"Say not, This brackish well I will not taste;
Ere long thou may'st give thanks that even this
Is left for thee in such a burning waste."
Reverend Horatius Bonar.
"Tell Mr Louvaine that I desire speech of him."
The page who received this order looked up in apprehension. So
exceedingly stern were Lady Oxford's tone, and _so frowning_ her aspect,
that he trembled for himself, apart from Aubrey. Escaping from that
awful presence at the earliest moment possible, he carried the message
to Aubrey, who when he received it was lounging on a day-bed, or sofa,
with his arms crossed behind his head.
"And you'd best go soon, Sir," said the page, "for her Ladyship looks as
though she could swallow me in two bites."
"Then I rather count I'd best not," said Aubrey, looking very much
indisposed to stir. "What on earth would she have of me? There's no
end to the whims and conceits of women."
He unwreathed his arms and stood up, yawned, and very slowly went
upstairs to the gallery where he had learned that the Countess was
awaiting him. Aubrey Louvaine was at that moment a most unhappy young
man. The first sensation of amazement and horror at the discovery of
the treachery and wickedness of his chosen friends was past, but the
apprehensions for his own safety were not; and as the time went on, the
sense of loss, weariness, and disgust of life, rather grew than
lessened. Worst of all, and beyond all, were two better feelings--the
honest affection which Aubrey had scarcely realised before that he
entertained for Thomas Winter, and the shock and pain of his miserable
fate: and even beyond this, a sense of humiliation, very wholesome yet
very distressing, at the folly of his course, and the wreck which he had
made of his life. How complete a wreck it was he had not discovered
even now: but that he had been very foolish, he knew in his inmost
heart. And when a man is just making that valuable discovery is not the
best time for other men to tell him of it.
That Fate was preparing for him not a sedative but a stimulant, he had
little doubt as he went slowly on his way to the gallery: but of the
astringent nature of that mixture he had equally small idea, until he
turned the last corner, and came in sight of the Countess's face. There
was an aspect of the avenging angel about Lady Oxford, as she stood up,
tall and stately, in that corner of the gallery, and held out to Aubrey
what that indiscreet young gentleman recognised as a lost solitaire that
was wont to fasten the lace ruffles on his wrist.
"Is this yours, Mr Louvaine?" Her voice said, "Guilty or not guilty?"
so plainly that he was almost ready to respond, "Of what?"
Aubrey gave the garnet solitaire a more prolonged examination than it
needed. He felt no doubt of its identity.
"Yes, Madam, I think it is," he answered slowly. "At the least, I have
lost one that resembles it."
"I think it is, too," said the Countess no less sternly. "Do you know
where this was found, Mr Louvaine?"
Aubrey began to feel thoroughly alarmed.
"No, Madam," he faltered.
"In the chamber of Thomas Winter, the traitor and Papist, at the sign of
the Duck, in the Strand. Perhaps you can tell me how it came thither?"
Aubrey was silent, from sheer terror. A gulf seemed to yawn before his
feet, and the Countess appeared to him in the light of the minister of
wrath waiting to push him into it. With the rapidity of lightning, his
whole life seemed to pass in sudden review before him--his happy
childhood and guarded youth at Selwick Hall, the changed circumstances
of his London experiences, his foolish ways and extravagant expenditure,
his friendship with Winter, the quiet home at the White Bear into which
his fall would bring such disgrace and sorrow, the possible prison and
scaffold as the close of all. Was it to end thus? He had meant so
little ill, had done so little wrong. Yet how was he to convince any
one that he had not meant the one, or even that he had not done the
other?
In that moment, one circumstance of his early life stood out bright and
vivid as if touched with a sunbeam:--an act of childish folly, done
fifteen years before, for which his grandfather had made him learn the
text, "Thou God seest me." It came flashing back upon him now. Had God
seen him all this while? Then He knew all his foolishness--ay, and his
innocence as well. Could He--would He--help him in this emergency?
Aubrey Louvaine had never left off the outward habit of saying prayers;
but it was years since he had really prayed before that unheard cry went
up in the gallery of Oxford House--"Lord, save me, for my grandmother's
sake!" He felt as if he dared not ask it for his own.
All these thoughts followed each other in so short a time that Lady
Oxford was conscious of little more than a momentary hesitation, before
Aubrey said--
"I suppose I can, Madam."
