married a London mercer.)  "He's an amusing fellow; and I've no objection
to his making one at the Oyster Club; but he's a bit too fond of riding
the high horse.  He's uncommonly knowing, I'll allow; but how came he to
go to the Indies?  I should like that answered.  It's unnatural in a
confectioner.  I'm not fond of people that have been beyond seas, if they
can't give a good account how they happened to go.  When folks go so far
off, it's because they've got little credit nearer home--that's my
opinion.  However, he's got some good rum; but I don't want to be hand
and glove with him, for all that."

It was this kind of dim suspicion which beclouded the view of Mr.
Freely's qualities in the maturer minds of Grimworth through the early
months of his residence there.  But when the confectioner ceased to be a
novelty, the suspicions also ceased to be novel, and people got tired of
hinting at them, especially as they seemed to be refuted by his advancing
prosperity and importance.  Mr. Freely was becoming a person of influence
in the parish; he was found useful as an overseer of the poor, having
great firmness in enduring other people's pain, which firmness, he said,
was due to his great benevolence; he always did what was good for people
in the end.  Mr. Chaloner had even selected him as clergyman's
churchwarden, for he was a very handy man, and much more of Mr.
Chaloner's opinion in everything about church business than the older
parishioners.  Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the Oyster
Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more than
hinting at a life of Sultanic self-indulgence which he had passed in the
West Indies, shaking his head now and then and smiling rather bitterly,
as men are wont to do when they intimate that they have become a little
too wise to be instructed about a world which has long been flat and
stale to them.

For some time he was quite general in his attentions to the fair sex,
combining the gallantries of a lady's man with a severity of criticism on
the person and manners of absent belles, which tended rather to stimulate
in the feminine breast the desire to conquer the approval of so
fastidious a judge.  Nothing short of the very best in the department of
female charms and virtues could suffice to kindle the ardour of Mr.
Edward Freely, who had become familiar with the most luxuriant and
dazzling beauty in the West Indies.  It may seem incredible that a
confectioner should have ideas and conversation so much resembling those
to be met with in a higher walk of life, but it must be remembered that
he had not merely travelled, he had also bow-legs and a sallow, small-
featured visage, so that nature herself had stamped him for a fastidious
connoisseur of the fair sex.

At last, however, it seemed clear that Cupid had found a sharper arrow
than usual, and that Mr. Freely's heart was pierced.  It was the general
talk among the young people at Grimworth.  But was it really love, and
not rather ambition?  Miss Fullilove, the timber-merchant's daughter, was
quite sure that if _she_ were Miss Penny Palfrey, she would be cautious;
it was not a good sign when men looked so much above themselves for a
wife.  For it was no less a person than Miss Penelope Palfrey, second
daughter of the Mr. Palfrey who farmed his own land, that had attracted
Mr. Freely's peculiar regard, and conquered his fastidiousness; and no
wonder, for the Ideal, as exhibited in the finest waxwork, was perhaps
never so closely approached by the Real as in the person of the pretty
Penelope.  Her yellowish flaxen hair did not curl naturally, I admit, but
its bright crisp ringlets were such smooth, perfect miniature tubes, that
you would have longed to pass your little finger through them, and feel
their soft elasticity.  She wore them in a crop, for in those days, when
society was in a healthier state, young ladies wore crops long after they
were twenty, and Penelope was not yet nineteen.  Like the waxen ideal,
she had round blue eyes, and round nostrils in her little nose, and teeth
such as the ideal would be seen to have, if it ever showed them.
Altogether, she was a small, round thing, as neat as a pink and white
double daisy, and as guileless; for I hope it does not argue guile in a
pretty damsel of nineteen, to think that she should like to have a beau
and be "engaged," when her elder sister had already been in that position
a year and a half.  To be sure, there was young Towers always coming to
the house; but Penny felt convinced he only came to see her brother, for
he never had anything to say to her, and never offered her his arm, and
was as awkward and silent as possible.

