Captain Ravender’s friend, “it will do as
well as any place; he can dig for gold. The
fact is, Dick has run through one fortune, and
now a maiden-aunt, who considers the credit
of the family, offers him three hundred pounds
to leave England. He consents to go, and the
best plan will be to put him under your
charge, pay his passage and outfit, and leave
the rest of the money in your hands to be
given over to him when he lands at the
diggings.”

Captain Ravender agreed to the proposal,
and poor Dick, who had been left standing
outside the door, was called in and introduced.
I came in just at that point, and saw him. He
was the wreck of what had been a fine-looking
young man, ten years ago, dragged down now
by reckless dissipation to reckless poverty. His
clothing was very shabby, his countenance
wild and haggard, his shock of brown hair,
rusty with neglect,—not a promising subject
to look at. His uncle told him the arrangements
he had made with Captain Ravender, in
which he apparently acquiesced without much
caring,—“North or south, east or west,” said
he, “it was all the same to him. If he had gone
out to India, when he had a chance a dozen
years before, he should have been a man or a
mouse then.” That was the only remark he
offered. And the thing was settled.

But when the time came to sail, poor Dick
was not forthcoming. We sent up to his uncle’s
house to know what was to be done, and, by-
and-by, down he came with his nephew, who
had almost given us the slip. Until we got
into blue water Dick was prisoner rather than
passenger. He did not take to his banishment
kindly, or see, as his relatives did, that
there was a chance before him of redeeming
a wasted life and repairing a ruined constitution.
He was a very good-humoured, easy-
tempered fellow, and a great favourite aboard;
and, till the time of the wreck, cheerful,
except in the evening when he got to leaning
over the ship’s-side, and singing all kinds of
sentimental love-songs. I had told the men to
keep an eye on him, and they did. I was
afraid he might, in one of his black moods,
try to make away with himself.

He was the younger of two brothers,
sons of a yeoman or gentleman-farmer in
Cheshire; both whose parents died when they
were quite little things, leaving them,
however, for their station, amply provided for.
There was two hundred pounds a-year for their
bringing-up, till they were eighteen, when
the sum was to be doubled, and at one-
and-twenty they were to get five thousand
pounds a-piece to start them in the world.
Old Miss Julian Tarrant took Tom, the elder,
and my friend took poor Dick. Dick was a
wild lad, idle at his book, hankering after
play, but as kind-hearted and handsome a
fellow as you could wish to see. Dick was
generally better liked than Tom, who was
steady as old Time. Both brothers were sent
to the grammar-school of the town, near
which they lived, and one of Dick’s discursive
anecdotes related to the second master there,
whom, he asserted, he should have had
pleasure in soundly thrashing at that moment,
in part payment of the severe punishment he
had formerly inflicted on his idle pupil. When
Dick was sixteen that tide in his affairs came,
which, had he followed it out to India,
would probably have led on to fortune.
But Dick had an invincible tie to England.
Precocious in everything, he was deeply in
love with his cousin Amy, who was three
years older than himself, and very beautiful;
and Amy was very fond of him as of a
younger brother.

Said poor Dick, with a quiver in his
voice, as he was telling his story, “She
was the only creature in the whole world
that ever really cared whether I lived
or died. I worshipped the very ground she
walked on! Tom was a clever, shrewd
fellow—made for getting on in the world,
and never minding anybody but himself.
Uncle Tarrant was as hard and rigid as a
machine, and his wife was worse—there was
nobody nice but Amy; she was an angel!
When I got into scrapes, and spent more
money than I ought, she set me right with
my uncle, and later—when it was too late
for any good, and the rest of them treated
me like a dog—she never gave me either a
cold look or a hard word. Bless her!”

For the sake of being near his cousin, Dick
professed a wish to be a farmer like his
cousin and father, which was quite agreeable
to the family; and for three years more he
stayed in his Uncle Tarrant’s house, very
much beloved by all—though in his bitterness
he said not—for his gaiety and light-
heart were like a charm about him. If there
was a fault, he had friends too many, for
most of them were of a kind not likely to
profit a young man.

Coming home one evening, about
twilight, from a hunt which he had attended,
the poor lad unexpectedly met the crisis of
his fate. He told us this with an exactness
of detail that made the scene he described
like a bit of Dutch painting. I wish I could
repeat it to you in his own words, but that
is impossible; still I will be as exact as
possible.

In Mr. Tarrant’s house there was a little
parlour especially appropriated to Amy’s use.
It had a low window with a cushioned seat,
from which one long step took you into the
garden. In this parlour Amy had her piano,
her book-case, her work-basket, her mother’s
picture on the wall, and several of poor
Dick’s sketches neatly framed. Dick liked
this room better than any other in the house.
When the difference betwixt Amy’s age and
his seemed greater than it did now, it was
here he used to come to be helped with, his
lessons; and later, when his red-hot youth
was secretly wreathing all manner of tender
fancies about her, that he used to sit at her