did."

"When you came up," said the low voice, "I thought all was over, and my
mind was very near made up to enlist as a common soldier, and leave no
trace behind. I see now, it should have been an ill deed to do."

"An ill deed in truth for your poor friends, if the only news they had
ever heard of you were your name in a list of the dead."

"Yes, I wished to be killed as soon as might be--get to the end as fast
as possible."

"Would that have been the end, Aubrey?"

The reply was barely audible. "No, I suppose not."

"Take up your burden instead, my son, and bear it by God's grace. He
does not refuse that, even when the burden is heaped and bound by our
own hands. Unlike men, His compassion faileth never. He has maybe
emptied thine heart, Aubrey, that He may fill it with Himself."

Aubrey made no reply, but Mr Marshall did not think that a bad sign.

"Well, come now," said he, rising from the bank, and in a more cheerful
tone. "Let us go to Shoe Lane, and see if Agnes hath any supper for us.
The prodigal son was not more welcome to his old father than you shall
be to my poor lodging, for so long a time as may stand with your safety
and conveniency. My Lady Oxford, you say, was to give my Lady Lettice
to know how things went with you? but methinks it shall do none ill if I
likewise visit her this evening. `Two heads are better than one,' and
though 'tis said `o'er many cooks spoil the broth,' yet three may be
better than two."

The feeling of humiliation which grew and deepened in Aubrey's mind, was
one of the best things which could have come to him. Vanity and
self-sufficiency had always been his chief failings; and he was now
finding, to his surprise, that while his chosen friends surrounded him
with difficulties, the people whom he had slighted and despised came
forward to help him out of them. He had looked down on no one more than
on Mr Marshall, and Agnes had received a share of his contempt, partly
because of her father's calling and comparative poverty, partly because
she was not pretty, and partly because she showed no power of repartee
or spirit in conversation. In Aubrey's eyes she had been "a dull,
humdrum thing," only fit to cook and sew, and utterly beneath the notice
of any one so elevated and _spirituel_ as himself.

During the last few hours, Aubrey's estimate of things in general had
sustained some rude shocks, and his hitherto unfaltering faith in his
own infallibility was con