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taking her before a little cross and shrine that he had erected in his bedroom for his private devotions, there bade her kneel, and swear that she would not wed Samuel Hobson without his consent. “I owe this to my father!” he said,

The poor woman swore, thinking he would soften as soon as he was ordained and in full awing of clerical work, But he did not. His education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him quite firm; though his mother might have led an idyllic life with her faithful frniterer and green-grocer, and nobody have been anything the worse in the world.

Her lameness became more confirmed aa time went on, and she seldom or never left the houge in the long southern thoroughfare, where she seemed to be pining her heart away. “ Why mayn’t I say to Sam that Pil marry him? Why mayn’t I?” she would murmur plaintively to herself when nobody was near.

Some four yeare after this date a middle-aged man was standing at the door of the largest fruiterer’s shop in Aldbrickham. He was the proprietor, but to-day, instead of hia usual business attire, ha wore a neat suit of black; and his window was partly shuttered. From the railway - station a funeral procession was seen approaching: it passed his door and went out of the town towards the village of Gaymead. The man, whose eyes were wet, held his hat in his hand as the vehiclea moved by; while from the mourning coach young amooth-shaven priest in a high waistcoat looked black as a cloud at the shopkeeper standing there,

December, 1891.