laity) had seven rounds in style within the sacred precincts, and the warden received a thrashing which kept him in bed for a week, and the parson a black eye, which drew a larger congregation than the best sermon ever heard in the Dales. It was a process of settling difficulties less expensive than by a suit in the Court of Arches, and quite as satisfactory. The particular grievance was, that the warden persisted in sitting in the vestry before service, to see that the parson didn't then and there take a glass, which surveillance the clerical man resented.

The annals of a later time-quarrels with tithe or school commissions -must be left untold, only I will remark that all such authorities have their way of looking at things, and we in Earndale ours, and hence our occasional collisions. There is, however, one bright page I am proud to remember. Not long ago Earndale was agitated to its core by the question : "How shall the rector be honoured?" A service of plate was proposed, but the funds would only furnish a teapot. Teapot the rector would have none, and the difficult question remained unsolved, till some genius hatched a proposal which recommended itself to all parties. There should be a concert given in honour of the rector by the amateurs of his flock. So there they came in troops, men with fiddles big and small, and maidens and matrons in white, and long blue streamers and; dainty wreaths. They sang glees, the jolly old glees somewhile banished, but now in favour again; and duets and solos were performed by ladies who had their share of admiration (if any limit thereto belongs), and by young gentlemen who died away with the pathos of the strain, or growled in jealous fury, or caracolled in cavalier style; and before we sang “God save the Queen," all, save the rector, stood up, and a rhythmical chaunt, setting forth the praises of the individual in the garlanded, chair, waз performed in full chorus. It was not a lullaby; it was not to the strain, "See the Conquering Hero." It was a pure Earndale composition, music and words, and sung with Earndale expression till the rafters rang again, and the rector's heart glowed and swelled, and his feelings were too strong for him to shape in articulate language the sentiments which that loudvoiced harmony of a united Earndale stirred.

ADY ONGAR sat alone, long

into the night, when Harry Clavering had left her. She sat there long, getting up occasionally from her seat, once or twice attempting to write at her desk, looking now and then at a paper or two, and then at a small picture which she had, but passing the long hours in thinking,-in long, sad, solitary thoughts. What should she do with herself, with herself, her title, and her money? Would it be still well that she should do something, that she should make some attempt; or should she, in truth, abandon all, as the arch-traitor did, and acknowledge that for her foot there could no longer be a restingplace on the earth? At sixand-twenty, with youth, beauty,

and wealth at her command, must she despair? But her youth had been stained, her beauty had lost its freshness; and as for her wealth, had she not stolen it? Did not the weight of the theft sit so heavy on her, that her brightest thought was one which prompted her to abandon it?

As to that idea of giving up her income and her house, and calling herself again Julia Brabazon, though there was something in the poetry of it which would now and again for half an hour relieve her, yet she hardly proposed such a course to herself as a reality. The world in which she had lived had taught her to laugh, at romance, to laugh at it even while she liked its beauty; and she would tell herself that for such a one as her to do such a thing as this, would be to insure for herself the ridicule of all who knew her name. What would Sir Hugh 'say, and her sister? What Count Pateroff and the faithful Sophie? What all the Ongar tribe,

who would reap the rich harvest of her insanity? These latter would offer to provide her a place in some convenient asylum, and the others would all agree that such would be her fitting destiny. She could bear the idea of walking forth, as she had said, penniless into the street, without a crust; but she could not bear the idea of being laughed at when she got there.

To her, in her position, her only escape was by marriage. It was the solitude of her position which maddened her;-its solitude, or the necessity of breaking that solitude by the presence of those who were odious to her. Whether it were better to be alone, feeding on the bitterness of her own thoughts, or to be comforted by the fulsome flatteries and odious falsenesses of Sophie Gordeloup, she could not tell. She hated herself for her loneliness, but she hated herself almost worse for submitting herself to the society of Sophie Gordeloup. Why not give all that she possessed to Harry Clavering-herself, her income, her rich pastures and horses and oxen, and try whether the world would not be better to her when she had done so ?

She had learned to laugh at romance, but still she believed in love. While that bargain was going on as to her settlement, she had laughed at romance, and had told herself that in this world worldly prosperity was everything. Sir Hugh then had stood by her with truth, for he had well understood the matter, and could enter into it with zest. Lord Ongar, in his state of health, had not been in a position to make close stipulations as to the dower in the event of his proposed wife becoming a widow. "No, no; we won't stand that," Sir Hugh had said to the lawyers. "We all hope, of course, that Lord Ongar may live long; no doubt he'll turn over a new leaf, and die at ninety. But in such a case as this the widow must not be fettered." The widow had not been fettered, and Julia had been made to understand the full advantage of such an arrangement. But still she had believed in love when she had bade farewell to Harry in the garden. She had told herself then, even then, that she would have better liked to have taken him and his love,-if only she could have afforded it. He had not dreamed that on leaving him she had gone from him to her room, and taken out his picture, the same that she had with her now in Bolton Street, and had kissed it, bidding him farewell there with a passion which she could not display in his presence. And she had thought of his offer about the money over and over again. "Yes," she would say; "that man loved me. He would have given me all he had to relieve me, though nothing was to come to him in return." She had, at any rate, been loved once; and she almost wished that she had taken the money, that she might now have an opportunity of repaying it.

And she was again free, and her old lover was again by her side. Had that fatal episode in her life been so fatal that she must now regard herself as tainted and unfit for him? There was no longer anything to separate them,-anything of which she was aware, unless it was that. And as for