"Come hither, my son, and tell me who you are, and what you want." The mere child he reassured himself, and smiled, Ten days afterward the brethren of La Certosa partly at his timid fancies, and partly to cheer were taking their evening meal in the refectory. Hilario. It was Pentecost, and vespers were over. air was dusk, although the tapers were not yet lighted. The abbot sat at the head of the table, with Messire Andrea Orcagna on his right hand, and Father Michael on his left: the monks sat below-a line of glimmering forms, ending with the old gardener on one side and Annunciata on the other. "Holy Father," said Hilario, "you see a little monk who loves a damsel named Annunciata. We live in the monastery of La Certosa. I love Annunciata, and Annunciata loves me. The gardener says a monk can not marry. Now I am a monk, and I want to marry Annunciata. And I beseech you, Holy Father, to absolve me. I have walked all the way to Rome to see your Highness." "Poor child!" thought the Pope, sadly, "and you, too, protest against the creed that crushes the heart of its priests." Then aloud: "So you love the little Annunciata?" "Dearly, your Grace." "I will absolve you, then, on one conditionthat you tell me all about it. Come, begin, and I will write the dispensation. You have a father ?" "I know none, except Father Michael." "A mother?" "With the angels." And thus they went on, the Pope asking questions and the child answering them, till he had unfolded the few incidents of his uneventful life. It was a plain tale, simply told; but it charmed that worn and wearied man, so seldom did he come in contact with a fresh, unworldly nature. For all his having lived years in La Certosa, and worn the garb of its brethren, Hilario was no monk, and stood in no need of being absolved on account of his love for Annunciata. But who could have told him so, after such a brave pilgrimage to Rome? Not Innocent the Sixth; for he humored the boy's mistake by writing him a free dispensation. And thus it ran: "We, Innocent the Sixth, successor of St. Peter, and Pope of the Church of Rome: By virtue of the power vested in us as Head of the Faith and Vicar of God on Earth: We hereby permit our beloved Brother Hilario to love the damsel Annunciata, daughter of the gardener of La Certosa, and to wed her when he grows up to manhood. "And may God bless them both, now and evermore. "Given at our Palace in Rome, and sealed with the Fisher's Ring, ASCENSION DAY, 1360." "And now," said the Pope to Hilario, after sealing the precious missive, "receive an old man's blessing." The absolved monk knelt at the feet of his spiritual Father, who laid his consecrated hand upon him, and breathed a solemn prayer-In nomine Deus, et Filius. He then summoned one of his Cardinals, to whom he whispered a few words, apparently concerning Hilario, and made his exit by a private staircase, leaving the boy delighted and amazed VOL. XXIX.-No. 173-U U "Any news of Hilario yet?" inquired Messire Andrea. "None," said the Abbot. "Alas! none," sighed Father Michael. "I fear he will never return," the sculptor added. "He has returned!" answered a strange but well-known voice. The lights at that moment appeared, and, sure enough, there was Hilario, standing at Father Michael's elbow, his dispensation in his hand; not as when he left the monastery, a little monk in robe and hood, but a dainty cavalier in sword and cloak and plume! Yes, it was Seignor Hilario, whom the Pope had sent back by a courier. And right glad was the seignor to get back to his old friends the monks and his dear mistress Annunciata. And right glad were they to have him back, especially the little lady, although I doubt whether she told him so at first. What finally became of Hilario-whether he grew up to manhood and wedded Annunciata, or whether they quarreled and parted, as the truest of lovers sometimes will, is a matter of dispute among the chroniclers. My own opinion is that they were wedded, and that Hilario became a sculptor with Messire Andrea. For when I was last in Florence-it is now five years ago-sauntering in the Pitti Garden, at the end of the cypress avenue I saw on a pedestal the figure of a monk, a little monk like Hilario; and opposite it was another, a damsel with orange flowers in her hair. To be sure they may have been carved by Messire Andrea, or some other sculptor of that period; but I choose to think them the first work of the Little Monk. The fierce desire stirred all my passionate heart: I who had looked on Love had looked on Death! OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. BY CHARLES DICKENS. IN FOUR BOOKS.