like himself for this good news.'

'It's all very well,' Jack said, 'but it seems to me if the Squire gets
the money at Easter he might as well have it now. What's the odds?'

'Oh, Jack, they will have the winter to look about them. It does make a
difference.'

'Well,' Jack said, 'I would not trust that man. He has got some reason
for this, depend on it.'

But poor Jack dare not trust himself to ask what that reason might be.
His was a mind slow to reach any conclusion. He was filled with a subtle
uneasiness as to what might be the relations between Bryda and the
Squire, and yet he dared not come to the point and ask the plain
question. Bryda would resent it, and he might lose what was so precious
to him--the Sunday walks and the sight of her who was the light of his
eyes. He only repeated,--

'He has got some reason, I'll warrant.'

'Kindness to an old man of seventy-six years is not that a reason enough
to please you,' Bryda said, and then she added, 'I must go back to the
parlour now. Mrs Lambert will awake and be angry if I am not at hand.
Good-bye, Jack, good-bye. I hope it will be fair weather next Sunday,
and then we'll go to the Redcliffe Meadows again. Good-bye.'

Jack turned away sorrowful and uneasy, determined to watch the movements
of the Squire and question Chatterton about him. 'And yet I should not
like to act spy to _her_,' he sighed, as he went out into the relentless
rain, which pattered on his best Sunday coat and dimmed the glory of the
large gilt buttons with moisture.

In a city like Bristol, then as now, many stories of love and hatred, of
vain aspirations and blighted hopes, are told out, of which the
passer-by in the busy streets knows nothing.

To-day, as yesterday, our hermit spirits dwell apart, and even those
with whom we live in daily intercourse but dimly guess what reason we
have to smile or sigh.

Perhaps there never has been anyone, dwelling apart in the dreams of
romance, and the world of the past peopled by his own fervid
imagination, whose short, sad story can be compared with that of Mr
Lambert's apprentice.

At this time of which I write--when Bryda Palmer was full of her own
troubles, and with many misgivings tried to persuade herself she had
given Mr Bayfield no promise, yet dreading lest he should interpret her
acquiescence in the delay as a promise--Chatterton was brooding over his
wrongs, and in August was in a frenzy of indignation when he received
his cherishe