THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Education 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Louise Farrow Barr 
 
Copyright, 1899, by Henry Altemus. 
 
BY THE AUTHOR or ' LADDIE" 
 
 &^j>sse 
 
 > ^ Vr^ <r3F\l 
 
Education 
 GIFT 
 
1ST 
 
 z. 
 
 ZOE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "Hath this child been already bap- 
 tized, or no ?" 
 
 "No, she ain't; leastwise we don't 
 know as how she've been- or no, so we 
 thought as we'd best have her done." 
 
 The clergyman who was taking Mr 
 Clifford's duty at Downside for that 
 Sunday thought that this might be the 
 usual undecided way of answering 
 among the natives, and proceeded with 
 the service. There were two other ba- 
 bies also brought that afternoon, one of 
 which was crying lustily, so that it was 
 not easy to hear what the sponsors an- 
 swered; and, moreover, the officiating 
 clergyman was a young man, and the 
 prospect of holding that screaming, red- 
 
 331 
 
6 Zoe. 
 
 faced little object made him too nervous 
 and anxious to get done with it to stop 
 and make further inquiries. 
 
 The woman who returned this unde- 
 cided answer was an elderly woman, 
 with a kind, sunburnt, honest face, very 
 much heated just now, and embarrassed, 
 too ; for the baby in her arms prevented 
 her getting at her pocket handkerchief 
 to wipe the perspiration from her brow 
 and pulling her bonnet on to its proper 
 position on her head. The man beside 
 her was also greatly embarrassed, and 
 kept shuffling his large hob-nailed shoes 
 together, and turning his hat round and 
 round in his fingers. I think that really 
 that hat was the chief cause of his dis- 
 comfort, for he was so accustomed to 
 have it on his head that he could not feel 
 quite himself without it; and, indeed, 
 his wife could hardly recognize him, as 
 
Zoe. 7 
 
 she had been accustomed to see him 
 wearing it indoors and out during the 
 twenty years of their married life, 
 pushed back for meals or smoking, but 
 always on his head, except in bed ; and 
 even there, report says, on cold winter 
 nights, he had recourse to it to keep off 
 the draught from that cracked pane in 
 the window. His face, like his wife's, 
 was weather-beaten, and of the same 
 broad, flat type as hers, with small, sur- 
 prised, dazzled-looking, pale blue eyes, 
 and a tangle of grizzled light hair under 
 his chin. He was noticeable for the 
 green smock-frock he wore, a garment 
 which is so rapidly disappearing before 
 the march of civilization, and giving 
 place to the ill-cut, ill-made coat of 
 shoddy cloth which is fondly thought to 
 resemble the squire's. 
 
 The christening party was completed 
 
8 Zoe. 
 
 by -fl, hobble-de-hoy lad of about sixteen, 
 who tried to cover his invincible shyness 
 by a grin, and to keep his foolish eyes 
 from the row of farm boys in the aisle, 
 whose critical glances he felt in every 
 pore. He was so like both father and 
 mother, that there was no mistaking his 
 parentage ; but when Mrs. Gray took off 
 the shepherd's-plaid shawl in which the 
 baby was wrapped, such a little dark 
 head and swarthy face were exposed to 
 view as might have made intelligent 
 spectators (if there were any in Down- 
 side church that afternoon, which I 
 doubt) reflect on the laws of heredity 
 and reversion to original types. 
 
 "Name this child I" 
 
 The clergyman had got successfully 
 through his business with the roaring 
 George Augustus and the whimpering 
 Alberta Florence, and had now the little, 
 
Zoe. 9^ 
 
 quiet, brown-faced baby in his arms. 
 Even a young and unmarried man was 
 fain to confess that it was an unusually 
 pretty little face that lay against his 
 surplice, with a pointed chin, and more 
 eyebrows and lashes than most young 
 babies possess, and with dark eyes that 
 looked up at him with a certain intelli- 
 gence, recognizable even to an unpreju- 
 diced observer. 
 
 "Name this child !" 
 
 Mrs. Gray had taken advantage of 
 this opportunity to mop her forehead 
 with her blue-and-white pocket handker- 
 chief, and wrestled with her bonnet's 
 unconquerable tendency to slip off be- 
 hind, and the clergyman passed the ques- 
 tion on to her husband, who fixed his 
 eye on a bluebottle buzzing in one of the 
 windows, and jerked out what sounded 
 like "Joe." 
 
10 Zoe. 
 
 "I thought it was a girl," whispered 
 the clergyman. "Joe, did you say ?" 
 
 "No, it ain't that 'zactly. Here, 
 'Liza, can't you tell the gentleman? 
 You knows best what it be." 
 
 The next attempt sounded like "Sue," 
 and the clergyman suggested Susan as 
 the name, but that would not do. 
 
 "Zola" seemed to him, though not a 
 reader of French novels, unsuitable, and 
 "Zero," too, he could not quite appre- 
 ciate. 
 
 "Dashun! if I can make it out, an 
 outlandish sorter name!" said Gray, 
 with a terrible inclination to put on his 
 hat in the excitement of the moment, 
 only checked by a timely nudge from 
 his wife's elbow; "here, ain't you got it 
 wrote down somewheres? Can't you 
 show it up ?" 
 
 And after a lengthened rummage in 
 
Zoe. 11 
 
 a voluminous pocket, and the produc- 
 tion of several articles irrelevant to the 
 occasion, a thimble, a bit of ginger, 
 and part of a tract, Mrs. Gray brought 
 to light a piece of paper, on which was 
 written the name "Zoe." 
 
 "Zoe, I baptize thee " 
 
 A sudden crash on the organ-pedals 
 followed these words. Mr. Robins, the 
 organist, had, perhaps, been asleep and 
 let his foot slip on to the pedals, or, 
 perhaps, he had thought there was no 
 wind in the instrument and that he 
 could put his foot down with impunity. 
 He was plainly very much ashamed of 
 himself for what had happened, and it 
 was only right that he should be, for of 
 course it made all the school children 
 giggle and a good many of their elders, 
 too, who should have known better. 
 
 The boy who blew the organ declared 
 
12 Zoe. 
 
 that he turned quite red and bent his 
 head over the keys as if he were exam- 
 ining something on them, and he was 
 evidently nervous and upset, for he 
 made ever so many mistakes in the con- 
 cluding part of the service, and to the 
 great surprise and to the satisfaction 
 of the blower, cut the voluntary at the 
 end unusually short, ending it in an 
 abrupt and discordant way, which, I am 
 sorry to say, the blower described as 
 "a 'owl," though any shock that the 
 boy's musical taste sustained was com- 
 pensated for by the feeling that he would 
 be at home at least ten minutes earlier 
 than usual to tea. 
 
 Now it so happened that Mr. Robins 
 was in the vestry when the christening 
 party came in to give the particulars 
 about the babies to be entered in the 
 register. He had come to fetch a music- 
 
Zoe. 13 
 
 book, which, however, it appeared after 
 all had been left at home ; but the clergy- 
 man was glad of his help in making out 
 the story of the little Zoe who had just 
 been baptized. 
 
 I have spoken before of intelligent ob- 
 servers noticing and drawing arguments 
 from the entire want of likeness between 
 Zoe and her parents; but all the ob- 
 servers on this occasion, whether intel- 
 ligent or not, with the exception of the 
 officiating clergyman, were quite aware 
 that Zoe was not the Grays' baby, but 
 was a foundling child picked up one 
 night by Gray in his garden. 
 
 Of her antecedents nothing was 
 known, and, of course, any sensible peo- 
 ple would have sent her to the work- 
 house, everyone agreed on this point 
 and told the Grays so ; and yet, I think, 
 half the women who were so positive 
 
14 Zoe. 
 
 and severe on Mrs. Gray's folly would 
 have done just the same. 
 
 We do not half of us know how kind- 
 hearted we are till we are tried, or per- 
 haps it is our foolishness that we do not 
 realize. 
 
 Gray was only a laborer with twelve 
 shillings a week and a couple of pounds 
 more at harvest, and, of course, in bad 
 weather there was no work and no wages, 
 which is the rule among the agricultu- 
 ral laborers about Downside, as in many 
 other parts, so it did not present itself as 
 a grievance to Gray's mind, though, to 
 be sure, in winter or wet seasons it was 
 a hard matter to get along. But it was 
 neighbors' fare, and none of them felt 
 hardly used, for Farmer Benson, what 
 with bad seasons and cattle plague, was 
 not much better off than they were, and 
 the men knew it. 
 
Zoe. 15 
 
 But out of these wages it was hardly 
 to be expected of the most provident of 
 people that anything could be laid by 
 for old age or a rainy day ; indeed, there 
 seemed so many rainy days in the pres- 
 ent that it was not easy to give much 
 thought to those in the future. Of 
 course, too, the local provident club had 
 come to utter and hopeless grief. Is 
 there any country place where this has 
 not been the case ? Gray had paid into 
 it regularly for years and had gone 
 every Whitmonday to its dinner, his one 
 voluntary holiday during the year, on 
 which occasion he took too much beer 
 as a sort of solemn duty connected with 
 his membership. When it collapsed he 
 was too old to join another club, and so 
 was left stranded. He bore it very 
 philosophically; indeed, I think it was 
 only on Whitmonday that he felt it at 
 
16 Zoe. 
 
 all, as it seemed strange and unnatural 
 to go to bed quite sober on that day as 
 he did on all other days of the year. 
 
 On all other occasions he was a thor- 
 oughly sober man, perhaps, however, 
 more from necessity than choice, as the 
 beer supplied by Farmer Benson in the 
 hayfield was of a quality on which, as 
 the men said, you got "no forrarder" 
 if you drank a hogshead, and Gray had 
 no money to spare from the necessaries 
 of life to spend on luxury, even the 
 luxury of getting drunk. 
 
 He was in one way better off than 
 his neighbors from a worldly point of 
 view, in that he had not a large family, 
 as most of them were blessed with ; for 
 children are a blessing, a gift and her- 
 itage that cometh of the Lord, even 
 when they cluster round a cold hearth 
 and a scanty board. But Gray had only 
 
Zoe. 17 
 
 two sons, the elder of whom, Tom, we 
 have seen at Zoe's christening, and who 
 had been at work four years, having 
 managed at twelve to scramble into the 
 fifth standard, and at once left school 
 triumphantly, and now can neither read 
 nor write, having clean forgotten every- 
 thing drummed into his head, but earns 
 three shillings and sixpence a week go- 
 ing along with Farmer Benson's horses, 
 from five o'clock in the morning till 
 six in the evening, the long wet fur- 
 rows and heavy ploughed land having 
 made havoc of his legs, as such work 
 does with most plough-boys. 
 
 The younger boy, Bill, is six years 
 younger and still at school, and, having 
 been a delicate child, or as his mother 
 puts it, "enjoying bad health," is not 
 promising for farm-work; and, being 
 fond of his book and a favorite at school, 
 
18 Zoe. 
 
 his mother cherishes hopes of his be- 
 coming a school-teacher in days to come. 
 
 But such is the perversity of human 
 nature that, though many a Downside 
 mother with a family of little steps en- 
 vied Mrs. Gray her compact family and 
 the small amount of washing attached 
 to it, that ungrateful woman yearned 
 after an occupant for the old wooden 
 cradle, and treasured up the bits of baby 
 things that had belonged to Tom and 
 Bill, and nursed up any young thing 
 that came to hand arid wanted care, 
 bringing up a motherless blind kitten 
 with assiduous care and patience, as if 
 the supply of that commodity was not 
 always largely in excess of the demand, 
 and lavishing more care on a sick lamb 
 or a superfluous young pig than most 
 of the neighbors' babies received. 
 
 So when one evening in May Gray 
 
Zoe. 19 
 
 came in holding a bundle in his arms 
 and poked it into her lap as she sat 
 darning the holes in Tom's stockings 
 (she was not good at needlework, but 
 she managed, as she said, to "goblify" 
 the holes), he knew pretty well that it 
 was into no unwilling arms that he gave 
 the baby. 
 
 "And a mercy it was as the darning- 
 needle didn't run right into the little 
 angel," Mrs. Gray always said in re- 
 counting the story. 
 
 He had been down to the village to 
 fetch some tobacco, for the Grays' cot- 
 tage was right away from the village, 
 up a lane leading on to the hillside, and 
 there were no other cottages near. Tom 
 was in bed, though it was not eight yet, 
 but he was generally ready for bed 
 when he had had his tea ; and Bill was 
 up on the hill, a favorite resort of his, 
 
20 Zoe. 
 
 and especially when it was growing dark 
 and the great indigo sky spread over 
 him, with the glory of the stars coming 
 out. 
 
 "He never were like other lads," his 
 mother used to 'say with a mixture of 
 pride and irritation; "always mooning 
 about by himself on them old hills." 
 
 The cottage door stood open, as it 
 always did, and Mrs. Gray sat there, 
 plainly to be seen from the lane, with 
 Tom's gray stocking and her eyes and 
 the tallow candle as near together as 
 possible. She did not hear a sound, 
 though she was listening for Bill's re- 
 turn, and even though Tom's snores pen- 
 etrated the numerous crevices in the 
 floor above, they were hardly enough to 
 drown other sounds. 
 
 So there was no knowing when the 
 bundle was laid just inside the cottage 
 
Zoe. 21 
 
 gate not quite in the middle of the brick 
 path, but on one side against the box 
 edging, where a clump of daffodils 
 nodded their graceful heads over the 
 dark velvet polyanthus in the border. 
 Gray nearly stepped upon the bundle, 
 having large feet and the way of walk- 
 ing which covers a good deal of ground 
 to right and left, a way which plough- 
 driving teaches. 
 
 Mrs. Gray heard an exclamation. 
 
 "Dashun !" was, I think, Gray's fa- 
 vorite ejaculation, which I am afraid is 
 an imprecation, but of a mild order, 
 and may perhaps be allowed to pass, 
 as expletives of some kind seem a neces- 
 sity to human nature. 
 
 And then Gray came in, and, as I 
 have said, did his best to impale the 
 bundle, baby and all, on the top of his 
 wife's darning-needle. 
 
22 Zoe. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The organist of Downside, Mr. 
 Robins, lived in a little house close to 
 the church. 
 
 Mr. Clifford, the vicar, was accounted 
 very lucky by the neighboring clergy 
 for having such a man, and not being 
 exposed to all the vagaries of a young 
 schoolmaster, or, perhaps still worse, 
 schoolmistress, with all the latest 
 musical fancies of the training colleges. 
 Neither had he to grapple with the 
 tyranny of the leading bass nor the con- 
 ceit and touchiness that seems insepara- 
 ble from the tenor voice, since Mr. Rob- 
 ins kept a firm and sensible hand on 
 the reins, and drove that generally un- 
 manageable team, a village choir, with 
 the greatest discretion. 
 
 But when Mr. Clifford was compli- 
 
Zoe. 23 
 
 mented by his friends on the possession 
 of such a treasure, he accepted their 
 remarks a little doubtfully, being some- 
 times inclined to think that he would 
 almost rather have had a less excellent 
 choir and have had some slight voice in 
 the matter himself. 
 
 Mr. Kobins imported a certain solem- 
 nity into the musical matters of Down- 
 side, which of course was very desirable 
 as far as the church services were con- 
 cerned ; but when it came to penny- 
 readings and village concerts, Mr. Clif- 
 ford and some of the parishioners were 
 disposed to envy the pleasant ease of 
 such festivities in other parishes, where, 
 though the music was very inferior, the 
 enjoyment of both performers and au- 
 dience was far greater. 
 
 Mr. Eobins, for one thing, set his face 
 steadily against comic songs; and Mr. 
 
24 Zoe. 
 
 Clifford in his inmost heart had an un- 
 grateful ambition to sing a certain song 
 called "The Three Little Pigs," with 
 which Mr. Wilson in the next parish 
 simply brought down the house on sev- 
 eral occasions ; though Mr. Clifford felt 
 he by no means did full justice to it, 
 especially in the part where the old 
 mother "waddled about, saying 'Umph ! 
 Umph! UmphP while the little ones 
 said 'Wee ! Wee !' " To be sure, Mr. 
 Wilson suffered for months after these 
 performances from outbursts of grunt- 
 ing among his youthful parishioners at 
 sight of him, and even at the Sunday- 
 school one audacious boy had given vent 
 on one occasion to an "Umph !" very 
 true indeed to nature, but not conducive 
 to good behavior in his class. But Mr. 
 Clifford did not know the after effects of 
 Mr. Wilson's vocal success. 
 
Zoe. 25 
 
 Likewise Mr. Robins selected very 
 simple music, and yet exacted an amount 
 of practising unheard of at Bilton or 
 Stokeley, where, after one or two at- 
 tempts, they felt competent to face a 
 crowded school-room, and yell or growl 
 out such choruses as "The Heavens Are 
 Telling" or "The Hallelujah Chorus," 
 with a lofty indifference to tune or time, 
 and with their respective schoolmasters 
 banging away at the accompaniment 
 within a bar or two of the singers, all 
 feeling quite satisfied if they finished 
 up all together on the concluding chord 
 or thereabouts, flushed and triumphant, 
 with perspiration standing on their fore- 
 heads, and an expression of honest pride 
 on their faces, as much as to say, 
 "There's for you. What do you think 
 of that?" 
 
 If success is to be measured by ap- 
 
26 Zoe. 
 
 plause, there is no doubt these perform- 
 ances were most successful, far more 
 so than the accurately rendered "Hardy 
 Norseman" or "Men of Harlech" at 
 Downside, in which lights and shades, 
 pianos and fortes were carefully ob- 
 served, and any attempt on any one's 
 part, even the tenors, to distinguish 
 themselves above the others was instant- 
 ly suppressed. The result, from a mu- 
 sical point of view, was no doubt satis- 
 factory ; but the applause was of a very 
 moderate character, and never accom- 
 panied by those vociferous "angcores" 
 which are so truly gratifying to the soul 
 of musical artistes. 
 
