"I will even do as you say," replied the curate. "My feet seem as though they rather belonged to some other person than to myself, and my head also." (The poor man perhaps included his heart in his survey.)

'Indeed, Miss Millicent, I have often resolved to give more attention to the wants of the

poor body. Its powers are otherwise liable to fail us at our utmost need."

Millicent's curiosity now became almost unrestrainable. But she had a stronger feeling than curiosity-a will, at all events, a wish, to triumph. "I will not ask a single question," said she to herself, "and he will be driven to tell me what is the matter." "There is the little beverage prepared by Susan," said she-" poor, but better than nothing."

Mr. Reredos slowly partook of the refreshment. "Truly," said he, "Miss Millicent, I have ofttimes wondered whether the bread

and flesh with which Elijah was wonderfully nurtured were brought in a basket by the ravens, or how otherwise. Indeed," he added, musingly, "your aid is almost to me like theirs."

"Like a raven ?" said Millicent, turning away with a very perceptible pout.

"Nay," said the curate, "surely that was the thought the farthest from my mind. How could I paragon you, my dear Miss Millicent, to a bird of ill-omen, or-if I mistake not even of prey."

"Yet you treat me like one," said Millicent, beginning to cry, "if you go wandering about the country half dead with fatigue, and then tell me you are in great affliction, and then no more let me nourish, or -or-be of any use to you than if I was a raven-a great black ugly raven-I wish I was!"

Now, there was one thing which Mr. Reredos regarded with fearfear is not the word-absolute terror: it was to see a woman cry. His alarm in this respect had been betrayed to his female parishioners by the slighter expression of the same passion which the remonstrances of an infant at the font, when at times an unlucky babe lifted up his voice, were known invariably to produce. "I can

never get through the lesson, Sponson," he said to the clerk, “if they permit the infants to wail; surely, those must be like the false mother in the judgment of Solomon, who are unable to bring their babes to the threshold of the sanctuary without some comfort that should at least still their cries for so short a time."

"Miss Millicent," he said, "Miss Millicent!"

Her tears flowed the faster.
"Oh dear!" said he, half aloud.
She began to sob.

'Nay, but hear me one word," said he.

"I don't want to hear-I've heard too much already," sobbed she. "Oh, dear! to be called a bird of ill-omen and a bird of prey, and by him, too!" and her little figure shook convulsively.

"As Heaven looks down upon us both, such an idea was the farthest from my thoughts," said he. "Why, Millicent ?"

"What was farthest from your thoughts ?"

"To think of you as a raven." "What do you think of me as, then?"

The curate was taken by prise. "What?" said he. thought such-I thought thing."

sur

66

no

"I can't bear it," said Miss Millicent; "I can bear anything but to lose-lose-lose esteem I have once felt. I've made up my m-m-mind-I'll go out as a governess, and join the B-B-Baptists."

66

You speak as if I had behaved unbecomingly to you, Miss Millicent."

"And haven't you?" said she; "haven't you? Look in my face and answer me that. Oh, dear!" she broke out again, "it's not so much for myself I feel it, as that a clergyman should so forget himself!"

A certain very practical text of St. Paul, as to a man not behaving himself unbecomingly towards a maiden, here occurred to Mr. Reredos with SO much patness that, as he afterwards said, it

Now, Lucius, let me go. You must; I must tell mamma of my happiness"-and a little sob.

"I have something more to say," said Mr. Reredos, "before those words pass between us which are irrevocable."

"Before?" said she, with a tendency to the return of the hysterics.

"Listen," said Mr. Reredosand the whole man seemed transformed as he spoke-his head rose proudly-there came a fire in his eyes he looked a man of whom any woman might be proud. 'Listen, Millicent, and do not interrupt. I will listen to you afterwards."

66

Millicent looked in wonder; what had a few minutes before been stratagem-flirtation-what

you like was now something

more noble and holy; the man's earnestness communicated itself to her.

"Millicent Penrose," said Mr. Reredos, "this matter is not of my seeking, nor do I think it is altogether of my doing. God knows that I left home with far

other ideas this morning. But I believe that it is the guidance of his Providence."

And Mr. Reredos took off his hat, bowed his head, and his lips moved in silence.

"I believe, I do believe, that even as He fed the prophet of old, so has he given, unawares to me, a light to my path. I am bounden to you; I do not wish to be unbound. But you are free till you hear what I have to say. It is now some little time since I began to doubt the wisdom of the celibate for the clergy."

Millicent looked a little uneasy. Perhaps that which was intended for my meat was turned by my own blindness into poison. I will not do you the injustice to believe that it can have any weight with you, Millicent, but my wife will not be a poor man's wife. I could at any moment have secured competence by marriage; and unless an old man, now upwards of seventy, should marry and should have children, and if I survive him, my wife will be the wife of a baronet."

