no Past; Eternity, the Now is
continuous.... The continuity of Now is for ever.
--RICHARD JEFFERIES.

The party from the Crow's Nest were somewhat late in arriving the
following evening. Verity made her excuses very prettily.

"It was all darling Babs's fault," she said to Miss Templeton; "she
would play instead of going to sleep. Mr. Herrick lost patience at
last, and declared he would go on alone."

"I must take my god-daughter in hand, or she will be ruined body and
soul," observed Malcolm severely. "Babs is already a domestic tyrant,
and screams the house down if any of her fads and fancies are resisted.
I am thinking of writing a series of essays on degenerate and
irresponsible parents, and the cruelty of modern education in the
nursery, which out-Herods Herod." Of course they all laughed at this
idea, and then David Carlyon crossed the room to shake hands with
Malcolm and to introduce his father.

The two men were curiously alike. The Rev. Rupert Carlyon was an older,
shabbier, and more careworn David; but there was the same broad,
intellectual brow, the same bright intelligence of expression, and
their voices were so strangely similar that if Malcolm had closed his
eyes he could not have distinguished between them; they both spoke with
the same quickness, and in the same clipping fashion.

Malcolm noticed before the evening was over that David Carlyon looked
unusually pale and tired, though he seemed in excellent spirits. Dinah
made the same remark to his father.

"Oh, I have been giving that boy of mine a lecture," he said quickly;
"he is a perfect spendthrift and prodigal with regard to the midnight
oil, and burns both ends of his candle in the most reckless fashion."

"I should not have thought a sleepy little place like Rotherwood would
have overtaxed his energies," observed Malcolm in rather a surprised
tone.

The elder man shook his head.

"There is always work enough if one looks for it. My son is a sort of
medical missionary in his way, and concerns himself with the bodies as
well as the souls of his people. The last two nights he has been up
until nearly dawn with a stranger--a sort of commercial traveller who
has been taken ill at 'The Plough.' It is a sad case: he is quite a
young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr.
Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his
son, rising from his bed in the gra