“No, he has led a most healthy life—temperate, gentle, and equable. His brain has always been clear and vigorous, without being too creative. He was one of the soundest scholars for his age I have ever met with.” “But he had some terrible blow, eh?” “Oh yes, a most terrible blow.” John thought what a terrible blow it would be to his own lifeʼs life, if the issue went against him, and for tears he could ask no more. CHAPTER XVI. The good people assembled in Nowelhurst church were agreeably surprised, on the following Sunday, by the announcement from Mr. Pell—in that loud sonorous voice of his, which had frightened spinsters out of their wits, lest he were forbidding, instead of asking their banns of matrimony—that there would be no sermon that morning, inasmuch as he, the Rev. Octavius, was forced to hurry away, at full speed, to assuage the rampant desire of Rushford for the performance of divine service. Mrs. Nowell Corklemore, who had the great curtained pew of the Hall entirely to herself and child—for Eoa never would go to church, because they defy the devil there—Georgie, who appeased her active mind by counting the brass–headed nails, and then multiplying them into each other, and subtracting the ones that were broken, lifted her indescribable eyes, and said, “Thank God,” almost audibly. Octavius Pell, hurrying out of the porch, ascended Coræbus, as had been arranged; but he did it so rapidly, and with such an air of decision, that Amy, standing at the churchyard gate, full of beautiful misgivings, could not help exclaiming, “Oh please, Mr. Pell, whatever you do, leave your stick here till Monday. We will take such care of it.” “Indeed, I fear I must not, Miss Rosedew,” Octavius answered, gravely, looking first at his stick, and then at the flanks of Ræby, who was full of interesting tricks; “I have so far to go, you know, and I must try to keep time with them.—Whoa, you little villain!” “Oh dear, I am so sorry. At any rate please not to strike him, only _stroke_ him with it. He is so _very_ high–spirited. And he has never had a weal upon him, at least since he came to papa. And I could not bear to see it. And I know you wonʼt, Mr. Pell.” Octavius looked at the soft–hearted girl, blushing so in her new drawn bonnet—mauve with black, for the sake of poor Clayton. He looked at her out of his knowing dry eyes in that sort of response–to–the–Litany style which a curate adopts to his rectorʼs daughter. “Can you suppose, Miss Rosedew, that I would have the heart to beat him now?—Ah, you will, will you then?” Ræbus thought better of it. “No, I hope you would not,” said Amy, in pure good faith, with a glance, however, at the thick bamboo, “because it would be _so cruel_. It is hollow, I hope; but it has such knots, and it looks so very hard!” “Hollow, and thin as a piece of pie–crust; and you know how this wood splits.”