When the host and his guest had gone out together, to the paved yard, it was already night, and the moon was shining brilliantly.

Tom had saddled the horse, and at the first summons led him out; and Harry, with a nod and a grin, for he was more prodigal of his smiles than of his shillings, took the bridle from his fingers, and with Charlie by his side, walked forth silently from the yard gate, upon that dark and rude track which followed for some distance the precipitous edge of the ravine, which opens upon the deeper glen of Carwell.

Very dark was this narrow road, overhung and crossed by towering trees, through whose boughs only here and there an angular gleam, or minute mottling of moonlight hovered and floated on the white and stony road, with the uneasy motion of the branches, like little flights of quivering wings.

There was a silence corresponding with this darkness. The clank of the horse’s hoof, and their own more muffled tread were the only sounds that mingled with the sigh and rustle of the boughs above them. The one was expecting, the other meditating, no very pleasant topic, and it was not the business of either to begin, for a little.

They were not walking fast. The horse seemed to feel that the human wayfarers were in a sauntering mood, and fell accommodatingly into a lounging gait like theirs.

If there were eyes there constructed to see in the dark, they would have seen two countenances, one sincere, the other adjusted to that sort of sham sympathy and regret, which Hogarth, with all his delicacy and power, portrays in the paternal alderman who figures in the last picture of “Marriage a la Mode.”

There was much anxiety in Charles’ face, and a certain brooding shame and constraint which would have accounted for his silence. In that jolly dog, Harry, was discoverable, as I have said, quite another light and form of countenance. There was a face that seemed to have discharged a smile, that still would not quite go. The eyelids drooped, the eyebrows raised, a simulated condolence, such as we all have seen.

In our moral reviews of ourselves we practise optical delusions even upon our own self-scrutiny, and paint and mask our motives, and fill our ears with excuses and with down-right lies. So inveterate is the habit of deceiving, and even in the dark we form our features by hypocrisy, and scarcely know all this.

“Here’s the turn at last to Cressley Common; there’s no talking comfortably among these trees; it’s so dark, anyone might be at your elbow and you know nothing about it—and so the old man is very angry.”

“Never saw a fellow so riled,” answered Harry; “you know what he is when he is riled, and I never saw him so angry before. If he knew I was here—but you’ll take care of me?”

“It’s very kind of you, old fellow; I won’t forget it, indeed I won’t, but I ought to have thought twice: I ought not to have brought poor Alice into this fix; for damn me, if I know how we are to get on.”

“Well, you know, it’s only just a pinch, an ugly corner, and you are all right—it can’t last.”

“It may last ten years, or twenty for that matter,” said Charlie. “I was a fool to sell out. I don’t know what we are to do; do you?”

“You’re too down in the mouth; can’t ye wait and see? there’s nothing yet, and it won’t cost ye much carrying on down here.”

“Do you think, Harry, it would be well to take up John Wauling’s farm, and try whether I could not make something of it in my own hands?” asked Charles.

Harry shook his head.

“You don’t?” said Charlie.

“Well, no, I don’t; you’d never make the rent of it,” answered Harry; “besides, if you begin upsetting things here, the people will begin to talk, and that would not answer; you’ll need to be damned quiet.”

There was here a pause, and they walked on in silence until the thick shadows of the trees began to break a little before them, and the woods grew more scattered; whole trees were shadowed in distinct outline, and the wide common of Cressley, with its furze and fern, and broad undulations, stretched mistily before them.

“About money—you know, Charlie, there’s money enough at present and no debts to signify; I mean, if you don’t make them you needn’t. You and Alice, with the house and garden, can get along on a trifle. The tenants give you three hundred a year, and you can manage with two.”

“Two hundred a year!” exclaimed Charlie, opening his eyes.

“Ay, two hundred a year!—that girl don’t eat sixpenn’orth in a day” said Harry.

“Alice is the best little thing in the world, and will look after everything, I know; but there are other things beside dinner and breakfast,” said Charles, who did not care to hear his wife called “that girl.”

“Needs must when the Devil drives, my boy! you’ll want a hundred every year for contingencies,” said Harry.

“Well, I suppose so,” Charles winced, “and all the more need for a few more hundreds; for I don’t see how anyone could manage to exist on such a pittance.”

“You’ll have to contrive though, my lad, unless they’ll manage a post obit for you,” said Harry.

“There is some trouble about that, and people are such damned screws,” said Charles, with a darkening face.

“Al’ays was and ever will be,” said Harry, with a laugh.

“And it’s all very fine talking of a hundred a year but you know and know that won’t do, and never did,” exclaimed Charles, breaking forth bitterly, and then looking hurriedly over his shoulder.

“Upon, my soul, Charlie, I don’t know a curse about it,” answered Harry, good-humouredly; “but if it won’t do, it won’t, that’s certain.”

“Quite certain,” said Charles, and sighed very heavily; and again there was a little silence.

“I wish I was as sharp a fellow as you are, Harry,” said Charles, regretfully.

“Do you really think I’m a sharp chap—do you though? I al’ays took myself for a bit of a muff, except about cattle—I did, upon my soul,” said Harry, with an innocent laugh.

“You are a long way a cleverer fellow than I am, and you are not half so lazy; and tell me what you’d do if you were in my situation?”

“What would I do if I was in your place?” said Harry, looking up at the stars, and whistling low for a minute.

“Well, I couldn’t tell you offhand; ’twould puzzle a better man’s head for a bit to answer that question—only I can tell you one thing, I’d never agone into that situation, as ye call it, at no price; ’twouldn’t ’av answered me by no chance. But don’t you be putting your finger in your eye yet a bit; there’s nothing to cry about now that I knows of; time enough to hang your mouth yet, only I thought I might as well come over and tell you.”

“I knew, Harry, there was something to tell,” said Charles.

“Not over much—only a trifle when all’s told,” answered Harry; “but you are right, for it was that brought me over here. I was in Lon’on last week, and I looked in at the place at Hoxton, and found just the usual thing, and came away pretty much as wise as I went in.”

“Not more reasonable?” asked Charles.

“Not a bit,” said Harry.

“Tell me what you said,” asked Charles.

“Just what we agreed,” he answered.

“Well, there was nothing in that that was not kind and conciliatory, and common sense—was there?&r............