All Chapters of Mary Barton: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

"Know the temptation ere you judge the crime! Look on this tree—'twas green, and fair, and graceful; Yet now, save these few shoots, how dry and rotten! Thou canst not tell the cause. Not long ago, A neighbour oak, with which its roots were twined, In falling wrenched them with such cruel force, That though we covered them again with care, Its beauty withered, and it pined away. So, could we look into the human breast, How oft the fatal blight that meets our view, Should we trace down to the torn, bleeding fibres Of a too trusting heart—where it were shame, For pitying tears, to give contempt or blame.""Street Walks."The month was over;—the honeymoon to the newly-married; the exquisite convalescence to the "living mother of a living child;" the "first dark days of nothingness" to the widow and the child bereaved; the term of penance, of hard labour, and solitary confinement, to the shrinking, shivering, hopeless prisoner."Sick, and in prison, and ye visited me." Shall

MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN."Not for a moment take the scorner's chair; While seated there, thou know'st not how a word, A tone, a look, may gall thy brother's heart, And make him turn in bitterness against thee.""Love-Truths."The day arrived on which the masters were to have an interview with a deputation of the work-people. The meeting was to take place in a public room, at an hotel; and there, about eleven o'clock, the mill-owners, who had received the foreign orders, began to collect.Of course, the first subject, however full their minds might be of another, was the weather. Having done their duty by all the showers and sunshine which had occurred during the past week, they fell to talking about the business which brought them together. There might be about twenty gentlemen in the room, including some by courtesy, who were not immediately concerned in the settlement of the present question; but who, nevertheless, were sufficiently interested to attend. These were

"I saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ''Twas there he died for thee!' * * ** "Oh! weeping heart! Oh, bleeding heart! What boots thy pity now? Bid from his eyes that shade depart, That death-damp from his brow!""The Birtle Tragedy."So there was no more peace in the house of sickness, except to Alice, the dying Alice.But Mary knew nothing of the afternoon's occurrences; and gladly did she breathe in the fresh air, as she left Miss Simmonds' house, to hasten to the Wilsons'. The very change, from the in-door to the out-door atmosphere, seemed to alter the current of her thoughts. She thought less of the dreadful subject which had so haunted her all day; she cared less for the upbraiding speeches of her fellow work-women; the old association of comfort and sympathy received from Alice gave her the idea that, even now, her bodily presence would soothe and compose those who were in trouble, changed, unconscious, and absen

"There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear Was, with its stored thunder, labouring up."Keats' "Hyperion."No sooner was Mary alone than she fastened the door, and put the shutters up against the window, which had all this time remained shaded only by the curtains hastily drawn together on Esther's entrance, and the lighting of the candle.She did all this with the same compressed lips, and the same stony look that her face had assumed on the first examination of the paper. Then she sat down for an instant to think; and rising directly, went, with a step rendered firm by inward resolution of purpose, up the stairs;—passed her own door, two steps, into her father's room. What did she want there?I must tell you; I must put into words the dreadful secret which she believed that bit of paper had revealed to her.Her father was the murderer!That corner of stiff, shinin

"Something there was, what, none presumed to say, Clouds lightly passing on a smiling day,— Whispers and hints which went from ear to ear, And mixed reports no judge on earth could clear."Crabbe."Curious conjectures he may always make, And either side of dubious questions take."Ib.Mary went home. Oh! how her head did ache, and how dizzy her brain was growing! But there would be time enough she felt for giving way, hereafter.So she sat quiet and still by an effort; sitting near the window, and looking out of it, but seeing nothing, when all at once she caught sight of something which roused her up, and made her draw back.But it was too late. She had been seen.Sally Leadbitter flaunted into the little dingy room, making it gaudy with the Sunday excess of colouring in her dress.She was really curious to see Mary; her connexion with a murderer seemed to have made her into a sort of lusus naturæ, and was almost, by some, expected to have made a change in her personal app