 Mr. Robins was a middle-aged man, 
 looking older than he really was, as his 
 hair was quite white. He had some 
 small independent means of his own, 
 which he supplemented by his small 
 
Zoe. 27 
 
 salary as organist, and by giving a few 
 music lessons in the neighborhood. He 
 had been in his earlier years a vicar- 
 choral at one of the cathedrals, and had 
 come to Downside twenty years ago, 
 after the death of his wife, bringing with 
 him his little girl, in whom he was en- 
 tirely wrapt up. 
 
 He spoilt her so persistently, and his 
 housekeeper, Mrs. Sands, was so gentle 
 and meek-spirited, that the effect on a 
 naturally self-willed child can easily be 
 imagined ; and as she grew up, she be- 
 came more and more uncontrollable. 
 She was a pretty, gypsy-looking girl, in- 
 heriting her sweet looks from her mother 
 and her voice and musical taste from her 
 father. There was more than one young 
 farmer in the neighborhood who cast 
 admiring glances toward the corner of 
 the church near the organ where the 
 
28 Zoe. 
 
 organist's pretty daughter sat, and slack- 
 ened the pace of his horse as he passed 
 the clipped yew-hedge by the church, to 
 catch a glimpse of her in the bright little 
 patch of garden, or to hear her clear, 
 sweet voice singing over her work. 
 
 But people said Mr. Robins thought 
 no one good enough for her, and though 
 he himself had come of humble parent- 
 age, and in no way regarded himself nor 
 expected to be regarded as a gentleman, 
 it was generally understood that no suit- 
 or except a gentleman would be accept- 
 able for Edith. 
 
 And so it took everyone by surprise, 
 and no one more so than her father, 
 when the girl took up with Martin 
 Blake, the son of the blacksmith in the 
 next village,- who might be seen most 
 days with a smutty face and leather 
 apron hammering away at the glowing 
 
Zoe. 29 
 
 red metal on the anvil. It would have 
 been well for him if he had only been 
 seen thus, with the marks of honest toil 
 about him ; but Martin Blake was too 
 often to be seen at the "Crown," and 
 often in a state that any one who loved 
 him would have grieved to see ; and he 
 was always to be found at any race 
 meetings and steeplechases and fairs in 
 the neighborhood, and report said was by 
 no means choice in his company. 
 
 To be sure he was good-looking and 
 pleasant-mannered, and had a sort of 
 rollicking, light-hearted way with him 
 which w T as very attractive; but still it 
 seemed little short of infatuation on the 
 part of Edith Robins to take up with 
 a man whose character was so well 
 known, and who was in every way her 
 inferior in position and education. 
 
 ~No doubt Mr. Robins was very inju- 
 
30 Zoe. 
 
 dicious in his treatment of her when he 
 found out what was going on, and as 
 this was the first time in her life that 
 Edith's wishes had been crossed, it was 
 not likely that she would yield without a 
 struggle. The mere fact of opposition 
 seemed to deepen what was at first mere- 
 ly an ordinary liking into an absorbing 
 passion. It was perfectly useless to 
 reason with her ; she disbelieved all the 
 stories to his discredit, which were 
 abundant, and treated those who repeat- 
 ed them as prejudiced and ill-natured. 
 
 It was in vain that Mr. Robins by 
 turns entreated and commanded her to 
 give him up, her father's distress or 
 anger alike seemed indifferent to her; 
 and when he forbade Martin to come 
 near the place and kept her as much as 
 possible under his eye to prevent meet- 
 ings between them, it only roused in her 
 
Zoe. 31 
 
 a more obstinate determination to have 
 her own way in spite of him. She was 
 missing one morning from the little bed- 
 room which Mrs. Sands loved to keep as 
 dainty and pretty as a lady's, and from 
 the garden where the roses and gerani- 
 ums did such credit to her care, and 
 from her place in the little church 
 where her prayer-book still lay on the 
 desk as she had left it the day before. 
 
 She had gone off with Martin Blake 
 to London, without a word of sorrow or 
 farewell to the father who had been so 
 foolishly fond of her, or to the home 
 where her happy petted childhood had 
 passed. It nearly broke her father's 
 heart; it made an old man of him and 
 turned his hair white, and it seemed 
 to freeze or petrify all his kindliness 
 and human sympathy. 
 
 He was a proud, reserved man, and 
 
32 Zoe. 
 
 could not bear the pity that every one 
 felt for him, or endure the well-meant 
 but injudicious condolences, mixed with 
 "I told you so" and "I've thought for 
 a long time," which the neighbors were 
 so liberal with. Even Mr. Clifford's 
 attempts at consolation he could hardly 
 bring himself to listen to courteously, 
 and Jane Sands' tearful eyes and quiver- 
 ing voice irritated him beyond all en- 
 durance. If there had been any one to 
 whom he could have talked unrestrain- 
 edly and let out all the pent-up disap- 
 pointment and wounded love and tor- 
 tured pride that surged and boiled with- 
 in him, he might have got through it 
 better, or rather it might have raised 
 him, as rightly borne troubles do, above 
 his poor, little, pitiful self, and nearer 
 to God ; but this was just what he could 
 not do. 
 
Zoe. 33 
 
 He came nearest it sometimes in 
 those long evenings of organ playing, of 
 the length of which poor little Jack 
 Davis, the blower, so bitterly com- 
 plained, when the long sad notes wailed 
 and sobbed through the little church like 
 the voice of a weary, sick soul making 
 its complaint. But even so, he could 
 not tell it all to God, though he had been 
 given that power of expression in music 
 which must make it easier to those so 
 gifted to cry unto the Lord. 
 
 But the music wailed itself into si- 
 lence, and Jack in his corner by the 
 bellows waited terror-struck at the 
 "unked" sounds and the darkening 
 church, till he ventured at last to ask: 
 "Be I to blow, Mister? I'm kinder 
 skeered like." 
 
 So the organist's trouble turned him 
 bitter and hard, and changed his love 
 
34 Zoe. 
 
 for his daughter into cold resentment; 
 he would not have her name mentioned. 
 in his presence, and he refused to open 
 a letter she sent him a few weeks after 
 her marriage, and bid Jane Sands send 
 it back if she knew the address of the 
 person who sent it. 
 
 On her side Edith was quite as obsti- 
 nate and resentful. She had no idea of 
 humbling herself and asking pardon. 
 She thought she had quite a right to do 
 as she liked, and she believed her father 
 would be too unhappy without her to 
 bear the separation long. She very 
 soon found out the mistake she had 
 made, indeed, even in the midst of her 
 infatuation about Martin Blake, I think 
 there lurked a certain distrust of him, 
 and they had not been married many 
 weeks I might almost say days before 
 this distrust was more than realized. 
 
Zoe. 35 
 
 His feelings toward her, too, had 
 been more flattered vanity at being pre- 
 ferred by such a superior sort of girl 
 than any deeper feeling, and vanity is 
 not a sufficiently lasting foundation for 
 married happiness, especially when the 
 cold winds of poverty blow on the edi- 
 fice, and when the superior sort of girl 
 has not been brought up to anything 
 useful, and cannot cook the dinner, or 
 iron a shirt, or keep the house tidy. 
 
 When his father, the old blacksmith 
 at Bilton, died six months after they 
 were married, Martin wished to come 
 back and take up the work there, more 
 especially as work was hard to get in 
 London and living dear; but Edith 
 would not hear of it, and opposed it so 
 violently that she got her way, though 
 Martin afterwards maintained that this 
 decision was the ruin of him, occasion- 
 
36 Zoe. 
 
 ally dating his ruin six months earlier, 
 from his wedding. Perhaps he was 
 right, and he might have settled down 
 steadily in the old home and among the 
 old neighbors in spite of his fine-lady 
 wife; but when he said so, Edith was 
 quick to remember and cast up at him 
 the stories which she had disbelieved and 
 ignored before, to prove in their constant 
 wranglings that place and neighborhood 
 had nothing to do with his idleness and 
 unsteadiness. No one ever heard much 
 of these five years in London, for Edith 
 wrote no more after that letter was re- 
 turned. 
 
 Those five years made little difference 
 at Downside, except in Mr. Kobins' 
 white hair and set, lined face ; the little 
 house behind the yew-hedge looked just 
 the same, and Jane Sands' kind, placid 
 face was still as kind and placid. Some 
 
Zoe. 37 
 
 of the girls had left school and gone to 
 service ; some of the lads had developed 
 into hobble-de-hoys and came to church 
 with walking-sticks and well-oiled hair ; 
 one or two of the old folks had died; 
 one or two more white-headed babies 
 crawled about the cottage floors; but 
 otherwise Downside was just the same 
 as it had been five years before, when, 
 one June morning, a self-willed girl had 
 softly opened the door under the honey- 
 dewy garden, where the birds were call- 
 ing such a glad good-morning as she 
 passed to join her lover in the lane. 
 
 But the flame of life burns quicker 
 and fiercer in London than at Down- 
 side, for that same girl, coming back 
 after only five years in London, was so 
 changed and aged and altered that 
 though, to be sure, she came in the dusk 
 and was muffled up in a big shawl no 
 
38 Zoe. 
 
 one recognized her, or thought for a 
 moment of pretty, coquettish, well- 
 dressed Edith Kobins, when the weary, 
 shabby-looking woman passed them by. 
 She had lingered a minute or two by 
 the churchyard gate, though tramps, for 
 such her worn-out boots and muddy 
 skirts proclaimed her, do not as a rule 
 care for such music as sounded out 
 from the church door, where Mr. Kobins 
 was consoling himself for the irritation 
 of choir-practice by ten minutes' play- 
 ing. It was soon over, and Jack Davis, 
 still blower, and not much taller than he 
 was five years before, charged out in the 
 rebound from the tension of long blow- 
 ing, and nearly knocked over the woman 
 standing by the churchyard gate in the 
 shadow of the yew-tree, and made the 
 baby she held in her arms give a feeble 
 cry. 
 
Zoe. 39 
 
 "Now, then, out of the way!" he 
 shouted in that unnecessarily loud voice 
 boys assume after church, perhaps to 
 try if their lungs are still capable of 
 producing such a noise after enforced 
 silence. 
 
 The woman made no answer, but after 
 the boy had run off went in and waited 
 in the porch till the sound of turning 
 keys announced that the organist was 
 closing the organ and church for the 
 night. But as his footsteps drew near 
 on the stone pavement she started and 
 trembled as if she had been afraid, and 
 when he came out into the porch she 
 shrank away into the shadows as if she 
 wished to be unobserved. He might 
 easily have passed her, for it was nearly 
 dark from the yew-tree and the row of 
 elms that shut out the western sky, 
 where the sunset was just dying away. 
 
40 Zoe. 
 
 His mind, too, was occupied with other 
 things, and he was humming over the 
 verse of a hymn the boys had been sing- 
 ing, "Far From My Heavenly Home." 
 There was no drilling into them the 
 proper rendering of the last pathetic 
 words 
 
 "Oh guide me through the desert here, 
 And bring me home at last." 
 
 He quite started when a hand was 
 laid upon his arm, and a voice, changed 
 indeed and weak, but still the voice that 
 in old days not so very old, either 
 was the one voice for him in all the 
 world, said "Father !" 
 
 I think just for one minute his im- 
 pulse was to take her in his arms and 
 forget the ingratitude and desertion and 
 deceit, like the father in the parable 
 whose heart went out to the poor prodi- 
 gal while he was yet a long way off ; but 
 
Zoe. 41 
 
 the next moment the cold, bitter, resent- 
 ful feelings quenched the gentler im- 
 pulse, and he drew away his arm from 
 her detaining hold, and passed on along 
 the flagged path as if he were uncon- 
 scious of her presence, and this on the 
 very threshold of His house who so piti- 
 fully forgives the debts of His servants, 
 forasmuch as they have not to pay. 
 
 But he had not reached the church- 
 yard gate before she was at his side 
 again. 
 
 "Stop," she said, "you must hear me. 
 It's not for my own sake, it's the child. 
 It's a little girl; the others were boys, 
 and I didn't mind so much; if they'd 
 grown up, they might have got on some- 
 how, but there! they're safe, anyhow 
 both of them in one week," wailed the 
 mother's voice, protesting against her 
 own words that she did not mind about 
 
42 Zoe. 
 
 them. "But this is a girl, and not a bit 
 like him. She's like me, and you used 
 to say I was like mother. She's like 
 mother, I'm sure she is. There, just 
 look at her. It's so dark, but you can 
 see even by this light that she's not like 
 the Blakes." She was fumbling to draw 
 back the shawl from the baby's head 
 with her disengaged hand, while with 
 the other she still held a grip on his arm 
 that was almost painful in its pressure ; 
 but he stood doggedly with his head 
 turned away, and gave no sign of hear- 
 ing what she said. 
 
 "He left me six months ago," she 
 went on, "and I've struggled along some- 
 how. I don't want ever to see him 
 again. They say he's gone to America, 
 but I don't care. I don't mind starving 
 myself, but it's the little girl. Oh ! I've 
 not come to ask you to take me in, 
 
Zoe. 43 
 
 though it wouldn't be for long," and the 
 wretched, hollow cough that had inter- 
 rupted her words once or twice before 
 broke in now as if to confirm what she 
 said; "if you'd just take the child. 
 She's a dear little thing and not old 
 enough at two months to have learnt any 
 harm, and Jane Sands would be good to 
 her, I know she would, for the sake of 
 old times. And I'll go away and never 
 come near to trouble you again I'll 
 promise it. Oh ! just look at her ! If 
 it wasn't so dark you'd see she was like 
 mother. Why, you can feel the like- 
 ness if you just put your hand on her 
 little face; often in the night I've felt 
 it, and I never did with the boys. She's 
 very good, and she's too little to fret 
 after me, bless her! and she'll never 
 know anything about me, and needn't 
 even know she has a father, and he's 
 
44 Zoe. 
 
 not ever likely to trouble himself about 
 her. 5 ' 
 
 Her voice grew more and more plead- 
 ing and entreating as she went on, for 
 there was not the slightest response or 
 movement in the still figure before her, 
 less movement even than in the old yew- 
 tree behind, whose smaller branches, 
 black against the sky where the orange 
 of the sunset was darkening into dull 
 crimson, stirred a little in the evening 
 air. 
 
 "Oh! you can't refuse to take her! 
 See, I'll carry her as far as the door so 
 that Jane can take her, and then I'll go 
 clear away and never come near her 
 again. You'll have her christened, 
 won't you ? I've been thinking all the 
 weary way what she should be called, 
 and I thought, unless you had a fancy 
 for any other name" (a little stifled sigh 
 
Zoe, 45 
 
 at the thought of how dear one name 
 used to be to him), "I should like her to 
 be Zoe. Just when she was born, and 
 I was thinking, thinking of you and 
 home and everything, that song of yours 
 kept ringing in my head, 'Maid of Ath- 
 ens,' and the last line of every verse be- 
 ginning with Zoe. I can't remember 
 the other words, but I know you said 
 they meant 'My life, I love you;' and 
 Zoe was life, and I thought when I'm 
 gone my little girl would live my life 
 over again, my happy old life with you, 
 and make up to you for all the trouble 
 her mother's been to you." 
 
 She stopped for want of breath and 
 for the cough that shook her from head 
 to foot, and at last he turned ; but even 
 in that dim light she could see his face 
 plainly enough to know that there was 
 no favorable answer coming from those 
 
46 Zoe. 
 
 hard-set lips and from those cold, 
 steady eyes, and her hand dropped from 
 his arm even before he spoke. 
 
 "You should have thought of this five 
 years ago," he said. "I do not see that 
 I am called upon to support Martin 
 Blake's family. I must trouble you to 
 let me pass." 
 
 She fell back against the trunk of the 
 yew-tree as if he had struck her, and the 
 movement caused the baby to wake and 
 cry, and the sound of its little wailing 
 voice followed him as he walked down 
 the path and out into the road ; and he 
 could hear it still when he reached his 
 own garden gate, where through the open 
 door the light shone out from the lamp 
 that Jane Sands was just carrying into 
 his room, where his supper was spread 
 and his arm-chair and slippers awaited 
 him. 
 
Zoe. 47 
 
 In after days, remembering that even- 
 ing, he fancied he had heard "Father" 
 once more mingling with the baby's cry; 
 but he went in and shut the door and 
 drew the bolt, and went into the cheer- 
 ful, pleasant room, leaving outside the 
 night and the child's cry and the black 
 shadow of the church and the yew-tree. 
 
 It was only the beginning of the an- 
 noyance, he told himself; he must ex- 
 pect a continued course of persecution, 
 and he listened, while he made a pre- 
 tence of eating his supper, for the steps 
 outside and the knock at the door which 
 would surely renew the unwarrantable 
 attempt to saddle him with the charge of 
 the child. He listened, too, as he sat 
 after supper, holding up the newspaper 
 in front of his unobservant eyes; and 
 he listened most of the night as he tossed 
 on his sleepless pillow listened to the 
 
48 Zoe. 
 
 wind that had risen and moaned and 
 sobbed round the house like a living 
 thing in pain listened to the pitiless 
 rain that followed, pelting down on the 
 ivy outside and on the tiles above his 
 head as if bent on finding its way into 
 the warm, comfortable bed where he lay. 
 
Zoe. 49 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 But the annoyance for which Mr. 
 Robins had been preparing himself was 
 not repeated; the persecution, if such 
 had been intended, was not continued. 
 As the days passed by he began to leave 
 off listening and lying awake ; he came 
 out from his house or from the church 
 without furtive glances of expectation 
 to the right and left; he lost that con- 
 stant feeling of apprehension and the 
 necessity to nerve himself for resistance. 
 He had never been one to gossip or con- 
 cern himself with other people's matters, 
 and Jane Sands' had never brought the 
 news of the place to amuse her master 
 as many in her place would have done, 
 so now he had no way of knowing if his 
 daughter's return had been known in 
 
 4 
 
50 Zoe. 
 
 the place or what comments the neigh- 
 bors passed on it. 
 
