George nodded, and went back to Merle, who was wiping his eyes with his coat-sleeve. "My good friend," said the scholar, "do me two favours, besides the greater one you have already bestowed in conducting me back to a revered friend. First, let me buy of you the contents of that basket; I have children amongst whom I would divide them as heirlooms; next, as we were travelling hither, you told me that, in your younger days, ere you took to a craft which does not seem to have prospered, you were brought up to country pursuits, and knew all about cows and sheep, their care and their maladies. Well, I have a few acres of glebe-land on my own hands, not enough for a bailiff--too much for my gardener--and a pretty cottage, which once belonged to a schoolmaster, but we have built him a larger one; it is now vacant, and at your service. Come and take all trouble of land and stock off my hands; we shall not quarrel about the salary. But harkye, my friend--on one proviso--give up the Crystal, and leave the Stars to mind their own business." "Please your Reverence," said Merle, who, at the earlier part of the address, had evinced the most grateful emotion, but who, at the proviso which closed it, jerked himself lip, dignified and displeased--"Please your Reverence, no! Kit Merle is not so unnatural as to swop away his Significator at Birth for a mess of porritch! There was that forrin chap, Gally-Leo--he stuck to the stars, or the sun, which is the same thing--and the stars stuck by him, and brought him honour and glory, though the Parsons war dead agin him. He had Malefics in his Ninth House, which belongs to Parsons." "Can't the matter be compromised, dear Mr. George?" said Waife, persuasively. "Suppose Merle promises to keep his crystal and astrological sehemes to himself, or at least only talk of them to you;-- they can't hurt you, I should think, sir? And science is a sacred thing, Merle; and the Chaldees, who were the great star-gazers, never degraded themselves by showing off to the vulgar. Mr. George, who is a scholar, will convince you of that fact." "Content," said George. "So long as Mr. Merle will leave my children and servants, and the parish generally, in happy ignorance of the future, I give him the fullest leave to discuss his science with myself whenever we chat together on summer moons or in winter evenings; and perhaps I may--" "Be converted?" said Waife, with a twinkling gleam of the playful Humour which had ever sported along his thorny way by the side of Sorrow. "I did not mean that," said the Parson, smiling; "rather the contrary. What say you, Merle? Is it not a bargain?" "Sir--God bless you!" cried Merle, simply; "I see you won't let me stand in my own light. And what Gentleman Waife says as to the vulgar, is uncommon true."