Mr. Challoner this evening found that the peroration with which he concluded his sermon took rather less time than he had anticipated, and there was still some ten minutes after he had arranged the sheets in order and placed them under a paper-weight to be read through in the morning before he need go to dress. As his custom was, he closed his eyes for a moment after finishing his work, in silent prayer that it might bear good fruit, and then, hearing the clash of croquet-balls from the garden, he strolled out to see his children. He had had a very unpleasant talk with Martin that morning on the subject of his late failure at Cambridge, and though the occasion seemed to him then and seemed still to have demanded stern speaking, he had wondered several times since whether he had not been too severe. Yet how else except by very earnest remonstrance could he awaken in the lad his sense of responsibility with regard to the spending of the days that would never come again. All his life he had faithfully and strenuously striven to implant in his boy the duty of making the best and the most of his youth. Prayer and work were the two great guides of life. These must be constant and concentrated; and how gravely and mortally would he himself be to blame if through any want of inculcation on his part his son grew up tepid in the one and slack in the other. Still, and here his essential tenderness groped about, Martin was young yet and more tender perhaps in mind even than in years, and the clash of croquet-balls and a sudden burst of boyish laughter from the lawn made him long to enter into his children’s pleasures. So without putting on his hat, for the evening breeze was not too cool to the head, he went out down the box-hedge and round the corner on to the croquet-lawn. Martin, standing with his back to him, had not heard his approach, and was examining the position of his two balls, which were quite close together, but with an uncompromising wire between them. On the bank where they had been sitting lay “The Mill on the Floss,” and Helen was standing close by her brother, in the proud, calm consciousness of having wired him with complete success. “Well, of all the devilish things to do, Helen,” said Martin at length, and struck wildly in the hopes of an impossible cannon off the wire. “My turn, I think,” she said. She walked across to the ball in play and saw her father. “Come and play, father,” she said. “No, dear; thanks. I must go and dress in a few minutes. Martin, old boy, come here a moment.” Again his duty, the need for remonstrance, strove with his tenderness. “Martin,” he said, gently, “that’s rather strong language to use to your sister, isn’t it? Don’t get in that sort of habit, dear fellow; never use words idly like that.” At this all the genial instinctive pleasure faded out of Martin’s face and his eyes fell. “Yes, father, I’m sorry,” he said, in a perfectly dull, conventional voice.