IT has been justly observed that one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. The statement is a very safe one, and might have been made a great deal more comprehensive by the philosopher who uttered it without risking his reputation for sagacity. We do not know how our next-door neighbour lives, except in the sense of what he has for dinner, which may indeed be discovered by the curious; nay, we often know not how our own household lives, how our very sons conduct themselves when not at meal-times and under our very eyes, what pursuits they really follow, what hopes, what fears, what ambitions they in secret entertain. It is well, indeed, and should be a matter of congratulation, if we are quite cognizant of the “goings on” of our wives and daughters. It is strange to think what a world in little lies under the roof of any great mansion, such as Mirk Abbey. How interesting would the genuine individual biographies—if one could only get at them—of such a household be, from that of the mistress of the establishment (whose troubles we are endeavouring to portray) down to that of the under kitchen-maid, concerning whom we have “no information,” but who has doubtless her own temptations, wrongs, and troubles also, which concern her with equal nearness, although they may not be so genteel! It is probable that the true history of the second gravedigger in Hamlet would be to the full as interesting as what we know of that philosophic Prince himself, though his father had not been murdered by his uncle, albeit even that may have been the case, for aught we know. But, alas! the novelist has not the power which the Devil on Two Sticks possessed of lifting the tiles off the attics; but has generally to content himself with such glimpses as he can obtain through the keyholes of the first and second floors.

Taking advantage of even this moderate privilege, we are sometimes rewarded with phenomena. Thus, it is little less than a portent to see Captain Walter Lisgard, who is not generally addicted to early rising, up and dressed upon a certain May morning before the clock on the great stairs has sounded three. True, he has been out of bed once or twice at such an hour on other occasions, but then it was because he had not retired to rest the night before. He has done that, however, this time, or, at all events, has exchanged his evening-dress for morning-costume. Some people do get up at the most premature hours, even in winter, and light their own fires, and retrim the midnight lamp to pursue literary or scientific labours; but if Captain Lisgard has got up to study, we will eat him. What can he be about? He gropes his way down the great staircase, where darkness is made visible by streaks of grayish light—which is not yet dawn—struggling through cracks and crannies; and he stumbles over the heavy rug beneath the bottom step, and swears with involuntary emphasis. Then he listens a while, to see what will come of that. The great clock on the hall-table ticks reprovingly: “Don't, don't—shame, shame!” as he never heard it tick before; and hear and there breaks forth an expostulatory creaking, as though from moral furniture, which has no such scruples in the daytime; but his ejaculation has aroused no living being.

Softly he turns the key of the frontdoor, softly withdraws the bolts, and would as softly have slipped out, but that there is suddenly a jar and a whir, and the opening door is held fast by an iron hand. “Confound the chain!” exclaims the captain. “It is as difficult to get out of this house as out of Newgate.” Then, when all is still quiet, he emerges upon the stone steps with an “I wonder, for my part, how burglars are ever discovered,” and takes his way towards the village. The gates are locked at the end of the avenue, and the porter and his wife are doubtless fast asleep, as well as fair-haired Polly—dreaming perhaps of himself, thinks the captain with, a half-contemptuous, half-complacent smile—but Master Walter, who is as active as a cat, climbs the stone pillar by help of the iron hinge, and “drops” noiselessly on to the road. He passes up the humble street, where each cottage is quiet as the grave—two blessed hours intervening yet between its inmates and their toil, and makes for the Lisgard Arms. The inn stands on a slight elevation, so that he sees it some time before he nears it. “Why, the place is on fire!” mutters the captain; and certainly there is some extraordinary illumination taking place in one of the apartments. A flood of light pours from it as from some Pharos, as though to beckon benighted folks whither good ale is to be found; and yet the house is always shut at eleven, in conformity with the squire's orders.

