We and the World, Part I

sufferings;

d alike

for anoth

r

houlder. After suffering the terrors of night for some time, and finding myself no braver with my head under the bedclothes than above them, I began conscientiously to try my mother's family recipe for "bad dreams and being afraid in the dark." This was to "say over" the Benedicite correctly, which (if by a rare chance one were still awake at the end) was to be followed by a succession of the hymns one knew by heart. It required an effort to begin, and to really try, but the children of such mothers as ours are taught to make efforts, and once f

awakened. When I did open my eyes Jem was sittin

our eyes. Don't shut 'em again. What do you

were not by way of being admitted to "grown-up" conversations; and though Mrs. Wood's husband and I became intimate friends, I neither wished

me little time the jury had not been unanimous. One man doubted the prisoner's guilt-the man we afterwards knew as the old miser of Walnut-tree Farm. But he was over-persuaded at last, and Mr. Wood was convicted and sentenced. He had spent ten years of his penal servitude in Bermuda when a man lying in M

come. He w

which seems always to have haunted him-whether he had not helped to condemn the innocent-was the re

at long, long time of home with Mother and Father and Jem-all the haymaking summers and snowballing winters-whilst Jem and I had never been away from home, and had had so much fun, and nothing very horrid that I could call to mind except the mumps-he had been an exile working in chains. I remember rousing up with a start from the realization of this one Sunday to find myself still standing in the middle of the Litany. My mother was behaving too well herself to find me out, and though Jem was giggling he dared not mo

ners in the firm which had prosecuted Mr. Wood were dead. Their successors offered him employment, but he could not face the old associations. I believe he found it so hard to face any one, that this wa

e was as well pleased to be read to out of the Penny Numbers as the bee-master

be jolted to and from the moors every day. So he lived at Walnut-tree Farm, and now and then his father would come down in

arlie came to us, especially in haytime, for haycocks seem very comfortable (for people whose backs hurt) to lean against; and we could cover his legs with hay too, as he liked them to be hidden. There is no

el lot; but he didn't really like being with him, though he

said. "And even when they're c

atient. I'm as sorry as can be for the poor lad, but he turns me queer, though I feel ashamed of it. I like things

en us. When he was talking, or listening to the penny numbers, I never thoug

knew he'd have liked to go round the world as well as I, and he often laughed and said-"What's more, Jack, if I'd the money I would. People are very kind to poor wretches like me all over the worl

out of his big brown eyes at the old man, who met them with as steady a gaze out of his. Then Charlie lowered himself again, and said in a tone of voice by which I knew he was pleased, "I'm so glad you've come to see me, old Isaac. It's very kind of you. Jack says you know a lot about

knew how sorry he felt for poor Charlie, for when he was moved h

ensitiveness, he had never a better friend than Isaac Irvine. Indeed the bee-master was one of those men (to be

is slowness to be sociable, and had, I think, a sort of feeling that the ex-convict ought not only to

en one lives a quiet, methodical life in the place where one's father and grandfather liv

k back I fancy that he must have felt as if he wanted years of peace and quiet in which to try and forget the years of suffering. Old Isaac said one day, "I reckon the mast

ot the best places to sit down and feel free in, particularly when there are a lot of strange

if he did not go to bed at once. My father did just the same. I think their feeling about houses was of a perfectly primitive kind. They looked upon t

selfish of me to wait till my father was asleep (for fear he should say "no"), and then

rial globe by Charlie's sofa; but as a rule Charlie and I were alone, and the Woods went round the homestead to

attice, resting his white head against the mullion that the ivy was creeping up, and listened to the blackbirds and thrushes as their songs dropped by odd notes into silence, and gazed at the near fields and trees, and the little homestead with its h