his Bob wrote to Miss Ormiston, saying,
"My father's indignation is natural, and can only be conquered by
time. But I love you always."

Miss Ormiston replied, "Your father's indignation is natural, perhaps.
But if you love me, it might be conquered by something else," or words
to that effect. At any rate, her letter implied that as it was Bob,
and not his father, who proposed to make her a wife, it was on Bob,
and not on his father, that she laid the responsibility of fulfilling
the promise.

But Bob was weak as water. Love had given him one brief glimpse of the
real world: then his father and mother began to talk, and the covers
of the Family Bible closed like gates upon his prospect. At the end
of a week he wrote--"Nothing shall shake me, dear Ethel. Still, some
consideration is due to them; for I am their only son."

To this Ethel Ormiston sent no answer; but reflected "And what
consideration is due to me? for you are my only lover."

For a while Bob thought of enlisting, and then of earning an honest
wage as a farm-labourer; but rejected both notions, because his
training had not taught him that independence is better than
respectability--yea, than much broadcloth. It was not that he hankered
after the fleshpots, but that he had no conception of a world without
fleshpots. In the end his father came to him and said--

"Will you give up this girl?"

And Bob answered--

"I'm sorry, father, but I can't."

"Very well. Rather than see this shame brought on the family, I will
send you out to Australia. I have written to my friend Morris, at
Ballawag, New South Wales, three hundred miles from Sydney, and he is
ready to take you into his office. You have broken my heart and your
mother's, and you must go."

And Bob--this man of twenty-one or more--obeyed his father in this,
and went. I can almost forgive him, knowing how the filial habit
blinds a man. But I cannot forgive the letter he wrote to Miss
Ormiston--whom he wished to make his wife, please remember.
Nevertheless she forgave him. She had found another situation, and was
working on. Her parents were dead.

Five years passed, and Bob's mother died--twelve years, and his father
died also, leaving him the lion's share of the money. During this time
Bob had worked away at Ballawag and earned enough to set up as lawyer
on his own account. But because a man cannot play fast and loose with
the self-will that God gave him and afterwards expect to do much
in the