Millicent now in her turn became deadly pale. She withdrew her hand gently, but she withdrew it.

"When I left home this morning," continued the curate, "I did so with the idea of asking some one to marry me, Millicent. I was not then thinking of you."

Millicent remained silent, pale,

and motionless.

"It was a woman, Millicent, of whom I had seen but very little, and whom I thought that I admired very much. I think so still," added he.

Millicent gave a little unconscious shudder.

"But I found, to my horror," said the curate, "that she was the wife of another man. Millicent, it was more the feeling of the sin I had unwittingly committed than

the loss of my-of my fancy, that made me feel more like a man in despair than I ever did beforethan I hope I ever can again."

"When I saw you," he continued, "I thought that there was the prospect of a great deliverance for me. After I had once spoken to a woman as to love, I knew that there was no more celibacy to be thought of. But I hesitated. I did hesitate to turn away from one fair face, and to take a rejected suit to another. I felt unworthy to do so. But I did think that it might be that God willed, in His mercy, to show that my sin had been pardoned. And, Millicent, if it be so, you need not be afraid. I know-at least I think, that, if she were free, she is all that a man might reverence; but is one to love a bright fire on one's hearth the less because one admires the pure ray of a star reflected from a well? I think not. cent, if, after this true and honest statement, you can consent to be my wife, I take God to witness that I will be a true, loving, and tender husband. I ask you once more. Please?"

Milli

"Mr. Reredos," said Millicent, rising, and drawing her pelisse round her with an air of dignity, "you must hear me in turn.'

The lover rose as she spoke. His foot coming in contact with his hat that lay on the ground, he-not with a kick, but a sort of lift of the foot-sent the hat to several yards distance. Then he stood very upright, and gazed at her very earnestly.

"I, too, have my confession to make. It is I-indeed it is-who am unworthy of you. I never felt it before. I saw you going-I need not say where I thought you were going and I came on in the hope of meeting you; I did indeed," and here she became like a peony. "If I had known what you have just told me about money and-and

66

Amen," said he. Then quietly, tenderly, deliberately, but very firmly, and without paying the slightest attention to the damage which he inflicted on the hat, he kissed first her head, then her eyes, then her lips, then each hand, and then glanced at her feet, as if he would have kissed them too. "My love," said he, "will you leave me alone for a few moments? I will call on mamma to-night." Without a word, Millicent turned gently from him, and glided over the turf. The mediaval droop, the sentimental draggle, were gone; there was now the firm, elastic step of a happy English girl, who knew that her heart was safe in the keeping of an honest man.

And so it was.

Mr. Reredos bowed lowly as she turned. He remained looking after her till she passed out of

sight, and then covered his eyes with his hand, and remained silent for some two minutes. Then he recovered his hat, put it firmly on, and sat down on the bole of the tree. There he remained in meditation for upwards of an hour, during which, as he afterwards said, the whole events of his past life seemed to arrange themselves in pictures before him. At last he

rose.

His foot struck something; it was Millicent's basket. Gently, almost tenderly, he took it up, took out the white napkin that it contained, shook out the fragments of the provisions, and carefully wrapped the basket in the napkin. Close by lay his own umbrella, an aged and somewhat decrepit servant; on this he laid his foot, and grasping the handle, broke the cane short in two,then whisking the wreck around his head, he flung it as far as he could-a pretty good distance, too -into the grass. Then he took the little basket under his arm, and set off homewards with a firm and elastic step. He felt almost a boy again.

"Mrs. Wiggins," said the curate to the experienced and discomfortable dame who made so good a living out of his modest provision; "two mutton-chops immediately, not overdone. Get me also a piece of cheese and a plate of apples, and the bottle of wine-there ought to be one left-and make haste!"

"Which," subsequently confided Mrs. Wiggins to a friend, "it did take the breath out of my body with that surprise, for to hear him speak so like a man, as I never once thought to do, that I forgot to say the last bottle was took before, as I should otherwise have done on principle, liking never to let the last go till I has another."

While the mutton-chops, which were giving audible proofs of the doom to which they were subjected,

were preparing, Mr. Reredos wrote, folded, and sealed a very short letter. He then retired to his bedroom, took off all his clothes, washed himself from head to foot, put on his Sunday garments, and spent a minute or two in the investigation of his shelves and drawers. From these he selected all such garments as appeared to come under condemnation, especially the whole of the stock of three pairs of blucher boots. These he made into a bundle with one of the longest clerical

petticoated surtouts as an envelope, and kicked them on to the top of the stairs. Then he dined. He sat still after the meal for half an hour, and then rang the bell.

"Mrs. Wiggins," said he, "I am going out. I shall not be in before ten. You may do what you like with that bundle on the stairs, but take it away at once, please. Mrs. Wiggins, I am going to be married."