I have often finished and
still been frightened and had to fall back upon the hymns, but this
night I began to dream pleasanter dreams of Charlie's father and the
bee-master before I got to the holy and humble men of heart.
I slept long then, and Mother would not let me be awakened. When I did
open my eyes Jem was sitting at the end of the bed, dying to tell me the
news.
"Jack! you have waked, haven't you? I see your eyes. Don't shut 'em
again. What _do_ you think? _Mrs. Wood's husband has come home!_"
I never knew the ins and outs of the story very exactly. At the time
that what did become generally known was fresh in people's minds Jem and
I were not by way of being admitted to "grown-up" conversations; and
though Mrs. Wood's husband and I became intimate friends, I neither
wished nor dared to ask him more about his past than he chose to tell,
for I knew enough to know that it must be a most intolerable pain to
recall it.
What we had all heard of the story was this. Mr. Wood had been a head
clerk in a house of business. A great forgery was committed against his
employers, and he was accused.
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