CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST OF A NEW LINE.
In Great Castleborough there lived a race of paupers. From the year of the 42nd of Elizabeth, or 1601, down to the present generation, this race maintained an uninterrupted descent. Like that of many a more worldly-favoured race, theirs was a descent; it had nothing of an ascent in it. But that is the fate of ancestry. A man on some particular occasion ascends; makes himself a mark in his time; perhaps a name in the world’s annals, and from him his family descends.
The expression is perfectly correct; as the heralds truly have it; it descends, fades out, and is gone. It has lived? no, continued, a thousand years perhaps; it has descended, and prided itself on descending. That was the case of the Rockvilles; and when we hear of families and persons illustriously or honourably descended, we hear an internal echo which says, “Yes—descended.” The truly great man ascends from his ancestors.
There was a steady and unbroken line of paupers in Great Castleborough, as the parish books testify. No families had a more unquestionable pedigree. There was no flaw, no dubious spot in it. The parish books were the red-books of this race. No genealogy could bear a more rigid scrutiny than theirs. From generation to generation their demands on the parish funds stand recorded. There were no lacunæ in their career; there was no occasion for the herald to skip skilfully from cousin to doubtful cousin, nor great lawyers to cast a costly glamour over some delicate question of legitimacy. There never failed a rightful heir to their families. Fed on the bread of idleness and legal provision, these people flourished, increased, and multiplied. Sometimes required to work for the weekly stipend which they received, they never acquired a taste for labour, or lost the taste for the bread for which they did not labour. These paupers regarded their maintenance by no means as a disgrace. They claimed it as a right—as their patrimony. They contended that one-third of the property of the Church had been given by benevolent individuals for the support of the poor, and that what the Reformation wrongfully deprived them of, the great enactment of Elizabeth rightfully—and only rightfully—restored.
Those who imagine that all paupers merely claim parish relief because the law has ordained it, commit a great error. There were numbers then who were hereditary paupers, on a higher principle even than hereditary peers, and that on a tradition carefully handed down, that they were only manfully claiming their own. They traced their claims from the most ancient feudal times. They were none of your modern manufactures, the offspring of wretched political necessities. They came down from times when the lord was as much bound to maintain his villein in gross, as the villein was to work for the lord. These paupers were in fact, or claimed to be, the original adscripti glebæ, and to have as sound a claim to parish support as the landed proprietor had to his land. For this reason, in the old Catholic times, after they had escaped from villenage by running away from their hundred, and remaining absent for a year and a day, dwelling for that period in a walled town, these people were amongst the most diligent attendants at the abbey doors, and, when the abbeys were dissolved, were, no doubt, amongst the most daring of those thieves, vagabonds, and sturdy rogues who, after the Robin Hood fashion, beset the highways and solitary farms of England, and claimed their black-mail in a very unceremonious style. It was out of this class that Henry VIII. hanged his seventy-two thousand during his reign, and, as it is said, without appearing materially to diminish their number.
That they continued to “increase, multiply, and replenish the earth,” overflowing all bounds, overpowering by mere populousness all the severe laws against them, of whipping, burning in the hand, in the forehead, or the breast, and hanging, and filling the whole country with alarm, is evidenced by the very Act of Elizabeth itself.
Amongst these hereditary paupers who, as we have said, were found in Castleborough, there was a family of the name of Deg. This family had never failed to demand and enjoy what it held to be its share of its ancient inheritance. It appeared from the parish records, that they practised, in different periods, the crafts of shoemaking, tailoring, and chimney-sweeping; but since the invention of the stocking-frame they had, one and all of them, followed the profession of stocking-weavers; or, as they were there called, stockingers. This was a trade which required no extreme exertion of the physical or intellectual powers. To sit in a frame, and throw the arms to and fro, was a thing that might be carried to a degree of extreme diligence, or be let down into a mere apology for idleness. An “idle stockinger” was then no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon. The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labour—a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that “hard work was enough to kill a man.”
There was, indeed, an anecdote of three of the Degs which was continually quoted as exemplifying the three degrees of extreme indolence. According to this, three Degs were lying one fine autumn day under a neighbour’s pear-tree. One of them, in a languid tone, said, “There! a pear has dropped.” The second observed, still more languidly, “I wish I had it.” The third was too lazy even to open his mouth to express such a wish, much less to move and get it.
