when one dreadful night my godwhen one dreadful night my godmother andmother and

I sat at the fireside. I was

reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o’clock as

I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St. John how

our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they

brought the sinful woman to him.

‟So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said

unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone ‛

at her!’”

I was stopped by my godmother’s rising, putting her hand to her

head, and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the

book, ” Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. ‛

And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!’”

In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she

fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had sounded

through the house and been heard in the street.

She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little

altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so well

knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and in the

night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be

plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for her

blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that she

knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was immovable. To the very last,

and even afterwards, her frown remained unsoftened.

On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman

in black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs.

Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone away.

My name is Kenge,” he said; you may remember it, my child; Kenge ‟ ‟

and Carboy, Lincoln’s Inn.”

I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.

‟Pray be seated—here near me. Don’t distress yourself; it’s of no use.

Mrs. Rachael, I needn’t inform you who were acq

Miss Barbary’s affairs, that her means die with her and that this young

lady, now her aunt is dead—”

‟My aunt, sir!”

‟It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to be

gained by it,” said Mr. Kenge smoothly, Aunt in fact, though not in law. ‟

Don’t distress yourself! Don’t weep! Don’t tremble! Mrs. Rachael, our

young friend has no doubt heard of—the—a—Jarndyce and Jarndyce.”

‟Never,” said Mrs. Rachael.

Is it possible,” pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses, that ‟ ‟

our young friend—I beg you won’t distress yourself!—never heard of

Jarndyce and Jarndyce!”

I shook my head, wondering even what it was.

‟Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” said Mr. Kenge, looking over his

glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he were

petting something. Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits known? ‟

Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce—the—a—in itself a monument of

Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every

contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in

that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause that could not

exist out of this free and great country. I should say that the aggregate of

costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs. Rachael”—I was afraid he addressed

himself to her because I appeared inattentive”—amounts at the present

hour to from six-ty to seven-ty thousand pounds!” said Mr. Kenge,

leaning back in his chair.

I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely

unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even

then.

‟And she really never heard of the cause!” said Mr. Kenge.

‟Surprising!”

Miss Barbary, sir,” returned Mrs. Rachael, who is now among the ‟ ‟

Serap