first three months, one hundred dollars were paid to
the minister. When he gave up his school, he sold it out to a person
who wished to succeed him, for two hundred dollars. The expense of
removing to C--, and living there for three months, had quite exhausted
this sum. Mr. Malcolm paid away his last dollar before the quarter's
salary was due, and was forced to let his bread-bill and his meat-bill
run on for a couple of weeks; these were paid the moment he received
his salary.

"I don't like these bills at all," said he to his wife, after they were
paid. "A minister should never owe a dollar; it does him no good. Above
all things, his mind should live in a region above the anxieties that a
deficient income and consequent debt always occasion. We must husband
what we have, and make it go as far as possible."

By the end of two months, the hundred dollars were all expended; but
not a word had been said about the additional three or four hundred
that had been promised, or that Mr. Malcolm fully believed had been
promised. Bills had now to be run up with the baker, grocer, and
butcher, which amounted to nearly fifty dollars when the next quarter's
salary was paid.

Mr. Malcolm did not doubt but the additional amount promised when he
consented to accept the call would be made up; still he could not help
feeling troubled. If things went on as they were going, by the end of
the year he would be in debt at least two hundred dollars; and, of all
things in the world, he had a horror of debt.

During this time, he was in familiar intercourse with the principal
members of his church, and especially with the leading vestrymen who
held out inducements to him beyond the fixed salary; but no allusion
was made to the subject, and he had too much delicacy to introduce it.

At last, matters approached a climax. The minister was about two
hundred dollars in debt, and bills were presented almost every week,
and their settlement politely urged. This was a condition of things not
to be endured by a man of Mr. Malcolm's high sense of right and
peculiar delicacy of feeling. At length, after lying awake for half of
the night, thinking over what was to be done, he came to the reluctant
conclusion that it was his imperative duty to those he owed, to mention
the necessities of his case to the vestry, and learn from them, without
further delay, whether he had any thing beyond the four hundred dollars
to expect.

The hardest task Mr. Malcolm h