“But, as I told you, I am a poor scholar in these high matters,” resumed the curate, “and I want to bring Mr. Polwarth to see him.” “The dwarf!” exclaimed Helen, shuddering at the remembrance of what she had gone through at the cottage. “Yes. That man’s soul is as grand and beautiful and patient as his body is insignificant and distorted and troubled. He is the wisest and best man I have ever known. “I must ask Leopold,” returned Helen, who, the better the man was represented, felt the more jealous and fearful of the advice he might give. Her love and her conscience were not yet at one with each other. They parted at the door from the garden, and she returned to the sick-room. She paused, hesitating to enter. All was still as the grave. She turned the handle softly and peeped in: could it be that Wingfold’s bearing had communicated to her mind a shadow of the awe with which he had left the place where perhaps a soul was being born again? Leopold did not move. Terror laid hold of her heart. She stepped quickly in, and round the screen to the side of the bed. There, to her glad surprise, he lay fast asleep, with the tears not yet dried upon his face. Her heart swelled with some sense unknown before: was it rudimentary thankfulness to the Father of her spirit? As she stood gazing with the look of a mother over her sick child, he lifted his eyelids, and smiled a sad smile. “When did you come into the room?” he said. “A minute ago,” she answered. “I did not hear you,” he returned. “No, you were asleep.” “Not I! Mr. Wingfold is only just gone.” “I have let him out on the meadow since.” Leopold stared, looked half alarmed, and then said, “Did God make me sleep, Helen?” She did not answer. The light of a new hope in his eye, as if the dawn had begun at last to break over the dark mountains, was already reflected from her heart. “Oh! Helen,” he said, “that IS a good fellow, SUCH a good fellow!” A pang of jealousy, the first she had ever felt, shot to her heart: she had hitherto, since his trouble, been all in all to her Leopold! Had the curate been a man she liked, she would not perhaps have minded it so much. “You will be able to do without me now,” she said sadly. “I never could understand taking to people at first sight!”