But Tom, even as he plied his knife and fork heard ringing in his ears the words that some instinct or some dim apprehension or prompting of native delicacy had compelled from Dorothy's lips.--"Mister Pinder". Tom had never been called Mister Pinder before in all his life "Gentleman Tom" and "Dandy Tom" he heard occasionally from the lasses of the mill, smarting from that worst of feminine ailments--_injuria formal spietal_,--the quiet unconsciousness of or indifference to advances none too coy. But "Mr. Tom"--'t was the baptism into a new life, the stirring of a new manhood, his accolade; it fell on his senses as falls the sovereign's sword on shoulder of kneeling knight. It was a new and nobler Tom that turned his face that afternoon over the hills to Diggle. "Go to see your sick friend?" Dorothy had cried. "Why, of course you'll go. I'm sure uncle would say so, and anyway if he faults anyone, why he must fault me." "An' aw hope his first mince-pie may choke him if he does," wished Betty, but kept her wishes to herself. Tom was shocked at the change a few weeks had made in the old schoolmaster Mr. Black had, truly, been failing ever since the sudden and unexpected death of the shrill Priscilla some twelve months before. His devoted if exacting sister had gone to that land where there is neither dusting nor teaching, and where she must have received a shaking of cherished convictions if she found any schoolboys. Since then her brother had lived alone, cooking and generally doing for himself, save that one of the boys scrubbed the schoolroom floor and scrubbed the desks, in consideration of being put on the school free-list. More and more as the days wore on the schoolmaster had seemed to shrink within himself, and find a placid joy in the not wholly unpleasing melancholy of reflection and regret. Perhaps Priscilla's faithful girding had been to him like a tonic and an irritant, and saved him from a natural tendency to the introspective absorption of a lonely life. Gradually the nightly symposia at the _Hanging Gate_ were abandoned, much to the wrath of good Mistress Schofield, who roundly declared that "if th' Schooilmaster had nobbut gone theer o' neets, takin' th' best chair, an' sittin' i'th' warmest corner, just to be out o' reick o' his sister's tongue, she for one fun' his room as gooid as his company." Perhaps one reason for Mr. Black's inconstancy might be found in the fact that so long as Priscilla lived, he knew there was a shield and buckler between him and the engines and weapons of attack the buxom widow knew so well how to employ. Priscilla gone, he felt himself as a city girt round and besieged, but helpless and defenceless, its strong tower razed to the ground. Reason be what it might the angle nook of the sanded kitchen knew him no more and the friendly circle had a very sensible gap. And ere long the news, the all but incredible news, spread through t' village, and up the valley, and about the steep hill-sides, that "owd