ou had better,
by a great deal, trust entirely to me, in these things, Master John. If
you do, I will bring you safely through, depend upon it; but if you do
not, nobody can tell what may come. Here comes Folwell, the sexton. Now
hold your tongue, and let me manage him, sir. You are not acquainted
with these matters."

CHAPTER IX.

Did you ever examine an ant-hill, dear reader? What a wonderful little
cosmos it is--what an epitome of a great city--of the human race! See
how the little fellows run bustling along upon their several
businesses--see how some get out of each other's way, how others jostle,
and others walk over their fellows' heads! But especially mark that
black gentleman, pulling hard to drag along a fat beetle's leg and
thigh, three times as large as his own body. He cannot get it on, do
what he will; and yet he tugs away, thinking it a very fine haunch
indeed. He does not perceive, what is nevertheless the fact, that there
are two others of his own race pulling at the other end, and thus
frustrating all his efforts.

And thus it is with you, and me, and every one in the wide world. We
work blindly, unknowing the favoring or counteracting causes that are
constantly going on around us, to facilitate or impede our endeavors.
The wish to look into futurity is vain, irrational, almost impious; but
what a service would it be to any man if he could but get a sight into
Fate's great workshop, and see only that part in which the events are on
the anvil that affect our own proceedings. Still, even if we did, we
might not understand the machinery after all, and only burn or pinch our
fingers in trying to put pieces together which fate did not intend to
fit.

In the mean time--that is to say while the attorney and his companion
were talking together at the alehouse--Sir Philip Hastings rode quietly
up the hill to the cottage I have before described, and therefore shall
not describe again, merely noticing that it now presented an appearance
of neatness and repair which it had not before possessed. He tied his
horse to the palings, walked slowly up the little path, gazing right and
left at the cabbages and carrots on either side, and then without
ceremony went in.

The cottage had two tenants at this time, the invalid old woman, and
another, well-nigh as old but less decrepit, who had been engaged to
attend upon her in her sickness. How she got the money to pay her no one
knew, for her middle life and the firs