his new work that his Bishop, ever on the watch for new blood, and ever ready to reward merit by promotion, shortly appointed him to a not unimportant living with a hint of better things to come. Matrimony followed in due course, and at five-and-thirty Lionel Balfour, blessed by the companionship of a sweet-natured and sympathetic woman, and conscious of the growth of spiritual life in his parish, could look round with satisfaction on the results of the work of his hands, and so was entitled to esteem himself a happy man. But alas for the transitory nature of worldly prosperity! Within twelve months the first blow came in the loss of the young wife: a few years later the power of work was for many a long day suspended, and the salt was gone from the man's life.

Only gradually, as has been said, had the child won her way into her father's heart, and only within the last few months bad there been an entire cessation of the grave symptoms that had caused the great doctor to put a veto on the growing desire to pick up the threads of the past working life. Even now it was more from the feeling that he should be ill requiting Laurence Ferrier's consistent friendship by a refusal, than from any inclination or feeling of aptitude for the more limited sphere of work which he foresaw in a quiet country parish, that he finally lent a favourable hearing to his friend's proposal to submit his name to Lord Leuchars.

"It is hardly to be called work at all," he argued; "it sounds much more like living in the lap of luxury." "Well, then, go and live in the lap of luxury, my good man, and see how you like it," was the ready retort. "You are not so young as you were, Balfour, any more than I am, and I cannot work as I did twenty years ago. Besides, you have to think what manner of home you will have to offer to May when she comes back, and we know that life in a London suburb is not what would be recommended for her.

Prince Charming will come one of these fine days, and then you will only have yourself to consider. Now, may I run down and see Leuchars and tell him that the matter is settled?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so," replied Mr Balfour, rather reluctantly; and with that Laurence took his leave, fairly well satisfied with the results of his lengthy visit.

65

CHAPTER VI.

A MISADVENTURE.

THE shooting of the Mote coverts had been arranged for a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The Saturday of each week Lord Leuchars devoted to County Council business, an arrangement which thoroughly coincided with John Fox's ideas of sporting necessities.

"They Jews," remarked that worthy man, who salved his conscience on the matter of not going to church on Sundays by a diligent study of the Bible, more particularly favouring the Old Testament, as containing the history of Nimrod, Esau, and other sporting characters, "they picked up their extra grub of a Saturday, and so I holds to going round the coverts and picking up the cripples, as is downright shameful to leave fretting and starving over Sunday."

And it so happened that on his way to the station on the Saturday prior to the important week, his lordship, remembering that he had forgotten to send certain instructions to John Fox, and meeting young Dick Loder on his bicycle, charged him with the delivery of a message.

"You won't forget, my boy," he said, "and try to see Fox yourself he is generally at home between four and five. And if you don't happen to catch him, put it down on paper, like a good fellow. The old woman is a good soul in her way, but she has about as much memory as a cucumber."

E

In pursuance of these directions Dick mounted his bicycle late in the afternoon, and was leisurely making his way in the direction of the keeper's house when he was suddenly hailed by a tall and well-set-up young man in a workman's dress.

"Happen as you can spare a minute, Master Dick?"

The speaker was an old acquaintance, one Harry Stokes, who had, a few years back, married a pretty housemaid from Loders. He was a civil and obliging fellow, a man who, under ordinary circumstances, earned good wages in the ironstoneworks, but it was easy to see from the drawn and haggard look on his face that he had for some reason or another fallen bad times.

upon

"Well, Harry, what is it?" exclaimed Dick as he dismounted. "Hulloa, man!" as he caught a full view of his face, "what is wrong with you? You look half-starved. What have you been up to?"

"Up to nothing, and not much to eat, that's about what is the matter, Master Dick. No," as he saw Dick's hand at once going to his pocket, "I ain't quite come to that yet—I ain't done no begging so far, and, what's more, I shan't. But thank you all the same, sir. But what I were agoing to ask you were just this, if as how you should happen to run up against Mr Fox-"

"I'm on my way to see him now," struck in Dick.

"Well then, sir, they do say as how his lordship's coverts are agoing to be shot next week, and I were thinking if you was to put in a word for me so as Master Fox should give me a job a-beating, I'd earn a few shillings mebbe, and take it kindly of you, Master Dick."

Dick readily consented to act as intercessor with the allimportant Fox; then it occurred to him to inquire into the cause of his companion's state of comparative destitution. The men in the employ of the ironstone company were as a rule reckoned to be better off than the ordinary farm-labourers, and Dick had an idea that if Stokes had lost his place, and was permanently out of work, there would be no great

difficulty in finding work for a capable man either in the garden at Loders or elsewhere in the village.

"Tell me what has gone wrong with you, Harry? Had a row with your manager or what?"

"Just a turn of downright bad luck, Master Dick, and that's the long and short of it. Six weeks back I had a bit of a fall off a plank and sprained my ankle, and couldn't go to work the best part of a fortnight. Well, that were right enough —I goes on my club and gets fifteen shillings a-week. And then, just as I gets off the books, in comes that beggarly frost, and there ain't been not a stroke of work done up at the works for wellnigh a month. It's the first winter as there's been a frost same as we've had now ever since I took on with that ironstone job. And now I wish as I were shot on it altogether. It's all very well to say as we earns one-and-twenty or mebbe two-and-twenty shilling a-week when the works is open, but you go and stop a chap working for a month or more with four mouths as well as his own to feed, and his wife laid by in August with a doctor's bill as eats up all his savings, and where are you then, Master Dick?"

Notwithstanding the slight confusion of persons, there was so much truth and common-sense in the man's argument that Dick felt unfeignedly sorry for him, and presently found himself wondering what sort of figure he should make himself if he was called upon to limit his own expenses-let alone the matter of wife and children-to some £60 or £70 a-year. He remembered that he had spent somewhere about that amount without any difficulty in the course of a single term at Oxford.

"It is a bit rough, Harry, on the kids and Annie," he remarked; "but couldn't you pick up a job anywhere? There is Fox, for instance, he must have wanted an extra hand or two at this time of year."

"Catch me going agin Master Fox myself," was the answer : "that is why I made so bold as to ask you to say a word for me, Master Dick. Now I ain't agoing to say a word agin