Along with this information I heard of a sister of Mr. Owen’s, who was paying them a visit--of repeated excursions into Simonborough--of Maurice’s growing relish for home, and some anxieties on the young man’s part about his future life. And Johnnie’s book was published--a book which in my wildest imagination I could not have supposed to be produced by the cripple boy, who, out of the cottage, knew nothing whatever of life. Johnnie’s hero was a hero who did feats of strength and skill unimaginable--tamed horses, knocked down bullies, fought, rode, rowed, and cricketed, after the most approved fashion of the modern youth, heroical and muscular--and in his leisure hours made love!--such love!--full of ecstasies and despairs, quite inconceivable to any imagination above twenty--but all enforced and explained with such perfect ingenuousness and good faith that one could have hugged the boy all the time for the exquisite and delightful folly, in which there did not mix an evil thought. Nothing could well be more remarkable than this fiery outburst of confined and restrained life from the bosom of the cripple, to whom all these active delights were impossible--it was profoundly pathetic too, to me. Poor Johnnie! with that fervid imagination in him, how was he to bear the gray life which Alice had predicted--the life which must be his, notwithstanding all his dreams and hopes? How, when it came to that, was he to undergo the downfall of his first miraculous castle in the air, his vain and violent love-passion? Poor heart, foredoomed! would he ever learn to bring the music of Patience, so lovely to those who hear, so hard to those who make it, out of those life-chords which were drawn all awry, beyond the reach of happiness? I was happy myself in those days. I had little desire to think of the marvellous life to come in which all these problems shall be made clear. I could not cast forward my mind beyond this existence--and the strange inequality between this boy’s mind and his fate vexed me at the heart. And so, quite quietly and gradually, the time stole on. I heard nothing more from poor Bertie Nugent, in India; he meant to come home, but he had not yet obtained his leave of absence, and it remained quite uncertain when we should see him. Everything was very quiet at home. Our fighting was over--our national pride and confidence in our own arms and soldiers, revived by actual experience; everything looking prosperous within the country, and nothing dangerous without.