-BOOK THE FIRST. CHAPTER XIV. THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN. COLD on the shore, in the raw cold of that THE CUP AND THE LIP. mean, so underhanded. Never going through with a thing, nor carrying it out like a man!" "Hallo! Steady!" cried Eugene (he had recovered immediately on embarking), as they bumped heavily against a pile; and then in a lower voice reversed his late apostrophe by remarking ("I wish the boat of my honorable and gallant friend may be endowed with philanthro leaden crisis in the four-and-twenty hours when the vital force of all the noblest and prettiest things that live is at its lowest, the three watchers looked each at the blank faces of the other two, and all at the blank face of Rider-py enough not to turn bottom-upward and exhood in his boat. "Gaffer's boat, Gaffer in luck again, and yet no Gaffer!" So spake Riderhood, staring disconsolate. As if with one accord, they all turned their eyes toward the light of the fire shining through the window. It was fainter and duller. Perhaps fire, like the higher animal and vegetable life it helps to sustain, has its greatest tendency toward death, when the night is dying and the day is not yet born. "If it was me that had the law of this here job in hand," growled Riderhood with a threatening shake of his head, "blest if I wouldn't lay hold of her, at any rate!" "Ay, but it is not you," said Eugene. With something so suddenly fierce in him that the informer returned, submissively: "Well, well, well, t'other governor, I didn't say it was. A man may speak." "And vermin may be silent," said Eugene. "Hold your tongue, you water-rat!" Astonished by his friend's unusual heat, Lightwood stared too, and then said: "What can have become of this man?" "Can't imagine. Unless he dived overboard." The informer wiped his brow ruefully as he said it, sitting in his boat and always staring disconsolate. "Did you make his boat fast?" I "She's fast enough till the tide runs back. couldn't make her faster than she is. Come aboard of mine, and see for your ownselves." There was a little backwardness in complying, for the freight looked too much for the boat; but on Riderhood's protesting "that he had had half a dozen, dead and alive, in her afore now, and she was nothing deep in the water nor down in the stern even then, to speak of," they carefully took their places, and trimmed the crazy thing. While they were doing so, Riderhood still sat staring disconsolate. tinguish us!) Steady, steady! Sit close, Mortimer. Here's the hail again. See how it flies, like a troop of wild-cats, at Mr. Riderhood's eyes!" Indeed he had the full benefit of it, and it so mauled him, though he bent his head low and tried to present nothing but the mangy cap to it, that he dropped under the lee of a tier of shipping, and they lay there until it was over. The squall had come up, like a spiteful messenger before the morning; there followed in its wake a ragged tear of light which ripped the dark clouds until they showed a great gray hole of day. They were all shivering, and every thing about them seemed to be shivering; the river itself, craft, rigging, sails, such early smoke as there yet was on the shore. Black with wet, and altered to the eye by white patches of hail and sleet, the huddled buildings looked lower than usual, as if they were cowering, and had shrunk with the cold. Very little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and doors were shut, and the staring black and white letters upon wharves and warehouses "looked," said Eugene to Mortimer, "like inscriptions over the graves of dead businesses." As they glided slowly on, keeping under the shore and sneaking in and out among the shipping by back-alleys of water, in a pilfering way that seemed to be their boatman's normal manner of progression, all the objects among which they crept were so huge in contrast with their wretched boat as to threaten to crush it. Not a ship's hull, with its rusty iron links of cable run out of hawse-holes long discolored with the iron's rusty tears, but seemed to be there with a fell intention. Not a figure-head but had a menacing look of bursting forward to run them down. Not a sluice gate, or a painted scale upon a post or wall, showing the depth of water, but seemed to hint, like the dreadfully face"All right. Give way!" said Lightwood. tious Wolf in bed in Grandmamma's cottage, "Give way, by George!" repeated Riderhood, "That's to drown you in, my dears!" Not a before shoving off. "If he's gone and made off lumbering black barge, with its cracked and any how Lawyer Lightwood, it's enough to make blistered side impending over them, but seemed me give way in a different manner. But he al- to suck at the river with a thirst for sucking ways was a cheat, con-found him! He always them under. And every thing so vaunted the was a infernal cheat, was Gaffer. Nothing spoiling influences of water-discolored copper, straightfor❜ard, nothing on the square. So rotten wood, honey-combed stone, green dank deposit that the after-consequences of being crushed, sucked under, and drawn down, looked as ugly to the imagination as the main event. Some half hour of this work, and Riderhood unshipped his sculls, stood holding on to a barge, and hand over hand long-wise along the barge's side gradually worked his boat under her head into a secret little nook of scummy