 He fancied that Jane looked a little 
 more anxious than usual; but then her 
 sister was lying ill at Stokeley and she 
 was often there with her, so that account- 
 ed for her anxiety. It accounted, too, 
 for her being away one evening a fort- 
 night later, when Mr. Robins, coming in 
 in the dusk, found something laid on his 
 doorstep. His thoughts had been other- 
 wise occupied, but the moment his eyes 
 fell on the shepherd's-plaid shawl wrap- 
 ping the bundle at his feet, he knew 
 what it was and recognized a renewed 
 attempt to coerce him into doing what 
 he had vowed he would not. He saw it 
 all in a minute, and understood that now 
 Jane Sands was in the plot against him, 
 and she had devised this way of putting 
 the child in his path because she was 
 
Zoe. 51 
 
 afraid to come to him openly and say 
 what she wanted. Perhaps even now 
 she was watching, expecting to see him 
 fall into the trap they had set for him ; 
 but they should find they were very 
 much mistaken. 
 
 His first resolution was to fetch the 
 police constable and get him to take the 
 child right off to the workhouse, but on 
 second thoughts he altered his purpose. 
 Such a step would set all the tongues 
 in the place wagging, and, little as he- 
 cared for public opinion, it would not 
 be pleasant for everyone to be telling 
 how he had sent his grandchild to the 
 workhouse. Grandchild? Pshaw! it 
 was Martin Blake's brat. 
 
 The child was sleeping soundly, 
 everything was quiet, the dusk was gath- 
 ering thick and fast. Why should he 
 not put the child outside some other cot- 
 
52 Zoe. 
 
 tage, and throw the responsibility of dis- 
 posing of it on some one else, and be 
 clear of it himself altogether? The 
 idea shaped itself with lightning rapid- 
 ity in his brain, and he passed quickly 
 in review the different cottages in the 
 place and their inmates, and, in spite of 
 his indifference to Martin Blake's brat, 
 he selected one where he knew a kindly 
 reception, at any rate for the night, 
 would be given. He knew more about 
 the Grays than of most of the village 
 people. Bill was a favorite of his, and 
 had been with him that afternoon after 
 school to f tch a book Mr. Robins had 
 promised to lend him. He was a bright, 
 intelligent boy, and had a sweet voice, 
 and the organist found him a more apt 
 pupil than any of the others, and had 
 taken some pains with him, and when 
 he was ill the winter before had been 
 
Zoe. 53 
 
 to see him, and so had come to know his 
 mother and her liking for anything 
 young and weak and tender. 
 
 Their cottage was at some distance, 
 to be sure, and Mr. Kobins had not had 
 much to do with babies of late years and 
 was a little distrustful of his ability to 
 carry one so far without rousing it and 
 so proclaiming its presence; but there 
 was a path across the fields but little 
 frequented, by which he could convey 
 the child without much risk of being 
 met and observed. 
 
 And now the great thing to be aimed 
 at was to carry out his plan as quickly 
 as possible, before anyone was aware of 
 the child being at his house, and he 
 gathered up the little warm bundle as 
 gingerly as he knew how, and was on 
 his way to the gate when the sound of 
 approaching steps along the road made 
 
54 Zoe. 
 
 him draw back and, unlocking the door, 
 carry the child in. The steps stopped 
 at the gate and turned in, and one of the 
 choirmen came to the door. 
 
 There were little movements and soft 
 grumblings inside the shawl in the or- 
 ganist's arms, and he turned quite cold 
 with apprehension. 
 
 "Anyone at home ?" sounded Millet's 
 jovial voice at the open door. "Even- 
 ing, Mr. Kobins are you there? All 
 in the dark, eh ? I wanted a couple 
 of words with you about that song." 
 
 "I'll come directly," sounded the or- 
 ganist's voice, with a curious jogging 
 effect in it, such as Millet was used to 
 sometimes in his conversations with his 
 wife at the children's bedtime. And 
 then Millet heard him go upstairs, and 
 it was some minutes before he came 
 down again, and then in such a queer, 
 
Zoe. 55 
 
 absent condition that if it had been any 
 other man in the parish than Mr. Rob- 
 ins, whose sobriety was unimpeachable, 
 Millet would have said that he had had 
 a drop too much. 
 
 He did not ask him in or strike a 
 light, but stood at the door answering 
 quite at haphazard, and showing such 
 indifference on the vital question of a 
 certain song suiting Millet's voice that 
 that usually good-natured man was al- 
 most offended. 
 
 "Well, I'll wish you good-evening," 
 he said at last (it seemed to Robins that 
 he had been hours at the door) ; "per- 
 haps you'll just think it over and let me 
 know. Hullo ! is that a cat you have 
 up there ? I thought I heard something 
 squeal out just them." 
 
 Mr. Robins was not generally given to 
 shaking hands, indeed, some of the 
 
56 Zoe. 
 
 choir thought he was too much stuck up 
 to do so ; but just then he seized Millet's 
 hand and shook it quite boisterously, at 
 the same time advancing with the ap- 
 parent intention of accompanying him 
 in a friendly manner to the gate, a 
 movement which compelled Millet to 
 back in the same direction, and cut short 
 his farewell remarks, which frequently 
 lasted for ten minutes or more. And 
 all the way to the gate Robins was talk- 
 ing much quicker and louder than was 
 his usual custom, and he ended by al- 
 most pushing Millet out at the gate, all 
 the time expressing great pleasure at 
 having seen him and pressing him to 
 come again any evening he could spare 
 the time and have a pipe and a bit of 
 supper with him such unheard-of hos- 
 pitality that Millet went home quite per- 
 suaded that the old man was, as he ex- 
 
Zoe. 57 
 
 pressed it to his wife, "going off his 
 chump ;" so that it was quite a relief to 
 meet him two days later at the choir 
 practice as formal and distant in his 
 manner as ever. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Robins had hastened 
 back to his bedroom where the baby lay 
 asleep on his bed, for it had been really 
 Jane Sands' cat whose voice Millet 
 heard and not, as Mr. Robins believed, 
 the waking child's. 
 
 It was quite dark up there, and he 
 could only feel the warm little heap on 
 his bed, but he struck a match to look at 
 it. The shawl had fallen away, show- 
 ing its little dark head and round sleep- 
 ing face, with one little fist doubled up 
 against its cheek and half -open mouth, 
 and the other arm thrown back, the tiny 
 hand lying with the little moist, creased 
 palm turned up. 
 
38 Zoe. 
 
 "She's like mother, I'm sure she is." 
 He remembered the wards and scanned 
 the small sleeping face. Well, perhaps 
 there was a likeness, the eye-lashes and 
 the gypsy tint of the complexion; but 
 just then the match went out and the 
 organist remembered there was no time 
 to be wasted in trying to see likenesses 
 in Martin Blake's brat. But just as he 
 was lifting the baby cautiously from his 
 bed a sudden thought struck him. Zoe 
 was to be her name ; well, it should be 
 so, though he had no concern in her 
 name or anything else ; so he groped 
 about for pencil and paper and wrote 
 the name in big printing letters to dis- 
 guise his hand and make it as distinct 
 as possible, though even so, as we have 
 seen already, the name caused consider- 
 able perplexity to the sponsors. And 
 then he pinned the paper on the shawl, 
 
Zoe. 59 
 
 and taking the child in his arms set out 
 across the field to the Grays' cottage. 
 
 There was a cold air, though it was a 
 May night, but the child lay warm 
 against him, and he remembered how 
 its mother had said she could feel the 
 likeness even in the dark, and he could 
 not resist laying his cold finger on the 
 warm little cheek under the shawl ; and 
 then, angry with himself for the throb 
 that the touch sent to his heart, hastened 
 his steps, and had soon reached the 
 Grays' cottage and deposited his burden 
 just inside the gate, where a few min- 
 utes after Gray found it. 
 
 He could see Mrs. Gray plainly as she 
 sat at her work, a pleasant, motherly 
 face ; but he did not linger to look at it, 
 but turned away and retraced his steps 
 along the field path home. He found 
 himself shivering as he went; the air 
 
00 Zoe. 
 
 seemed to have grown more chilly and 
 penetrating without that warm burden 
 against his heart, and the unaccustomed 
 weight had made his arms tremble. 
 
 Somehow the house looked dull and 
 uncomfortable, though Jane Sands had 
 come in and lighted the lamp, and was 
 laying his supper. Upstairs there was 
 a hollow on his bed where something had 
 lain, and by the side of the bed he found 
 a baby's woollen shoe, which might have 
 betrayed him to Jane if she had gone 
 upstairs. But, though he put it out of 
 sight directly, he felt sure that the whole 
 matter was no secret from Jane, and 
 that she had been an accomplice in the 
 trick that had been played on him, and 
 he smiled to himself at the thought of 
 how he had outwitted her, and of how 
 puzzled she must be to know what had 
 become of the baby. 
 
Zoe. 61 
 
 He did his best to appear as tranquil 
 and composed as usual, as if nothing 
 had happened to disturb the ordinary 
 current of his lif e, and he forced himself 
 to make a few remarks on indifferent 
 subjects when she came into the room. 
 
 She had evidently been crying, and 
 was altogether in a nervous and upset 
 condition. She forgot half the things 
 he wanted at supper, and her hand 
 trembled so that she nearly overturned 
 the lamp. More than once she stopped 
 and looked at him as if she were nerving 
 herself to speak, and he knew quite well 
 the question that was trembling on her 
 lips "Where is the child? Master, 
 where is the child ?" But he would not 
 help her in any way, and he quite ig- 
 nored the agitation that was only too 
 evident ; and even when he went into 
 the kitchen to fetch his pipe, and found 
 
62 Zoe. 
 
 her with her face buried in her arms on 
 the kitchen table, shaking with irre- 
 pressible sobs, he retreated softly into 
 the passage and called to her to bring 
 the pipe, and when after a long delay she 
 brought it in, he was apparently ab- 
 sorbed in his paper and took no notice of 
 her tear-stained face and quivering lips. 
 
 He heard her stirring far into the 
 night, and once she went into the little 
 room next his that used to be his daugh- 
 ter's and which no one had used since 
 she left, and in the silence of the night 
 again he could hear her heart-breaking 
 sobs half-stifled. 
 
 "Poor soul ! poor soul !" he said to 
 himself. "She's a good creature, is 
 Jane, and no doubt she's bitterly disap- 
 pointed. I'll make it up to her some- 
 how. She's a faithful, good soul !" 
 
 He was restless and uncomfortable 
 
Zoe. 63 
 
 himself, and he told himself he had 
 taken cold and was a bit feverish. It 
 was feverish fancy, no doubt, that made 
 him think the hollow where the child's 
 light weight had rested was still percept- 
 ible, but this fancy outlasted the fever 
 of that night and the cold that caused it, 
 for there was hardly a night afterwards 
 when Mr. Robins did not detect its pres- 
 ence, even with all Jane Sands' thorough 
 shaking of the feather-bed and careful 
 spreading of sheets and blankets. If 
 he dropped asleep for a minute that 
 night the child was in his arms again, 
 heavy as lead, weighing him down, down 
 into some unfathomable gulf, or he was 
 feeling for it in the dark, and its face 
 was cold as death ; and more than once 
 he woke with a start, feeling certain 
 that a child's cry had sounded close to 
 his bed. 
 
64 Zoe. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 There is certainly a penalty paid by 
 people who keep entirely clear of gos- 
 sip, though it is not by any means in 
 proportion to the advantages they gain. 
 The penalty is that when they particu- 
 larly want to hear any piece of news, 
 they are not likely to hear it naturally 
 like other people, but must go out of 
 their way to make inquiries and evince 
 a curiosity which at once makes them 
 remarkable. 
 
 Now everyone in the village except 
 Mr. Robins heard of the baby found in 
 the Grays' garden, and discussed how 
 it came there, but it was only by over- 
 hearing a casual word here and there 
 that the organist gathered even so much 
 as that the Grays had resolved to keep 
 the child, and were not going to send it 
 
Zoe. 65 
 
 to the workhouse. Even Bill Gray 
 knew the organist's ways too well to trou- 
 ble him with the story, though he was 
 too full of it himself to give his usual 
 attention at the next choir practice, and 
 at every available pause between chant 
 and hymn his head and that of the boy 
 next him were close together in deep 
 discourse. 
 
 It had occurred to Mr. Robins' mind, 
 in the waking moments of that restless 
 night, that there might have been nay, 
 most probably was some mark on the 
 child's clothes which would lead to its 
 identification, and for the next few days 
 every glance in his direction, or for the 
 matter of that in any other direction, 
 was interpreted by him as having some 
 covert allusion to this foundling grand- 
 child of his; but the conversation of 
 some men outside his yew-hedge, which 
 
66 Zoe. 
 
 he accidentally overheard one day, get 
 his anxiety at rest. 
 
 From this he gathered that it was 
 generally supposed to be a child belong- 
 ing to a gypsy caravan that had passed 
 through the village that day. 
 
 "And I says/' said one of the men, 
 with that slow, emphatic delivery in 
 which the most ordinary sentiments are 
 given forth as if they were wisdom un- 
 heard and undreamt of before ; "and I 
 don't mind who hears me, as Gray did 
 oughter set the perlice on to 'un to find 
 the heartless jade as did 'un." 
 
 "Ay, sure ! so he did oughter ; but he 
 ain't no gumption, Gray ain't; never 
 Lad, neither, as have known him man 
 and boy these fifty year." 
 
 "My missus says," went on the first 
 speaker, "as she seed a gypsy gal with 
 just such a brat as this on her arm. She 
 
Zoe. 67 
 
 come round to parson's back door my 
 'Liza's kitchen gal there and telled her 
 mother. She were one of them dressed- 
 up baggages with long earrings and a 
 yeller handkercher round her head, 
 a-telling fortunes; coming round the 
 poor, silly gals with her long tongue and 
 sly ways. She went in here, too." Mr. 
 . Robins guessed, though he could not see, 
 the jerk of the thumb in his direction. 
 "Mrs. Sands told me so herself" the 
 organist's listening was quickened to yet 
 sharper attention. "She says she had 
 quite a job to get rid of her, and thought 
 she were after the spoons belike. But 
 she says as she'd know the gal again any- 
 wheres, and my missus says she'd pret- 
 ty near take her davy to the child, 
 though, as I says, one brat's pretty much 
 like another haw! haw! though the 
 women don't think it." 
 
68 Zoe. 
 
 And the two men parted, laughing 
 over this excellent joke. 
 
 It was most curious how that little 
 out-of-the-way house of the Grays and its 
 unremarkable inmates had suddenly be- 
 come conspicuous ; the very cottage was 
 visible from all directions from the 
 churchyard gate, from the organist's 
 garden, from various points along the 
 Stokeley road ; but perhaps this may 
 have been because Mr. Robins had never 
 cared to identify one thatched roof from 
 another hitherto. As for the Grays, 
 they seemed to be everywhere ; that man 
 hoeing in the turnip-field was Gray; 
 that boy at the head of the team in the 
 big yellow wagon was Tom, and Bill 
 seemed to be all over the place, whistling 
 along the road or running round the cor- 
 ner, or waiting to change his book at the 
 organist's gate. If Mr. Clifford spoke 
 
Zoe. 69 
 
 to Mr. Kobins it was about something to 
 do with the Grays, and even Mr. Wilson 
 of Stokeley stopped him in the road to 
 ask if some people called Gray lived at 
 Downside. It was most extraordinary 
 how these people, so insignificant a week 
 ago, were now brought into prominence. 
 
 Even before Mr. Kobins had over- 
 heard that conversation he had had a 
 fidgety sort of wish to go up to the 
 Grays' cottage, and now he made a pre- 
 text of asking for a book he had lent Bill, 
 but went before the school came out, so 
 that only Mrs. Gray was at home as he 
 opened the gate and went up the path. 
 
 It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, 
 and Mrs. Gray was sitting outside the 
 door, making, plain as she was, a pretty 
 picture with the shadows of the young 
 vine leaves over the door dappling her 
 print gown and apron and the baby's 
 
70 Zoe. 
 
 little dark head and pink pinafore a 
 garment that had once been Bill's, who 
 had been of a more robust build than 
 this baby, and moreover had worn the 
 pinafore at a more advanced age, so that 
 the fit left a good deal to be desired, and 
 the color had suffered in constant visits 
 to the wash-tub, and was not so bright 
 as it had been originally. 
 
 But altogether the faded pinafore and 
 the vine-leaf shadows, and the love in 
 the woman's face made a harmonious 
 whole, and the song she was singing, 
 without a note of sweetness or tune in 
 it, did not jar on the organist's ear, as 
 you might have supposed, knowing his 
 critical and refined taste. 
 
 "Good afternoon, Mrs. Gray," he 
 said ; "I came for the book I lent your 
 son the other day. Why, is this your 
 baby?" he added, with unnecessarily 
 
Zoe. 71 
 
 elaborate dissimulation. "I did not 
 know you had any so young." 
 
 "Mine? Lor' bless you, no. Ain't 
 you heard ? Why, I thought it was all 
 over the place. Gray found it in the 
 garden just there where you be standing, 
 a week ago come to-morrow. Ain't she 
 a pretty dear, bless her ! and takes such 
 notice, too, as is wonderful. Why, she's 
 looking at you now as if she'd a-known 
 you all her life. Just look at her ! if 
 she ain't smiling at you, a little puss !" 
 "Where did she come from ?" 
 "Well, sure, who's to know? There 
 was some gypsy folks through the place, 
 and there've been a lot of tramps about 
 along of Milton Fair, and there was one 
 of 'em, they say, a week or two ago with 
 just such a baby as this 'un. My mas- 
 ter he've made a few inquirements ; but 
 there! for my part I don't care if we 
 
Ti } Zoe. 
 
 don't hear no more of her folks, and 
 Gray's much of the same mind, having 
 took a terrible fancy to the child. And 
 it's plain as she ain't got no mother 
 worth the name, as would leave her like 
 that, and neglected, too, shameful. As 
 there ain't no excuse, to my way of 
 thinking, for a baby being dirty, let 
 folks be as poor as they may." 
 
 Somewhere deep down in Mr. Robins' 
 mind, unacknowledged to himself, there 
 was a tinge of resentment at this reflec- 
 tion on the mother's treatment of the 
 baby. 
 
