THE FIRST OF A NEW LINE.
In Great Castleborough there lived a race of paupers. From the year
of the 42nd of Elizabeth, or 1601, down to the present generation,
this race maintained an uninterrupted descent. Like that of many a
more worldly-favoured race, theirs was a descent; it had nothing of
an ascent in it. But that is the fate of ancestry. A man on some
particular occasion ascends; makes himself a mark in his time;
perhaps a name in the world’s annals, and from him his family
_descends_.
The expression is perfectly correct; as the heralds truly have it;
it descends, fades out, and is gone. It has lived? no, continued,
a thousand years perhaps; it has descended, and prided itself on
descending. That was the case of the Rockvilles; and when we hear of
families and persons illustriously or honourably descended, we hear
an internal echo which says, “Yes—descended.” The truly great man
_ascends_ from his ancestors.
There was a steady and unbroken line of paupers in Great
Castleborough, as the parish books testify. No families had a more
unquestionable pedigree. There was no flaw, no dubious spot in it.
The parish books were the red-books of this race. No genealogy
could bear a more rigid scrutiny than theirs. From generation to
generation their demands on the parish funds stand recorded. There
were no _lacunæ_ in their career; there was no occasion for the
herald to skip skilfully from cousin to doubtful cousin, nor great
lawyers to cast a costly glamour over some delicate question of
legitimacy. There never failed a rightful heir to their families.
Fed on the bread of idleness and legal provision, these people
flourished, increased, and multiplied. Sometimes required to work
for the weekly stipend which they received, they never acquired a
taste for labour, or lost the taste for the bread for which they did
not labour. These paupers regarded their maintenance by no means
as a disgrace. They claimed it as a right—as their patrimony. They
contended that one-third of the property of the Church had been given
by benevolent individuals for the support of the poor, and that what
the Reformation wrongfully deprived them of, the great enactment of
Elizabeth rightfully—and only rightfully—restored.
Those who imagine that all paupers merely claim parish relief because
the law has ordained it, commit a great error. There were numbers
then who were hereditary paupers, on a higher principle even than
hereditary peers, and that on a tradition carefully handed down, that
they were only manfully claiming their own. They traced their claims
from the most ancient feudal times. They were none of your modern
manufactures, the offspring of wretched political necessities. They
came down from times when the lord was as much bound to maintain his
villein in gross, as the villein was to work for the lord. These
paupers were in fact, or claimed to be, the original _adscripti
glebæ_, and to have as sound a claim to parish support as the landed
proprietor had to his land. For this reason, in the old Catholic
times, after they had escaped from villenage by running away from
their hundred, and remaining absent for a year and a day, dwelling
for that period in a walled town, these people were amongst the most
diligent attendants at the abbey doors, and, when the abbeys were
dissolved, were, no doubt, amongst the most daring of those thieves,
vagabonds, and sturdy rogues who, after the Robin Hood fashion,
beset the highways and solitary farms of England, and claimed their
black-mail in a very unceremonious style. It was out of this class
that Henry VIII. hanged his seventy-two thousand during his reign,
and, as it is said, without appearing materially to diminish their
number.
That they continued to “increase, multiply, and replenish the earth,”
overflowing all bounds, overpowering by mere populousness all the
severe laws against them, of whipping, burning in the hand, in the
forehead, or the breast, and hanging, and filling the whole country
with alarm, is evidenced by the very Act of Elizabeth itself.
Amongst these hereditary paupers who, as we have said, were found in
Castleborough, there was a family of the name of Deg. This family
had never failed to demand and enjoy what it held to be its share
of its ancient inheritance. It appeared from the parish records,
that they practised, in different periods, the crafts of shoemaking,
tailoring, and chimney-sweeping; but since the invention of the
stocking-frame they had, one and all of them, followed the profession
of stocking-weavers; or, as they were there called, stockingers.
This was a trade which required no extreme exertion of the physical
or intellectual powers. To sit in a frame, and throw the arms to
and fro, was a thing that might be carried to a degree of extreme
diligence, or be let down into a mere apology for idleness. An “idle
stockinger” was then no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were
always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably
adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon.
The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish
authorities would soon have set them to some real labour—a thing
that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the
family, that “hard work was enough to kill a man.”
There was, indeed, an anecdote of three of the Degs which was
continually quoted as exemplifying the three degrees of extreme
indolence. According to this, three Degs were lying one fine autumn
day under a neighbour’s pear-tree. One of them, in a languid tone,
said, “There! a pear has dropped.” The second observed, still more
languidly, “I wish I had it.” The third was too lazy even to open his
mouth to express such a wish, much less to move and get it.
