thing you speak of, when you stand aside, and do not inter-
pose yourself between the view and me. I am very sorry
for you. If I had not had the pleasure to meet you here, I
think I should have written to tell you so. But you don't
bear it as well as I had expected excuse me no, you don't
indeed."

He pulled out his snuff-box, and addressing him with
the superior air of a man who, by reason of his higher
nature, has a right to read a moral lesson to another,
continued :

" For you arc 1 a philosopher, you know one of that stern

VOL. II. 2 D



402 BARNABY RUDGE.

and rigid school who are far above the weaknesses of mankind
in general. You are removed, a long way, from the frailties
of the crowd. You contemplate them from a height, and
rail at them with a most impressive bitterness. I have heard
you.""

" And shall again," said Mr. Haredale.

" Thank you," returned the other. " Shall we walk as we
talk ? The damp falls rather heavily. Well, as you please.
But I grieve to say that I can spare you only a very few
moments.""

"I would," said Mr. Haredale, "you had spared me none.
I would, with all my soul, you had been in Paradise (if
such a monstrous lie could be enacted), rather than here
to-night."

"Nay," returned the other "really you do yourself in-
justice. You are a rough companion, but I would not go
so far to avoid you."

" Listen to me," said Mr. Haredale. " Listen to me."

" While you rail ? " inquired Sir John.

" While I deliver your infamy. You urged and stimulated
to do your work a fit agent, but one who in his nature in
the very essence of his being is a traitor, and who has been
false to you (despite the sympathy you two should have
together) as he has been to all others. With hints, and
looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you
set on Gashford to this work this work before us now.
With these same hints, and looks, and crafty words, which
told again are nothing, you urged him on to gratify the
deadlv hate he owes me I have earned it, I thank Heaven

mf

by the abduction and dishonour of my niece. You did. I
see denial in your looks," he cried, abruptly pointing in his
face, and stepping back, " and denial is a lie ! "

He had his hand upon his sword; but the knight, with a
contemptuous smile, replied to him as coldly as before.

"You will take notice, sir if you can discriminate suffi-
ciently that I have taken the trouble to deny nothing. Your



SHARP WORDS. 403

discernment is hardly fine enough for the perusal of faces, not
of a kind as coarse as your speech ; nor has it ever been, that
I remember; or, in one face that I could name, you would
have read indifference, not to say disgust, somewhat sooner
than you did. I speak of a long time ago, but you under-
stand me."

" Disguise it as you will, you mean denial. Denial explicit
or reserved, expressed or left to be inferred, is still a lie.
You say you don't deny. Do you admit?"

" You yourself," returned Sir John, suffering the current of
his speech to flow as smoothly as if it had been stemmed
by no one word of interruption, "publicly proclaimed the
character of the gentleman in question (I think it was in
Westminster Hall) in terms which relieve me from the
necessity of making any further allusion to him. You may
have been warranted ; you may not have been ; I can't say.
Assuming the ge'ntleman to be what you described, and to
have made to you or any other person any statements that
may have happened to suggest themselves to him, for the
sake of his own security, or for the sake of money, or for
his own amusement, or for any other consideration, I have
nothing to say of him, except that his extremely degrading
situation appears to me to be shared with his employers.
You are so very plain yourself, that you will excuse a little
freedom in me, I am sure."

"Attend to me again, Sir John but once," cried Mr.
Haredale ; " in your every look, and word, and gesture,
you tell me this was not your act. I tell you that it was,
and that you tampered with the man I speak of, and with
your wretched son (whom God forgive !) to do this deed.
You talk of degradation and character. You told me once
that you had purchased the absence of the poor idiot and
his mother, when (as I have discovered since, and then
suspected) you had gone to tempt them, and had found
them flown. To you I traced the insinuation that I alone
reaped any harvest from my brother's death ; and all the foul



404 BARNABY RUDGE.

attacks and whispered calumnies that followed in its train.
In every action of my life, from that first hope which you
converted into grief and desolation, you have stood, like an
adverse fate, between me and peace. In all, you have ever
been the same cold-blooded, hollow, false, unworthy villain.
For the second time, and for the last, I cast these charges in
your teeth, and spurn you from me as I would a faithless
dog ! :1

With that he raised his arm, and struck him on the breast
so that he staggered. Sir John, the instant he recovered,
drew his sword, threw away the scabbard and his hat, and
running on his adversary made a desperate lunge at his heart,
which, but that his guard was quick and true, would have
stretched him dead upon the grass.

