ing
to hush it, she declared that she would only go if he did, and to my
amazement he yielded and she led him off in her chains.

He made no comment, but on the next Sunday I found him pocketing an
immense parcel of sweets. He walked into the town with us, and when I
expected him to turn off to his friend's lodging, he said, "Lucy, if
you prefer the old church, I'll take Dora to the school. I like the
little monkeys."

He went, and he went again and again, towering among the pigmies in the
great room, kneeling when they knelt, adding his deep bass to the
curate's in their songs, responding with them, picking up the sleepy
and fretful to sit on his knee during the little discourse and the
catechising; and then, outside the door, solacing himself and them with
a grand distribution of ginger-bread and all other dainty cakes,
especially presenting solid plum buns, and even mutton pies, where
there were pinched looks and pale faces.

It was delightful, I have been told, to see him sitting on the low wall
with as many children as possible scrambling over him, or sometimes
standing up, holding a prize above his head, to be scrambled for by the
lesser urchins. It had the effect of rendering this a highly popular
service, and the curate was wise enough not to interfere with this
anomalous conclusion to the service, but to perceive that it might both
bless him that gave and those that took.

In the early part of the autumn, one of the little members of the
congregation died, and was buried just after the school service. Harold
did not know of it, or I do not think he would have been present, for
he shrank from whatever renewed the terrible agony of that dark time in
Australia.

But the devotions in the school were full of the thought, the metrical
litany was one specially adapted to the occasion, so was the brief
address, which dwelt vividly, in what some might have called too
realising a strain, upon the glories and the joys of innocents in
Paradise. And, above all, the hymns had been chosen with special
purpose, to tell of those who--

For ever and for ever
Are clad in robes of white.

I knew nothing of all this, but when I came home from my own church,
and went to my own sitting-room, I was startled to find Harold there,
leaning over the table, with that miniature of little Percy, which, two
months before, he had bidden me shut up, open before him, and the tears
streaming down his face.

In