The Degs, then, were seldom out of work; but they did not get enough,
or do enough, to meet and tie. They had but little work if times
were bad, and if times were good, they complained of large families
and sickly wives and children. Be times what they would, therefore,
the Degs were due and successful attendants at the parish pay-table.
Nay, so much was this a matter of course, that they came at length
not even to trouble themselves to receive their pay, but sent their
young children for it; and it was duly paid. Did any parish officer,
indeed, turn restive, and decline to pay a Deg, he soon found
himself summoned before a magistrate, and such pleas of sickness,
want of work, and poor earnings brought forward, that he most likely
got a sharp rebuke from the benevolent but uninquiring magistrate,
and acquired a character of hard-heartedness that stuck to him.
So parish overseers learnt to let the Degs alone; and their
children, thus regularly brought up to receive the parish money for
their parents, were impatient, as they grew up, to receive it for
themselves. Marriages in the Deg family were, consequently, very
early, and there were plenty of instances of married Degs claiming
parish relief under the age of twenty, on the plea of being the
parents of two children. One such precocious individual being asked
by a rather verdant officer why he was married before he was able to
maintain a family, replied, in much astonishment, that he had married
in order to maintain himself by parish assistance. That he had
never been able to maintain himself by his labour, nor ever expected
to do it: his only hope, therefore, lay in marrying, and becoming
the father of two children, to which patriarchal rank he had now
attained, and demanded his “pay.”
Thus had lived and flourished the Degs on their ancient patrimony,
the parish, for upwards of two hundred years. Nay, we have no doubt
whatever that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an
ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville
himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage they had,
doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right.
They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an
alehouse and gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had
become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances.
It was become pure pauper blood.
The Degs married, if not entirely amongst Degs, yet amongst the same
class. None but a pauper would dream of marrying a Deg, even were she
handsome as Helen of Troy. The Degs, therefore, were in constitution,
in mind, in habit, and in inclination, paupers. But a pure and
unmixed class of this kind does not die out like an aristocratic
stereotype. It increases and multiplies. The lower the grade, the
more prolific, as is sometimes seen on a large and even national
scale. The Degs threatened, therefore, to become a most formidable
clan in the lower purlieus of Castleborough; but, luckily, there is
so much virtue even in evils, that one not rarely cures another. War,
the great evil, cleared the town of Degs.
Fond of idleness, of indulgence, of money easily got and as easily
spent, the Degs were rapidly drained off by recruiting parties during
the great French war. The young men enlisted, and were marched away;
the young women married soldiers that were quartered in the town
from time to time, and marched away with them. There were eventually
none of the once numerous Degs left, except a few old people, whom
death was sure to draft off at no distant period into his regiment of
the line which has no end. Parish overseers, magistrates, and master
manufacturers felicitated themselves on this unhoped-for deliverance
from the ancient family of the Degs.
But one cold, clear winter evening, the east wind piping his sharp,
sibilant ditty in the hawthorn hedges, and poking his sharp fingers
into the sides of well broad-clothed men by way of passing joke,
Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Castleborough, driving in his
gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a
stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking man in the prime
of life, and in the greatcoat and thick worsted gloves of a wealthy
traveller, cast a glance at the wretched creature trudging heavily
on, expecting a pitiful appeal to his sensibilities, and thinking it
a bore to have to pull off a glove, and dive into his pocket for a
copper; but to his surprise, there was no demand, only a low curtsey,
and the glimpse of a face of singular honesty of expression, and of
excessive weariness.
Spires was a man of warm feelings; he looked earnestly at the woman,
and thought he had never seen such a picture of fatigue in his life.
He pulled up and said,
“You seem very tired, my good woman.”
“Awfully tired, sir.”
“And are you going far to-night?”
“To Great Castleborough, sir, if God give me strength.”
“To Castleborough!” exclaimed Mr. Spires, “why you seem ready to
drop; you’ll never reach it. You’d better stop at the next village.”
“Ay, sir, it is easy stopping for those who have money.”
“And you’ve none, eh?”
“As God lives, sir, I’ve a sixpence, and that’s all.”
Mr. Spires put his hand in his pocket and held out to her the next
instant half-a-crown.
“There, stop, poor thing—make yourself comfortable—it’s quite out
of the question to reach Castleborough. But stay, are your friends
living in Castleborough? What are you?”
“A poor soldier’s widow, sir: and may God Almighty bless you,” said
the poor woman, taking the money, the tears standing in her large
brown eyes as she curtseyed very low.
“A soldier’s widow,” said Mr. Spires. She had touched the softest
place in the manufacturer’s heart, for he was a very loyal man, and
vehement champion of his country’s honour in the war. “So young,”
said he,—“how did you lose your husband?”
