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Wittgenstein Rules Grammar and Necessity Volume 2 of
an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical
Investigations Essays and Exegesis 185 242 2nd Edition
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Author(s): Gordon P. Baker; P.M.S. Hacker
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Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity
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Other volumes of this Commentary

Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Volume 1 of An Analytical

Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations
Part I: Essays
G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker,
second, extensively revised edition by P. M. S. Hacker

Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Volume 1 of An Analytical

Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations
Part II: Exegesis §§1–184
G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker,
second, extensively revised edition by P. M. S. Hacker

Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of An Analytical Commentary

on the Philosophical Investigations
Part I: Essays
P. M. S. Hacker

Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of An Analytical Commentary

on the Philosophical Investigations
Part II: Exegesis §§243–427
P. M. S. Hacker

Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Volume 4 of An Analytical Commentary on

the Philosophical Investigations
Part I: Essays
P. M. S. Hacker

Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Volume 4 of An Analytical Commentary on

the Philosophical Investigations
Part II: Exegesis §§428–693
P. M. S. Hacker

Epilogue:
Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy
P. M. S. Hacker
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page iii

Volume 2
of An Analytical Commentary on
the Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein:
Rules, Grammar and Necessity


Essays and Exegesis of §§185–242

G. P. Baker & P. M. S. Hacker

Fellows of St John’s College · Oxford

Second, extensively revised edition

by

P. M. S. Hacker
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page iv

This second edition first published 2009

© 2009 G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker
Edition history: Blackwell Publishers Ltd (1e, 1985)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baker, Gordon P.
Wittgenstein – rules, grammar and necessity: essays and exegesis of 185–242 / G. P. Baker
& P. M. S. Hacker. – 2nd, extensively rev. ed. / by P. M. S. Hacker.
p. cm. – (An analytical commentary on the philosophical investigations; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-8408-3 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889 –1951. Philosophische Untersuchungen.
2. Philosophy. 3. Language and languages–Philosophy. 4. Semantics (Philosophy)
I. Hacker, P. M. S. (Peter Michael Stephan)
II. Title. B3376.W563 P5323 2010 vol. 2
192 – dc22
2009018428
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12pt Bembo by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed in Singapore
1 2009
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For Anne and Sylvia

9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page vii

Contents

Acknowledgements x
Introduction to Volume 2 xii
Abbreviations xvi

ANALYTICAL COMMENTARY 1

I Two fruits upon one tree 3

1. The continuation of the Early Draft into philosophy
of mathematics 3
2. Hidden isomorphism 7
3. A common methodology 12
4. The flatness of philosophical grammar 19

FOLLOWING A RULE §§185–242 23

Introduction to the exegesis 25

II Rules and grammar 41

1. The Tractatus and rules of logical syntax 41
2. From logical syntax to philosophical grammar 43
3. Rules and rule-formulations 46
4. Philosophy and grammar 55
5. The scope of grammar 59
6. Some morals 65

Exegesis §§185–8 68

III Accord with a rule 81

1. Initial compass bearings 81
2. Accord and the harmony between language and reality 83
3. Rules of inference and logical machinery 88
4. Formulations and explanations of rules by examples 90
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page viii

viii Contents

5. Interpretations, fitting and grammar 93

6. Further misunderstandings 95

Exegesis §§189–202 98
IV Following rules, mastery of techniques, and practices 135
1. Following a rule 135
2. Practices and techniques 140
3. Doing the right thing and doing the same thing 145
4. Privacy and the community view 149
5. On not digging below bedrock 156

V Private linguists and ‘private linguists’ – Robinson

Crusoe sails again 157
1. Is a language necessarily shared with a community of speakers? 157
2. Innate knowledge of a language 158
3. Robinson Crusoe sails again 160
4. Solitary cavemen and monologuists 163
5. Private languages and ‘private languages’ 165
6. Overview 166

Exegesis §§203–37 169

VI Agreement in definitions, judgements and forms of life 211
1. The scaffolding of facts 211
2. The role of our nature 215
3. Forms of life 218
4. Agreement: consensus of human beings and their actions 223

Exegesis §§238–42 231

VII Grammar and necessity 241
1. Setting the stage 241
2. Leitmotifs 245
3. External guidelines 258
4. Necessary propositions and norms of representation 262
5. Concerning the truth and falsehood of necessary propositions 270
6. What necessary truths are about 280
7. Illusions of correspondence: ideal objects, kinds of reality
and ultra-physics 283
8. The psychology and epistemology of the a priori 289
(i) Knowledge 289
(ii) Belief 291
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Contents ix

(iii) Certainty 294

(iv) Surprise 298
(v) Discoveries and conjectures 300
(vi) Compulsion 305
9. Propositions of logic and laws of thought 308
10. Alternative forms of representation 320
11. The arbitrariness of grammar 332
12. A kinship to the non-arbitrary 338
13. Proof in mathematics 345
14. Conventionalism 356

Index 371
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Acknowledgements

While writing the second edition of Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity,
I have benefited greatly from friends and colleagues who were kind enough
to read some of the draft essays or the exegesis or both, and to discuss the
difficulties with me. I am grateful to Edward Kanterian, who read and com-
mented on many of the essays. Leo Cheung, Andrew English, Timo-Peter
Ertz, Anthony Kenny, Wolfgang Künne, Felix Mühlhölzer, Hans Oberdiek,
Piero Pinzauti and Joachim Schulte all gave me numerous helpful comments
and corrections on the final essay on grammar and necessity. I am especially
indebted to Hanoch Ben-Yami and to Herman Philipse who read most of the
exegesis and essays and whose remarks saved me again and again from error
or unclarity.
My college, St John’s, generously supports research done by its Emeritus
Research Fellows and offers its many facilities for their use. For this I am most
grateful. The team at Wiley-Blackwell have seen this project through the press
with their customary efficiency and courtesy. I am particularly indebted to Nick
Bellorini and Liz Cremona.
A version of the essay ‘Private linguists and “private linguists” – Robinson
Crusoe sails again’ was presented at a conference organized by Nuño
Venturinha at the Universidad Nova de Lisboa in May, 2008, and is to be
published in the volume he has edited, entitled Wittgenstein after His Nachlass
(Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2009). Parts of the essay ‘Grammar and neces-
sity’ were presented at seminars at the University of Bologna in April/May
2009 and at the 32nd International Wittgenstein Symposium at Kirchberg in
August 2009.
P. M. S. H.
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page xi

Thoughts reduced to paper are generally nothing

more than the footprints of a man walking in
the sand. It is true that we see the path he
has taken; but to know what he saw on the way,
we must use our own eyes.

Schopenhauer
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page xii

Introduction to Volume 2

The first edition of this book was written between 1981 and 1984. Gordon
Baker and I had not originally intended to dedicate a whole volume to the
fifty-seven remarks that run from Philosophical Investigations §185 to §242. But
we found that the text was exceedingly difficult to penetrate. The interpreta-
tive controversies about these remarks were extensive and deep. The amount
of manuscript material on rules, following rules, practices and techniques was
large. The ratio of directly related Nachlass notes and typescripts to published
text is high. For, as we noted, Wittgenstein went over this ground again
and again, criss-cross in all directions, repeatedly redrafting remarks, adding,
pruning and polishing. Much of this material is invaluable, making his inten-
tions clear and resolving disputes about the interpretation of the final text.
We thought it a fundamental part of our enterprise to lay this documentation
before the reader. The manuscript material is indispensable for understanding
Wittgenstein’s ideas, and it provides the background against which our exposi-
tion of his ideas must be judged. So we resolved to write a volume dedicated
to Wittgenstein’s views on grammatical rules, on accord with a rule, on follow-
ing rules, on internal relations, and on the nature of logical, grammatical and
mathematical necessity.
Because the themes raised in these fifty-seven remarks of the Investigations
are so densely interwoven, the essays in this volume are more closely integ-
rated as parts of a single logical nexus than those in Volume 1, Part I. The
clarification of what precisely Wittgenstein meant by ‘a rule of grammar’, what
the relation is between a rule and the acts that accord with it, what it is to
follow a rule, and whether, and in what sense, one can follow a rule privately
or ‘privately’ are a sequentially related array of enquiries that are essential to
understanding Wittgenstein’s thought both upon the philosophy of mathematics
and upon the philosophy of language. Precisely because the Frühfassung con-
tinued into an early draft of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Part
1, rather than into what we now know as ‘the private language arguments’,
we thought it essential to explain how two such diverse trees as the philo-
sophy of mathematics and explanation of the nature of necessity, on the one
hand, and the private language arguments, on the other, could be grafted onto
the same stock. And we also thought it necessary to take some steps to explain
the direction of Wittgenstein’s thought in the Remarks. Hence the long con-
cluding essay on ‘Grammar and necessity’. For it is not possible to understand
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Introduction to Volume 2 xiii

