by all hope and ambition, perhaps all desire to improve his cure from that point of view, died out of Mr. Mowledy's mind, and he let things take their ancient, immemorial course.

He came back from the north a little older and more dejected than he went; for his brother and only relative, who had held a small living on the borders of Northumberland as locum-tenens for the patron's son, had died during his absence; but there was no apparent change in him. He preached wearily twice every Sunday, and once on Wednesday evenings, after his return, and his spare congregation was increased by Madge; who looked very pale and thin, but listened to him reverently without understanding much of his discourse.

He soon noticed the girl's regular attendance on his ministry; and the heart of the lonely man warmed towards her. He had scarcely more than the wage of a servant; he had no prospects of advancement, no respect for himself now. He could not ask any lady to share his penury, and if he could do so he knew of no one to ask. He might, however, take Madge to his desolate cottage, if she would go. She was a busy housewife, and would make him a good helpmate. There would be nothing to shock her feelings, or estrange her heart in his meagre fortunes. He would love her very dearly, and she would make his home bright with her presence. The girl had good natural abilities. She might be taught enough book-learning to make her a pleasant companion upon winter's evenings when their work was done. He knew she was thrifty and sweettempered. He only forgot that he was forty-nine years old and she not twenty.

It was one evening early in November that he spoke to her first. He even fancied she was waiting for him, and looked kind welcome from her large, soft, purple eyes; but that could only be imagination, overwrought by solitude. The hoar frost was on the ground, and the landscape seen from the stile near the village church, where he met her, was very tranquil and lonely. There was a path that led on through some meadows to the rectory, beside which stood his own forlorn cottage; it had been built by a former more prosperous incumbent for his gardener. He walked beside Madge through these fields, where the blackbird sang his loud goodnight, and the wren and the speckled thrush were busy with the hedgeberries. It was she who spoke first, and she asked him, in a sweet, grave voice, if he would write a letter for her.

Mr. Mowledy, though surprised at this request, promised readily to do so, thinking in his own mind that it might refer to some brewer's or distiller's account which was overdue, and then he walked silently on beside her. He was a learned man, was Mr. Mowledy, and had taken honours at his college. He might have done well in the world if he had had more energy, or less conscience. But he let one opportunity after another glide by him in the race of life, and never overtook them or tried to do so. And here now was this gentleman and scholar abashed in the company of a village girl. If she had cared for him, if he had met such a woman once in the heyday of existence when his blood was young, if even yet she

had felt or could have felt one spark of love for him, he might have been helped out of his difficulty. A word or a look would have done it, and the pent-up tenderness of his gentle heart would have overflowed. But most girls are cruel where they are indifferent. Their eyes are closed, their ears are deaf to the concerns of all except those who can win their affections; and Providence has willed it so in mercy to mankind, that our wives and mothers may be entirely our own. So Madge, having said what she had to say, never more cast a glance at the parson, but went on absently breaking dried twigs from the hedges, and listening unconsciously to the carol of the birds.

They parted when they reached the road. The moon had just risen, and shed a quivering light through an old elm-tree, of which the topmost branches were dead and withered. A waggon toiled slowly up a hill, a dog barked in a farmyard close at hand.

voice.

"Good-night, Miss Margaret," said the parson, with a faltering It was the only time he had ventured to address her. Good-night, zur," said the girl, and she too passed away from that good man's life unwon.

66

CHAPTER VII.

A WOMAN'S WAY.

THAT evening, after John Giles was gone to bed, Madge began to sing over her needlework, and when Tom Brown came in with his lantern to see that all was well before he went to sleep in the hayloft, she spoke kindly to him and asked him to have a jug of beer, as in old times.