It is not unlikely that Mr. Freely had early been smitten by Penny's
charms, as brought under his observation at church, but he had to make
his way in society a little before he could come into nearer contact with
them; and even after he was well received in Grimworth families, it was a
long while before he could converse with Penny otherwise than in an
incidental meeting at Mr. Luff's.  It was not so easy to get invited to
Long Meadows, the residence of the Palfreys; for though Mr. Palfrey had
been losing money of late years, not being able quite to recover his feet
after the terrible murrain which forced him to borrow, his family were
far from considering themselves on the same level even as the
old-established tradespeople with whom they visited.  The greatest
people, even kings and queens, must visit with somebody, and the equals
of the great are scarce.  They were especially scarce at Grimworth,
which, as I have before observed, was a low parish, mentioned with the
most scornful brevity in gazetteers.  Even the great people there were
far behind those of their own standing in other parts of this realm.  Mr.
Palfrey's farmyard doors had the paint all worn off them, and the front
garden walks had long been merged in a general weediness.  Still, his
father had been called Squire Palfrey, and had been respected by the last
Grimworth generation as a man who could afford to drink too much in his
own house.

Pretty Penny was not blind to the fact that Mr. Freely admired her, and
she felt sure that it was he who had sent her a beautiful valentine; but
her sister seemed to think so lightly of him (all young ladies think
lightly of the gentlemen to whom they are not engaged), that Penny never
dared mention him, and trembled and blushed whenever they met him,
thinking of the valentine, which was very strong in its expressions, and
which she felt guilty of knowing by heart.  A man who had been to the
Indies, and knew the sea so well, seemed to her a sort of public
character, almost like Robinson Crusoe or Captain Cook; and Penny had
always wished her husband to be a remarkable personage, likely to be put
in Mangnall's Questions, with which register of the immortals she had
become acquainted during her one year at a boarding-school.  Only it
seemed strange that a remarkable man should be a confectioner and pastry-
cook, and this anomaly quite disturbed Penny's dreams.  Her brothers, she
knew, laughed at men who couldn't sit on horseback well, and called them
tailors; but her brothers were very rough, and were quite without that
power of anecdote which made Mr. Freely such a delightful companion.  He
was a very good man, she thought, for she had heard him say at Mr.
Luff's, one day, that he always wished to do his duty in whatever state
of life he might be placed; and he knew a great deal of poetry, for one
day he had repeated a verse of a song.  She wondered if he had made the
words of the valentine!--it ended in this way:--

"Without thee, it is pain to live,
But with thee, it were sweet to die."

Poor Mr. Freely! her father would very likely object--she felt sure he
would, for he always called Mr. Freely "that sugar-plum fellow."  Oh, it
was very cruel, when true love was crossed in that way, and all because
Mr. Freely was a confectioner: well, Penny would be true to him, for all
that, and since his being a confectioner gave her an opportunity of
showing her faithfulness, she was glad of it.  Edward Freely was a pretty
name, much better than John Towers.  Young Towers had offered her a rose
out of his button-hole the other day, blushing very much; but she refused
it, and thought with delight how much Mr. Freely would be comforted if he
knew her firmness of mind.

Poor little Penny! the days were so very long among the daisies on a
grazing farm, and thought is so active--how was it possible that the
inward drama should not get the start of the outward?  I have known young
ladies, much better educated, and with an outward world diversified by
instructive lectures, to say nothing of literature and highly-developed
fancy-work, who have spun a cocoon of visionary joys and sorrows for
themselves, just as Penny did.  Her elder sister Letitia, who had a
prouder style of beauty, and a more worldly ambition, was engaged to a
wool-factor, who came all the way from Cattelton to see her; and
everybody knows that a wool-factor takes a very high rank, sometimes
driving a double-bodied gig.  Letty's notions got higher every day, and
Penny never dared to speak of her cherished griefs to her lofty
sister--never dared to propose that they should call at Mr. Freely's to
buy liquorice, though she had prepared for such an incident by mentioning
a slight sore throat.  So she had to pass the shop on the other side of
the market-place, and reflect, with a suppressed sigh, that behind those
pink and white jars somebody was thinking of her tenderly, unconscious of
the small space that divided her from him.

And it was quite true that, when business permitted, Mr. Freely thought a
great deal of Penny.  He thought her prettiness comparable to the
loveliest things in confectionery; he judged her to be of submissive
temper--likely to wait upon him as well as if she had been a negress, and
to be silently terrified when his liver made him irritable; and he
considered the Palfrey family quite the best in the parish, possessing
marriageable daughters.  On the whole, he thought her worthy to become
Mrs. Edward Freely, and all the more so, because it would probably
require some ingenuity to win her.  Mr. Palfrey was capable of
horse-whipping a too rash pretender to his daughter's hand; and,
moreover, he had three tall sons: it was clear that a suitor would be at
a disadvantage with such a family, unless travel and natural acumen had
given him a countervailing power of contrivance.  And the first idea that
occurred to him in the matter was, that Mr. Palfrey would object less if
he knew that the Freelys were a much higher family than his own.  It had
been foolish modesty in him hitherto to conceal the fact that a branch of
the Freelys held a manor in Yorkshire, and to shut up the portrait of his
great uncle the admiral, instead of hanging it up where a family portrait
should be hung--over the mantelpiece in the parlour.  Admiral Freely,
K.C.B., once placed in this conspicuous position, was seen to have had
one arm only, and one eye--in these points resembling the heroic
Nelson--while a certain pallid insignificance of feature confirmed the
relationship between himself and his grand-nephew.

