"Stephen dragged him away, and in the scuffle thought Bernard had struck him; Meekin swore that he did.
"Stephen, when set up, was furiously passionate, and without taking time for thought, he snatched a switch from the hand of Ben, and laid it on Bernard till his back and even the sides of his face were covered with wheals. The poor boy ran, and Stephen after him. Stephen was even the more provoked because Benjamin cried to him to desist.
"Bernard at last got away from him by a little gate which led into the garden, and he continued to run until he had come to the arbour and the grotto. He had never gone to that corner of the shrubbery since the news had come of the loss of the Dory; and at first, when he almost dropped down on one of the benches, he scarcely recollected where he was. He was seated exactly where he had sat with Lucilla on the last Whitsun-Monday. The mouth of the grotto was exactly before him; the winter's wind had driven the dead damp leaves into it, and there had been no one to clear them away. The highest point of the little window in the back, which Lucilla herself had painted on a piece of board, just peeped above the heap of leaves. Bernard thought of the tools Lucilla had bought; they were lying, no doubt, rusting in a corner.
"'Oh, Lucilla!' he cried; and bursting into tears, he laid his hands on the table, and stooped his face upon them: the board was quite wet with his tears when he looked up again.
"He was startled by the sudden ringing out of the bells. Stephen and the boys had gone to cool themselves in the belfry, after leaving the pony undocked in the field.
"How did those bells remind the unhappy boy of the year before, for he had heard them when sitting in that very place with Lucilla! He remembered his hardness and pride at that time, and like the Prodigal Son to his father, he cried to his God, 'I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am not worthy to be called Thy son.'
"Could Lucilla have foreknown in what spirit her dear brother would have spoken those words in that place, at the end of twelve months after she had brought him there, she would have been filled with joy, and would have said, 'My God, I thank Thee, for Thou hast heard my prayers.'
"When Bernard was getting more calm, his tears were made to flow again by the sight of the broken splinters and one of Lucilla's beads on the gravel at his feet. He took up the bead, wrapped it in a bit of paper, put it into his waistcoat pocket, and went out of the shrubbery by the wicket close by into the wood.
"As he walked along his wandering eye at last settled upon that spot of ground, at the foot of the round hill with the crown of fir-trees, where the carriage which had taken away his parents had disappeared. He thought then of his nurse, and that she had been one of those to whom he had behaved ill.
"'Poor nurse!' he said to himself, 'I will go to beg her pardon, and I will get her to let me live with her, and never let me come back to this place again. Nurse will