 "She's as sweet as a blossom now," 
 went on Mrs. Gray, tossing the baby up, 
 who laughed and crowed and stretched 
 its arms. Yes, he could see the like- 
 ness, he was sure of it ; and it brought 
 back to his mind with sudden vividness 
 a young mother's look of pride and love 
 
Zoe. 73- 
 
 as she held up her little girl for the fath- 
 er's admiration. Mother and child 
 had then been wonderfully alike, and in 
 this baby he could trace a likeness to 
 both. 
 
 Mrs. Gray went maundering on, as 
 her manner was, interspersing her nar- 
 rative with baby nonsense and endear- 
 ments, and Mr. Robins forgot his er- 
 rand, which was, after all, only a pre- 
 text, and stood half-listening and more 
 than half back in the old days of mem- 
 ory; and once he so far forgot himself 
 as to snap his fingers at the child, and 
 touch one of its warm little hands, 
 which immediately closed round his fin- 
 ger with a baby's soft, tenacious grasp, 
 from which it required a certain gentle 
 effort to escape. 
 
 "A pleasant, chatty sort of man the 
 organist," Mrs. Gray said, having talked 
 
74 Zoe. 
 
 nearly all the time herself, with only a 
 word or two from him now and then 
 as reply; u and not a*bit of pride about 
 him, let folks say what they like. Why, 
 he stopped ever so long and had a deal 
 to say; and there, Bill, you just run 
 down with the book, as he went off after 
 all without it." 
 
 Mr. Robins went home slowly across 
 the fields in a curiously softened frame 
 of mind. Perhaps it was the soft west 
 wind, fragrant with sweet spring scents 
 of cowslips and cherry blossom, or the 
 full glad sunshine on all the varied green 
 of tree and hedge, a thousand tints of 
 that "shower of greennesses" poured 
 down so lavishly by the Giver of all good 
 things ; perhaps it was the larks spring- 
 ing up from the clover in such an ecstasy 
 of song ; or perhaps it was the clasp of a 
 baby's hand on his finger. He noticed 
 
Zoe. 75 
 
 the spring beauty round him as he had 
 not noticed such things for many a day, 
 stooping to pick a big, tasselled, gold- 
 freckled cowslip, and stopping to let a 
 newly-fledged, awkward young bird hop 
 clumsily out of the way, with a sort of 
 tenderness and consideration for young 
 things unusual to him. 
 
 His mind was more at rest than it had 
 been for the last three weeks. The 
 baby's crowing laughter seemed to drive 
 out of his memory the wailing cry and 
 the hollow cough and the sad, beseech- 
 ing voice saying "Father," and then the 
 pitiless beating rain, which had been 
 haunting him for the last three weeks. 
 The sight of the baby, loved and cared 
 for, had taken away a misgiving, which 
 he had hardly been conscious of himself. 
 After all, he had not done badly by the 
 child. Mrs. Gray was a kind, motherly 
 
76 Zoe. 
 
 sort of body, and used to babies, which 
 Jane Sands was not, and she would do 
 well by the child, and he himself could 
 see, without anyone being the wiser, that 
 the child did not want for anything, 
 though he would not be held responsible 
 in any way for it. 
 
Zoe. 77 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 There was one thing that puzzled Mr. 
 Robins extremely, and this was Jane 
 Sands' behavior. He was convinced 
 that she had been a party to the trick 
 that had been played off on him, and she 
 was evidently full of some secret trouble 
 and anxiety, for which he could only ac- 
 count by attributing it to her disappoint- 
 ment about the baby, and perhaps dis- 
 trust of the care that would be taken of 
 it by others. 
 
 Mr. Robins often discovered her in 
 tears, and she was constantly going out 
 for hours at a time, having always hith- 
 erto been almost too much of a stay-at- 
 home. He suspected that these length- 
 ened absences meant visits to the Grays' 
 
78 Zoe-. 
 
 cottage and that baby-worship that 
 women find so delightful ; but he found 
 out accidentally that she had never been 
 near the cottage since the baby's arrival, 
 and when he made an excuse of sending 
 a book by her to Bill to get her to go 
 there, she met the boy at the bottom of 
 the lane and did not go on to the cottage. 
 
 As to what he had overheard the men 
 saying about the gypsy girl, he felt sure 
 that Jane had only said this to put peo- 
 ple on the wrong scent, though, certain- 
 ly, deception of any sort was very un- 
 like her. Once he found her sitting up 
 late at night at work on some small 
 frocks and pinafores, and he thought 
 that at last the subject was coming to 
 the surface, and especially as she col- 
 ored up and tried to hide the work when 
 he came in. 
 
 "Busy?" he said. "You seem very 
 
Zoe. 79 
 
 hard at work. Who are you working 
 for 3" 
 
 "A baby," she stammered, "a baby 
 that my sister's taking care of." 
 
 She was so red and confused that he 
 felt sure she was saying what was not 
 true, but he forgave her for the sake of 
 the baby for whom he firmly believed 
 the work was being done, and who, to be 
 sure, when he saw it in Mrs. Gray's 
 arms, looked badly in want of clothes 
 more fitted to its size than Bill's old pin- 
 afores. 
 
 He stood for a minute fingering the 
 pink, spotted print of infantile simplici- 
 ty of pattern, and listening to the quick 
 click, click, of her needle as it flew in 
 and out ; but it was not till he had turned 
 away and was half out of the kitchen 
 that she began a request that had been on 
 the tip of her tongue all the time, but 
 
80 Zoe. 
 
 which she had not ventured to bring out 
 while he stood at the table. 
 
 "I was going to ask if you'd no ob- 
 jection, seeing that they're no good to 
 any one 
 
 Now it was coming out, and he turned 
 with an encouraging smile. 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 "There are some old baby-clothes put 
 away in a drawer upstairs. They're 
 rough dried, and I've kept an eye on 
 them, and took them out now and then 
 to see as the moth didn't get in them 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Well, sir, this baby that I'm work- 
 ing for is terrible short of clothes, and I 
 thought I might take a few of them for 
 her" 
 
 She did not look at him once as she 
 spoke, or she might have been encour- 
 aged by the look on his face, which soft- 
 
Zoe. 81 
 
 ened into a very benignant, kindly ex- 
 pression. 
 
 "To be sure! to be sure!" he said. 
 "I've no objection to your taking some 
 of them for the baby at your sister's." 
 He spoke the last words with some mean- 
 ing, and she looked quickly up at him 
 and dropped her work as if tumultuous 
 words were pressing to be spoken, but 
 stopped them with an effort and went 
 on with her work, only with heightened 
 color and trembling fingers. 
 
 She was not slow to avail herself of 
 his permission, for that very night be- 
 fore she went to bed he heard her in the 
 next room turning out the drawer where 
 the old baby-clothes had been stored 
 away ever since little Edith had discard- 
 ed them for clothes of a larger size. 
 And next morning she was up betimes, 
 starching and ironing and goffering 
 
 6 
 
82 Zoe. 
 
 dainty little frills with such a look of 
 love and satisfaction on her face, that he 
 had not the heart to hint that she had 
 availed herself somewhat liberally of his 
 permission, and that less dainty care and 
 crispness might do equally well for the 
 baby, bundled up in Mrs. Gray's kind 
 but crumpling arms, to take the place of 
 Bill's faded pinafore. 
 
 That afternoon he purposely took his 
 way home over the hillside and down the 
 lane by the Grays' cottage, with the con- 
 viction that he should see the baby 
 tricked out in some of those frilled and 
 tucked little garments over which Jane 
 Sands had lavished so much time and 
 attention that morning. But to his sur- 
 prise he saw her in much the same cos- 
 tume as before, only the pinafore this 
 time was washed-out lavender instead of 
 pink, and as she was in Bill's arms, and 
 
Zoe. 83 
 
 he, as the youngest of the family, being 
 inexperienced in nursing, a more 
 crumpled effect was produced than his 
 mother had done. He could only con- 
 clude that Jane had not found time yet 
 to take the things, or that Mrs. Gray was 
 reserving them for a more showy occa- 
 sion. 
 
 But he found Jane just returning as 
 he came up to his house, and she looked 
 far more hot and dusty than the short 
 walk up the lane to the Grays accounted 
 for, but with a beaming look on her kind 
 face that had not been there for many a 
 day. 
 
 "Well," he said, "Jane, have you been 
 toStokeley?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, "and I took the 
 things you were good enough to say the 
 baby might have. They were pleased." 
 
 She, too, spoke with a curious mean- 
 
84 Zoe. 
 
 ing in her voice and manner which some- 
 how faded when she saw the want of re- 
 sponse in his face. Indeed there was a 
 very distinct feeling of disappointment 
 and irritation in his feelings. For after 
 all those clothes had actually gone to 
 some other baby. Well, well! it is a 
 selfish world after all, and each of us has 
 his own interests which take him up and 
 engross him. No doubt this little com- 
 mon child at Stokeley was all in all to 
 Jane Sands, and she was glad enough of 
 a chance to pick all the best out of those 
 baby-clothes upstairs that he remem- 
 bered his young wife preparing so lov- 
 ingly for her baby and his. It gave 
 him quite a pang to think of some little 
 Sands or Jenkins adorned with these 
 tucks he had seen run so carefully and 
 frills sewn so daintily. He had evi- 
 dently given Jane credit for a great deal 
 
Zoe. 85 
 
 more unselfishness and devotion to him 
 and his than she really felt, for* she had 
 all the time been busy working and pro- 
 viding for her own people when he had 
 thought she was full of consideration for 
 Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull 
 himself together and take himself to 
 task ; for even in these few days he had 
 grown to think of that little brown-faced, 
 dark-eyed baby as his grandchild, in- 
 stead of Martin Blake's brat. Insensi- 
 bly, and naturally, too, the child had 
 brought back the memory of its mother, 
 first as baby, then as sweet and winsome 
 little child ; then as bright, wilful, coax- 
 ing girl, and, lastly, unless he kept his 
 thoughts well in check, there followed on 
 these brighter memories the shadow of 
 a white, worn woman under the yew- 
 tree in the churchyard, and of a voice 
 that said "Father." 
 
86 Zoe. 
 
 That uninteresting child at Stokeley 
 apparently required a great supply of 
 clothes, for Jane Sands was hard at 
 work again that evening, and when he 
 came in from the choir practice he 
 heard her singing over her work as she 
 used to do in old days, and when he went 
 in for his pipe she looked up with a 
 smile that seemed to expect a sympathet- 
 ic response, and made no effort to con- 
 ceal the work as she had done the day 
 before. 
 
 He stood morosely by the fireplace for 
 a minute, shaking the ashes out of his 
 pipe. 
 
 "You're very much taken up with 
 that baby," he said crossly; and she 
 looked up quickly, thinking that perhaps 
 he had a hole in his stocking or a button 
 off his shirt to complain of, as a conse- 
 quence of her being engrossed in other 
 
Zoe. 87 
 
 work. But he went on without looking 
 at her, and apparently deeply absorbed 
 in getting an obstinate bit of ash out of 
 the pipe bowl. 
 
 "There's a child at Mrs. Gray's they 
 say is very short of clothes. That baby, 
 you know 
 
 "That baby that was found in the gar- 
 den," Jane said, in such a curiously un- 
 interested tone of voice that he could not 
 resist glancing round at her ; but she was 
 just then engaged in that mysterious 
 process of "stroking the gathers," which 
 the intelligent feminine reader will un- 
 derstand requires a certain attention. 
 If this indifference were assumed, Jane 
 Sands was a much better actor and a 
 more deceptive character than he had 
 believed possible ; if she were too entire- 
 ly absorbed in her own people to give 
 even a thought to her young mistress' 
 
88 Zoe. 
 
 baby, she was not the Jane Sands he 
 thought he had known for the last twen- 
 ty years. The only alternative was that 
 she knew nothing about the baby having 
 been left on his door-step, nor of the 
 meeting with his daughter in the church- 
 yard which had preceded it. 
 
 What followed convinced him that 
 this was the case, though it also a little 
 favored the other hypnotists of her self- 
 ish absorption in her own people. 
 
 "Perhaps," he said, "you could look 
 out some of those baby things upstairs 
 if there are any left." 
 
 "What? I beg your pardon, sir. 
 What did you say ?" 
 
 "Those baby-clothes upstairs that you 
 gave to your sister's baby." 
 
 "Those!" she said, with a strange 
 light of indignation in her eyes, more 
 even than you would have expected in 
 
Zoe. 89 
 
 the most grasping and greedy person on 
 a proposal that something should be 
 snatched from her hungry maw and 
 given to another. " Those ! Little Miss 
 Edith's things, that her own mother 
 made and that I've kept so careful all 
 these years in case Miss Edith's own 
 should need them !" 
 
 You see, she forgot in the excitement 
 of the moment that these were the very 
 things she had been giving away so 
 freely to that common little child at 
 Stokeley ; but women are so inconsistent. 
 
 "Well," he said, as her breath failed 
 her in this unusual torrent of remon- 
 strance, "why not ?" 
 
 "For a little gypsy child ! a foundling 
 that nobody knows anything about! 
 Don't do it, master, don't ! I couldn't 
 abear to see it. Here, let me get a bit 
 of print and flannel and run together a 
 
90 Zoe. 
 
 few things for the child. I'd rather do 
 it a hundred times than that those things 
 should be given away and just now, 
 too!" 
 
 It was very plain to Mr. Robins that 
 she did not know; but all the same he 
 was half inclined to point out that it 
 was not a much more outrageous thing 
 to bestow these cherished garments on 
 a foundling than on her sister's baby; 
 but she was evidently so unconscious of 
 her inconsistency in the matter that he 
 did not know how to suggest it to her. 
 
 "I'm going into Stokeley to-morrow," 
 she went on, "and if you liked I could 
 get some print and make it a few frocks. 
 I saw some very neat at f ourpence three 
 farthings that would wash beautiful, and 
 a good stout flannel at elevenpence. 
 Oh ! not like that/' she said, as he laid 
 a finger on some soft Saxony flannel 
 
Zoe. 91 
 
 with a pink edge which lay on the table ; 
 "something- more serviceable for a poor 
 person's child." 
 
 Well, perhaps it was better that Jane 
 should not know who the baby was of 
 whom she spoke so contemptuously. A 
 baby was none the better or healthier 
 for being dressed up in frills and lace; 
 and Mrs. Gray was a thoroughly clean, 
 motherly woman, and would do well by 
 the child. 
 
 All the same, when Jane came back 
 from Stokeley next day and unfolded 
 the parcel she had brought from the 
 draper's there, he could not help feeling 
 that that somewhat dingy lavender, 
 though it might wash like a rag, was, to 
 say the least, uninteresting, and the tex- 
 ture of the flannel, even to his undis- 
 criminating eye, was a trifle rough and 
 coarse for baby limbs. 
 
92 Zoe. 
 
 He knew nothing (how should he?) 
 of the cut and make of baby-clothes, but 
 somehow these, under Jane's scissors 
 and needle, did not take such attractive 
 proportions as those she had prepared 
 for the other baby ; nor did the stitches 
 appear so careful and minute, though 
 Jane's worst enemy, if she had any, 
 could not have accused her of putting 
 bad work even into the hem of a duster, 
 let alone a baby's frock. He also noticed 
 that, industriously as she worked at the 
 lavender print, her ardor was not suffi- 
 cient to last beyond bedtime, and that 
 when the clock struck ten, her work was 
 put away without any apparent reluc- 
 tance, even when, to all appearances, it 
 was so near completion that any one 
 would have given the requisite ten min- 
 utes just from the mere lust of finish- 
 ing. 
 
Zoe. 93 
 
 That Sunday afternoon when the cu- 
 rious name Zoe, sounding across the 
 church in the strange clergyman's voice, 
 startled the organist, who had not ex- 
 pected the christening to take place that 
 day, one of the distracting thoughts 
 \vhich made him make so many mistakes 
 in the music was wondering what Jane 
 Sands would think of the name, and 
 whether it would rouse any suspicion in 
 her mind and enlighten her a little as to 
 who the baby at Mrs. Gray's really was. 
 The name was full of memories and as- 
 sociations to him ; surely it must be also 
 a little to Jane Sands. 
 
 But of all Sunday afternoons in the 
 year, she had chosen this to go over to 
 Stokeley church. Why, parson and 
 clerk were hardly more regular in their 
 attendance than Jane Sands as a rule ; 
 it was almost an unheard-of thing for 
 
94 Zoe. 
 
 her seat to be empty. But to-day it was 
 so, and the row of little boys whom her 
 gentle presence generally awed into 
 tolerable behavior indulged unchecked 
 in all the ingenious naughtiness that 
 infant mind and body are capable of in 
 church. 
 
 She came in rather late with his tea, 
 apologizing for having kept him wait- 
 ing. 
 
 "It was christening Sunday/' she 
 said, and then she looked at him rather 
 wistfully. 
 
 Perhaps she has heard, he thought; 
 perhaps the neighbors have told her the 
 name, and she is beginning to guess. 
 
 "And the baby has been called " 
 She hesitated and glanced timidly at 
 him. 
 
 "Well," he said encouragingly, "what 
 is the name V 9 
 
Zoe. 95 
 
 "Edith," she answered, 
 
 name." 
 
 Pshaw ! it was the baby at her sister's 
 she was talking of all the time! He 
 turned irritably away. 
 
 "He can't bear to hear the name, even 
 now; or, perhaps, he's cross at being 
 kept waiting for tea," thought Jane 
 Sands. 
 
96 Zoe. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 As spring glided into summer, and 
 June's long, bright, hay-scented days 
 passed by, followed by July, with its hot 
 sun pouring down on the ripening wheat 
 and shaven hayfields, and on the trees, 
 which had settled down into the monoto- 
 nous green of summer, the little brown- 
 faced baby at the Grays' throve and 
 flourished, and entwined itself round 
 the hearts of the kindly people in whose 
 care Providence, by the hands of the 
 organist, had placed it. It grew close 
 to them like the branches of the Virginia 
 creeper against a battered, ugly old wall, 
 putting out those dainty little hands and 
 fingers that cling so close not even the 
 roughest wind or driving rain can tear 
 them apart. Gray, coming in dirty and 
 tired in the evening, after a long day's 
 
Zoe. 97 
 
 work in the hayfield or carting manure, 
 was never too tired, nor for the matter of 
 that too dirty, to take the baby and let 
 it dab its fat hands on his face, or claw 
 at his grizzled whiskers, or slobber open- 
 mouthed kisses on his cheeks. 
 