She drank some of the beer herself, and when Tom asked her to sing his favourite song over again, she sang it so readily and so sweetly that his rough coarse nature was quite melted. Then she led Tom to talk of the boy in drab overalls and the big horse that had been left behind by the stranger huntsman; who had never more been heard of after he had left the inn that October day, now two full weeks ago. She never spoke of the huntsman himself, feeling with true feminine instinct that the subject was not agreeable to her kinsman. She seemed to be bent on pleasing him, and succeeded so completely, that he told her all about the urchin and his impudence over and over again. She was especially anxious to fix the name of the boy's master and the place of his residence in her memory, and went over it several times with Tom, laughing as she did so; and asked him to tell her if she had pronounced it rightly.

"Ees," repeated Tom, for the twentieth time. "Maister Walker, up street, wor his neame an bidin' plecace, it wor."

When Madge had clearly ascertained this fact, the conversation went on less smoothly; and, as Tom was just going to say something about "fairings " and "true lovers' knots," which had more or less reference to a riband she was sewing on a cap, she sent him away to draw another

jug of beer, and when he came back stumbling from haste on the way, she was gone.

The next day also, while John Giles and the ostler were busy, she called to a pedlar, who had never passed that way before, and civilly offered him a crust of bread of her own baking and a tempting slice of cheese with his beer. The pedlar, nothing loth, went into the kitchen when thus bidden, but observed that he had had a bad day and earned no money.

"There bain't nowt to pay, maister," said the girl, smiling slyly, and then she asked if he could write. The pedlar said he could" off and on," and surmised that she wanted a letter written to her "bo." She took his banter quite good-humouredly, and, as pen, ink, paper, and envelopes (then recently invented) were all ready to his hand, he wrote, with many strange contortions and grimaces, some words she told him. They were few words, and he did not take long about it. When he had finished, he inquired with an impudent leer what direction he should put upon the letter; but she took the closed envelope, and hid it away, after which she looked quite unconscious, and would not say another word to him. So he got huffed and angry, shouldered his pack with a surly look, and went about his business.

In the dusk of the evening she slipped out, while John Giles was drinking with the blacksmith and the sexton, and she had sent Tom Brown to get some flour from the mill, situated a long mile from the inn. After walking briskly through the glebe meadows, where she was not likely to meet anybody, she rang at the parson's gate, and dropped a curtsey to that gentleman as he came in some embarrassment to meet her. Mr. Mowledy had only an old woman, who slept at home, to wait upon him; and she had left, as Madge knew, an hour ago, so that he was quite alone.

Having curtsied again, she took the pedlar's letter from her breast, and asked Mr. Mowledy, with her father's duty, to address it.

Mr. Mowledy put on his lightest pair of blue steel spectacles, which he had purchased at an optician's shop in the City when summoned three years before to see his rector, in order that he might not appear at too great a disadvantage in her eyes; and then mildly demanded the name of. her correspondent. She replied demurely that his name was "Walker."

"And his Christian-name? It is always better to write that, in case of mistakes," observed Mr. Mowledy, wishing perhaps to prolong the interview with his parishioner as long as possible.

The girl hung her head.

"I mean," said Mr. Mowledy, who feared he might not have explained himself with sufficient clearness, "his baptismal appellation-the same which was given him, as to all of us, by his godfathers and godmothers. Your name is Margaret; mine is Marmaduke," added Mr. Mowledy, softly, and he blushed.

Now Madge had heard both the stud groom and Mr. Sharpe call the

stranger "Duke," so she curtsied again, as Mr. Mowledy pronounced his

name.

"That be t' neame, zur."

"What! Marmaduke?" exclaimed Mr. Mowledy.

"Dear me, it is

an uncommon name too. Don't you think so, Miss Margaret?" "Duke, or maybe Dook, be t' neame, zur," persisted the girl, afraid to let the sound leave her ears lest she should lose it.

Marmaduke," reiterated Mr. Mowledy, blandly, and, after further explanatory discourse, the reverend gentleman put the information he had received, with his own knowledge of geography and nomenclature, together. The product was no usual thing. Madge took away her letter addressed in a scrupulously careful and legible manner

Mr. Marmaduke Walker

(Dealer in fermented liquors),
Upper Street,
Islington,

near London.

