Mr Caine was particularly fortunate in obtaining a place on the _Academy_ staff. A complete stranger to Mr J. S. Cotton (at that time the editor of this paper), he called on him and asked for employment. “Certainly!” replied Mr Cotton, much to the young man’s confusion, for he had by no means expected so enthusiastic a reception. The acquaintance made in this way soon deepened to a warm friendship which is to-day valued by both men as much as it was twenty years ago.
_The Bondman_ is a lurid picture of conflicting passions. Love, of an intense sadness, is set against hate and mischance. The strength of the story and the powerfulness of its narration lay hold of the reader’s imagination with a shudder, like a grim masterpiece of Rembrandt. Here is an extract from the opening book—Rachel, the Governor’s daughter, has left her home under the curse of her father, to marry a peasant Icelander, a good-for-nothing. Supported by his mother, they live on the brink of starvation. At last the husband, in shame, complains that if he had sixty crowns he would buy a fishing-boat; and Rachel sells her beautiful hair to procure the money, handing it over to him to make the purchase.
The old woman sat by the hearth and smoked. Rachel waited with fear at her heart, but the hours went by and still Stephen did not appear. The old woman dozed before the fire and snored. At length, when the night had worn on towards midnight, an unsteady step came to the door, and Stephen reeled into the house drunk. The old woman awoke and laughed.
Rachel grew faint and sank to a seat. Stephen dropped to his knees on the ground before her, and in a maudlin cry went on to tell of how he had thought to make one hundred crowns of her sixty by a wager, how he had lost fifty, and then in a fit of despair had spent the other ten.
“Then all is gone—all,” cried Rachel. And thereupon the old woman shuffled to her feet and said bitterly, “And a good thing too. I know you—trust me for seeing through your sly ways, my lady. You expected to take my son from me with the price of your ginger hair, you ugly bald-pate.”
Rachel’s head grew light, and with the cry of a baited creature she turned upon the old mother in a torrent of hot words. “You low, mean, selfish soul,” she cried, “I despise you more than the dirt under my feet.”