BLACK SHEEP!

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "KISSING THE ROD,'
&c. &c.

CHAPTER IX. TIDED OVER.

IT was the fourth morning after George
Dallas's arrival in Amherst, the day on which his
mother had appointed by letter for him to go
over to Poynings, and there receive that which
was to set him free from the incubus of debt
and difficulty which had so long oppressed
him. An anticipation of pleasure crossed his
mind so soon as he first opened his eyes; he
soon remembered whence the satisfaction sprung,
and on going to the window and looking out,
he found that nature and he were once again in
accord. As at the time of his misery she had
worn her blackest garb, her direst expression,
so now, when hope seemed to gleam upon him,
did nature don her flowery robes and array
herself in her brightest verdant sheen. Spring
was rapidly ripening into summer; into the
clean and comely little town, which itself was
radiant with whitened door-steps, and newly
painted woodwork, and polished brass fittings,
came wafted delicious odours from outlying gardens
and uplands, where the tossing grass went
waving to and fro like the undulations of a
restless sea, and in the midst of which the
sturdy old farm-houses, dotted here and there,
stood out like red-faced islands. Dust, which
even the frequent April showers could not lay,
was blowing in Amherst streets; blinds, which
had been carefully laid by during the winter
(the Amherst mind had scarcely arrived at
spring blinds for outside use, and contented itself
with modest striped sacking, fastened between
hooks on the shop fronts, and poles
socketed into the pavement), were brought
forth and hung up in all the glory of cleanliness.
It was reported by those who had been
early astir, that Tom Leigh, the mail-cart driver,
had been seen with his white hat on that morning,
and any Amherstian who may have previously
doubted whether the fine weather had
actually arrived, must have been flinty-hearted
and obdurate indeed not to have accepted that
assurance.

The sunshine and the general brightness of
the day had its due effect on George Dallas,
who was young, for a nineteenth-century man,
almost romantic, and certainly impressible. His
spirits rose within him, as, his breakfast
finished, he started off to walk to Poynings.
Drinking in the loveliness of the broad sun-steeped
landscape, the sweet odours coming
towards him on the soft breeze, the pleasant
sound, were it chink of blacksmith's hammer, or
hum of bees, or voice of cuckoo hidden deep in
distant bright-leaved woods, the young man
for a time forgot his baser associations and
seemed to rise, in the surroundings of the
moment, to a better and purer frame of mind
than he had known for many years. Natural,
under such circumstances, was the first turning
of his thoughts to his mother, to whose deep
love and self-sacrifice he was indebted for the
freedom which at length was about to be his.
In his worst times there had been one bright
spot of love for her in all the black folly of his
life, and now the recollection of her disinterestedness
and long suffering on his behalf
made her as purely dear to him as when, in the
old days that seemed so long ago, he had said
his prayers at her knee. He recollected walking
with her in their garden on mornings like
these, when they were all in all to each other,
soon after his father's death, when that chastening
memory was on them both, and before
there was any thought of Mr. Carruthers or his
niece—or his niece!—and straightway off went
his thoughts into a different channel. What a
pretty girl! so soft and quiet, so fresh withal,
and frank, and guileless, so different to——Well,
he didn't know; with similar advantages Harriet
might have been very much the same.
But Miss Carruthers was certainly specially
charming; the talk which they had had together
showed that. The talk which they had together?
Was he not entering her own domain?
What if she were to meet and recognise him
there? That would spoil all their plans. A
word from her would—oh no! Though Mrs.
Carruthers might not have been intended as a
conspirator by nature, George felt by his recent
experience of his mother's movements that she
would have sufficient foresight to prevent Clare
from leaving the house just at that time, lest
she might discover the rendezvous in the shrubbery.
The tact that had so rapidly shifted the
venue of their last meeting from the bustle of
the draper's to the calm solitude of the dentist's
would assuredly be sufficient to prevent a young
girl from intruding on their next appointment.