 Tom, who had bought a blue tie and 
 begun taking Mary Jane, dairymaid at 
 the farm, out walking on a Sunday even- 
 ing, for at the age of sixteen, and on 
 three-and-sixpence a week, it is natural 
 and usual to think of matrimony Tom, 
 I say, let Zoe keep him from his siren 
 and scrabble at that vivid necktie, and 
 pull the bit of southernwood out of his 
 buttonhole and rumple his well-oiled 
 locks out of all symmetry ; while Bill ex- 
 pended boundless ingenuity and time in 
 cutting whistles and fashioning whirli- 
 gigs, which were summarily disposed of 
 directly they got into the baby's Hands. 
 
98 Zoe. 
 
 As for Mrs. Gray, it is unnecessary 
 to say that she was the most complete 
 slave of all Zoe's abject subjects, and 
 the neighbors all agreed that she was 
 downright silly like over that little 
 brown-faced brat as was no better no, 
 nor nothing to hold a candle to my John- 
 nie, or Dolly, or Bobby, as the case might 
 be. 
 
 An unprejudiced observer might have 
 thought that Mrs. Gray had some reason 
 for her high opinion of Zoe, for she was 
 certainly a very much prettier baby than 
 the majority in Downside, who were gen- 
 erally of the dumpling type, with two 
 currants for eyes. And she was also a 
 very good baby. "And easy enough, too, 
 for any one to be good !" would be the 
 comment of any listening Downside 
 mother, "when they always gets their 
 own way ;" which, however, is not so ob- 
 
Zoe. 99 
 
 vious a truth as regards babies under 
 a year as it is of older people. Cer- 
 tainly to be put to bed awake arid 
 smiling at seven o'olock, and there- 
 upon to go to sleep and sleep soundly 
 till seven o'clock next morning, shows 
 an amount of virtue in a baby which is 
 unhappily rare, though captious read- 
 ers may attribute it rather to good health 
 and digestion, which may also be cred- 
 ited, perhaps, with much virtue in older 
 people. 
 
 "And I do say," Mrs. Gray was never 
 tired of repeating to any one who had 
 patience to listen, "as nothing wouldn't 
 upset that blessed little angel, as it 
 makes me quite uneasy thinking as how 
 she's too good to live, as is only natural 
 to mortal babies to have the tantrums 
 now and then, if it's only from stomach- 
 ache." 
 
100 Zoe. 
 
 The only person who seemed to sym- 
 pathize in the Grays' admiration for the 
 baby was the organist. It was really 
 wonderful, Mrs. Gray said, the fancy 
 he had taken to the child. "Ay, and 
 the child to him, too, perking up and 
 looking quite peart like, as soon as ever 
 his step come along the path." The 
 wonder was mostly in the baby taking 
 to him, in Mrs. Gray's opinion, as there 
 was nothing to be surprised at in any one 
 taking to the baby; but "he, with no 
 chick nor child of his own, and with that 
 quiet kind of way with him as ain't gen- 
 eral what children like, though don't 
 never go for to tell me as Mr. Eobins is 
 proud and stuck up, as I knows better." 
 
 There was a sort of fascination about 
 the child to the organist, and when he 
 found that no one seemed to have the 
 slightest suspicion as to who the baby 
 
Zoe. 101 
 
 really was, or why he should be inter- 
 ested in it, he gave way more and more 
 to the inclination to go to the Grays' 
 cottage and watch the little thing and 
 trace the likeness that seemed every day 
 to grow more and more strong to his 
 dead wife and to her baby girl. 
 
 Perhaps anyone sharper and less sim- 
 ple than Mrs. Gray might have grown 
 suspicious of some other reason than 
 pure, disinterested admiration for little 
 Zoe as the cause which brought the or- 
 ganist so often to her house ; and per- 
 haps if the cottage had stood in the vil- 
 lage street it might have occasioned re- 
 marks among the neighbors ; but he had 
 always, of late years, been so reserved 
 and solitary a man that no notice was 
 taken of his comings and goings, and if 
 his way took him frequently over the 
 hillside and down the lane whv ! it was 
 
102 Zoe. 
 
 a very nice walk, and there was nothing 
 to be surprised at. 
 
 The only person who might have no- 
 ticed where he went, and how long he 
 sometimes lingered, was Jane Sands, 
 and I cannot help thinking that in old 
 days she would have done so ; but then, 
 as we have seen, she was not quite the 
 same Jane Sands she used to be, or at 
 any rate not quite what we used to fancy 
 her, devoted above all things to her mas- 
 ter and his interests, but much absorbed 
 in her own matters and in those Stokeley 
 friends of hers. She had asked for a 
 rise in her wages, too, which Mr. Robins 
 assented to, but without that cordiality 
 he might have done a few months be- 
 fore; and he strongly suspected that 
 when quarter-day came the wages went 
 the same way as those baby-clothes, for 
 there was certainly no outlay on her own 
 
Zoe. 103 
 
 attire, which, though always scrupulous- 
 ly neat, seemed to him more plain and 
 a shade more shabby than it used to be. 
 
 As the summer waxed and waned, the 
 love for little Zoe grew and strengthened 
 in the organist's heart. It seemed a 
 kind of possession, as if a spell had 
 been cast on him ; in old times it might 
 have been set down to witchcraft; and, 
 indeed, it seemed something of the sort 
 to himself, as if a power he could not re- 
 sist compelled him to seek out the child, 
 to think of it, to dream of it, to have it so 
 constantly in his mind and thoughts that 
 from there it found its way into his 
 heart. To us who know his secret it 
 may be explained as the tie of blood, the 
 drawing of a man, in spite of himself, 
 towards his own kith and kin. Blood 
 is thicker than water, and the organist 
 could not reject this baby grandchild 
 
104 Zoe. 
 
 from his natural feelings, though he 
 might from his house. And beyond 
 and above this explanation, we may ac- 
 count for it, as we may for most other- 
 wise unaccountable things, as being the 
 leading of a wise Providence working 
 out a divine purpose. 
 
 Perhaps the punishment that was to 
 come to the organist by the hands of lit- 
 tle Zoe those fat, dimpled, brown hands 
 that flourished about in the air so joy- 
 ously when he whistled a tune to her 
 began from the very first, for it was im- 
 possible to think of the child without 
 thinking of the mother, for to look at 
 Zoe without seeing the likeness that his 
 fond fancy made far plainer than it 
 really was ; and to think of the mother 
 and to see her likeness was to remember 
 that meeting in the churchyard and the 
 sad, pleading voice and hollow cough, 
 
Zoe. 105 
 
 and the cold denial he had given, and the 
 beating rain and howling wind of that 
 dreary night. He grew by degrees to 
 excuse himself to himself and to plead 
 that he was taken unawares, and that, if 
 she had not taken his answer as final, but 
 had followed him to the house, he should 
 certainly have relented. 
 
 And then he went a step further. I 
 think it was one July day, when the baby 
 had been more than usually gracious to 
 him, and he had ventured, in Mrs. 
 Gray's absence, to lift her out of the 
 cradle and carry her down the garden 
 path, finding her a heavier weight than 
 when he had first taken her to the Grays' 
 cottage. She had clapped her hands at a 
 great, velvet-bodied bumble-bee, she had 
 nestled her curly head into his neck, 
 and with the feeling of her soft breath 
 on his cheek he had said to himself : "If 
 
106 Zoe. 
 
 Edith were to come back now I would 
 forgive her for the baby's sake, for Zoe's 
 sake." He forgot that he had need to be 
 forgiven, too. "She will come back," 
 he told himself ; "she will come back to 
 see the child. She could not be content 
 to hear nothing more of her baby and 
 never to see her, in spite of what she 
 said. And when she comes it shall be 
 different, for Zoe's sake." 
 
 He wondered if Jane Sands knew 
 where Edith was, or ever heard from 
 her. He sometimes fancied that she 
 did, and yet, if she knew nothing of the 
 baby, it was hardly likely that she had 
 any correspondence with the mother. 
 He was puzzled, and more than once 
 he felt inclined to let her into the secret, 
 or at least drop some hint that might 
 lead to its discovery. 
 
 It pleased him to imagine her delight 
 
Zoe. 107 
 
 over Edith's child, her pride in and de- 
 votion to it ; she would never rest till she 
 had it under her care, and ousted Mrs. 
 Gray from all share in little Zoe. And 
 yet, whenever he had got so far in his 
 inclination to tell Jane, some proof of 
 her absorption in that baby at Stokeley, 
 for whom he had a sort of jealous dis- 
 like, threw him back upon himself and 
 made him doubt her aifection for her 
 young mistress and resolve to keep the 
 secret to himself, at any rate for the 
 present. 
 
 He came the nearest telling her one 
 day in August, when, as he was watering 
 his flowers in the evening, Mrs. Gray 
 passed the gate with that very little Zoe, 
 who was so constantly in his thoughts. 
 
 She had a little white sunbonnet on, 
 which Jane Sands had actually bestowed 
 upon her, rather grudgingly, it is true, 
 
108 Zoe. 
 
 and only because there was some defect 
 about it which made it unworthy of the 
 pampered child at Stokeley. Zoe saw 
 the organist, or at least Mrs. Gray im- 
 agined that she did, for the cry she 
 gave might equally well have been in- 
 tended as a geeting to a pig down in 
 the ditch. 
 
 "Well, a-never, who'd V thought! 
 she see you ever so far off, bless her! 
 and give such a jump as pretty near took 
 her out of my arms. Why, there ! Mr. 
 Robins don't want you, Miss Saucy, no 
 one don't want such rubbidge ; a 
 naughty, tiresome gal! as won't go to 
 sleep, but keeps jumping and kicking 
 and looking about till my arm's fit to 
 drop with aching." 
 
 Jane Sands was sitting at work just 
 outside the kitchen door at the side of 
 the house. He had seen her there a 
 
Zoe. 109 
 
 minute ago when he filled the watering- 
 can at the pump, and a sudden impulse 
 came into his mind to show her the 
 child. 
 
 He did not quite decide what he should 
 say, or what he should do, when the 
 recognition, which he felt sure was un- 
 avoidable, followed the sight of the 
 child ; but he just yielded to the impulse 
 and took the child from Mrs. Gray's 
 arms and carried her round to the back 
 door. The recognition was even more 
 instantaneous than he had expected. 
 As he came round the corner of the house 
 with the little white-bonneted girl in 
 his arms, Jane sprang up with a cry of 
 glad surprise and delight, such as swept 
 away in a moment all his doubt of her 
 loyalty to him and his, and all his re- 
 membrance of her absorption in that lit- 
 tle common child at Stokeley. She 
 
110 Zoe. 
 
 made a step forward and then stood per- 
 fectly still, and the light and gladness 
 faded out of her face, and her hands, 
 that had been stretched out in delighted 
 greeting, fell lifeless to her sides. 
 
 He said nothing, but held the child to- 
 wards her ; it was only natural that she 
 should doubt, being so unprepared, but 
 a second glance would convince hej*. 
 
 "I thought," she said, looking the 
 baby over, with what in a less kind, gen- 
 tle face might have been quite a hard, 
 critical manner, "I thought for a min- 
 ute" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I was mistaken," she said ; "of course 
 I was mistaken." And then she added 
 to herself more than to him, "It is not 
 a bit like " 
 
 "Look again," he said, "look again; 
 don't you see a likeness ?" 
 
Zoe. Ill 
 
 "Likeness? Oh, I suppose it's the 
 gypsy child up at Mrs. Gray's, and you 
 mean the likeness to the woman who 
 came here that day she was left; but I 
 don't remember enough of her to say. 
 It's plain the child's a gypsy. What a 
 swarthy skin, to be sure !" 
 
 Why, where were her eyes ? To Mr. 
 Robins it was little Edith over again. 
 He wondered that all the village did not 
 see it and cry out on him. 
 
 But it was not likely that after this 
 his confidence should go further, and 
 just then the child began a little grum- 
 ble, and he took her back hastily to Mrs. 
 Gray with a disappointed, crestfallen 
 feeling. 
 
 Jane Sands was conscious that her 
 reception of the baby had not been sat- 
 isfactory, and she tried to make amends 
 by little complimentary remarks, which 
 
112 Zoe. 
 
 annoyed him more than her indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 "A fine, strong child, and does Mrs. 
 Gray great credit." 
 
 "It's a nice, bright little thing, and I 
 dare say will improve as it grows older." 
 
 She could not imagine why the or- 
 ganist grunted in such a surly way in 
 reply to these remarks, for what on earth 
 could it matter to him what any one 
 thought of a foundling gypsy child ? 
 
Zoe. 113 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It was near the end of September that 
 John Gray broke his leg. They were 
 thrashing out a wheat-rick at Farmer 
 Benson's, and somehow he tumbled from 
 the top of the rick and fell with his leg 
 bent under him, and found that he could 
 not stand when he tried to struggle up 
 to his feet. 
 
 They ran to tell "his missus," who 
 came straight off from the washtub with 
 the soapsuds still about her skinny, red 
 elbows, catching up Zoe from the cradle 
 as she passed, at sight of whom Gray, 
 in spite of the pain and the deadly faint- 
 ness that was dimming his eyes and 
 clutching his breath, made an effort to 
 chirrup and snap his fingers at the little 
 one. 
 
 "It's his innerds as is hurted," ex- 
 
 8 
 
114 Zoe. 
 
 plained one of the bystanders, with that 
 wonderful openness and way of making 
 the worst of everything that is found in 
 that class. 
 
 "The spine of his back most like," 
 said another, "like poor Johnson over to 
 Stokeley, as never walked another step 
 arter his fall." 
 
 "Ay, he do look mortal bad! 'Tis 
 a terrible bad job!" 
 
 "Cut off like a flower !" sighed one of 
 the women. "There, bear up, my dear," 
 to Mrs. Gray, with whom she had not 
 been on speaking terms for some weeks, 
 owing to a few words about her cat's 
 thieving propensities. "Don't 'ee take 
 on! I knows well enough what you 
 feels, as is only three weeks since father 
 was took with his fit." 
 
 "Don't be skeered, old gal," sounded 
 Gray's voice, odd and unnatural to the 
 
Zoe. 11& 
 
 ears of the hearers, and far away and 
 independent to himself, "I ain't so bad 
 as that comes to 
 
 And then mercifully he became un- 
 conscious, for to go six miles with a 
 broken leg in a cart without springs on 
 the way to the hospital is not a joke, and 
 the neighbors' kindly attempts to bring 
 him round were happily unsuccessful. 
 The worst part of that drive fell to the 
 share of his wife, who sat holding his 
 head on her lap as they jolted along, 
 trying to keep the jars and bumps from 
 jerking his leg, though all the time she 
 firmly believed he was dead, and was 
 already in her dulled mind making piti- 
 ful little arrangements about mourning 
 and the funeral, and contemplating, 
 with dreary equanimity, a widowed ex- 
 istence w r ith three-and-sixpence a week 
 for her and Tom and Bill and Zoe to 
 
116 Zoe. 
 
 live upon. She never left Zoe out of the 
 calculation, even when it became most 
 difficult to adjust the number of mouths 
 to be fed with the amount of food to be 
 put into them, and over this dark fu- 
 ture fell the darker shadow of the work- 
 house, which closes the vista of life to 
 most of the poor. No wonder they live 
 entirely in the present, and shut their 
 eyes persistently to the future ! 
 
 There was not much going back into 
 the past when she was a girl and the 
 "master" a lad, and they went courting 
 of a Sunday afternoon along the green 
 lanes. Life had been too matter-of-fact 
 and full of hard work to leave much 
 sentiment even in memory. 
 
 Mr. Robins heard of the accident in 
 the evening, and went up to the cottage, 
 where he found Bill taking care of Zoe, 
 who \vas having a fine time of it, having 
 
Zoe. . 117 
 
 soon discovered that she had only to cry 
 for anything that evening to get it, and 
 that it was an occasion for displaying a 
 will of her own in the matter of going to 
 bed and being preter-naturally wide 
 awake and inclined for a game, when 
 on other nights she was quite content 
 to be laid down in the wooden cradle, 
 which was rapidly becoming too small 
 for her increasing size. 
 
 Poor Bill had been at school when the 
 accident happened, and of course the 
 neighbors had made the very worst of 
 the matter, so the poor boy hardly knew 
 what part of his father had not been 
 crushed or injured, or if he had been 
 killed on the spot, or had been taken 
 barely alive to the hospital. The baby 
 had been pushed into his arms, so that 
 he could not go up to the farm, nor find 
 Tom to learn the rights of the matter, 
 
118 Zoe. 
 
 so that when Mr. Kobins came into the 
 cottage he found both Bill and the baby 
 crying together, the fire out, and the 
 kettle upset into the fender. 
 
 "Give me the child/' the organist said. 
 And Bill obeyed, as he did at the choir 
 practice when he was told to pass a 
 hymn-book, too miserable to wonder 
 much at this new aspect of his master, 
 and at seeing him take the baby as if he 
 knew all about it, and sit down in fath- 
 er's arm-chair. 
 
 "See if you can't make the fire burn 
 up," he went on; "the child's cold." 
 
 Zoe seemed well content with her new 
 nurse and left off crying, and sat blink- 
 ing gravely at the fire, which Bill, much 
 relieved at having something definite to 
 do, soon roused up to a sparkling, crack- 
 ling blaze with some dry sticks, while 
 Mr. Robins warmed her small pink feet. 
 
Zoe. 119 
 
 Bill would certainly have been sur- 
 prised if he could have seen what was 
 passing in the organist's mind, a pro- 
 posal ripening into a firm resolve that 
 he would take the child home that very 
 night and tell Jane who she was. Let 
 the village talk as it might, he did not 
 mind ; let them say what they pleased. 
 
