maid?"

"Yes, Grace there. I always call her my maid; having no father, poor
thing, she looks up to me as one, pretty much,--the dear soul. Oh,
sir! I hope you'll think over this again, before you do anything. It's
done in a day: but years won't undo it again."

So Grace's sayings were quoted against him. Her power was formidable
enough, if she dare use it. He was silent awhile, and then--

"Do you think she has heard of this--of my--"

"Honesty's the best policy, sir: she has; and that's the truth. You
know how things get round."

"Well; and what did she say?"

"I'll tell you her very words, sir; and they were these, if you'll
excuse me. 'Poor dear gentleman,' says she, 'if he thinks chapel-going
so wrong, why does he dare drive folks to chapel? I wonder, every time
he looks at that deep sea, he don't remember what the Lord said about
it, and those who cause his little ones to offend.'"

Frank was somewhat awed. The thought was new; the application of the
text, as his own scholarship taught him, even more exact than Grace
had fancied.

"Then she was not angry?"

"She, sir! You couldn't anger her if you tore her in pieces with hot
pincers, as they did those old martyrs she's always telling about."

"Good-bye, Willis," said Frank, in a hopeless tone of voice, and
sauntered to the pier-end, down the steps, and along the lower
pier-way, burdened with many thoughts. He came up to the knot of
chatting sailors. Not one of them touched his cap, or moved out of the
way for him. The boat lay almost across the whole pier-way; and he
stopped, awkwardly enough, for there was not room to get by.

"Will you be so kind as to let me pass?" asked he, meekly enough. But
no one stirred.

"Why don't you get up, Tom?" asked one.

"I be lame."

"So be I."

"The gentleman can step over me, if he likes," said big Jan; a
proposition the impossibility whereof raised a horse-laugh.

"Ain't you ashamed of yourselves, lads?" said the severe voice of
Willis, from above. The men rose sulkily; and Frank hastened on, as
ready to cry as ever he had been in his life. Poor fellow! he had been
labouring among these people for now twelve months, as no man had ever
laboured before, and he felt that he had not won the confidence of a
single human being,--not even of the old women, who took his teaching
for the sake of his charity, and who scented popery, all the while, in
words in which there was no popery, and in doctrines which were jus