buxom woman with the great earrings.

'Dammy, the mis'ess! Your step-mother! Didn't you know I'd married? She
helped me home from market one night, and we came to terms, and struck
the bargain. Didn't we, Selinar?'

'Oi, by the great Lord an' we did!' simpered the lady.

'Well, what sort of a place is this you are living in?' asked the
millwright. 'A kind of house-of-correction, apparently?'

Joshua listened abstractedly, his features set to resignation. Sick at
heart he was going to ask them if they were in want of any necessary, any
meal, when his father cut him short by saying, 'Why, we've called to ask
ye to come round and take pot-luck with us at the Cock-and-Bottle, where
we've put up for the day, on our way to see mis'ess's friends at Binegar
Fair, where they'll be lying under canvas for a night or two. As for the
victuals at the Cock I can't testify to 'em at all; but for the drink,
they've the rarest drop of Old Tom that I've tasted for many a year.'

'Thanks; but I am a teetotaller; and I have lunched,' said Joshua, who
could fully believe his father's testimony to the gin, from the odour of
his breath. 'You see we have to observe regular habits here; and I
couldn't be seen at the Cock-and-Bottle just now.'

'O dammy, then don't come, your reverence. Perhaps you won't mind
standing treat for those who can be seen there?'

'Not a penny,' said the younger firmly. 'You've had enough already.'

'Thank you for nothing. By the bye, who was that spindle-legged, shoe-
buckled parson feller we met by now? He seemed to think we should poison
him!'

Joshua remarked coldly that it was the principal of his college,
guardedly inquiring, 'Did you tell him whom you were come to see?'

His father did not reply. He and his strapping gipsy wife--if she were
his wife--stayed no longer, and disappeared in the direction of the High
Street. Joshua Halborough went back to the library. Determined as was
his nature, he wept hot tears upon the books, and was immeasurably more
wretched that afternoon than the unwelcome millwright. In the evening he
sat down and wrote a letter to his brother, in which, after stating what
had happened, and expatiating upon this new disgrace in the gipsy wife,
he propounded a plan for raising money sufficient to induce the couple to
emigrate to Canada. 'It is our only chance,' he said. 'The case as it
stands is maddening. For a successful painter, sculptor, musician,
author, wh