nger
days, ere you took to a craft which does not seem to have prospered, you
were brought up to country pursuits, and knew all about cows and sheep,
their care and their maladies. Well, I have a few acres of glebe-land on
my own hands, not enough for a bailiff--too much for my gardener--and a
pretty cottage, which once belonged to a schoolmaster, but we have built
him a larger one; it is now vacant, and at your service. Come and take
all trouble of land and stock off my hands; we shall not quarrel about
the salary. But harkye, my friend--on one proviso--give up the Crystal,
and leave the Stars to mind their own business."

"Please your Reverence," said Merle, who, at the earlier part of the
address, had evinced the most grateful emotion, but who, at the proviso
which closed it, jerked himself lip, dignified and displeased--"Please
your Reverence, no! Kit Merle is not so unnatural as to swop away his
Significator at Birth for a mess of porritch! There was that forrin
chap, Gally-Leo--he stuck to the stars, or the sun, which is the same
thing--and the stars stuck by him, and brought him honour and glory,
though the Parsons war dead agin him. He had Malefics in his Ninth
House, which belongs to Parsons."

"Can't the matter be compromised, dear Mr. George?" said Waife,
persuasively. "Suppose Merle promises to keep his crystal and
astrological schemes to himself, or at least only talk of them to
you;--they can't hurt you, I should think, sir? And science is a sacred
thing, Merle; and the Chaldees, who were the great star-gazers, never
degraded themselves by showing off to the vulgar. Mr. George, who is a
scholar, will convince you of that fact."

"Content," said George. "So long as Mr. Merle will leave my children and
servants, and the parish generally, in happy ignorance of the future, I
give him the fullest leave to discuss his science with myself whenever
we chat together on summer moons or in winter evenings; and perhaps I
may--"

"Be converted?" said Waife, with a twinkling gleam of the playful Humour
which had ever sported along his thorny way by the side of Sorrow.

"I did not mean that," said the Parson, smiling; "rather the contrary.
What say you, Merle? Is it not a bargain?"

"Sir--God bless you!" cried Merle, simply; "I see you won't let me stand
in my own light. And what Gentleman Waife says as to the vulgar, is
uncommon true."

This matter settled, and Merle's future secured in a way that his stars,
or