ng, slowly playing away with his right
hand, as though the bow were beneath the chair in which he was
sitting.

"What! throw it up altogether?" said the attorney-general, gazing with
utter astonishment at his client.

"Did you see those articles in _The Jupiter_?" said Mr Harding,
piteously, appealing to the sympathy of the lawyer.

Sir Abraham said he had seen them. This poor little clergyman, cowed
into such an act of extreme weakness by a newspaper article, was to
Sir Abraham so contemptible an object, that he hardly knew how to talk
to him as to a rational being.

"Hadn't you better wait," said he, "till Dr Grantly is in town with
you? Wouldn't it be better to postpone any serious step till you can
consult with him?"

Mr Harding declared vehemently that he could not wait, and Sir Abraham
began seriously to doubt his sanity.

"Of course," said the latter, "if you have private means sufficient
for your wants, and if this--"

"I haven't a sixpence, Sir Abraham," said the warden.

"God bless me! Why, Mr Harding, how do you mean to live?"

Mr Harding proceeded to explain to the man of law that he meant to
keep his precentorship,--that was eighty pounds a year; and, also,
that he meant to fall back upon his own little living of Crabtree,
which was another eighty pounds. That, to be sure, the duties of the
two were hardly compatible; but perhaps he might effect an exchange.
And then, recollecting that the attorney-general would hardly care to
hear how the service of a cathedral church is divided among the minor
canons, stopped short in his explanations.

Sir Abraham listened in pitying wonder. "I really think, Mr Harding,
you had better wait for the archdeacon. This is a most serious
step,--one for which, in my opinion, there is not the slightest
necessity; and, as you have done me the honour of asking my advice, I
must implore you to do nothing without the approval of your friends.
A man is never the best judge of his own position."

"A man is the best judge of what he feels himself. I'd sooner beg my
bread till my death than read such another article as those two that
have appeared, and feel, as I do, that the writer has truth on his
side."

"Have you not a daughter, Mr Harding--an unmarried daughter?"

"I have," said he, now standing also, but still playing away on his
fiddle with his hand behind his back. "I have, Sir Abraham; and she
and I are completely agreed on this subject."

"Pray excus