Next, Mr. Freely was seized with an irrepressible ambition to posses Mrs.
Palfrey's receipt for brawn, hers being pronounced on all hands to be
superior to his own--as he informed her in a very flattering letter
carried by his errand-boy.  Now Mrs. Palfrey, like other geniuses,
wrought by instinct rather than by rule, and possessed no
receipts--indeed, despised all people who used them, observing that
people who pickled by book, must pickle by weights and measures, and such
nonsense; as for herself, her weights and measures were the tip of her
finger and the tip of her tongue, and if you went nearer, why, of course,
for dry goods like flour and spice, you went by handfuls and pinches, and
for wet, there was a middle-sized jug--quite the best thing whether for
much or little, because you might know how much a teacupful was if you'd
got any use of your senses, and you might be sure it would take five
middle-sized jugs to make a gallon.  Knowledge of this kind is like
Titian's colouring, difficult to communicate; and as Mrs. Palfrey, once
remarkably handsome, had now become rather stout and asthmatical, and
scarcely ever left home, her oral teaching could hardly be given anywhere
except at Long Meadows.  Even a matron is not insusceptible to flattery,
and the prospect of a visitor whose great object would be to listen to
her conversation, was not without its charms to Mrs. Palfrey.  Since
there was no receipt to be sent in reply to Mr. Freely's humble request,
she called on her more docile daughter, Penny, to write a note, telling
him that her mother would be glad to see him and talk with him on brawn,
any day that he could call at Long Meadows.  Penny obeyed with a
trembling hand, thinking how wonderfully things came about in this world.

In this way, Mr. Freely got himself introduced into the home of the
Palfreys, and notwithstanding a tendency in the male part of the family
to jeer at him a little as "peaky" and bow-legged, he presently
established his position as an accepted and frequent guest.  Young Towers
looked at him with increasing disgust when they met at the house on a
Sunday, and secretly longed to try his ferret upon him, as a piece of
vermin which that valuable animal would be likely to tackle with
unhesitating vigour.  But--so blind sometimes are parents--neither Mr.
nor Mrs. Palfrey suspected that Penny would have anything to say to a
tradesman of questionable rank whose youthful bloom was much withered.
Young Towers, they thought, had an eye to her, and _that_ was likely
enough to be a match some day; but Penny was a child at present.  And all
the while Penny was imagining the circumstances under which Mr. Freely
would make her an offer: perhaps down by the row of damson-trees, when
they were in the garden before tea; perhaps by letter--in which case, how
would the letter begin?  "Dearest Penelope?" or "My dear Miss Penelope?"
or straight off, without dear anything, as seemed the most natural when
people were embarrassed?  But, however he might make the offer, she would
not accept it without her father's consent: she would always be true to
Mr. Freely, but she would not disobey her father.  For Penny was a good
girl, though some of her female friends were afterwards of opinion that
it spoke ill for her not to have felt an instinctive repugnance to Mr.
Freely.

But he was cautious, and wished to be quite sure of the ground he trod
on.  His views on marriage were not entirely sentimental, but were as
duly mingled with considerations of what would be advantageous to a man
in his position, as if he had had a very large amount of money spent on
his education.  He was not a man to fall in love in the wrong place; and
so, he applied himself quite as much to conciliate the favour of the
parents, as to secure the attachment of Penny.  Mrs. Palfrey had not been
inaccessible to flattery, and her husband, being also of mortal mould,
would not, it might be hoped, be proof against rum--that very fine
Jamaica rum--of which Mr. Freely expected always to have a supply sent
him from Jamaica.  It was not easy to get Mr. Palfrey into the parlour
behind the shop, where a mild back-street light fell on the features of
the heroic admiral; but by getting hold of him rather late one evening as
he was about to return home from Grimworth, the aspiring lover succeeded
in persuading him to sup on some collared beef which, after Mrs.
Palfrey's brawn, he would find the very best of cold eating.

