e less weighty, but, as he advanced no further speech,
the sins and backslidings of the metropolis were strongly brought to
mind by his condemnatory utterance. Policy and Dahlia's entreaties at
last prevailed with the farmer, and so the fair girl went up to the
great city.

After months of a division that was like the division of her living
veins, and when the comfort of letters was getting cold, Rhoda, having
previously pledged herself to secresy, though she could not guess why
it was commanded, received a miniature portrait of Dahlia, so beautiful
that her envy of London for holding her sister away from her, melted
in gratitude. She had permission to keep the portrait a week; it was
impossible to forbear from showing it to Mrs. Sumfit, who peeped in awe,
and that emotion subsiding, shed tears abundantly. Why it was to be kept
secret, they failed to inquire; the mystery was possibly not without
its delights to them. Tears were shed again when the portrait had to
be packed up and despatched. Rhoda lived on abashed by the adorable new
refinement of Dahlia's features, and her heart yearned to her uncle for
so caring to decorate the lovely face.

One day Rhoda was at her bed-room window, on the point of descending to
encounter the daily dumpling, which was the principal and the unvarying
item of the midday meal of the house, when she beheld a stranger trying
to turn the handle of the iron gate. Her heart thumped. She divined
correctly that it was her uncle. Dahlia had now been absent for very
many months, and Rhoda's growing fretfulness sprang the conviction in
her mind that something closer than letters must soon be coming. She
ran downstairs, and along the gravel-path. He was a little man,
square-built, and looking as if he had worn to toughness; with an
evident Sunday suit on: black, and black gloves, though the day was only
antecedent to Sunday.

"Let me help you, sir," she said, and her hands came in contact with
his, and were squeezed.

"How is my sister?" She had no longer any fear in asking.

"Now, you let me through, first," he replied, imitating an arbitrary
juvenile. "You're as tight locked in as if you was in dread of all
the thieves of London. You ain't afraid o' me, miss? I'm not the party
generally outside of a fortification; I ain't, I can assure you. I'm a
defence party, and a reg'lar lion when I've got the law backing me."

He spoke in a queer, wheezy voice, like a cracked flute, combined with
the