BLACK SHEEP!
BY THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "KISSING THE          ROD,'
                       &c. &c.
                      BOOK II.
          CHAPTER IX. CLEARED UP.

THE shock communicated to George Dallas
by his step-father's letter was violent and terrible
in proportion to the resolutions which had been
growing up in his mind, and gaining strength
and fixedness with each day's absence from the
old accustomed scenes of dissipation and sources
of temptation. Like all persons of similar
temperament, he was easily overcome by agitation,
and his eager nature led him to anticipate evil
as readily as it caused him to enjoy good
thoroughly. He was a strong man physically,
but a sickening, weak shudder, such as might
have shaken a woman, shook him as he read the
few formal lines which conveyed to him so much
more than their writer had known or intended.
Was it all to be in vain? Was the golden time,
the precious opportunity, gone by for ever?
Was she to die, or to die to him at least, and
never to know that his repentance had been
real, that the lesson had been effectual, that the
reform had been inaugurated?

The terms in which Mr. Carruthers had
written to his step-son were as vague as they
were formal, and the uncertainty to which the
letter condemned him was as agonising as the
misery which it produced. Where was she?
He did not know; he had no means of knowing.
How great were her sufferings? How imminent
was her danger? These points were beyond the
reach of his investigation. He knew that he
was to blame for his mother's illness; he saw all
things now in a new and clear light, and though
his was no miraculous reformation, no sudden
transformation from sinner to saint, but rather an
evidence of mental growth and refinement under
the influence of a new order of feelings, working
on a singularly pliable temperament, George
Dallas was so different to what he had been,
that he shrank not only with disgust, but with
wonder, from the contemplation of the perverse
folly which had led to such results. He had
always been dissipated, worthless, and ungrateful,
he thought; why had he never realised the
guilt of being so before? Why, indeed? Having
been blind, now he saw, having been foolish,
he had become wise. The ordinary experience,
after all, but which every man and woman
believes in his or her case exceptional, had come
to this young man, but had come laden with
exceedingly bitter grief. With swift, sudden
fear, too, and stinging self-distrust; for if his
mother were indeed lost to him, the great
motive, a real one, however tardily acknowledged,
would be lost too, and then, how should he,
how could he, answer for himself? Just then,
in the first keenness of his suffering, in the first
thrill of fear which the sense of impending
punishment sent through him, he did not think
of his love, he drew no strength, no counsel, no
consolation from it; the only image before his
mind was that of his mother, long bowed down,
and now broken, under the accumulated load
of grief and disappointment which he had laid
upon her. Mr. Carruthers had acted
characteristically, George thought, in writing to him,
as he had done, merely telling him of his
mother's illness and removal, but giving him no
address, affording him no opportunity of writing
to her. So much he had done for his own
conscience' and credit's sake, not actuated by any
sympathy for him. The old anger towards his
step-father, the old temptation to lay the blame
of all his own ill-conduct on Mr. Carruthers, to
regard his banishment from Poynings as cause
rather than effect, arose fiercely in George's
heart, as he read the curt sentences of the letter
over and over again; but they were met and
conquered by a sudden softened remembrance
of his mother's appeal to him for a just
judgment of her husband, whom she loved, and the
better nature of the young man, newly and
strongly aroused, got the victory.

"No, no," he said, impetuously and aloud,
"he's not to blame; the fault is mine, and if I
am never to have the chance of telling her
the truth, I'll tell it to myself at all events."

George's resolution to go to England was
soon taken. He must know more than Mrs.
Carruthers had told him, and only at Poynings
could he learn it. It never occurred to him
that Mrs. Brookes might have accompanied his
mother abroad. His impulsive nature rarely
permitted him to foresee any obstacle in the way
of a design or a desire, and he acted in this
instance with his usual headlong precipitation.

When George Dallas reached London, he
found he would have just sufficient time to go
to South Molton-street and see Routh or
Harriet for a few minutes, before he could catch a