l surely be happier for us both. And let the care of your own
health, in the way of taking proper exercise, be reckoned as a most
important part of home duties. Life is given us to use, and not to
shorten. Therefore, don't undertake anything which will unfit you for
the due performance of these home duties. You have no just call to any
such undertaking. Do that which is the manifest work lying at your
hand, and I feel sure you will be guided aright as to what other work
you can find time and strength for."

"Well, John, I will think it well over; I am glad we have had this
conversation."

"So am I, my precious wife; I am sure good will come of it. And you
know we have an invitation to visit the Maltbys in the spring: we shall
be sure to get some words of valuable counsel there. I don't want to
hinder you from doing good out of your own home; I don't want selfishly
to claim all your energies for home work, and my own convenience and
comfort: but I do feel strongly, and more and more strongly every day,
that there is a tendency at the present day to make an idol of woman's
work; to keep, too, the bow perpetually on the stretch; to drag wives,
mothers, and daughters from their home duties into public, and to give
them no rest, but bid them strain every nerve, and gallop, gallop till
they die."

"Perhaps so, John; but it is time for me to go up and dress for dinner."

CHAPTER FOUR.

TOMMY TRACKS.

No one was more universally respected or more vigorously abused in
Crossbourne than "Tommy Tracks," as he was sneeringly called. His real
name was Thomas Bradly. He was not a native of Crossbourne, but had
resided in that town for some five years past at the time when our story
opens. As he was a capital workman, and had two sons growing up into
young men who were also very skilful hands, it was thought quite natural
that he should have come to settle down in Crossbourne, where skilled
labour was well remunerated. As to where he came from, some said one
thing, some another. He was very reserved on the matter himself, and so
people soon ceased to ask him about it.

Thomas was undoubtedly an oddity, but his eccentricities were of a kind
which did no one any harm, and only served to add force to his words and
example. He was an earnest Christian, and as earnest an abstainer from
all intoxicating drinks; and his family walked with him on the narrow
gospel way, and in their adherence to temperance principles an