The Degs, then, were seldom out of work; but they did not get enough, or do enough, to meet and tie. They had but little work if times were bad, and if times were good, they complained of large families and sickly wives and children. Be times what they would, therefore, the Degs were due and successful attendants at the parish pay-table. Nay, so much was this a matter of course, that they came at length not even to trouble themselves to receive their pay, but sent their young children for it; and it was duly paid. Did any parish officer, indeed, turn restive, and decline to pay a Deg, he soon found himself summoned before a magistrate, and such pleas of sickness, want of work, and poor earnings brought forward, that he most likely got a sharp rebuke from the benevolent but uninquiring magistrate, and acquired a character of hard-heartedness that stuck to him.
So parish overseers learnt to let the Degs alone; and their children, thus regularly brought up to receive the parish money for their parents, were impatient, as they grew up, to receive it for themselves. Marriages in the Deg family were, consequently, very early, and there were plenty of instances of married Degs claiming parish relief under the age of twenty, on the plea of being the parents of two children. One such precocious individual being asked by a rather verdant officer why he was married before he was able to maintain a family, replied, in much astonishment, that he had married in order to maintain himself by parish assistance. That he had never been able to maintain himself by his labour, nor ever expected to do it: his only hope, therefore, lay in marrying, and becoming the father of two children, to which patriarchal rank he had now attained, and demanded his “pay.”
Thus had lived and flourished the Degs on their ancient patrimony, the parish, for upwards of two hundred years. Nay, we have no doubt whatever that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage they had, doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right. They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an alehouse and gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances. It was become pure pauper blood.
The Degs married, if not entirely amongst Degs, yet amongst the same class. None but a pauper would dream of marrying a Deg, even were she handsome as Helen of Troy. The Degs, therefore, were in constitution, in mind, in habit, and in inclination, paupers. But a pure and unmixed class of this kind does not die out like an aristocratic stereotype. It increases and multiplies. The lower the grade, the more prolific, as is sometimes seen on a large and even national scale. The Degs threatened, therefore, to become a most formidable clan in the lower purlieus of Castleborough; but, luckily, there is so much virtue even in evils, that one not rarely cures another. War, the great evil, cleared the town of Degs.
Fond of idleness, of indulgence, of money easily got and as easily spent, the Degs were rapidly drained off by recruiting parties during the great French war. The young men enlisted, and were marched away; the young women married soldiers that were quartered in the town from time to time, and marched away with them. There were eventually none of the once numerous Degs left, except a few old people, whom death was sure to draft off at no distant period into his regiment of the line which has no end. Parish overseers, magistrates, and master manufacturers felicitated themselves on this unhoped-for deliverance from the ancient family of the Degs.
But one cold, clear winter evening, the east wind piping his sharp, sibilant ditty in the hawthorn hedges, and poking his sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by way of passing joke, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Castleborough, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking man in the prime of life, and in the greatcoat and thick worsted gloves of a wealthy traveller, cast a glance at the wretched creature trudging heavily on, expecting a pitiful appeal to his sensibilities, and thinking it a bore to have to pull off a glove, and dive into his pocket for a copper; but to his surprise, there was no demand, only a low curtsey, and the glimpse of a face of singular honesty of expression, and of excessive weariness.
Spires was a man of warm feelings; he looked earnestly at the woman, and thought he had never seen such a picture of fatigue in his life. He pulled up and said,
“You seem very tired, my good woman.”
“Awfully tired, sir.”
“And are you going far to-night?”
“To Great Castleborough, sir, if God give me strength.”
“To Castleborough!” exclaimed Mr. Spires, “why you seem ready to drop; you’ll never reach it. You’d better stop at the next village.”
“Ay, sir, it is easy stopping for those who have money.”
“And you’ve none, eh?”
“As God lives, sir, I’ve a sixpence, and that’s all.”
Mr. Spires put his hand in his pocket and held out to her the next instant half-a-crown.
“There, stop, poor thing—make yourself comfortable—it’s quite out of the question to reach Castleborough. But stay, are your friends living in Castleborough? What are you?”
“A poor soldier’s widow, sir: and may God Almighty bless you,” said the poor woman, taking the money, the tears standing in her large brown eyes as she curtseyed very low.
“A soldier’s widow,” said Mr. Spires. She had touched the softest place in the manufacturer’s heart, for he was a very loyal man, and vehement champion of his country’s honour in the war. “So young,” said he,—“how did you lose your husband?”