Wittgenstein’s thought in general without some grasp of his conception of the

nature of the necessary truths of logic, mathematics and grammar (metaphysics),
even though this theme is muted in the Investigations.
While we were working on this volume of the Commentary, Saul Kripke
published his lecture on Wittgenstein on following rules, which was sub-
sequently expanded into a small book, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1982). We were convinced, on the basis of our research
on the Nachlass, that Kripke’s (and Robert Fogelin’s prior) interpretation of
what they both called the ‘paradox’ of rule-following was mistaken. We were
even more doubtful about the sceptical Humean solution to the alleged prob-
lem, which they attributed to Wittgenstein, and of the assertability-conditional
semantic theory that Kripke, following Dummett, ascribed to Wittgenstein.
We confronted those views explicitly in a small volume of three essays on the
subject, Scepticism, Rules and Language (Blackwell, Oxford, 1984), and impli-
citly in this volume, especially in the essays ‘Accord with a rule’ and ‘Following
rules, mastery of techniques and practices’ and in the exegesis of §§198–202.
We showed that they had no adequate basis in Wittgenstein’s writings.
Indeed, we argued that they conflict with much that Wittgenstein had written
and with the point and purpose of his discussions.
In the quarter of a century since we published the first edition of this
volume, there has been much discussion of Kripke’s interpretation, some cri-
ticizing and others defending it. Some philosophers, such as Norman Malcolm,
prescinded from Kripke’s sceptical interpretation of the remarks on following
rules, but supported the so-called community view according to which there
can be rules only if they are shared by a community of rule-followers. These
continuing debates merited fresh scrutiny. New Nachlass materials were dis-
covered, shedding further light on the issues. The Bergen electronic edition
of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass was published, with an invaluable search engine.
Puzzlement and bafflement about Wittgenstein’s writings on the philosophy
of mathematics continued, still largely guided by Michael Dummett’s mis-
interpretations of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics in
his 1959 review of the book and in his later writings on the subject. All this
warranted an extensively revised edition that would take advantage of the new
materials and of the Nachlass search engine, and examine the issues afresh.
In 2001 Gordon Baker and I decided to produce a second edition of
Volume 1 of this Commentary, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, in order
to correct errors that we had made twenty-five years earlier, to bring it up to
date with the continuing research on Wittgenstein’s texts, to make use of the
electronic edition of the Nachlass and its search engine, and to elaborate the
new ideas we had had in the course of a quarter of a century’s further reflections.
Before we had even begun, however, Gordon fell ill with cancer, and died
in 2002. Working therefore alone, I rewrote large parts of the first edition of
Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, compressing the old text and adding
a great deal of new material, as well as two new essays, completely redrafting
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page xiv

xiv Introduction to Volume 2

about half of the old essays, and comprehensively rewriting the exegesis. The
second edition was published in two volumes, one of essays and the other of
exegesis, in 2005. Having completed that task, I turned in 2007 to examine
Volume 2 of the Commentary, and decided that this too needed redrafting
and supplementing with new material.
In this second edition I have redrafted much of the exegesis in the light of
numerous debates on the text over the last twenty-five years. I have, as in the
revisions to Volume 1, benefited greatly from Professor Eike von Savigny’s
methodical criticisms in his Wittgensteins ‘Philosophische Untersuchungen’: Ein
Commentar für Leser, 2nd edn (Klosterman, Frankfurt am Main, 1994). I have
also been able to make use of the Bergen electronic edition to hunt down
passages Gordon and I had missed as we searched our way through the 20,000
pages of Nachlass in the 1980s. Hence the tables of correlation are much expanded,
and will enable scholars to trace each remark to its sources. The result of this
new research is, I hope, an exhaustive survey of the relevant materials that
bear on the text, which will enable readers to judge for themselves whether
the interpretation offered is faithful to the printed text and supported by the
relevant manuscript materials. I should emphasize that I bear sole responsibility
for any new views advanced in this second edition.
The essays have been rewritten, sometimes extensively. One point that I
have tried to bring out, which was not previously made adequately clear, is
the point and purpose of Wittgenstein’s lengthy investigations into rules and
following rules, and their structural role within the Philosophical Investigations.
We had endeavoured to clarify why this issue arises out of the conception of
meaning as use, on the one hand, and the notion of understanding, in parti-
cular understanding something at a stroke, on the other. But no less pertinent
is the need to elucidate the nexus between internal relations and the idea that
following a rule is a practice. For internal relations are the fruits of a norma-
tive practice – a rule-governed regularity of action. And, against the backdrop
of the stream of human life, it is they that determine what is to be called, for
example, describing, calculating, inferring, and so forth. These ideas are at the
heart of Wittgenstein’s normative conception of mathematical propositions and
laws of inference and, indeed, it was for that purpose that they were origin-
ally crafted. For the book was originally intended to proceed from §189 into
what we now know as Part I of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.
So it is important to set the discussion of following a rule in both contexts.
One new essay has been added. ‘Private linguists and “private linguists”
– Robinson Crusoe sails again’ is designed to settle the debate between the
‘community view’ and its ‘individualist’ adversaries once and for all as far as
Wittgensteinian exegesis is concerned.
By far the most important modification to the essays is the substantial ex-
pansion of ‘Grammar and necessity’. I have rewritten this essay, compressing
the old text and adding much new material. My intention was to produce an
overview of Wittgenstein’s conception of logical, grammatical and mathematical
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page xv

Introduction to Volume 2 xv

necessity and also a prolegomenon to his later (post-1936) philosophy of math-

ematics. A new section on mathematical proof has been added, with an expla-
nation of Wittgenstein’s remarks on decision that is at odds with the views
commonly ascribed to him. I have also elaborated the section on the relation-
ship between Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics and logic and that
of the Vienna Circle. This was rewritten in the light of Gordon Baker’s
essay on this subject in Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1988).
The exegesis follows the same model as in Volume 1, Part II, save that in
this volume it is dispersed between the essays. It has been thoroughly revised.
The number of German quotations has been reduced, since the text of
Wittgenstein’s manuscripts is now readily available in the Bergen electronic
edition of the Nachlass. The text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen used is
the 4th edition. The English text of the Investigations is also the 4th edition
with its considerably modified translation.

P. M. S. Hacker
St John’s College, Oxford
March, 2009
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page xvi

Abbreviations

1. Wittgenstein’s published works

The following abbreviations, listed in alphabetical order, are used to refer to
Wittgenstein’s published works.
BB The Blue and Brown Books (Blackwell, Oxford, 1958).
BlB Occasionally used to refer to the Blue Book.
BrB Occasionally used to refer to the Brown Book.
BT The Big Typescript, tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue
(Blackwell, Oxford, 2004).
C On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, tr.
D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1969).
CE ‘Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness’, repr. in Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann
(Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1993), pp. 370–426.
CL Cambridge Letters, ed. Brian McGuinness and G. H. von Wright
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1995).
CV Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright in collaboration with
H. Nyman, tr. P. Winch (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980).
EPB Eine Philosophische Betrachtung, ed. R. Rhees, in Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Schriften 5 (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1970).
GB ‘Remarks on Frazer’s “Golden Bough” ’, tr. J. Beversluis, repr. in
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. J. Klagge
and A. Nordmann (Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1993),
pp. 118–55.
LPE ‘Wittgenstein’s Notes for Lectures on “Private Experience” and
“Sense Data” ’, ed. R. Rhees, repr. in Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann
(Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1993), pp. 202–88.
LW I Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, ed. G. H. von
Wright and H. Nyman, tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1982).
NB Notebooks 1914 –16, ed. G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe,
tr. G. E. M. Anscombe 2nd edn (Blackwell, Oxford, 1979).
PG Philosophical Grammar, ed. R. Rhees, tr. A. J. P. Kenny (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1974).
9781405184083_1_pre.qxd 28/8/09 10:44 AM Page xvii

Abbreviations xvii

PI Philosophical Investigations, revised 4th edn edited by P. M. S. Hacker

and Joachim Schulte, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and
Joachim Schulte (Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2009).
PO Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. J. Klagge
and A. Nordmann (Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1993).
PPF Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment published in Philosophical
Investigations, revised 4th edn edited by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim
Schulte, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte
(Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2009).
PR Philosophical Remarks, ed. R. Rhees, tr. R. Hargreaves and R. White
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1975).
PTLP Proto-Tractatus – An Early Version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ed.
B. F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg and G. H. von Wright, tr. D. F. Pears
and B. F. McGuinness (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1971).
RC Remarks on Colour, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright,
tr. L. L. McAlister and M. Schättle (Blackwell, Oxford, [1977]).
RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G. H. von Wright,
R. Rhees, G. E. M. Anscombe, rev. edn (Blackwell, Oxford, 1978).
RLF ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, suppl. vol. 9 (1929), pp. 162–71.
RPP I Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, ed. G. E. M.
Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1980).
RPP II Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, ed. G. H. von Wright
and H. Nyman, tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1980).
TLP Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1961).
Z Zettel, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, tr. G. E. M.
Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1967).

Reference style: all references to Philosophical Investigations are to sections

(e.g. PI §1), except those to boxed notes on various pages. Reference to these
pages is given by two numbers, the first referring to the page of the first and
second editions, the second to the fourth edition. References to Philosophy of
Psychology – a Fragment (previously known as Philosophical Investigations Part II)
are to numbered sections, and to page numbers in the first two editions (e.g.
PPF §1/p. 174). References to other printed works are either to numbered
remarks (TLP) or to sections signified ‘§’ (Z, RPP, LW); in all other cases
references are to pages (e.g. LFM 21 = LFM, page 21) or to numbered let-
ters (CL); references to The Big Typescript are to the original pagination of the
typescript as given in the Bergen electronic edition of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000) and in the published translation edited
by Aue and Luckhardt.
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xviii Abbreviations

2. Derivative primary sources and Waismann’s publications

AWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932–35, from the Notes of Alice Ambrose
and Margaret MacDonald, ed. Alice Ambrose (Blackwell, Oxford, 1979).
IMT Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, F. Waismann, tr. T. J. Benac
(Hafner, London, 1951).
LA Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Beliefs,
ed. C. Barrett (Blackwell, Oxford, 1970).
LFM Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939,
ed. C. Diamond (Harvester Press, Sussex, 1976).
LPM Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics, F. Waismann, ed. with an
introduction by W. Grassl (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1982).
LPP Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946 –47, notes by
P. T. Geach, K. J. Shah and A. C. Jackson, ed. P. T. Geach (Harvester
Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1988).
LSD ‘The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience’, notes
taken by R. Rhees of Wittgenstein’s lectures, 1936, Philosophical
Investigations 7 (1984), pp. 1–45, 101–40.
LWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930–32, from the Notes of John King
and Desmond Lee, ed. Desmond Lee (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980).
M G. E. Moore’s notes entitled ‘Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33’,
repr. in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed.
J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Hackett, Indianapolis and Cambridge,
1993), pp. 46–114.
PLP The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, F. Waismann, ed. R. Harre
(Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, London and New York, 1965).
RR Discussions of Wittgenstein, by R. Rhees (Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London, 1970).
VoW The Voices of Wittgenstein, transcribed and edited by Gordon Baker,
tr. Gordon Baker, Michael Mackert, John Connolly and Vasilis Politis
(Routledge, London, 2003).
WWK Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis, shorthand notes recorded
by F. Waismann, ed. B. F. McGuinness (Blackwell, Oxford, 1967).
The English translation, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1979), matches the pagination of the original edition.