water. And driven into that nook, and wedged as he had described, was Gaffer's boat; that boat with the stain still in it, bearing some resemblance to a muffled human form. Accepting Lightwood's proffered hand to help him up, he then put on his coat, and said to Riderhood, "Hand me over those spare sculls of yours, and I'll pull this into the nearest stairs. Go ahead you, and keep out in pretty open water, that I mayn't get fouled again." His directions were obeyed, and they pulled ashore directly; two in one boat, two in the other. "Now," said Mr. Inspector, again to Riderhood, when they were all on the slushy stones; "you have had more practice in this than I have "Now tell me I'm a liar!" said the honest had, and ought to be a better workman at it. Mr. Inspector stepped into the boat. Eugene to that degree that he dropped upon the stones and Mortimer looked on. to get his breath. "And see now!" added Riderhood, creeping aft, and showing a stretched rope made fast there and towing overboard. "Didn't I tell you he was in luck again?" "Haul in," said Mr. Inspector. "Easy to say haul in," answered Riderhood. "Not so easy done. His luck's got fouled under the keels of the barges. I tried to haul in last time, but I couldn't. See how taut the line is !" "I must have it up," said Mr. Inspector. "I am going to take this boat ashore, and his luck along with it. Try easy now.” He tried easy now; but the luck resisted; wouldn't come. "Gaffer's done me. It's Gaffer!" They ran to the rope, leaving him gasping there. Soon the form of the bird of prey, dead some hours, lay stretched upon the shore, with a new blast storming at it and clotting the wet hair with hailstones. Father, was that you calling me? Father! I thought I heard you call me twice before! Words never to be answered, those, upon the carth-side of the grave. The wind sweeps jeeringly over Father, whips him with the frayed ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to turn him where he lies stark on his back, and force his face toward the rising sun, that he may be shamed the "I mean to have it, and the boat too," said more. A lull, and the wind is secret and prying Mr. Inspector, playing the line. "You'll dis But still the luck resisted; wouldn't come. "Take care," said Riderhood. figure. Or pull asunder perhaps." "I am not going to do either, not even to your Grandmother," said Mr. Inspector; "but I mean to have it, Come!" he added, at once persuasively and with authority to the hidden object in the water, as he played the line again; "it's no good this sort of game, you know. You must come up. I mean to have you." There was so much virtue in this distinctly and decidedly meaning to have it, that it yielded a little, even while the line was played. "I told you so," quoth Mr. Inspector, pulling off his outer coat, and leaning well over the stern with a will. "Come!" It was an awful sort of fishing, but it no more disconcerted Mr. Inspector than if he had been fishing in a punt on a summer evening by some soothing weir high up the peaceful river. After certain minutes, and a few directions to the rest to "ease her a little for'ard," and "now ease her a trifle aft," and the like, he said, composedly, "All clear!" and the line and the boat came free together. with him; lifts and lets fall a rag; hides palpitating under another rag; runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then, in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you, thus baptized unto Death, with these flying impurities now flung upon your face? Why not speak, Father? Soaking into this filthy ground as you lie here, is your own shape. Did you never see such a shape soaked into your boat? Speak, Father. Speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left you! "Now see," said Mr. Inspector, after mature deliberation: kneeling on one knee beside the body, when they had stood looking down on the drowned man, as he had many a time looked down on many another man: "the way of it was this. Of course you gentlemen hardly failed to observe that he was towing by the neck and arms." They had helped to release the rope, and of course not. "And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, that this knot, which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the strain of his own arms, is a slip-knot:" holding it up for dem onstration. Plain enough. "Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this rope to his boat." It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined and bound. 