She asked her mother this, and Mrs. Wesley fenced with the question while hardening her heart. In truth she feared what might happen if Hetty stayed. They had made some new acquaintances at Wroote and at Bawtry there was a lover, a young lawyer . . . a personable young man, reputed to be clever in his profession. . . . Mrs. Wesley knew nothing to his discredit . . . and sure, Hetty's face might attract any lover. So her thoughts ran, without blaming the girl, whose heart she believed to be engaged, though she could not tell how deeply. But the Rector must be considered, and he had taken an instant and almost frantic dislike for the youth. There was nothing unusual in this: for, like many another uxorious man (with all his faults of temper he was uxorious), Mr. Wesley hated that anyone should offer love to his daughters. This antipathy of his had been a nuisance for ten years past; since the girls were, when all was said, honest healthy girls with an instinct for mating, and not to be blamed for making their best of the suitors which Epworth and its neighbourhood provided. But since Sukey's marriage it had deepened into something like a mania, and now, in Hetty's case, flared up with a passion incomprehensible if not quite insane. He declared his hatred of lawyers—and certainly he had suffered at their hands: he forbade the young man to visit the house, to correspond with Hetty, even to see her.

Mrs. Wesley watched her daughter and was troubled. The Rector's veto had been effective enough once or twice with Hetty's sisters. Emilia, on a visit with her uncle Matthew in London, had fallen passionately in love with a young Oxonian named Leybourne. But Sam's wife had discovered something to his discredit and had spoken to Sam, and Sam to the Rector. The match was broken off, and Emilia renounced her love, though she never forgave the mischief-maker. Patty again had formed an attachment for John Romley, who had been a pupil of Sam's, had afterwards graduated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was now the ambitious young master of the Free School at Epworth. Again the Rector interfered, and Patty sighed and renounced her romance. Would Hetty, too, renounce and acquiesce? Mrs. Wesley doubted: nay, was even afraid. Hetty alone had never been overawed by her father, had never acknowledged the patria potestas with all its exorbitant claims. She had never actually revolted, but she defied, somehow, the spell he had cast upon the others: and somehow— here was the marvel—Mrs. Wesley, who more than any other of the family had yielded to the illusion and fostered it, understood Hetty the better for her independence. The others, under various kinds of pressure, had submitted: but here was the very woman she might have been, but for her own submission! And she feared for that woman. Hetty must leave Wroote, or there was no knowing how it might end.

"Mother, I believe you are afraid of what I may do."

Mrs. Wesley, incapable of a lie or anything resembling it, bent her head. "I have been afraid, once or twice," she said.

"So you send me away? That seems to me neither very brave nor very wise. Will there be less danger at Kelstein?"

Her mother started. "Does he know of your going? You don't tell me he means to visit you there?"

"Forgive me, dearest mother, but your first question is a little foolish—eh?" Hetty laughed and quoted:

"But if she whom Love doth honour Be conceal'd from the day— Set a thousand guards upon her, Love will find out the way."

She put up her chin defiantly.

"I wish, child, you would tell me if—if this is much to you," said Mrs. Wesley wistfully, with a sudden craving to put her arms around her daughter and have her confidence.

Hetty hesitated for a fatal moment, then laughed again. "I am not a child precisely; and we read one another, dear, much better than we allow. Your second question you have no right to ask. You are sending me away—"

"No right, Hetty?"

"You are sending me away," Hetty repeated, and seemed to be considering. After a pause she added slowly: "You others are all under papa's thumb, and you make me a coward. But I will promise you this"—here her words began to drag—"and to strengthen me no less than to ease your fears, I promise it, mother. If the worst come to the worst, it shall not be at Kelstein that I choose it, but here among you all. I think you will gain little by sending me to Kelstein, mother: but you need not be afraid for me there."

"You speak in enigmas."

"And my tone, you would say, is something too theatrical for your taste? Well, well, dear mother, 'tis the privilege of a house with a doom upon it to talk tragedy: for, you know, Molly declares we have a doom upon us, though we cannot agree what 'tis. I uphold it to be debt, or papa's tantrums, or perhaps Old Jeffrey [apparently the Wesley family ghost] but she will have it to be something deeper, and that one day we shall awake and see that it includes all three."

"It appears to be my doom," said Mrs. Wesley, her face relaxing, "to listen to a deal of nonsense from my daughters."

"And who's to blame, dear? You chose to marry at twenty, and here you have a daughter unmarried at seven and twenty. Now I respect and love you, as you well know: but every now and then reason steps in and proves to me that I am seven years your senior—which is absurd, and the absurder for the grave wise face you put upon it. So come along, sweet-and-twenty, and help me pack my buskins." Hetty led the way upstairs humming an air which (though her mother did not recognise it) was Purcell's setting of a song in Twelfth Night:

"Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know."



CHAPTER VII.

On the day fixed, and at nine in the morning, Dick Ellison, who had promised to drive Hetty over to Kelstein, arrived with his gig. Sukey accompanied him, to join in the farewells and spend a few hours at the parsonage pending his return.