From that hour Mr. Freely felt sure of success: being in privacy with an
estimable man old enough to be his father, and being rather lonely in the
world, it was natural he should unbosom himself a little on subjects
which he could not speak of in a mixed circle--especially concerning his
expectations from his uncle in Jamaica, who had no children, and loved
his nephew Edward better than any one else in the world, though he had
been so hurt at his leaving Jamaica, that he had threatened to cut him
off with a shilling.  However, he had since written to state his full
forgiveness, and though he was an eccentric old gentleman and could not
bear to give away money during his life, Mr. Edward Freely could show Mr.
Palfrey the letter which declared, plainly enough, who would be the
affectionate uncle's heir.  Mr. Palfrey actually saw the letter, and
could not help admiring the spirit of the nephew who declared that such
brilliant hopes as these made no difference to his conduct; he should
work at his humble business and make his modest fortune at it all the
same.  If the Jamaica estate was to come to him--well and good.  It was
nothing very surprising for one of the Freely family to have an estate
left him, considering the lands that family had possessed in time gone
by--nay, still possessed in the Northumberland branch.  Would not Mr.
Palfrey take another glass of rum? and also look at the last year's
balance of the accounts?  Mr. Freely was a man who cared to possess
personal virtues, and did not pique himself on his family, though some
men would.

We know how easily the great Leviathan may be led, when once there is a
hook in his nose or a bridle in his jaws.  Mr. Palfrey was a large man,
but, like Leviathan's, his bulk went against him when once he had taken a
turning.  He was not a mercurial man, who easily changed his point of
view.  Enough.  Before two months were over, he had given his consent to
Mr. Freely's marriage with his daughter Penny, and having hit on a
formula by which he could justify it, fenced off all doubts and
objections, his own included.  The formula was this: "I'm not a man to
put my head up an entry before I know where it leads."

Little Penny was very proud and fluttering, but hardly so happy as she
expected to be in an engagement.  She wondered if young Towers cared much
about it, for he had not been to the house lately, and her sister and
brothers were rather inclined to sneer than to sympathize.  Grimworth
rang with the news.  All men extolled Mr. Freely's good fortune; while
the women, with the tender solicitude characteristic of the sex, wished
the marriage might turn out well.

While affairs were at this triumphant juncture, Mr. Freely one morning
observed that a stone-carver who had been breakfasting in the eating-room
had left a newspaper behind.  It was the _X-shire Gazette_, and X-shire
being a county not unknown to Mr. Freely, he felt some curiosity to
glance over it, and especially over the advertisements.  A slight flush
came over his face as he read.  It was produced by the following
announcement:--"If David Faux, son of Jonathan Faux, late of Gilsbrook,
will apply at the office of Mr. Strutt, attorney, of Rodham, he will hear
of something to his advantage."

"Father's dead!" exclaimed Mr. Freely, involuntarily.  "Can he have left
me a legacy?"




CHAPTER III


Perhaps it was a result quite different from your expectations, that Mr.
David Faux should have returned from the West Indies only a few years
after his arrival there, and have set up in his old business, like any
plain man who has never travelled.  But these cases do occur in life.
Since, as we know, men change their skies and see new constellations
without changing their souls, it will follow sometimes that they don't
change their business under those novel circumstances.

