About a week after Hilda Merton's engagement, just when her friends were full of the event, and congratulations began to pour in on all sides, there came a very unexpected blow to the inmates of the peaceful and pretty Rectory. The parish of Little Staunton was large and scattered; it stretched away at one side down to the sea, at another it communicated with great open moors and tracts of the outlying lands of the New Forest. It was but sparsely peopled, and those parishioners who lived in small cottages by the sea, and who earned their living as fishermen, were most of them very poor. Mr. Merton, however, was one of the ideal sort of rectors, who helped his flock with temporal as well as spiritual benefits. The stipend which he received from the church was not a large one, and every penny of it was devoted to the necessities of his poor parishioners. There came an awful morning, therefore, when a short announcement in the local paper, and a long letter from Mr. Merton's lawyer, acquainted him with the fact that the Downshire County Bank had stopped payment. In plain language, Mr. Merton, from being a wealthy man, became suddenly a very poor one. Aunt Marjorie cried when she heard the news; Hilda's face turned very pale, and Judy and Babs, who were both in the room at the time, felt that sort of wonder and perplexity which children do experience when they know something is dreadfully wrong, but cannot in the least understand what it is. In the course of the morning Hilda went to her father in his study. Her face was very white as she opened the door, some of the young soft lines of her early youth seemed to have left it; her beautiful brown eyes looked in a heavy sort of fashion out at the world from their dark surroundings. She came up to her father, and put her hand on his shoulder. He was bending over his desk, busily writing. "What is the matter, Hilda?" he asked, glancing up at her with a quick start, and an endeavor to make his voice sound as usual. "I--I have come, father, to say that if you like, I--I will give up my engagement to Jasper Quentyns." Mr. Merton rose from his seat and put his arm round her neck. "My dear child," he said, "it is my comfort to-day to know that you, at least, are provided for. Quentyns is fairly well off. If he will take you without any fortune, there is certainly no reason why you should not go to him." "Money can't make any difference to Jasper," said Hilda, just a little proudly, although her lips trembled; "but I--it seems wrong that I should be so happy when the rest of you are so miserable."