In the act of striking him, the torrent of his opponent's
rage had reached a stop. He parried his rapid thrusts, Avith-
out returning them, and called to him, with a frantic kind
of terror in his face, to keep back.

" Not to-night ! not to-night ! " he cried. " In God's name,
not to-night ! " .

Seeing that he lowered his weapon, and that he would not
thrust in turn, Sir John lowered his.

" Not to-night ! " his adversary cried. " Be warned in
time ! "

" You told me it must have been in a sort of inspiration
said Sir John, quite deliberately, though now he dropped his
mask, and showed his hatred in his face, " that this was the
last time. Be assured it is ! Did you believe our last meet-
ing was forgotten? Did you believe that your every word and
look was not to be accounted for, and was not well remem-
bered ? Do you believe that I have waited your time, or you
mine? What kind of man is he who entered, with all his
sickening cant of honesty and truth, into a bond with me to
prevent a marriage he affected to dislike, and when I had
redeemed my part to the spirit and the letter, skulked from
his, and brought the match about in his own time, to rid



SHARP POINTS. 405

himself of a burden he had grown tired of, and cast a
spurious lustre on his house ? "

" I have acted," cried Mr. Haredale, " with honour and in
good faith. I do so now. Do not force me to renew this
duel to-night!"

" You said my * wretched 1 son, I think ? " said Sir John,
with a smile. " Poor fool ! The dupe of such a shallow
knave trapped into marriage by such an uncle and by such
a niece he well deserves your pity. But he is no longer a
son of mine : you are welcome to the prize your craft has
made, sir."

"Once more," cried his opponent, wildly stamping on the
ground, "although you tear me from my better angel, I
implore you not to come within the reach of my sword
to-night. Oh ! why were you here at all ! Why have we
met ! To-morrow would have cast us apart for ever ! "

"That being the case," returned Sir John, without the
least emotion, " it is very fortunate we have met to-night.
Haredale, I have always despised you, as you know, but I
have given you credit for a species of brute courage. For
the honour of my judgment, which I had thought a good
one, I am sorry to find you a coward."

Not another word was spoken on either side. They crossed
swords, though it was now quite dusk, and attacked each
other fiercely. They were well matched, and each was
thoroughly skilled in the management of his weapon.

After a few seconds they grew hotter and more furious, and
pressing on each other inflicted and received several slight
wounds. It was directly after receiving one of these in his
arm, that Mr. Haredale, making a keener thrust as he felt
the warm blood spirting out, plunged his sword through his
opponent's body to the hilt.

Their eyes met, and were on each other as he drew it out.
He put his arm about the dying man, who repulsed him,
feebly, and dropped upon the turf. Raising himself upon his
hands, he gazed at him for an instant, with scorn and hatred



406



BARNABY RUDGE.



in his look; but, seeming to remember, even then, that this
expression Avould distort his features after death, he tried to




smile, and, faintly moving his right hand, as if to hide his
bloody linen in his vest, fell back dead the phantom of last
night.



CHAPTER THE LAST.

A PARTING glance at such of the actors in this little history
as it has not, in the course of its events, dismissed, will bring
it to an end.

Mr. Haredale fled that night. Before pursuit could be
begun, indeed before Sir John was traced or missed, he had
left the kingdom. Repairing straight to a religious establish-
ment, known throughout Europe for the rigour and severity
of its discipline, and for the merciless penitence it exacted
from those who sought its shelter as a refuge from the world,
he took the vows which thenceforth shut him out from nature
and its kind, and after a few remorseful years was buried in
its gloomy cloisters.

Two days elapsed before the body of Sir John was found.
As soon as it was recognised and carried home, the faithful
valet, true to his master's creed, eloped with all the cash and
movables he could lay his hands on, and started as a finished
gentleman upon his own account. In this career he met with
great success, and would certainly have married an heiress in
the end, but for an unlucky check which led to his premature
decease. He sank under a contagious disorder, very prevalent
at that time, and vulgarly termed the jail fever.

