ome to love
the old man very heartily.

One day of expectation, in which he was the most calm and resolute of
us, one anxious day when they sent me to Miss Woolmer, until Harold
came, thankful and hopeful to fetch me, a few more of nursing accepted
with touching gratitude, and he was soon downstairs again, a hale old
man, though nearly seventy, but more than ever bent on his retreat to
La Trappe. It distressed us much. He seemed so much to enjoy
intelligent talk with Miss Woolmer and the Yollands; he so delighted in
books, and took such fresh interest in all, whether mechanical or
moral, that was doing at the Hydriots--of which, by-the-by, as first
inventor, the company had contrived, at Harold's suggestion, to make
him a shareholder to an extent that would cover all his modest needs, I
could not think how he would bear the change.

"My dear young lady," he said to me, when I tried to persuade him out
of writing the first letter, "you forget how much I have of sin upon
me. Can years of negation of faith, or the ruin of four young lives,
and I know not of how many more, be repented of at ease in your
pleasant town, amid the amiable cares you young people are good enough
to lavish on the old man?"

I made some foolish answer about his having meant all for good and
noble purposes, but he shook his head.

"Error, my dear madam, error excusable, perhaps, in one whose country
has been destroyed. I see, now that I have returned, after years alone
with my God, that the work I tried to precipitate was one of patience.
The fire from heaven must first illuminate the soul, then the spirit,
and then the bonds will be loosed of themselves; otherwise we do but
pluck them asunder to set maniacs free to rush into the gulf. And as
to my influence on my two pupils, your brothers, I see now that what
began in filial rebellion and disobedience could never end well. I
bless God that I have been permitted to see, in the next generation,
the true hero and reformer I ought to have made of my Ambrose. Ah!
Ambrose, Ambrose! noble young spirit, would that any tears and penance
of mine would expiate the shipwreck to which I led thee!" and he burst
into tears.

He had, of course, seen the Roman Catholic priest several times before
encountering the danger of the operation, and was a thoroughly devout
penitent, but of his old Liberalism he retained the intense benevolence
that made the improvements at the potteries a great delight to him,