"Happy to draw the marriage settlements," ventured the unabashed attorney. "Thank you, Edwin Sykes will do that," was the reply. Wimpenny returned to his siege of the facile heart of the lively Polly, and in time wedded her. But their marriage was not a happy one. Nehemiah's attachment to the bar of the _Rose and Crown_ survived Polly's translation to a loftier sphere of life. He became a confirmed tippler, and his clients left him one after the other. He became in time that most pitiable of objects--a pot-house lawyer, and only escaped the last disgrace of a lawyer's life because no one would trust him with their money. Ben Garside took to Methodism in his old age, and wore glossy black-cloth o' Sundays. But he always averred that he had fallen from his best ideals, and suffered the fear for his own soul to deaden his concern for the souls of others. He and Jack smoked many a pipe together in the calm summer months of peaceful and prosperous years, seated on the crumbling walls of Co-op. Mill, and mourning over a vanished dream. The last sage dictum of Ben to be recorded in this narrative suggested its title. It was uttered on the eve of his friend's wedding. "Aw reckon, Tom, as ha' tha'll be goin' to Aenon Chapel after tha'rt wed?" "Why so?" asked Tom "Cost tha'rt one o' th' elect." "I don't take you, Ben." "Why, mon, doesn't elect mean chossen." "I suppose so, Ben." "Why, doesn't ta see, tha'rt Dorothy's choice?" THE END. THE HOLMFIRTH FLOOD. As many of the readers of "Dorothy's Choice" may not be conversant with the facts upon which that story is based, and as those who are may wish to have in concise form a historical narrative of that great catastrophe the following account, taken from the author's "History of Huddersfield and Its Vicinity," is appended:-- "The Bilberry Reservoir is situated at the head of a narrow gorge or glen, leading from the Holme Valley, at Holme Bridge, to a high bluff of land called Good Bent, and was supplied by two streams flowing through the cloughs running to the north-east and south-east of Good Bent, and draining the Moors of Holme Moss on the one side and the hills running up to Saddleworth on the other, including some thousands of acres of moorland. The confluence of the streams takes place between two large hills, called Hoobrook Hill and Lum Bank, and which run parallel to each other for a distance of about one hundred and fifty yards, when they open out and form an extensive oval basin of not less than three hundred yards diameter. The reservoir formed by blocking up the valley below the basin enclosing some twelve acres of surface. It was defective in its original construction, and was for a long time known to be in a most dangerous condition. At the time when the embankment gave way the quantity of water in the reservoir would not be less than eighty-six million two hundred and forty-eight thousand gallons or the enormous and fearful amount of three hundred thousand tons in weight.