Certainly, this result was contrary to David's own expectations.  He had
looked forward, you are aware, to a brilliant career among "the blacks";
but, either because they had already seen too many white men, or for some
other reason, they did not at once recognize him as a superior order of
human being; besides, there were no princesses among them.  Nobody in
Jamaica was anxious to maintain David for the mere pleasure of his
society; and those hidden merits of a man which are so well known to
himself were as little recognized there as they notoriously are in the
effete society of the Old World.  So that in the dark hints that David
threw out at the Oyster Club about that life of Sultanic self-indulgence
spent by him in the luxurious Indies, I really think he was doing himself
a wrong; I believe he worked for his bread, and, in fact, took to cooking
as, after all, the only department in which he could offer skilled
labour.  He had formed several ingenious plans by which he meant to
circumvent people of large fortune and small faculty; but then he never
met with exactly the right circumstances.  David's devices for getting
rich without work had apparently no direct relation with the world
outside him, as his confectionery receipts had.  It is possible to pass a
great many bad half pennies and bad half-crowns, but I believe there has
no instance been known of passing a halfpenny or a half-crown as a
sovereign.  A sharper can drive a brisk trade in this world: it is
undeniable that there may be a fine career for him, if he will dare
consequences; but David was too timid to be a sharper, or venture in any
way among the mantraps of the law.  He dared rob nobody but his mother.
And so he had to fall back on the genuine value there was in him--to be
content to pass as a good halfpenny, or, to speak more accurately, as a
good confectioner.  For in spite of some additional reading and
observation, there was nothing else he could make so much money by; nay,
he found in himself even a capability of extending his skill in this
direction, and embracing all forms of cookery; while, in other branches
of human labour, he began to see that it was not possible for him to
shine.  Fate was too strong for him; he had thought to master her
inclination and had fled over the seas to that end; but she caught him,
tied an apron round him, and snatching him from all other devices, made
him devise cakes and patties in a kitchen at Kingstown.  He was getting
submissive to her, since she paid him with tolerable gains; but fevers
and prickly heat, and other evils incidental to cooks in ardent climates,
made him long for his native land; so he took ship once more, carrying
his six years' savings, and seeing distinctly, this time, what were
Fate's intentions as to his career.  If you question me closely as to
whether all the money with which he set up at Grimworth consisted of pure
and simple earnings, I am obliged to confess that he got a sum or two for
charitably abstaining from mentioning some other people's misdemeanours.
Altogether, since no prospects were attached to his family name, and
since a new christening seemed a suitable commencement of a new life, Mr.
David Faux thought it as well to call himself Mr. Edward Freely.

But lo! now, in opposition to all calculable probability, some benefit
appeared to be attached to the name of David Faux.  Should he neglect it,
as beneath the attention of a prosperous tradesman?  It might bring him
into contact with his family again, and he felt no yearnings in that
direction: moreover, he had small belief that the "something to his
advantage" could be anything considerable.  On the other hand, even a
small gain is pleasant, and the promise of it in this instance was so
surprising, that David felt his curiosity awakened.  The scale dipped at
last on the side of writing to the lawyer, and, to be brief, the
correspondence ended in an appointment for a meeting between David and
his eldest brother at Mr. Strutt's, the vague "something" having been
defined as a legacy from his father of eighty-two pounds, three
shillings.

David, you know, had expected to be disinherited; and so he would have
been, if he had not, like some other indifferent sons, come of excellent
parents, whose conscience made them scrupulous where much more highly-
instructed people often feel themselves warranted in following the bent
of their indignation.  Good Mrs. Faux could never forget that she had
brought this ill-conditioned son into the world when he was in that
entirely helpless state which excluded the smallest choice on his part;
and, somehow or other, she felt that his going wrong would be his
father's and mother's fault, if they failed in one tittle of their
parental duty.  Her notion of parental duty was not of a high and subtle
kind, but it included giving him his due share of the family property;
for when a man had got a little honest money of his own, was he so likely
to steal?  To cut the delinquent son off with a shilling, was like
delivering him over to his evil propensities.  No; let the sum of twenty
guineas which he had stolen be deducted from his share, and then let the
sum of three guineas be put back from it, seeing that his mother had
always considered three of the twenty guineas as his; and, though he had
run away, and was, perhaps, gone across the sea, let the money be left to
him all the same, and be kept in reserve for his possible return.  Mr.
Faux agreed to his wife's views, and made a codicil to his will
accordingly, in time to die with a clear conscience.  But for some time
his family thought it likely that David would never reappear; and the
eldest son, who had the charge of Jacob on his hands, often thought it a
little hard that David might perhaps be dead, and yet, for want of
certitude on that point, his legacy could not fall to his legal heir.  But
in this state of things the opposite certitude--namely, that David was
still alive and in England--seemed to be brought by the testimony of a
neighbour, who, having been on a journey to Cattelton, was pretty sure he
had seen David in a gig, with a stout man driving by his side.  He could
"swear it was David," though he could "give no account why, for he had no
marks on him; but no more had a white dog, and that didn't hinder folks
from knowing a white dog."  It was this incident which had led to the
advertisement.

The legacy was paid, of course, after a few preliminary disclosures as to
Mr. David's actual position.  He begged to send his love to his mother,
and to say that he hoped to pay her a dutiful visit by and by; but, at
present, his business and near prospect of marriage made it difficult for
him to leave home.  His brother replied with much frankness.

"My mother may do as she likes about having you to see her, but, for my
part, I don't want to catch sight of you on the premises again.  When
folks have taken a new name, they'd better keep to their new
'quinetance."