He had made up his mind to speak the plain, full truth. Even that
slight touch of the hem of Christ's garment had given him strength.
"Then do so. Have you visited this man?"
"I have, Madam."
"How many times?"
"Several times, Madam. I could not say with certainty how many."
"How long knew you this Thomas Winter?"
"Almost as long as I have dwelt in your Ladyship's house--not fully that
time."
"Who made you acquaint with him?"
"Mr Percy."
"What, the arch-traitor?" Percy was then supposed to be what Catesby
really was--the head and front of the offending.
"He, Madam. I will not deceive your Ladyship."
"And pray who made you acquaint with him?" demanded the Countess,
grimly. In her heart, as she looked into the eyes honestly raised to
hers, she was saying, "The lad is innocent of all ill meaning--a foolish
daw that these kites have plucked:" but she showed no sign of the
relenting she really felt.
"Madam, that was Mr Thomas Rookwood."
"He that dwells beside the Lady Lettice?"
"His son, Madam."
"Were you acquaint with any of their wicked designs?"
"Not one of them, Madam, nor I never imagined no such a thing of any of
those gentlemen."
"Who of them all have you seen?"
"Madam, I have seen divers of whom I knew no more than to see them,
whose names--but no more--I can specify if your Ladyship desire it. But
those that I did really know and at all consort with were three only
beside Mr Tom Rookwood--to wit, Mr Percy, Mr Catesby, and Mr Thomas
Winter: and I saw but little save of the last."
"The boy's telling truth," said Lady Oxford to herself. "He has been
exceedingly foolish, but no worse." Then aloud she asked,--"Saw you
ever any priests there?"
"Not to know them for such, Madam."
"Tampered they with you in any wise as to religion?"
"Never, Madam."
"And you are yet at heart a true Protestant, and loyal to King James?"
"As much so as I ever was, Madam."
But as Aubrey spoke, the question arose in his conscience,--What had he
ever cared about either? Not half as much as he had cared for Tom
Winter,--nay, not so much as he had cared for Tom Winter's tobacco.
"Mr Louvaine," said the Countess, suddenly, "have you discovered that
you are a very foolish young man?"
Aubrey flushed red, and remained silent.
"It seems to me," she continued, "that you speak truth, and that you
have been no worser than foolish. Yet, so being, you must surely guess
that for your own sake, no less than for the Earl's, you must leave this
house, and that quickly."
He had not guessed it, and it came upon him like a bomb-shell. Leave
Oxford House! What was to become of him?
"And if you will take my advice, you will not essay to win into any
other service. Tarry as still as you can some whither, till matters be
blown over, and men begin to forget the inwards of this affair: not in
Town. Have you no friend in the country that would take you in for a
while? 'Tis for your own good, and for my Lady Lettice' sake, that I
give you this counsel."
"Lie hidden in the country!" Aubrey's tones were perfectly aghast.
Such an expectation had never visited his least coherent dreams.
"Mr Louvaine," said Lady Oxford in a kinder voice, "I can see that you
have never reckoned till this moment whither your course should lead
you, nor what lay at the end of the road you traversed. I am sorry for
you, rather than angered; for I believe you thought no ill: you simply
failed to think at all, as so many have done before you. Yet is it the
truest kindness not to cover your path by a deluding mist, but to point
out to you plainly the end of the way you are going. Trust me, if this
witness in mine hand were traced to you by them in power, they should
not take your testimony for truth so easily as I may. I know you, and
the stock whence you come; to them, you were but one of a thousand,
without favour or distinction. Maybe you think me hard; yet I ensure
you, you have no better friend, nor one that shall give you truer
counsel than this which I have given. Go you into the country, the
further from London the better, and lie as quiet as you may, till the
whole matter be blown over, and maybe some time hence, it shall be
possible to sue you a pardon from his Majesty to cover all."
"Some time!" broke from Aubrey's lips.
"Ay, and be thankful it is no worse. He that leaps into a volcano,
counting it but a puddle, shall not find it a puddle, but a volcano.
You have played with firebrands, Mr Louvaine, and must not marvel nor
grumble to feel the scorching of your fingers."
Aubrey's silence was the issue of sheer despair.
"You must leave this house to-day," said the Countess firmly, "and not
as though you went on a journey. Go forth this afternoon, as for a walk
of pleasure, and carrying nothing save what you can put in your pockets.
