victim of an ague contracted in his
endeavour to catch a winter effect in a marshy hollow, there was nobody
to mourn him but his motherless child. It was very pitiful, and surely
in the wide world there must have been found some compassionate heart
who would have taken the child by the hand and ministered unto her for
Christ's sake. If any such there were, Gladys had never heard of them,
and did not believe they lived. She was very old in knowledge of the
world, that bitterest of all knowledge, which poverty had taught. She
had even known what it was, that gentle child, to be hungry and have
nothing to eat--a misery enhanced by the proud, sensitive spirit which
was the only heritage John Graham had left the daughter for whom, most
cheerfully, he would have laid down his life. The village people had
been kind after their homely way; but they, working hard all day with
their hands, and eating at eventide the substantial bread of their
honest toil, were possessed of a great contempt for the worn and haggard
man who tramped their meadow-ways with his sketch-books under his arm,
his daughter always with him, preserving still the look and manners of
the gently born, though they wore the shabbiest of shabby garments, and
could scarcely pay for the simple food they ate. It was a great mystery
to them, and they regarded the spectacle with the impatience of those
who did not understand.

It was the month of November, and very early that grey day the chilly
darkness fell. When she could no longer see across the narrow street,
Gladys let her head fall on her hands, and so sat very still. She had
eaten nothing for many hours, and though feeling faint and weak, it did
not occur to her to seek something to strengthen her. She had something
more important than such trifling matters to engross her thoughts. She
was so sitting, hopeless, melancholy, half-dazed, when she heard the
voice of an arrival down-stairs, and the unaccustomed tones of a man's
voice mingling with the shriller notes of Miss Peck, their little
landlady. It was not the curate's voice, with which Gladys had grown
quite familiar during her father's illness. He had been very kind; and
in his desperation, when his end approached, Graham had implored him to
look after Gladys. It was a curious charge to lay upon a young man's
shoulders, but Clement Courtney had accepted it cheerfully, and had even
written to his widowed mother, who lived alone in a Dorsetshire village,
aski