rate, I'll go to Warminster. I want to call on old Dr. Dickleburg,
and I can do that at the same time."

He did go to Warminster. He did call on the Doctor, who was not at
home;--and he did call also upon Mr. Jay, who was at home.

With Mr. Jay himself his chance was naturally much less than it
would be with George Brattle. The ironmonger was connected with the
unfortunate young woman only by marriage; and what brother-in-law
would take such a sister-in-law to his bosom? And of Mrs. Jay he
thought that he knew that she was puritanical, stiff, and severe.
Mr. Jay he found in his shop along with an apprentice, but he had no
difficulty in leading the master ironmonger along with him through
a vista of pots, grates and frying pans, into a small recess at the
back of the establishment, in which requests for prolonged credit
were usually made, and urgent appeals for speedy payment as often put
forth.

"Know the story of Caroline Brattle? Oh yes! I know it, sir," said
Mr. Jay. "We had to know it." And as he spoke he shook his head, and
rubbed his hands together, and looked down upon the ground. There
was, however, a humility about the man, a confession on his part,
that in talking to an undoubted gentleman he was talking to a
superior being, which gave to Fenwick an authority which he had felt
himself to want in his intercourse with the farmer.

"I am sure, Mr. Jay, you will agree with me in that she should be
saved if possible."

"As to her soul, sir?" asked the ironmonger.

"Of course, as to her soul. But we must get at that by saving her in
this world first."

Mr. Jay was a slight man, of middle height, with very respectable
iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a
poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good
deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the
making of many civil little speeches; but his strength as a leading
man in Warminster lay in his hair, and in the suit of orderly
well-brushed black clothes which he wore on all occasions. He was,
too, a man fairly prosperous, who went always to church, paid his
way, attended sedulously to his business, and hung his bells, and
sold his pots in such a manner as not actually to drive his old
customers away by default of work. "Jay is respectable, and I don't
like to leave him," men would say, when their wives declared that the
backs of his grates fell out, and that his nails never would stand
ham