‘I came to hear how Lord Fitzjocelyn is,’ said Tom, with brief bluntness and defiance.

‘A likely story!  What, you came to ask the apple-trees?’ and James scornfully laughed.  ’There was no back-door, I suppose!  I could forgive you anything but such a barefaced falsehood, when you know it was your own intolerable carelessness that was the only cause of the accident!’

’Better say ‘twas yourself!’ cried Tom, hoarse with passion and shaking all over.

The provocation was intense enough to bring back James’s real principle and self-restraint, and he spoke with more dignity.  ’You seem to be beside yourself, Madison,’ he said, ’you had better go at once, before any one finds you here.  Lord Fitzjocelyn cared for you so much, that I should not wish for you to meet your deserts under present circumstances.  Go!  I wish to have no more of your tongue!’

The boy was bounding off, while James walked slowly after to see him beyond the grounds, and finding Warren the keeper, desired him to be on the look-out.  Warren replied with the tidings that Madison had run away from his place, and that the police were looking out for him on the suspicion of having stolen Mr. Calcott’s parcel, moralizing further on the depravity of such doings when my young Lord was so ill, but accounting for the whole by pronouncing poaching to be bred in the bone of the Marksedge people.

This little scene had done Jem a great deal of good, both by the exhalation of bitterness and by the final exertion of forbearance.  He had, indeed, been under two great fallacies on this day,—­soothing Charlotte for the grief that was not caused by Fitzjocelyn’s illness, and driving to extremity the lad brimming over with sorrow not inferior to his own.  Little did he know what a gentle word might have done for that poor, wild, tempestuous spirit!

Yet, James’s heart smote him that evening, when, according to Louis’s earnest wish, Mr. Holdsworth came again, and they all were admitted to the room, and he saw the feeble sign and summons to the Vicar to bend down and listen.  ’Tell poor Madison, it was wrong in me not to go to see him.  Give him one of my books, and tell him to go on well!’

That day had been one of rapid change, and the remedies and suffering had so exhausted Louis that he could scarcely speak, and seemed hardly conscious who was present.  All his faculties were absorbed in the one wish, which late in the evening was granted.  The scene was like an epitome of his life—­the large irregular room, cumbered with the disorderly apparatus of all his multifarious pursuits, while there he lay on his little narrow iron bed, his features so fair and colourless as to be strangely like his mother’s marble effigy—­his eyes closed, and his brows often contracted with pain, so that there was a doubt how far his attention was free, but still with a calm, pure sweetness, that settled down more and more, as if he were being lulled into a sleep.