Lord George Gordon, remaining in his prison in the Tower
until Monday the Fifth of February in the following year,
was on that day solemnly tried at Westminster for High
Treason. Of this crime he was, after a patient investigation,



408 BARNABY BUDGE.

declared Not Guilty ; upon the ground that there was no
proof of his having called the multitude together with any
traitorous or unlawful intentions. Yet so many people were
there, still, to whom those riots taught no lesson of reproof
or moderation, that a public subscription was set on foot
in Scotland to defray the cost of his defence.

For seven years afterwards he remained, at the strong
intercession of his friends, comparatively quiet; saving that
he, every now and then, took occasion to display his zeal for
the Protestant faith in some extravagant proceeding which
was the delight of its enemies ; and saving, besides, that he
was formally excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, for refusing to appear as a witness in the Ecclesiastical
Court when cited for that purpose. In the year 1788 he was
stimulated by some new insanity to write and publish an
injurious pamphlet, reflecting on the Queen of France, in
very violent terms. Being indicted for the libel, and (after
various strange demonstrations in court) found guilty, he
fled into Holland in place of appearing to receive sentence :
from whence, as the quiet burgomasters of Amsterdam had
no relish for his company, he was sent home again with all
speed. Arriving in the month of July at Harwich, and
going thence to Birmingham, he made in the latter place,
in August, a public profession of the Jewish religion ; and
figured there as a Jew until he was arrested, and brought
back to London to receive the sentence he had evaded. By
virtue of this sentence he was, in the month of December,
cast into Newgate for five years and ten months, and required
besides to pay a large fine, and to furnish heavy securities
for his future good behaviour.

After addressing, in the midsummer of the following year,
an appeal to the commiseration of the National Assembly of
France, which the English minister refused to sanction, he
composed himself to undergo his full term of punishment;
and suffering his beard to grow nearly to his waist, and con-
forming in all respects to the ceremonies of his new religion,



THE END OF LORD GEORGE GORDON. 409

he applied himself to the study of history, and occasionally
to the art of painting, in which, in his younger days, he had
shown some skill. Deserted by his former friends, and treated
in all respects like the worst criminal in the jail, he lingered
on, quite cheerful and resigned, until the 1st of November,
1793, when he died in his cell, being then only three-and-forty
years of age.

Many men with fewer sympathies for the distressed and
needy, with less abilities and harder hearts, have made a
shining figure and left a brilliant fame. He had his mourners.
The prisoners bemoaned his loss, and missed him ; for though
his means were not large, his charity was great, and in
bestowing alms among them he considered the necessities
of all alike, and knew no distinction of sect or creed. There
are wise men in the highways of the world who may learn
something, even from this poor crazy lord who died in
Newgate.

To the last, he was truly served by bluff John Grueby.
John was at his side before he had been four-and-twenty
hours in the Tower, and never left him until he died. He
had one other constant attendant, in the person of a beautiful
Jewish girl ; who attached herself to him from feelings half
religious, half romantic, but whose virtuous and disinterested
character appears to have been beyond the censure even of
the most censorious.

Gashford deserted him, of course. He subsisted for a time
upon his traffic in his master's secrets ; and, this trade failing
when the stock was quite exhausted, procured an appointment
in the honourable corps of spies and eaves- droppers employed
by the government. As one of these wretched underlings,
he did his drudgery, sometimes abroad, sometimes at home,
and long endured the various miseries of such a station.
Ten or a dozen years ago not more a meagre, wan old
man, diseased and miserably poor, was found dead in his bed
at an obscure inn in the Borough, where he was quite un-
known. He had taken poison. There was no clue to his



410 BARNABY RUDGE.

name ; but it was discovered from certain entries in a pocket-
book he carried, that he had been secretary to Lord George
Gordon in the time of the famous riots.

