`O no, father, dear father! said Maggie, almost choked with fear. `You shouldnt make Tom write that.

`Dear heart, Mr Tulliver, what can you be thinking of? said his wife, looking up in alarm. `Its very wasteful, breaking the coal, and weve got hardly any large coal left, and I dont know where the rest is to come from.

`Ive made up my mind, Bessy, and Ill be as good as my word to you. Theres the same grave made for us to lie down in, and we mustnt be bearing one another ill-will. Ill stop in the old place, and Ill serve under Wakem - and Ill serve him like an honest man - theres no Tulliver but whats honest, mind that, Tom - here his voice rose: `theyll have it to throw up against me as I paid a dividend - but it wasnt my fault - it was because theres raskills in the world - Theyve been too many for me, and I must, give in. Ill put my neck in harness - for youve a right to say as Ive brought you into trouble, Bessy - and Ill serve him as honest as if he was no raskill: Im an honest man, though I shall never hold my head up no more - Im a tree as is broke - a tree as is broke.

Maggie obeyed, wondering: but her father gave no further orders, and only sat listening for Toms footfall on the gravel, apparently irritated by the wind, which had risen and was roaring so as to drown all other sounds. There was a strange light in his eyes that rather frightened Maggie: she began to wish that Tom would come, too.

`I think my father wants Tom, mother, said Maggie, `he must come into the parlour first.

`Ay, sir, said Luke, `youd be a deal better here nor in some new place. I cant abide new plazen mysen: things is allays awkard - narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another sort, an oat-cake i some plazen, towrt th head o the Floss, there. Its poor work, changing your country side.

`The old mill ud miss me, I think, Luke. Theres a story as when the mill changes hands, the rivers angry - Ive heard my father say it many a time. Theres no telling whether there maynt be summat in the story, for this is a puzzling w九-九-藏-书-网orld and Old Harrys got a finger in it - its been too many for me, I know.

`Its nigh upon half past eight, said Mr Tulliver. `Hell be here soon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at the beginning where everythings set down. And get the pen and ink.

`Is there anything the matter, father? said Tom.

`But I wont forgive him! I know what they say - he never meant me any harm - thats the way Old Harry props up the raskills - hes been at the bottom of everything - but hes a fine gentleman - I know, I know. I shouldnt hagone to law, they say. But who made it so as there was no arbitratin, and no justice to be got? It signifies nothing to him - I know that - hes one o them fine gentlemen as get money by doing business for poorer folks, and when hes made beggars of em, hell give em charity. I wont forgive him! I wish he might be punished with shame till his own son ud like to forget him. I wish he may do summat as theyd make him work at the treadmill! But he wont - hes too big a raskill to let the law lay hold on him. And you mind this, Tom - you never forgive him, neither, if you mean to be my son. Therell may be come a time, when you may make him feel - itll never come to me - In got my head under the yoke. Now write - write it i the Bible.

Then he turned round, and, leaning against the gate post, looked at the opposite buildings.

`It isnt wicked, I tell you, said her father fiercely. `Its wicked as the raskills should prosper - its the devils doing. Do as I tell you, Tom. Write.

`You sit down - all of you, said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily. `And, Tom, sit down here, Ive got something for you to write i the Bible.

`Why, how is it Tom doesnt come? said Mr Tulliver, impatiently.

`O father, what? said Maggie, sinking down by his knee, pale and trembling. `Its wicked to curse and bear malice.

Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fell immediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with a look of anxious surprise at his father, who was saying,

`Write as your father, 九_九_藏_书_网Edward Tulliver, took service under John Wakem, the man as had helped to ruin him, because Id promised my wife to make her what amends I could for her trouble, and because I wanted to die in th old place, where I was born and my father was born. Put that i the right words - you know how - and then write, as I dont forgive Wakem, for all that; and for all Ill serve him honest, I wish evil may befall him. Write that.

`I dont think youre quite so well to-night, are you, father? said Maggie; `you seem uneasy.

`Its just as if it was yesterday, now, Mr Tulliver went on, `when my father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for wed a plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my mother - she was a fine dark eyed woman, my mother was - the little wench ull be as like her as two peas. - Here Mr Tulliver put his stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as if he every other moment lost narration in vision. `I was a little chap no higher much than my mothers knee - she was sore fond of us children, Gritty and me - and so I said to her, "Mother," I said, "shall we have plum-pudding every day because o the malthouse?" She used to tell me o that till her dying day - she was but a young woman when she died, my mother was. But its forty good year since they finished the malthouse, and it isnt many days out of em all as I havent looked out into the yard there, the first thing in the morning - all weathers, from years end to years end. I should go off my head in a new place - I should be like as if Id lost my way. Its all hard, whichever way I look at it - the harness ull gall me - but it ud be summat to draw along the old road, istead of a new un.