3. Nachlass
All references to other material cited in the von Wright catalogue (G. H. von
Wright, Wittgenstein [Blackwell, Oxford, 1982], pp. 35ff.) are by MS or TS
number followed by page number (‘r’ indicating recto, ‘v’ indicating verso)
or section number ‘§’, as it appears in the Bergen electronic edition of
Wittgenstein’s Nachlass.
In the case of the first manuscript draft of the Investigations, MS 142 (the
Urfassung), references are to Wittgenstein’s section number (‘§’), save in the
case of references to pp. 77f., which are redrafts of PI §§1–2 and to pp. 78–91,
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Abbreviations xix

which Wittgenstein crossed out and redrafted on pp. 91ff., subsequently

assigning them section numbers in the redrafts alone.

Manuscripts
MSS 105–22 refer to the eighteen large manuscript volumes written be-
tween 2 February 1929 and 1944. These were numbered by Wittgenstein as
Vols I–XVIII. In the first edition of this Commentary they were referred to
by volume number, followed by page number (e.g. ‘ Vol. XII, 271’). Since
then it has become customary to refer to them by von Wright number alone.
Here they are referred to on their first occurrence in a discussion by their von
Wright number, followed by volume number in parenthesis, followed by page
number as paginated in the Bergen edition (e.g. ‘MS 116 (Vol. XII), 271’).
In the subsequent occurrence of a reference to the same volume in the same
discussion, the volume number is dropped.
‘MS 114 (Vol. X), Um.’ refers to Wittgenstein’s pagination of the
Umarbeitung (reworking) of the Big Typescript in MS 114. The Umarbeitung begins
on folio 31v of MS 114 (Vol. X), and is consecutively paginated 1–228.

Typescripts
BI Bemerkungen I (TS 228), 1945–6, 185 pp. All references are to num-
bered sections (§).

All other typescripts are referred to as ‘TS’, followed by the von Wright
number and pagination as in the Bergen edition.
The successive drafts of the Investigations are referred to as follows:
TS 220 is the typescript of the ‘Early Draft’ (Fruhfassung (FF)) of the
Investigations, referred to in the first edition of this Commentary as ‘PPI’ (‘Proto-
Philosophical Investigations’), dictated from MS 142 (the Urfassung ( UF)).
TS 226R is Rhees’s pre-war translation of TS 220 §§1–116, referred to in the
1st edn of this Commentary as PPI(R).
TS 227a and 227b are the two surviving typescripts of the Investigations (the
copy from which the text was printed having been lost).
TS 238 is a reworking of TS 220, §§96–116, with renumberings, deletions,
corrections and additions in Wittgenstein’s hand, referred to in the 1st edn of
this Commentary as PPI (A).
TS 239 is a reworking of TS 220 (Bearbeitete Frühfassung).
ZF is the reconstructed ‘Intermediate Draft’ (Zwischenfassung) of the Investiga-
tions, previously known as ‘The Intermediate Version’, and referred to in the
1st edn of this Commentary as PPI(I).
In transcriptions from the Nachlass I have followed Wittgenstein’s convention
of enclosing alternative draftings within double slashes ‘//’.
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xx Abbreviations

4. Abbreviations for the other volumes of An Analytical

Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations
G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning,
Volume 1 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edn,
extensively revised by P. M. S. Hacker, Part I – Essays, Part II – Exegesis §§1–
184 (Blackwell, Oxford, 2005).
P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of an Analytical Com-
mentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, Oxford and Cambridge,
Mass., 1990).
P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Volume 4 of an Analytical Com-
mentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, Oxford and Cambridge,
Mass., 1996).
All references to these are of the form ‘Volume’, followed by the volume
number and the quoted title of an essay in the designated volume (and, in the
case of Volume 1, to Part I). References to the exegesis are flagged ‘Exg.’,
followed by section number prefixed with ‘§’ or page number (in the case of
the boxed remarks).

5. Abbreviations for works by Frege

BLA i The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, vol. i (1893); references to the preface
by roman numeral indicating original page number, all other refer-
ences by section number (§).
BLA ii The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, vol. ii (1903); all references by section
number (§).
CN Conceptual Notation and Related Articles, tr. and ed. T. W. Bynum
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972). References to sections (§) are to
‘Conceptual Notation’.
FA The Foundations of Arithmetic, tr. J. L. Austin, 2nd edition (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1959).
PW Posthumous Writings, ed. H. Hermes, F. Kambartel and F. Kaulbach,
tr. P. Long and R. White (Blackwell, Oxford, 1979).

6. Abbreviations for works by Russell

PM Principia Mathematica, vol. I (with A. N. Whitehead), 2nd edn
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1927).
PrM The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd edn (rev.) (Allen and Unwin,
London, 1937).
9781405184083_4_001.qxd 28/8/09 10:43 AM Page 1

ANALYTICAL

COMMENTARY

Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker

© 2009 G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker ISBN: 978-1-405-18408-3
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 "Never any more," she murmured--"never any more." The
morning was cold and raw, but Harriet heeded it not. She glanced
out of the window of her bed-room before she left it, wearing her
bonnet and shawl, and closely veiled. Then she closed the shutters,
locked the door, withdrew the key, and came into the sitting-room.
She went to a chair and took up a coat which lay at the back of it;
then she looked round for a moment as if in search of something.
Her eye lighted on a small but heavy square of black marble which
lay on the writing-table, and served as a paper-press. She then
spread the coat on the table, placed the square of marble on it, and
rolled it tightly round the heavy centre, folding and pressing the
parcel into the smallest possible dimensions. This done, she tied it
tightly with a strong cord, and, concealing it under her shawl, went
swiftly out of the house. No one saw her issue from the grim,
gloomy door--the neighbouring housemaids had not commenced
their matutinal task of door-step cleaning, alleviated by gossip--and
she went away down the street, completely unobserved. Went away,
with her head down, her face hidden, with a quick, steady step and
an unfaltering purpose. There were not many wayfarers abroad in
the street, and of those she saw none, and was remarked by only
one.

Harriet Routh took her way towards the river, and reached
Westminster-bridge as the clock in the great tower of the new
palace marked half-past six. All was quiet. A few of the laggards of
the working classes were straggling across the bridge to their daily
toil, a few barges were moving sluggishly upon the muddy water;
but there was no stir, no business yet. Harriet lingered when she
reached the centre of the bridge; a figure was just vanishing at the
southern end, the northern was clear of people. She leaned over the
parapet, and looked down--no boat, no barge was near. Then she
dropped the parcel she had carried into the river, and the water
closed over it. Without the delay of an instant, she turned and
retraced her steps toward home. As she neared South Morton-street,
she found several of the shops open, and entering one, she
purchased a black marble letter-press. It was not precisely similar to
that with which she had weighted the parcel, which now lay in the
bed of the river; but the difference was trifling, and not to be
perceived by the eye of a stranger.

Near the house in which the Rouths occupied apartments there

was an archway which formed the entrance to some mews. As she
passed this open space, Harriet's glance fell upon the inquisitive
countenance of a keen-looking, ragged street-boy, who was lying
contentedly on his back under the archway, with his arms under his
head, and propped upon the kerbstone. A sudden impulse arrested
her steps. "Have you no other place to lie than here?" she asked the
boy, who jumped up with great alacrity, and stood before her in an
attitude almost respectful.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, "I have, but I'm here, waiting for an early
job."

She gave him a shilling and a smile--not such a smile as she once
had to give, but the best that was left her--and went on to the door
of the house she lived in. She opened it with a key, and went in.

The boy remained where she had left him, apparently ruminating,
and wagging his tousled head sagely.

"Whatever is she up to?" he asked of himself, in perplexity, "It's a

rum start, as far as I knows on it, and I means to know more. But
how is she in it? I shan't say nothing till I knows more about it." And
then Mr. Jim Swain went his way to a more likely quarter for early
jobs.

Fortune favoured Mrs. Routh on that morning. She gained her

bed-room unseen and unheard, and having hastily undressed, lay
down to rest, if rest would come to her--at least to await in quiet the
ordinary hour at which the servant was accustomed to call her. It
came, and passed; but Harriet did not rise.
 She slept a little when all the world was up and busy--slept until
the second delivery of letters brought one for her, which the servant
took at once to her room.

The letter was from George Dallas, and contained merely a few
lines, written when he was on the point of starting, and posted at
the river-side. He apologized to Harriet for a mistake which he had
made on the previous night. He had taken up Routh's coat instead of
his own, and had not discovered the error until he was on his way to
the steamer, and it was too late to repair it. He hoped it would not
matter, as he had left his own coat at South Molton-street, and no
doubt Routh could wear it, on an occasion. When Harriet had read
this note, she lay back upon her pillow, and fell into a deep sleep,
which was broken by Routh's coming into her room early in the
afternoon. He looked pale and haggard, and he stood by the bedside
in silence. But she--she sat up, and flung her arms round him with a
wonderfully good imitation of her former manner; and when she told
him all that had passed, her husband caught her to his breast with
passionate fondness and gratitude, and declared over and over
again that her ready wit and wonderful fortitude had saved him.
Saved him? How, and from what?
 CHAPTER XI.

