Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/42

38 parish burying-ground—a damp and dreary spot not far from the river's brink, in which many such as she are laid.

Our friend Jabez North, borrowing the Saturday's paper of his principal in the evening after school-hours, is very much interested in the accounts of these two coroner's inquests.

dreary winter months pass by. Time, slow of foot to some, and fast of wing to others, is a very chameleon, such different accounts do different people give of him.

He is very rapid in his flight, no doubt, for the young gentlemen from Dr. Tappenden's home for the Christmas holidays: rapid enough perhaps for the young gentlemen's papas, who have to send their sons back to the academy armed with Dr. Tappenden's little account—which is not such a very little account either, when you reckon up all the extras, such as dancing, French, gymnastics, drill-serjeant, hair-cutting, stationery, servants, and pew at church.

Fast enough, perhaps, is the flight of Time for Allecompain Major, who goes home in a new suit of mourning, and who makes it sticky about the cuffs and white about the elbows before the holidays are out. I don't suppose he forgets his little dead brother; and I dare say, by the blazing hearth, where the firelight falls dullest upon his mother's black dress, be sometimes thinks very sadly of the little grave out in the bleak winter night, on which the snow falls so purely white. But "cakes and ale" are eternal institutions; and if you or I, reader, died to-morrow, the baker would still bake, and Messrs. Barclay and Perkins would continue to brew the ale and stout for which they are so famous, and the friends who were sorriest for us would eat, drink, ay and be merry too, before long.

Who shall say how slow of foot is Time to the miserable young man awaiting his trial in the dreary gaol of Slopperton?

Who shall say how slow to the mother awaiting in agony the result of that trial?

The assizes take place late in February. So, through the fog and damp of gloomy November; through long, dark, and dreary December nights; through January frost and snow—(of whose outward presence he has no better token than the piercing cold within)—Richard paces up and down his narrow cell, and broods upon the murder of his uncle, and of his trial which is to come.

Ministers of religion come to convert him, as they say. He