The living at Little Yafford was a good one, and the parish was small. It was altogether one of those exceptional cures which are reserved for the more fortunate sons of the Church. Mr. Dulcimer had obtained it while he was still a young man, the living being in the gift of his uncle, Sir Philip Dulcimer, of Hawtree Hall and Yafford Park. Yafford Park was rather a dreary place, with an unwieldly barrack of the Georgian era in the middle of it, and Sir Philip had been very glad to grant a large lease of park and mansion to Mr. Piper, the Great Yafford cotton-spinner, who spent a great deal more money in little Yafford than Sir Philip would have done, but who was looked down upon by his neighbours on principle. Great Yafford, the manufacturing town five miles off, was as Radical a place as you would care to find, but Little Yafford was essentially aristocratic, ignored the commercial element altogether, and thought it an affliction to be so near the tall chimney shafts of the busy town. Little Yafford had perhaps some right to give itself airs, on the strength of being one of the prettiest villages in Yorkshire. It was like a spoiled beauty, and felt that nothing could be too good for it. Great bleak hills rose up between it and the bitter east winds, a river wound in and out of the village like a shining serpent, and licked its green meadows and garden boundaries. The long low stone bridge was as old as the Romans. There was not an ugly house in the place--except that big barrack of Sir Philip’s, and that was hidden behind the fine old elms and oaks of the park. There was not a neglected garden, or an objectionable pigsty. The gentry were all well-to-do people, who bestowed money and care upon the beautification of their homes; while the poorer parishioners were under the influence of Mr. Dulcimer’s sweetness and light, and Mrs. Dulcimer’s active good-nature, and laboured industriously to make their cottages lovely. To come from stony, noisy, smoky, crowded Great Yafford to pastoral Little Yafford, was like coming from purgatory to paradise--an earthly paradise of rustic beauty and placid repose, content, and harmony. Yet Mr. Dulcimer’s last new curate, Cyril Culverhouse, breathed many a thoughtful sigh over the ignorances and even vice which he discovered in this smiling village. Coming out of some cottage door, over which the roses and honeysuckle hung in unpruned luxuriance, his lips would often involuntarily ejaculate the familiar words of the evening collect--‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord.’ CHAPTER II. SWORD AND GOWN.