66 "Now see," said Mr. Inspector, 'see how it works round upon him. It's a wild tempestuous evening when this man that was," stooping to wipe some hailstones out of his hair with an end of his own drowned jacket, "-there! Now he's more like himself, though he's badly bruised when this man that was rows out upon the river on his usual lay. He carries with him this coil of rope. He always carries with him this coil of rope. It's as well known to me as he was himself. Sometimes it lay in the bottom of his boat. Sometimes he hung it loose round his neck. He was a light-dresser was this manyou see?" lifting the loose neckerchief over his breast, and taking the opportunity of wiping the dead lips with it-"and when it was wet, or freezing, or blew cold, he would hang this coil of line round his neck. Last evening he docs this. Worse for him! He dodges about in his boat, does this man, till he gets chilled. His hands,” taking up one of them, which dropped like a leaden weight, "get numbed. He sees some object that's in his way of business, floating. He makes ready to secure that object. He unwinds the end of his coil that he wants to take some turns on in his boat, and he takes turns enough on it to secure that it sha'n't run out. He makes it too secure, as it happens. He is a little longer about this than usual, his hands being numbed. His object drifts up, before he is quite ready for it. He catches at it, thinks he'll make sure of the contents of the pockets any how, in case he should be parted from it, bends right over the stern, and in one of these heavy squalls, or in the cross-swell of two steamers, or in not being quite prepared, or through all or most or some, gets a lurch, overbalances and goes head-foremost overboard. Now see! He can swim, can this man, and instantly he strikes out. But in such striking-out he tangles his arms, pulls strong on the slip-knot, and it runs home. The object he had expected to take in tow floats by, and his own boat tows him dead, to where we found him, all entangled in his own line. You'll ask me how I make out about the pockets? First, I'll tell you more; there was silver in 'em. How do I make that out? Simple and satisfactory. Because he's got it here." The lecturer held up the tightly clenched right hand. Eugene," said Lightwood-and was about to add "we may wait at a little distance," when turning his head he found that no Eugene was there. He raised his voice and called "Engene! Holloa!" But no Eugene replied. It was broad daylight now, and he looked about. But no Eugene was in all the view. Mr. Inspector speedily returning down the wooden stairs, with a police constable, Lightwood asked him if he had seen his friend leave them? Mr. Inspector could not exactly say that he had seen him go, but had noticed that he was restless. "Singular and entertaining combination, Sir, your friend." "I wish it had not been a part of his singular and entertaining combination to give me the slip under these dreary circumstances at this time of the morning," said Lightwood. "Can we get any thing hot to drink?" We could, and we did. In a public-house kitchen with a large fire. We got hot brandy and water, and it revived us wonderfully. Mr. Inspector having to Mr. Riderhood announced his official intention of "keeping his eye upon him," stood him in a corner of the fire-place, like a wet umbrella, and took no further outward and visible notice of that honest man, except ordering a separate service of brandy and water for him: apparently out of the public funds. As Mortimer Lightwood sat before the blazing fire, conscious of drinking brandy and water then and there in his sleep, and yet at one and the same time drinking burned sherry at the Six Jolly Fellowships, and lying under the boat on the river shore, and sitting in the boat that Riderhood rowed, and listening to the lecture recently concluded, and having to dine in the Temple with an unknown man, who described himself as M. R. F. Eugene Gaffer Harmon, and said he lived at Hailstorm-as he passed through these curious vicissitudes of fatigue and slumber, arranged upon the scale of a dozen hours to the second, he became aware of answering aloud a communication of pressing importance that had never been made to him, and then turned it into a cough on beholding Mr. Inspector. For he felt, with some natural indignation, that that functionary might otherwise suspect him of having closed his eyes, or wandered in his attention. "Here just before us, you see," said Mr. Inspector. "I see," said Lightwood, with dignity. "And had hot brandy and water too, you "What is to be done with the remains ?" see," said Mr. Inspector, "and then cut off at a asked Lightwood. "If you wouldn't object to standing by him half a minute, Sir," was the reply, "I'll find the nearest of our men to come and take charge of him I still call it him, you see," said Mr. Inspector, looking back as he went, with a philosophical smile upon the force of habit. great rate." "Who?" said Lightwood. "Your friend, you know." "I know," he replied, again with dignity. After hearing, in a mist through which Mr. Inspector loomed vague and large, that the offcer took upon himself to prepare the dead man's daughter for what had befallen in the night, and | an exceedingly distrustful and corrective thumb, generally that he took every thing upon himself, Mortimer Lightwood stumbled in his sleep to a cab-stand, called a cab, and had entered the army and committed a capital military