hought and combated the strange ideas that had taken
possession of him of late. He trampled them beneath his feet--he would
not even give them a name; but so sure as he--he, the Reverend Henry
Lambent, M.A., vicar of Plumton All Saints, went into the retirement of
his study to quell the fancies that he told himself were beneath his
dignity as a teacher of men and a gentleman, he thought of Hazel Thorne,
and her face became to him an absolute torture.

The idea was absurd, he knew it was ridiculous, and not to be thought of
for a moment, and consequently he thought of it for hours every day;
dreamed of it every night. It was his first waking thought in the
morning; and in the quietude of the late evening, when he was seated
alone, he found himself filling the chair before him with a well-known
figure, and seeing the face smile upon his as the red lips parted, and
sweet and pure, the simple little school song of the violet in its shady
bed floated to his listening ears.

He told himself that it was absurd, and laughed at it, but it was a
dismal kind of mirth that echoed hollowly in his ears, startling him,
for he fancied that the laughter sounded mocking, and he began to recall
the old legends that he had read about holy men being tempted of the
emissaries of the Evil One, and of the strange guises they had been said
to assume for the better leading of their victims astray.

Was he--he asked himself--being chosen for one of those terrible
temptations? Was he to be the object of one of their assaults?

For the moment he was ready to accept the idea; but directly after, his
common-sense stepped in to point out how weak and full of vanity was
such a fancy. And he then found himself thinking of how sweet and
ladylike Hazel Thorne was in all her dealings with the school children--
how gentle and yet how firm! And if she could be so good a manager of
these children, what would she not be as a wife!

He could not bear the thought, but cast it from him, and half angrily he
wished that Hazel Thorne had never come to the town; but directly after,
his pale handsome face lit up with a smile, his eyelids dropped, and he
began thinking of how bright his life had seemed ever since Hazel Thorne
had come.

"Good-day, Mr Chute. Yes, a nice day," he said, as he came suddenly
upon the schoolmaster, gnashing his teeth as usual, but ceasing the
operation upon finding himself suddenly face to face with his vicar, who
bowed gravely a