 He knew enough of village reports to 
 guess that Gray was not as badly hurt as 
 every one declared ; but still, even a tri- 
 fling accident meant, at any rate, a week 
 or two of very short commons at the cot- 
 tage, perhaps less milk for the baby or 
 economy over fuel, and the September 
 days were growing cold and raw, and 
 there had been more than one frost in the 
 mornings, and the baby's little toes were 
 cold to his warm hand. Mrs. Gray, too, 
 would be occupied and taken up with her 
 husband, and little Zoe would be pushed 
 
120 Zoe. 
 
 about from one to another ; and he had 
 heard that there was scarlatina about, 
 and the relieving officer had been telling 
 him that very morning how careless the 
 people were about infection. 
 
 The cottage looked quite different in 
 the blazing firelight, and Bill, encour- 
 aged by the organist's presence, tidied 
 up the place, where the washtub stood 
 just as Mrs. Gray had left it; and he 
 set the kettle on to boil, so that when 
 Mrs. Gray and Tom came in it presented 
 quite a comfortable appearance. Mrs. 
 Gray came in tired and tearful, but de- 
 cidedly hopeful, having left Gray com- 
 fortably in bed with his leg set, and 
 having received reassuring opinions 
 from nurse and doctor ; and the first 
 alarm and apprehension being removed, 
 there was a certain feeling of importance 
 in her position as wife of the injured 
 
Zoe. 121 
 
 man, and excitement at a visit to the 
 country town, both ways in a cart, which 
 does not happen often in a lifetime. 
 
 The baby, thanks to the warmth and 
 Mr. Robins' nursing, had fallen asleep 
 in his arms. Mrs. Gray was so much 
 confused and bewildered by the events 
 of the day that she would hardly have 
 been surprised to see the Queen with the 
 crown on her head sitting there in the 
 master's arm-chair, quite at home like, 
 and holding the baby on one arm and 
 the sceptre on the other ; and Tom was 
 of too phlegmatic a disposition to be sur- 
 prised at anything. So they made no re- 
 mark, and Mr. Robins laid the baby, still 
 asleep, in Bill's arms, and went away. 
 
 Such a beautiful, quiet September 
 night, with great soft stars overhead, 
 and the scent of fallen leaves in the air ! 
 The path beneath his feet was soft with 
 
122 Zoe. 
 
 them, and as he passed under the elms 
 which by daylight were a blaze of sunny 
 gold, some leaves dropped gently on his 
 head. 
 
 "To-morrow," he said, "I will bring 
 little Zoe home, and I will let her moth- 
 er I will let Edith know that the child 
 is with me, and that if she likes It 
 needed but a word he felt sure to bring 
 the mother to the baby, the daughter to 
 her father. 
 
 He stood for a moment by the church- 
 yard gate, close to the spot where that 
 bitter, cruel parting had been, and fan- 
 cied what the meeting would be. After 
 all, what was his feeling for little Zoe 
 and his imagination of what his little 
 grandchild would be to him in the future 
 to the delight of having Edith's arms 
 round his neck and holding her to his 
 heart once more ? 
 
Zoe. 123 
 
 "Edith," he whispered softly, as he 
 turned away; "Edith, come home!" 
 
 "I wonder," he said to Jane Sands 
 that night, "I wonder if you could find 
 out an address for me ?" 
 
 She was folding up the tablecloth, and 
 she stopped with a puzzled look. 
 
 "An address ? Whose ?" 
 
 "Well," he said, without looking at 
 her, "I fancy there are still some of the 
 Blakes" (the word came out with a cer- 
 tain effort) "living at Bilton, and per- 
 haps you could find out from them the 
 address I want ; or perhaps," he added 
 quickly, for she understood now, and 
 eager words were on her lips, "perhaps 
 you know. There ! never mind now ; if 
 you know, you can tell me to-morrow." 
 
124 Zoe. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Morning very often brings other 
 counsels, but this was not the case with 
 Mr. Robins, for when he got up next 
 day he was more than ever resolved to 
 carry out his intention of bringing little 
 Zoe home and letting her mother know 
 that a welcome awaited her in her old 
 home. 
 
 He had not slept very much during 
 the night, for his mind had been too full 
 of thephange that was coming in his life 
 and of the difference that the presence 
 of Edith and little Zoe would make in 
 the dull old house. Sad and worn and 
 altered was she ! Ah, that would soon 
 pass away with kindness and care and 
 happiness, and the cough that had sound- 
 ed so hollow and ominous should be 
 
Zoe. 125 
 
 nursed away, and Edith should be a girl 
 again, a girl as she ought to be yet by 
 right of her years ; and those five years 
 of suffering and estrangement should be 
 altogether forgotten as if they had never 
 been. 
 
 He went into the bedroom next his, 
 that had been Edith's, that was to be 
 Edith's again, and looking round it, no- 
 ticed with satisfaction that Jane had 
 kept it just as it had been in the old 
 days ; and he pushed the bed a little to 
 one side to make room for a cot to stand 
 beside it, a cot which he remembered in 
 the night as having stood for years in 
 the lumber-room up in the roof, and 
 which he now with much difficulty 
 dragged out from behind some heavy 
 boxes, and fitted together, wishing there 
 had been time to give it a coat of paint, 
 and yet glad with a tremulous sort of 
 
126 Zoe. 
 
 gladness that there was not, seeing that 
 it would be wanted that very night. 
 
 And just then Jane Sands came up to 
 call him to breakfast, and stood looking 
 from the cot to her master's dusty coat, 
 with such a look of delighted compre- 
 hension on her face that the organist 
 felt that no words were needed to pre- 
 pare her for what was going to hap- 
 pen. 
 
 "I thought," he said, "it had better be 
 brought down." 
 
 "Where shall it go ?" she asked. 
 
 "In Miss in the room next mine," 
 he said, "and it will want a good air- 
 ing." 
 
 "Shall I make up the bed, too ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes, you may as well." 
 
 "Oh, master," she said, the tears 
 shaking in her voice and shining in her 
 
Zoe. 127 
 
 eyes ; "will they be wanted soon ? Will 
 they, maybe, be wanted to-night ?" 
 
 His own voice felt suspiciously 
 shaky ; his own eyes could not see the old 
 cot, nor Jane's beaming face quite 
 plainly, so he only gave a gruff assent 
 and turned away. 
 
 "What a good, kind creature she is," 
 he thought. "What a welcome she will 
 give Edith and Edith's little Zoe !" 
 
 During the morning he heard her up 
 in the room sweeping and scrubbing, 
 as if for these five years it had been left 
 a prey to dust and dirt, and when he 
 went out after dinner to give a lesson 
 at Bilton, she was still at it with an 
 energy worthy of a woman half her 
 age. 
 
 That stupid little girl at Bilton, who 
 generally found her music-lesson such 
 an intolerable weariness to the flesh, and 
 
128 Zoe. 
 
 was conscious that it was no less so to her 
 teacher, found the half -hour to-day quite 
 pleasant. Mr. Robins had never been so 
 kind and cheerful, quite amusing, laugh- 
 ing at her mistakes, and allowing her to 
 play just the things she knew best, and to 
 get up in the middle of the lesson to go to 
 the window and see a long procession of 
 gypsy vans going by to Smithurst Fair. 
 It was such a very beautiful day; 
 perhaps it was this that produced such 
 a good effect on the organist's temper. 
 There had been a frost that morning, 
 but it was not enough to strip the trees, 
 but only to turn the elms a richer gold 
 and the beeches a warmer red and the 
 oaks a ruddier brown, while in the 
 hedges the purple dogwood and haw- 
 thorn and bramble leaves made a won- 
 derful variety of rich tints in the full 
 bright sunshine, which set the birds twit- 
 
Zoe. 129 
 
 tering with a momentary delusion that 
 it might be spring. 
 
 He did not come back over the hill, 
 and past the Grays' cottage, for he was 
 going to fetch the child that evening; 
 but he came home by the road, meeting 
 many more of those gypsy vans which 
 had distracted his pupil's attention, and 
 looking with kindliness on the swarthy 
 men and bronze, dark-eyed women, for 
 the sake of little Zoe, who had been so 
 often called the gypsy baby. 
 
 When he reached home he found the 
 room prepared with all the care Jane 
 Sands could lavish. He had thought 
 when he went in that morning that it 
 was just as Edith had left it, and all in 
 the most perfect order ; but now the room 
 was a bower of daintiness and cleanli- 
 ness, and all Edith's old treasures had 
 been set out in the very order she used 
 
130 Zoe. 
 
 to arrange them. Why ! even her brush 
 and comb were laid ready on the dress- 
 ing table, and a pair of slippers by the 
 bedside, and a small bunch of autumn 
 anemones and Czar violets was placed in 
 a little glass beside her books. He 
 smiled, but with tears in his eyes, as he 
 saw all these loving preparations. 
 
 "Edith can hardly be here to-night," 
 he said to himself ; "but Zoe will," and 
 he smoothed the pillow of the cot close 
 to the bedside, and drew the curtain 
 more closely over its head. 
 
 He found his tea set ready for him 
 when he came down, but Jane Sands had 
 gone out, and he was rather glad of it, 
 as she had watched him that morning 
 with an eager, expectant eye, and he did 
 not know what to say to her. It woiild 
 be easier when he brought the baby and 
 actually put it into her arms. 
 
Zoe. 131 
 
 The sun had set when he had finished 
 tea, a blaze of splendor settling down 
 into dull purple and dead orange, leav- 
 ing a stripe of pale-green sky over the 
 horizon, flecked with a few soft brown 
 clouds tinged with red. 
 
 But envious night hastened to cover 
 up and deaden the colors of the sky and 
 the almost equally gorgeous tints of tree 
 and hedge ; and by the time Mr. Robins 
 reached the Grays' cottage, darkness had 
 settled down as deep as on that evening 
 four months ago, when he carried the 
 baby and left it there. 
 
 Now, as then, the cottage door was 
 open, and Mrs. Gray sat at work with the 
 candle close to her elbow, every now and 
 then giving a long sniff or a sigh that 
 made the tallow candle flicker and trem- 
 ble. He had almost forgotten her hus- 
 band's accident in his absorption in the 
 
1152 Zoe. 
 
 baby; but these sniffs recalled it to his 
 mind, and he thought he would give them 
 a hand while Gray was in the hospital. 
 
 "She has been kind to my little Zoe," 
 he thought, "and I will not forget it in 
 a hurry. She shall come and see the 
 child whenever she likes ; and Edith will 
 be good to her, for she has been like a 
 mother to the baby all these months." 
 
 Close by where Mrs. Gray sat he could 
 see the foot of the old cradle and the 
 rocker within reach of the woman's foot ; 
 but Zoe must be asleep, for there was no 
 rocking necessary, and Mrs. Gray did 
 not turn from her work to look at the 
 child, though she stopped from time 
 to time to wipe her eyes on her apron. 
 
 "She is taken up with her husband," 
 he said to himself; "it is as well that I 
 am going to take the child away, as she 
 will have no thought to give her now." 
 
Zoe. 133 
 
 And then he went into the cottage, 
 with a tap on the open door to announce 
 his presence. 
 
 "Good evening, Mrs. Gray/' he said 
 in a subdued voice, so as not to wake the 
 baby. But he might have spared him- 
 self this precaution, for the next glance 
 showed him that the cradle was empty. 
 
 "Lord bless you, Mr. Robins/' the 
 woman said, "you give me quite a start, 
 coming in so quiet like. But, there ! 
 Fm all of a tremble ; the leastest thing 
 do terrify me. You might knock me 
 down with a feather. First one thing 
 and then another ! The master yester- 
 day and the baby to-day !" 
 
 "What !" he said, so sharp and sud- 
 den that it stopped the flow of words 
 for a moment. "What do you mean? 
 Is the baby in bed upstairs? What's 
 the matter? It's not the scarlatina?" 
 
134 Zoe. 
 
 "Bless you !" she said, "why I thought 
 you'd a-knowed. It ain't the scarlatina. 
 The baby was as well and bonny as ever 
 when she went. She've agone; her 
 mother come and fetch her this very 
 day, and took her right off. Ay! but 
 she were pleased to see how the little 
 thing had got on, and she said as she'd 
 never forget my kindness, and how she'd 
 bring her to see me whenever she come 
 this way. But, there! I do miss her 
 terrible. Why, it's most worse than the 
 master himself !" 
 
 The organist hardly listened to what 
 she was saying, after the fact of the 
 mother having come and fetched her 
 away. Edith had come for her baby! 
 How had she known? Why had she 
 done it to-day? Could Jane have let 
 her know ? and had she come so quickly 
 to take the child herself to her old home ? 
 
Zoe. 135 
 
 His first impulse was to turn and hasten 
 home ; perhaps Edith and Zoe were there 
 already and would find him absent. But 
 he could not go without a word to Mrs. 
 Gray, who was wiping her eyes in her 
 apron and unconsciously rocking the 
 empty cradle. 
 
 "You will often see her/' he said con- 
 solingly ; "she will not be far away." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know about that; them 
 gypsies go all over the place, up and 
 down the country, and they don't always 
 come back for the fairs ; though she says 
 as they don't often miss Smithurst." 
 
 "Gypsies ?" he said, puzzled. 
 
 "Ay, the mother's a gypsy sure 
 enough, and I've said it all along, and 
 the child's the very image of her ; there 
 wasn't no doubt when one saw the two 
 together as they was mother and child. " 
 
 "Are you sure she was a gypsy ?" He 
 
136 Zoe. 
 
 had often said in fun that Edith was 
 a regular little gypsy, but he would 
 never have thought that any one could 
 really mistake her for one ; and, besides, 
 Mrs. Gray must have known Edith well 
 enough, at any rate by sight, in the old 
 days, and, changed as she was, it was 
 not beyond all recognition. 
 
 "Oh, there wasn't no mistaking, and 
 the van as she belonged to waited just 
 outside the village, for I went down 
 along with her and seed it, painted yeller 
 with red wheels. I knowed Zoe was 
 gypsy born, for she'd one of them charmg 
 round her neck as I didn't meddle with, 
 for they do say as there's a deal of power 
 in them things, and that gypsies can't 
 be drownded or ketch fevers and things 
 as long as they keeps 'em." 
 
 Mr. Robins sat down in the chair op- 
 posite Mrs. Gray. An odd, cold sort of 
 
Zoe. 137 
 
 apprehension was stealing over him, and 
 the pleasant dream of home and Edith 
 and Zoe, in which he had been living 
 through the day, was fading away with 
 every word the woman said. 
 
 "The funny part of it were that she 
 vowed and declared as she put the child 
 at your door, and never came this way 
 at all ; leastways, from what she said it 
 must a-been your house, for she said it 
 was hard by the church and had a thick 
 hedge, and that there was a kind sorter 
 body as she see there in the morning, 
 as must a-been Mrs. Sands and nobody 
 else from her account. She said she 
 was in a heap of trouble just then, her 
 husband ill and a deal more, and she was 
 pretty nigh at her wits' end, and that 
 without thinking twice what she were 
 about, she wrapt the baby up and laid it 
 close agin the door of the house where 
 
138 Zoe. 
 
 she'd seen the kind-looking body. She 
 would have it as it was there, say what 
 I would ; but maybe, poor soul, she were 
 mazed, and hardly knew where she were. 
 She went to your house to-day, and Mrs. 
 Sands were quite put out with her, being 
 busy, too, and expecting company, and 
 thought it were just her impidence ; but 
 there ! I knows what trouble is, and how 
 it just mazes a body, for I could no more 
 tell where I went nor what I did yester- 
 day than that table there. And another 
 queer thing is as she didn't know noth- 
 ing about the name, and neither she nor 
 her husband can't read or write no-ways, 
 so she couldn't have wrote it down, and 
 she'd never heard tell of such a name as 
 Zoe, and didn't like it neither. She'd 
 always a-meant it to be Rachel, as had 
 been her mother's name before her and 
 her grandmother's, too." 
 
Zoe. 139 
 
 "Are you quite certain she was the 
 
 mother ?" 
 
 "Certain ? Why, you'd only to see 
 the two together to be sure of it. Fd 
 not have let her go, not were it ever so, 
 if it hadn't been as clear as daylight; 
 and just now, too, when I seems to want 
 her for a bit of comfort ;" and here Mrs. 
 Gray relapsed into her apron. 
 
 Mr. Eobins sat for a minute looking 
 at her in silence, and then got up, and 
 without a word went out into the dark 
 night, mechanically taking the way to 
 his house and then turning on to the 
 high road to Smithurst, tramping along 
 through the mud and dead leaves with 
 a dull, heavy persistence. 
 
 Anything was better than going back 
 to the empty silence of his house and 
 Jane Sands' expectant face, and the 
 pretty, white-curtained room with the 
 
140 Zoe. 
 
 cot all ready for little Zoe, who was al- 
 ready miles away along that dark road 
 before him, .sleeping, perhaps, in some 
 dirty gypsy van put up on some bit of 
 waste land by the roadside, or perhaps 
 surrounded by the noise and glare of the 
 fair with its shows and round-abouts. 
 His little Zoe ! he could not possibly have 
 been so utterly deceived all through, 
 the baby who had lain on his bed, whose 
 little face he had felt as he carried her 
 up to the Grays' cottage in the dark, 
 whom he had seen day after day and 
 never failed to notice the likeness, grow- 
 ing stronger with the child's growth ! 
 Was it all a delusion all the foolish 
 fancy of a fond old man? He tried 
 hard to believe that it was impossible 
 that he could have been so deceived, and 
 yet from the very first he felt that it was 
 so, and that the love that had been grow- 
 
Zoe. 141 
 
 ing in his heart all these months had 
 been lavished on a gypsy baby whose face 
 most likely he should never see again. 
 
 And all his plans for the future, his 
 dreams of reparation, of tender recon- 
 ciliation with Edith, and of happy, 
 peaceful days that would obliterate the 
 memory of past trouble and alienation, 
 they had all vanished with the gypsy 
 baby ; life was as empty as the cradle by 
 Mrs. Gray's side. 
 
