How often is this so! times without number; the weak have to struggle while the strong look on. Women and children labour while full-grown men rest; the sick and the feeble have all the powers of darkness to encounter, while the athlete yawns his unoccupied force away. So this strange paradox of a world runs on. The Minor Canon, who was of very gentle mould, with a heart open as day to melting charities, sat and thought of it with a giddiness and vertigo of the heart. He could not change it. He could not take up Lottie’s trouble and give her his calm. One cannot stand in another’s place--not you in mine, nor I in yours--though you may be a hundred times more capable of my work than I. This was what Ernest Ashford thought sitting among his peaceful books, and following Lottie Despard in imagination into the little lodge which was her battlefield. Sympathy gave him the strongest mental perception of all that took place there. The only thing he had no clue to was the sweet and secret flood of consolation which subdued her sense of all her troubles--which already had drowned the dread of the future, and floated over with brightness the difficulties of the present in Lottie’s heart. Next morning Law arrived at the house of the Minor Canon, considerably to his own surprise, with his big Virgil under his arm. “I don’t know whether you meant it, or if she understood you,” he said, shy and uncomfortable, looking down at his shoes, and presenting the top of his head rather than his face to Mr. Ashford’s regard, “but my sister said----” “Yes; I meant it fully. Sit down and tell me what you have been doing, and whereabouts you are in your work. I have a pupil coming presently with whom probably you might read----” “Well, you must know that I haven’t been what you might call working very hard, you know,” said Law, still butting at his future instructor with the top of his head. He sat down as Mr. Ashford directed him, but he did not give up the earnest contemplation of his boots. “It isn’t so easy to get into the way of it when you’re working alone. I left school a long time ago--and I don’t know that it was much of a school--and latterly I was a little bit irregular--and so, you know----” “I see,” said the Minor Canon; “however, it is not too late to do better. What is that big book under your arm--Virgil? Very well. Construe a passage for me, and let me see how you get on.” “Shall I do a bit I know, or a bit I don’t know?” said Law, raising his head this time with a doubtful gleam, half of merriment. “Of course, I want to put my best foot foremost--but I don’t want to take you in all the same.” “I must trust you entirely on that point--or give me the book, I will choose, and chance shall decide.”