HARRY JOSCELYN. VOL. II. HARRY JOSCELYN. BY MRS. OLIPHANT AUTHOR OF “The Chronicles of Carlingford,” &c., &c. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1881. _All rights reserved._ HARRY JOSCELYN. CHAPTER I. HARRY’S RESOLUTION. There is nothing that grows and strengthens with thinking of it like the sense of personal injury. Harry Joscelyn had been very angry when he left home; but he was not half so angry at that moment as when he looked out of the window of the railway carriage, as the train swept through the valley, and saw in the distance the village roofs, over which, had there been light enough, and had his eyes served him so far, he might have seen the White House seated, firm and defiant, upon the Fellside. And every mile that he travelled his wrath and indignation grew. When he reached Liverpool he had formed his purpose beyond the reach of argument, or anything that reason could say; and reason said very little in the general excitement of his being. He had been turned out of his home, he had been refused the money by which he thought he could have made his fortune. He felt himself cast off by everybody belonging to him. His mother had permitted that final outrage, he thought; for surely she could have found means of help if she had chosen to exert herself. His Uncle Henry had bought himself off, and got rid of a troublesome applicant by the gift of that twenty pounds. They were all against him. He thought of it and thought of it till they seemed to be all his enemies, and at last he came to believe that they were glad to get quit of him, to be done with him. This was the aspect under which he contemplated his relations with his family when he got to Liverpool; and the effect upon him was that of a settled disgust with all the ordinary habits of his life, and its fashion altogether. When he thought of returning to the office, to his former routine as clerk, the idea made him sick. It seemed to him that he could do anything, or go anywhere, rather than this. But though the impulse of abandoning all he had been or done hitherto was instantaneous, he could not quite settle in a moment, with the same rapidity, what he was to do, or be, in the future. He crossed to the other side of the great river with his little bag of “needments,” the linen Mrs. Eadie had bought for him and a few other indispensable things which he had himself procured, and lived in one of the villages there, which have now grown into towns, watching the ships