The Vicar of Bullhampton

ought to do in bringing about the murder of her late master. For two days the miller was very gloomy, and made no reply when Sam declared his purpose of leaving the mill before Christmas unless Agnes should be received there as his wife;⁠—but at last he gave way. “As the old ’uns go into their graves,” he said, “it’s no more than nature that the young ’uns should become masters.” And so Sam was married, and was taken, with his wife, to live with the other Brattles at the mill. It was well for the miller that it should be so, for Sam was a man who would surely earn money when he put his shoulder in earnest to the wheel.

As for Carry, she lived still with them, doomed by her beauty, as was her elder sister by the want of it, to expect that no lover should come and ask her to establish with him a homestead of their own.

Our friend the Vicar married Sam and his sweetheart, and is still often at the mill. From time to time he has made efforts to convert the unbelieving old man whose grave is now so near to his feet; but he has never prevailed to make the miller own even the need of any change. “I’ve struv’ to be honest,” he said, when last he was thus attacked, “and I’ve wrought for my wife and bairns. I ain’t been a drunkard, nor yet, as I knows on, neither a talebearer, nor yet a liar. I’ve been harsh-tempered and dour enough I know, and maybe it’s fitting as they shall be hard and dour to me where I’m going. I don’t say again it, Muster Fenwick;⁠—but nothing as I can do now’ll change it.” This, at any rate, was clear to the Vicar⁠—that Death, when it came, would come without making the old man tremble.

Mr. Gilmore has been some years away from Bullhampton; but when I last heard from my friends in that village I was told that at last he was expected home.

Colophon

The Vicar of Bullhampton
was published in 1870 by
Anthony Trollope.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Reimer,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 by
Delphine Lettau and Joseph E. Loewenstein
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from
Google Books.

The cover page is adapted from
The Goose Girl,
a painting completed in 1900 by
Valentine Cameron Prinsep.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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The League of Moveable Type.

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