rather sharply, "and to tell you to trust in God; or else, to tell you that our troubles have been brought on us by our wickedness; and that is the most likely thing; for if we don't do just as such people do themselves, with their prayers and their preachings, they think we must be wrong. I have no patience with them," I added.

Mr. Wake did not come

"But you are wrong, my dear. to preach to me. He came on business."

It

And then my father told me what that business was. was to offer to lend him a sum of money so large that it bewildered me to think of it, so that he might keep on the farm, and recover his losses. And while making this offer, our neighbour had spoken in high terms of my father's well known probity and honesty, and of his reputation as a good farmer, which assured him, he said, that in putting out his money as he proposed, he was making a very safe investment. He said nothing about our ingratitude to Mrs. Wake, nor of our determined alienation from his family; but spoke as a friend to a friend; and it was this unexpected kindness, at a time when other professed friends were showing their utter selfishness, which had so melted my dear father.

"Have you accepted his offer, father?" I asked, timidly, when he had done speaking.

"No-that is, I have not exactly said No; but it is left open for me to think about.”

"Oh, why did you not say Yes, at once?" I asked, in some alarm that the hopes so suddenly raised in me would as suddenly fall to the ground again.

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Because, Jane, I mean to be honest if I can, though I am poor; and I must see my way clearly to be able to pay back the money in a reasonable time, or I won't touch it. I am to give my answer in three days' time; and till then, you must not not speak to me about the matter. I shall be busy in going over my books."

Our conversation ended here.

When two honest men come together (and my dear father was strictly honest in worldly things), it is easy for them to understand each other, and to arrive at an agreement. My father not only looked over his books himself, but carried them to The Grange, and insisted-if I may use the word in such a connection-insisted on Mr. Wake going over them also, together with the calculations he had made respecting the future. And the result was that our gene

rous neighbour lent my father the sum he had promised, at a low rate of interest, taking only a simple note of hand, as a memorandum of the transaction rather than as security for repayment. Think what quiet rejoicings there were in our old house when we knew that our notice of quitting was rescinded, that my father had taken another long lease of the farm, and that instead of being scattered abroad friendless and moneyless, we had still a home, and work before us to do!

There is only a little more to add; but that little is of great importance.

I have just written that we had work before us to do; and we did it. There are some persons, I believe, who, when they get into difficulties, lose heart and slacken exertion, although they know that heart and exertion are more than ever needed. This was not the case with my father and brothers. I do not think they-my brothers, I mean -had ever been careless or idle, or above their business; and I am sure my father had not; but now they each worked harder than any two men on the farm; and "the hand of the diligent" gradually "made rich." In the course of a few years, the greater part of the loan had been repaid, and our losses had been in part recovered.

Meanwhile, friendship with our neighbours at The Grange was renewed, much to dear Lucy's heartfelt joy and thankfulness. We never heard a reproachful word or hint respecting our past cold ingratitude; and we found, when the thick film of prejudice was removed, that the Wakes were among "the best and dearest people in the world, the very best she had ever met with," my dear mother said.

And our intercourse with them led to higher results still. I think that our sorrows had softened our hearts, and opened our eyes to see a value in true and earnest piety which until then worldly prosperity had hidden from us; and I thank God that before our family eventually became separated-first by two or three marriages, and then by the death of our dear mother-we were all made experimentally acquainted with the precious salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and put in possession of durable riches, which never can deceive, and never fade away.

And the instrumental means of this blessed change was the Christian consistency and charity and endurance of our once despised and hated neighbours, who had taken for their working motto the exhortation of the apostle,—

"Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”*

A SCANDALOUS STORY AND A SERMON.

"Aн, well, Mr. Crabs, if everybody only knew what I know, that's all."

The speaker was a stout, middle-aged woman who kept the little village shop; and she was now standing behind her counter surrounded by candles, cheese, herrings, balls of string, bundles of firewood, and all the rest of the things innumerable which such shops contain. She had a comely face, and there was a thriving look about her; but it was spoiled by an envious suspicious glance which every now and then shot out of the corners of her eyes as if she was hoping to find out something bad about somebody. As she said the words written above, she gave her head a sort of toss and closed her lips with a decided and self-satisfied air: then turning to a little girl who was waiting to be served, she said, "What's for you, my dear?" and left Mr. Crabs, the parish clerk and sexton, to digest what she had said and go as soon as he liked.

So the next day, that day being a busy day with him, Mr. Crabs, who had had hard work to keep it to himself so long, went down the street of the village to his neighbour, Benjamin Backbite, and said he was afraid there was something wrong with young Willis, but he didn't rightly know what.

