But the vision faded and all was still,
On the purple valley and distant hill.
No sound was there save the wailing breeze,
The rain, and the rustling cypress trees.

NORTH AND SOUTH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF MARY BARTON.

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.

MARGARET went home so painfully occupied
with what she had heard and seen that she
hardly knew how to rouse herself up to the
duties which awaited her; the necessity for
keeping up a constant flow of cheerful
conversation for her mother, who, now that she
was unable to go out, always looked to
Margaret's return from the shortest walk as
bringing in some news.

"And can your factory friend come on
Thursday to see you dressed?"

"She was so ill I never thought of asking
her," said Margaret, dolefully.

"Dear! Everybody is ill now, I think,"
said Mrs. Hale, with a little of the jealousy
which one invalid is apt to feel of another.
"But it must be very sad to be ill in one of
those little back streets." (Her kindly nature
prevailing, and the old Helstone habits of
thought returning.) "It's bad enough here.
What could you do for her, Margaret? Mr.
Thornton has sent me some of his old port
wine since you went out. Would a bottle of
that do her good, think you?"

"No, mamma! I don't believe they are
very poor,—at least, they don't speak as if
they were; and, at any rate, Bessy's illness
is consumption—she won't want wine.
Perhaps, I might take her a little preserve, made
of our dear Helstone fruit. No! there's
another family to whom I should like to give—
Oh mamma, mamma! how am I to dress up
in my finery, and go off and away to smart
parties, after the sorrow I have seen to-day?"
exclaimed Margaret, bursting the bounds she
had preordained for herself before she came
in, and telling her mother of what she had
seen and heard at Higgins's cottage.

It distressed Mrs. Hale excessively. It
made her restlessly irritated till she could do
something. She directed Margaret to pack
up a basket in the very drawing-room, to be
sent there and then to the family; and was
almost angry with her for saying that it
would not signify if it did not go till morning,
as she knew Higgins had provided for their
immediate wants, and she herself had left
money with Bessy. Mrs. Hale called her
unfeeling for saying this; and never gave
herself breathing-time till the basket was sent
out of the house. Then she said:

"After all, we may have been doing
wrong. It was only the last time Mr.
Thornton was here that he said, those were
no true friends who helped to prolong the
struggle by assisting the turn-outs. And
this Boucher-man was a turn-out, was he
not?"

The question was referred to Mr. Hale by
his wife when he came up-stairs, fresh from
giving a lesson to Mr. Thornton, which had
ended in conversation, as was their wont.
Margaret did not care if their gifts had
prolonged the strike; she did not think far
enough for that in her present excited state.

Mr. Hale listened, and tried to be as calm
as a judge; he recalled all that had seemed so
clear not half-an-hour before, as it came out
of Mr. Thornton's lips; and then he made
an unsatisfactory compromise. His wife and
daughter had not only done quite right in
this instance, but he did not see for a
moment how they could have done otherwise.
Nevertheless, as a general rule, it was very
true what Mr. Thornton said, that as the
strike, if prolonged, must end in the masters'
bringing hands from a distance (if, indeed,
the final result were not, as it had often been
before, the invention of some machine which
would diminish the need of hands at all),
why, it was clear enough that the kindest
thing was to refuse all help which might
bolster them up in their folly. But, as to
this Boucher, he would go and see him the
first thing in the morning, and try and find
out what could be done for him.

Mr. Hale went the next morning, as he
proposed. He did not find Boucher at home,
but he had a long talk with his wife;
promised to ask for an Infirmary order for her;
and, seeing the plenty provided by Mrs.
Hale, and somewhat lavishly used by the
children, who were masters down-stairs in
their father's absence, he came back with a
more consoling and cheerful account than
Margaret had dared to hope for; indeed,
what she had said the night before had
prepared her father for so much worse a state of
things that, by a re-action of his imagination,
he described all as better than it really was.

"But I will go again, and see the man
himself," said Mr. Hale. "I hardly know as
yet how to compare one of these houses with
our Helstone cottages. I see furniture here
which our labourers would never have
thought of buying, and food commonly used
which they would consider luxuries; yet for
these very families there seems no other
resource, now that their weekly wages are
stopped, but the pawn-shop. One had need
to learn a different language, and measure by
a different standard, up here in Milton."

Bessy, too, was rather better this day.
Still she was so weak that she seemed to have
entirely, forgotten her wish to see Margaret
dressed—if, indeed, that had not been the
feverish desire of a half-delirious state.

Margaret could not help comparing this
strange dressing of hers to go where she did
not care to be—her heart heavy with various
anxieties—with the old, merry, girlish
toilettes that she and Edith had performed
scarcely more than a year ago. Her only