The last time was on a genial day in spring.  He did not return at the usual hour, and they went to seek him, and found him lying dead upon the stone.

They laid by the side of her whom he had loved so well; and in the church where they had often lingered hand in hand the child and the old man slept together.

* * * * *

Our Mutual Friend

      “Our Mutual Friend” was the last long complete novel Dickens
     wrote, and, like all his books, it first appeared in monthly
     parts.  It was so published in 1864-65.  After three numbers had
     appeared, the author wrote:  “I have grown hard to satisfy, and
     write very slowly.  Although I have not been wanting in
     industry, I have been wanting in imagination.”  In his
     “Postscript in Lieu of Preface,” the author points out—­in
     answer to those who had disputed the probability of Harmon’s
     will—­“that there are hundreds of will cases far more
     remarkable than that fancied in this book.”  In this same
     postscript Dickens also renewed his attack on Poor Law
     administration, begun in “Oliver Twist.”  Though “Our Mutual
     Friend” is not one of the greatest or most famous of Dickens’s
     works, for it is somewhat loosely constructed as a story, and
     shows signs of laboured composition, it abounds in scenes of
     real Dickensian character, and is not without touches of the
     genius which had made its author the foremost novelist of his
     time, and one of the greatest writers of all ages.

I.—­The Man from Somewhere

It was at a dinner-party that Mortimer Lightwood, solicitor, at the request of Lady Tippins, told the story of the Man from Somewhere.

“Upon my life,” says Mortimer languidly, “I can’t fix him with a local habitation; but he comes from the place, the name of which escapes me, where they make the wine.

“The man,” Mortimer goes on, “whose name is Harmon, was the only son of a tremendous old rascal, who made his money by dust, as a dust contractor.  This venerable parent, displeased with his son, turns him out of doors.  The boy takes flight, gets aboard ship, turns up on dry land among the Cape wine; small proprietor, farmer, grower—­whatever you like to call it.  Venerable parent dies.  His will is found.  It leaves the lowest of a range of dust mountains, with a dwelling-house, to an old servant, who is sole executor.  And that’s all, except that the son’s inheritance is made conditional on his marrying a girl, at the date of the will a child four or five years old, who is now a marriageable young woman.  Advertisement and inquiry discovered the son in the Man from Somewhere, and he is now on his way home, after fourteen years’ absence, to succeed to a very large fortune, and to take a wife.”

Mortimer, being asked what would become of the fortune in the event of the marriage condition not being fulfilled, replies that by a clause in the will it would then go to the old servant above-mentioned, passing over and excluding the son; also, that if the son had not been living, the same old servant would have been sole residuary legatee.