholard," was greatly patronized by
Jael. I noticed, too, that the said Jem, whenever he came in my way,
in house or garden, was the most capital "little foot-page" that ever
invalid had; knowing intuitively all my needs, and serving me with an
unfailing devotion, which quite surprised and puzzled me at the time.
It did not afterwards.

Summer was passing. People began to watch with anxious looks the thin
harvest-fields--as Jael often told me, when she came home from her
afternoon walks. "It was piteous to see them," she said; "only July,
and the quartern loaf nearly three shillings, and meal four shillings a
peck."

And then she would glance at our flour-mill, where for several days a
week the water-wheel was as quiet as on Sundays; for my father kept his
grain locked up, waiting for what, he wisely judged, might be a worse
harvest than the last. But Jael, though she said nothing, often looked
at the flour-mill and shook her head. And after one m