The clocks in the shop began at that moment to strike ten in a dozen different tones, as if they discerned the hopelessness of the discussion, and were determined to cut it short.  The company consequently separated, and Miriam went to bed; but not to sleep, for before her eyes, half through the night, was sailing the ship in which she thought poor Cutts would be exiled.  Let it not for a moment be supposed that Mr. Cutts was a young man, and that Miriam was in love with him.  He was about fifty.

Next morning she was still more distressed.  Sometimes the morning brings forgetfulness of the trouble of the day before, and at other times it revives with peculiar power just at the moment when we wake, especially if it be dark.  Miriam was confused.  The belief that she ought to do something if possible to help Cutts was just dawning upon her; but although she was singularly liable to be set fast to any purpose when once she had it clearly formed, it was always a long time before it became formed.  She was not one of those happy persons whose thoughts are always beneath them, as the horses of a coach are beneath the driver, and can be directed this way or that way at his bidding.  She could not settle beforehand that she would think upon a given subject, and step by step disentangle its difficulties, and pursue it to the end.  That is the result of continuous training, and of this she had had none.  Ideas passed through her mind with great rapidity, but they were spontaneous, and consequently disconnected, so that in difficulty the path was chosen without any balancing of the reasons on this and on the other side, which, forced the conclusion that it was the proper path to take.

A thousand things whirled through her brain.  She had known all about Cutts before the conversation with the Cattles, or with the Cattle, as she generally called them; but the case had not struck her till they and she began to talk about it.  She was in a great turmoil, and plans presented themselves to her, were discarded, and then presented themselves again as if they were quite new.  The next night she slept well.  More than ever was she impressed with horror at what seemed to be Cutts’s certain fate—­more than ever was she resolved to help him if she could; and now at last she was a little clearer, and had determined to go over to the county town and see Messrs. Mortimer, Wake, Collins and Mortimer, the solicitors in whose hands the defence lay.  She did not doubt it to be her duty to go, although Cutts was no more to her than to any other person in Cowfold, and she had no notion of what she was going to say to the lawyers when she saw them.  On the following morning she started, under the pretence that she wanted something she could not obtain in Cowfold.  Having no mother, and being manageress in a small way at home, these trips were not unusual.  Courageous as she was, when she reached the office her heart sank, and she then first remembered that