AT POYNINGS.

Life at Poynings had its parallel in hundreds of country-houses, of

which it was but a type. It was a life essentially English in its
character, in its staid respectability, in its dull decorum. There are old
French chateaux without number, visible in bygone days to travellers
in the banquettes of diligencies, and glimpses of which may still
occasionally be caught from the railways, gray, square, four pepper-
box turreted old buildings, wherein life is dreary but not decorous,
and sad without being staid. It is the day-dream of many an English
country gentleman that his house should, in the first place, be
respectable, in the second place, comfortable, in the third place, free
from damp; after these successes are achieved, he takes no further
thought for it; within and without the dulness may be soul-
harrowing; that is no affair of his. So long as his dining-room is large
enough to contain the four-and-twenty guests who, on selected
moonlight nights, are four times in every year bidden to share his
hospitality--so long as the important seignorial dignities derivable
from the possession of lodge, and stable, and kennel are
maintained--so long as the state devolving upon him as justice of
the peace, with a scarcely defined hope of one day arriving at the
position of deputy-lieutenant, is kept up, vaulting ambition keeps
itself within bounds, and the young English country gentleman is
satisfied. More than satisfied, indeed, was Mr. Capel Carruthers in
the belief that all the requirements above named were properly
fulfilled. In his earlier life he had been haunted by a dim conviction
that he was rather an ass than otherwise; he remembered that that
had been the verdict returned at Rugby, and his reflections on his
very short career at Cambridge gave him no reason to doubt the
decision of his schoolfellows. Not a pleasant source of reflection
even to a man of Mr. Carruthers's blunted feelings; in fact, a
depressing, wrong, Radical state of mind, for which there was only
one antidote--the thought that he was Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, a
certain settled stable position which would have floated its possessor
over any amount of imbecility. Carruthers of Poynings! There it was
in old county histories, with a genealogy of the family and a
charming copper engraving of Poynings at the beginning of the
century, with two ladies in powder and hoops fishing in an
impossible pond, and a gentleman in a cocked-hat and knee-
breeches pointing out nothing in particular to nobody at all.
Carruthers of Poynings! All the old armour in the hall, hauberks and
breastplates, now propped upon a slight wooden frame, instead of
enclosing the big chests and the thews and sinews which they had
preserved through the contests of the rival Roses or the Cavaliers
and Roundheads--all the old ancestors hanging round the dining-
room, soldiers, courtiers, Kentish yeomen, staring with grave eyes at
the smug white-whiskered old gentleman, their descendant--all the
old tapestry worked by Maud Carruthers, whose husband was killed
in the service of Mary Stuart--all the carvings and gildings about the
house, all the stained glass in the windows, all the arms and
quartering and crests upon the family plate--all whispered to the
present representative of the family that he was Carruthers of
Poynings, and as such had only to make a very small effort to find
life no very difficult matter, even for a person scantily endowed with
brains. He tried it accordingly--tried it when a young man, had
pursued the course ever since, and found it successful. Any latent
suspicion of his own want of wisdom had vanished long since, as
how, indeed, could it last? When Mr. Carruthers took his seat as
chairman of the magisterial bench at Amherst, he found himself
listening with great admiration to the prefatory remarks which he
addressed to the delinquent in custody before passing sentence on
him, unconscious that those remarks only echoed the magistrate's
clerk, who stood close behind him whispering into his ear. When, as
was his regular custom, he walked round the barn, where, on rent-
days, the tenants were assembled at dinner, and heard his health
proposed in glowing terms, and drunk with great enthusiasm--for he
was a good and liberal landlord--and when he addressed a few
conventional words of thanks in reply, and stroked his white
whiskers, and bowed, amidst renewed cheering, how should a
thought of his own shortcomings ever dawn upon him?

His shortcomings!--the shortcomings of Mr. Carruthers of

Poynings? If, indeed, in his earlier days there had been a latent
belief in the existence of anything so undesirable and so averse to
the proper status of a county magnate, it had long since died out. It
would have been hard and unnatural, indeed, for a man so
universally respected and looked up to, not to give in to the general
creed, and admit that there were undoubted grounds for the
widespread respect which he enjoyed. There are two kinds of
"squires," to use the old English word, who exercise equal influence
on the agricultural mind, though in very different ways. The one is
the type which Fielding loved to draw, and which has very little
altered since his time--the jocund sporting man, rib-poking, lass-
chin-chucking franklin, the tankard-loving, cross-country-riding,
oath-using, broad-skirted, cord-breeched, white-hatted squire. The
other is the landed proprietor, magistrate, patron of the living,
chairman of the board of guardians, supporter of the church and
state, pattern man. Mr. Carruthers of Poynings belonged to the latter
class. You could have told that by a glance at him on his first
appearance in the morning, with his chin shaved clean, his well-
brushed hair and whiskers, his scrupulously white linen, his carefully
tied check neckcloth, his portentous collars, his trimmed and
polished nails. His very boots creaked of position and respectability,
and his large white waistcoat represented unspotted virtue. Looking
at him ensconced behind the bright-edged Bible at early morning
prayers, the servants believed in the advantages derivable from a
correct life, and made an exception in their master's favour to the
doom of Dives. By his own measure he meted the doings of others,
and invariably arose considerably self-refreshed from the
mensuration. Hodge, ploughman, consigned to the cage after a
brawl with Giles, hedger, consequent upon a too liberal consumption
of flat and muddy ale at The Three Horseshoes, known generally as
The Shoes, and brought up for judgment before the bench, pleading
"a moog too much" in extenuation, might count on scanty
commiseration from the magistrate, who never exceeded his four
glasses of remarkably sound claret. Levi Hinde, gipsy and tramp,
arraigned for stealing a loaf from a baker's shop--as he said, to save
the life of his starving child--impressed not one whit the portly
chairman of the Amherst branch of the County Bank. Mr. Carruthers
never got drunk, and never committed theft; and that there could be
any possible temptation for other people so to act, was beyond the
grasp of his most respectable imagination.

A man of his stamp generally shows to the least advantage in his

domestic relations. Worshipped from a distance by outsiders, who,
when occasion forces them into the presence, approach,
metaphorically, in the Siamese fashion, on hands and knees, there is
usually a good deal too much Grand Lama-like mystery and dignity
about the recipient of all this homage to render him agreeable to
those with whom he is brought into daily contact. Mr. Carruthers was
not an exception to the rule. He had a notion that love, except the
extremely respectable but rather weak regard felt by mothers
towards their infants, was a ridiculous boy-and-girl sentiment, which
never really came to anything, nor could be considered worthy of
notice until the feminine mind was imbued with a certain amount of
reverence for the object of her affection. Mr. Carruthers had never
read Tennyson (in common with his class, he was extremely severe
upon poets in general, looking upon them not merely as fools, but as
idle mischievous fools, who might be better employed in earning a
decent livelihood, say as carters or turnpike-men); but he was
thoroughly impressed with the idea that "woman is the lesser man,"
and he felt that any open display of affection on his part towards his
wife might militate against what he considered entirely essential to
his domestic happiness--his "being looked up to." He was in the
habit of treating his wife in ordinary matters of social intercourse
very much as he treated the newly-appointed justice of the peace at
the meetings of the magisterial bench, viz. as a person whose
position was now recognized by the laws of society as equal to their
own, but who must nevertheless feel inwardly that between him and
Mr. Carruthers of Poynings there was really a great gulf fixed, the
bridging of which, however easy it may appear, was really a matter
of impossibility.

If these feelings existed, as they undoubtedly did in Mr. Carruthers

under the actual circumstances of his marriage, it may be imagined
that they would have been much keener, much more intensified, had
he taken to wife, instead of the quiet widow lady whom, to the
astonishment of the county, he chose, any of the dashing girls who
had danced, dressed, and flirted at him perseveringly, but in vain.
Poynings was a sufficiently nice place to render its master a catch in
the county, and to induce husband-hunting misses to discount his
age and pomposity, so that when the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Capel
Carruthers were sent round (it was before the contemptuous days of
"no cards "), and it was discovered that the new mistress of
Poynings was somebody quite out of "the set," immediately "that
dear Mr. Carruthers" became "that horrid old thing," and it required
years of open-handed hospitality to reestablish him in favour.

But Capel Carruthers had chosen wisely, and he knew it. With all
his weakness and vanity, a gentleman in thought and tastes, he had
taken for his wife a lady whose birth and breeding must have been
acknowledged in any society; a lady whose age was not ill-suited to
his own, whose character was unimpeachable, who was thoroughly
qualified to superintend the bringing out of his niece, and whose
sole vulnerable point for criticism--her poverty--was rendered
invulnerable as soon as she became Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings.
And, under all the cold placid exterior which never thawed, under all
the set Grandisonian forms of speech which were never relaxed,
under the judicial manner and the Board-of-Guardians address,
flowed a warm current of love for his wife which he himself scarcely
suspected. With such poor brains as he had, he had occasionally
fallen to the task of self-examination, asking himself how it was that
he, Mr. Carruthers of Poynings (even in his thoughts he liked the ring
of that phrase), could have so far permitted himself to be swayed by
any one, and then he told himself that he was reverenced and
looked up to, that his state, position, and dignities were duly
acknowledged, and in a satisfied frame of mind he closed the self-
colloquy. Loved his wife--eh! neither he nor any one else knew how
much. George Dallas need not have been anxious about the
treatment of his mother by his stepfather. When the young man
cursed his exile from his mother's presence and his stepfather's
home, he little knew the actual motives which prompted Mr.
Carruthers to decide upon and to keep rigidly in force that decree of
banishment. Not only his stepson's wildness and extravagance;
though a purist, Mr. Carruthers was sufficient man of the world to
know that in most cases there are errors of youth which correct
themselves in the flight of time. Not a lurking fear that his niece,
thrown in this prodigal's way, should be dazzled by the glare of his
specious gifts, and singe her youth and innocence in their baleful
light. Not a dread of having to notice and recognize the young man
as his connection in the chastened arena of county society.

