n my soul I don't know what
some people are dreaming of. I tell you I never was more surprised i' my
life than when your sister made that suggestion. I'll give 'em a guinea
towards their blooming organ if that's any use to 'em. Ella, go and see
if the horse is ready."

"Yes, father."

He felt genuinely aggrieved.

"If they'd get a new organist," he remarked, with ferocious satire, five
minutes later, as he lit a cigar, "and a new choir--I could see summat
in that."

In another minute he was driving at a fine pace towards his colliery at
Toft End. The horse, with swift instinct, had understood that to-day its
master was not in the mood for badinage.

Half-way down the hill into Shawport he overtook a lady walking very
slowly.

"Mrs Sutton!" he shouted in astonishment, and when he had finished with
the tense frown which involuntarily accompanied the effort of stopping
the horse dead within its own length, his face softened into a beautiful
smile. "How's this?" he questioned.

"Our mare's gone lame," Mrs Sutton answered, "and as I'm bound to get
about I'm bound to walk."

He descended instantly from the dogcart. "Climb up," he said, "and tell
me where you want to go to."

"Nay, nay."

"Climb up," he repeated, and he helped her into the dogcart.

"Well," she said, laughing, "what must be, must. I was trudging home,
and I hope it isn't out of your way."

"It isn't," he said; "I'm for Toft End, and I should have driven up
Trafalgar Road anyhow."

Mrs Sutton was one of James Peake's ideals. He worshipped this small
frail woman of fifty-five, whose soft eyes were the mirror of as candid
a soul as was ever prisoned in Staffordshire clay. More than forty years
ago he had gone to school with her, and the remembrance of having kissed
the pale girl when she was crying over a broken slate was still vivid in
his mind. For nearly half a century she had remained to him exactly that
same ethereal girl. The sole thing about her that puzzled him was that
she should have found anything attractive in the man whom she allowed to
marry her--Alderman Sutton. In all else he regarded her as an angel.
And to many another, besides James Peake, it seemed that Sarah Sutton
wore robes of light. She was a creature born to be the succour of
misery, the balm of distress. She would have soothed the two thieves on
Calvary. Led on by the bounteous instinct of a divine, all-embracing
sympathy, the intrepid spirit within her continually forc