ou'll pay for what you've ordered, I suppose?"

"Certainly!"

"Then you'll get just what everybody gets for their money,"--and her
smile broadened kindly--"We don't make any difference between poor and
rich."

She retired, and he dropped into a chair, wearily. "We don't make any
difference between poor and rich!" said this simple woman. How very
simple she was! No difference between poor and rich! Where would
"society" be if this axiom were followed! He almost laughed to think of
it. A girl came in and brought his coffee with a plate of fresh
bread-and-butter, a dish of Devonshire cream, a pot of jam, and a small
round basket full of rosy apples,--also a saucer of milk which she set
down on the floor for Charlie, patting him kindly as she did so, with
many admiring comments on his beauty.

"You've brought me quite a breakfast!" said Helmsley. "How much?"

"Sixpence, please."

"Only sixpence?"

"That's all. It's a shilling with ham and eggs."

Helmsley paid the humble coin demanded, and wondered where the "starving
poor" came in, at any rate in Somersetshire. Any beggar on the road,
making sixpence a day, might consider himself well fed with such a meal.
Just as he drew up his chair to the table, a sudden gust of wind swept
round the house, shaking the whole building, and apparently hurling the
weight of its fury on the roof, for it sounded as if a whole stack of
chimney-pots had fallen.

"It's a squall,"--said the girl--"Father said there was a storm coming.
It often blows pretty hard up this way."

She went out, and left Helmsley to himself. He ate his meal, and fed
Charlie with as much bread and milk as that canine epicure could
consume,--and then sat for a while, listening to the curious hissing of
the wind, which was like a suppressed angry whisper in his ears.

"It will be rough weather,"--he thought--"Now shall I stay in Minehead,
or go on?"

Somehow, his experience of vagabondage had bred in him a certain
restlessness, and he did not care to linger in any one place. An
inexplicable force urged him on. He was conscious that he entertained a
most foolish, most forlorn secret hope,--that of finding some yet
unknown consolation,--of receiving some yet unobtained heavenly
benediction. And he repeated again the lines:--

"Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me,
Before I am quite, quite sure
That there is one to love me!"

Surely a Divine Providence there was