“He fell, sir,” said the poor woman,—but she could get no further; she suddenly caught up the corner of her grey cloak, covered her face with it, and burst into an excess of grief.
The manufacturer felt as if he had hit the woman a blow by his careless question. He sat watching her for a moment in silence, and then said—“Come, get into the gig, my poor woman; come, I must see you to Castleborough.”
The poor woman dried her tears, and heavily climbed into the gig, expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said in a cheerful tone to comfort her, “Bless me, but that is a fine, thumping fellow, though. I don’t wonder you are tired, carrying such a load.”
The poor woman pressed the stout child, apparently two years old, to her heart, as if she felt it a great blessing, and no load. The gig drove rapidly on.
Presently, Mr. Spires resumed his conversation.
“So you are from Castleborough?”
“No, sir, my husband was.”
“So: what was his name?”
“John Deg, sir.”
“Deg?” said Mr. Spires; “Deg, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
The manufacturer seemed to hitch himself off towards his own side of the gig, gave another look at her, and was silent. The poor woman seemed somewhat astonished at his look and movement, and was silent too.
After awhile Mr. Spires said again, “And do you hope to find friends in Castleborough? Had you none where you came from?”
“None, sir; none in the world!” said the poor woman, and again her feelings seemed too strong for her. At length she added, “I was in service, sir, at Poole, in Dorsetshire, when I married; my mother only was living, and while I was away with my husband, she died. When—when the news came from abroad, that—when I was a widow, sir, I went back to my native place, and the parish-officers said I must go to my husband’s parish lest I and my child should become troublesome.”
“You asked relief of them?”
“Never! oh, God knows, no, never! My family have never asked a penny of a parish,—they would die first, and so would I, sir; but they said I might do it, and I had better go to my husband’s parish at once and they offered me money to go.”
“And you took it, of course.”
“No, sir; I had a little money, which I had earned by washing and laundering; and I sold most of my things, as I could not carry them, and came off. I felt hurt, sir; my heart rose against the treatment of the parish, and I thought I should be better amongst my husband’s friends,—and my child would, if anything happened to me. I had no friends of my own.”
Mr. Spires looked at the woman in silence.
“Did your husband tell you anything of his friends? What sort of a man was he?”
“Oh, he was a gay young fellow, rather, sir; but not bad to me. He always said his friends were well off in Castleborough.”
“He did!” said the manufacturer, with a great stare, and as if bolting the words from his heart in a large gust of wonder.
The poor woman again looked at him with a strange look. The manufacturer whistled to himself, and giving his horse a smart cut with the whip, drove on faster than ever. The night was fast settling down; it was numbing cold; a grey fog rose from the river as they thundered over the old bridge; and tall engine chimneys, and black smoky houses loomed through the dusk before them. They were at Castleborough.
As they slackened their pace up a hill at the entrance of the town, Mr. Spires again opened his mouth.
“I should be very sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Deg,” he said, “but I have my fears that you are coming to this place with false expectations. I fear your husband did not give you the truest possible account of his family here.”
“Oh, sir! What—what is it?” exclaimed the poor woman; “in God’s name, tell me!”
“Why, nothing more than this,” said the manufacturer; “there are few of the Degs left here. They are old, and on the parish, and can do nothing for you.”
The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was silent.
“But don’t be cast down,” said Mr. Spires. He would not tell her what a pauper family it really was; for he saw that she was a very feeling woman, and he thought that she would learn that soon enough. He felt that her husband had from vanity given her a false account of his connections; and he was really sorry for her.
“Don’t be cast down!” he went on; “you can wash and iron, you say; you are young and strong; those are your friends. Depend on them, and they will be better to you than any other.”
The poor woman was silent, leaning her head down on her slumbering child, and crying to herself; and thus they drove on through many long and narrow streets, with lights glaring from the shops, but with few people in the streets, and those hurrying shivering along the pavement, so intense was the cold. Anon, they stopped at a large pair of gates; and the manufacturer rang a bell, which he could reach from his gig; and the gates were presently flung open, and they drove into a spacious yard, with a large handsome house, having a bright lamp burning before it, on one side of the yard, and tall warehouses on the other.
“Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock’s, James,” said Mr. Spires, “and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable; and if you will come to my warehouse to-morrow,” added he, addressing the poor woman, “perhaps I can be of some use to you.”
The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and following the old man-servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with her living load, her limbs stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue and cold ride.
We must not pursue too minutely our narrative. Mrs. Deg was engaged to do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spires’s linen, and the manner in which she executed her task, insured her recommendations to all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in these meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two or three children of almost the same age as Mrs. Deg’s child. The children, as time went on, became playfellows. Little Simon might be said to have the free run of the shoemaker’s house, and he was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker’s birds, and his flute, on which he often played when his work was done.
Mrs. Deg took a great liking to the shoemaker: and he and his wife, a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that she cultivated. She had found out her husband’s parents; but they were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of persons whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather that her little boy had died than have been familiarised with the spirit of these old people. Despise them she struggled hard not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient to maintain them, on condition that they desisted from any further application to the parish. It would be a long and disgusting tale to recount all the troubles, annoyances, and querulous complaints and even bitter accusations that she received from her connections, whom she could never satisfy; but she considered it one of her crosses in life, and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered no real want, so long as they lived, which was for years; but she would never allow her little Simon to be with them alone.
The shoemaker neighbour was a stout protector to her against the greedy demands of the old people, and of others of the old Degs, and also against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely suitors, who saw in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman, with a flourishing business, and a neat and well-furnished house, a very desirable acquisition. But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but to live for the boy, and she kept her resolve with firmness and gentleness.
The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town-meadows, to gather groundsel and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and little Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children. There William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the children the beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects of nature; and while he sat on a stile and read in a little old book of poetry, as he often used to do, the children sate on the summer grass, and enjoyed themselves in a variety of plays.
The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker’s conversation on little Simon Deg, was such as never wore out of him through his whole life, and soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He manifested the greatest uneasiness at their treading on the flowers in the grass; he would burst into tears if they persisted in it; and when asked why, he said they were so beautiful, and that they must enjoy the sunshine, and be very unhappy to die. The shoemaker was amazed, but indulged the lad’s fancy. One day he thought to give him a great treat, and when they were out in the meadows, he drew from under his coat a bow and arrow, and shot the arrow high up into the air. He expected to see him in an ecstasy of delight; his own children clapped their hands in transport, but Simon stood silent, and as if awestruck. “Shall I send up another?” asked the shoemaker.
“No, no!” exclaimed the child, imploringly. “You say God lives up there, and He mayn’t like it.”
The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, “There is too much imagination there. There will be a poet there if we don’t take care.”
The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his trade. His mother was very glad; and thought shoemaking would be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit. He was greatly indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such cases amongst the boys in the neighbourhood.
He was now about twelve years of age; when going one day with a basket of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires’ for his mother, he was noticed by Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window. The great war was raging; there was much distress amongst the manufacturers; the people were suffering, and exasperated against their masters. Mr. Spires, as a staunch tory, and supporter of the war, Was particularly obnoxious to the workpeople, who uttered violent threats against him. For this reason his premises were strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his yard, just within the gates, was chained a large and fierce mastiff, his chain allowing him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger, though not to reach him. The dog knew the people who came regularly about, and seemed not to notice them; but on the entrance of a stranger, he rose up, barked, and came to the length of his chain. This always drew the attention of the porter, if he was away from his box, and few persons dared to pass till he came.
Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head, when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite to him, within a few feet. The boy, a good deal startled at first, drew himself back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting his basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to say—“Well, old boy, you’d like to eat me, wouldn’t you?”
Mr. Spires, who sat near his counting-house window at his books, was struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a clerk, “What boy is that?”
“It is Jenny Deg’s,” was the answer.
“Ha! that boy! Zounds! how boys do grow! Why, that’s the child that Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Castleborough, and what a strong, handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now.”
As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires called him to the counting-house door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and learning, and so on. Simon, taking off his cap with much respect, answered in such a clear and modest way, with a voice which had so much feeling and natural music in it, that the worthy manufacturer was greatly taken with him.
“That’s no Deg!” said he, when he again entered the counting-house, “not a bit of it. He’s all Goodrich, or whatever his mother’s name was, every inch of him.”
