more moss than fruit.  The din of London was absolutely unheard by Mr. Ford’s client, but he heard her voice, saying, “You must learn to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery.  And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study the sky.  We have no mountains, but we have clouds.”  It was in the orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had plighted their troth—­ten years ago.

They were married.  Had he ever denied himself a single gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of his career?  He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications all his life.  His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man, not difficult to deceive.  He spent most of the next ten months in Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest time he had ever known.  Then his father recalled him peremptorily to England.

When Mr. Ford’s client obeyed his father’s summons, the climax of his difficulties seemed at hand.  The old man was anxious for a reconciliation, but resolved that his son should “settle in life;” and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young, handsome, and with a good fortune.  He gave him a fortnight for consideration.  If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent.  If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his death.

It was at this juncture that Jan’s mother followed her husband to England.  Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her father.  The crisis could hardly have been worse.  Mr. Ford’s client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily by letter when he reached London.  But before the letter was written, his wife died.

Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears.  It is like the cruelty that comes of terror.  He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free.  He took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his grandson—­Jan.  But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford’s client.  On the same day he got letters from his father and from his father-in-law.  From the first, to press his instant return home; from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him.  Jan’s father almost hated him.  That the child should have lived