As nature had not endowed Mr. Carruthers with a capacity for

winning affection, though it was not to be denied that there were
qualities in his character which commanded respect, it was fortunate
for him that he cared less about the former than the latter.
Nevertheless, he would probably have been rendered very
uncomfortable, not to say unhappy, had he supposed that his wife.
"Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings," as there is reason to suppose he
designated her, even in his inmost thoughts, positively did not love
him. Such a supposition, however, never had occurred to him, which
was fortunate; for Mr. Carruthers was apt to hold by his suppositions
as strongly as other people held by their convictions, as, indeed,
being his, why should he not? and it would have been very difficult
to dislodge such a notion. The notion itself would have been, in the
first place, untrue, and in the second, dangerous. Mrs. Carruthers of
Poynings loved her rather grim and decidedly uninteresting but
unimpeachably respectable husband, if not passionately, which was
hardly to be expected, very sincerely, and estimated him after the
fashion of wives--that is to say, considerably above his deserts. All
women like their husbands, except those who notoriously do not,
and Mrs. Carruthers was no exception to the rule. She had a much
greater sense of justice in her than most women, and she used it
practically--applied it to her own case. She knew the fault had been
her son's in the great sorrow which had destroyed all the pride and
pleasure which her prosperous marriage would otherwise have
brought her, and she did not charge it upon her husband, or, except
in so far as her unconquerable anxiety and depression caused him
annoyance, did she inflict the penalty of it on him. She knew him to
be a hard man, and she did not look for softness from, him; but she
accepted such advantages as hardness of character possesses, and
bore its disadvantages well. "If I were he," she had said to herself,
even in the first hours of her anguish of conviction of her boy's
unworthiness, and when his stepfather's edict of exclusion was but
newly published, "and I had so little knowledge of human nature as
he has, if life had never taught me toleration, if Clare were my niece
and George his son, would I not have acted as he has done? He is
consistent to the justness and the sternness of his character."
Thinking thus, Mrs. Carruthers acted on the maxim that to judge
others aright we should put ourselves in their position. So she
accepted the great trial of her life, and suffered it as quietly and
patiently as she could. It would be difficult to define with precision
the nature of Mr. Carruthers's sentiments towards George Dallas.
The young man had met his stepfather but rarely, and had on each
occasion increased the disfavour with which from the first the elder
man had regarded him. He had never tried to propitiate, had,
indeed, regarded him with contemptuous indifference, secure in
what he fancied to be the security of his mother's position; and
there had been covert antagonism between them from the first. How
much astonished Mr. Carruthers would have been had any revelation
been made to him of the secrets of his own heart, whereby he
would have discovered that a strong sentiment of jealousy lay at the
root of his antipathy to George Dallas--jealousy which intensified his
hardness and sternness, and forbade him to listen to the promptings
of common sense, which told him that the line he was taking
towards the son was so cruel to the mother as to neutralize all the
advantages presented by the fine marriage she had made, and for
which, by the way, he expected her to be constantly demonstratively
grateful. In this expectation he was as constantly disappointed. Mrs.
Carruthers was an eminently true woman, and as she felt no peculiar
exuberance of gratitude, she showed none. She was a lady too--
much more perfectly a lady than Mr. Carruthers was unimpeachably
a gentleman--and, as such, she filled her position as a matter of
course, as she would have filled one much higher, or one much
lower, and thought nothing about it. She was of so much finer a
texture, so much higher a nature, than her husband, that she did
not suspect him of any double motive in his treatment of George
Dallas. She never dreamed that Mr. Carruthers of Poynings was
secretly uneasily jealous of the man who had died in his prime many
years before, and the son, who had been first the young widow's
sole consolation and then her bitterest trial. The living and the dead
combined to displease Mr. Carruthers, and he would have been
unequivocally glad, only in decorous secrecy, could he have obtained
any evidence to prove that George Dallas was remarkably like his
father in all the defective points of his personal appearance and in all
the faults of his character. But such evidence was not within his
reach, and Mr. Carruthers was reduced to hoping in his secret heart
that his suppositions were correct on this point, and discovering a
confirmation of them in his wife's scrupulous silence with regard to
her first husband. She had never, in their most confidential
moments, remarked on any likeness between George and his father;
had never, indeed, mentioned Captain Dallas at all, which appeared
extremely significant to Mr. Carruthers, but seeing that Captain
Dallas had been dead twelve years when his widow became Mrs.
Carruthers of Poynings, would not have occasioned much surprise to
the world in general. Mr. Carruthers regarded himself as his wife's
benefactor, but she did not partake of his views in that respect. The
notion which he entertained of his position with regard to his niece
Clare was better founded and more reasonable.

The beautiful young heiress, who was an unconscious and

involuntary element in the standing grievance of Mrs. Carruthers's
life, was the only child of Mr. Carruthers's brother, and the sole
inheritor of his property. Her father had died while she was a little
child, and her mother's method of educating her has been already
described. She was attached to her uncle, but was afraid of him; and
she was happier and more at ease at the Sycamores than at
Poynings. Of course Mr. Carruthers did not suspect his niece of any
such depravity of taste. It never occurred to him that any one could
fancy himself or herself happier anywhere on the face of the created
globe than at Poynings; and so Clare escaped the condemnation
which she would otherwise have received in no stinted measure.

Accustomed to attach a wonderful amount of importance to duties

and responsibilities which were his, if their due fulfilment could add
to his dignity and reputation, Mr. Carruthers was a model of the
uncle and guardian. He really liked Clare very much indeed, and he
was fully persuaded that he loved her--a distinction he would have
learned to draw only if Clare had been deprived of her possessions,
and rendered dependent on him. He spoke of her as "my brother's
heiress," and so thought of her, not as "my brother's orphan child;"
but in all external and material respects Mr. Carruthers of Poynings
was an admirable guardian, and a highly respectable specimen of
the uncle tribe. He would have been deeply shocked had he
discovered that any young lady in the county was better dressed,
better mounted, more obsequiously waited upon, more
accomplished, or regarded by society as in any way more favoured
by fortune than Miss Carruthers--not of Poynings, indeed, but the
next thing to it, and likely at some future day to enjoy that
distinction. Mr. Carruthers did not regret that he was childless; he
had never cared for children, and, though not a keenly observant
person, he had noticed occasionally that the importance of a rich
man's heir was apt, in this irrepressibly anticipative world, to
outweigh the importance of the rich man himself. No Carruthers on
record had ever had a large family, and, for his own part, he liked
the idea of a female heir to the joint property of himself and his
brother, who should carry her own name in addition to her
husband's. He was determined on that. Unless Clare married a
nobleman, her husband should take the name of Carruthers.
Carruthers of Poynings must not die out of the land. The strange
jealousy which was one of the underlying constituents of Mr.
Carruthers's character came into play with regard to his niece and
his wife. Mrs. Carruthers loved the girl, and would gladly have acted
the part of a mother to her; and as Clare's own mother had been a
remarkably mild specimen of maternal duty and affection, she could
have replaced that lady considerably to Clare's advantage. But she
had soon perceived that this was not to be; her husband's fidgety
sense of his own importance, his ever-present fear lest it should be
trenched upon or in any way slighted, interfered with her good
intentions. She knew the uselessness of opposing the foible, though
she did not understand its source, and she relinquished the projects
she had formed.

Mr. Carruthers was incapable of believing that his wife never once
dreamed of resenting to Clare the exclusion of George, for which the
girl's residence at Poynings had been assigned as a reason, or that
she would have despised herself if such an idea had presented itself
to her mind, as she probably must have despised him had she
known how natural and inevitable he supposed it to be on her part.

Thus it came to pass that the three persons who lived together at
Poynings had but little real intimacy or confidence between them.
Clare was very happy; she had her own tastes and pursuits, and
ample means of gratifying them. Her mother's brother and his wife,
Sir Thomas and Lady Boldero, with her cousin, their ugly but clever
and charming daughter, were much attached to her, and she to
them, and, when she got away from Poynings to the Sycamores,
Clare acknowledged to herself that she enjoyed the change very
much, but was very happy at Poynings nevertheless. The Sycamores
had another interest for her now, another association, and the girl's
life had entered upon a new phase. Innocent, inexperienced, and
romantic as she was, inclined to hero-worship, and by no means
likely to form sound opinions as to her heroes, Clare Carruthers was
endowed with an unusual allowance of common sense and
perception. She understood Mr. Carruthers of Poynings thoroughly;
so much more thoroughly than his wife, that she had found out the
jealousy which permeated his character, and recognized it in action
with unfailing accuracy. She had considerably more tact than girls at
her age ordinarily possess, and she continued to fill a somewhat
difficult position with satisfaction not only to others, but to herself.
She contrived to avoid wounding her uncle's susceptible self-love,
and to keep within the limits which Mrs. Carruthers's discretion had
set to their intimacy, without throwing external coldness or restraint
into their relations.