“It's that infernal idiot Derrick himself who has done it,” continues the captain. “That's his room, I know. Just as if he could not have got up in the dark, as I did: a fellow that probably never had more than a farthing-dip to light him any morning, before he went to Cariboo. I wonder, for my part, he can dress without a valet. What a stuck-up, vulgar dog it is! How I hate his pinchbeck ostentation, and still worse, his dreadful familiarity! If it could only be found out immediately after this Derby that he was a returned transport, with five-and-twenty years or so of his sentence still unexpired, how delightful it would be! I really think that he is least objectionable in the evenings, when he is drunk. There is something original in his brute-manner of swilling; a sort of over-driven-ox style about his stagger, which would make his fortune upon any stage—where there was room enough for the magnitude of the exhibition. Certainly, one has to pay for the society of this sort of gentry, and still more for their friendship. Alas, that I should have made this fortunate savage fond of me! I wish I could feel as Valentine did with Orson, instead of being much more like the too ingenious Frankenstein, whose monster became his master. However, that has not come about yet—notwithstanding meddling Mr Arthur Haldane's warnings.—Let me see, it was arranged, I think, that I was to whistle to this animal.” Master Walter drew a silver cab-call from his pocket, and executed upon it the disconsolate cry of one who in London streets between the closing of the night-houses and the rising of the sun desires a Hansom. Instantly the light from the inn began to diminish—once, twice, thrice; and then the casement became blind and rayless like the other windows. “That beggar had four candles lit!” ejaculated the captain with irritation. “It was a mercy that he did not bring out the village fire-engine! Here he comes with his eternal pipe, too. I daresay he had the imprudence to light that before he left the house, and Steve's red nose will smell it.” There are some men who always look the same no matter at what hour you come upon them: fresh, and hearty, and strong, they have but to duck their heads in cold water, and straightway the fatigues of a weary day or a sleepless night are utterly obliterated. They rejoice like giants to run their courses without any sort of preparation in the way of food and sleep, such as the rest of mankind require. Against this healthy animalism we protest, by calling it rude health; and to those who are of a less powerful constitution, it is naturally an offensive spectacle. Walter Lisgard had himself by no means a delicate organisation; his complexion, though pale, was far from sickly; his limbs, though models of grace rather than of strength, were of good proportions and well knit. But he was conscious of looking heavy-eyed and haggard, and he secretly resented the robust and florid appearance of the unconscious individual who now joined him—a man at least twenty-five years his senior.

“I suppose you have been accustomed to get up at these unearthly hours at the gold-diggings, that you look so disagreeably wide-awake, Mr Derrick,” grumbled he. “You would very much oblige me if you would but yawn.”

“Get up! Master Walter; why, I've never been to bed,” answered the bearded man with a great guffaw. “The fact is, that I took a little more than was good for me last night, and I did not dare lie down, knowing that we had this business on hand so early.”

“Why, one would think, by the amount of light, that you had been lying in state, like some deceased king of the Cannibal Islands,” returned the other peevishly. “Was it your habit to use two pair of candles in your bedroom in Cariboo?”

“Well, I never had a bedroom there, that you would call such, as I have told you again and again, Master Walter; but I have burned twenty candles at a time when they were selling at Antler Creek at five dollars a pound. You imagine, I suppose, that it is only you gentlemen who live at home at ease who have money to spend; but let me tell you that is not the case. I will go bail for my part, for example, that I have paid more sovereigns away in twenty-four hours than your brother, Sir Richard, ever did in a week.”

“My dear Mr Derrick, you are boastful this morning,” said the captain quietly: “it is my belief that you have taken a hair of the dog that bit you overnight.”

“Maybe I have, and maybe I haven't, Master Walter; but I shall burn just as many candles as I like. I have worked hard enough for my money, and, dam'me, but I'll enjoy it. Why, when I was at New Westminster, I had my horse shod with gold, sir; and if I choose, I'll do it here.”

“You would have a perfect right so to do, Mr Derrick,” returned the other gravely; “and for my part, if your horse should cast a shoe in my neighbourhood, I should warmly applaud your expensive tastes. But you must have been really very rich, to do such things. Now, how much do you think you were worth when you were at New Westminster?”

“That's tellings, captain,” responded the other with a cunning chuckle; “but when I was on Fraser River, me and my mate Blanquette, we made”———

“Well, now, what did you make?” urged the young man, as the other hesitated.

“Well, we made nothing for the first five days,” answered Derrick drily—“nothing at all.—How far have we got to go to reach the Measured Mile by this road?”

The two men had left the village, and were pursuing a winding chalk-road that led, but not directly, to the Downlands at the back of Mr Chifney's stables.

“It is a very circuitous route,” returned Master Walter frankly; “and I was in hopes it might be shortened to the fancy by hearing you tell something of your own story. But, of course, I have no wish to press you to tell it against your will. You have conferred obligations upon me enough already, I am quite aware.”

