his way took him frequently
over the hillside and down the lane--why, it was a very nice walk, and
there was nothing to be surprised at.

The only person who might have noticed where he went, and how long he
sometimes lingered, was Jane Sands, and I cannot help thinking that in
old days she would have done so; but then, as we have seen, she was not
quite the same Jane Sands she used to be, or at any rate not quite what
we used to fancy her, devoted above all things to her master and his
interests, but much absorbed in her own matters, and in those Stokeley
friends of hers. She had asked for a rise in her wages too, which Mr
Robins assented to; but without that cordiality he might have done a
few months before, and he strongly suspected that when quarter-day
came, the wages went the same way as those baby clothes, for there was
certainly no outlay on her own attire, which, though always
scrupulously neat, seemed to him more plain and a shade more shabby
than it used to be.

As the summer waxed and waned, the love for little Zoe grew and
strengthened in the organist's heart. It seemed a kind of possession,
as if a spell had been cast on him; in old times it might have been set
down to witchcraft; and, indeed, it seemed something of the sort to
himself, as if a power he could not resist compelled him to seek out
the child--to think of it, to dream of it, to have it so constantly in
his mind and thoughts, that from there it found its way into his heart.
To us, who know his secret, it may be explained as the tie of blood,
the drawing of a man, in spite of himself, towards his own kith and
kin; blood is thicker than water, and the organist could not reject
this baby grandchild from his natural feelings, though he might from
his house. And beyond and above this explanation, we may account for
it, as we may for most otherwise unaccountable things, as being the
leading of a wise Providence working out a divine purpose.

Perhaps the punishment that was to come to the organist by the hands of
little Zoe--those fat, dimpled, brown hands, that flourished about in
the air so joyously when he whistled a tune to her--began from the very
first, for it was impossible to think of the child without thinking of
the mother, and to look at Zoe without seeing the likeness that his
fond fancy made far plainer than it really was; and to think of the
mother and to see her likeness was to remember that meeting in the
churchyard, and the sad