COLLEGE DEBTS. CHAPTER I. STEEPLE NORTON RECTORY. Its STEEPLE NORTON is a village in one of the midland counties, little known to fame. muster roll at the last census fixed it as the local habitation of rather more than one hundred souls. Events of every-day occurrence in the great city wear, in this little place, so much of the novel and marvellous, that its pulse requires some time for the resumption of its usually quiet, equable tone, after their inroad on its little-broken calm. Sameness VOL. I. B and monotony have set their stamp on the records of this simple parish, the extra surpliceduties of the rector having, for many years, been confined to one or two baptisms and funerals annually,-marriages occurring among the people at yet more distant intervals, and giving rise to no little fever and excitement among the simple community when they do take place. The little village skirts the turnpike road, and with the exception of one or two outlying farms in the immediate neighbourhood, is the only home of man to be met with within a circuit of several miles. On one side rich meadows, intersected by a river fringed with willows, greet the eye, to reach which, from the cluster of houses, it is necessary to direct one's footsteps down a narrow lane, wherein, at the distance of about two hundred yards from the main road, stands the little low church, with its pretty rural tower and spire-ivied and venerable. The rectory nestles near it under shadow of a few tall poplars; and, a little farther removed, there is a house of more pretending architecture and of larger dimensions, the residence of Peter Busby, a land-owner, of the gentlemanfarmer type, called Squire-through the courtesy of his less prosperous neighbours, in consideration of his ancestors' three centuries' tenure of their estates, and patron of the living. The coach-road takes a gentle curve between the houses lining the village street, and afterwards ascends along the base of a somewhat lofty fir-topped eminence, commanding fine views over hill and dale, wood and water, that stretch far away to the horizon on its farther side. At the date of our story's commencement, a group of three persons sat in the Rectory drawing-room. It was the twilight hour, and "shadows from the fitful firelight" played over the composed and contemplative countenances of each as they silently and abstractedly watched the glowing embers. The room was all the more still, owing to the absence from it of certain little ones, who, after working hard at play, had, at last, laid themselves down, subdued by the potent influence of "tired Nature's sweet restorer." It could easily be seen that Mr. Grantley, the rector, as he sat, in lounging attitude, in front of the fire, was a person of diminutive stature, and of rather more than the wonted circumference of figure. His iron-grey hair betokened his entrance on the beginning of life's evening, with whose changing lights and shades his round, flushed face, and calm benignity of aspect testified his perfect contentment. His wife appeared to be, by contrast of figure, taller than himself, though such was not actually the case. Few could have detected traces of former beauty in her oval face and calm grey eyes. There sat upon her features a sober, not to say a gloomy gravity-a mood, indeed, that even a transient observer would have felt to be deeper and more settled in her own than in her hus |