The unteachable, the never-to-be-convinced, shook his head. ‘Joe will suit me best,’ he said. And thus the bargain was made. He was to have a moderate allowance, his passage-money, and his outfit. He was shipped off with his friend, decently clothed, well fitted out as he desired, and disappeared into the West. When his children, half-glad, half-miserable, went to see him off, he bade them be cheerful and not fret. ‘For there is no telling when the fancy may take me, and I may turn up again,’ he said. The hearts of Susie and John sank within them at this last blessing which he flung at them over the side of the ship, which was already beginning to churn the water on her passage outward-bound. They did not see the twinkle in his eye, nor know that he meant it for a joke in the humorous simplicity of his heart. Susie married her curate shortly after, very quietly, without any fuss, in London, an event which caused much excitement in Edgeley, but none where it took place. The Rev. Percy Spencer never mentioned it at all, or allowed that he knew of it. But he spoke of ‘that fool Cattley,’ and was so violent about the late curate’s mismanagement of the parish that even the mild rector, who never made any appearance save in extremity, took up the cudgels on behalf of the absent. ‘It will be well for you if you do half as much for the parish in your day as Cattley did in his,’ the rector said; and his son aghast at this unexpected defence ventured to say no more. Mrs. Egerton treated the matter in the contrary way. She made, perhaps, too great a joke of it, talking to everybody on the subject. ‘Such a good thing for him,’ she said, ‘going into a new place: and a good little nonentity of a wife who will adore him, which is what our good Mr. Cattley was little used to.’ But she sent the pair a wedding present, and was what Susie called very kind. This marriage was no help to Elly, however, in the arduous piece of work which she found she had before her when she got home. It made matters a little worse. It turned Percy into an open and violent foe, and it shook a little the wavering sympathy which Mrs. Egerton always accorded her. And as for the rector, whom Elly had declared her faith in, he did not respond as she had hoped. He was a true gentleman, he was as good as Chaucer’s ‘very parfit gentle knight’--he was all his daughter had claimed for him to be. But he, too, shuddered at the name of the convict. Like all the older people, he remembered May’s story, and all about him: and to permit his daughter, the quintessence of the family excellence and pride, the flower of all the kindred, to connect herself with such a race was more than Mr. Spencer’s generosity, or his kindness, or even Elly’s influence could bring him to. He retired into that stronghold of silence which is so redoubtable. He would not argue nor give his reasons; he would not enter into the abstract question. He acknowledged, or at least he did not contest, the merits of John. But,