When you have set a few miles betwixt yourself and the town, you may
then hire an horse, and ride quickly. I would counsel you not to
journey too direct--if you go north or south, tack about somewhat to
east and west; one may ride with far more safety than many. I am not,
as you know, over rich, yet I will, for my Lady Lettice' sake, lend you
a sufficiency to carry you an hundred miles--and if it fall out that you
are not able to return the loan, trouble yourself not thereabout. I am
doing my best for you, Mr Louvaine, not my worst."
"I thank your Ladyship," faltered the unhappy youth. "But--must I not
so much as visit my grandmother?"
It was no very long time since the White Bear had been to Aubrey a
troublesome nuisance. Now it presented itself to his eyes in the
enticing form of a haven of peace. He was loved there: and he began to
perceive that love, even when it crossed his wishes, was better worth
having than the due reward of his deeds.
"Too great a risk to run," said the Countess, gravely. "If any
inquiration be made for you, and you not found here, the officers of
justice should go straight thither. No: I will visit my Lady Lettice
myself, and soften the thing as best I may to her and to Mrs Louvaine.
The only thing," she paused a moment in thought. "What other friends
have you in London?"
"Truly, none, Madam, save my cousin David--"
"Not a relative. Is there no clergyman that knows you, who is of good
account, and a staunch Protestant?"
"There is truly Mr Marshall, a friend of my grandmother, and an ejected
Puritan."
"Where dwelleth he?"
"In Shoe Lane, Madam."
"Is he a wise and discreet man?"
"I think, Madam, my grandmother holds him for such."
"It is possible," said Lady Oxford, meditatively, "that you might be
safe in his house for a day or two, and your friends from the White Bear
could go as if to see him and his wife--hath he a wife?"
"He buried his wife this last summer, Madam: he hath a daughter that
keeps his house, of about mine own years."
"If you think it worth to run the risk, you might ask this good
gentleman to give you a day's shelter, so as to speak with your friends
ere you depart. It were a risk: yet not, perchance, too great. You
must judge for yourself. If you choose this way, I will take it on
myself to let your friends know how it is with you."
It was a bitter pill to swallow. Mr Marshall was about the last man in
his world to whom Aubrey felt any inclination to lay himself under an
obligation. Both as a clergyman, a Puritan, and an ejected minister,
this undiscerning youth had looked down exceedingly upon his superior.
The popular estimate of the clergy was just then at the lowest ebb, and
it required some moral courage for any man to take holy orders, who was
neither very high up in rank, nor very low down. This was the result
partly of the evil lives, and partly of the gross ignorance, of the
pre-Reformation priests; the lives were now greatly amended, but too
much of the ignorance, remained, and the time had not been sufficient to
remove the stigma. A clergyman was expected to apprentice his children
to a trade, or at best to place them in domestic service; and he would
have been thought forward and impertinent if, when dining with laymen in
a good position, he had not spontaneously taken his departure before
dessert made its appearance. To be indebted, therefore, for an
essential service to one of this lowly class, Aubrey was sufficiently
foolish to account a small degradation.
Happily for him, he had just enough sense left, and had been
sufficiently humiliated, to perceive that he could not escape the
necessity of devouring this unpalatable piece of humble pie, and that
the only choice left him was a choice of bitters. The false manliness
which he had been diligently cultivating had vanished into thin air, and
something of the child's spirit, so long despised, was coming back to
him,--the longing for the sound of a familiar voice, and the touch of a
tender hand. Even Aunt Temperance would have received, just then, a
welcome which might have astonished her. But it showed the character of
the women of his family that in this emergency Aubrey's thoughts
scarcely touched his mother, and dwelt longingly on his grandmother and
his Aunt Edith.
The wise Countess waited quietly till Aubrey's meditations had taken
time to settle themselves into resolution.
"Madam, I thank your Ladyship," he said at last, as he looked up, with
an expression which had not dwelt for many a month in his eyes. "I
think I perceive now how matters stand. Suffer me to say that I never
knew, until now, how foolish I have been. Under your Ladyship's leave,
I will take your kindly counsel, and seek aid of Mr Marshall. I would
like to see them again."
His voice faltered as the last words were spoken.
"So will you do well," said the Countess, more kindly than before. "All
is not yet lost, Mr Louvaine. You have been foolish, but there is time
before you wherein you may be wise."
