Two Sundays later the congregation had just left the church, and Portlock was going up to the vestry, when he saw there was something wrong in the clerk's seat. "Why, Sammy, owd man," he cried, "what ails--" He did not finish his broken sentence, but tore open the door of the clerk's desk, the Rector coming forward to where the old man knelt in his accustomed narrow place, his hands upon his book, his head upon his breast, as he had knelt down after the sermon. "He's like ice," whispered the Churchwarden, putting forth his great strength, and lifting the old man bodily out, to lay him by the stove, the Rector placing a cushion beneath his head. The motion seemed to revive the old man for a moment, and he opened his eyes, staring strangely at the Rector, who held one hand. Then his lips moved, and in a voice hardly above a whisper they heard him say-- "Bless--thou!--Bless--thou!--those words would--have killed me." There was a pause, and the Churchwarden was hastening forth to fetch help, when there arose in the now empty church a shrill "_Amen_." It was the old clerk's last. PART ONE, CHAPTER FOUR. AT LAWFORD SCHOOL. "Oh!" in a loud shrill voice; and then a general titter. "Silence! who was that?" "Please, Miss, Cissy Hudson, Miss. Please, Miss, it's Mr Bone." This last delivered in a chorus of shrill voices; and Sage Portlock turned sharply from the semi-circle of children, one and all standing with their toes accurately touching a thickly-chalked line, to see a head thrust into the schoolroom, but with the edge of the door held closely against the neck, pressing it upon the jamb, so that the entire body to which the head belonged was invisible. The head which had been thus suddenly thrust into the schoolroom was not attractive, the face being red and deeply lined with marks not made by age. The eyes were dull and watery, there was a greyish stubble of a couple of days' growth upon the chin, and the hair that appeared above the low brow was rough, unkempt, and, if clean, did no justice to the cleansing hand. "How tiresome!" muttered Sage Portlock, moving towards the door, which then opened, and a tall man, in a very shabby thin greatcoat which reached almost to his heels, stumped into the room. Stumped or thumped--either word will do to express the heavy way in which Humphrey Bone, thirty years master of Lawford boys' school, drew attention to the fact that he had one leg much shorter than the other, the difference in length being made up by a sole of some five inches' thickness, which sole came down upon the red-brick floor like the modified blows of a pavior's rammer.