ide and
ignorance, stupidity and stinginess.

But to Tom, in his sorest need, arose a new and most unexpected
coadjutor; and this was the way in which it came to pass.

For it befell in that pleasant summer time, "when small birds sing and
shaughs are green," that Thurnall started, one bright Sunday eve, to
see a sick child at an upland farm, some few miles from the town.
And partly because he liked the walk, and partly because he could no
other, having neither horse nor gig, he went on foot; and whistled as
he went like any throstle-cock, along the pleasant vale, by flowery
banks and ferny walls, by oak and ash and thorn, while Alva flashed
and swirled, between green boughs below, clear coffee-brown from last
night's rain. Some miles up the turnpike road he went, and then away
to the right, through the ash-woods of Trebooze, up by the rill which
drips from pool to pool over the ledges of grey slate, deep-bedded in
dark sedge, and broad bright burdock leaves, and tall angelica, and
ell-broad rings and tufts of king, and crown, and lady-fern, and all
the semi-tropic luxuriance of the fat western soil, and steaming
western woods; out into the boggy moor at the glen head, all fragrant
with the gold-tipped gale, where the turf is enamelled with the hectic
marsh violet, and the pink pimpernel, and the pale yellow leaf-stars
of the butterwort, and the blue bells and green threads of the
ivy-leaved campanula; out upon the steep smooth down above, and away
over the broad cattle-pastures; and then to pause a moment, and look
far and wide over land and sea.

It was a "day of God." The earth lay like one great emerald, ringed
and roofed with sapphire; blue sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead.
There she lay, not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath joy, as
though her two great sisters, of the sea and air, had washed her weary
limbs with holy tears, and purged away the stains of last week's
sin and toil, and cooled her hot worn forehead with their pure
incense-breath, and folded her within their azure robes, and brooded
over her with smiles of pitying love, till she smiled back in answer,
and took heart and hope for next week's weary work.

Heart and hope for next week's work.--That was the sermon which it
preached to Tom Thurnall, as he stood there alone, a stranger and a
wanderer, like Ulysses of old; but, like him, self-helpful, cheerful,
fate-defiant. In one respect indeed, he knew less than Ulysses, and
was more of