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On the lowest levels of the mines, grimy men looked into each other's faces and talked in an undertone of the awful fear which they would not have the rocks and the secret places of the earth know; that "the parson" was in a murderer's cell, and the storm clouds were gathering fast about him, and the worst was, he was guilty it must be so!
The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs. Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting iced cherry-juice.
Walter could hardly regard him as a cousin, declaring to himself that his uncle the parson, and his own father were, in effect, younger men than the younger Gregory Marrable. He was never without a cough, never well, never without various ailments and troubles of the flesh, of which, however, he himself made but slight account, taking them quite as a matter of course.
Even such stick-at-nothing enthusiasts as Parson, Bosher, and Co., couldn't make a case of it, and were forced to admit with deep mortification that the glory had departed from Parrett's, at any rate for a season. Perhaps the most patriotic rejoicings that evening were in Welch's house.
He put up at the principal inn, refreshed himself by a general ablution, and sat down with good appetite to his beefsteak and pint of port. The parson was a better judge of the physiognomy of man than that of the horse; and after a satisfactory glance at the civil smirking landlord, who removed the cover and set on the wine, he ventured on an attempt at conversation. "Is my Lord at the Park?"
"He is though, lad," said the Parson at the window, very quiet. Kit was beside him in a minute. The mattress was down, and the Parson, leaning out into the blue, both hands on the sill, munched his thoughts. "There's his tops'ls," said he, nodding east to where far across the waters a glimmer as of an iceberg hung in the dawn. "Take the glass and have a peep at her."
"Why?" hotly. "Impossible that's why." It was the first time he had thrown that dead-wall word across the lad's path, and it maddened the boy. After all, he was responsible, not this beefy soldier. "That's a word we don't know in our Service, sir," he cried with scornful nostrils. The taunt touched the Parson on the raw. He swung round savagely. "Your Service!" he stormed.
Now there appears in the doorway, the stalworth figure of the vote-cribber, who, with sullen face, advances mechanically toward Tom, pauses and regards him with an air of suspicion. "You are not what you ought to be, Tom," he says, doggedly, and turns to the young Missionary. "Parson," he continues, "this 'ere pupil of yourn's a hard un. He isn't fit for respectable society.
The parson said many other things of a like character, out which I did not think worth writing down in my memory. He then shook hands with my mother and father, expressed his surprise at the lateness of the hour to the doctor, and took his leave, meeting with a strange mishap on his way home, which will be related in the next chapter.
I remember when I was a little boy," he continued, pensively, "hearing the parson read about some handwriting on the wall, that frightened Beelzebub himself; but I tell you this handwriting on the wall used me up a good deal more than that other. Still what followed was worse." Clark paused for a little while, and then, taking a long breath, went on.
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