e begins to assume ugly proportions. When you have been weak
enough to let it lie on your desk, or worse again, hidden in your
breast-pocket, for a week or ten days, it will have become an enemy
so strong and so odious that you will not dare to attack it. It
throws a gloom over all your joys. It makes you cross to your wife,
severe to the cook, and critical to your own wine-cellar. It becomes
the Black Care which sits behind you when you go out a riding. You
have neglected a duty, and have put yourself in the power of perhaps
some vulgar snarler. You think of destroying it and denying it,
dishonestly and falsely,--as Crocker did the mail papers. And yet you
must bear yourself all the time as though there were no load lying
near your heart. So it was with our Aeolus and the Crocker papers.
The papers had become a great bundle. The unfortunate man had been
called upon for an explanation, and had written a blundering long
letter on a huge sheet of foolscap paper,--which Sir Boreas had not
read, and did not mean to read. Large fragments of the torn "mail
papers" had been found, and were all there. Mr. Jerningham had
written a well-worded lengthy report,--which never certainly would
be read. There were former documents in which the existence of the
papers had been denied. Altogether the bundle was big and unholy and
distasteful. Those who knew our Aeolus well were sure that he would
never even undo the tape by which the bundle was tied. But something
must be done. One month's pay-day had already passed since the
suspension, and the next was at hand. "Can anything be settled about
Mr. Crocker?" asked Mr. Jerningham, one day about the end of August.
Sir Boreas had already sent his family to a little place he had in
the West of Ireland, and was postponing his holiday because of this
horrid matter. Mr. Jerningham could never go away till Aeolus went.
Sir Boreas knew all this, and was thoroughly ashamed of himself.
"Just speak to me about it to-morrow and we'll settle the matter," he
said, in his blandest voice. Mr. Jerningham retreated from the room
frowning. According to his thinking there ought to be nothing to
settle. "D---- the fellow," said Sir Boreas, as soon as the door was
closed; and he gave the papers another shove which sent them off the
huge table on to the floor. Whether it was Mr. Jerningham or Crocker
who was damned, he hardly knew himself. Then he was forced to stoop
to the humility of picking up the bundle.

Th