"Father," said he, as he kissed the old man farewell, "I've a little money come in. I'll send you fifty from London in a day or two, and lodge a hundred and fifty more with Smith and Co. So you'll be quite in clover while I am poisoning the Turkeys, or at some better work."
The old man thanked God for his good son, and only hoped that he was not straitening himself to buy luxuries for a useless old fellow.
Another sacred kiss on that white head, and Tom was away for London, with a fuller purse, and a more self-contented heart too, than he had known for many a year.
And Elsley was left behind, under the grey church spire, sleeping with his fathers, and vexing his soul with poetry no more. Mark has covered him now with a fair Portland slab. He took Claude Mellot to it this winter before church time, and stood over it long with a puzzled look, as if dimly discovering that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in his philosophy.
"Wonderful fellow he was, after all! Mary shall read us out some of his verses to-night. But, I say, why should people be born clever, only to make them all the more miserable?"
"Perhaps they learn the more, papa, by their sorrows," said quiet little
Mary; "and so they are the gainers after all."
And none of them having any better answer to give, they all three went into the church, to see if one could be found there.
And so Tom Thurnall, too, went Eastward-Ho, to take, like all the rest, what God might send.