candalising the farmers by causing them to sit or stand in
any portion of the church which was hitherto unappropriated. He had
been constant in his personal visits to them, and had felt himself to
be more a St Paul with them than with any other of his neighbours
around him.

It was a cold morning, but the rain of the preceding evening had
given way to frost, and the air, though sharp, was dry. The ground
under the feet was crisp, having felt the wind and frost, and was no
longer clogged with mud. In his present state of mind the walk was
good for our poor pastor, and exhilarated him; but still, as he went,
he thought always of his injuries. His own wife believed that he was
about to commit suicide, and for so believing he was very angry with
her; and yet, as he well knew, the idea of making away with himself
had flitted through his own mind a dozen times. Not from his own wife
could he get real sympathy. He would see what he could do with a
certain brickmaker of his acquaintance.

"Are you here, Dan?" he said, knocking at the door of a cottage which
stood alone, close to the towing-path of the canal, and close also to
a forlorn corner of the muddy, watery, ugly, disordered brick-field.
It was now just past six o'clock, and the men would be rising, as
in midwinter they commenced their work at seven. The cottage was an
unalluring, straight brick-built tenement, seeming as though intended
to be one of a row which had never progressed beyond Number One. A
voice answered from the interior, inquiring who was the visitor, to
which Mr. Crawley replied by giving his name. Then the key was turned
in the lock, and Dan Morris, the brickmaker, appeared with a candle
in his hand. He had been engaged in lighting the fire, with a view to
his own breakfast. "Where is your wife, Dan?" asked Mr. Crawley. The
man answered by pointing with a short poker, which he held in his
hand, to the bed, which was half screened from the room by a ragged
curtain, which hung from the ceiling half-way down to the floor. "And
are the Darvels here?" asked Mr. Crawley. Then Morris, again using the
poker, pointed upwards, showing that the Darvels were still in their
allotted abode upstairs.

"You're early out, Muster Crawley," said Morris, and then he went on
with his fire. "Drat the sticks, if they bean't as wet as the old
'un hisself. Get up, old woman, and do you do it, for I can't. They
wun't kindle for me, nohow." But the old woman, having well noted