through the pipe. He fell into desuetude, however, of his daily walk,
[Endnote: 1] and sent Elsie to play by herself in the graveyard (a
dreary business enough for the poor child) instead of taking her to
country or seaside himself. He was more savage and blasphemous,
sometimes, than he had been heretofore known to be; but, on the other
hand, he was sometimes softer, with a kind of weary consenting to
circumstances, intervals of helpless resignation, when he no longer
fought and struggled in his heart. He did not seem to be alive all the
time; but, on the other hand, he was sometimes a good deal too much
alive, and could not bear his potations as well as he used to do, and
was overheard blaspheming at himself for being so weakly, and having a
brain that could not bear a thimbleful, and growing to be a milksop
like Colcord, as he said. This person, of whom the Doctor and his young
people had had such a brief experience, appeared nevertheless to hang
upon his remembrance in a singular way,--the more singular as there was
little resemblance between them, or apparent possibility of sympathy.
Little Elsie was startled to hear Doctor Grim sometimes call out,
"Colcord! Colcord!" as if he were summoning a spirit from some secret
place. He muttered, sitting by himself, long, indistinct masses of
talk, in which this name was discernible, and other names. Going on
mumbling, by the hour together, great masses of vague trouble, in
which, if it only could have been unravelled and put in order, no doubt
all the secrets of his life,--secrets of wrath, guilt, vengeance, love,
hatred, all beaten up together, and the best quite spoiled by the
worst, might have been found. His mind evidently wandered. Sometimes,
he seemed to be holding conversation with unseen interlocutors, and
almost invariably, so far as could be gathered, he was bitter, and then
sat, immitigable, pouring out wrath and terror, denunciating,
tyrannical, speaking as to something that lay at his feet, but which he
would not spare. [Endnote: 2] Then suddenly, he would start, look round