son, the clerk, the couple,
and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was resolemnized forthwith.
In the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the
clergyman came to the words, "What God hath joined," a woman's voice
from among these was heard to utter audibly:

"God hath jined indeed!"

It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of
the similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before.
When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband
and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually
forgiving act. "All's well that ends well," he said smiling.
"May you long be happy together, after thus having been 'saved as by
fire.'"

They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the
schoolhouse. Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left
early. He, too, congratulated the couple. "Now," he said in parting
from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, "I shall be able to
tell the people in your native place a good round tale; and they'll
all say 'Well done,' depend on it."

When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing
some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid at his
approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.

"Of course, my dear, I shan't expect to intrude upon your personal
privacy any more than I did before," he said gravely. "It is for our
good socially to do this, and that's its justification, if it was not
my reason." Sue brightened a little.

VI

The place was the door of Jude's lodging in the out-skirts of
Christminster--far from the precincts of St. Silas' where he had
formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness. The rain was coming
down. A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to Jude,
who held the door in his hand.

"I am lonely, destitute, and houseless--that's what I am! Father has
turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I'd got, to put it
into his business, and then accusing me of laziness when I was only
waiting for a situation. I am at the mercy of the world! If you
can't take me and help me, Jude, I must go to the workhouse, or to
something worse. Only just now two undergraduates winked at me as I
came along. 'Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there's so
many young men!"

The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening being
that of the day after Sue's remarriage with Phillotson.

"I