'For never any thing can be amiss

When simpleness and duty tender it.'

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

Mr. Thornton went straight and clear into all the interests of

the following day. There was a slight demand for finished goods;

and as it affected his branch of the trade, he took advantage of

it, and drove hard bargains. He was sharp to the hour at the

meeting of his brother magistrates,--giving them the best

assistance of his strong sense, and his power of seeing

consequences at a glance, and so coming to a rapid decision.

Older men, men of long standing in the town, men of far greater

wealth--realised and turned into land, while his was all floating

capital, engaged in his trade--looked to him for prompt, ready

wisdom.

He was the one deputed to see and arrange with the

police--to lead in all the requisite steps. And he cared for

their unconscious deference no more than for the soft west wind,

that scarcely made the smoke from the great tall chimneys swerve

in its straight upward course. He was not aware of the silent

respect paid to him. If it had been otherwise, he would have felt

it as an obstacle in his progress to the object he had in view.

As it was, he looked to the speedy accomplishment of that alone.

It was his mother's greedy ears that sucked in, from the

women-kind of these magistrates and wealthy men, how highly Mr.

This or Mr. That thought of Mr. Thornton; that if he had not been

there, things would have gone on very differently,--very badly,

indeed. He swept off his business right and left that day. It

seemed as though his deep mortification of yesterday, and the

stunned purposeless course of the hours afterwards, had cleared

away all the mists from his intellect. He felt his power and

revelled in it. He could almost defy his heart. If he had known

it, he could have sang the song of the miller who lived by the

river Dee:-'I care for nobody--Nobody cares for me.'

The evidence against Boucher, and other ringleaders of the riot,

was taken before him; that against the three others, for

conspiracy, failed. But he sternly charged the police to be on

the watch; for the swift right arm of the law should be in

readiness to strike, as soon as they could prove a fault. And

then he left the hot reeking room in the borough court, and went

out into the fresher, but still sultry street. It seemed as

though he gave way all at once; he was so languid that he could

not control his thoughts; they would wander to her; they would

bring back the scene,--not of his repulse and rejection the day

before but the looks, the actions of the day before that. He went

along the crowded streets mechanically, winding in and out among

the people, but never seeing them,--almost sick with longing for

that one half-hour--that one brief space of time when she clung

to him, and her heart beat against his--to come once again.




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