Many months after the re-establishment of peace and
order, and even when it had ceased to be the town-talk,
that every military officer, kept at free quarters by the City
during the late alarms, had cost for his board and lodging-
four pounds four per day, and every private soldier two and
twopence half-penny ; many months after even this engrossing
topic was forgotten, and the United Bull-dogs were to a
man all killed, imprisoned, or transported, Mr. Simon Tapper-
tit, being removed from a hospital to prison, and thence to
his place of trial, was discharged by proclamation, on two
wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful limbs, and brought down
from his high estate to circumstances of utter destitution,
and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his
old master, and beg for some relief. By the locksmith's
advice and aid, he was established in business as a shoe-black,
and opened shop under an archway near the Horse Guards.
This being a central quarter, he quickly made a very large
connection; and on levee days, was sometimes known to
have as many as twenty half-pay officers waiting their turn
for polishing. Indeed his trade increased to that extent, that
in course of time he entertained no less than two apprentices,
besides taking for his wife the widow of an eminent bone
and rag collector, formerly of Millbank. With this lady
(who assisted in the business) he lived in great domestic
happiness, only chequered by those little storms which serve
to clear the atmosphere of wedlock, and brighten its horizon.
In some of these gusts of bad weather, Mr. Tappertit would,
in the assertion of his prerogative, so far forget himself, as
to correct his lady with a brush, or boot, or shoe; while
she (but only in extreme cases) would retaliate by taking off
his legs, and leaving him exposed to the derision of those
urchins who delight in mischief.

Miss Miggs, baffled in all her schemes, matrimonial and



MISS MIGGS A FEMALE TURNKEY. 411

otherwise, and cast upon a thankless, undeserving world,
turned very sharp and sour; and did at length become so
acid, and did so pinch and slap and tweak the hair and
noses of the youth of Golden Lion Court, that she was by one
consent expelled that sanctuary, and desired to bless some
other spot of earth, in preference. It chanced at that moment,
that the justices of the peace for Middlesex proclaimed by
public placard that they stood in need of a female turnkey
for the County Bridewell, and appointed a day and hour
for the inspection of candidates. Miss Miggs attending at
the time appointed, was instantly chosen and selected from
one hundred and twenty-four competitors, and at once pro-
moted to the office ; which she held until her decease, more
than thirty years afterwards, remaining single all that time.
It was observed of this lady that while she was inflexible and
grim to all her female flock, she was particularly so to those
who could establish any claim to beauty : and it was often
remarked as a proof of her indomitable virtue and severe
chastity, that to such as had been frail she showed no mercy ;
always falling upon them on the slightest occasion, or on
no occasion at all, with the fullest measure of her wrath.
Among other useful inventions which she practised upon this
class of offenders and bequeathed to posterity, was the art
of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig with the wards
of a key in the small of the back, near the spine. She like-
wise originated a mode of treading by accident (in pattens)
on such as had small feet ; also very remarkable for its
ingenuity, and previously quite unknown.

It was not very long, you may be sure, before Joe Willet
and Dolly Varden were made husband and wife, and with a
handsome sum in bank (for the locksmith could afford ta give
his daughter a good dowry), reopened the Maypole. It was not
very long, you may be sure, before a red-faced little boy was
seen staggering about the Maypole passage, and kicking up
his heels on the green before the door. It was not very long,
counting by years, before there was a red-faced little girl,



412 BARNABY RUDGE.

another red-faced little boy, and a whole troop of girls and
boys : so that, go to Chigwell when you would, there would
surely be seen, either in the village street, or on the green, or
frolicking in the farm-yard for it was a farm now, as well as
a tavern more small Joes and small Dollys than could be
easily counted. It was not a very long time before these
appearances ensued ; but it icas a very long time before Joe
looked five years older, or Dolly either, or the locksmith
either, or his wife either: for cheerfulness and content are
great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of youthful looks,
depend upon it.

