Frank Maberly was the second son of a country gentleman of good property, and was a very remarkable character. His uncle had always said of him, that whatever he chose to take up he would be first in; and his uncle was right. At Eton he was not only the best cricketer and runner, but decidedly the best scholar of his time. At Cambridge, for the first year, he was probably the noisiest man in his college, though he never lived what is called "hard;" but in the second year he took up his books once more, and came forth third wrangler and first class, and the second day after the class-list came out, made a very long score in the match with Oxford. Few men were more popular, though the fast men used to call him crotchety; and on some subjects, indeed, he was very impatient of contradiction. And most of his friends were a little disappointed when they heard of his intention of going into the Church. His father went so far as to say,-- "My dear Frank, I always thought you would have been a lawyer." "I'd sooner be a--well, never mind what." "But you might have gone into the army, Frank," said his father. "I am going into the army, sir," he said; "into the army of Christ." Old Mr. Maberly was at first shocked by this last expression from a son who rarely or never talked on religious matters, and told his wife so that night. "But," he added, "since I've been thinking of it, I'm sure Frank meant neither BLAGUE nor irreverence. He is in earnest. I never knew him tell a lie; and since he was six years old he has known how to call a spade a spade." "He'll make a good parson," said the mother. "He'll be first in that, as he is in everything else," said the father. "But he'll never be a bishop," said Mrs. Maberly. "Why not?" said the husband, indignantly. "Because, as you say yourself, husband, he will call a spade a spade." "Bah! you are a radical," said the father. "Go to sleep." At the time of John Thornton's illness, he had been ordained about a year and a-half. He had got a title for orders, as a curate, in a remote part of Devon, but had left it in consequence of a violent disagreement with his rector, in which he had been most fully borne out by his uncle, who, by the bye, was not the sort of man who would have supported his own brother, had he been in the wrong. Since then Frank Maberly had been staying with his uncle, and, as he expressed it, "working the slums" at Exeter.