“He fell, sir,” said the poor woman,—but she could get no further;
she suddenly caught up the corner of her grey cloak, covered her face
with it, and burst into an excess of grief.
The manufacturer felt as if he had hit the woman a blow by his
careless question. He sat watching her for a moment in silence, and
then said—“Come, get into the gig, my poor woman; come, I must see
you to Castleborough.”
The poor woman dried her tears, and heavily climbed into the gig,
expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires
buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said
in a cheerful tone to comfort her, “Bless me, but that is a fine,
thumping fellow, though. I don’t wonder you are tired, carrying such
a load.”
The poor woman pressed the stout child, apparently two years old, to
her heart, as if she felt it a great blessing, and no load. The gig
drove rapidly on.
Presently, Mr. Spires resumed his conversation.
“So you are from Castleborough?”
“No, sir, my husband was.”
“So: what was his name?”
“John Deg, sir.”
“Deg?” said Mr. Spires; “Deg, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
The manufacturer seemed to hitch himself off towards his own side of
the gig, gave another look at her, and was silent. The poor woman
seemed somewhat astonished at his look and movement, and was silent
too.
After awhile Mr. Spires said again, “And do you hope to find friends
in Castleborough? Had you none where you came from?”
“None, sir; none in the world!” said the poor woman, and again her
feelings seemed too strong for her. At length she added, “I was in
service, sir, at Poole, in Dorsetshire, when I married; my mother
only was living, and while I was away with my husband, she died.
When—when the news came from abroad, that—when I was a widow, sir, I
went back to my native place, and the parish-officers said I must go
to my husband’s parish lest I and my child should become troublesome.”
“You asked relief of them?”
“Never! oh, God knows, no, never! My family have never asked a penny
of a parish,—they would die first, and so would I, sir; but they said
I might do it, and I had better go to my husband’s parish at once and
they offered me money to go.”
“And you took it, of course.”
“No, sir; I had a little money, which I had earned by washing and
laundering; and I sold most of my things, as I could not carry them,
and came off. I felt hurt, sir; my heart rose against the treatment
of the parish, and I thought I should be better amongst my husband’s
friends,—and my child would, if anything happened to me. I had no
friends of my own.”
Mr. Spires looked at the woman in silence.
“Did your husband tell you anything of his friends? What sort of a
man was he?”
“Oh, he was a gay young fellow, rather, sir; but not bad to me. He
always said his friends were well off in Castleborough.”
“He did!” said the manufacturer, with a great stare, and as if
bolting the words from his heart in a large gust of wonder.
The poor woman again looked at him with a strange look. The
manufacturer whistled to himself, and giving his horse a smart cut
with the whip, drove on faster than ever. The night was fast settling
down; it was numbing cold; a grey fog rose from the river as they
thundered over the old bridge; and tall engine chimneys, and black
smoky houses loomed through the dusk before them. They were at
Castleborough.
As they slackened their pace up a hill at the entrance of the town,
Mr. Spires again opened his mouth.
“I should be very sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Deg,” he said,
“but I have my fears that you are coming to this place with false
expectations. I fear your husband did not give you the truest
possible account of his family here.”
“Oh, sir! What—what is it?” exclaimed the poor woman; “in God’s name,
tell me!”
“Why, nothing more than this,” said the manufacturer; “there are few
of the Degs left here. They are old, and on the parish, and can do
nothing for you.”
The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was silent.
“But don’t be cast down,” said Mr. Spires. He would not tell her
what a pauper family it really was; for he saw that she was a very
feeling woman, and he thought that she would learn that soon enough.
He felt that her husband had from vanity given her a false account of
his connections; and he was really sorry for her.
“Don’t be cast down!” he went on; “you can wash and iron, you say;
you are young and strong; those are your friends. Depend on them, and
they will be better to you than any other.”
The poor woman was silent, leaning her head down on her slumbering
child, and crying to herself; and thus they drove on through many
long and narrow streets, with lights glaring from the shops, but with
few people in the streets, and those hurrying shivering along the
pavement, so intense was the cold. Anon, they stopped at a large pair
of gates; and the manufacturer rang a bell, which he could reach from
his gig; and the gates were presently flung open, and they drove into
a spacious yard, with a large handsome house, having a bright lamp
burning before it, on one side of the yard, and tall warehouses on
the other.
“Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock’s, James,” said
Mr. Spires, “and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable;
and if you will come to my warehouse to-morrow,” added he, addressing
the poor woman, “perhaps I can be of some use to you.”
The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and following the old
man-servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with
her living load, her limbs stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue
and cold ride.