The consequence of that interview was, that Simon Deg was very soon after perched on a stool in Mr. Spires’ counting-house, where he continued till he was twenty-two. Mr. Spires had no son, only a single daughter; and such were Simon Deg’s talents, attention to business, and genial disposition, that at that age Mr. Spires gave him a share in the concern. He was himself now getting less fond of exertion than he had been, and placed the most implicit reliance on Simon’s judgment and general management. Yet, no two men could be more unlike in their opinions beyond the circle of trade. Mr. Spires was a staunch tory of the staunch old school. He was for church and king, and for things remaining for ever as they had been. Simon, on the other hand, had liberal and reforming notions. He was for the improvement of the people, and their admission to many privileges. Mr. Spires, therefore, was liked by the leading men of the place, and disliked by the people. Simon’s estimation was precisely in the opposite direction. But this did not disturb their friendship; it required another disturbing cause, and that came.
Simon Deg and the daughter of Mr. Spires grew attached to each other; and as the father had thought Simon worthy of becoming a partner in the business, neither of the young people deemed that he could object to a partnership of a more domestic description. But here they made a tremendous mistake. No sooner was such a proposal hinted at, than Mr. Spires burst forth with the fury of all the winds from the bag of Ulysses.
“What! a Deg aspire to the hand of the sole heiress of the enormously opulent Spires?”
The very thought almost cut the proud manufacturer off with apoplexy. The ghosts of a thousand paupers rose up before him, and he was black in the face. It was only by a prompt and bold application of leeches and lancet, that the life of the great man was saved. But there was an end of all further friendship between himself and the expectant Simon. He insisted that he should withdraw from the concern, and it was done. Simon, who felt his own dignity deeply wounded too, for dignity he had, though the last of a long line of paupers—his own dignity, not his ancestors’—took silently, yet not unrespectfully, his share—a good round sum, and entered another house of business.
For several years there appeared to be a feud, and a bitterness between the former friends; yet, it showed itself in no other manner, than by a careful avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. Then came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Castleborough was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood pre-eminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was growing rich, and was extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the country and flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built little summer-houses in them, and let them to the artizans. In his factory, he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation. He had set up a school for the children, besides an evening and Sunday school for such as had begun to work in the factory or the loom, with a reading-room and conversation-room for the workpeople, and encouraged them to bring their families there, and enjoy music, books, and lectures. Accordingly, he was the idol of the people, and the horror of the old school of the manufacturers.
“A pretty upstart and demagogue I’ve nurtured,” said Mr. Spires often to his wife and daughter, who only sighed and were silent.
Then came a furious election. The town for a fortnight, more resembled the worst corner of Tartarus, than a Christian borough. Drunkenness, riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another, that is, tearing each other’s coat-tails off, all sorts of violence and abuse ruled and raged, till the blood of all Castleborough was at boiling heat. In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen, ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular beyond measure. But popular though he still was, the other and old tory side triumphed. The people were exasperated to madness; and when the chairing of the successful candidate commenced, there was a terrific attack made on the procession by the defeated party. Down went the chair, and the new member, glad to escape into an inn, saw his friends mercilessly assailed by the populace. There was a tremendous tempest of sticks, brickbats, paving-stones and rotten eggs. In the midst of this, Simon Deg, and a number of his friends, standing at the upper window of an hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked down, and trampled on by the crowd. In an instant, and before his friends had missed him from amongst them, Simon Deg was seen darting through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a surprising vigour, and gesticulating, and, no doubt, shouting vehemently to the rioters, though his voice was lost in the din. In the next moment his hat was knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger; but another moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were bearing somebody from the frantic mob into a neighbouring shop. It was Simon Deg assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr. Spires.
Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and bewildered by his fall. His clothes were one mass of mud, and his face was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of water, and his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was found that he had received no serious injury.
“They had like to have done for me, though,” said he.
“Yes; and who saved you?” asked a gentleman.
“Ay, who was it? who was it?” asked the really warm-hearted manufacturer. “Let me know; I owe him my life.”
“There he is!” said several gentlemen at the same instant, pushing forward Simon Deg.
“What, Simon!” said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet. “Was it thee, my boy?” He did more—he stretched out his hand. The young man clasped it eagerly; and the two stood silent, and with a heartfelt emotion, which blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a union more sacred than esteem.
A week hence, and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of opposition to his old friend, in defence of conscientious principles, the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and re-union.
Simon Deg was now one of the richest men in Castleborough. His mother was still living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent and wise housekeeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.