ood-on-the-Heath, to have taken a personal dislike to him. He
wished to publicly apologize for the injustice he had unwittingly done
to their heads and to their hearts. He now had it from their own lips
that a libel had been put upon them. So far from their wishing his
departure, it was self-evident that his going would inflict upon them
a great sorrow. With the knowledge he now possessed of the respect--one
might almost say the veneration--with which the majority of that
congregation regarded him--knowledge, he admitted, acquired somewhat
late--it was clear to him he could still be of help to them in their
spiritual need. To leave a flock so devoted would stamp him as an
unworthy shepherd. The ceaseless stream of regrets at his departure that
had been poured into his ear during the last four days he had decided
at the last moment to pay heed to. He would remain with them--on one
condition.

There quivered across the sea of humanity below him a movement that
might have suggested to a more observant watcher the convulsive
clutchings of some drowning man at some chance straw. But the Rev.
Augustus Cracklethorpe was thinking of himself.

The parish was large and he was no longer a young man. Let them provide
him with a conscientious and energetic curate. He had such a one in his
mind's eye, a near relation of his own, who, for a small stipend that
was hardly worth mentioning, would, he knew it for a fact, accept the
post. The pulpit was not the place in which to discuss these matters,
but in the vestry afterwards he would be pleased to meet such members of
the congregation as might choose to stay.

The question agitating the majority of the congregation during the
singing of the hymn was the time it would take them to get outside
the church. There still remained a faint hope that the Rev. Augustus
Cracklethorpe, not obtaining his curate, might consider it due to his
own dignity to shake from his feet the dust of a parish generous in
sentiment, but obstinately close-fisted when it came to putting its
hands into its pockets.

But for the parishioners of St. Jude's that Sunday was a day of
misfortune. Before there could be any thought of moving, the Rev.
Augustus raised his surpliced arm and begged leave to acquaint them with
the contents of a short note that had just been handed up to him. It
would send them all home, he felt sure, with joy and thankfulness in
their hearts. An example of Christian benevolence was among t