Mr Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a startled gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had often transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with entire novelty. “Yes, father,” said Tom, in answer to the gaze. “You needn’t trouble your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is settled about that for the present,—about the mill and the land and the debts.” “What’s settled, then?” said his father, angrily. “Don’t you take on too much about it, sir,” said Luke. “You’d ha’ paid iverybody if you could,—that’s what I said to Master Tom,—I said you’d ha’ paid iverybody if you could.” Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men whose lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in rank which made his master’s downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged, in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds out of the children’s money, were the most ready to his tongue. They were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master’s bewildered mind. “Paid everybody?” he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing, and his eye lighting up. “Why—what—have they made me a _bankrupt?_” “Oh, father, dear father!” said Maggie, who thought that terrible word really represented the fact; “bear it well, because we love you; your children will always love you. Tom will pay them all; he says he will, when he’s a man.” She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trembled too, as he said, after a few moments: “Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o’er.” “But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, father,” said Tom, speaking with a great effort. “Ah, my lad,” said Mr Tulliver, shaking his head slowly, “but what’s broke can never be whole again; it ’ud be your doing, not mine.” Then looking up at him, “You’re only sixteen; it’s an up-hill fight for you, but you mustn’t throw it at your father; the raskills have been too many for him. I’ve given you a good eddication,—that’ll start you.” Something in his throat half choked the last words; the flush, which had alarmed his children because it had so often preceded a recurrence of paralysis, had subsided, and his face looked pale and tremulous. Tom said nothing; he was still struggling against his inclination to rush away. His father remained quiet a minute or two, but his mind did not seem to be wandering again. “Have they sold me up, then?” he said more calmly, as if he were possessed simply by the desire to know what had happened. “Everything is sold, father; but we don’t know all about the mill and the land yet,” said Tom, anxious to ward off any question leading to the fact that Wakem was the purchaser.