He's just, as you say He is, there'll be a blessing for you. Will you come again?"

"To be sure I will, as often as I can. Think about what I have been telling you, Jacob. It must comfort you to remember that there is One caring for you-for all of us, though we have no friends on earth."

The curate's voice sank a little as he said this, and a momentary pang of loneliness and desolation passed through his heart; but the cripple watched him as though his words were life, and he did his best to look hopeful.

6.

Good-bye. I'll send you the wine. I'm a poor man myself, or I would do more for you."

The old man looked at the coin which Mr. Lifford put into his hand with a sort of reluctant shrinking. He kept it, however, and his eyes brightened.

"Mr. Lifford, if I'd millions of money I couldn't live different from this. I've always lived so, and it would be too hard to alter. But don't give your money away, sir. Money is power.

"I'm afraid that's rather a worldly maxim, Jacob."

The old man did not answer. He was turning the shilling over

and over in his hand, as if he liked the feel of it.

"Yes," he repeated, softly. "It's power-power. it away."

Don't give

CHAPTER III.

A CURIOUS DOCUMENT.

THE curate sat at the table in his sitting-room with a sheet of notepaper before him and a pen in his hand, but he was not writing. From time to time he got up and went to the window. The lanes were dusty and parched, the road lay like a dry white thread beneath them, and the sun shone down upon all with cruel intensity. Helen's visit had stretched out into three weeks, but they were over now, and she was at home. Mark had called once during her absence, and he felt now too worn out and wretched to trust himself to the personal interview which he had been waiting for. A fresh disappointment had come upon him. His chance of the living was nil; he did not think it had ever really existed. It was in vain that he told himself he had never counted upon it. Somehow or other he must have indulged a feeble hope, since he could not help being disappointed. He had, as Mrs. Toser said, been working very hard. It was the only way in which he could forget for a time the trial that lay waiting for him in the poor little room that had witnessed so

many of his joys and sorrows. He was utterly cast down. He did not feel as if there were sufficient energy in him to write that letter or think of its contents. He had been considering about it all the morning, in snatches, but he was no nearer writing it now than he had been at first.

There was a knock at the door, and the landlady came in to ask some question about dinner.

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Dinner," repeated Mark, impatiently. "I don't want any! Then, seeing a remonstrance impending, he added, "I mean anything will do. I don't care what. I'm very busy."

He sat down again and wrote the commencement of his letter. He looked up for a moment as a dark figure passed the window and an elaborate knock sounded on Mrs. Toser's door, but he felt no curiosity, only impatience at the noise. He could not know that after all his letter would never be written, never need to be written. His landlady appeared again, and ushered in a strange gentleman, saying some name which he did not catch.

"The Rev. Mr. Lifford ?" said the stranger.

Mark bowed.

"An old man in Chalk Lane died last Monday-Jacob Grime." "Yes," said Mark, absently.

"You did not officiate at the funeral."

"No. I was from home."

"Some days before this old man's death I made his will, Mr. Lifford."

In spite of his abstraction, Mark smiled.

The stranger smiled also.

It only

"It is rather a curious document. There are several bequests of one shilling each, accompanied with very bitter sarcasms. remains to name the residuary legatee."

Something in the stranger's manner arrested Mark's attention at last, and his heart beat a little quicker than usual.

Five minutes afterwards he was once again walking across the little paddock towards the doctor's house; but he was walking in a changed world. Only this morning the sunshine had oppressed him with its brightness, and the song of the birds had been intolerable. He stopped at the doctor's gate. He had tried to be thankful, he thought. Was he thankful enough? He passed on to the wellknown French window, which stood wide open in the sunlight. He saw some one in light muslin rise up to meet him.

"Helen," said Mr. Lifford, "forgive me."

And then he was silent. It was so hard to believe that the blank and waiting had passed away; so hard to realize that all this arose from his seeing that dark heap under the hedge, and taking pity on it.

"Won't you forgive me, Helen?"

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'Oh, Mark, why did you hide anything from me? I have been so unhappy. I knew all about it, but I couldn't write when you did not, could I?"

"And you won't give me up?"

"Mark," she said, "what does it matter how long we wait? We know that we love each other. Isn't that enough?"

"God bless you, Helen, and make me thankful. I hope the waiting is over. I hope it is not wrong to be so glad about money. I'll tell you the story some time; just now it is too long. An old man whom I believed to be a pauper has died in this parish-in my part of it. He has left me nine thousand pounds. Do you think that will do for us?"

