et all the funds therein applicable to parson's work is
this miserable stipend of one hundred and thirty pounds a year. It
is a stipend neither picturesque, nor time-honoured, nor feudal, for
Hogglestock takes rank only as a perpetual curacy.

Mr. Crawley has been mentioned before as a clergyman of whom Mr.
Robarts said, that he almost thought it wrong to take a walk out of
his own parish. In so saying Mark Robarts of course burlesqued his
brother parson; but there can be no doubt that Mr. Crawley was a
strict man,--a strict, stern, unpleasant man, and one who feared God
and his own conscience. We must say a word or two of Mr. Crawley and
his concerns. He was now some forty years of age, but of these he had
not been in possession even of his present benefice for more than
four or five. The first ten years of his life as a clergyman had
been passed in performing the duties and struggling through the life
of a curate in a bleak, ugly, cold parish on the northern coast of
Cornwall. It had been a weary life and a fearful struggle, made up
of duties ill requited and not always satisfactorily performed, of
love and poverty, of increasing cares, of sickness, debt, and death.
For Mr. Crawley had married almost as soon as he was ordained, and
children had been born to him in that chill, comfortless Cornish
cottage. He had married a lady well educated and softly nurtured, but
not dowered with worldly wealth. They two had gone forth determined
to fight bravely together; to disregard the world and the world's
ways, looking only to God and to each other for their comfort. They
would give up ideas of gentle living, of soft raiment, and delicate
feeding. Others,--those that work with their hands, even the
bettermost of such workers--could live in decency and health upon
even such provision as he could earn as a clergyman. In such manner
would they live, so poorly and so decently, working out their work,
not with their hands but with their hearts.

And so they had established themselves, beginning the world with
one bare-footed little girl of fourteen to aid them in their small
household matters; and for a while they had both kept heart, loving
each other dearly, and prospering somewhat in their work. But a man
who has once walked the world as a gentleman knows not what it is to
change his position, and place himself lower down in the social rank.
Much less can he know what it is so to put down the woman whom he
loves. There are a th