David pocketed the insult along with the eighty-two pounds three, and
travelled home again in some triumph at the ease of a transaction which
had enriched him to this extent.  He had no intention of offending his
brother by further claims on his fraternal recognition, and relapsed with
full contentment into the character of Mr. Edward Freely, the orphan,
scion of a great but reduced family, with an eccentric uncle in the West
Indies.  (I have already hinted that he had some acquaintance with
imaginative literature; and being of a practical turn, he had, you
perceive, applied even this form of knowledge to practical purposes.)

It was little more than a week after the return from his fruitful
journey, that the day of his marriage with Penny having been fixed, it
was agreed that Mrs. Palfrey should overcome her reluctance to move from
home, and that she and her husband should bring their two daughters to
inspect little Penny's future abode and decide on the new arrangements to
be made for the reception of the bride.  Mr. Freely meant her to have a
house so pretty and comfortable that she need not envy even a
wool-factor's wife.  Of course, the upper room over the shop was to be
the best sitting-room; but also the parlour behind the shop was to be
made a suitable bower for the lovely Penny, who would naturally wish to
be near her husband, though Mr. Freely declared his resolution never to
allow _his_ wife to wait in the shop.  The decisions about the parlour
furniture were left till last, because the party was to take tea there;
and, about five o'clock, they were all seated there with the best muffins
and buttered buns before them, little Penny blushing and smiling, with
her "crop" in the best order, and a blue frock showing her little white
shoulders, while her opinion was being always asked and never given.  She
secretly wished to have a particular sort of chimney ornaments, but she
could not have brought herself to mention it.  Seated by the side of her
yellow and rather withered lover, who, though he had not reached his
thirtieth year, had already crow's-feet about his eyes, she was quite
tremulous at the greatness of her lot in being married to a man who had
travelled so much--and before her sister Letty!  The handsome Letitia
looked rather proud and contemptuous, thought her nature brother-in-law
an odious person, and was vexed with her father and mother for letting
Penny marry him.  Dear little Penny!  She certainly did look like a fresh
white-heart cherry going to be bitten off the stem by that lipless mouth.
Would no deliverer come to make a slip between that cherry and that mouth
without a lip?

"Quite a family likeness between the admiral and you, Mr. Freely,"
observed Mrs. Palfrey, who was looking at the family portrait for the
first time.  "It's wonderful! and only a grand-uncle.  Do you feature the
rest of your family, as you know of?"

"I can't say," said Mr. Freely, with a sigh.  "My family have mostly
thought themselves too high to take any notice of me."

At this moment an extraordinary disturbance was heard in the shop, as of
a heavy animal stamping about and making angry noises, and then of a
glass vessel falling in shivers, while the voice of the apprentice was
heard calling "Master" in great alarm.

Mr. Freely rose in anxious astonishment, and hastened into the shop,
followed by the four Palfreys, who made a group at the parlour-door,
transfixed with wonder at seeing a large man in a smock-frock, with a
pitchfork in his hand, rush up to Mr. Freely and hug him, crying
out,--"Zavy, Zavy, b'other Zavy!"

It was Jacob, and for some moments David lost all presence of mind.  He
felt arrested for having stolen his mother's guineas.  He turned cold,
and trembled in his brother's grasp.

"Why, how's this?" said Mr. Palfrey, advancing from the door.  "Who is
he?"

Jacob supplied the answer by saying over and over again--

"I'se Zacob, b'other Zacob.  Come 'o zee Zavy"--till hunger prompted him
to relax his grasp, and to seize a large raised pie, which he lifted to
his mouth.

By this time David's power of device had begun to return, but it was a
very hard task for his prudence to master his rage and hatred towards
poor Jacob.

"I don't know who he is; he must be drunk," he said, in a low tone to Mr.
Palfrey.  "But he's dangerous with that pitchfork.  He'll never let it
go."  Then checking himself on the point of betraying too great an
intimacy with Jacob's habits, he added "You watch him, while I run for
the constable."  And he hurried out of the shop.

"Why, where do you come from, my man?" said Mr. Palfrey, speaking to
Jacob in a conciliatory tone.  Jacob was eating his pie by large
mouthfuls, and looking round at the other good things in the shop, while
he embraced his pitchfork with his left arm, and laid his left hand on
some Bath buns.  He was in the rare position of a person who recovers a
long absent friend and finds him richer than ever in the characteristics
that won his heart.

