he had disappeared, and no one knew what had become
of him. Then, suddenly, as I say, he reappeared at Golden Friars--a
very black and silent man, sedate and orderly. His mother was dead and
buried; but the "prodigal son" was received good-naturedly. The good
vicar, Doctor Jenner, reported to his wife:

"His hard heart has been softened, dear Dolly. I saw him dry his eyes,
poor fellow, at the sermon yesterday."

"I don't wonder, Hugh darling. I know the part--'There is joy in
Heaven.' I am sure it was--wasn't it? It was quite beautiful. I almost
cried myself."

The Vicar laughed gently, and stooped over her chair and kissed her,
and patted her cheek fondly.

"You think too well of your old man's sermons," he said. "I preach,
you see, Dolly, very much to the _poor_. If _they_ understand me, I am
pretty sure everyone else must; and I think that my simple style goes
more home to both feelings and conscience--"

"You ought to have told me of his crying before. You _are_ so
eloquent," exclaimed Dolly Jenner. "No one preaches like my man. I
have never heard such sermons."

Not many, we may be sure; for the good lady had not heard more than
six from any other divine for the last twenty years.

The personages of Golden Friars talked Toby Crooke over on his return.
Doctor Lincote said:

"He must have led a hard life; he had _dried in_ so, and got a good
deal of hard muscle; and he rather fancied he had been soldiering--he
stood like a soldier; and the mark over his right eye looked like a
gunshot."

People might wonder how he could have survived a gunshot over the eye;
but was not Lincote a doctor--and an army doctor to boot--when he was
young; and who, in Golden Friars, could dispute with him on points of
surgery? And I believe the truth is, that this mark had been really
made by a pistol bullet.

Mr. Jarlcot, the attorney, would "go bail" he had picked up some sense
in his travels; and honest Turnbull, the host of the George and
Dragon, said heartily:

"We must look out something for him to put his hand to. _Now's_ the
time to make a man of him."

The end of it was that he became, among other things, the sexton of
Golden Friars.

He was a punctual sexton. He meddled with no other person's business;
but he was a silent man, and by no means popular. He was reserved in
company; and he used to walk alone by the shore of the lake, while
other fellows played at fives or skittles; and when he visited the
kitchen of