“That blessing should have come from me!” said Darrell to himself, as he turned back, and stood on his solitary hearth. “But they on whose heads I once poured a blessing, where are they,--where? And that man’s tale, reviving the audacious fable which the other, and I verily believe the less guilty knave of the two, sought to palm on me years ago! Stop; let me weigh well what he said. If it were true! Oh, shame, shame!” Folding his arms tightly on his breast, Darrell paced the room with slow, measured strides, pondering deeply. He was, indeed, seeking to suppress feeling, and to exercise only judgment; and his reasoning process seemed at length fully to satisfy him, for his countenance gradually cleared, and a triumphant smile passed across it. “A lie,--certainly a palpable and gross lie; lie it must and shall be. Never will I accept it as truth. Father” (looking full at the portrait over the mantel-shelf), “Father, fear not--never--never!” BOOK III. CHAPTER I. Certes, the lizard is a shy and timorous creature. He runs into chinks and crannies if you come too near to him, and sheds his very tail for fear, if you catch it by the tip. He has not his being in good society: no one cages him, no one pets. He is an idle vagrant. But when he steals through the green herbage, and basks unmolested in the sun, he crowds perhaps as much enjoyment into one summer hour as a parrot, however pampered and erudite, spreads over a whole drawing-room life spent in saying “How dye do” and “Pretty Poll.” ON that dull and sombre summer morning in which the grandfather and grandchild departed from the friendly roof of Mr. Merle, very dull and very sombre were the thoughts of little Sophy. She walked slowly behind the gray cripple, who had need to lean so heavily on his staff, and her eye had not even a smile for the golden buttercups that glittered on dewy meads alongside the barren road. Thus had they proceeded apart and silent till they had passed the second milestone. There, Waife, rousing from his own reveries, which were perhaps yet more dreary than those of the dejected child, halted abruptly, passed his hand once or twice rapidly over his forehead, and, turning round to Sophy, looked into her face with great kindness as she came slowly to his side. “You are sad, little one?” said he. “Very sad, Grandy.” “And displeased with me? Yes, displeased that I have taken you suddenly away from the pretty young gentleman, who was so kind to you, without encouraging the chance that you were to meet with him again.” “It was not like you, Grandy,” answered Sophy; and her under-lip slightly pouted, while the big tears swelled to her eye. “True,” said the vagabond; “anything resembling common-sense is not like me. But don’t you think that I did what I felt was best for you? Must I not have some good cause for it, whenever I have the heart deliberately to vex you?”