“I was housekeeper at the rectory of Medge, ma’am, in the old lady’s time, three years before his reverence was married.” “She means in my grandmother’s days,” put in Mr. Campbell. “And for eighteen years afterward; making twenty-one years in all that I lived with the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell. I held that child, Miss Jennie—Mrs. Montgomery that now is—on my lap when she wasn’t twenty-four hours old. And nursed her and took care of her from the time of her birth until that of her marriage,” said Julia. And Jennie, who was holding her hand, raised and pressed it to her own breast. “Yes; and I have lived with them ever since, up to the time when they left to come up here to Yorkshire. Then I took Mr. Legg’s offer and married him.” “I hope you have been very happy,” said Jennie. “I am as happy, dear, as I can be parted from you all. We came to Haymore to see Uncle Dandy. And we intended to go to-morrow and see you. We little expected to find you here. I haven’t seen his reverence since the day he married John and me.” “That was the last ceremony he ever performed in Medge parish church,” said Mrs. Campbell. While they talked in this manner of strictly personal and domestic matters, the rector himself was one of a group gathered around Mr. Will Walling, who was another Gulliver or Munchausen for telling fabulous adventures of which he himself was the hero. The inevitable subject of mining had suggested to Mr. Will the story of the horrors of penal serviture in the silver mines of the Ural Mountains, and he was telling it as if the false charge, the secret conviction, the exile, the journey, the life in the mines, the escape and flight through the snow and ice of Siberia, and all the attendant awful sufferings had been in his own personal experience. And all his audience listened with the fullest faith and deepest interest—that is, all except two—Ran, who had heard the story told before to-night, and John Legg, who had very recently read it in a dilapidated old volume bought for threepence at a second-hand book stand. Ran was bored, and could hardly repress the rudeness of a yawn; and he saw, besides, that John Legg looked incredulous and sarcastic. Then he thought of the party of sinners who were by this time on their way to Haymore and to judgment. And then that their coming would bring pain and shame to more than one of that party. But all—even poor Jennie—had been prepared for the event except John Legg. Then it occurred to him that he must warn the poor father of the shock that might otherwise overwhelm him. He stopped and said: “Mr. Legg, will you favor me with a few minutes’ conversation in the library?” “Surely, sir,” replied the greengrocer with alacrity as he arose to accompany his host. “Friends, will you excuse us for a few moments?” “Yes, if we must,” replied Will Walling, answering for the company; “but, really, you know, it is a shame to go before you have heard the end of the story.”