One of the company saw this look and understood it.  Yielding to an impulse he took three steps, and laid his hand on Crawley.  “Ye little snake,” said he, “let the man alone!” and he sent Crawley spinning like a teetotum; then turned on his own heel and came away, looking a little red and ashamed of what he had done.  My reader shall guess which of the company this was.

Half way to the county jail Meadows and Crawley met William Fielding coming back.

It took hours and hours to realize all the happiness that had fallen on two loving hearts.  First had to pass away many a spasm of terror at the wrongs they had suffered, the danger they had escaped, the long misery they had grazed.  They remained rooted to the narrow spot of ground where such great and strange events had passed in a few minutes, and their destinies had fluctuated so violently, and all ended in joy unspeakable.  And everybody put questions to everybody, and all compared notes, and the hours fled while they unraveled their own strange story.  And Susan and George almost worshipped Isaac Levi; and Susan kissed him and called him her father, and hung upon his neck all gratitude.  And he passed his hand over her chestnut hair, and said, “Go to, foolish child,” but his deep rich voice trembled a little, and wonderful tenderness and benevolence glistened in that fiery eye.

He would now have left them, but nobody there would part with him; behooved him to stay and eat fish and pudding with them—­the meat they would excuse him if he would be good and not talk about going again.  And after dinner George and Tom must tell their whole story; and, as they told their eventful lives, it was observed that the hearers were far more agitated than the narrators.  The latter had been in a gold mine; had supped so full of adventures and crimes and horrors that nothing astonished them, and they were made sensible of the tremendous scenes they had been through by the loud ejaculations, the pallor, the excitement of their hearers.  As for Susan, again and again during the men’s narratives the tears streamed down her face, and once she was taken faint at George’s peril, and the story had to be interrupted and water sprinkled on her, and the men in their innocence were for not going on with their part, but she peremptorily insisted, and sneered at them for being so foolish as to take any notice of her foolishness—­she would have every word.  After all was he not there alive and well, sent back to her safe after so many perils, never, never to leave England again!

“Oh, giorno felice!” A day to be imagined; or described by a pen a thousand times greater and subtler than mine, but of this be sure—­it was a day such as, neither to Susan nor George, nor to you nor me, nor to any man or woman upon earth, has ever come twice between the cradle and the grave.

CHAPTER LXXXV.

A MONTH of Elysium.  And then one day George asked Susan, plump, when it would be agreeable to her to marry him.