Chapter 3 - Chirp the Third

The Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten, when the Carrier sat down
by his fireside. So troubled and grief-worn, that he seemed to
scare the Cuckoo, who, having cut his ten melodious announcements
as short as possible, plunged back into the Moorish Palace again,
and clapped his little door behind him, as if the unwonted
spectacle were too much for his feelings.

If the little Haymaker had been armed with the sharpest of scythes,
and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier's heart, he never
could have gashed and wounded it, as Dot had done.

It was a heart so full of love for her; so bound up and held
together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance, spun from
the daily working of her many qualities of endearment; it was a
heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely;
a heart so single and so earnest in its Truth, so strong in right,
so weak in wrong; that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge
at first, and had only room to hold the broken image of its Idol.

But, slowly, slowly, as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth, now
cold and dark, other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him,
as an angry wind comes rising in the night. The Stranger was
beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his
chamber-door. One blow would beat it in. 'You might do murder
before you know it,' Tackleton had said. How could it be murder,
if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! He
was the younger man.

It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his mind. It
was an angry thought, goading him to some avenging act, that should
change the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely
travellers would dread to pass by night; and where the timid would
see shadows struggling in the ruined windows when the moon was dim,
and hear wild noises in the stormy weather.

He was the younger man! Yes, yes; some lover who had won the heart
that HE had never touched. Some lover of her early choice, of whom
she had thought and dreamed, for whom she had pined and pined, when
he had fancied her so happy by his side. O agony to think of it!

She had been above-stairs with the Baby, getting it to bed. As he
sat brooding on the hearth, she came close beside him, without his
knowledge--in the turning of the rack of his great misery, he lost
all other sounds--and put her little stool at his feet. He only
knew it, when he felt her hand upon his own, and saw her looking up
into his face.

With wonder? No. It was his first impression, and he was fain to
look at her again, to set it right. No, not with wonder. With an
eager and inquiring look; but not with wonder. At first it was
alarmed and serious; then, it changed into a