and a third could not go unless his
wife let him.

Consequently the bridegroom was badly supported. He was not the man
to make friends, and such acquaintances of his as appeared did
so, not out of friendship, but in expectation of eating and drinking
at the landlord's table.

This angered Jonas, who, in church, on looking around, had noticed
that his own family had failed to attend, but that they should
fail also at the feast was what surprised him.

"It don't matter a rush," scoffed he in Mehetabel's ear, "we can
get along without 'em, and if they won't come to eat roast duck
and green peas, there are others who will and say 'Thank'y.'"

The announcement of Jonas's engagement had been indeed too bitter
a morsel for his sister to swallow. She resented his matrimonial
project as a personal wrong, as a robbery committed on the Rocliffes.
Her husband was not in good circumstances; in fact, the family
had become involved through a marriage, to which allusion has
already been made; and had not thereafter been able to recover
from it.

She had felt the pressure of debt, and the struggle for existence.
It had eaten into her flesh like a canker, and had turned her
heart into wormwood. In her pinched circumstances, even the pittance
paid by her brother for doing his cooking and washing had been a
consideration. This now was to be withdrawn.

Sarah Rocliffe had set her ambition on the acquisition of her
brother's estate, by which means alone, as far as she could see,
would the family be enabled to shake off the incubus that oppressed
it. Content in her own lifetime to drudge and moil, she would have
gone on to the end, grumbling and fault-finding, indeed, but
satisfied with the prospect that at some time in the future her
son would inherit the adjoining farm and be lifted thereby out of
the sorry position in which was his father, hampered on all sides,
and without cheeriness.

But this hope was now taken from her. Jonas was marrying a young
and vigorous wife, and a family was certain to follow.

The woman had not the command over herself to veil her feelings,
and put on a semblance of good humor, not even the grace to put in
an appearance at the wedding.

The story must now be told which accounts for the embarrassed
circumstances of the Rocliffe family.

This shall be done by means of an extract from a periodical of the
date of the event which clouded the hitherto flourishing condition
of the Rocliffes. The period