Always at the call of the poor of his district, the Reverend Arthur Sterne sighed as, slowly descending towards the court, he tried to drive away the words that seemed to ring in his ears; but in vain, for the next moment he was muttering them once more; and the thought came upon him that, for many months past, he had been gazing at the Hardon family through a pleasant medium--a softening mist, glowing with bright colours, but now swept away by one rude blast, so that he looked upon this scene of life in all its rugged truthfulness. He told himself that the mist had once opened to afford him a glimpse, while again and again he smiled at the folly which had led him to expect romance in a London court. The pleasant outlines and softened distance, toned down by the light mists, were gone now, and he gazed upon nothing but the cold, bare reality. It was strange; but he did not ask himself whether the bitter blast might not have brought with it some murky, distorted cloud, whose shade had been cast athwart the picture upon which, he now woke to the fact, he had dearly loved to gaze; and still muttering to himself, he slowly went down step by step. "So young, so pure-looking! But who could wonder, living in this atmosphere of misery? But what is it to me?" he cried angrily; for strange thoughts and fancies came upon him, and his mind was whispering of a wild tale. The thoughts of the past, too, came--of the happy days when, in early manhood, he had loved one as fair and bright--one whom another bridegroom had claimed, as having been betrothed to him from her birth. The cold earth had been her nuptial-bed, and he, the lover, became the gloomy retired student until his appointment to a city curacy, and the devotion of his life to the sorrows of the poor. But again he bit his lip angrily, at making the comparison between the dead and the living. What connection was there between them, and of what had he been dreaming? What indeed! After years upon years of floating down life's stream,--a calm and sad, but placid journey, unruffled but by the sorrows of others,--he now awoke to the fact that unwittingly he had halted by a pleasant spot, where he had been loitering and dreaming of something undefined--something fraught with memories of the past; and now he had been rudely awakened and recalled to the duties he had chosen. He passed into the court, and stood for a few moments gazing at where there was a cellar opened, with half a score of children collected to drop themselves or their toys down; while, being a fresh arrival upon the scene, a cluster of the little ones began to get beneath his feet, and run against him, or give themselves that pleasant cramp known as "a crick in the neck," by staring up in his face; but he freed himself from his visitors by hastily entering the opposite house.