"Just so, sir," said I, concurring with all he said.

"And what brought you down, lad?" asked he.

"I think, sir, it was to see you and my aunt. I haven't been very well of late, and I fancied a day in the country might rally me."

"Stealing a holiday,--the old story," muttered he. "Are you doing anything now?"

"No, sir. I have unfortunately nothing to do."

"Why not go on the quay then, and turn coal-heaver? I 'd not eat bread of another man's earning when I could carry a sack of coals. Do you understand that?"

"Perhaps I do, sir; but I'm scarcely strong enough to be a coal-porter."

"Sell matches, then,--lucifer matches!" cried he, with a bang of his hand on the table, "or be a poster."

"Oh, Tom!" cried my aunt, who saw that I had grown first red, and then sickly pale all over.

"As good men as he have done both. But here's the dinner, and I suppose you must have your share of it."

I was in no mood to resent this invitation, discourteous as it was, for I was in no mood to resent anything. I was crushed and humbled to a degree that I began to regard my abject condition as a martyr might his martyrdom.

The meal went over somewhat silently; little was spoken on any side. A half-jocular remark on the goodness of my appet.i.te was the only approach to a pleasantry. My uncle drank something which by the color I judged to be port, but he neither offered it to my aunt nor myself. She took water, and I drank largely of beer, which once more elicited a compliment to me on my powers of suction.

"Better have you for a week than a fortnight, lad," said my uncle, as we drew round the fire after dinner.

My aunt now armed herself with some knitting apparatus, while my uncle, flanked by a smoking gla.s.s of toddy on one side and the "Tizer" on the other, proceeded to fill his pipe with strong tobacco, puffing out at intervals short and pithy apothegms about youth being the season for work and age for repose,--under the influence of whose drowsy wisdom, and overcome by the hot fire, I fell off fast asleep. For a while I was so completely lost in slumber that I heard nothing around. At last I began to dream of my long journey, and the little towns I had pa.s.sed through, and the places I fain would have stopped at to bait and rest, but n.o.bly resisted, never breaking bread nor tasting water till I had reached my journey's end. At length I fancied I heard people calling me by my name, some saying words of warning or caution, and others jeering and bantering me; and then quite distinctly,--as clearly as though the words were in my ear,--I heard my aunt say,--"I'm sure Lizzy would take him. She was shamefully treated by that heartless fellow, but she's getting over it now; and if any one, even Paul there, offered, I 'm certain she 'd not refuse him."

"She has a thousand pounds," grunted out my uncle.

"Fourteen hundred in the bank; and as they have no other child, they must leave her everything they have, when they die."

"It won't be much. Old Dan has little more than his vicarage, and he always ends each year a shade deeper in debt than the one before it."

"Well, she has her own fortune, and n.o.body can touch that."

I roused myself, yawned aloud, and opened my eyes.

"Pretty nigh as good a hand at sleeping as eating," said my uncle, gruffly.

"It's a smart bit of a walk from Duke Street, Piccadilly," said I, with more vigor than I had yet a.s.sumed.

"Why, a fellow of your age ought to do that twice a week just to keep him in wind."

"I say, Paul," said my aunt, "were you ever in Ireland?"

"Never, aunt. Why do you ask me?"

"Because you said a little while back that you felt rather poorly of late,--low and weakly."

"No loss of appet.i.te, though," chuckled in my uncle.

"And we were thinking," resumed she, "of sending you over to stay a few weeks with an old friend of ours in Donegal. He calls it the finest air in Europe; and I know he 'd treat you with every kindness."

"Do you shoot?" asked my uncle.

"No, sir."

"Nor fish?"

"No, sir."

"What are you as a sportsman? Can you ride? Can you do anything?"

"Nothing whatever, sir. I once carried a game-bag, and that was all."

"And you're not a farmer nor a judge of cattle. How are you to pa.s.s your time, I 'd like to know?"

"If there were books, or if there were people to talk to--"

"Mrs. Dudgeon's deaf,--she's been deaf these twenty years; but she has a daughter. Is Lizzy deaf?"

"Of course she's not," rejoined my aunt, tartly.

"Well, she'd talk to you; and Dan would talk. Not much, I believe, though; he a'n't a great fellow for talk."

"They 're something silent all of them, but Lizzy is a nice girl and very pretty,--at least she was when I saw her here two years ago."

"At all events, they are distant connections of your mother's; and as you are determined to live on your relations, I think you ought to give them a turn."

"There is some justice in that, sir," said I, determined now to resent no rudeness, nor show offence at any coa.r.s.eness, however great it might be.

"Well, then, I 'll write to-morrow, and say you 'll follow my letter, and be with them soon after they receive it. I believe it's a lonely sort of place enough,--Dan calls it next door to Greenland; but there's good air, and plenty of it."

We talked for some time longer over the family whose guest I was to be, and I went off to bed, determined to see out this new act of my life's drama before I whistled for the curtain to drop.

It gave a great additional interest besides to my journey to have overheard the hint my aunt threw out about a marriage. It was something more than a mere journey for change of air. It might be a journey to change the whole character and fortune of my life. And was it not thus one's fate ever turned? You went somewhere by a mere accident, or you stopped at home. You held a hand to help a lady into a boat, or you a.s.sisted her off her horse, or you took her in to dinner; and out of something insignificant and trivial as this your whole life's destiny was altered. And not alone your destiny, but your very nature; your temper, as fashioned by another's temper; your tastes as moulded by others' tastes; and your morality, your actual ident.i.ty, was the sport of a casualty too small and too poor to be called an incident.

"Is this about to be the turning-point in my life?" asked I of myself.

"Is Fortune at last disposed to bestow a smile upon me? Is it out of the very depth of my despair I 'm to catch sight of the first gleam of light that has fallen upon my luckless career?"

CHAPTER II. THE REV. DAN DUDGEON.

My plan of procedure was to be this. I was supposed to be making a tour in Ireland, when, hearing of certain connections of my mother's family living in Donegal, I at once wrote to my uncle Morse for an introduction to them, and he not only provided me with a letter accrediting me, but wrote by the same post to the Dudgeons to say I was sure to pay them a visit.

On arriving in Dublin I was astonished to find so much that seemed unlike what I had left behind me. That intense preoccupation, that anxious eager look of business so remarkable in Liverpool, was not to be found here. If the people really were busy, they went about their affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn't be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they had anything else to do,--as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as possible to the pleasanter occupations of life.

Such was the aspect of things on the quays. The same look pervaded the Exchange, and the same air of little to do, and of deeming it a joke while doing it, abounded in the law courts, where the bench exchanged witty pa.s.sages with the bar; and the prisoners, the witnesses, and the jury fired smart things at each other with a seeming geniality and enjoyment that were very remarkable. I was so much amused by all I saw, that I would willingly have delayed some days in the capital; but my uncle had charged me to present myself at the vicarage without any unnecessary delay; so I determined to set out at once. I was not, I shame to own, much better up in the geography of Ireland than in that of Central Africa, and had but a very vague idea whither I was going.