We must not pursue too minutely our narrative. Mrs. Deg was engaged
to do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spires’s linen, and the
manner in which she executed her task, insured her recommendations to
all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied
a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in these
meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the
grass attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a
shoemaker, who had two or three children of almost the same age as
Mrs. Deg’s child. The children, as time went on, became playfellows.
Little Simon might be said to have the free run of the shoemaker’s
house, and he was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker’s
birds, and his flute, on which he often played when his work was done.
Mrs. Deg took a great liking to the shoemaker: and he and his wife,
a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that
she cultivated. She had found out her husband’s parents; but they
were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and
infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of persons
whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked
on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come
and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings.
But Mrs. Deg would rather that her little boy had died than have been
familiarised with the spirit of these old people. Despise them she
struggled hard not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient
to maintain them, on condition that they desisted from any further
application to the parish. It would be a long and disgusting tale to
recount all the troubles, annoyances, and querulous complaints and
even bitter accusations that she received from her connections, whom
she could never satisfy; but she considered it one of her crosses in
life, and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered no real want,
so long as they lived, which was for years; but she would never allow
her little Simon to be with them alone.
The shoemaker neighbour was a stout protector to her against the
greedy demands of the old people, and of others of the old Degs, and
also against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely suitors,
who saw in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman, with a flourishing
business, and a neat and well-furnished house, a very desirable
acquisition. But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but
to live for the boy, and she kept her resolve with firmness and
gentleness.
The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town-meadows, to
gather groundsel and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and
little Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children.
There William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the
children the beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects
of nature; and while he sat on a stile and read in a little old book
of poetry, as he often used to do, the children sate on the summer
grass, and enjoyed themselves in a variety of plays.
The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker’s conversation on little
Simon Deg, was such as never wore out of him through his whole life,
and soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary
conduct. He manifested the greatest uneasiness at their treading
on the flowers in the grass; he would burst into tears if they
persisted in it; and when asked why, he said they were so beautiful,
and that they must enjoy the sunshine, and be very unhappy to die.
The shoemaker was amazed, but indulged the lad’s fancy. One day he
thought to give him a great treat, and when they were out in the
meadows, he drew from under his coat a bow and arrow, and shot the
arrow high up into the air. He expected to see him in an ecstasy
of delight; his own children clapped their hands in transport, but
Simon stood silent, and as if awestruck. “Shall I send up another?”
asked the shoemaker.
“No, no!” exclaimed the child, imploringly. “You say God lives up
there, and He mayn’t like it.”
The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself,
“There is too much imagination there. There will be a poet there if
we don’t take care.”
The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his
mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work
at his trade. His mother was very glad; and thought shoemaking would
be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should
have him always near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was
especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit. He was greatly
indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not
seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such
cases amongst the boys in the neighbourhood.
He was now about twelve years of age; when going one day with a
basket of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires’ for his mother, he
was noticed by Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window.
The great war was raging; there was much distress amongst the
manufacturers; the people were suffering, and exasperated against
their masters. Mr. Spires, as a staunch tory, and supporter of the
war, Was particularly obnoxious to the workpeople, who uttered
violent threats against him. For this reason his premises were
strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his yard, just within the
gates, was chained a large and fierce mastiff, his chain allowing
him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger, though not
to reach him. The dog knew the people who came regularly about, and
seemed not to notice them; but on the entrance of a stranger, he
rose up, barked, and came to the length of his chain. This always
drew the attention of the porter, if he was away from his box, and
few persons dared to pass till he came.
Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head,
when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite
to him, within a few feet. The boy, a good deal startled at first,
drew himself back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that
the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his
situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting
his basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to
say—“Well, old boy, you’d like to eat me, wouldn’t you?”
Mr. Spires, who sat near his counting-house window at his books, was
struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a
clerk, “What boy is that?”
“It is Jenny Deg’s,” was the answer.
“Ha! that boy! Zounds! how boys do grow! Why, that’s the child that
Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Castleborough, and what a
strong, handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now.”
As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires called him to the counting-house
door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and
learning, and so on. Simon, taking off his cap with much respect,
answered in such a clear and modest way, with a voice which had so
much feeling and natural music in it, that the worthy manufacturer
was greatly taken with him.
“That’s no Deg!” said he, when he again entered the counting-house,
“not a bit of it. He’s all Goodrich, or whatever his mother’s name
was, every inch of him.”
