perhaps be restrained in future? Nobody knows. All we know is that
there are very few human actions of which it can be said that this or
that taken by itself produced them. With our inborn tendency to
abstract, to separate mentally the concrete into factors which do not
exist separately, we are always disposed to assign causes which are
too simple, and which, in fact, have no being in rerum natura.
Nothing in nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone.
There is no such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician. I
see no reason why even motives diametrically opposite should not
unite in one resulting deed, and think it very probable that the
squire was both cruel and merciful to the same person in the letter;
influenced by exactly conflicting passions, whose conflict ended SO.

As to the squire and his wife, they lived together just as before. I
do not think, that, excepting the four persons concerned, anybody
ever heard a syllable about the affair, save myself a long while
afterwards. Clem, however, packed up and left the town, after
selling his business. He had a reputation for restlessness; and his
departure, although it was sudden, was no surprise. He betook
himself to Australia, his wife going with him. I heard that they had
gone, and heard also that he was tired of school-keeping in England,
and had determined to try his fortune in another part of the world.
Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more about
him. Mrs. Butts never uttered one word of reproach to her husband.
I cannot say that she loved him as she could have loved, but she had
accepted him, and she said to herself that as perhaps it was through
her lack of sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her duty
more and more to draw him to herself. She had a divine disposition,
not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for any
wrong which was done to her. That almost instinctive tendency in