destroyed instead of trying to renovate.

"Why not build a new church at once?" he said, with a certain youthful
intolerance that made people angry. "Never mind the vicarage; the old
house will last my time: but a place like this--a rising place--ought
to have a church worthy of it. It will be money thrown away to restore
this one," finished the young vicar, looking round him with sorely
troubled eyes; and it was this outspoken frankness that had lost him
popularity at first.

But, if the new vicar had secret cause for discontent in the Drummond
family there was nothing but the sweetness of triumph.

"Archie has never given me a moment's trouble from his birth," his
proud mother was wont to declare; and it must be owned that the young
man had done very fairly for himself.

There had been plenty of anxiety in the Drummond household while
Archibald was enjoying his first Oxford term. Things had come to a
climax: his father, who was a Leeds manufacturer, had failed most
utterly, and to a large amount. The firm of Drummond & Drummond, once
known as a most respectable and reliable firm, had come suddenly, but
not unexpectedly to the ground; and Archibald Drummond the elder had
been compelled to accept a managership in the very firm that, by
competition and underselling, had helped to ruin him.

It was a heavy trial to a man of Mr. Drummond's proud temperament; but
he went through with it in a tough, dogged way that excited his wife's
admiration. True, his bread was bitter to him for a long time, and the
sweetness of life, as he told himself, was over for him; but he had a
large family to maintain, sons and daughters growing up around him,
and the youngest was not yet six months old; under such circumstances
a man may be induced to put his pride in his pocket.

"Your father has grown quite gray, and has begun to stoop. It makes my
heart quite ache to see him sometimes," Mrs. Drummond wrote to her
eldest son; "but he never says a word to any of us. He just goes
through with it day after day."

At that time Archie was her great comfort. He had begun to make his
own way early in life, understanding from the first that his parents
could do very little for him. He had worked well at school, and had
succeeded in obtaining one or two scholarships. When his university
life commenced, and the household at Leeds became straitened in their
circumstances, he determined not to encumber them with his presence.

He soon became know