Of course, Mr. Birkett's consent was a necessary preliminary to Alick's departure, but there was no difficulty about it. The military rector was tired to death, so he used to say, of his zealous young aide-de-camp, and hailed the prospect of getting rid of him handsomely with a frank pleasure not flattering to poor Alick's self-love. "Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," he said. "It will be better for you to have a place of your own, where you can carry out your new ideas. You see I am an old man now, and have learnt the value of letting well alone. You are in all the fever-time of zeal, and believe that vice and ignorance are like the walls of Jericho, to fall down when you blow your trump. I do not. But on the whole, it is as well that you should learn the realities of life for yourself, and carry your energies where they may be useful." "Then you do not mind?" asked Alick boyishly. The rector gave a loud clear laugh. "Mind! a thousand times no," he said, rubbing his plump white hands. "I can manage well enough alone, and if I cannot there are dozens of young eligibles ready to jump at the place. Mind! no. Go in Heaven's name, and may you be blessed in your undertaking!" The last words came in as grace-lines, and with them Alick felt himself dismissed. If the rector had been facile to deal with, Mrs. Corfield was not. When she heard of the proposed arrangement, and that she was to lose her boy for the second time out of her daily life, and more permanently than before, her grief was as intense as if she had been told of his approaching death. She wept bitterly, and even bent herself to entreaty; but Alick, to whom North Aston had become a dungeon of pain since Leam went, held pertinaciously to his plan--not without sorrow, but surely without yielding. He was fascinated by the idea of a cure where he might be sole master, not checked by rectorial ridicule when he wished to establish night schools or clothing clubs, penny savings banks, or any other of the schemes in vogue for the good of the poor; thinking too, not unwisely, that the best heal-all for his sorrow was to be found in change of scene and more arduous work together. Also, he thought that if his vague tentative advertisements in the papers, which he dared not make too evident, had as yet brought nothing, some more satisfactory way of discovering Leam's hiding-place might shape itself when he was alone, freer to act as he thought best. On all of which accounts he resisted his mother's grief, and his own at seeing her grieve, and decided on going down to Monk Grange the next day.