o send over to
the glebe. But Richard knew that the minister would wish to chat
with him, and Richard himself had no indisposition for a little
conversation.

"I hope yer riverences is quite well then," said Richard, as he
tendered his note, making a double bow, so as to include them both.

"Pretty well, thank you," said Mrs. Townsend. "And how's all the
family?"

"Well, then, they're all rightly, considhering. The Masther's no just
what he war, you know, ma'am."

"I'm afraid not--I'm afraid not," said the rector. "You'll not take a
glass of spirits, Richard?"

"Yer riverence knows I never does that," said Richard, with somewhat
of a conscious look of high morality, for he was a rigid teetotaller.

"And do you mean to say that you stick to that always?" said Mrs.
Townsend, who firmly believed that no good could come out of
Nazareth, and that even abstinence from whisky must be bad if
accompanied by anything in the shape of a Roman Catholic ceremony.

"I do mean to say, ma'am, that I never touched a dhrop of anything
sthronger than wather, barring tay, since the time I got the pledge
from the blessed apostle." And Richard boldly crossed himself in the
presence of them both. They knew well whom he meant by the blessed
apostle: it was Father Mathew.

"Temperance is a very good thing, however we may come by it," said
Mr. Townsend, who meant to imply by this that Richard's temperance
had been come by in the worst way possible.

"That's thrue for you, sir," said Richard; "but I never knew any
pledge kept, only the blessed apostle's." By which he meant to imply
that no sanctity inherent in Mr. Townsend's sacerdotal proceedings
could be of any such efficacy.

And then Mr. Townsend read the note. "Ah, yes," said he; "tell Mr.
Herbert that I'm very much obliged to him. There will be no other
answer necessary."

"Very well, yer riverence, I'll be sure to give Mr. Herbert the
message." And Richard made a sign as though he were going.

"But tell me, Richard," said Mrs. Townsend, "is Sir Thomas any
better? for we have been really very uneasy about him."

"Indeed and he is, ma'am; a dail betther this morning, the Lord be
praised."

"It was a kind of a fit, wasn't it, Richard?" asked the parson.

"A sort of a fit of illness of some kind, I'm thinking," said
Richard, who had no mind to speak of his family's secrets out of
doors. Whatever he might be called upon to tell the priest, at any
rate he was not called on to