no cause to fear
danger. He sent his love, and Harold would write again. Viola sent me
Dermot's letter with full particulars, but I kept silence through all
the mother's agitations of joy and grief.

The next mail brought me full details of the skirmish, and of what
Harold had learnt of Henry Alison's course. It had been a succession
of falls lower and lower, as with each failure habits of drunkenness
and dissipation fastened on him, and peculation and dishonesty on that
congenial soil grew into ruffianism. Expelled from the gold diggings
for some act too mean even for that atmosphere, he had become the
leader of a gang of runaway shepherds in the recesses of the Red
Valley, and spread increasing terror there until the attack on him in
his stronghold, when Harold's cousinly embrace (really intended to
spare his life, as well as that of the magistrate) had absolutely
injured his spine, probably for life. He had with great difficulty
been carried to Sydney, and there placed in the hospital instead of the
jail; since, disabled as he was, no one wished to prosecute the poor
wretch, and identification was always a difficulty. Harold had been
taking daily care of him, and had found him in his weak and broken
state ready to soften, nay, to shed tears, at the thought of his
mother; evincing feelings that might be of little service if he had
recovered, but if he were crippled for life might be the beginning of
better things. Harold had given him the Bible, and the stockings, and
had left him alone with them. The Bible was as yet left untouched, as
if he were afraid of it, but he had ever since been turning over and
fondling the stockings, as though all the love that the poor mother had
been knitting into them for years and years, apparently in vain, were
exhaling like the heat and colours stored by the sun in ages past in
our coals.

Harold was wondering over the question whether a man in his state could
or ought to be brought to England, or whether it could be possible to
send his mother out to him, when the problem was solved by his falling
in with a gentleman whose wife was a confirmed invalid, and who was
ready to give almost any salary to a motherly, ladylike woman, beyond
danger of marrying, who would take care of her and attend to the
household. He would even endure the son, and lodge him in one of the
dependencies of his house, which had large grounds looking into
beautiful Sydney Bay, provided he could secu