character crept about again, and got down to our dear Cornish homes. You may be sure it made our mothers bad enough when they heard it; but I don't think they quite believed it, though they thought it right to send us a warning, as if they did; and if they did, then they believed what was not true. As for ourselves, we had our own consciences and Mary's salvation to keep us up; and with these it mattered little what any one else chose to say. As Joshua said, we had not set out in our endeavour to realise Christ for the sake of gain, but for the sake of the right; and if we had to suffer, we must; but the right was not to be abandoned because of it.

CHAPTER IX.

LORD X., (I may not in common honour give his name; a man however—so far I may say-notorious for his philanthropy of an unsteady and spasmodic kind, and for a certain restless curiosity to see into the inside of different social circles)-this lord, in his wanderings among the East-end poor, had come across Joshua in his little kingdom of endeavour in Church-court. And as no one could come in contact with him, without feeling that inexplicable charm which is inseparable from great earnestness and selfdevotion, it is to be supposed that Lord X.

among the rest was attracted to the man as he was. Or maybe it was only a poor kind of curiosity, not sympathy; as I have since believed. However that may be, he and Joshua met; and a friendship was struck up between them on the spot. I use the word advisedly; for though the one was a peer of the realm, and the other only an artisan—not learned in the scholarly way

of a gentleman; not refined in the same way perhaps as a gentleman, so far as manner and little observances went; a man speaking with a provincial accent, and dressed in fustian and coarse clothes-yet he was fit to take his place with the finest gentleman in the land; and even the finest lady would have found but little in him to ridicule and much to respect. And I will do both Lord and Lady X. the credit of sincerity in

the beginning, when, as I said, the friendship between him and them was struck up.

Then it must be remembered, that Joshua was one of the handsomest men you could see in a long summer's day; a real man; no sickly, effeminate, half-woman, but a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested fellow, largely framed, and with that calm self-control, that steady unfeverish energy, which seemed as if it could carry the world before it. And maybe his good looks influenced his new acquaintances in the beginning, even more than they themselves knew. However that might be, they made up to him, and seemed as though they would have been his best friends all through.

"You want a background, Mr. Davidson," said Lord X., one day when he called on him at our lodgings. "All human nature

resolves itself into a mathematical formula; a plus y represents a quantity unattainable by a alone."

"But what background can I get, my lord?" returned Joshua. "It sounds a strange confession to make, but no one will work with me. Sects keep only to themselves or their affiliations; and I, who be long to no sect, am looked on as an enemy by all because I am an enemy to none."

"Putting sectarianism aside for the moment, you can do nothing without the sanction of society," said Lord X. “No movement can succeed which is not backed by men of birth and money."

Joshua smiled. "This remark does not

apply to the roots, my lord, I suppose?" he said; "only to the growth and development?"