down when you blow your trump. I do not. But
on the whole, it is as well that you should learn the realities of life
for yourself, and carry your energies where they may be useful."

"Then you do not mind?" asked Alick boyishly.

The rector gave a loud clear laugh. "Mind! a thousand times no," he
said, rubbing his plump white hands. "I can manage well enough alone,
and if I cannot there are dozens of young eligibles ready to jump at the
place. Mind! no. Go in Heaven's name, and may you be blessed in your
undertaking!"

The last words came in as grace-lines, and with them Alick felt himself
dismissed.

If the rector had been facile to deal with, Mrs. Corfield was not. When
she heard of the proposed arrangement, and that she was to lose her boy
for the second time out of her daily life, and more permanently than
before, her grief was as intense as if she had been told of his
approaching death. She wept bitterly, and even bent herself to entreaty;
but Alick, to whom North Aston had become a dungeon of pain since Leam
went, held pertinaciously to his plan--not without sorrow, but surely
without yielding. He was fascinated by the idea of a cure where he might
be sole master, not checked by rectorial ridicule when he wished to
establish night schools or clothing clubs, penny savings banks, or any
other of the schemes in vogue for the good of the poor; thinking too,
not unwisely, that the best heal-all for his sorrow was to be found in
change of scene and more arduous work together. Also, he thought that if
his vague tentative advertisements in the papers, which he dared not
make too evident, had as yet brought nothing, some more satisfactory
way of discovering Leam's hiding-place might shape itself when he was
alone, freer to act as he thought best. On all of which accounts he
resisted his mother's grief, and his own at seeing her grieve, and
decided on going down to Monk Grange the next day.

Had not Dr. Corfield been ailing at this time, the mother would have
accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her
mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies'
girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups
of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured up as prowling
for her Alick through the fastnesses of Monk Grange. Circumstances,
however, were stronger than her desire; and, happily for Alick, she was
perforce obliged to remain at home while he