that his wife's funeral should cost no
less than he chose to expend on it. He breathed indignant fumes against
"interferences." He desired Anthony to know that he also was "not a
beggar," and that he would not be treated as one. The letter showed a
solid yeoman's fist. Farmer Fleming told his chums, and the shopkeeper
of Wrexby, with whom he came into converse, that he would honour his
dead wife up to his last penny. Some month or so afterward it was
generally conjectured that he had kept his word.

Anthony's rejoinder was characterized by a marked humility. He expressed
contrition for the farmer's misunderstanding of his motives. His
fathomless conscience had plainly been reached. He wrote again, without
waiting for an answer, speaking of the Funds indeed, but only to
pronounce them worldly things, and hoping that they all might meet in
heaven, where brotherly love, as well as money, was ready made, and
not always in the next street. A hint occurred that it would be a
gratification to him to be invited down, whether he could come or no;
for holidays were expensive, and journeys by rail had to be thought over
before they were undertaken; and when you are away from your post, you
never knew who maybe supplanting you. He did not promise that he could
come, but frankly stated his susceptibility to the friendliness of an
invitation. The feeling indulged by Farmer Fleming in refusing to
notice Anthony's advance toward a reconciliation, was, on the whole,
not creditable to him. Spite is more often fattened than propitiated by
penitence. He may have thought besides (policy not being always a vacant
space in revengeful acts) that Anthony was capable of something stronger
and warmer, now that his humanity had been aroused. The speculation is
commonly perilous; but Farmer Fleming had the desperation of a man who
has run slightly into debt, and has heard the first din of dunning,
which to the unaccustomed imagination is fearful as bankruptcy (shorn
of the horror of the word). And, moreover, it was so wonderful to find
Anthony displaying humanity at all, that anything might be expected of
him. "Let's see what he will do," thought the farmer in an interval
of his wrath; and the wrath is very new which has none of these cool
intervals. The passions, do but watch them, are all more or less
intermittent.

As it chanced, he acted sagaciously, for Anthony at last wrote to say
that his home in London was cheerless, and that he intended t