don't tell me that you are really in earnest about this bullet-headed, penniless young scamp ?" There was something feminine about Nancy Adams, after all, as she hung down her head and endeavoured to parry the question. But we must own that she was not a young person to whom the future domestic happiness of Toby Blick could be entrusted with any very great confidence. 215 CHAPTER X. AMOS WESTON CANNOT RECKON UP HIS "But they that cast her spirit into flesh, Her worldly-wise begetters, plagued themselves "I CAN'T make that girl out," said Amos Weston to his wife in their parlour, the night after the conversations narrated in the last chapter. "She takes it so quietly, though I'll be bound she cries enough at nights." "I don't trouble to make her out," re plied Leah Weston; "I give my orders, and see that she does them." "You'll get nothing by driving her, it's my opinion," continued he; "she ain't one of that sort who want it. We shouldn't have had this running off if you'd just have humoured her a bit.” Mrs. Weston folded her arms in an attitude of resignation. "Lay it all on me, Amos, and it may do you good," she rejoined, sitting bolt upright in her chair, and tightening in her lips. "Mr. Baruch tells me I've too many blessings and mercies this side Jordan to repine; and he hinted that the house of an elder was well-nigh sure to be humbled in Israel, since that wicked knocking off of a minister's salary by ten pounds last October. Oh, Amos, how could you shorten the staff of that good man's pilgrimage in this valley of sorrow ?" "He hadn't a scrap of right to the ten pounds; they were charity funds, and left as such, and we only restored them to their original destination. If he comes explaining visitations here, he won't be many times more in our chapel pulpit, and I wonder how he'll explain that. Richards is none so pleased with him already." And Weston, we are sorry to say, shook his fist at the imaginary head of the nonconformist divine. "How can you talk and act so dreadful, Weston ?" said his wife, turning up her eyes. "Your trade can never prosper if you go agen' the minister." "Hold your tongue, wife, and don't let Baruch lead you about by the nose," he retorted. Leah Weston sighed, and went on with her needlework. "I repeat," again he resumed, “I can't make out Mary. I can't understand this journey of hers to Bremicham. That Butler was never with her one moment of the time, that's certain. Why did he not meet her? Can he have given her up?" "Does Satan ever relinquish a lamb until he has devoured it, and made an end utterly thereof?" demanded his wife, with a solemn gusto. "Come, I say," he reasoned, "girls will get sweethearts, you mothers and ministers. know, in spite of I believe she's more in love with him than he with her. I can't see he's acted so bad by her, after all; she seems to throw herself a good deal at his head. I'm sorry I was so harsh and rough with her at Bremicham. But then, |