I took on Brother Augustine or Mr. Mills. Some called him one, some the other, and rightly, for he had two aspects, very distinct. When I engaged him he was aged, I suppose, thirty-five, but it was impossible to say what his age really was: he was one of those men who look old when twenty, and never alter. He did not tell me his age. He was as coy as an old maid about that, but he was very ready to tell me his story, and it was an odd one. He had been given when quite a little boy by his father, in Colchester, to the Roman Catholic priest there, who brought him up, and made him serve him daily at the altar, black his boots, and help the old housekeeper to make the beds, and dust the rooms, and clean the dishes. He also brought in the meals. This went on till, as Mr. Mills said to me, “the dear old priest got so very old that he was fit for nothing but to be chaplain to a convent, so he was moved away, and then I had to be put somewhere. So I was put with Hyams, the tailor.” How long Mills was with Hyams I do not know, but the swirl of life in freedom after the even and quiet of a parsonage was more than he could bear, and he took it into his head to become a monk. He entered on his novitiate, “And,” said he, “they shaved my head, and I have been a martyr to neuralgia ever since.” After a while he was sent to Rome. I cannot now recall what the Order was into which he had entered. “I got into trouble there,” said Brother Augustine. “You must know that I am passionately fond of cats, and I had not had a cat to pat and coax ever since I had become a monk. Well, one day we were walking in procession down the long street in Trastevere, when I saw a white cat, with one paw black and one ear black, sitting in a doorway of a house. I could not help myself. The sight of that puss was too much for my pent-up feelings—there was a sort of void in me that only a cat could fill. Well, I broke out of the procession and ran to the cat to catch it up. But it was frightened, and made a bolt and was gone. That set all the monks off laughing to see me after the cat. We had been singing a psalm, and they could not get on with it. I was put on bread and water for a week, all because of that cat.” Brother Augustine was not happy in Rome, and was teased with neuralgia. After a twelvemonth he was sent back to England, and he had made up his mind not to take the vows. So on landing at London he gave the slip to the monk who was sent along with him, and found his way into some sort of refuge for runaway monks and nuns that had been set up, just as there are refuges for stray cats and dogs. There he made acquaintance with Miss Headly Vicars, who was most kind to him, and of her he spoke with deep regard. By her advice he became a Scripture reader, or if not by her advice, with her consent.