When Tackleton had gone off likewise , escorting May and her mother home , poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his daughter ; anxious and remorseful at the core ; and still saying , in his wistful contemplation of her , `` Have I deceived her from her cradle , but to break her heart at last ? '' The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby had all stopped and run down long ago . In the faint light and silence , the imperturbably calm dolls , the agitated rocking-horses with distended eyes and nostrils , the old gentlemen at the street-doors , standing half doubled up upon their failing knees and ankles , the wry-faced nut-crackers , the very Beasts upon their way into the Ark , in twos , like a Boarding-School out walking , might have been imagined to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder at Dot being false , or Tackleton beloved , under any combination of circumstances . CHIRP THE THIRD The Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten when the Carrier sat down by his fireside . So troubled and grief-worn that he seemed to scare the Cuckoo , who , having cut his ten melodious announcements as short as possible , plunged back into the Moorish Palace again , and clapped his little door behind him , as if the unwonted spectacle were too much for his feelings . If the little Hay-maker had been armed with the sharpest of scythes , and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier 's heart , he never could have gashed and wounded it as Dot had done . It was a heart so full of love for her ; so bound up and held together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance , spun from the daily working of her many qualities of endearment ; it was a heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely ; a heart so single and so earnest in its Truth , so strong in right , so weak in wrong , -- that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge at first , and had only room to hold the broken image of its Idol . But , slowly , slowly , as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth , now cold and dark , other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him , as an angry wind comes rising in the night . The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof . Three steps would take him to his chamber door . One blow would beat it in . `` You might do murder before you know it , '' Tackleton had said . How could it be murder , if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand ? He was the younger man . It was an ill-timed thought , bad for the dark mood of his mind . It was an angry thought , goading him to some avenging act , that should change the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely travellers would dread to pass by night ; and where the timid would see shadows struggling in the ruined windows when the moon was dim , and hear wild noises in the stormy weather . He was the younger man ! Yes , yes ; some lover who had won the heart that he had never touched . Some lover of her early choice , of whom she had thought and dreamed , for whom she had pined and pined , when he had fancied her so happy by his side . Oh , agony to think of it !
She had been above-stairs XXXXX the Baby ; getting it to bed .
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