rself, recalling the careworn face. "If
he does, can I overlook the past? Can I help him to make a fresh start?
If he had not done this one dishonorable action, I could have cared for
him. Can I now?"

CHAPTER XXX

"A fool's mouth is his destruction."

The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have forgotten, but
the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an earlier chapter a
sale of work was mentioned which was to take place in the Wilderleigh
gardens at the end of August.

The end of August had now arrived, and with it two white tents, which
sprang up suddenly one morning, like giant mushrooms, on one of Doll's
smooth-shaven lawns. He groaned in spirit as he watched their erection.
They would ruin the turf.

"Might as well iron it with a hot iron," he said, disconsolately to
Hugh. "But, of course, this sort of thing--Diocesan Fund, eh? In these
days we must stand by our colors." He repeated Mr. Gresley's phrase.
Doll seldom ventured on an opinion not sanctioned by the ages, or that
he had not heard repeated till its novelty had been comfortably rubbed
off by his wife or the Gresleys.

The two men watched the proceedings mournfully. They could not help, at
least they were told they could not help the women busily engaged in
draping and arranging the stalls. They were still at large, but Doll
knew, as well as a dog who is going to be washed, what was in store for
him in the afternoon, and he was depressed beforehand.

"Don't let yourself be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not
up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing.
Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the smoking-room
till it's all over."

* * * * *

"All I can say is," remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led the
Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the work of
many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly badly. Here they
are, the richest people by far in the parish, and they would not even
take a stall, they would not even furnish half of one, and they said
they would be away, and they are at the Towers, after all. No one likes
the Pratts more than I do, or sees their good points as I do, but I
can't shut my eyes to the fact that they are the meanest of the mean."

The Pratts had only contributed two "bed-spreads," and a "sheet-sham,"
and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to know what
"bed-spre