Clare found herself very often doing or not doing, saying or

refraining from saying, some particular thing, in order to avoid
"getting Mrs. Carruthers into a scrape," and of course she was aware
that the constantly-recurring necessity for such carefulness argued,
at the least, a difficult temper to deal with in the head of the
household; but she did not let the matter trouble her much. She
would think, when she thought about it at all, with the irrepressible
self-complacency of youth, how careful she would be not to marry
an ill-tempered man, or, at all events, she would make up her mind
to marry a man so devotedly attached to her that his temper would
not be of the slightest consequence, as, of course, she should never
suffer from it. On the whole, it would be difficult to find a more
dangerous condition of circumstances than that in which Clare
Carruthers was placed when her romantic meeting with Paul Ward
took place--a meeting in which the fates seemed to have combined
every element of present attraction and future danger. Practically,
Clare was quite alone; she placed implicit confidence in no one, she
had no guide for her feelings or actions, and she had just drifted into
a position in which she needed careful direction. She refrained from
mentioning her meeting with the stranger, more on Mrs. Carruthers's
account than on her own, from the usual motive--apprehension lest,
by some unreasonable turn of Mr. Carruthers's temper, she might be
brought "into a scrape." Her curiosity had been strongly excited by
the discovery that Mrs. Carruthers had some sort of acquaintance
with Paul Ward, or, at least, with his name; but she adhered to her
resolution, and kept silence for the present.

Mrs. Carruthers's son had always been an object of tacit interest

to Clare. She had not been fully informed of the circumstances of
her uncle's marriage, and she understood vaguely that George Dallas
was an individual held in disfavour by the august master of
Poynings; so her natural delicacy of feeling conquered her curiosity,
and she abstained from mentioning George to his mother or to Mr.
Carruthers, and also from giving encouragement to the gossip on
the subject which occasionally arose in her presence.

In Mrs. Carruthers's dressing-room a portrait hung, which Clare

had been told by Mrs. Brookes was that of her mistress's son, when
a fine, brave, promising boy of ten years old. Clare had felt an
interest in the picture, not only for Mrs. Carruthers's sake, but
because she liked the face which it portrayed--the clear bright brown
eyes, the long curling hair, the brilliant dark complexion, the bold,
frank, gleeful expression. Once or twice she had said a few words in
praise of the picture, and once she had ventured to ask Mrs.
Carruthers if her son still resembled it. The mother had answered
her, with a sigh, that he was greatly changed, and no one would
now recognize the picture as a likeness of him.

The dignified and decorous household at Poynings pursued its

luxurious way with less apparent disunion among its principal
members than is generally to be seen under the most favourable
circumstances, but with little real community of feeling or of interest.
Mrs. Carruthers was a popular person in society, and Clare was liked
as much as she was admired. As for Mr. Carruthers, he was Mr.
Carruthers of Poynings, and that fact sufficed for the neighbourhood
almost as completely as it satisfied himself.
 The unexpected return of her uncle from York had caused Clare
no particular emotion. She was standing at the French window of
the breakfast-room, feeding a colony of birds, her outdoor
pensioners, when the carriage made its appearance. She had just
observed the fact, and was quietly pursuing her occupation, when
Mrs. Carruthers, who had left the breakfast-room half an hour
before, returned, looking so pale, and with so unmistakeable an
expression of terror in her face, that Clare looked at her in
astonishment.

"Your uncle has come back," she said. "I am not well, I cannot
meet him yet. Go to the door, Clare, and tell him I am not well, and
am still in my room. Pray go, my dear; don't delay a moment."

"Certainly I will go," answered Clare, leaving the window and

crossing the room as she spoke; "but--"

"I'll tell you what ails me another time, but go now--go," said Mrs.
Carruthers; and, without another word, the girl obeyed her. She had
seen the carriage at a turn in the avenue; now the wheels were
grinding the gravel of the sweep opposite the hall-door. In a minute
Clare was receiving her uncle on the steps, and Mrs. Carruthers,
having thrown the bonnet and shawl she had just taken out for her
proposed expedition to the shrubbery back into the wardrobe,
removed her gown, and replaced it by a dressing-gown, was
awaiting her husband's approach with a beating heart and an aching
head. Had he met her son? Had he passed him unseen upon the
road? Would Mrs. Brookes succeed, unseen and unsuspected, in
executing the commission with which she had hurriedly charged her?

"She is in a scrape of some sort," Clare thought, as she

accompanied her uncle to his wife's dressing-room. "What can have
happened since he left home? Can it have anything to do with Paul
Ward?"
 CHAPTER XII.

IN CONFERENCE.

It is nine o'clock in the morning, and breakfast is on the table in

the pretty breakfast-room at Poynings. Mrs. Carruthers presides over
the breakfast-table, and Clare is occupied in arranging some flowers
which have just been sent in by the head gardener--sweet, fresh
flowers, partaking alike of the brightness of spring and the
sweetness of summer, for the April showers have fulfilled their
mission, and the earth is alike glowing and redolent. Through the
bow-window, opened in fear and trembling by Clare before her
uncle's appearance, and hitherto unnoticed by that potentate, who
has a vivid dread of rheumatism, comes a soft air laden with
delicious scent of new-mown grass; for close underneath three men
are busily engaged in trimming the broad lawn, and the sound of
their swiftly plied whetstones and the hum of their talk in their
occasional intervals of rest has penetrated into the room, and makes
a kind of human accompaniment to Mr. Carruthers's strictly unhuman
and intonative manner of reading the morning prayers. Spreading far
away, and bordered in the extreme distance of a sloping shoulder of
Surrey down, lies the glorious Kentish landscape, dotted here and
there with broad red-faced farmsteads and lowly labourers' cots,
with vast expanse of green and springing wheat and hop-grounds,
where the parasite has as yet scarcely taken the tall poles within its
pliant embrace, with thick plantations and high chalk cuttings, over
which the steam from the flying train hangs like a vaporous wreath.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the house the big elm-trees,
guarding on either side the carriage-drive, tossed their high heads
and rustled their broad arms in all the delight of their freshly
acquired greenery; dew-bathed broad upland and mossy knoll
sparkle alike in the morning sun; in the silvery bosom of the little
lake the reflection of the slowly-drifting clouds rears quaint
impalpable islands of strange fantastic form; within the magic square
of the old red kitchen-garden wall, where rusty nails and fragments
of last year's list still hung, large cucumber and melon frames blink
in the sunlight, and every little handlight lends a scintillating ray.
Over all hangs a sense of stillness and composure, of peace and rest
and quietude, such as might bring balm and healing to any wounded
spirit.

External influences have, however, very little effect on one of the

persons in the breakfast-room, for Mrs. Carruthers is bodily ill and
mentally depressed. A racking nervous headache has deprived her of
sleep during the past night, and has left its traces in deep livid marks
underneath her eyes. She has a worn-out look and a preoccupied
manner, and while she is superintending the preparation of the
Grand Lama's tea--a process about which he is particular, and which
is by no means to be lightly undertaken--her thoughts are far away,
and her mind is full of doubts and misgiving. Why did her husband
come back so suddenly from the agricultural meeting yesterday?
Could be by any means have been aware of George's presence in
the neighbourhood; and, if so, had he hastened his return with the
view of detecting him? If so, he had providentially been thwarted in
his plan. Nurse Ellen had seen the boy, and had conveyed to him the
bracelet; the means of release from his surrounding difficulties were
now in his hands, and the mother felt sure, from his manner, that he
would keep his word, and never again subject himself to such a
fearful risk. All danger surely must be over; no hint had been
dropped by her husband of the slightest suspicion, and yet Mrs.
Carruthers watches every change of his countenance, listens
nervously to every footfall on the stairs, hears with a heart-beat the
creak of every opening door, and is, obviously, constrained and
wretched and ill at ease.
 Clare notices this pityingly and with wonder; Mr. Carruthers
notices it too, with wonder, but without any pity, but he resents it, in
point of fact, silently and with dignity. That Mrs. Carruthers of
Poynings should "mope" and be "out of sorts" is a kind of reflection
on Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, which that gentleman by no means
approves of. Over the top of his rustling newspaper he looks at his
wife with severe glances levelled from under knitted brows; between
his occasional bites of toast he gives a short, sharp, irritable cough;
now and then he drums with his fingers on the table, or taps his foot
impatiently on the floor. No notice of these vagaries is taken by
either of the ladies, it being generally understood at Poynings that
the Grand Lama will always find vent in speech when the proper
times arrives. Meanwhile, Mrs. Carruthers moodily broods over the
breakfast equipage, and Clare continues her handiwork with the
flowers.

The Grand Lama becomes more and more irate, glares through his
gold double eye-glasses at the newspaper, wherein he is reading
atrociously "levelling" views promulgated by a correspondent, gives
utterance to smothered sounds indicative of indignation and
contempt, and is just about to burst forth in a torrent of rage, when
the door opens, and a footman, entering, hands a card on a salver
to his master. As when, in full pursuit of the flying matador, the bull
in the arena wheels round and engages the lithe picador who has
just planted a flag-bearing dart in his quivering carcass, so Mr.
Carruthers turns upon the servant who had interposed between him
and the intended objects of his attack.

"What's this?" said he, in a sharp voice.

"Card, sir," said the footman, utterly unmoved, and with the
complacent expression of an ancient gurgoyle on a Saxon church.

"Do you think I'm blind?" said his master. "I see it's a card. Where
did it come from?"
 "Gentleman in the library, sir. Said you was at breakfast; told me
no 'urry, and giv' me his card."

Mr. Carruthers looks up suspiciously at Thomas footman, but

Thomas footman is still gurgoylesque. Then Mr. Carruthers replaces
his eye-glasses, and, looking at the card, reads thereon, in old
English characters, "Mr. Dalrymple," and in pencil the words "Home
Office." "I will be with the gentleman in a moment." Only stopping at
the looking-glass to run his fingers through his hair and to settle the
tie of his checked cravat, Mr. Carruthers creaks out of the room.

Mr. Dalrymple, of the Home Office, has established himself in a

comfortable chair, from which he rises on Mr. Carruthers's entrance.
He is a tall, bald-headed man, and, to Mr. Carruthers's horror, wears
a full-flowing brown beard. The Grand Lama, whose ideas on this
point are out of date, knows that beards are now generally worn by
members of the aristocracy as well as foreigners and billiard-
sharpers, but cannot conceive that any government has been so
preposterously lax as to permit its officials to indulge in such
nonsense. Consequently he refers to the card again, and, his first
impressions being verified, is dumb with astonishment. Nevertheless,
he controls his feelings sufficiently to bow and to point to a chair.

