 every passer-by, »Look here!«
    With the night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the
outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in between
the bars; stands looking in, for a little while.
    It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the
archway clean. It does so, very busily and trimly; looks in again, a little
while; and so departs.
    Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who can't exactly say
what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in
outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered
reason for this:
    »He wos wery good to me, he wos!«
 

                                  Chapter XII

                                  On the Watch

It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire, at last, and Chesney Wold has
taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for Sir Leicester and
my Lady are coming home from Paris. The fashionable intelligence has found it
out, and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England. It has also found
out, that they will entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the élite
of the beau monde (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a giant
refreshed in French), at the ancient and hospitable family seat in Lincolnshire.
    For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and of
Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in the park is
mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again spanned
gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. The clear cold
sunshine glances into the brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the sharp wind
scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the
moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day.
It looks in at the windows, and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and
patches of brightness, never contemplated by the painters. Athwart the picture
of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of
light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth, and seems to rend it.
    Through the same cold sunshine, and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir
Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman, and Sir Leicester's man
affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a considerable amount of
jingling and whip