`Neer mind, sir, said Luke, `I shant plague mysen. In been wi you twenty year, an you cant get twenty year wi whistlin for em, no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait九九藏书 till God Amighty sends em. I cant abide new victual nor new fazen, I cant - you niver know but what theyll gripe you.

`Ay, Luke, he said, one afternoon, as he stood looking over the orchard gate, `I remember the day they planted those apple trees. My father was a huge man for planting - it was like a merry-making to him to get a cart full o young trees - and I used to stand i the cold with him, and follow him about like a dog.

`Come, come, youre late - I want you.

The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had disburthened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational resources quite barren, and Mr Tulliver had relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships before him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterwards he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at the ground, moving his lips, and shaking his head from time to time. Then he looked hard at Mrs Tulliver, who was knitting opposite him, then at Maggie, who as she bent over her sewing was intensely conscious of some drama going forward in her fathers mind. Suddenly he took up the poker and broke the large coal fiercely.

`What am I to write, Father? said Tom, with gloomy submission.

`There he is, then, said Mr Tulliver, in an excited way, when the knock came at last. Maggie went to open the door, but her mother came out of the kitchen hurriedly, saying, `Stop a bit, Maggie, Ill open it.

An Item Added to the Family Register

Mrs Tulliver had begun to be a little frightened at her boy, but she was jealous of every office others did for him.

THAT first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days of violent struggle in the millers mind, as the gradual access of bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself. Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges which the old vigour cowww.9９liｂ•nｅtmes back and breaks. There were times when poor Tulliver thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was something quite too hard for human nature: he had promised her without knowing what she was going to say - she might as well have asked him to carry a ton weight on his back. But again, there were many feelings arguing on her side, besides the sense that life had been made hard to her by having married him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving money out of his salary towards paying a second dividend to his creditors, and it would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such as he could fill. He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labour, and his wife must have help from her sisters, a prospect doubly bitter to him, now they had let all Bessys precious things be sold, probably because they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that he had brought her to that pass. He listened to their admonitory talk, when they came to urge on him what he was bound to do for poor Bessys sake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on them furtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of needing their help could have made it an easier alternative to take their advice. But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old premises where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had done after him. The Tullivers had lived on this spot for generations, and he had sat listening on a low stool on winter evenings while his father talked of the old half-timbered mill that had been there before the last great floods, which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled it down and built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about and look at all the old objects, that he felt the strain of this clinging affection for the old home as part of his life, part of himself. He couldnt bear to think of himself living on any other spot than this, where he knew the sound of every gate and door99ｌｉｂ.nｅｔ, and felt that the shape and colour of every roof and weather stain and broken hillock was good, because his growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructed vagrancy which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics and is at home with palms and banyans, - which is nourished on books of travel and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi can hardly get a dim notion of what an old- fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot where all his memories centred and where life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just now he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which comes to us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.

`Your suppers ready by the kitchen fire, my boy, she said as he took off his hat and coat. `You shall have it by yourself, just as you like, and I wont speak to you.

`But I doubt, Luke, theyll be for getting rid o Ben, and making you do with a lad - and I must help a bit wi the mill. Youll have a worse place.

`Be quiet, Maggie! said Tom. `I shall write it.

`Ay, sir, said Luke, with soothing sympathy, `what withe rust on the wheat, an the firin o the ricks an that, as Ive seen i my time - things often looks comical: theres the bacon fat wi our last pig runs away like butter - it leaves nought but a scratchin.

`Now write - write as youll remember what Wakems done to your father, and youll make him and his feel it, if ever the day comes. And sign your name Thomas Tulliver.

`Dear heart! is it time? I must go and get his supper, said Mrs Tulliver, laying down her knitting, and leaving the room.

He paused and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, he said in a louder yet deeper tone,

`Now let me hear what youve wrote, said Mr Tulliver. Tom read aloud, slowly.

There was a dead silence while Toms pen moved along the paper: Mrs Tulliver looked scared, and Maggie trembled like a leaf.

They all three sat down, looking at him. He began to speak, slowly, looking first at his wife.