When the village was asleep that night, she posted it unseen and unsuspected. Mrs. Jinks, the postmistress, felt sure it was a letter from the parson, and spread a rumour that he kept a bottle or two of spirits in a snug place for private use. So she told Madge, who said, "Lauk-a-daisy me," not knowing whence the scandal came. Who does know when the grim, scoffing thing called rumour first spreads its agile wings, or whence it comes, or whither it speeds so fast? Dr. Porteous, the rector, heard it in the rules of the King's Bench Prison; it was whispered to the bishop of the diocese by the Dean of Dronington's widow. The magistrates laughed about "the curate's sly bottle" when they met at quarter sessions, and one of them, a jolly good fellow who had been in the navy, made a song about it, putting it to rhyme with "throttle," and singing it to a roaring chorus after a dinner at the "Crown," where the worshipful and loyal gentlemen refreshed themselves in company at the termination of their judicial labours. Mr. Mowledy was the only person for twenty miles round who never heard it at all; for rumour has a deal of humour in it, for all its gravity, and keeps prudently out of the way of contradiction.

CHAPTER VIII.

FOUND DROWNED.

DAY after day passed by for nearly a fortnight, but no letter, addressed to the village inn, ever arrived from Mr. Marmaduke Walker.

Madge watched for the postman as he passed through Wakefield-inthe-Marsh every morning in his donkey-cart, in hopes that he would stop at the "Chequers;" and once, when she thought he looked her way, she held out her apron, but he only stared at her and jogged along upon his round.

She seemed to pine visibly away during this time, and to have no care or pride in herself. The curate watched for her in vain as he walked from the church through the glebe meadows, taking always the same way home to his little cottage with a hope that he might meet her again, almost painful in its intensity; and though he had composed a sermon on a text taken from the thirty-ninth verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Genesis, especially to ascertain her views upon the subject nearest his heart, she never came to hear it; nor did she go at all to church any more. When Tom Brown shuffled into the kitchen of an evening, he found nobody there. She got dinner and supper silently ready for John Giles, and set it in order upon the white deal table duly scoured; but she never tasted the good food herself, and her voice was never heard now singing about the house. She passed most of her time locked up in her own room. But nobody, except Tom Brown, took any notice of her. John Giles had his meals and his beer as he was accustomed to have them, and nothing but an earthquake would have roused his fuddled intelligence. Even a convulsion of nature would have found him with a brown jug in his hand, and he would only have set it down, to take it up again after the shock was over. The blacksmith, who had been slowly making up his mind to marry Madge at some time or other, indeed looked about him now and then after he had finished his beer, as if he missed something, but he was not sorry that matters should bide as they were for a bit longer.

Tom Brown was the only person who knew that there was anything wrong, and he tried in uncouth ways to serve or comfort her. When she came downstairs, after moaning for hours to herself, she would find the hardest part of her work done. He kept the fire burning, swept the hearth, drew water, and put the kettle on ready for her tea, which she drank eagerly, taking hardly anything else. When one of the old customers called for her, he answered, and made some mumbling excuse which served the purpose well enough. One day he brought her some apples, which he knew she liked, and another he walked to Dronington for an orange. She found them on the table beside her tea things, and left them untasted. She appeared unable to bear the daylight, and never went outside the door as she used to do. She would stand with her face turned from the window, and her arm resting on the high kitchen mantelpiece; if spoken to, she answered without moving. All her clothes hung loosely on her she had become terribly thin and wan. She started at the least noise, and once, when Tom Brown came in unexpectedly and looked her full in the face, she shrunk from him as though she were afraid. She avoided him more resolutely after that; watching with a beating heart and frightened eyes lest he should catch her unawares again.

Her favourite occupation when alone was to open a large carved oak work-box which had belonged to her foster-mother, and take out one by one the upper-leathers of a pair of top-boots, a dried rose-bud, and a strip of flimsy paper. She was never tired of looking at these things, but would rock herself in her chair, with her clasped hands on her knees, VOL. XXVIII.-No. 163. 2.