The consequence of that interview was, that Simon Deg was very soon
after perched on a stool in Mr. Spires’ counting-house, where he
continued till he was twenty-two. Mr. Spires had no son, only a
single daughter; and such were Simon Deg’s talents, attention to
business, and genial disposition, that at that age Mr. Spires gave
him a share in the concern. He was himself now getting less fond of
exertion than he had been, and placed the most implicit reliance on
Simon’s judgment and general management. Yet, no two men could be
more unlike in their opinions beyond the circle of trade. Mr. Spires
was a staunch tory of the staunch old school. He was for church and
king, and for things remaining for ever as they had been. Simon, on
the other hand, had liberal and reforming notions. He was for the
improvement of the people, and their admission to many privileges.
Mr. Spires, therefore, was liked by the leading men of the place,
and disliked by the people. Simon’s estimation was precisely in the
opposite direction. But this did not disturb their friendship; it
required another disturbing cause, and that came.
Simon Deg and the daughter of Mr. Spires grew attached to each other;
and as the father had thought Simon worthy of becoming a partner in
the business, neither of the young people deemed that he could object
to a partnership of a more domestic description. But here they made
a tremendous mistake. No sooner was such a proposal hinted at, than
Mr. Spires burst forth with the fury of all the winds from the bag of
Ulysses.
“What! a Deg aspire to the hand of the sole heiress of the enormously
opulent Spires?”
The very thought almost cut the proud manufacturer off with apoplexy.
The ghosts of a thousand paupers rose up before him, and he was black
in the face. It was only by a prompt and bold application of leeches
and lancet, that the life of the great man was saved. But there was
an end of all further friendship between himself and the expectant
Simon. He insisted that he should withdraw from the concern, and it
was done. Simon, who felt his own dignity deeply wounded too, for
dignity he had, though the last of a long line of paupers—his own
dignity, not his ancestors’—took silently, yet not unrespectfully,
his share—a good round sum, and entered another house of business.
For several years there appeared to be a feud, and a bitterness
between the former friends; yet, it showed itself in no other manner,
than by a careful avoidance of each other. The continental war
came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly.
Then came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great
Castleborough was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood
pre-eminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon
Deg. Simon was growing rich, and was extremely popular. He was on
all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had
sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of
land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the country and
flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built little
summer-houses in them, and let them to the artizans. In his factory,
he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation. He had set
up a school for the children, besides an evening and Sunday school
for such as had begun to work in the factory or the loom, with a
reading-room and conversation-room for the workpeople, and encouraged
them to bring their families there, and enjoy music, books, and
lectures. Accordingly, he was the idol of the people, and the horror
of the old school of the manufacturers.
“A pretty upstart and demagogue I’ve nurtured,” said Mr. Spires often
to his wife and daughter, who only sighed and were silent.
Then came a furious election. The town for a fortnight, more
resembled the worst corner of Tartarus, than a Christian borough.
Drunkenness, riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another,
that is, tearing each other’s coat-tails off, all sorts of violence
and abuse ruled and raged, till the blood of all Castleborough was
at boiling heat. In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen,
ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely
corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular
beyond measure. But popular though he still was, the other and old
tory side triumphed. The people were exasperated to madness; and
when the chairing of the successful candidate commenced, there was a
terrific attack made on the procession by the defeated party. Down
went the chair, and the new member, glad to escape into an inn,
saw his friends mercilessly assailed by the populace. There was a
tremendous tempest of sticks, brickbats, paving-stones and rotten
eggs. In the midst of this, Simon Deg, and a number of his friends,
standing at the upper window of an hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked
down, and trampled on by the crowd. In an instant, and before his
friends had missed him from amongst them, Simon Deg was seen darting
through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a surprising vigour,
and gesticulating, and, no doubt, shouting vehemently to the rioters,
though his voice was lost in the din. In the next moment his hat was
knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger; but another
moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were bearing
somebody from the frantic mob into a neighbouring shop. It was Simon
Deg assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr.
Spires.
Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and
bewildered by his fall. His clothes were one mass of mud, and his
face was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of
water, and his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was
found that he had received no serious injury.
“They had like to have done for me, though,” said he.
“Yes; and who saved you?” asked a gentleman.
“Ay, who was it? who was it?” asked the really warm-hearted
manufacturer. “Let me know; I owe him my life.”
“There he is!” said several gentlemen at the same instant, pushing
forward Simon Deg.
“What, Simon!” said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet. “Was it thee,
my boy?” He did more—he stretched out his hand. The young man clasped
it eagerly; and the two stood silent, and with a heartfelt emotion,
which blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a
union more sacred than esteem.
A week hence, and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though
Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of
opposition to his old friend, in defence of conscientious principles,
the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him,
and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and re-union.
Simon Deg was now one of the richest men in Castleborough. His mother
was still living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent
and wise housekeeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.