ber, except that of course Catherine took
all these ideas from him. He wouldn't let his children know any
unbeliever, however apparently worthy and good. He impressed it upon
them as their special sacred duty, in a time of wicked enmity to
religion, to cherish the faith and the whole faith. He wished his wife
and daughters to live on here after his death that they might be less in
danger spiritually than in the big world, and that they might have more
opportunity of living the old-fashioned Christian life. There was also
some mystical idea, I think, of making up through his children for the
godless lives of their forefathers. He used to reproach himself for
having in his prosperous days neglected his family, some of whom he
might have helped to raise.'

'Well, but,' said Robert, 'all very well for Miss Leyburn, but I don't
see the father in the two younger girls.'

'Ah, there is Catherine's difficulty,' said the vicar, shrugging his
shoulders. 'Poor thing! How well I remember her after her father's
death! She came down to see me in the dining-room about some arrangement
for the funeral. She was only sixteen, so pale and thin with nursing. I
said something about the comfort she had been to her father. She took my
hand and burst into tears. "He was so good!" she said; "I loved him so!
Oh, Mr. Thornburgh, help me to look after the others!" And that's been
her one thought since then--that, next to following the narrow road.'

The vicar had begun to speak with emotion, as generally happened to him
whenever he was beguiled into much speech about Catherine Leyburn. There
must have been something great somewhere in the insignificant elderly
man. A meaner soul might so easily have been jealous of this girl with
her inconveniently high standards, and her influence, surpassing his
own, in his own domain.

'I should like to know the secret of the little musician's
independence,' said Robert, musing. 'There might be no tie of blood at
all between her and the elder, so far as I can see.'

'Oh, I don't know that! There's more than you think, or Catherine
wouldn't have kept her hold over her so far as she has. Generally she
gets her way, except about the music. There Rose sticks to it.'

'And why shouldn't she?'

'Ah, well, you see, my dear fellow, I am old enough, and you're not, to
remember what people in the old days used to think about art. Of course
nowadays we all say very fine things about it; but Richard Leyburn would
n