Hark, Emmy, hark!  The shouts of happy children bursting out of school!  See, dearest—­see:  here they come homewards merrily from Oxton.

Thus, rewarded through the instrumentality of her own benevolence, help was speedily obtained; and Mrs. Sainsbury’s invalid-chair, hurried to the spot by an escort of indignant rustics, soon conveyed the recovering patient to the comforts of his own home, and the appliances of medical assistance.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHARLES’S RETURN; AND MRS. MACKIE’S EXPLANATION.

AND now the happy day was come at length; that day formerly so hoped-for, latterly so feared, but last of all, hailed with the joy that trembles at its own intensity.  The very morning after the sad occurrence it has just been my lot to chronicle—­while the general was having his wounds dressed, slight ones, happily, but still he was not safe, as inflammation might ensue—­while Mrs. Tracy was indulging in her third tumbler, mixed to whet her appetite for shrimps—­and while Emily was deciphering, for the forty thousandth time, Charles’s sanguine billet-doux—­lo! a dusty chaise and smoking posters, and a sun-burnt young fellow springing out, and just upon the stairs—­they were locked in each other’s arms!

Oh, the rapture of that instant! it can but happen once within a life.  Ye that have loved, remember such a meeting; and ye that never loved, conceive it if you can; for my pen hath little skill to paint so bright a pleasure.  It is to be all heart, all pulse, all sympathy, all spirit—­but the warm soft kiss, that rarified bloom of the Material.

How the sick old nurse got out, cased in many blankets; how she was bundled up stairs, and deposited safely on a sofa, no poet is alive to sing:  to those who would record the payment of postillions, let me leave so sweet a theme.

The first fond greeting over, and those tumults of affection sobered down, Charles rejoiced to find how lovingly the general met him; the kind and good old man fell upon his neck, as the father in the parable.  Many things were then to be made known:  and many questions answered, as best might be, about a mother and a brother; but well aware of all things ourselves, let us be satisfied that Charles heard in due time all they had to tell him; though neither Emily nor the general could explain what had become of Julian after that terrible encounter.  In their belief, he had fled for very life, thinking he had killed his father.  Poor wretched man, thought Charles—­on that same spot, too, where he would have murdered me!  And for his mother—­why came she not down eagerly and happily, as mothers ever do, to greet her long-lost son?  Do not ask, Charles; do not press the question.  Think her ill, dying, dead—­any thing but—­drunken.  He ran to her room-door; but it was locked—­luckily.

Now, Charles—­now speedily to business; happy business that, if I may trust the lover’s flushing cheek, and Emily’s radiant eyes; but a mournful one too, and a fearful, if I turn my glance to that poor old man, wounded in body and stricken in mind—­who waits to hear, in more despondency than hope, what he knows to be the bitter truth—­the truth that must be told, to the misery of those dear children.