groped vaguely for his note-book: he extracted
it at last like a loose tooth, fumbled with it, and
dropped it: Alfred picked it up fuming inwardly.

The ancient went to write, but his fingers
were weak and hesitating, and by this time he
had half forgotten what he was going to say.
Alfred's voice quavered with impatience; but he
fought it down, and offered as coolly as he could
to write it for him: the offer was accepted, and
he wrote down in a feigned hand, very clear.

"Drayton House, Oct. 5. A sane patient,
Alfred Hardie, confined here from interested
motives. Has written four letters to the
Commissioners, all believed to be intercepted.
Communicated to me in confidence by an attendant in
the house. Refer to the party himself, and his
correspondence with the Commissioners from
Dr. Wycherley's: also to Thomas Wales,
another attendant; and to Dr. Wycherley: also to
Dr. Eskell and Mr. Abbott, Commissioners of
Lunacy."

After this stroke of address Alfred took the
first opportunity of leaving him, and sent Frank
Beverley to him.

Thus Alfred, alarmed by the hatred of Mrs.
Archbold, and racked witli jealousy, exerted all
his intelligence and played many cards for liberty.
One he kept in reserve; and a trump card too.
Having now no ink nor colouring matter, he did
not hesitate, but out penknife, up sleeve, and
drew blood from his arm, and with it wrote once
more to the Commissioners, but kept this letter
hidden for an ingenious purpose. What that was
my reader shall divine.

CHAPTER XLV.

WE left Julia Dodd a district visitor. Working
in a dense parish she learned the depths of human
misery, bodily and mental.

She visited an honest widow, so poor that she
could not afford a farthing dip, but sat in the
dark. When friends came to see her they
sometimes brought a candle to talk by.

She visited a cripple who often thanked God
sincerely for leaving her the use of one thumb.

She visited a poor creature who for sixteen
years had been afflicted with a tumour in the
neck, and had lain all those years on her back
with her head in a plate; the heat of a pillow
being intolerable. Julia found her longing to go,
and yet content to stay: and praising God in all
the lulls of that pain, which was her companion
day and night.

But were I to enumerate the ghastly sights,
the stifling loathsome odours, the vulgar horrors
upon horrors this refined young lady faced, few
of my readers would endure on paper for love of
truth, what she endured in reality for love of
suffering humanity, and of Him whose servant
she aspired to be.

Probably such sacrifices of selfish ease and
comfort are never quite in vain; they tend in
many ways to heal our own wounds: I won't
say that bodily suffering is worse than mental:
but it is realised far more vividly by a spectator.
The grim heart-breaking sights she saw arrayed
Julia's conscience against her own grief; the
more so when she found some of her most afflicted
ones resigned, and even grateful. "What," said
she, "can they, all rags, disease, and suffering,
bow so cheerfully to the will of Heaven, and have
I the wickedness, the impudence, to repine?"

And then, happier than most district visitors,
she was not always obliged to look on helpless,
or to confine her consolations to good words.
Mrs. Dodd was getting on famously in her
groove. She was high in the confidence of Cross
and Co., and was inspecting eighty ladies, as well
as working; her salary and profits together
were not less than five hundred pounds a year,
and her one luxury was charity, and Julia its
minister. She carried a good honest basket, and
there you might see her Bible wedged in with
wine, and meat, and tea and sugar: and still, as
these melted in her round, a little spark of
something warm would sometimes come in her own
sick heart. Thus by degrees she was attaining,
not earthly happiness, but a grave and pensive
composure.

Yet across it gusts of earthly grief came sweeping
often; but these she hid till she was herself
again.

To her mother and brother she was kinder
sweeter, and dearer if possible, than ever. They
looked on her as a saint; but she knew better;
and used to blush with honest shame when they
called her so. "Oh don't, pray don't," she
would say with unaffected pain. "Love me as
if I was an angel; but do not praise me; that
turns my eyes inward and makes me see myself.
I am not a Christian yet, nor anything like one."

Returning one day from her duties very tired,
she sat down to take off her bonnet in her own
room, and presently heard snatches of an argument,
that made her prick those wonderful little
ears of hers that could almost hear through a wall.
The two concluding sentences were sufficiently
typical of the whole dialogue.

"Why disturb her?" said Mrs. Dodd. "She
is getting better of 'the Wretch;' and my advice
is, say nothing: what harm can that do?"

"But then it is so unfair, so ungenerous, to
keep anything from the poor girl that may
concern her."

At this moment Julia came softly into the room
with her curiosity hidden under an air of angelic
composure.

Her mother asked after Mrs. Beecher, to draw
her into conversation. She replied quietly that
Mrs. Beecher was no better, but very thankful
for the wine Mrs. Dodd had sent her. This
answer given, she went without any apparent
hurry and sat by Edward, and fixed two loving
imploring eyes on him in silence. O, subtle sex!
This feather was to turn the scale, and make
him talk unquestioned. It told. She was close
to him too, and mamma at the end of the room.

"Look here, Ju," said he, putting his hands
in his pockets, "we two have always been friends
as well as brother and sister; and somehow it