BLACK SHEEP!

By THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," " KISSING THE ROD,"

&c. &c.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER V. IN THE MUIDERSTRAAT.

HIGH houses, broad, jolly, arid red- faced,
standing now on the edges of quays or at the feet
of bridges, now in quaint trim little gardens,
whose close-shaven turf is gaudy with brilliant
bulbs, or overshadowed by box and yew, but
always fringing the long, shallow, black canals,
whose sluggish waters scarcely ripple under
the passing barge. Water, water, everywhere,
and requiring everybody's first consideration,
dammed out by vast dykes and let in through
numerous sluices, spanned by nearly three
hundred bridges, employing a perfect army of men
to watch it and tend it, to avail themselves of
its presence and yet to keep it in subjection; for
if not properly looked after and skilfully
managed, it might at any moment submerge the
city; avenues of green trees running along the
canal banks and blooming freshly in the thickest
portions of the commerce-crowded quays;
innumerable windmills on the horizon; picture-
galleries rich in treasures of Rubens, Rembrandt,
Vandyke, and Teniers; dockyards, where square
and sturdy ships are built by square and sturdy
men, in solemn silence and with much
pipe-smoking; asylums, homes, almshouses, through
which a broad stream of well-administered
charity is always flowing. A population of grave
burghers, and chattering vrows, and the fattest,
shiniest, and most old-fashioned children; of
outlandish sailors and Jews of the grand old type,
who might have sat, and whose ancestors
probably did sit, as models to Rembrandt; of stalwart
bargemen and canal-tenders, of strangers,
some pleasure-seeking, but the great majority
intent on business; for whatever may be the
solemn delights of its inhabitants, to a stranger
accustomed to other capitals there are few
gaieties to be met with in the city to which
George Dallas had wended his way—Amsterdam.

To George Dallas this mattered very little.
Of the grosser kinds of pleasure he had had
enough and more than enough; the better feelings
of his nature had been awakened, and
nothing could have induced him to allow himself
to drift back into the slough from which he had
emerged. Wandering through the long
picture-galleries and museums, and gloating over their
contents with thorough artistic appreciation,
dreamily gazing out of his hotel window over a
prospect of barge-dotted and tree-towered canals
which would gradually dissolve before his eyes,
the beech avenue of the sycamores arising in its
place, recalling Clare Carruthers's soft, voice and
ringing laugh and innocent trusting manner,
George Dallas could scarcely believe that for
months and months of his past life he had been
the companion of sharpers and gamblers, and
had been cut off from all communication with
everything and everybody that in his youth he
had been taught to look up to and respect. He
shuddered as he recollected the orgies which he
had taken part in, the company he had kept, the
life he had led. He groaned aloud and stamped
with rage as he thought of time lost, character
blighted, opportunities missed. And his rage
this time was vented on himself: he did not, as
usual, curse his step-father for having pronounced
his edict of banishment; he did not lay the blame
on luck or fate, which generally bore the burden;
he was man enough to look his past life fairly in
the face, and to own to himself that all its past
privations, and what might have been its future
miseries, were of his own creation. What might
have been, but what should not be now. A new
career lay before him, a career of honour and
fame, inducements to pursue which such as he
had never dreamed of were not wanting, and by
Heaven's help he would succeed.

It was on the first morning after his arrival
in Amsterdam that George Dallas, after much
desultory thought, thus determined. Actuated
by surroundings in an extraordinary degree, he
had, while in London, been completely fascinated
by the combined influence of Routh and Harriet;
and had he remained with them he would,
probably, never have shaken off that influence, or
been anything but their ready instrument. But
so soon as he had left them the fascination was
gone, and his eyes were opened to the degradation
of his position, and the impossibility, so
long as he continued with his recent associates,
of retrieving himself in the eyes of the world  —-
of being anything to Clare Carruthers. This
last thought decided him — he would break with
Stewart Routh; yes, and with Harriet, at once!
He would sell the bracelet and send the proceeds to
Routh with a letter, in which he would delicately
but firmly express his determination and take