Sunday morning; but instead of spending the Sabbath evening in the orthodox way--which at Helmingham consisted in sitting in the best parlour with a very dim light, and enjoying the blessings of sound sleep while Nelson's _Fasts and Festivals_, or some equally proper work, rested on the sleeper's knee, until it fell off with a crash, and was only recovered to be held upside down until the grateful announcement of the arrival of supper--Mr. Joyce was in the habit of dropping into Salem Chapel, where Mr. Stoker, a shining light from the pottery district, dealt forth the most uncomfortable doctrine in the most forcible manner. The Helmingham people declared, too, that Andrew Joyce was "uncanny" in other ways; he was close-fisted and niggardly, his name was to be found on no subscription-list; he was litigious; he declared that Mr. Prickett, the old-fashioned solicitor of the village, was too slow for him, and he put his law-matters into the hands of Messrs. Sheen and Nasmyth, attorneys at Brocksopp, who levied a distress before other people had served a writ, and who were considered the sharpest practitioners in the county. Old Dr. Munch had heard of the process of Messrs. Sheen and Nasmyth, and the dread of any of it being exercised on him originally prompted his offer to Andrew Joyce. He knew that he might count on an ally in Andrew Joyce's wife, a superior woman, in very delicate health, who had great influence with her husband, and who was devoted to her only son. Mrs. Joyce, when Hester Baines, had been a Bible-class teacher in Spindleton, and had had herself a fair amount of education--would have had more, for she was a very earnest woman in her vocation, over striving to gain more knowledge herself for the mere purpose of imparting it to others, but from her early youth she had been fighting with a spinal disease, to which she was gradually succumbing; so that although sour granite-faced Andrew Joyce was not the exact helpmate that the girl so full of love and trust could have chosen for herself, when he offered her his hand and his home, she was glad to avail herself of the protection thus afforded, and of the temporary peace which she could thus enjoy until called, as she thought she should be, very speedily to her eternal rest.