Aubrey bowed, took his leave, and went to his own room, where he filled
his pockets with a few immediate necessaries and what little money he
had. It was hard to bear, this going forth into the wilderness, not at
God's call, but as the consequence of his own folly--Egypt left behind,
and no Canaan in prospect. He must take leave of none save Lady
Oxford--must appear to none to be what he was--a homeless fugitive with
his life in his hand. As he came down-stairs, he was met in the hall by
the same page who had previously summoned him.
"My Lady would speak a word with you in her cabinet ere you walk forth."
Aubrey found Lady Oxford at her desk, busied with household accounts,
and a little pile of gold beside her. When she had reminded him that
she was not rich, she had spoken very truly. That deceased husband of
hers, as wanting in reason in his age as in his youth, having reduced
the great Vere estates to almost nothing, his second wife, the Countess
Elizabeth, and her young son Earl Henry, had to sustain the dignity of
the House upon a very insufficient number of gold pieces. Twenty months
had elapsed since the death of Earl Edward, and the excellent management
and strict economy of the widowed Countess had done something to
retrieve the ruined fortunes of the family, but much still remained to
do.
Lady Oxford glanced up at Aubrey as he entered.
"Mr Louvaine, I owe you your quarter's wages," she said; "at least, so
little time remains that it need not tarry, and 'tis to my conveniency
to reckon with you this afternoon." This was said in a voice that the
page could hear. Then, as Aubrey came up to her, with a significant
look, she laid another ten pounds in his hand, with a few words for his
private ear. "Let me hear of you in time to come as a good man. God go
with you! Farewell."
Ten minutes later, Aubrey closed the door of Oxford House for the last
time, and went out, truly not knowing whither he went. His primary
destination of course was Shoe Lane; but after that--whither?
Through back streets he made his way to Aldersgate, and passed through
it out of the City; over Snow Hill and Holborn Bridge, and down Shoe
Lane to the small house where Mr Marshall "had his lodging"--to use the
phrase of the time--in other words, where he and Agnes made their home
in three rooms, the kitchen being open to all the lodgers to cook for
themselves. Two of the rooms were moderately large; these formed the
sitting-room, and the clergyman's bedroom and study, the bedroom end
being parted from the study end by a curtain between the two. The
remaining room, a mere closet, was his daughter's bedchamber.
Pleasantest of the three was the sitting-room, the front half of which
was the general and public portion, while the back was reserved as
Agnes's boudoir, where her little work-table and stool were set by a
small window, looking out over the little garden towards Fetter Lane,
bounded on the right hand by the wall of Saint Andrew's Church. The
door was opened by a rather slipshod girl, the landlady's daughter.
"Pray you, is Mr Marshall at home?"
"He's not, Sir; he's gone for a country walk."
"What time look you for him?"
"Well, about dark, I dare say. Mrs Agnes, she's in."
"Thank you; I will come again about dusk." Aubrey walked up the lane,
turned aimlessly to the left, and sauntered on towards Bloomsbury. It
was no matter where he went--no matter to any one, himself least of all.
Passing Saint Giles's Church, he turned to the right, up a broad
country road lined by flowery banks, wherein the first primroses of
spring were just beginning to appear. There are primroses there yet--in
flower-girls' baskets: they bloom now no otherwise in Tottenham Court
Road.
When he had gone some little distance, Aubrey grew tired. It was a warm
day for the season; he sat down to rest on the flowery bank, and lost
himself in unhappy thought.
A mile further on, Mr Marshall was coming home down the same road, in a
more despondent mood than was usual with him. Things were going badly
for the Puritans abroad, and for the Marshalls at home. An ejected
minister was at all times an unfashionable person, and usually a very
poor man. His income was small, was growing smaller, and was not at all
likely to take a turn and increase. His wife was gone, and he felt her
loss rather more than less as time passed on; and Agnes had her private
trouble, for her affianced husband, a young tradesman to whom she had
been engaged for two years, had jilted her when he heard of her father's
ejectment. Altogether, the prospect before the Marshalls was not
pleasant. Rent was due, and clothes were needed, and money was
exceedingly scanty.
In the outside world, too, the sky was dull and gloomy. The Puritans
were in no greater favour than they had been, though the Papists were at
the lowest ebb. That there was any inconsistency in their conduct did
not apparently occur to the authorities, nor that the true way to
repress Popery was by cultivating Puritanism. Believing the true
principles of the Church of England to be the golden mean between the
two, they acted under the pleasing illusion that when both halves were
cut off, the middle would be left intact, and all the better for the
operation.
