So it came to pass that after a few weeks had glided on, unmarked but by no means slowly, and the fate-guided comrades had settled down to a placid endurance bordering upon enjoyment of their damper, mutton, quart-pot tea, and negro-head, Jack began to look forward to his paper, and to digest the contents of it, from the stock advertisements to the list of new books, unattainable, alas! with a relish which surprised himself. The regular exercise, the healthful, pure atmosphere, the absence of anxiety, the sound sleep, and natural appetite had produced their ordinary effects, had thoroughly recruited his bodily and mental powers. In despite of himself, so to speak, and of the persistence with which he would declare that he was irrevocably ruined, his mental thermometer rose perceptibly. He experienced once more a sensation (and there is no more complete test of high bodily health) which he had rarely enjoyed since the blessed days of Marshmead. He felt the childlike lightness of spirit, on awakening with the dawn, which more than all things denotes an uninjured and perfect physique, a nervous system in normal and flawless condition. Wonderful is the self-attuning power of the “harp of a thousand strings,” the divinely-fashioned instrument upon which, alas! angelic melodies alternate with demon wailings; and the fiend-chorus from the lowest inferno is mysteriously permitted to drown the seraphic tones which would fain uplift the aspirations of man to his celestial home.
With braced sinews, freshly-toned nerves, and veins refilled with pure and unfevered blood, John Redgrave appeared so manifestly an altered man that his humble mentor could not refrain from approving comment.
“Eh, ma certie, but ye’re just improvin’ and gainin’ strength, like the vara sheep, the puir dumb craters, just uncommon. There’s a glint o’ your e’e, and a lift o’ your heed, and a swing o’ your walk that tell me ye’re castin’ awa’ the black shadow—the Lord be praised for it, and for a’ His mercies. I’ll live to see you ance mair in your rightful place amang men, and ye’ll give old Jock a corner in your kitchen, or a lodge gate to keep, when he’s too auld and failed to work, and hasna strength left for as much as to drink.”
“You have a right to a share of whatever I may have in time to come,” said Jack, with comparative cheerfulness. “But I have lost the habit of hoping. I do feel wonderfully better; and if I could look forward to anything but to some fresh strange trick of destiny I should feel again like the man I once was, who had the heart to dare and the hand to back a bold adventure. But I doubt my luck, as I have had good reason to do; and I believe old Blockham was not far wrong when he said that there were some men (and he took me to be one of them) who, with whatever apparent prospects, never did any good.”
“He’s an auld sneck-drawer. I kenned him weel when he hadna sae muckle as a guid pair o’ boots. I wadna gie a foot-rot parin’ for the opinion o’ a hunner like him.”
“He is a stupid old fellow enough,” said Jack; “but those sort of people have an awkward knack of being right, especially where the making of money is concerned. A man can’t be too thick-headed to be a successful money-grubber.”
“It gars one doot o’ the wisdom and maircy of an over-ruling Providence whiles,” assented the old man; “but I’ll no deny that siccan thoughts hae passed through my ain brain when I hae seen the senseless, narrow, meeserable ceephers that were permitted to gather up a’ the guid things o’ this life. But that’s no to say that a man wi’ understanding and pairts suldna learn caution frae adversity, and pass all these creeping tortoise-bodies in the race of life, like the hare, puir beastie, if the auld story-book had given him anither heat.”
“But the hare never gets a chance of a second heat, my old friend,” said Jack, ruefully; “that’s the worst of it; he jumps into a gravel-pit, or a stray greyhound chops him. I think I see my sheep drawing off.”
So the colloquy ended for the time. But Jack doubtless revolved the question suggested by his humble friend, and asked himself whether the returning hope of which he was conscious was the herald of a gleam of fickle Fortune’s favour, or whether it was an ignis fatuus, destined to lure him on to yet more dire misfortune.