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under his chin, and the tail-piece in his hand, and they began to crowd round him, thinking ‘twas some new way of performing.

“This revealed everything; the squire’s mother had Andrew turned out of the house as a vile impostor, and there was great interruption to the harmony of the proceedings, the squire declaring he should haye notice to leave his cottage that day fortnight. However, when we got to the servants’ hall there sat Andrew, who had been let in at the back door by the orders of the aquire’s wife, after being turned out at the front by the orders of the squire, and nothing more was heard about his leaving his cottage. But Andrew never performed in public as a musician after that night; and now he’s dead and gone, poor man, as we all shall be.”

“I had quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass-viole,” eaid the home-comer, musingly. Are they still going on the same as of old ?”

"Bless the man!” said Christopher Twink, the master-thatcher ; “ why, they’ve been done away with these twenty year. A young testotsler plays the organ in chureh now, and plays it very well; though ‘tis not quite such good music as in old times, because the organ is one of them that go with a winch, and the young teetotaler eays he can’t always throw the proper feeling into the tane without wellnigh working his arms off.”

“Why did they make the change, then ?”

“Well, partly because of fashion, partly because the old musicians got into a sort of scrape. A terrible scrape “twas, too—waan’t it, John? I shall never forget it—never! They lost their character as officers of the church as complete as if they’d never had any character at all.”