e no
allusion now to your unhappy principles--had you done so it was my fixed
intention to have increased your salary ten pounds per annum, out of my
own pocket, notwithstanding the great claims that are upon me."

"My legal salary, I believe, Mr. Lucre, is seventy-five pounds per
annum, and the value of your benefice is one thousand four hundred. I
may say the whole duty is performed by me. Out of that one thousand four
hundred, I receive sixty; but I shall add nothing more--for indeed I
have yet several visits to make before I go home. As to my orthodoxy,
sir, you will take your own course. To my bishop I am ready to explain
my opinions; they are in accordance with the Word of God; and if for
entertaining them I am deprived of the slender support for which I
labor, as your curate, my trust in God will not be the less."

Mr. Lucre declined any reply, but bowed very politely, and rang
the bell, to order his carriage, as a hint to Mr. Clement that the
conversation was closed. The latter bowed, bade him good morning, and
departed.

When Mr. Clement said he had some visits to make, we must, lest the
reader might suppose they are visits of ceremony, follow his steps in
order to learn the nature of these visits.

About half a mile from the Glebe house of Castle Cumber, the meek and
unassuming curate entered into an abode of misery and sorrow, which
would require a far more touching pen than ours to describe. A poor
widow sat upon the edge of a little truckle bed with the head of one of
her children on her lap; another lay in the same bed silent and feeble,
and looking evidently ill. Mr. Clement remembered to have seen the boy
whom she supported, not long before playing about the cottage, his rosy
cheeks heightened into a glow of health and beauty by the exercise, and
his fair, thick-clustered hair blown about by the breeze. The child was
dying, and the tender power of a mother's love prompted her to keep him
as near her breaking heart as she could, during the short space that
remained of his brief existence. When Mr. Clement entered, the lonely
mother looked upon him with an aspect of such bitter sorrow, of such
helpless supplication in her misery, as if she said, am I left to the
affliction of my own heart! Am I cut off from the piety and comfort,
which distress like mine ought to derive from Christian sympathy and
fellowship! Have I not even a human face to look upon, but those of my
dying children! Such in similar cir