"I's Zacob--b'other Zacob--'t home.  I love Zavy--b'other Zavy," he said,
as soon as Mr. Palfrey had drawn his attention.  "Zavy come back from z'
Indies--got mother's zinnies.  Where's Zavy?" he added, looking round and
then turning to the others with a questioning air, puzzled by David's
disappearance.

"It's very odd," observed Mr. Palfrey to his wife and daughters.  "He
seems to say Freely's his brother come back from th' Indies."

"What a pleasant relation for us!" said Letitia, sarcastically.  "I think
he's a good deal like Mr. Freely.  He's got just the same sort of nose,
and his eyes are the same colour."

Poor Penny was ready to cry.

But now Mr. Freely re-entered the shop without the constable.  During his
walk of a few yards he had had time and calmness enough to widen his view
of consequences, and he saw that to get Jacob taken to the workhouse or
to the lock-up house as an offensive stranger might have awkward effects
if his family took the trouble of inquiring after him.  He must resign
himself to more patient measures.

"On second thoughts," he said, beckoning to Mr. Palfrey and whispering to
him while Jacob's back was turned, "he's a poor half-witted fellow.
Perhaps his friends will come after him.  I don't mind giving him
something to eat, and letting him lie down for the night.  He's got it
into his head that he knows me--they do get these fancies, idiots do.
He'll perhaps go away again in an hour or two, and make no more ado.  I'm
a kind-hearted man _myself_--I shouldn't like to have the poor fellow ill-
used."

"Why, he'll eat a sovereign's worth in no time," said Mr. Palfrey,
thinking Mr. Freely a little too magnificent in his generosity.

"Eh, Zavy, come back?" exclaimed Jacob, giving his dear brother another
hug, which crushed Mr. Freely's features inconveniently against the stale
of the pitchfork.

"Aye, aye," said Mr. Freely, smiling, with every capability of murder in
his mind, except the courage to commit it.  He wished the Bath buns might
by chance have arsenic in them.

"Mother's zinnies?" said Jacob, pointing to a glass jar of yellow
lozenges that stood in the window.  "Zive 'em me."

David dared not do otherwise than reach down the glass jar and give Jacob
a handful.  He received them in his smock-frock, which he held out for
more.

"They'll keep him quiet a bit, at any rate," thought David, and emptied
the jar.  Jacob grinned and mowed with delight.

"You're very good to this stranger, Mr. Freely," said Letitia; and then
spitefully, as David joined the party at the parlour-door, "I think you
could hardly treat him better, if he was really your brother."

"I've always thought it a duty to be good to idiots," said Mr. Freely,
striving after the most moral view of the subject.  "We might have been
idiots ourselves--everybody might have been born idiots, instead of
having their right senses."

"I don't know where there'd ha' been victual for us all then," observed
Mrs. Palfrey, regarding the matter in a housewifely light.

"But let us sit down again and finish our tea," said Mr. Freely.  "Let us
leave the poor creature to himself."

They walked into the parlour again; but Jacob, not apparently
appreciating the kindness of leaving him to himself, immediately followed
his brother, and seated himself, pitchfork grounded, at the table.

"Well," said Miss Letitia, rising, "I don't know whether _you_ mean to
stay, mother; but I shall go home."

"Oh, me too," said Penny, frightened to death at Jacob, who had begun to
nod and grin at her.

"Well, I think we _had_ better be going, Mr. Palfrey," said the mother,
rising more slowly.

Mr. Freely, whose complexion had become decidedly yellower during the
last half-hour, did not resist this proposition.  He hoped they should
meet again "under happier circumstances."

"It's my belief the man is his brother," said Letitia, when they were all
on their way home.

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Palfrey.  "Freely's got no brother--he's said so
many and many a time; he's an orphan; he's got nothing but
uncles--leastwise, one.  What's it matter what an idiot says?  What call
had Freely to tell lies?"

Letitia tossed her head and was silent.

Mr. Freely, left alone with his affectionate brother Jacob, brooded over
the possibility of luring him out of the town early the next morning, and
getting him conveyed to Gilsbrook without further betrayals.  But the
thing was difficult.  He saw clearly that if he took Jacob himself, his
absence, conjoined with the disappearance of the stranger, would either
cause the conviction that he was really a relative, or would oblige him
to the dangerous course of inventing a story to account for his
disappearance, and his own absence at the same time.  David groaned.
There come occasions when falsehood is felt to be inconvenient.  It
would, perhaps, have been a longer-headed device, if he had never told
any of those clever fibs about his uncles, grand and otherwise; for the
Palfreys were simple people, and shared the popular prejudice against
lying.  Even if he could get Jacob away this time, what security was
there that he would not come again, having once found the way?  O
guineas!  O lozenges! what enviable people those were who had never
robbed their mothers, and had never told fibs!  David spent a sleepless
night, while Jacob was snoring close by.  Was this the upshot of
travelling to the Indies, and acquiring experience combined with
anecdote?