It was a long time, too, before there was such a country
inn as the Maypole, in all England : indeed it is a great
question whether there has ever been such another to this
hour, or ever will be. It was a long time too for Never,
as the proverb says, is a long day before they forgot to have
an interest in wounded soldiers at the Maypole, or before
Joe omitted to refresh them, for the sake of his old cam-
paign ; or before the serjeant left off looking in there, now
and then ; or before they fatigued themselves, or each other,
by talking on these occasions of battles and sieges, and hard
weather and hard service, and a thousand things belonging to
a soldier's life. As to the great silver snuff-box which the
King sent Joe with his own hand, because of his conduct in
the Riots, what guest ever went to the Maypole without
putting finger and thumb into that box, and taking a great
pinch, though he had never taken a pinch of snuff before,
and almost sneezed himself into convulsions even then ? As
to the purple-faced vintner, where is the man who lived in
those times and never saw him at the Maypole : to all
appearance as much at home in the best room, as if he lived
there ? And as to the feastings and christenings, and revel-
lings at Christmas, and celebrations of birthdays, wedding-
days, and all manner of days, both at the Maypole and the
Golden Key, if they are not notorious, what facts are ?

Mr. Willet the elder, having been by some extraordinary



THE WILLET FAMILY. 413

means possessed with the idea that Joe wanted to be married,
and that it would be well for him, his father, to retire into
private life, and enable him to live in comfort, took up his
abode in a small cottage at Chigwell ; where they widened
and enlarged the fireplace for him, hung up the boiler, and
furthermore planted in the little garden outside the front-
door, a fictitious Maypole ; so that he was quite at home
directly. To this, his new habitation, Tom Cobb, Phil
Parkes, and Solomon Daisy went regularly every night : and
in the chimney-corner, they all four quaffed, and smoked, and
prosed, and dozed, as they had done of old. It being acci-
dentally discovered after a short time that Mr. Willet still
appeared to consider himself a landlord by profession, Joe
provided him with a slate, upon which the old man regularly
scored up vast accounts for meat, drink, and tobacco. As he
grew older this passion increased upon him ; and it became
his delight to chalk against the name of each of his cronies
a sum of enormous magnitude, and impossible to be paid :
and such was his secret joy in these entries, that he would
be perpetually seen going behind the door to look at them,
and coming forth again, suffused with the liveliest satisfaction.
He never recovered the surprise the Rioters had given him,
and remained in the same mental condition down to the last
moment of his life. It was like to have been brought to a
speedy termination by the first sight of his first grandchild,
which appeared to fill him with the belief that some alarming
miracle had happened to Joe. Being promptly blooded, how-
ever, by a skilful surgeon, he rallied ; and although the
doctors all agreed, on his being attacked with symptoms of
apoplexy six months afterwards, that he ought to die, and
took it very ill that he did not, he remained alive possibly
on account of his constitutional slowness for nearly seven
years more, when he was one morning found speechless in
his bed. He lay in this state, free from all tokens of un-
easiness, for a whole week, when he was suddenly restored to
consciousness by hearing the nurse whisper in his son's ears



414 BARNABY RUDGE.

that he was going. " Fm a-going, Joseph," said Mr. Willet,
turning round upon the instant, "to the Salwanners" and
immediately gave up the ghost.

He left a large sum of money behind him ; even more
than he was supposed to have been worth, although the
neighbours, according to the custom of mankind in calcu-
lating the wealth that other people ought to have saved,
had estimated his property in good round numbers. Joe
inherited the whole ; so that he became a man of great
consequence in those parts, and was perfectly independent.

Some time elapsed before Barnaby got the better of the
shock he had sustained, or regained his old health and gaiety.
But he recovered by degrees : and although he could never
separate his condemnation and escape from the idea of a
terrific dream, he became, in other respects, more rational.
Dating from the time of his recovery, he had a better
memory and greater steadiness of purpose ; but a dark cloud
overhung his whole previous existence, and never cleared
away.

He was not the less happy for this ; for his love of freedom
and interest in all that moved or grew, or had its being in
the elements, remained to him unimpaired. He lived with
his mother on the Maypole farm, tending the poultry and
the cattle, working in a garden of his own, and helping
everywhere. He was known to every bird and beast about
the place, and had a name for every one. Never was there
a lighter-hearted husbandman, a creature more popular with
young and old, a blither or more happy soul than Barnaby;
and though he was free to ramble where he would, he never
quitted Her, but was for evermore her stay and comfort.

It was remarkable that although he had that dim sense of
the past, he sought out Hugh's dog, and took him under
his care; and that he never could be tempted into London.