The difficulties around her were immense; in the narrow circle in which she lived she had not any present chances of meeting with any person likely to be able to give her the position which she sought, far less of rendering him subservient to her wishes. But she waited and hoped; she was waiting and hoping, calmly and quietly fulfilling the ordinary duties of her very ordinary life, but never losing sight of her fixed intent. Then across the path of her life there came a man who seemed to give promise of eventually fulfilling the requirements she had planned out for herself. It was but a promise; there was nothing tangible; but the promise was so good, and the girl's heart yearned for an occupant, for, with all its hard teaching and its worldly aspirations, it was but human after all. So her human heart and her worldly wisdom come to a compromise in the matter of her acceptance of a lover, and the result of that compromise was her engagement to Walter Joyce. When the Helmingham Grammar School was under the misrule of old Dr. Munch, then at its lowest ebb, and nominations to the foundation were to be had for the asking, and, indeed, in many cases sent a-begging, it occurred to the old head master to offer one of the vacancies to Mr. Joyce, the principal grocer and maltster of the village, whose son was then just of an age to render him accessible to the benefits of the education which Sir Ranulph Clinton had devised to the youth of Helmingham, and which was being so imperfectly supplied to them under the auspices of Dr. Munch. You must not for an instant imagine that the offer was made by the old doctor out of pure loving-kindness and magnanimity; he looked at it, as he did at most things, from a purely practical point of view: he owed Joyce the grocer so much money, and if Joyce the grocer would write him a receipt in full for all his indebtedness in return for a nomination for Joyce junior, at least he, the doctor, would not have done a bad stroke of business. He would have wiped out an existing score, the value of which proceeding meant, in Dr. Munch's eyes, that he would be enabled at once to commence a fresh one, while the acquisition of young Joyce as a scholar would not cause one atom of difference in the manner in which the school was conducted, or rather, left to conduct itself. The offer was worth making, for the debt was heavy, though the doctor was by no means sure of its being accepted. Andrew Joyce was not Helmingham-born; he had come from Spindleton, one of the large inland capitals, and had purchased the business which he owned. He was not popular among the Helmingham folk, who were all strict church-people so far as morning-service attending, tithe-paying, and parson-respecting were concerned, from the fact that his religious tendencies were suspected to be what the villagers termed "Methodee." He had his seat in the village church, it is true, and put in an appearance there on the