"I am an early visitor, Mr. Carruthers," says Mr. Dalrymple, "but the
fact is, my business is pressing. I came down to Amherst by the mail
train last night, but I would not disturb you at so late an hour, and,
moreover, I could have done no good by seeing you then; so I slept
at the inn. My visit to you is on business, as I presume you
understand?"

Mr. Dalrymple says this pointedly, as the Grand Lama's face is

rapidly assuming an open mouth and sunken jaw expression of
idiotcy. He recovers himself by an effort, and, glancing at the card,
mutters "Home Office."
 "Precisely," says Mr. Dalrymple. "I am a principal clerk in the Home
Office, and I come to you in your capacity as justice of the peace.
Lord Wolstenholme, our Secretary, noticed that you generally acted
as chairman of the bench of magistrates, and therefore decided that
you were the proper person to be communicated with."

Mr. Carruthers's attention, which has been wandering a little--his

eyes are still attracted by his visitor's beard, and he is wondering
how long it has been growing, and why it should be, as it is, of two
distinct shades of brown--is recalled by these words, and he mutters
that he is obliged to his lordship for his opinion.

"Now, my dear Mr. Carruthers," says Mr. Dalrymple, bending

forward in his chair, dropping his voice to a whisper, and looking slyly
from under his bushy eyebrows, "will you allow me to ask you a
question? Can you keep a secret?"

Mr. Carruthers is taken aback. From his magisterial and country-

gentleman position he looks upon secrets as things exclusively
appertaining to the vulgar, as connected with conspiracies, plots,
swindles, and other indictable offences. Considering, however, that
the matter is brought under his notice in connection with the Home
Office, he thinks he may venture to answer in the affirmative, and
does accordingly.

"Ex-actly," says Mr. Dalrymple. "I knew your answer before I put
the question; but in these little matters it is absolutely necessary to
have perfect accuracy. Now then to the point--we are quite out of
earshot? Thank you! No chance of any one listening at the doors?"

Mr. Carruthers says "No," with an expression of face which says he

should very much like to catch any one there.

"Pre-cisely! Now, my dear Mr. Carruthers, I will at once put you in

possession of Lord Wolstenholme's views. The fact is, that a murder
has been committed, under rather peculiar circumstances, and his
lordship wants your assistance in investigating the matter."
 Mr. Carruthers is all attention in an instant. Every trace of
preoccupation has vanished. His visitor's beard has no kind of
attraction for him now, though it is wagging close before his eyes. A
murder! The worst case he had ever investigated was a doubtful
manslaughter arising out of a poaching affray, and for his remarks
on that he had been highly complimented in the local press; but
here is murder--and his aid is enlisted by the Home Office!

"The facts of the case," continues Mr. Dalrymple, "are shortly

these. A body of a man is seen floating off Paul's Wharf, and is
hooked up by one of the men attached to the steam-boat pier there.
It is taken to the police station to be examined, and is then found to
have been stabbed to the heart with a sharp instrument, and by a
strong and clever hand. The pockets are empty, the studs have been
taken from the shirt, and there is no token, pocket-book, or anything
to establish its identity. 'Ordinary case enough,' you'll say, with your
experience; 'ordinary case enough--drunken man decoyed into some
water-side ken, robbed, and made away with--case for the police--
why Lord Wolstenholme and the Home Office?' You would say that,
my dear sir, influenced by your ordinary perspicacity; but I answer
your 'Why.' From the appearance of this man's body it is plain that
he was not an Englishman; his clothes are not of English cut, and he
had on a huge fur-lined overcoat, with a deep hood, such as no
Englishman ever wears. When this description was sent to us, Lord
Wolstenholme at once referred to a private correspondence which
we have had with the French embassy in relation to some of the
Second-of-December exiles who are now sheltered under the British
flag, and we came to the conclusion that this was no common
murder for purposes of plunder, but an act of political vengeance.
Now, my dear sir, you will perceive that to penetrate a mystery of
this kind is of the greatest political importance, and consequently his
lordship took the matter up at once, and set every engine we have
at work to elucidate it. The result of our inquiries proves that the
whole chance of identification rests upon a question of coats. The
last person by whom, so far as we know, the wearer of the fur-lined
coat was seen alive is a waiter at a tavern in the Strand, who
distinctly recollects the murdered man, whose dress he described
very fully, being particularly positive about his jewelry--diamond
studs, real, no 'duffers,' as he said, and of which there is no trace to
be found--having dined at his eating-house, in company with
another man, who had with him a blue Witney overcoat, on the
inside of which was a label bearing the name of some tailor, Ewart or
Evans, he is unable to state which, residing at Amherst."

"Good God!" said Mr. Carruthers, surprised out of his usual

reticence. "Evans--I know the man well!"

"Very likely!" says Mr. Dalrymple, composedly. "Evans! The waiter

has been had up, cross-questioned, turned inside out, but still
adheres to his story. Now, as we imagine this to be a bit of political
vengeance, and not an ordinary crime, and as the detectives (capital
fellows in their way) have had their heads a little turned since
they've been made novel heroes of, Lord Wolstenholme thought it
better that I should come down into the neighbourhood of Amherst,
and with your assistance try to find out where and by whom this
coat was bought."

No hesitation now on Mr. Carruthers's part; he and the Home

Office are colleagues in this affair. Lord Wolstenholme has shown his
sagacity in picking out the active and intelligent magistrate of the
district, and he shall see that his confidence is not misplaced. Will
Mr. Dalrymple breakfast? Mr. Dalrymple has breakfasted; then a
message is sent to Mrs. Carruthers to say that Mr. Carruthers
presumes he may say that Mr. Dalrymple, a gentleman from London,
will join them at dinner? Mr. Dalrymple will be delighted, so long as
he catches the up mail-train at Amherst at--what is it?--nine fifteen.
Mr. Carruthers pledges his word that Mr. Dalrymple shall be in time,
and orders the barouche round at once. Will Mr. Dalrymple excuse
Mr. Carruthers for five minutes? Mr. Dalrymple will; and Mr.
Carruthers goes to his dressing-room, while Mr. Dalrymple re-
ensconces himself in the big arm-chair, and devotes his period of
solitude to paring his nails and whistling softly the while.
 The big, heavy, swinging barouche, only used on solemn
occasions, such as state visits, Sunday church-goings, and
magisterial sittings, drawn by the two big grays, and driven by
Gibson, coachman, in his silver wig, his stiff collar, and his bright
top-boots, and escorted by Thomas, footman, in all the bloom of
blue-and-silver livery and drab gaiters, comes round to the front
door, and the gentlemen take their places in it and are driven off.
The three gardeners mowing the lawn perform Hindooish obeisances
as the carriage passes them; obeisances acknowledged by Mr.
Carruthers with a fore-finger lifted to the brim of his hat, as
modelled on a portrait of the late Duke of Wellington. Bulger at the
lodge gates pulls his forelock, and receives the same gracious return,
Mr. Carruthers all the time bristling with the sense of his own
importance, and inwardly wishing that he could tell gardeners,
lodge-keeper, and every one they met that his companion had come
from the Home Office, and that they were about together to
investigate a most important case of murder. Mr. Dalrymple, on the
contrary, seems to have forgotten all about the actual business
under treatment, and might be a friend come on a few days' visit.
He admires the scenery, asks about the shooting, gives his opinion
on the rising crops, talks of the politics rife in the neighbourhood,
showing, by the way, a keen knowledge of their details, and never
for an instant refers to the object of their inquiry until they are
nearing the town, when he suggests that they had better alight
short of their destination, and proceed on foot there. There is no
particular reason for this, as probably Mr. Dalrymple knows; but he
has never yet pursued an official and mysterious investigation in a
barouche, and it seems to him an abnormal proceeding. So Mr.
Carruthers, deferring in a courtly manner to his visitor's wishes, but,
at the same time, walking beside him as though he had him in
charge, they alight from the carriage, bidding the servant to wait,
and walk into the town, directing their steps towards Evans, tailor.
Evans, tailor, coatless, as is his wont, and with his thumbs stuck in
the arm-holes of his waistcoat, is standing at his door, and greets Mr.
Carruthers with as much bow as is possible to his stout figure. Could
they speak to him for a moment? by all manner of means; will Mr.
Carruthers walk into the back shop? where Miss Evans, a buxom girl
with many shaking curls, is discovered working a pair of Berlin-wool
slippers, at a glance too small for her father, and is put to flight with
much blushing and giggling. The two gentlemen seat themselves in
the old-fashioned black-horsehair chairs, and Mr. Evans, a little
excited, stands by them with his thumbs in his arm-holes, and flaps
his hands occasionally, as though they were fins. "This gentleman,
Mr. Evans," says Mr. Carruthers, giving this happy specimen of his
acumen and discretion in a loud and pompous tone--"has come from
Lord Wolstenholme, the Secretary of State for the Home
Department." Mr. Evans gives a fin-flap, indicative of profound
respect. "He has been sent here to--"

"Will you permit me in the very mildest manner to interrupt you,

my dear sir?" says Mr. Dalrymple, in dulcet accents. "You put the
matter admirably from the magisterial point of view--but perhaps if I
were just to-- You have no objection? Thank you! You've lived a long
time in Amherst, Mr. Evans?"

"I've been a master tailor here, sir, forty-three years last

Michaelmas."

"Forty-three years! Long time, indeed! And you're the tailor of the
neighbourhood, eh?"

"Well, sir, I think I may say we make for all the gentry round--Mr.
Carruthers of Poynings, sir, and Sir Thomas Boldero, and--"

"Of course--of course! You've a gold-printed label, I think, which

you generally sew on to all goods made by you?"

