long, by such a place as this ! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses ; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out ! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch ! It is well that you should call to every passer-by, " Look here ! "
With the night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in between the bars ; stands looking in, for a little while.
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean. It does so, very busily and trimly ; looks in again, a little while ; and so departs.
Jo, is it thou ? Well, well ! Though a rejected witness, who "can't exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this :
"He wos wery good to me, he wos !"
CHAPTER XII.
on the watch.
It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire, at last, and Chesney Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The fashionable intelligence has found it out, and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England. It has also found out, that they will entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the élite of the beau monde (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a giant-refreshed in French), at the ancient and hospitable family seat in Lincolnshire.
For the greater honor of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. The clear cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It looks in at the windows, and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness, never contemplated by the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth, and seems to rend it.
Through the same cold sunshine, and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot, (my Lady's woman, and Sir Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble,) start for home. With a considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging demonstrations on the part of tavo bare-backed horses, and two Centaurs with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they rattle out
