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put her off with some slight word. She went away disappointed. Presently there was a dull noise of heavy footsteps at the side of the house, and one of the brothers sat up. “I fancy I hear him coming,” he murmured, his eyea on the window.

A man in the light drab clothes of an old-fashioned country tradesman approached from round the corner, reeling as he came. The elder son flushed with anger, rose from his books, and descended the stairs. The younger saat on, till, after the lapse of a few minutes, his brother re-entered the room,

"Did Rosa see him ?”

"No.”

"Nor anybody ?”

"No.”

"What have you done with him ?”

“He's in the straw-shed. I got him in with some trouble, and he has fallen asleep. I thought this would be the explanation of his absence! No stones dressed for Miller Kench, the great wheel of the saw-mill waiting for new float-boards, even the poor felk not able to get their wagons wheeled.”

"What és the nse of poring over this!” said the younger, shutting up Donnegan’s Lexicon with a slap.

"Oh, if we had only been able to keep mother’s seven hundred pounds, what we could have done !”

“How well she had estimated the sum necessary! Three hundred and fifty each, she thought. And I have no doubt that we could have done it on that with care.”

This loss of the seven handred pounds was the sharp thorn of their crown, It waa a sum which their mother had amassed with great exertion and self-denial, by adding te a chance legacy such other small amounts as she could lay hands on from time to time ; and she had intended with the hoard to indulge the dear wish