ong, and that I was firmly, conscientiously
determined to make no concessions, no half-way advances, though our
Father _goes to meet_ His prodigals. Merciful Heaven! I had the
satisfaction of parting myself for all these slow years from the most
honest--the tenderest-hearted--"

My Aunt Isobel had overrated her strength. After a short and vain
struggle in silence she got up and went slowly out of the room,
resting her hand for an instant on my little knick-knack table by the
door as she went out--the only time I ever saw her lean upon anything.

* * * * *

Old Mr. Rampant was another of my "warnings." He--to whose face no one
dared hint that he could ever be in the wrong--would have been more
astonished than Aunt Isobel to learn how plainly--nay, how
contemptuously--the servants spoke behind his back of his unbridled
temper and its results. They knew that the only son was somewhere on
the other side of the world, and that little Mrs. Rampant wept tears
for him and sent money to him in secret, and they had no difficulty in
deciding why: "He'd got his father's temper, and it stood to reason
that he and the old gentleman couldn't put up their horses together."
The moral was not obscure. From no lack of affection, but for want of
self-control, the son was condemned to homelessness and hardships in
his youth, and the father was sonless in his old age.

But that was not the point of Nurse's tales about Mr. Rampant which
impressed me most, nor even the endless anecdotes of his unreasonable
passions which leaked out at his back-door and came up our back-stairs
to the nursery. They rather amused us. That assault on the butcher's
boy, who brought ribs of beef instead of sirloin, for which he was
summoned and fined; his throwing the dinner out of the window, and
going to dine at the village inn--by which the dogs ate the dinner and
he had to pay for two dinners, and to buy new plates and dishes.

We laughed at these things, but in my serious moments, especially on
the first Sunday of the month, I was haunted by something else which
Nurse had told me about old Mr. Rampant.

In our small parish--a dull village on the edge of a marsh--the Holy
Communion was only celebrated once a month. It was not because he was
irreligious that old Mr. Rampant was one of the too numerous
non-communicants. "It's his temper, poor gentleman," said Nurse. "He
can't answer for himself, and he has that religious feelin