before
Sebastopol, now upon the blood-stained heights of Inkermann. Yet, and I
noticed it was always towards the end of his second tankard, the old
man would lose the thread of his story, whatever it might be, and take
up the topic of "The Bye Jarge."

I was at first naturally perplexed as to whom he could mean, until Mr.
Amos Baggett, the landlord, informed me on the quiet that the "bye
Jarge" was none other than old Jasper's only son--a man now some forty
years of age--who, though promising well in his youth; had "gone
wrong"--and was at that moment serving a long term of imprisonment for
burglary; further, that upon the day of his son's conviction old Jasper
had had a "stroke," and was never quite the same after, all
recollection of the event being completely blotted from his mind, so
that he persisted in thinking and speaking of his son as still a boy.

"That bye were a wonder!" he would say, looking round with a kindling
eye; "went away to make 'is fortun' 'e did--oh! 'e were a gen'us were
that bye Jarge! You, Amos Baggett, were 'e a gen'us or were 'e not."

"'E were!" Mr. Baggett would answer, with a slow nod.

"Look'ee, sir, do'ee see that theer clock?"--and he would point with a
bony, tremulous finger--"stopped it were--got sum'mat wrong wi' its
inn'ards--wouldn't stir a finger--dead it were! But that bye Jarge 'e
see it 'e did--give it a look over 'e did, an' wi' nout but 'is two
'ands set it a-goin' good as ever: You, Silas Madden, you remember as
'e done it wi' 'is two 'ands?"

"'Is two 'ands!" Silas would repeat solemnly.

"An' it's gone ever since!" old Jasper would croak triumphantly. "Oh!
'e were a gen'us were my bye Jarge. 'Ell come a-marchin' back to 'is
old feyther, some day, wi' 'is pockets stuffed full o' money an'
bank-notes--I knaw--I knaw, old Jasper bean't a fule."

And herewith, lifting up his old, cracked voice, he would strike up
"The British Grenadiers," in which the rest would presently join full
lustily, waving their long-stemmed pipes in unison.

So the old fellow would sit, singing the praises of his scapegrace son,
while his hearers would nod solemn heads, fostering old Jasper's
innocent delusion for the sake of his white hairs and the medals upon
his breast.

But now, he was down with "the rheumatics," and from what Lisbeth told
me when I met her on her way to and from his cottage, it was rather
more than likely that the high-backed elbow-chair would know him no
more. U