owncast face, and hands as if she were praying. He tapped on the glass,
and as she rushed to the door he met her with a flag of truce in the
form of a requisition for aid.

"Miss Wort, I know you are a liberal soul, and here is a case where you
can do some real good, if you will be guided," he said firmly. "I was
going to appeal to Lady Latimer, but I have put so much on her
ladyship's kindness lately--"

"Oh, Mr. Carnegie! I have a right to help here," interrupted Miss Wort.
"A _right_, for poor Tom was years and years in my Sunday-school class;
so he can't be very bad! Didn't Admiral Parkins and the other
magistrates say that they would rather send his master to prison than
him, if they had the power?"

"Yes; but he has done his prison now, and the pressing business is to
keep him from going altogether to the deuce. I want him to have a good
meal of meat three or four times a week, and light garden-work--all he
is fit for now. And then we shall see what next."

"I wo'ant list and I wo'ant emigrate; I'll stop where I am and live it
down," announced Tom doggedly.

"Yes, yes, that is what I should expect of you, Tom," said Miss Wort.
"Then you will recover everybody's good opinion."

"I don't heed folks' opinions, good or bad. I know what I know."

"Well, then, get your cap, and come home to dinner with me; it is roast
mutton," said Miss Wort, as if pleading with a fractious child.

Tom rose heavily, took his cap, and followed her out. Mr. Carnegie
watched them as they turned down a back lane to the village, the lathy
figure of the lad towering by the head and shoulders above the poke
bonnet and drab cloak of Miss Wort. He was talking with much violent
gesture of arm and fist, and she was silent. But she was not ruminating
physic.

"Miss Wort is like one of the old saints--she is not ashamed in any
company," said Bessie Fairfax.

"If justice were satisfied with good intentions, Miss Wort would be a
blameless woman," said her father.

A few minutes more brought the ride to an end at the doctor's door. And
there was a messenger waiting for him with a peremptory call to a
distance. It was a very rare chance indeed that he had a whole holiday.
His reputation for skill stood high in the Forest, and his practice was
extensive in proportion. But he had health, strength, and the heart for
it; and in fact it was his prosperity that bore half the burden of his
toils.

CHAPTER V.

_GREAT-ASH FORD._

A wee