While Bob was speaking he laid down the sovereign, and resolutely twisted up his bag again. Tom pushed back the gold, and said, “No, indeed, Bob; thank you heartily, but I can’t take it.” And Maggie, taking it between her fingers, held it up to Bob and said, more persuasively: “Not now, but perhaps another time. If ever Tom or my father wants help that you can give, we’ll let you know; won’t we, Tom? That’s what you would like,—to have us always depend on you as a friend that we can go to,—isn’t it, Bob?” “Yes, Miss, and thank you,” said Bob, reluctantly taking the money; “that’s what I’d like, anything as you like. An’ I wish you good-by, Miss, and good-luck, Mr Tom, and thank you for shaking hands wi’ me, _though_ you wouldn’t take the money.” Kezia’s entrance, with very black looks, to inquire if she shouldn’t bring in the tea now, or whether the toast was to get hardened to a brick, was a seasonable check on Bob’s flux of words, and hastened his parting bow. Chapter VII. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem The days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition; the paralytic obstruction was, little by little, losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made opening. Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful, distant hope which kept count of the moments within the chamber; but it was measured for them by a fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly. While Mr Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening toward its moment of most palpable change. The taxing-masters had done their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two. Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but must fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.