ary to the nature of those who dwells in
the woods and lanes. I will not deny that the clergyman--and especially
the young clergywoman--had been very good to him; but for which he would
probably have run away long before. But what is bred in the bone comes
out in the flesh. He does pretty well with the learning, and he bears
with the confinement of school, though it is worse than that of the
clergy-house. But when a rumour has crept out that he is not the son of
the clergyman nor of the clergywoman, and he is taunted with being a
gipsy and a vagrant, he lays his bare hands on those nearest to him, my
daughter, and comes away on his bare feet."

"How did he find you, Mother?"

"He has no fixed intentions beyond running away, my daughter; but as he
is sitting in a hedge to bandage one of his feet with his handkerchief,
he sees our patteran, and he goes on, keeping it by the left, and sees
it again, and so follows it, and comes home."

"You mean that he came to you?"

"I do, my dear. For home is not a house that never moves from one place,
built of stone or brick, and with a front door for the genteel and a
back door for the common people. If it was so, prisons would be homes.
But home, my daughter, is where persons is whom you belongs to, and it
may be under a hedge to-day and in a fair to-morrow."

"Mother," said Sybil, "what did you do about the ten pounds?"

"I will tell you, my daughter. I was obliged to wait longer than was
agreeable to me before proceeding to that neighbourhood, for the police
was searching everywhere, and it would be wearisome to relate to you
with what difficulty Christian was concealed. My plans had been long
made, as you know.

"Clergyfolk, my daughter, with a tediousness of jaw which makes them as
oppressive to listen long to as houses is to rest long in, has their
good points like other persons; they shows kindness to those who are in
trouble, and they spends their money very freely on the poor. This is
well known, even by those who has no liking for parsons, and I have more
than once observed that persons who goes straight to the public-house
when they has money in their pockets, goes straight to the parson when
their pockets is empty.

"It is also well known, my daughter, that when the clergyman collects
money after speaking in his church, he doesn't take it for his own use,
as is the custom with other people, such as Punch and Judy men, or
singers, or fortune tellers; at the same t