396 FIRESIDE MUSINGS. 



unseen," than of believing with Dolly that some such exist- 

 ences as the latter were for ever " about us," in the forms of 

 cricket and of cockroach. 



Since a few particles of new leaven had been infused (as we 

 have seen) into the old man's never before fermented mind, 

 the automaton, if he could not be said to have acquired as yet 

 the faculty of thinking, would sometimes when his body was 

 at rest have his mind in a sort of bustle, as seeking about for 

 a something it could hardly find. So as the autumn days grew 

 shorter and shorter, and we all four of an evening drew round 

 the kitchen fire, while Dolly was pondering sadly on her 

 master's absence, and about us, and about the cricket, and we 

 (Lucy and I) were thinking, each in our own way, upon the 

 very same subjects, Caleb would, in the blinking fire-light, and 

 in the darkness visible of his barely loop-holed mind, be 

 groping for, and catching hold occasionally of one of the 

 salient points in the new preacher's wonder-working discourses, 

 the battering-rams which had forced an entrance through his 

 mental walls. 



One night, late in September, when we were thus assembled 

 Lucy on a low stool, one hand on Dolly's knee, the other on 

 the head of the large white cat her eyes, as those of us all, 

 bent upon the fire, she suddenly whispered, "Look there! 

 there's the cricket!" and she pointed as she spoke towards the 

 hole into which our old favourite had run for refuge on being 

 routed by Caleb from his original retreat. "Look there!" 