D. W.

THERE are people who cannot endure realities: I myself shrink from some; but in mezzo del cammin we have to search the crevices of those rocks for a late flower or two. Hope is almost out of bloom, and memory fast turning to a heap of dead leaves. It may be wiser to let the dead leaves lie in the dark wood than to plait them into some sorrow's crown of sorrow. For my own part, I find that the things I pass on the road of life glide out of sight much swifter than formerly; either as if I were travelling with more speed, or as if the atmosphere had become, like that of the afternoon, misty at a small distance, although the objects in my immediate neighbourhood are distinct enough. Ah, my friend of twenty, rejoice and be thankful in the morning air of thy fresh mind, with its faculties undimmed!

The present is like a scum lying on the pool of the past: here and there it is broken, and we look down with marvel into the clear and crystal depths, and behold therein a spiritualized reflection of our lineaments.

About a year ago I received one morning a number of the Pimlico Magazine, addressed to me in a hand, the unexpected sight of which magnetized me back, as it were, into a former state of existence.

There are persons whose handwriting on an envelope makes me afraid. Not that I dislike the writers, but I know beforehand the gist of their letters, and am filled with an indescribable sort of trouble, discomfort, and dismay. Other handwritings have a quite contrary effect. They toss my fancy and keep it dancing like a manycoloured ball on the top of a feathery fountain column.

Such an effect had the jaunty little characters that ornamented with my name the label of the Pimlico Magazine.

I had hardly the heart to open that popular periodical: the outside said much more to me than the inside could possibly do. I knew that I should find at a certain page "April showers," or, possibly, "May flowers. By D. W." I knew the quality of those effusions, and tenderly kept the label on the Pimlico Magazine.

And tenderly I thought of D. W., as I knew him first, long ago in the west country, a dauntless young aspirant to literary honours.

A slight and elegant lad he was, with a most singular face, which irregular features and a trifling cast, made some people call ugly, but which was in reality very near being beautiful.

The colour of his eyes was a deep hazel; his skin pale, but a little tinted by the sun; the form of his chin and jaw classic; his ringlety hair of a golden brown; his feet were very small, and ever dandy-booted. His voice was sweet and ringing clear; and he sang like a lark. In fact, the man's being was musical; yet even in his love for music he betrayed the fatal taint of mediocrity in his mental constitution. He took delight in all that music of the modern Italian school which certain bigots of my acquaintance would cheerfully burn—to roast its composers.

D. W. and I loved each other well; and in those days I admired with awe everything he did.

I considered that, in his own intellectual person, D. W. enfolded, coat over coat, like an onion, the shells of poet, philosopher, and critic. Like birds singing gaily that came at his call, were the verses which he, as it were, whistled to his pen. But for a long time it was denied to him to see himself in print except in the poet's corner of the Westbridge Gazette, that still surviving print of his native town.

Regularly on every festival day, for some years, there reached me, by the interposition of the Westbridge carrier, a thinnish MS. volume. bound in green and gold,-" Poems. By D. W." I trust those manuscripts were never printed. They looked so pretty in that trim and jaunty little hand. Print would have restored them to nothingness -like a Parisian belle extinguished in a British bonnet.

Occasionally one of these elegant little tomes will turn up when I am searching a dusty box, perhaps for a dictionary. I open not the faded toy. It hardly looks real. I should as soon think of attempting to eat one of those pretty peaches of tinted marble that adorn some chimney-pieces. But the sight of it startles me with remembrances of those golden days, that innocent and regrettable time, when I believed in the perfections of all whom I loved. Yet there is something that refreshes me in such glimpses of those green covers-green must they ever seem to me, although their hue be touched by the autumnal finger of decay. There is somewhat that can never be bitterly sorrowful in remembering, among happier things, the hopeful face of young D. W.

He disappeared into the metropolis, whither I, called by fate to a far country, followed him not. Plumed, like Marcus Curtius, he rode his Pegasus into that gulf, and the deeps closed over him. For many years I saw him, heard of him, no more.

At length, on my return to England, I found him out.

so sad was the chronicle of wasted days he then unfolded to me, that, when I once more lost sight of him during another prolonged absence, I feared rather than hoped for news of D. W. on my next arrival in London.

And now I had got (how he discovered me I did not know)