Old Backbite thought it over this way and that as he sat hammering his leather on the lapstone and put this and that together, and wondered a good deal to himself what it was, but couldn't make much of it, for George Willis was, as far as he knew, a steady young man. "But there," he said to himself, "who knows, who knows?" and then he hit the lapstone harder still, as if the leather was his bitter enemy.

By-and-by Chips the carpenter came into his shop. Chips was a good-natured man, but weak in judgment, and ever ready to open his mouth wide in wonder at any new story. So he listened to old Backbite's story and speculations with eyes, ears, and mouth wide open, and then said, Well, now, who'd a' thought it?-but there, who knows?-well, I never!"

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* Gal. vi. 9.

"And I never, too, Mr. Chips," replied old Backbite; "but there, I see'd him going into the White Horse myself, not as I'm going to say anything."

When he got home Chips told his wife that George Willis was going on bad-" least wise," he said, "he'd been seen at the White Horse, and old Backbite said that he knew more than he was going to tell.”

"There now, don't you say harm of the young man,' said Mrs. Chips; "that old Backbite 'll say anything, and you ought to know better than to listen to his precious stories." Nevertheless when Mrs. Chips went to fetch the beer for Chips's supper she met Mrs. Pratt, the blacksmith's wife, and the following conversation took place.

“Mrs. Pratt, and how be you to-night? To think I should meet you!"

"The same to you, Mrs. Chips; you be going to get your man his beer, then ?"

"Better be going to get it for him, than for he to go and get it for hisself, and have to be fetched away at eleven o'clock as some is."

"So it is, Mrs. Chips, not as I've anything to complain of in that way with my man, though he be a bit hasty sometimes; but there, I say that's the heat of the forge, and hot enough it is sometimes, and no wonder if it do make him tempery; but I can say he ain't one of that sort, though there's some

"You've heard then?" and Mrs. Chips, as she looked inquiringly in her neighbour's face, nodded her head in the direction of George Willis, who had just passed hem with a cheery good night.

"You don't say so, Mrs. Chips ?"

"It ain't for me to say, Mrs. Pratt, but people will talk." “Well, I wouldn't have believed it.”

“Nor I, Mrs. Pratt; but there, nobody knows."

Martha," sounded the voice of the blacksmith at the back door, "where's supper?"

"Good-night, Mrs. Chips." "Good-night, Mrs. Pratt."

'Well, Chips shouldn't order me about like that," said Mrs. Pratt to herself, as she tossed her head and walked on with an indignant air.

News, like a snowball, loses nothing by rolling; and so the next day it was common talk in the village of Mudford that George Willis, the steady young mason, who was only

just married, had taken to drinking, and had been brought home late at night from the White Horse, in a state of intoxication.

Now what was the truth about all this?

Why the fact was that George Willis, being a steady man and a good workman, who had prudently laid by a comfortable sum in the savings' bank before he was married, was not so good a customer to Mrs. Cross at the shop as she thought he ought to be; and one day she found out to her disgust that George and his trim tidy wife preferred walking over to the town, about two miles away, to make their purchases, to having credit at her shop and paying half as much again as they ought. There seemed no chance of getting him under her thumb and making a good thing out of him by advancing money on his watch, or his Sunday coat, at exorbitant interest, as she had done to many in the village; and she did not like the thought that there was one man, clear-headed and honest, in the village who could see through her, and perhaps might take it in his head some day to expose her. She would have been glad enough to do him harm, but was obliged to be content only with wishing it; but she wished it so much, and so constantly indulged evil thoughts about him, that she came at last almost to believe her own wishes, and to think evil about him. So it was that when she got talking about him to Crabs, she said more than she had any ground for saying, and what she wished rather than what she knew, because she would have been glad to damage his good name. And Crabs, who liked a bit of scandal and did not care much whether it was true or not so long as it gave him something to talk about, put a little bit of his own to it. And Backbite made it still worse, and Chips made it no better, and Mrs. Chips and Mrs. Pratt whose story next day was discussed among the idlers at the blacksmith's forge, gave it the finishing touch. And thus poor George Willis, the steadiest man in the village, got, for a time at any rate, the reputation of being that most degraded of all characters, a sot, because one envious bad woman hinted at something suspicious about him, and other idle foolish people put their own constructions upon her saying and then circulated their fictions as truth.

It was not long before the news reached the clergyman's ear; for Crabs, the clerk, had heard the story so many times that he thought it must be true; and one day when he was