`Get it me, then, get it me. I feel a bit weak.'

`Tom, my lad,' he said, in a stronger voice, when he had taken some brandy and water, `You shall make a speech to 'em. I'll tell 'em it's you as got the best part o' the money. They'll see I'm honest at last, and ha' got an honest son. Ah! Wakem 'ud be fine and glad to have a son like mine - a fine straight fellow - i'stead o' that poor crooked creatur! You'll prosper i' the world, my lad; you'll maybe see the day when Wakem and his son 'ull be a round or two below you. You'll like enough be ta'en into partnership, as your uncle Deane was before you - you're in the right way for't; and then there's nothing to hinder your getting rich... And if ever you're rich enough - mind this - try and get th' old mill again.'

Mr Tulliver threw himself back in his chair - his mind, which had so long been the home of nothing but bitter discontent and foreboding suddenly filled, by the magic of joy, with visions of good fortune. But some subtle influence prevented him from foreseeing the good fortune as happening to himself.

`Shake hands wi' me, my lad,' he said, suddenly putting out his hand. `It's a great thing when a man can be proud as he's got a good son. I've had that luck.'

Tom never lived to taste another moment so delicious as that, and Maggie couldn't help forgetting her own grievances. Tom was good; and in the sweet humility that springs in us all in moments of true admiration and gratitude, she felt that the faults he had to pardon in her had never been redeemed, as his faults were. She felt no jealousy this evening that for the first time, she seemed to be thrown into the background in her father's mind.

There was much more talk before bed-time. Mr Tulliver naturally wanted to hear all the particulars of Tom's trading adventures, and he listened with growing excitement and delight. He was curious to know what had been said on every occasion - if possible, what had been thought; and Bob Jakin's part in the business threw him into peculiar outbursts of sympathy with the triumphant knowingness of that remarkable packman. Bob's juvenile history so far as it had come under Mr Tulliver's knowledge was recalled with that sense of astonishing promise it displayed, which is observable in all reminiscences of the childhood of great men.

It was well that there was this interest of narrative to keep under the vague but fierce sense of triumph over Wakem which would otherwise have been the channel his joy would have rushed into with dangerous force. Even as it was, that feeling from time to time gave threats of its ultimate mastery, in sudden bursts of irrelevant exclamation.

It was long before Mr Tulliver got to sleep that night, and the sleep, when it came, was filled with vivid dreams. At half past five o'clock in the morning, when Mrs Tulliver was already rising, he alarmed her by starting up with a sort of smothered shout, and looking round in a bewildered way at the walls of the bedroom.

`What's the matter, Mr Tulliver?' said his wife. He looked at her, still with a puzzled expression and said at last,

`Ah! - I was dreaming... did I make a noise?... I thought I'd got hold of him.'