"We have, sir--that same. With my name upon it."

"With your name upon it. Just so! Now, I suppose that label is
never sewed on to anything which has not been either made or sold
by you?"
 "Which has not been made, sir! We don't sell anything except our
own make--Evans of Amherst don't."

"Exactly; and very proper too." To Mr. Carruthers: "Settles one

point, my dear sir--must have been made here! Now, Mr. Evans, you
make all sorts of coats, of course, blue Witney overcoats among the
number?"

Mr. Evans, after a hesitating fin-flap, says: "A blue Witney

overcoat, sir, is an article seldom if ever called for in these parts. I
shouldn't say we'd made one within the last two years--leastways,
more than one."

"But you think you did make one?"

"There were one, sir, made to order from a party that was staying
at the Lion."

"Staying at the Lion? The inn, of course, where I slept last night.
How long ago was that?"

"That were two years ago, sir."

"That won't do!" cries Mr. Dalrymple, in disappointed tone.

"Two years ago that it were made and that the party was at the
Lion. The coat was sold less than three months ago."

"Was it? To whom?"

"To a stranger--a slim young gent who came in here one day
promiscuous, and wanted an overcoat. He had that blue Witney, he
had!"

"Now, my dear Mr. Evans," says Mr. Dalrymple, laying his hand
lightly on Mr. Evans's shirt-sleeve, and looking up from under his
bushy brows into the old man's face, "just try and exercise your
memory a little about this stranger. Give us a little more description
of him--his age, height, general appearance, and that sort of thing!"

But Mr. Evans's memory is quite unaccustomed to exercise, and

cannot be jogged, or ensnared, or bullied into any kind of action.
The stranger was young, "middling height," appearance, "well, gen-
teel and slim-like;" and wild horses could not extract further
particulars from Mr. Evans than these. Stay. "What did he give for
the coat, and in what money did he pay for it?" There's a chance.
Mr. Evans remembers that he "gev fifty-three-and-six for the
overcoat, and handed in a ten-pun' note for change." A ten-pound
note, which, as Mr. Evans, by a further tremendous effort, recollects,
had "the stamp of our post-office on it, as I pinted out to the gent at
the time." Was the note there? No; Mr. Evans had paid it into the
County Bank to his little account with some other money, but he
quite recollected the post-office stamp being on it.

Mr. Carruthers thinks this a great point, but is dashed by Mr.

Dalrymple's telling him, on their way from the tailor's, that all bank-
notes passing through post-offices received the official stamp. This
statement is corroborated at the Amherst post-office, where no
money-order of that amount, or of anything equivalent to that
amount, has been recently paid, the remittances in that form being,
as the postmaster explains, generally to the canal boatmen or the
railway people, and of small value.

So there the clue fails suddenly and entirely, and Mr. Carruthers
and Mr. Dalrymple again mount the big swinging barouche and are
driven back to Poynings to dinner, which meal is not, however,
graced by the presence of either of the ladies; for Mrs. Carruthers is
too ill to leave her room, and Clare is in attendance on her. So the
gentlemen eat a solemn dinner by themselves, and talk a solemn
conversation; and at eight o'clock Mr. Dalrymple goes away, driven
by Gibson, coachman, in the carriage, and turning over in his mind
how best to make something out of the uneventful day for the
information of the Home Secretary.
 That dignitary occupies also much of the attention of Mr.
Carruthers, left in dignified solitude in the dining-room before the
decanters of wine and the dishes of fruit, oblivious of his wife's
indisposition, and wholly unobservant of the curiosity with which Mr.
Downing, his butler and body-servant, surveys him on entering the
room to suggest the taking of tea. Very unusual is it for the Poynings
servants to regard their master with curiosity, or indeed with any
feeling that bears the semblance of interest; but, be the cause what
it may, there is no mistaking the present expression of Downing's
face. Surprise, curiosity, and something which, if it must be called
fear, is the pleasant and excited form of that feeling, prompt Mr.
Downing to look fixedly at his master, who sits back in his chair in an
attitude of magisterial cogitation, twirling his heavy gold eye-glass in
his bony white hands, and lost in something which resembles
thought more closely than Mr. Carruthers's mental occupation can
ordinarily be said to do. There he sits, until he resolves to take his
niece Clare into confidence, tell her of the visit he has received from
the gentleman from the Home Office, and ask her whether she can
make anything of it, which resolution attained, and finding by his
watch that the hour is half-past ten, and that therefore a Carruthers
of Poynings may retire to rest if he chooses without indecorum, the
worthy gentleman creaks upstairs to his room, and in a few minutes
is sleeping the sleep of the just. Mrs. Carruthers--Clare having been
some time previously dismissed from the room--also seems to sleep
soundly; at least her husband has seen that her eyes are closed.

Her rest, real or pretended, would have been none the calmer had
she been able to see her faithful old servant pacing up and down the
housekeeper's room, and wringing her withered hands in an agony
of distress; for the servant who had gone to Amherst with Mr.
Carruthers and his mysterious visitor in the morning had learned the
meaning and purpose of the two gentlemen's visit to Evans, the
tailor, and had made it the subject of a lively and sentimental
conversation in the servants' hall. Although literature was not in a
very flourishing condition at Amherst, the male domestics of the
household at Poynings were not without their sources of information,
and had thoroughly possessed themselves of the details of the
murder.

Mrs. Brookes had heard of the occurrence two or three times in

the course of the preceding day, but she had given it little attention.
She was in her own room when the servants returned with the
carriage which had taken Mr. Dalrymple to the railway station,
having visited her mistress for the last time that evening, and was
thinking, sadly enough, of George, when the entrance of the upper
housemaid, her eager face brimful of news, disturbed her.

"Oh, Mrs. Brookes," she began, "do you know who that gentleman
was as dined here, and went to the town with master?"

"No, I don't," said Mrs. Brookes, with some curiosity; "do you?"

"Not exactly; but Thomas says Home Office were wrote on his
card, and Home Office has something to do with finding people out
when they've been a-doing anything."

Mrs. Brookes began to feel uncomfortable.

"What do you mean?" she said. "Who's been doing anything that
wants finding out?"

"Nobody as I knows," replied Martha, looking knowing and

mysterious. "Only, you know, that murder as Mr. Downing read us
the inquest of, and how it's a foreigner as has been killed because
he wouldn't help to blow up the King of France; at least, there's
something of that in it. Well, Mr. Downing thinks as the gentleman
come about that."

"About that, here?" said Mrs. Brookes. "Whatever has put such a
notion into Mr. Downing's head as that?"

"Well, Mrs. Brookes, this is it: they're all talking about it in the hall,
and so I thought I'd just come and tell you. Master and the stranger
gentleman didn't take the carriage right on into town; they got just
inside the pike, and went on by themselves; and, when they came
back, master, he looked very red and grand-looking, and the strange
gentleman he looked as if he was rare disappointed and put out,
and, as he was a-shutting the door of the b'rouche, Thomas heard
him saying, 'No, no; there's nothing more to be done. Evans was our
only chance, and he's no use.' So nat'rally Thomas wonders
whatever they've been about, and what was their business with
Evans; so he and coachman wasn't sorry this evening when the
strange gentleman was gone by the train, and they see Evans a-
loungin' about, a-flapping his hands, which he's always doing of it,
up by the station. He were lookin' at the strange gentleman as sharp
as sharp, as they drove up to the bookin'-office; and when they
came out, there he were, and Evans tells 'em all about it."

"All about what?" asks Mrs. Brookes sharply.

"All about what brought master and the other gentleman to his
shop; and it's his belief, as master said more than the other
gentleman wanted him to say; for master let out as how a murder
had something to do with the business."

"What business, Martha? Do tell me what you mean, if you want

me to listen to you any longer. How could Mr. Carruthers want to
know anything from Evans about a murder?"

"Lor', ma'am, it weren't about the murder; it were about the coat!
Master told Evans as how there had been a murder, and the other
gentleman took master up rather shorter, Evans thinks, than master
is accustomed to be took, and asked him no end of questions--did
he make such and such coats? and who did he sell 'em to? and
particular did he sell Witney coats? which Mr. Evans said he didn't in
general, and had only sold one in two years, which the strange
gentleman wanted to know what sort of gent had had it, and were
he young or old, or good-looking or or'nary, and a mort of questions;
wherein Evans answered him to the best of his ability, but, being a
man of his word, he couldn't make it no clearer than he could."

"What did he make clear?" asked Mrs. Brookes. "Two years is a

long time to remember the sale of a coat."

"It wasn't so long since it were sold. Mr. Evans sold it six weeks
ago, but it were two years made."

Mrs. Brookes's heart gave a great bound, and her old eyes grew
dim; but she was a brave woman, and Martha, housemaid, was a
dull one.

"Did Mr. Evans not succeed in describing the person who bought
the coat, then?"

"He thinks not; but he says he should know him again immediate,
if he saw him. The strange gentleman didn't seem overpleased that
his memory was so short; but lor', who's to know all about the
eyeses and the noses of everybody as comes to buy a coat, or what
not?--partic'lar if you don't know as he's been a committen of a
murder. If you did, why, you'd look at him closer like, I should say!"

"Has Mr. Downing got the paper with the murder of the foreigner
in it?" asked Mrs. Brookes.

"Yes, he have; he's just been reading it all over again in the hall.
And he says as how master's in a brown study, as he calls it; only it's
in the dining-room, and he's sure as the finding-out people has put it
into his hands."

"When he has done with the paper, ask him to let me see it,
Martha. Very likely this stranger's visit has nothing to do with the
matter. Downing finds out things that nobody else can see."

Martha was an admirer and partisan of Mr. Downing, from the

humble and discreet distance which divides a housemaid from a
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