“Yes, Miss, and thank you,” said Bob,
reluctantly taking the money; “that’s
what I’d like, anything as you like. An’
I wish you good-by, Miss, and good-luck, Mr. Tom,
and thank you for shaking hands wi’ me, though
you wouldn’t take the money.”
Kezia’s entrance, with very black looks, to
inquire if she shouldn’t bring in the tea now,
or whether the toast was to get hardened to a brick,
was a seasonable check on Bob’s flux of words,
and hastened his parting bow.
How a Hen Takes to Stratagem
The days passed, and Mr. Tulliver showed, at least
to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger
symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition;
the paralytic obstruction was, little by little, losing
its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it
with fitful struggles, like a living creature making
its way from under a great snowdrift, that slides
and slides again, and shuts up the newly made opening.
Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by
the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful,
distant hope which kept count of the moments within
the chamber; but it was measured for them by a fast-approaching
dread which made the nights come too quickly.
While Mr. Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again,
his lot was hastening toward its moment of most palpable
change. The taxing-masters had done their work
like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing
the musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will
spoil a life or two. Allocaturs, filing of bills
in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal chain-shot
or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark,
but must fall with widespread shattering. So
deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men
have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably
diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes
its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that
does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited
pain.
By the beginning of the second week in January, the
bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree
of Chancery, of Mr. Tulliver’s farming and other
stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land,
held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden
Lion. The miller himself, unaware of the lapse
of time, fancied himself still in that first stage
of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought
of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble,
disjointed manner of plans he would carry out when
he “got well.” The wife and children
were not without hope of an issue that would at least
save Mr. Tulliver from leaving the old spot, and seeking
an entirely strange life. For uncle Deane had
been induced to interest himself in this stage of
the business. It would not, he acknowledged, be
a bad speculation for Guest & Co. to buy Dorlcote
Mill, and carry on the business, which was a good
one, and might be increased by the addition of steam
