“Make him take that, madam, and put him to bed.  I will wait downstairs awhile!”

“Thurnall, Thurnall!” calls Trebooze, “don’t leave me, old fellow! you are a good fellow.  I say, forgive and forget.  Don’t leave me!  Only don’t leave me, for the room is as full of devils as—­”

* * * * *

An hour after, Tom and Tardrew were walking home together.

“He is quite quiet now, and fast asleep.”

“Will he mend, sir?” asks Tardrew.

“Of course, he will:  and perhaps in more ways than one.  Best thing that could have happened—­will bring him to his senses, and he’ll start fresh.”

“We’ll hope so,—­he’s been mad, I think, ever since he heard of that cholera.”

“So have others:  but not with brandy,” thought Tom:  but he said nothing.

“I say, sir,” quoth Tardrew, after a while, “how’s Parson Headley?”

“Getting well, I’m happy to say.”

“Glad to hear it, sir.  He’s a good man, after all; though we did have our differences.  But he’s a good man, and worked like one.”

“He did.”

Silence again.

“Never heard such beautiful prayers in all my life, as he made over my poor maid.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Tom.  “He understands his business at heart, though he may have his fancies.”

“And so do some others,” said Tardrew in a gruff tone, as if half to himself, “who have no fancies....  Tell you what it is, sir:  you was right this time; and that’s plain truth.  I’m sorry to hear talk of your going.”

“My good sir,” quoth Tom, “I shall be very sorry to go.  I have found place and people here as pleasant as man could wish:  but go I must.”

“Glad you’re satisfied, sir; wish you was going to stay,” says Tardrew.  “Seen Miss Harvey this last day or two, sir?”

“Yes.  You know she’s to keep her school?”

“I know it.  Nursed my girl like an angel.”

“Like what she is,” said Tom.

“You said one true word once:  that she was too good for us.”

“For this world,” said Tom; and fell into a great musing.

By those curt and surly utterances did Tardrew, in true British bulldog fashion, express a repentance too deep for words; too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance not of the excitable and theatric southern, unstable as water, even in his most violent remorse:  but of the still, deep-hearted northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man; and having told it, is a new creature from that day forth for ever.

CHAPTER XIX.

Beddgelert.