eet the
buglers began to sound the "Last Post," and he hugged himself and
felt that the world he knew was still about him, companionable and
kind.

Twice the buglers repeated their call, in more distant streets, each
time more faintly; and the last flying notes carried him into sleep
again.

CHAPTER III.

PASSENGERS BY JOBY'S VAN.

At breakfast next morning he saw by his parents' faces that something
unusual had happened. Nothing was said to him about it, whatever it
might be. But once or twice after this, coming into the parlour
suddenly, he found his father and mother talking low and earnestly
together; and now and then they would go up to his grandmother's room
and talk.

In some way he divined that there was a question of leaving home.
But the summer passed and these private talks became fewer.
Toward August, however, they began again; and by-and-by his mother
told him. They were going to a parish on the North Coast, right away
across the Duchy, where his father had been presented to a living.
The place had an odd name--Nannizabuloe.

"And it is lonely," said Humility, "the most of it sea-sand, so far
as I can hear."

It was by the sea, then. How would they get there?

"Oh, Joby's van will take us most of the way."

Of all the vans which came and went in the Fore Street, none could
compare for romance with Joby's. People called it the Wreck Ashore;
but its real name, "Vital Spark, J. Job, Proprietor," was painted on
its orange-coloured sides in letters of vivid blue, a blue not often
seen except on ship's boats. It disappeared every Tuesday and
Saturday over the hill and into a mysterious country, from which it
emerged on Mondays and Fridays with a fine flavour of the sea renewed
upon it and upon Joby. No other driver wore a blue guernsey, or
rings in his ears, as Joby did. No other van had the same mode of
progressing down the street in a series of short tacks, or brought
such a crust of brine on its panes, or such a mixture of mud and fine
sand on its wheels, or mingled scraps of dry sea-weed with the straw
on its floor.

"Will there be ships?" Taffy asked.

"I dare say we shall see a few, out in the distance. It's a poor,
outlandish place. It hasn't even a proper church."

"If there's no church, father can get into a boat and preach; just
like the Sea of Galilee, you know."

"Your father is too good a man to mimic the Scriptures in any such
way. There is a church, I believe, t