ying about, poor dearest?' he said.

She started. 'Because of what you have told me!' The Captain grew very
unhappy; but he was undeterred.

In due time the town learnt, to its intense surprise, that Captain
Maumbry had retired from the ---th Hussars and gone to Fountall
Theological College to prepare for the ministry.

CHAPTER IV

'O, the pity of it! Such a dashing soldier--so popular--such an
acquisition to the town--the soul of social life here! And now! . . .
One should not speak ill of the dead, but that dreadful Mr. Sainway--it
was too cruel of him!'

This is a summary of what was said when Captain, now the Reverend, John
Maumbry was enabled by circumstances to indulge his heart's desire of
returning to the scene of his former exploits in the capacity of a
minister of the Gospel. A low-lying district of the town, which at that
date was crowded with impoverished cottagers, was crying for a curate,
and Mr. Maumbry generously offered himself as one willing to undertake
labours that were certain to produce little result, and no thanks,
credit, or emolument.

Let the truth be told about him as a clergyman; he proved to be anything
but a brilliant success. Painstaking, single-minded, deeply in earnest
as all could see, his delivery was laboured, his sermons were dull to
listen to, and alas, too, too long. Even the dispassionate judges who
sat by the hour in the bar-parlour of the White Hart--an inn standing at
the dividing line between the poor quarter aforesaid and the fashionable
quarter of Maumbry's former triumphs, and hence affording a position of
strict impartiality--agreed in substance with the young ladies to the
westward, though their views were somewhat more tersely expressed:
'Surely, God A'mighty spwiled a good sojer to make a bad pa'son when He
shifted Cap'n Ma'mbry into a sarpless!'

The latter knew that such things were said, but he pursued his daily'
labours in and out of the hovels with serene unconcern.

It was about this time that the invalid in the oriel became more than a
mere bowing acquaintance of Mrs. Maumbry's. She had returned to the town
with her husband, and was living with him in a little house in the centre
of his circle of ministration, when by some means she became one of the
invalid's visitors. After a general conversation while sitting in his
room with a friend of both, an incident led up to the matter that still
rankled deeply in her soul. Her face was now pale