As Mr Marshall walked on in the Tottenham road, he saw a figure seated
on the grassy bank at some distance before him. When he came nearer, he
perceived that it was a young man, who sat with his head cast down, in
an attitude of meditation, and a light cane in his hand, with which now
and then he switched off the head of an unoffending dandelion. Drawing
nearer still, the minister began to suspect that the youth's face was
not unfamiliar; and when he came close, instead of passing the sitter on
the bank, he stepped down, and took a seat beside him.
The youth had paid no apparent attention to his companion until that
moment. His face was turned away northward, and only when Mr Marshall
sat down close to him did he seem to perceive that he was not alone.
"How goes the world with you this afternoon, Mr Louvaine?"
"Mr Marshall! I ask your pardon. I had not seen you."
"I thought not. You have taken a long walk."
Aubrey made no reply.
"Now, how am I to get at this shut-up heart?" said Mr Marshall to
himself. "To say the wrong thing just now may do considerable harm.
Yet what is the right one?" Aloud he said only,--"I hope my Lady
Lettice is well? I know not whether you or I saw her last."
"I have not seen her for months," said Aubrey, curtly.
"Then I am happier than you, for I saw her three weeks since. I thought
her looking somewhat frail and feeble, even more so than her wont; yet
very ripe for Heaven, when as it shall please God to take her."
There was no answer again. Aubrey's cane applied itself diligently to
making a plantain leaf lie to the right of its neighbour instead of the
_left_.
"Mr Louvaine, did you ever hear that my mother and your grandfather
were friends of old time?"
For the first time Aubrey turned his head fully, and looked at his
companion. The face which Mr Marshall saw was not, as he had imagined
it might be, sullen and reluctant to converse. It was only very, very
weary and sad, with heavy eyes as though they had slept little, or were
holding back unshed tears.
"No, never," was all he said.
"My mother," said Mr Marshall, "was an Oxfordshire woman, of Minster
Lovel by her birth, but she wedded a bookseller in Oxford town, where
she was in service to a lady. I think you were not present when I told
this to my Lady Lettice. But do you remember your old friend Mrs
Elizabeth Wolvercot, that she told me you were wont to call Cousin
Bess?"
"Remember Cousin Bess! Of course I do," said Aubrey, a tone of interest
coming into his voice. "What of her?"
"My mother was her sister Ellen."
"Why, Mr Marshall! are you my cousin?"
"If it please you to acknowledge me, Cousin Aubrey."
"That I will, indeed!" said Aubrey, clasping the hand of the ejected
minister. Then, with a sudden and complete change of tone,--"But,
maybe, if you knew all I know, you were not over ready to acknowledge
me."
"You are in trouble, my friend," answered Mr Marshall sympathisingly.
"Can I help you thereout? At least I can feel for you in it, if I may
do no more."
There was another minute of dead silence. The next question came
suddenly and bluntly.
"Mr Marshall, did you ever in your life feel that you had been a grand
fool?"
"Yes," was the short, quiet answer.
"I am glad to hear it, though I should not have thought so. I thought
you had always been a precisely proper person, and I did not suppose you
could feel for me a whit. But I must tell my trouble to somebody, or I
shall grow desperate. Look you, I have lost my place, and I can get
none other, and I have not twenty pounds in the world, and I owe an
hundred pounds, and I can't go home."
"Thank God!" was the strange answer.
"Well, to be sure,--Mr Marshall, what on earth are you thanking God
for?"
"That your husks have lost their flavour, my son. So long as the
prodigal finds the husks sweet, there is little hope of him. But let
him once discover that they are dry husks, and not sweet fruits, and
that his companions are swine, and not princes--then he is coming to
himself, and there is hope of making a man of him again. I say
therefore, Thank God!"
"I shall never make anything better than a fool."
"A man commonly ceases to be a fool when he begins to reckon himself
one."
"You know not the worst yet. But--Mr Marshall, if I tell it you, you
will not betray me, for my poor old grandmother's sake? I never gave
her much cause to love me, but I know she doth, and it would grieve her
if I came to public hurt and shame."
"It would grieve me, my cousin, more than you know. Fear not, but speak
freely."
"Well,--I know not if my grandmother told you that I was intimate with
some of these poor gentlemen that have paid the penalty of their treason
of late?"
