How a Hen Takes Tem
THE days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his normal dition: the paralytic obstru was, little by little, losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from u with fitful struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great snowdrift that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made opening. Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful distant hope which kept t of the moments within the chamber: but it was measured for them by a fast-approag dread which made the nights e too quickly. While Mr Tulliver was slowly being himself again, his lot was hastening towards its moment of most palpable ge. The taxing-masters had doheir work like any respectable gunsmith stiously preparing the musket that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two. Allocaturs, filing of bills in cery, decrees of sale, are legal -shot or bomb-shells that ever hit a solitary mark but must fall with widespread shattering. So deeply i is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each others sins, so iably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we ceive ribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of ued pain.
By the beginning of the sed week in January the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of cery, of Mr Tullivers farming and other stock to be followed by a sale of the mill and land held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his scious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner, of plans he would carry out when he `got well. The wife and children were not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr Tulliver from leaving the old spot and seeking airely strange life. For uncle Deane had been io i himself in this stage of the business. It would not, he aowledged, be a bad speculation fuest and Co. to buy Dorlill and carry on the business, which was a good one, and might be increased by the addition of steam power: in which case Tulliver might be retained as manager. Still Mr Deane would say nothing decided about the matter: the fact that Wakem held the me on the land might put in into his head to bid for the whole estate, and further, to outbid the cautious firm of Guest and Co. who did not carry on business oimental grounds. Mr Deane was obliged to tell Mrs Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode over to the mill to ihe books in pany with Mrs Glegg: for she had observed that `if Guest and Co. would only think about it, Mr Tullivers father and grandfather had been carrying on Dorlill long before the oil-mill of that firm had been so much as thought of. Mr Deane, in reply, doubted whether that recisely the relatioweewo mills which would determiheir value as iments. As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination: the goodnatured ma siy for the Tulliver family, but his money was all locked up in excellent mes and he could run no risk: that would be unfair to his owives: but he had made up his mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had himself renounced in favour of a more elastiodity, and that he would buy Mrs Tulliver a pound of tea now and then: it