offense and been tried by court-martial and found guilty and had arranged his affairs and been marched out to be shot, before the door banged. that busy member had so often interposed to smear his notes, that they were little more legible than the various impressions of itself, which blurred his nose and forehead. It is curious to consider, in such a case was Mr. Boffin's, what a cheap article ink is, and how far it may be made to go. As a grain of musk will scent a drawer Hard work rowing the cab through the City for many years, and still lose nothing apprecito the Temple, for a cup of from five to ten able of its original weight, so a halfpenny-worth thousand pounds value, given by Mr. Boffin; of ink would blot Mr. Boffin to the roots of his and hard work holding forth at that immeasura-hair and the calves of his legs, without inscribble length to Eugene (when he had been rescueding a line on the paper before him, or appearing with a rope from the running pavement) for to diminish in the inkstand. making off in that extraordinary manner! But he offered such ample apologies, and was so very penitent, that when Lightwood got out of the cab, he gave the driver a particular charge to be careful of him. Which the driver (knowing there was no other fare left inside) stared at prodigiously. In short, the night's work had so exhausted and worn out this actor in it, that he had become a mere somnambulist. He was too tired to rest in his sleep, until he was even tired out of being too tired, and dropped into oblivion. Late in the afternoon he awoke, and in some anxiety sent round to Eugene's lodging hard by to inquire if he were up yet? Oh yes, he was up. In fact, he had not been to bed. He had just come home. And here he was, close following on the heels of the message. "Why what bloodshot, draggled, disheveled spectacle is this!" cried Mortimer. "Are my feathers so very much rumpled ?" said Eugene, coolly going up to the lookingglass. "They are rather out of sorts. But consider. Such a night for plumage!" "Such a night ?" repeated Mortimer. "What became of you in the morning?" "My dear fellow," said Eugene, sitting on his bed, "I felt that we had bored one another so long, that an unbroken continuance of those relations must inevitably terminate in our flying to opposite points of the earth. I also felt that I had committed every crime in the Newgate Calendar. So, for mingled considerations of friendship and felony, I took a walk.” CHAPTER XV. TWO NEW SERVANTS. Mr. Boffin was in such severe literary difficulties that his eyes were prominent and fixed, and his breathing was stertorous, when, to the great relief of Mrs. Boffin, who observed these symptoms with alarm, the yard bell rang. "Who's that, I wonder!" said Mrs. Boffin. Mr. Boffin drew a long breath, laid down his pen, looked at his notes as doubting whether he had the pleasure of their acquaintance, and appeared, on a second perusal of their countenances, to be confirmed in his impression that he had not, when there was announced by the hammer-headed young man : "Mr. Rokesmith." and the Wilfers' Mutual Friend, my dear. Yes. Ask him to come in.". Mr. Rokesmith appeared. "Sit down, Sir," said Mr. Boffin, shaking hands with him. "Mrs. Boffin you're already acquainted with. "Well, Sir, I am rather unprepared to see you, for, to tell you the truth, I've been so busy with one thing and another that I've not had time to turn your offer over." "That's apology for both of us: for Mr. Boffin, and for me as well," said the smiling Mrs. Boffin. But Lor! we can talk it over now; can't us?" Mr. Rokesmith bowed, thanked her, and said he hoped so. "Let me see then," resumed Mr. Boffin, with his hand to his chin. "It was Secretary that you named; wasn't it?" "I said Secretary," assented Mr. Rokesmith. "It rather puzzled me at the time," said Mr. Boffin, "and it rather puzzled me and Mrs. Boffin when we spoke of it afterward, because (not to make a mystery of our belief) we have always believed a Secretary to be a piece of furniture, mostly of mahogany, lined with green baize or leather, with a lot of little drawers in it. Now, you won't think I take a liberty when I mention that you certainly ain't that." "Certainly not," said Mr. Rokesmith. But he had used the word in the sense of Steward. "Why, as to Steward, you see," returned Mr. Boffin, with his hand still to his chin, "the odds MR. and Mrs. Boffin sat after breakfast, in the Bower, a prey to prosperity. Mr. Boffin's face denoted Care and Complication. Many disordered papers were before him, and he looked at them about as hopefully as an innocent civilian might look at a crowd of troops whom he was required at five minutes' notice to manoeu-are that Mrs. Boffin and me may never go upon vre and review. He had been engaged in some attempts to make notes of these papers; but being troubled (as men of his stamp often are) with the water. Being both bad sailors, we should want a Steward if we did; but there's generally one provided." |