"Oh, but that is absurd, Mr Portlock, highly absurd. No, I regret it very much, but he must go. There, I will see him myself." The Rector saw the old clerk sooner than he expected, for in crossing the churchyard next day he met him going up to the church. "Poor old fellow! ninety-three," said the Rector to himself, as he looked curiously at the strange old figure tottering up the rough cobble-stone path. "Good-morning, Warmoth," he said. "Here, give me your hand." The old man stopped short, thumped his stick down, and peered up fiercely. "Nay, nay, nay," he groaned, "not so owd as all that, mester. I can do it yet. Let me bide, I'm reight yet. Yow want to get shut o' me--to drift me off. Yow thowt wi' your new ways that I wasn't good enew for t' church, but revvylootion or no revvylootion, I stick to church as my fathers did afore me. When I'm down theer, and can howd out no more, thou mun do thy worst." "That's all put aside, Mr Warmoth," said the Rector, smiling. "I do want to make improvements here, but not to that extent. I did not want to hurt your feelings. Come, shake hands." "Nay; I'll not," cried the old man, fiercely, his bearing seeming to have wonderfully altered now. "Thou want'st to get round me wi' soft words, but I'll howd thee off--I'll howd thee off. There ain't every servant of t' owd church like me, and I'll howd my own unto the last." "My good old fellow, Heaven forbid that I should be guilty of so unkind an act. You shall stop on, Warmoth, till the last, for no act of mine shall remove you from your post." The old man's jaw fell, and he stepped back, slipped, and would have fallen, but for the Rector's hands, to which the old fellow clung spasmodically, his face working, his lips twitching in his efforts to speak. But for a long time no words would come, and then but two, twice repeated, though with earnest emphasis-- "Bless thee! Bless thee!" Then, quickly snatching his hands away, the old man turned aside, leaned his trembling arm against a tombstone which had gradually encroached upon the path, and stood with his head bent down, trying to recover his strength. It was a strange contrast: the thin, sharply featured old man, and the handsome portly figure of the Rector, as he stood there vexed with himself at having, as he called it, been so weak as to give way at the first difficulty that he had to encounter; and he afterwards came to the conclusion that he might just as well have held out, for the people gave him the credit of killing old Warmoth so as to have his way. "Let me help you into the church to sit down for a bit," he said to the trembling old man. Old Warmoth turned and laid one hand upon the Rector's, gazing up in his face, and there was a piteous smile upon his withered lips. "I was afraid thou'd want me to go as soon as I heard thou was coming back; and they said thou'dst get shut o' me. But sixty year, sir! It would have killed me. I couldn't have beared to go."