This was the first sentence of conciliation, not to say of civility, that the young man had spoken, and heretofore his air had been cross or cynical; yet no sooner did he evince this little of good-will, than the manner of the other softened at once to a degree that was very remarkable in so rough a man.

“Don't talk of obligations, lad, for I like you—ay, so well, that I wish you were son of mine; not that I am fit to be the father of such as you either; I know that well.”

“If I were your son, I am afraid you would have a good deal of trouble with me, Mr Derrick,” replied the young man laughing: “I am not a good boy.”

“That is true, Walter Lisgard; and yet I never saw a face that took my liking as yours does—save once. I could not tell what drew me so towards you, when I first met you up at the Farm yonder; but now I know very well.”

“Then it is to the similarity between myself and some other favoured individual that I am indebted for your regard? That rather robs the compliment of its flavour.”

“Ay, my lad; but you are dear to me for your own sake also, although, indeed, I scarce know why.”

“Thank you, Mr Derrick.”

“True,” continued the other thoughtfully, without noticing his companion's flippant tone, “you are like—ah, Heaven, how like you are to one that's dead and gone! Indeed, I can refuse you nothing while I think upon it. It is not everybody, however, lad, to whom I would humour by telling exactly what I'm worth. While a man is merely known as rich, he may have any sum, and be looked up to accordingly; but when his wealth can be reckoned to a pound, he loses credit. If Manylaws wins at Epsom, I shall be worth—ay, near a hundred thousand pounds.”

“I suppose no one in Cariboo ever made a sum like that by gold-digging, eh?”

“I think no one, Master Walter. There was no claim so rich as my mate's and mine at Snowy Creek, and it did not yield that sum. But, by Heaven, how well I remember what it did yield. It seemed to me then that I should never run risks any more, but live on what I had in content and plenty; and yet here I am, this very morning”——

“My dear sir,” interrupted his companion gaily, “it appears to me that you are taking gloomy views. What is life without excitement?”

“Ay, that is very well for you, lad, who have something to fall back upon, if your little schemes should miscarry. Excitement in your case is only another name for amusement; but in mine”——

“Well, in yours, Mr Derrick?”

“Do not call me Mister; call me Ralph, lad—that is, if you are not ashamed of me altogether.—You are ashamed, I see. Well, never mind.—Let me see, I was speaking of Cariboo, was I not? Well, success or failure there was a question of life and death. One might be a beggar, or one might be the king of the colony. I had known what poverty was—and that is not merely being without money, mind. I have lived among a savage people for months who had neither gold nor silver—nothing to hoard and nothing to spend save shells picked up on the sea-shore, and strung on sea-weed for a purse; and I was as poor as they; but yet it was not poverty. But I had felt the sting of that in many a crowded city, and I came to Cariboo to escape from it. If I should make my thousand pounds or so, I would buy a farm, or a share in a ship, and live a quiet respectable life to the end of my days. While making these good resolutions, my ready money—which was also all I had in the world—was melting fast. With the last ten pounds of it, I bought the half of a small claim at Snowy Creek. Blanquette and I sawed our own lumber and made our own sluices. It was no light work even for me, who had been used to rough it. There was twelve feet of top-stripping to be removed before we could hope to reach the pay-dirt. For the first five days, we made nothing. I would have sold my share in the whole concern for a couple of pounds, and begun life with that afresh; but on the sixth day we found fourteen ounces of gold, and I was worth fifty pounds. Then I would not have sold my chance for scarcely any sum that you could name. I would have shot any man that had jumped into our pit, spade in hand, just as I would have shot a dog. Your brother, Sir Richard, may talk about the rights of property, but he never appreciated them as I did then. On the seventh day, we found forty-five ounces; on the eighth, sixty. The find kept on increasing, till it rose to four hundred ounces daily, when we employed eight hands to clear away the tailings. The whole area of the place out of which I scooped my fortune was not eighty feet by twenty. I found for my share twelve thousand pounds in it.”

“And you brought that safe to England, did you?”

“No, lad, I did not. I spent five hundred pounds of it in champagne—we drank it out of buckets—for one item.”

“And in candles, Ralph,” asked Master Walter smiling—“how much in candles?”

“In one thing and another, dear lad, I spent four thousand pounds before we landed in England. Even what was left would have seemed affluence six months before——But there, what's the good of talking? There's the rubbing-down house, is it not? and I shall soon know whether I am going to get a second fortune, or to lose what I have.”