"Hi! hi! hi!" the old man laughed. "Make me two noo best shirts o' fine linen as a man may be proud on. Ill wind as blows nobody any good." The old man went chuckling away, as he thought over the two new Sunday shirts he was to have made out of the surplice, which, after unpicking and cutting off edgings, he had washed and dried and handed as so much new material to Dally to make up, long immunity from detection having made him daring enough to trust the linen to the very place that, to an ordinary observer, would have seemed most dangerous. But the shirts were not made yet, for Dally had declared it to be all bother, and had put the roll of linen in her drawer, inspired by a feeling that gran'fa couldn't live much longer, and then the linen would do for her. Oddly enough, as Moredock mused upon the whiteness and coolness of the coming undergarments, the carrier stopped at the Rectory gate, and delivered a parcel, carriage paid by North Midland Railway to King's Hampton station, but sixpence to pay for the ten miles by cart. "Dear me!" said Salis, turning over the package, which was evidently a box done up in very stout brown paper. "`The Reverend Hartley Salis, Duke's Hampton Rectory, Warwickshire. By N.M. Rail and Thompson, carrier. Carriage paid to King's Hampton.' Well, that's plain enough, Mary." "Yes, dear; it's evidently for you." "Yes, evidently for me; eh, Leo?" "Yes," said Leo, looking up from her book for a moment, and dropping her eyes again without displaying any further interest. "It's very curious," said Salis, rather excitedly. "`From Irish and Lawn, robe makers, Southampton Street.' Why, surely--bless my soul, I never sent. I--" He busily cut the string, and opened the paper and the neatly-tied box within, to find, as, after reading the label, he had expected, that the contents consisted of a new surplice of the finest quality with a note pinned thereto, and written within, in a tremulous, disguised hand: "From an admirer." The word "admirer" had been lightly scratched across, and "constant attendant" placed above. Salis looked at the note, and then at his sister Mary, colouring with excitement as ingenuously as a girl. "Why, Mary," he said, "who could have sent this? Do you know?" Mary shook her head, but her eyes brightened with pleasure, as she felt how gratified her brother would be. "Did not you and Leo contrive this as a surprise?" Mary shook her head again, and Leo looked up languidly. "What is it?" she said. "A present? No," she added, with a frown, as she saw what it was, and lowered her eyes to her book to read apparently with great interest. "Then it must be one of North's tricks," cried Salis. "It's very kind and thoughtful of him, but I cannot think of letting him give me such a present as this. Look, Mary, dear. It is his writing disguised, is it not?"