The people of Upton, great and small, conformist or nonconformist, were proud of their rector. It was no unusual sight for a dozen or more carriages from a distance to be seen waiting at the church door for the close of the service, not only on a Sunday morning, when custom demands the observance, but even in the afternoon, when public worship is usually left to servant-maids. There was not a seat to be had for love or money, either by gentle or simple, after the reading of the Psalms had begun. The Dissenters themselves were accustomed to attend church occasionally, with a half-guilty sense, not altogether unpleasant, of acting against their principles. But then the rector was always on friendly terms with them: and made no distinction, in distributing Christmas charities, between the poor old folks who went to church or to chapel, Or, as it was said regretfully, to no place at all. He had his failings; but the one point on which all Upton agreed was, that their church and rector were the best between that town and London. It was a hard struggle with David Chantrey, this beloved rector of Upton, to resolve upon leaving his parish, though only for a time, when his physicians strenuously urged him to spend two winters, and the intervening summer, in Madeira. Very definitely they assured him that such an absence was his only chance of assuring a fair share of the ordinary term of human life. But it was a difficult thing to do, apart from the hardness of the struggle; and the difficulty just verged upon an impossibility. The living was not a rich one, its whole income being a little under L400 a year. Now, when he had provided a salary for the curate who must take his duty, and decided upon the smallest sum necessary for his own expenses, the remainder, in whatever way the sum was worked, was clearly quite insufficient for the maintenance of his young wife and child. They could not go with him; that was impossible. But how were they to live whilst he was away? No doubt, if his difficulty had been known, there were many wealthy people among his friends who would gladly have removed it; but not one of them even guessed at it. Was not Mrs. Bolton, the widow of the late archdeacon, and the richest woman in Upton, own aunt to the rector, David Chantrey?