He rose at break of day, as he had once before done when he was in fear
of Jacob, and took all gentle means to rouse this fatal brother from his
deep sleep; he dared not be loud, because his apprentice was in the
house, and would report everything.  But Jacob was not to be roused.  He
fought out with his fist at the unknown cause of disturbance, turned
over, and snored again.  He must be left to wake as he would.  David,
with a cold perspiration on his brow, confessed to himself that Jacob
could not be got away that day.

Mr. Palfrey came over to Grimworth before noon, with a natural curiosity
to see how his future son-in-law got on with the stranger to whom he was
so benevolently inclined.  He found a crowd round the shop.  All
Grimworth by this time had heard how Freely had been fastened on by an
idiot, who called him "Brother Zavy"; and the younger population seemed
to find the singular stranger an unwearying source of fascination, while
the householders dropped in one by one to inquire into the incident.

"Why don't you send him to the workhouse?" said Mr. Prettyman.  "You'll
have a row with him and the children presently, and he'll eat you up.  The
workhouse is the proper place for him; let his kin claim him, if he's got
any."

"Those may be _your_ feelings, Mr. Prettyman," said David, his mind quite
enfeebled by the torture of his position.

"What! _is_ he your brother, then?" said Mr. Prettyman, looking at his
neighbour Freely rather sharply.

"All men are our brothers, and idiots particular so," said Mr. Freely,
who, like many other travelled men, was not master of the English
language.

"Come, come, if he's your brother, tell the truth, man," said Mr.
Prettyman, with growing suspicion.  "Don't be ashamed of your own flesh
and blood."

Mr. Palfrey was present, and also had his eye on Freely.  It is difficult
for a man to believe in the advantage of a truth which will disclose him
to have been a liar.  In this critical moment, David shrank from this
immediate disgrace in the eyes of his future father-in-law.

"Mr. Prettyman," he said, "I take your observations as an insult.  I've
no reason to be otherwise than proud of my own flesh and blood.  If this
poor man was my brother more than all men are, I should say so."

A tall figure darkened the door, and David, lifting his eyes in that
direction, saw his eldest brother, Jonathan, on the door-sill.

"I'll stay wi' Zavy," shouted Jacob, as he, too, caught sight of his
eldest brother; and, running behind the counter, he clutched David hard.

"What, he _is_ here?" said Jonathan Faux, coming forward.  "My mother
would have no nay, as he'd been away so long, but I must see after him.
And it struck me he was very like come after you, because we'd been
talking of you o' late, and where you lived."

David saw there was no escape; he smiled a ghastly smile.

"What! is this a relation of yours, sir?" said Mr. Palfrey to Jonathan.

"Aye, it's my innicent of a brother, sure enough," said honest Jonathan.
"A fine trouble and cost he is to us, in th' eating and other things, but
we must bear what's laid on us."

"And your name's Freely, is it?" said Mr. Prettyman.

"Nay, nay, my name's Faux, I know nothing o' Freelys," said Jonathan,
curtly.  "Come," he added, turning to David, "I must take some news to
mother about Jacob.  Shall I take him with me, or will you undertake to
send him back?"

"Take him, if you can make him loose his hold of me," said David, feebly.

"Is this gentleman here in the confectionery line your brother, then,
sir?" said Mr. Prettyman, feeling that it was an occasion on which format
language must be used.

"_I_ don't want to own him," said Jonathan, unable to resist a movement
of indignation that had never been allowed to satisfy itself.  "He ran
away from home with good reasons in his pocket years ago: he didn't want
to be owned again, I reckon."

Mr. Palfrey left the shop; he felt his own pride too severely wounded by
the sense that he had let himself be fooled, to feel curiosity for
further details.  The most pressing business was to go home and tell his
daughter that Freely was a poor sneak, probably a rascal, and that her
engagement was broken off.

Mr. Prettyman stayed, with some internal self-gratulation that _he_ had
never given in to Freely, and that Mr. Chaloner would see now what sort
of fellow it was that he had put over the heads of older parishioners.  He
considered it due from him (Mr. Prettyman) that, for the interests of the