 Where was he to find his daughter? 
 Where had she wandered that night 
 when the pitiless rain fell and the sullen 
 wind moaned? Was that the last he 
 should ever see of her, with the white, 
 wan, pleading face under the yew-tree ; 
 and would that despairing voice saying 
 "Father" haunt his ears till his dying 
 day ; and would the wailing cry that fol- 
 lowed him as he went to his house that 
 
142 Zoe. 
 
 night be the only thing he should ever 
 know of his grandchild, the real little 
 Zoe whom he had rejected ? 
 
 He was several miles away along the 
 Smithurst road when he first realized 
 what he was doing, brought to the con- 
 sciousness, perhaps, by the fact of being 
 weary and footsore and wet through 
 from a fine rain that had begun falling 
 soon after he left the village. It must 
 be getting late, too ; many of the cottages 
 he passed showed no light from the win- 
 dows, the inmates most likely being in 
 bed. 
 
 Painfully and wearily he toiled back 
 to Downside ; he seemed to have no spirit 
 left to contend against even such trifling 
 things as mud and inequalities in the 
 road, and when a bramble straying from 
 the hedge caught his coat and tore it, he 
 could almost have cried in feeble vexa- 
 
Zoe. 143 
 
 tion of spirit. Downside street was all 
 dark and quiet, but from the organist's 
 house a light shone out from the open 
 door and down the garden path, making 
 a patch of light on the wet road. 
 
 Some one stood peering out into the 
 darkness, and at the sound of his drag- 
 ging, stumbling footsteps, Jane Sands 
 ran down to the gate. The long waiting 
 had made her anxious, for she was 
 breathless and trembling with excite- 
 ment. 
 
 "Where have you been ?" she said. 
 "We got so frightened. Why are you so 
 late ? Oh, dearie me !" as she caught 
 sight of his face "you're ill! Some- 
 thing has happened! There, come in, 
 do 'ee, now ; you look fit to drop !" 
 
 He pushed by her almost roughly into 
 the house and dropped down wearily into 
 the arm-chair. He was too worn out 
 
144: Zoe. 
 
 and exhausted to notice anything, even 
 the warmth and comfort of the bright 
 fire and the supper ready on the table. 
 He tossed his soaked hat on the ground, 
 and leaning his elbows on his knees and 
 his head on his hands, sat bowed down 
 with the feeling of utter wretchedness. 
 
 Day after day, night after night, till 
 his life's end, plenty and comfort, and 
 neatness and respectability and warmth 
 in dull monotony; while outside some- 
 where in the cold and rain, in poverty 
 and want and wretchedness, wandered 
 Edith with the wailing baby in her 
 arms! 
 
 "You can go to bed," he said to Jane 
 Sands ; "I don't want any supper." 
 
 She drew back and went softly out of 
 the room ;but some one else was standing 
 there looking down at the bowed white 
 head with eyes fuller even of pity and 
 
Zoe. 145 
 
 tears than Jane's had been, and then she, 
 too, left the room, and with a raised fin- 
 ger to Jane, who was waiting in the pas- 
 sage, she went upstairs, and as if the way 
 were well known to her, to the little room 
 which had been got ready so uselessly 
 for the organist's daughter. 
 
 There, sheltered by the bed-curtain, 
 was the cot where Zoe was to have lain, 
 and there, wonderful to relate, a child's 
 dark head might be seen deep in the soft 
 pillow, deeper in soft sleep. 
 
 And then this strangely presuming 
 intruder in the organist's house softly 
 took up the sleeping child, and wrapping 
 a shawl round it, carried it, still sleep- 
 ing, downstairs, the dark lashes resting 
 on the round cheek flushed with sleep 
 and of a fairer tint than gypsy Zoe's, 
 and the rosy mouth half open. 
 
 The organist still sat with his head in 
 
146 Zoe. 
 
 his hands and did not stir as she entered, 
 not even when she came and knelt down 
 on the hearth in front of him. 
 
 Jane Sands was unusually tiresome 
 to-night, he thought; why could she not 
 leave him alone ? 
 
 And then against his cold hands 
 clasped over his face was laid something 
 soft and warm and tender, surely a lit- 
 tle child's hand ! and a voice a voice he 
 had never thought to hear again till 
 maybe it sounded as his accuser before 
 the throne of grace said : "Father, for 
 Zoe's sake." 
 
HENRY ALtEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 
 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC (a History). 
 By John Lothrop Motley. A new and handsome 
 library edition of a Grand Historical Work. Em- 
 bellished with over 50 full-page half-tone Engrav- 
 ings. Complete in two volumes over 1,000 ] 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth, per set, $2.00. Half Morocco, 
 gilt top, per set, $3.25. 
 
 QUO VADIS. A tale of the time of Nero, by Henryk 
 Sienkiewicz. Complete and unabridged. Trans- 1 
 lated by Dr. S. A. Binton, author of "Ancient 
 Egypt," etc., and S. Malevsky, with illustrations 
 by M. DeLipman. Crown 8vo. Cloth, ornamental, 
 515 pages, $1.25. 
 
 WITH FIRE AND SWORD. By the author of " Quo 
 Vadis." A tale of the past. Crown 8vo. 825 
 pages. $1.00. 
 
 FAN MICHAEL. By the author of " Quo Vadia." A 
 historical tale. Crown 8vo. 530 pages. $1.00. 
 
 JULIAN, THE APOSTATE. By S. Mereshkovski. "A 
 brilliant and effective picture of one of the most 
 interesting characters in history, who had been 
 slmdderingly styled anti-Christ by the followers 
 of the new faith. In descriptive beauty the work 
 is fully equal to " Quo Vadis." Cloth 12mo. 450 
 pages. $1.00. 
 
 MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the use of Schools, 
 Art Students, and General Readers, by Alexander 
 S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman An- 
 tiquities, British Museum. With Notes, Revis- 
 ions, and Additions by William H. Klapp, Head- 
 master of the Protestant Episcopal Academy, 
 Philadelphia. With 200 illustrations and an ex- 
 "haustive Index. Large 12mo, 40 pages, $1.25. 
 
 THE AGE OF FABLE; OR, BEAUTIES OF MYTH- 
 OLOGY. By Thomas Bulfinch, with Notes, Re- 
 visions and Additions by William H. Klapp, Head- 
 master of the Protestant Episcopal Academy, 
 Philadelphia. With 200 illustrations and an ex- 
 haustive Index. Large 12mo, 450 pages, $1.25. 
 
 This work has always been regarded as classical 
 authority. 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 TAINE'S ENGLISH LITERATURE, translated from 
 the French by Henry Van Laun, illustrated with 
 20 fine photogravure portraits. Best English 
 library edition, four volumes, cloth, full gilt, 
 octavo, per set, $10.00. Half calf, per set, $12.50. 
 Cheaper edition, with frontispiece illustrations 
 only, cloth, paper titles, per set, $7.50. 
 STEPHEN. A SOLDIER OF THE CROSS, by Flor- 
 ence Morse Kingsley, author of " Titus, a Com- 
 rade of the Cross." " Since l Ben-Hur ' no story 
 has so vividly portrayed the times of Christ." 
 " The Bookseller." Cloth, 12mo, 369 pages, $1.00. 
 THE CROSS TRIUMPHANT, by Florence Morse 
 Kingsley, author of " Paul and Stephen." 
 The story of " a child of the law," who 
 witnesses, amid the scenes of the recent life and 
 death of Jesus, the deepening conflict between the 
 Law and the Cross. Nazarite, priest and warrior, 
 influenced by three women of widely-varying char- 
 acter, he beholds at last in the terrible hour of 
 Jerusalem's downfall " The Cross Triumphant." 
 Cloth, 12mo, 364 pages, $1.00. 
 
 PAUL. A HERALD OF THE CROSS, by Florence 
 Morse Kingsley. "A vivid and picturesque nar- 
 rative of the life and times of the great Apostle." 
 Cloth, 12mo, 450 pages, $1.00. 
 
 AMERICAN POLITICS (non-Partisan), by Hon. 
 Thomas V. Cooper. A history of all the Political 
 Parties, with their views and records on all im- 
 portant questions. All political platforms from 
 the beginning. Great Speeches on Great Is- 
 sues. Parliamentary practice and tabulated his- 
 tory of chronological events. A library without 
 this work is deficient. 8vo, 750 pages. Cloth, 
 $3.00. Full sheep, Library style, $4.00. 
 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, as John Bunyan wrote 
 it. A fac-simile reproduction of the first edition, 
 published in 1678. Antique cloth, 12mo, $1.25. 
 THE FAIREST OF THE FAIR., by Hildegarde Haw- 
 thorne. " The grand-daughter of Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne possesses a full share of his wonderful 
 genius." Cloth, 16mo, $1.25. 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY MINUTES. 
 
 Contains over ICO photographs of the most famous 
 places and edifices, with descriptive text. Cloth, 
 50 cents. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE'S COMPLETE WORKS, with a bio- 
 graphical sketch by Mary Cowden Clark, embel- 
 lished with 64 Boydell, and numerous other illus- 
 trations, four volumes, over 2,000 pages. Half 
 Morocco, 12mo, boxed, per set, $3.00. 
 
 THE CARE OF CHILDREN, by Elisabeth R. Scovil. 
 " An excellent book of the most vital interest." 
 Cloth, 12mo, $1.00. 
 
 PREPARATION FOR MOTHERHOOD, by Elisabeth 
 R. Scovil. Cloth, 12mo, 320 pages, $1.00. 
 
 BABY'S REQUIREMENTS, by Elisabeth R. Scovil. 
 Limp binding, leatherette, 25 cents. 
 
 NAMES FOR CHILDREN, by Elisabeth Robinson Sco 
 vil, author of " The Care of Children," " Prepara- 
 tion for Motherhood," etc. In family life there is 
 no question of greater weight or importance than 
 naming the baby. The author gives much good 
 advice and many suggestions on the subject. Cloth, 
 12mo, 40 cents. 
 
 TRIF AND TRIXY, by John Habberton, author of 
 " Helen's Babies." The story is replete with vivid, 
 and spirited scenes, and is comparatively the hap- 
 piest and most delightful work Mr. Habberton has 
 yet written. Cloth, 12mo, 50 cents. 
 
 SHE WHO WILL NOT WHEN SHE MAY, by Eleanor 
 G. Walton. Half-tone illustrations by C. P. M. 
 Rumford. "An exquisite prose idyl." Cloth, gilt 
 top, deckle edges, $1.00. 
 
 A SON OF THE CAROLINAS, by C. E. Satterthwaite. 
 A pure romance introducing a lifelike portrayal 
 of life on the coast islands of the Palmetto State. 
 Cloth, 12mo, 280 pages, 50 cents. 
 
 THE DAY BREAKETH, by Fannie Alricks Shugert. 
 A tale of Rome and Jerusalem in the time of 
 Christ. Cloth, 12mo, 280 pages, 50 cents. 
 
 WHAT WOMEN SHOULD KNOW. A woman's book 
 about women. By Mrs. E. B. Duffy. Cloth, 320' 
 pages, 75 cents. 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE DORE BIBLE GALLERY. A complete pano- 
 rania of Bible History, containing 100 full-page en- 
 gravings by Gustave Dore. 
 
 MILTON'S PARADISE LOST, with 50 full page engrav- 
 ings by Gustave Dore. 
 
 DANTE'S INFERNO, with 75 full-page engravings by 
 Gustave Dore. 
 
 DAXTK-S PURGATORY AND PARADISE, with GO 
 
 full-page engravings by Gustave Dore. 
 
 TKXN YSON'S IDYLLS OF THE KING, with 37 full- 
 page engravings by Gustave Dore. 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, by Sam- 
 uel Taylor Coleridge, with 46 full-page engravings 
 by Gustave Dore. 
 
 Cloth, ornamental, large quarto (9x12 inches,), each 
 $2.00. 
 
 BUNYAX < HLCIMM'S PKOGRKSS, with 100 engrav- 
 ings by Frederick 1 laniard and others. Cloth, 
 small quarto (9x10 inches), $1.00. 
 
 DICKENS' CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, with 
 75 fine engravings by famous artists. Cloth, small 
 quarto, boxed (9x10 inches), $1.00. 
 
 BIBLE PICTURES AND STORIES, 100 full-page en- 
 gravings. Cloth, small quarto (7x9 inches), $1.00. 
 
 MY ODD LITTLE FOLK, some rhymes and verses 
 about them, by Malcolm Douglass. Numerous 
 original engravings. Cloth, small quarto (7x9 
 inches), $1.00. 
 
 PAUL AND VIRGINIA, by Bernardin de St. Pierre, 
 with 125 engravings by Maurice Leloir. Cloth, 
 small quarto (9x10), $1.00. 
 
 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, 
 with 120 original engravings by Walter Paget. 
 Cloth, octavo (7^x9%), $1.50. 
 
 ALTEMUS' ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY OF 
 
 STANDARD AUTHORS. 
 Cloth, 12mo. Size SVoxTVi Inches. Each $1.00. 
 
 TALES FROM SHAKSPEARE, by Charles and Mary 
 Lamb, with 155 illustrations by famous artists. 
 4 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 PAUL AND VIRGINIA, by Bernardin de St. Pierre, 
 with 125 engravings by Maurice Leloir. 
 
 ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, AND 
 THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND 
 'WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE, by Lewis Car- 
 roll. Complete in one volume with 92 engravings 
 by John Tenniel. 
 
 LUCILE, by Owen Meredith, with numerous illustra- 
 tions by George Du Maurier, author of " Trilby." 
 
 BLACK BEAUTY, by Anna Sewell, with nearly 50 
 original engravings. 
 
 SCARLET LETTER, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with 
 numerous original full-page and text illustrations. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, by Nathan- 
 iel Hawthorne, with numerous original full-page 
 and text illustrations. 
 
 BATTLES OF THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, by 
 Prescott Holmes, with 70 illustrations. 
 
 BATTLES OF THE WAR FOR THfi UNION, by Pres- 
 cott Holmes with 80 illustrations. 
 
 THE SONG OF HIAWATHA, by Henry W. Longfel- 
 low, with 100 illustrations. 
 
 ALTEMUS' YOUNG PEOPLES' LIBRARY. 
 Price, 50 cents each. 
 
 ROBINSON CRUSOE: (Chiefly in words of one sylla- 
 ble). His life and strange, surprising adventures, 
 with 70 beautiful illustrations by Walter Paget. 
 
 ALICE'S ADVENTURES IX WONDERLAND, with 
 42 illustrations by John Tenniel. " The most de- 
 lightful of children's stories. Elegant and de- 
 licious nonsense." " Saturday Review." 
 
 THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT 
 ALICE FOUND TPIP^RE; a companion to " Alice 
 in Wonderland," with 50 illustrations by John 
 Tenniel. 
 
 BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, with 50 full-page 
 and text illustrations. 
 5 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Alti'iuus* Young Peoples' Library Continued. 
 
 .A CHILD'S STORY OF THE BIBLE, with 72 full-page 
 illustrations. 
 
 A CHILD'S LIFE OF CHRIST, with 49 illustrations. 
 God has implanted in the infant heart a desire 
 to hear of Jesus, and children are early attracted 
 
 and sweetly riveted by the wonderful Story of the 
 Master from the Manger to the Throne. 
 
 'SWISS FAMILY R01HNSON, with 50 illustrations. 
 The father of the family tells the tale of the 
 vicii Hides through which he and his wife and 
 children pas-s, the wonderful discoveries made and 
 dangers encountered. The book is full of interest 
 and instruction. 
 
 *CHRISTOP!1FR ( OLUMRrs AND THE DISCOV- 
 i:i;V OF AMKKICA, with 70 illustrations. Every 
 American boy and girl should be acquainted with 
 the story of the life of the great discoverer, with 
 it- struggles, adventures, and trials. 
 
 '.THE STORY OF EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 
 IX AFRICA, with 80 illustrations. Records the 
 experiences of adventures and discoveries in de- 
 veloping the " Dark Continent," from the early 
 days of Bruce and Mungo Park down to Living- 
 stone and Stanley, and tlie heroes of our own 
 times. Xo present can be more acceptable than 
 such a volume as this, where courage, intrepidity, 
 resource, and devotion are so admirably mingled. 
 
 THE FABLES OF .^ESOP. Compiled from the best ac- 
 cepted sources. With 62 illustrations. The fables 
 of .-Esop are among the very earliest compositions 
 of this kind, and probably have never been sur- 
 passed for point and brevity. 
 
 GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Adapted for young readers, 
 with 50 illustrations. 
 
 MOTHER GOOSE'S RHYMES, JINGLES AXD 
 FAIRY' TALES, with 234 illustrations. 
 6 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Altemus' Young Peoples' Library Continued. 
 
 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED 1 
 STATES, by Prescott Holmes. With portraits of 
 the Presidents and also of the unsuccessful can- 
 didates for the office; as well as the ablest of the 
 Cabinet officers. It is just the book for intelli- 
 gent boys, and it will help to make them intelli- 
 gent and patriotic citizens. 
 
 THE STORY OF ADVENTURE IN THE FROZEN 
 SEAS, with 70 illustrations. By Prescott Holmes. 
 We have here brought together the records of the 
 attempts to reach the North Pole. The book 
 shows how much can be accomplished by steady 
 perseverance and indomitable pluck. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED NATURAL HISTORY, by the Rev. 
 J. G. Wood, with 80 illustrations. This author 
 has done more to popularize the study of natural 
 history than any other writer. The illustrations 
 are striking and life-like. 
 
 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, by Charles 
 Dickens, with 50 illustrations. Tired of listening 
 to his children memorize the twaddle of oM- 
 fashioned English history, the author covered the 
 ground in his own peculiar and happy style for his 
 own children's use. When the work was pub- 
 lished its success was instantaneous. 
 
 BLACK BEAUTY: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A 
 HORSE, by Anna Sewell, with 50 illustrations. 
 A work sure to educate boys and girls to treat 
 with kindness all members of the animal kingdom. 
 Recognized as the greatest story of animal life ex- 
 tant. 
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS, with 
 130 illustrations. Contains the most favorably 
 known of the stories. 
 
 GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES. With 55 illustrations. 
 
 The Tales are a wonderful collection, as inter- 
 esting, from a literary point of view, as they are 
 delightful as stories. 
 
 FLOWER FABLES. By Louisa May A'cott. With nu- 
 merous illustrations, full-page and text. 
 
 A series of very interesting fairy tales by the 
 most charming of American story-tellers. 
 7 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Altemus' Young Peoples' Library Continued. 
 
 ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES. By Hans Christian 
 Andersen. With 77 illustrations. 
 
 The it of high moral teaching, and the deli- 
 cacy of sentiment, feeling, and expression that per- 
 vade these tales make these wonderful creations 
 not only attractive to the young, but equally ac- 
 ceptable to those of mature years, who are able 
 to understand their real significance and apprec- 
 ciate the depth of their meaning. 
 
 GRANDFATHER'S CHAIR; A HISTORY FOR 
 YOUTH. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With 60 il- 
 lustrations. 
 
 The story of America from the landing of the 
 Puritans to the acknowledgment without reserve 
 of the Independence of the United States, told 
 with all the elegance, simplicity, grace, clearness 
 and force for which Hawthorne is conspicuously 
 noted. 
 
 AUNT MARTHA'S CORNER CUPBOARD, by Mary 
 and Elizabeth Kirby, with 60 illustrations. Stor- 
 ies about Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Rice and Chinaware, 
 and other accessories of the well-kept Cupboard. 
 A book full of interest for all the girls and many 
 of the boys. 
 
 BATTLES OF THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, 
 
 by Prescott Holmes, with 70 illustrations. A 
 graphic and full history of the Rebellion of the 
 American Colonies from the yoke and oppression 
 of England, with the causes that led thereto, and 
 including an account of the second war with Great 
 Britain, and the War with Mexico. 
 
 BATTLES OF THE W^R FOR THE UNION, by Pres- 
 cott Holmes, with 80 illustrations. A correct and 
 impartial account of the greatest civil war in the 
 annals of history. Both of these histories of 
 American wars are a necessary part of the educa- 
 tion of all intelligent American boys and girls. 
 8 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS 
 
 ALTEMUS' KIPLING SEPJES. 
 
 Embracing the best known tales and stories of tin? 
 popular writer. Presented in attractive handy volume 
 size, and adapted for leisure moment reading. Large 
 type, superior paper and attractive binding. Cloth, 3." 
 cents. 
 
 1. THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT. 
 
 2. THE MAN WHO WAS. 
 
 3. WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY. 
 
 4. RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY. 
 
 5. ON GREENHOW HILL. 
 
 6. WEE WILLIE WINKIE. 
 
 7. THE MAX WHO WOULD BE KING, 
 
 8. MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY. 
 
 9. THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD. 
 
 10. THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MUL- 
 
 VANEY. 
 
 11. HIS MAJESTY THE KING. 
 
 12. WITH THE MAIN GUARD. 
 
 13. THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 
 
 14. LISPETH. 
 
 15. CUPID'S ARROWS. 
 
 16. IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 
 
 17. THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE, 
 
 18. THE JUDGMENT OF DUNGARA. 
 
 19. GEMIXT. 
 
 20. AT TWENTY-TWO. 
 
 21. ON THE CITY WALL. 
 
 ALTEMUS' ILLUSTRATED ONE SYLLABLE 
 SERIES FOR YOUNG READEARS. 
 
 Embracing popular works arranged for the young folks 
 in words of one syllable. 
 
 Printed from extra large clear type on fine enamelled 
 paper and fully illustrated by famous artists. The hand- 
 somest line of books for young children before the pub- 
 lic. 
 
 Fine English cloth; handsome, new, original designs, 
 50 cents. 
 
 1. JESOP'S FABLES. 62 illustrations. 
 >7 \ CHILD'S LIFE OF CHRIST. 49 illustrations. 
 9 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 One Syllable Series Continued. 
 
 3. A CHILD'S STORY OF THE BIBLE. 72 illustra- 
 
 tions. 
 
 4. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. 
 
 70 illustrations. 
 
 5. BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 46 illustra- 
 
 tions. 
 
 6. SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. 50 illustrations. 
 
 7. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. 50 illustrations. 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 ALTEMUS' NEW ILLUSTRATED VADEMECUM 
 SERIES. 
 
 Masterpieces of English and American literature, 
 handy volume size, large type editions. Each volume 
 contains illuminated title pages, etched portrait of 
 author or colored frontispiece and numerous engravings. 
 
 Full cloth, ivory finish, ornamental inlaid sides and 
 back, boxed, 40 cents. 
 
 1. ABBE CONSTANTIN. Halevy. 
 
 2. ADVKNTURES OF A BROWNIE.-Mulock. 
 
 3. ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. 
 
 Carroll. 
 
 4. AMERICAN XOTES.-Kipling. 
 
 5. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANK- 
 
 LIN. 
 
 6. AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 
 Holmes. 
 
 11. BAB BALLALDS AND SAVOY SONGS.-Gil- 
 
 bert. 
 
 12. BACON'S ESSAYS. 
 
 13. BALZAC'S SHORTER STORIES. 
 
 14. BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS AND DITTIES. 
 
 Kipling. 
 
 15. BATTLE OF LIFE. Dickens. 
 ]<>. BTGLOW PAPERS. Lowell. 
 
 17. / BLACK BEAUTY. Sewell. 
 
 18. BLITHEDALE ROMANCE, THE. Hawthorne. 
 IP.' BRACEBRIDGE HALL. Irving. 
 
 20. BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 26. CAMILLE. Dumas, Jr. 
 
 27. CARMEN. Merimee. 
 
 10 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Vademecuin Series Continued. 
 
 28. CHARLOTTE TEMPLE. Rowson. 
 
 29. CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS, SENTENCES 
 
 AND MAXIMS. 
 
 30. CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES. Stevenson. 
 
 31. CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. Byron. 
 
 32. CHIMES, THE. Dickens. 
 
 33. CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN. Walton. 
 
 34. CHRISTMAS CAROL, A. Dickens. 
 
 35. CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER. De 
 
 Quincey. 
 
 36. CRANFORD. Gaskell. 
 
 37. CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. Dickens. 
 
 38. CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, THE. Ruskin. 
 
 43. DAY BREAKETH, THE. Shugert. 
 
 44. DAYS WITH SIR ROGER DE COVERLY. 
 
 Addison. 
 
 45. DISCOURSES, EPICTETUS. 
 
 46. DOG OF FLANDERS, A. Ouida. 
 47./ DREAM LIFE. Mitchell. 
 
 51. EMERSON'S ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES. 
 
 52. EMERSON'S ESSAYS, SECOND SERIES. 
 
 53. ENDYMION. Keats. 
 
 54. ESSAYS OF ELIA.-Lamb. 
 
 55. ETHICS OF THE DUST. Ruskin. 
 
 56. EVANGELINE. Longfellow. 
 
 61. FAIRY LAND OF SCIENCE. Buckley. 
 
 62. FAXCHOX. Sand. 
 
 63. FOR DAILY r BREAD. Sienkiewicz. 
 
 67. GRAMMAR OF PALMISTRY. St. Hill. 
 
 68. GREEK HEROES. Kingsley. 
 
 69. GULLIVER'S TRAVEL'S. Swift. 
 
 74. HAXIA. Sienkiewicz. 
 
 75. HAUNTED MAN, THE. Dickens. 
 
 76 HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. Carlyle. 
 
 77 HIAWATHA, THE SONG OF. Longfellow. 
 78./ HOLME'S POEMS. 
 
 79. HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. Hawthorne. 
 
 * 80. HOUSE OF THE WOLF. Weyman. 
 
 81. HYPERION. Longfellow. 
 
 87. IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW. 
 
 Jerome. 
 
 88. IDYLLS OF THE KING. Tennvson. 
 
 89. IMPREGNABLE ROCK OF HOLY SCRIPT- 
 URE. Gladstone. 
 
 11 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Vademecuin Series Continued. 
 
 90. IN BLACK AND WHITE. Kipling. 
 
 91. IN MEMORIAM.-Tennyson. 
 
 96. JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER. Strettoa. 
 
 97. J. COLE. Gcllibrand. 
 
 101. KAVANAGH.-Longfellow. 
 
 102. KIDNAPPED.-Stevenson. 
 
 103. KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW 
 
 YORK. -Irving. 
 
 107. LA BELLE NIVERNAISE. Daudet. 
 
 108. LADDIE AND MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION. 
 
 109. LADY OF Till: LAK E.-Scott. 
 
 110. LALLA ROOKH. Moore. 
 
 111. LAST ESSAYS OF KUA.-Lamb. 
 
 112. LAYS OF ANCIENT IJOME, THE. Macaulay. 
 
 113. LET IS FOLLOW HIM. Sienkiewicz. 
 
 114. LIGHT OF ASIA. Arnold. 
 
 115. LIC I IT THAT FA1LKF). THE.-Kipling. 
 
 116. LITTLK LAME PiMNCK. Mulock. 
 
 117. LONGFELLOW'S POEMS. VOL. I. 
 
 118. LONGFELLOW'S POEMS, VOL. II. 
 
 119. LOWELL'S POEMS. 
 
 120. LUCILE. Meredith. 
 
 126. MAGIC NUTS THE. -Mo'esworth. 
 
 127. MAXOX LKSCAtT. Prevost. 
 
 128. MARMION. Scott. 
 
 129. MASTER OF P.ALLANTRAE, THE. Stevenson 
 
 130. MILTON'S POEMS. 
 
 131. MINE OWN PEOPLE. KipHng. 
 
 132. MINISTER OF THE WORLD. Mason. 
 
 133. MOSSES FPvOM AN OLD MAXSE. Hawthorne 
 
 134. MULVANEY STORIES. Kipling. 
 
 140. NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 WORLD. Drummond. 
 
 141. NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES.- 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 145. OLD CHRISTMAS. Irving. 
 
 146. OUTRE-MER. Longfellow. 
 
 150. PARADISE LOST. Milton. 
 
 151. PARADISE REGAINED. MUton. 
 
 152. PAUL AND VIRGINIA. Sainte Pierre. 
 
 153. PETER SCHLEMIHL. Chamisso. 
 
 154. PHANTOM RICKSHAW. Kipling. 
 
 155. PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, THE. Bunyan. 
 
 12 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Vademecmn Series Continued. 
 
 156. PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS.-Kipling. 
 
 157. PLEASURES OF LIFE. Lubbock. 
 
 158. PLUTARCH'S LIVES. 
 
 159. POE'S POEMS. 
 
 160. PRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. Ingra- 
 
 ham. 
 
 161. PRINCESS AND MAUD. Tennyson. 
 
 162. PRUE AND L Curtis. 
 
 169. QUEEN OF THE AIR. Ruskin. 
 
 172. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. Brown. 
 
 173. REPRESENTATIVE MEN.-Emerson. 
 
 174. REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. Mitchell. 
 
 175. RIP VAN WINKLE. Irving. 
 
 176. ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Feuillet. 
 
 177. RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM. 
 
 182. SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.-Holloy. 
 
 183. 'SARTOR RESARTUS. Carlyle. 
 
 184. SCARLET LETTER, THE. Hawthorne. 
 
 185. SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. Sheridan. 
 
 186. SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, A. Sterne. 
 
 187. SESAME ANL LILIES. Ruskin. 
 
 188. SHAKSPKARE'S HEROINES. Jameson. 
 
 189. SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. Goldsmith. 
 
 190. SILAS MARKER. Eliot. 
 
 191. SKETCH BOOK, THE. Irving. 
 
 192. SNOW IMAGE, THE. Hawthorne. 
 
 199. TALES FROM SHAKSPEARE. Lamb. 
 
 200. TANGLEWOOD TALES. Hawthorne. 
 
 201. TARTARIN OF TARASCON. Daudet. 
 
 202. TARTARIN ON THE ALPS. Daudet. 
 
 203. TEN NIGHTS IN A BAR-ROOM. Arthur. 
 
 204. THINGS WILL TAKE A TURN. Harraden. 
 
 205. THOUGHTS. MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 206. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Carroll, 
 
 207. TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. Hughes. 
 
 208. TREASURE ISLAND. Stevenson. 
 
 209. TWICE TOLD TALES. Hawthorne. 
 
 210. TW T YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. Dana. 
 217. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Stowe. 
 
 213. UNDINE. Fouque. 
 
 222. VIC: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FOX- 
 TERRIER. Mars-h. 
 13 
 
HENRY ALTEMI S' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Vademecuin Series Continued. 
 
 223. VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. Goldsmith. 
 
 226. WALDEN. Thoreau. 
 
 2'J7. WATER BABIES. Kingsley. 
 
 228. WEIRD TALES. Poe. 
 
 229. WHAT IS ART? Tolstoi. 
 
 230. WHITTIER'S POEMS, VOL. I. 
 
 231. WHITTIER'S PnKMS, VOL. II. 
 
 232. WINDOW IN THRUMS. Barrie. 
 
 233. WOMAN'S WORK IN THE HOME. Farrar. 
 
 234. WONDER BOOK, A. Hawthorne. 
 
 241. YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, THE. Thackeray. 
 
 244. ZOE. By author of " Laddie," etc. 
 
 ALTEMUS' ILLUSTRATED DEVOTIONAL 
 SERIES. 
 
 Full White Vellum, handsome new mosaic design in 
 gold and colors, gold edges, Boxed, 50 cents. 
 
 1. ABIDE IX CHRIST. Mun ay. 
 
 2. AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE.V 
 
 3. BEECHER'S ADDRESSES. 
 
 4. BEST THOUGHTS. From Henry Drummond. 
 
 5. BIBLE BIRTHDAY BOOK. 
 
 6. MJROOKS' ADDRESSES. 
 
 7. CHAMBER OF PEACE. 
 
 8. CHANGED CROSS, THE.\ 
 
 9. CHRISTIAN LIFE. Oxenden. 
 
 10. CHRISTIAN LIVING. Meyer. 
 
 11. CHRISTIAN'S SECRET OF A HAPPY LIFE. 
 
 12. CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN. Walton. 
 
 13. COMING TO CHRIST. Havergal. 
 
 14. DAILY FOOD FOR CHRISTIANS. 
 
 15. DAY BREAKETH, THE Shugert.x 
 
 16. DAYS OF GRACE. Murray. 
 
 17. DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 
 
 18. EVENING THOUGHTS. Havergal. 
 1.0. GOLD DUST. 
 
 20. HOLY IN CHRIST. Murray. 
 
 21. IMITATION OF CHRIST, THE. A'Kempis. 
 
 22. IMPREGNABLE ROCK OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Gladstone. 
 
 14 
 
HENRY ALTEMUS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Devotional Series Continued. 
 
 23. JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER. Stretton. 
 
 24. JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. Spurgeon. 
 
 25. JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK. Spurgeon. 
 
 26. KEPT FOR THE MASTER'S USE. Havergal. 
 
 27. KEBLE'S CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 28. LET US FOLLOW HIM. Sienkiewicz. 
 
 29. LIKE CHRIST. Murray. 
 
 30. LINE UPON LINE. 
 
 31. MANLINESS OF CHRIST, THE. Hughes. 
 
 32. MESSAGE OF PEACE, THE. Church. 
 
 33. MORNING THOUGHTS. Havergal. 
 
 34. MY KING AND HIS SERVICE. Havergal. 
 
 35. NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 WORLD. Drummond. \ 
 
 36. PALACE OF THE KING. 
 
 37. PATHWAY OF PROMISE. 
 
 38. PATHWAY r OF SAFETY. Oxenden. 
 
 39. PEEP OF DAY. 
 
 40. PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, THE. Bunyan. 
 
 41. PRECEPT UPON PRECEPT. 
 
 42. PRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID Ingra- 
 
 ham. 
 
 43. SHADOW OF THE ROCK. 
 
 44. SHEPHERD PSALM. Meyer. 
 
 45. STEPS INTO THE BLESSED LIFE. Meyer. 
 
 46. STEPPING HEAVENWARD. Prentiss.\ 
 
 47. THE THRONE OF GRACE. 
 
 48. UNTO THE DESIRED HAVEN. 
 
 49. UPLANDS OF GOD. 
 
 50. WITH CHRIST.-Murray. 
 
 15 
 
ALTEMUS' EDi 
 
 IIAXDY VOLUME SIZE. 
 
 Limp cloth binding, gold top, illuminated title and 
 frontispiece, 35 cents. 
 
 1. WELL. 
 
 2. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 
 
 3. A .MI DSL* MM:- )REAM. 
 
 S YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 5. COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 6. CORIOLANUS. 
 
 7. CYMIIKLINE. 
 
 8. HAM! 
 
 9. JUL1 ^R. 
 
 IV. (Part I). 
 IV. (Part II). 
 
 12. K VRY V. 
 
 13. KING 1IENKY VI. (Part I). 
 
 14. KIN<; II EMI Y VI. (Part II). 
 
 15. KIN- : VI. (Part III). 
 
 16. KLV tf VIII. 
 
 17. KING JOHN. 
 
 18. KING LK 
 
 19. KING RICHARD II. 
 
 20. KING RICHARD III. 
 
 21. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 
 2-2. MA< i- TH. 
 
 23. ^lEASri'E J'OR MKASFRE. 
 
 24. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 25. OTHELLO. 
 
 26. PERICLES. 
 
 27. ROMEO AND JULIET. 
 
 28. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 
 
 29. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 
 
 30. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 
 
 31. THE TEMPEST. 
 
 32. THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 
 
 33. THE WINTER'S TALE. 
 
 34. TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 35. TITUS ANDRONICUS. 
 
 36. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 
 
 37. TWELFTH NIGHT. 
 
 38. VENUS AND ADONIS AND LUCRECE. 
 
 39. SONNETS, PASSIONATE PILGRIM, ETC. 
 
 16 
 
IA 0446: