pect to come out
safe--" and then he grasped tightly hold of Ethel's hands, and, as if
the terror had suddenly flashed on him, asked her, with dilated eye and
trembling voice, whether she were sure that he was safe, and held the
faith.

Ethel repeated his asseveration, and her father covered his face with
his hands in thanksgiving.

After this, he seemed somewhat inclined to hold poor Oxford in horror,
only, as he observed, it would be going out of the frying-pan into the
fire, to take refuge at Paris--a recurrence to the notion of Norman's
medical studies, that showed him rather enticed by the proposal.

He sent Ethel to bed, saying he should talk to Norman and find out what
was the meaning of it, and she walked upstairs, much ashamed of having
so ill served her brother, as almost to have made him ridiculous.

Dr May and Norman never failed to come to an understanding, and after
they had had a long drive into the country together, Dr May told Ethel
that he was afraid, of what he ought not to be afraid of, that she was
right, that the lad was very much in earnest now at any rate, and if he
should continue in the same mind, he hoped he should not be so weak as
to hold him from a blessed work.

From Norman, Ethel heard the warmest gratitude for his father's
kindness. Nothing could be done yet, he must wait patiently for the
present, but he was to write to his uncle, Mr. Arnott, in New Zealand,
and, without pledging himself, to make inquiries as to the mission; and
in the meantime, return to Oxford, where, to his other studies, he was
to add a course of medical lectures, which, as Dr. May said, would do
him no harm, would occupy his mind, and might turn to use wherever he
was.

Ethel was surprised to find that Norman wrote to Flora an expression of
his resolution, that, if he found he could be spared from assisting his
father as a physician, he would give himself up to the mission in New
Zealand. Why should he tell any one so unsympathetic as Flora, who would
think him wasted in either case?

CHAPTER XVII.

Do not fear: Heaven is as near,
By water, as by land.--LONGFELLOW.

The fifth of May was poor Harry's eighteenth birthday, and, as usual,
was a holiday. Etheldred privately thought his memory more likely to be
respected, if Blanche and Aubrey were employed, than if they were left
in idleness; but Mary would have been wretched had the celebration been
omitted, and a leisure day was never