"I know that you knew Percy and Winter--and, I dare say, Rookwood."
"I knew them all, and Catesby too. And though I was not privy to the
plot--not quite so bad as that!--yet I would have followed Mr Tom
Winter almost anywhere,--ay, even into worse than I did."
"Surely, Aubrey Louvaine, you never dreamed of perversion!"
"Mr Marshall, I was ready to do anything Tom Winter bade me; but he
never meddled with my religion. And--come, I may as well make a clean
breast, as I have begun--I loved Dorothy Rookwood, and if she had held
up a finger, I should have gone after. You think the Rookwoods
Protestants, don't you? They are not."
Mr Marshall sat in dismayed silence, for a moment.
"I doubted them somewhat," he said: "but I never knew so much as you
have told me. Then Mrs Dorothy--"
"Oh, she would have none of me. She told me I was a beggar and a fool
both, and she spake but the bitter truth. Yet it was bitter when she
said it."
"My poor boy!" said Mr Marshall, compassionately.
"I thought Hans but a fool when he went and bound himself to yon
mercer--he, the son of a Dutch Baron! But I see now--I was the fool,
not he. Had I spent my days in selling silk stockings instead of
wearing them, and taken my wages home to my mother like a good little
boy, it had been better for me. I see, now,--now that the doors are all
shut against me, and I dare not go home."
"Yet tell me, Aubrey, for I scarce understand it--why dare you not go
home?"
As Aubrey laid the matter before him from the point of view presented by
Lady Oxford, Mr Marshall's face grew graver every moment. He began to
see that the circumstances were much more serious than he had
apprehended. There was silence for a few minutes when Aubrey finished
his account. Then the clergyman said--
"'Tis a tangle, and a tight one, my boy. Yet, by God's blessing, we may
see our way out. Let us take one point at a time. These debts of
yours--will you tell me, are they `debts of honour,' falsely so-called?"
"Only twenty pounds. The rest is due partly to Patrick the tailor and
others for goods, and partly to Tom Rookwood for money I borrowed of
him."
"How much to Tom Rookwood?"
"Twenty pounds."
"I will see what I can do with him," said Mr Marshall, thoughtfully.
"If these Rookwoods are in no wise dragged into the plot, so that they
have no land escheated, nor fines to pay, then I think he can afford to
wait for his money--better, very like, than the tradesfolk. But,
Aubrey, you must get another place. Bear with me if I ask you,--Could
you bring your pride down to serve in a shop?"
The young shapely head went up suddenly, as if in proud protest against
this most unacceptable proposal. Then it dropped again, and the cane
toyed with the plantain.
"I thought my pride was down," he said in a low voice? "but I see it
might be lowered yet further. Mr Marshall, I will try to humble myself
even to that, if it be needful."
Aubrey did not suspect that Mr Marshall had never come so near
respecting him as at that moment.
"Well," he said, quietly, "I will do what I can to help you. I will see
Tom Rookwood; and I know a bookseller in Oxford town to whom I could
speak for you if you wish it. The question for you at this moment is
not, What is easy and pleasant?--but, What is right? `_Facilis
descensus Averni_'--you know--`_sed revocare gradum_!' It is always
hard work turning back. There is a bitter cup to be drunk; and if you
would win back your lost self-respect--if you would bring help and
comfort to your grandmother in her old age--if you would light up the
lamp of joy where hitherto you have wrought darkness--nay, if you would
win a smile from the blessed lips which said `Father, forgive them' _for
you_--then, Aubrey Louvaine, be a man, and drink off that bitter
draught. You will find it sweeter afterwards than all the dainties you
have been searching after for so long."
Aubrey sat still and silent for some time, and his companion let him
alone to consider his ways. Mr Marshall was a wise man; and never gave
more strokes to a nail than were needful to drive it in. At last the
question came, in low, unsteady tones--
"Mr Marshall, did God send you up this road this afternoon?"
"I have no doubt He did, my friend, if anything I say or do can help you
to the right way. You see, I knew not of your being here, and He did."
"When you came up," said the low voice, "I thought all was over, and my
mind was very near made up to enlist as a common soldier, and leave no
trace behind. I see now, it should have been an ill deed to do."
"An ill deed in truth for your poor friends, if the only news they had
ever heard of you were your name in a list of the dead."
"Yes, I wished to be killed as soon as might be--get to the end as fast
as possible."
"Would that have been the end, Aubrey?"