Chapter 3 - Page 2

drifted into this quiet harbor to end their days in a
sort of humble yet stately ease and decorous abundance. And this
shelter, the grim Doctor said, was the gift of a man who had died ages
ago; and having been a great sinner in his lifetime, and having drawn
lands, manors, and a great mass of wealth into his clutches, by violent
and unfair means, had thought to get his pardon by founding this
Hospital, as it was called, in which thirteen old men should always
reside; and he hoped that they would spend their time in praying for
the welfare of his soul. [Endnote: 2.]

Said little Elsie, "I am glad he did it, and I hope the poor old men
never forgot to pray for him, and that it did good to the poor wicked
man's soul."

"Well, child," said Doctor Grimshawe, with a scowl into vacancy, and a
sort of wicked leer of merriment at the same time, as if he saw before
him the face of the dead man of past centuries, "I happen to be no
lover of this man's race, and I hate him for the sake of one of his
descendants. I don't think he succeeded in bribing the Devil to let him
go, or God to save him!"

"Doctor Grim, you are very naughty!" said Elsie, looking shocked.

"It is fair enough," said Ned, "to hate your enemies to the very brink
of the grave, but then to leave him to get what mercy he can."

"After shoving him in!" quoth the Doctor; and made no further response
to either of these criticisms, which seemed indeed to affect him very
little--if he even listened to them. For he was a man of singularly
imperfect moral culture; insomuch that nothing else was so remarkable
about him as that--possessing a good deal of intellectual ability, made
available by much reading and experience--he was so very dark on the
moral side; as if he needed the natural perceptions that should have
enabled him to acquire that better wisdom. Such a phenomenon often
meets us in life; oftener than we recognize, because a certain tact and
exterior decency generally hide the moral deficiency. But often there
is a mind well polished, married to a conscience and natural impulses
left as they were in childhood, except that they have sprouted up into
evil and poisonous weeds, richly blossoming with strong-smelling
flowers, or seeds which the plant scatters by a sort of impulse; even
as the Doctor was now half-consciously throwing seeds of his evil
passions into the minds of these children. He was himself a grown-up
child, without tact, simplicity, and innocence, and with ripened evil,
all the ranker for a native heat that was in him and still active,
which might have nourished good things as well as evil. Indeed, it did
cherish by chance a root or two of good, the