consider the opportunities of doing good in, perhaps, a
still more important and extensive field than that which he had chosen.

"Time was that I should have grasped at such a prospect," said Norman;
"but I am not the man for it. I have too much ambition, and too little
humility. You know, father, how often you have had to come to my rescue,
when I was running after success as my prime object."

"Vanity fair is a dangerous place, but you who have sound principles and
pure motives--"

"How long would my motives be pure?" said Norman. "Rivalry and
party-spirit make me distrust my motives, and then my principles feel
the shock. Other men are marked by station for such trials, and may be
carried through them, but I am not."

"Yet some of these men are far from your equals."

"Not perhaps in speechifying," said Norman, smiling; "but in steadiness
of aim, in patience, in callousness, in seeing one side of the question
at once."

"You judge rightly for your own peace; you will be the happier; I always
doubted whether you had nerve to make your wits available."

"It may be cowardice," said Norman, "but I think not. I could burn for
the combat; and if I had no scruples, I could enjoy bearing down such
as--"

Of course Dr. May burst in with a political name, and--"I wish you were
at him!"

"Whether I could is another matter," said Norman, laughing; "but the
fact is, that I stand pledged; and if I embraced what to me would be
a worldly career, I should be running into temptation, and could not
expect to be shielded from it."

"Your old rule," said Dr. May. "Seek to be less rather than more. But
there is another choice. Why not a parsonage at home?"

"Pleasant parishes are not in the same need," said Norman.

"I wonder what poor old Rivers would say to you, if he knew what you
want to do with his daughter! Brought up as she has been--to expose her
to the roughness of a colonial life, such as I should hesitate about for
your sisters."

"It is her own ardent desire."

"True, but are girlish enthusiasms to be trusted? Take care, Norman,
take care of her--she is a bit of the choicest porcelain of human kind,
and not to be rudely dealt with."

"No, indeed, but she has the brave enterprising temper, to which I fully
believe that actual work, in a good cause, is far preferable to what she
calls idleness. I do not believe that we are likely to meet with more
hardship than she would gladly encounter, and would almost--nay