hope. I
hope Mr. Hawker will use you kindly. Your father hopes that you and he
may come down and live near him, but we know that is impossible. If
your father were to know of your husband's fearful delinquencies, it
would kill him at once. But when trouble comes on you, my love, as it
must in the end, remember that there is still a happy home left you
here."

These letters she never received. George burnt them without giving them
to her, so that for a year she remained under the impression that they
had cast her off. So only at the last did she, as the sole hope of
warding off poverty and misery from her child, determine to cast
herself upon their mercy.

The year had nearly passed, when the Vicar had another stroke, a stroke
that rendered him childish and helpless, and precluded all possibility
of his leaving his bed again. Miss Thornton found that it was necessary
to have a man servant in the house now, to move him, and so on. So one
evening, when Major and Mrs. Buckley and the Doctor had come down to
sit with her, she asked, did they know a man who could undertake the
business?

"I do," said the Doctor. "I know a man who would suit you exactly. A
strong knave enough. An old soldier."

"I don't think we should like a soldier in the house, Doctor," said
Miss Thornton. "They use such very odd language sometimes, you know."

"This man never swears," said the Doctor.

"But soldiers are apt to drink sometimes, you know, Doctor," said Miss
Thornton. "And that wouldn't do in this case."

"I've known the man all my life," said the Doctor, with animation. "And
I never saw him drunk."

"He seems faultless, Doctor," said the Major, smiling.

"No, he is not faultless, but he has his qualifications for the office,
nevertheless. He can read passably, and might amuse our poor old friend
in that way. He is not evil tempered, though hasty, and I think he
would be tender and kindly to the old man. He had a father once
himself, this man, and he nursed him to his latest day, as well as he
was able, after his mother had left them and gone on the road to
destruction. And my man has picked up some knowledge of medicine too,
and might be a useful ally to the physician."

"A paragon!" said Mrs. Buckley, laughing. "Now let us hear his faults,
dear Doctor."

"They are many," he replied, "I don't deny. But not such as to make him
an ineligible person in this matter. To begin with, he is a fool--a
dreaming fool, who once mixed hi