st--was left at my
own disposal. I began the morning by again applying at the post-office
for my regular report from Marian. It was waiting for me as before,
and it was written throughout in good spirits. I read the letter
thankfully, and then set forth with my mind at ease for the day to go
to Old Welmingham, and to view the scene of the fire by the morning
light.

What changes met me when I got there!

Through all the ways of our unintelligible world the trivial and the
terrible walk hand in hand together. The irony of circumstances holds
no mortal catastrophe in respect. When I reached the church, the
trampled condition of the burial-ground was the only serious trace left
to tell of the fire and the death. A rough hoarding of boards had been
knocked up before the vestry doorway. Rude caricatures were scrawled
on it already, and the village children were fighting and shouting for
the possession of the best peep-hole to see through. On the spot where
I had heard the cry for help from the burning room, on the spot where
the panic-stricken servant had dropped on his knees, a fussy flock of
poultry was now scrambling for the first choice of worms after the
rain; and on the ground at my feet, where the door and its dreadful
burden had been laid, a workman's dinner was waiting for him, tied up
in a yellow basin, and his faithful cur in charge was yelping at me for
coming near the food. The old clerk, looking idly at the slow
commencement of the repairs, had only one interest that he could talk
about now--the interest of escaping all blame for his own part on
account of the accident that had happened. One of the village women,
whose white wild face I remembered the picture of terror when we pulled
down the beam, was giggling with another woman, the picture of inanity,
over an old washing-tub. There is nothing serious in mortality!
Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the
contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of
his palace.

As I left the place, my thoughts turned, not for the first time, to the
complete overthrow that all present hope of establishing Laura's
identity had now suffered through Sir Percival's death. He was
gone--and with him the chance was gone which had been the one object of
all my labours and all my hopes.

Could I look at my failure from no truer point of view than this?

Suppose he had lived, would that change of circumstance have altered