Now these visits of Sukey's were a trial to her no less than to her mother and sisters. She knew that they detested her husband, and (what was worse) she had enough of the Wesley in her to perceive why and how: nevertheless, being a Wesley, she kept a steady face on her pain. Stung at times to echo Dick's sentiments and opinions, as it were in self-defence, she tried to soften them down and present them in a form at least tolerable to her family. It was heroic, but uncomfortable; and they set aside the best parlour for it.

Sukey would have preferred the kitchen. In person she was short and plump, and her face expressed a desire to be cheerful. She had little or none of that grace by which her sisters walked in the commonest cotton frocks as queens. In childhood she had been noted for her carelessness in attire, and now obediently flaunted her husband's taste in bonnets.

Her headdress to-day had a dreadful coquettishness. Dick had found it at Lincoln and called on the company to admire. It consisted of three large mock water-lilies on a little mat of muslin, and was perched on her piled hair so high aloft that their gaze, as they scanned it, seemed to pass far over her head. She longed to tear it down, cast it on the floor, and be the Sukey they knew.

The plate of cake and biscuits on the table gave the parlour a last funereal touch. Dick was boisterously talkative. The others scarcely spoke. At length Hetty, who had been struggling to swallow a biscuit, and well-nigh choking over it, rose abruptly, kissed her mother, and went straight to her father's room.

He sat at his writing-table, busy as usual with his commentary upon the Book of Job. At another table by the window Johnny Whitelamb bent over a map, with his back to the light. He glanced up as she entered: she could not well read his eyes for the shadow, and perhaps for some dimness in her own: but he rose, gathered his papers together, and slipped from the room.

"Papa, Dick Ellison is in the parlour."

"So my ears inform me."

"He wishes to see you."

"Then you may take him my compliments and assure him that he will not."

"But, papa, the gig is at the door. I have come to say good-bye."

"Ah, in that case I will step out to the door and see you off; but I will not be button-holed by Dick Ellison." He rose and stood eyeing her, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger. "You have something to say to me, I suspect."

"I am going to Kelstein," Hetty began firmly. "I would like to obey you there, sir, as the others do at home. I do not mean outwardly: but to feel, while I am absent, that I am earning—" She paused and cast about for a word.

"You will be earning, of course. There is always satisfaction in that."

"I am not thinking of money."

"Of my approval, then? Your employer, Mr. Grantham, is an honest gentleman: I shall trust his report of you."

"Papa, I came to beg you for more than that. Will you not let me feel that I am earning something more?—that if, as times goes on, my conduct pleases you, you will be more disposed to consider—to grant me—"

"Mehetabel!"

"I love him, papa! I cannot help it. Sir—!"

She put out both hands to him, her eyes welling. But he had turned sharply away from her cry, and strode across the room in his irritation. Her hands fell, and one caught at the edge of the table for support while she leaned, bowing her head.

He came abruptly back. "Are you aware, Mehetabel, that you have proposed a bargain to me? I do not bargain with my children: I expect obedience. Nor as a father am I obliged to give my reasons. But since you are leaving us, and I would not dismiss you harshly, let me say that I have studied this man for whom you avow a fondness; and apart from his calling—which I detest—I find him vain, foppish, insincere. He has levitas with levitas: I believe his heart to be as shallow as his head. I know him to be no fit mate for one of my daughters; least of all for you who have gifts above your sisters—gifts which I have recognised and tried to improve. Child, summon your pride to you, and let it help your obedience." He broke off and gazed out of the window. "If," said he more softly, "our fate be not offered to us, we must make it. If, while our true fate delays, there come to us unworthy phantoms simulating it, we should test them; lest impatient we run to embrace vanity, and betray, not our hopes alone, but the purpose God had in mind for us from the beginning."

Hetty looked up. She might have thought that she was twenty-seven, and asked herself how long was it likely to be before a prince came across those dreary fields to the thatched parsonage, seeking her. But her heart was full of the man she loved, and she thought only that her father did him bitter injustice.

She shivered and lifted her face. "Good-bye, papa," she said coldly.

He kissed her on the cheek, and took a step to follow her to the door; but thought better of it and returned to the window. He heard the door close upon her, and five minutes later saw her whisked away in the gig by Dick Ellison's side.



CHAPTER VIII.

He continued to stare out of the window long after the gig had disappeared over the low horizon: a small, nervous, indomitable figure of a man close upon his sixty-second birthday, standing for a while with his back turned upon his unwieldy manuscripts and his jaw thrust forward obstinately as he surveyed the blank landscape. He had the scholar's stoop, but this thrust of the jaw was habitual and lifted his face at an angle which gave an "up-sighted" expression to his small eyes, set somewhat closely together above a long straight nose. Nose, eyes, jaw announced obstinacy, and the eyes, quick and fiery, warned you that it was of the aggressive kind which not only holds to its purpose, but never ceases nagging until it be attained. In build he was lean and wiry: in carriage amazingly dignified for one who (to be precise) stood but 5 feet 5 and a half inches high.

His father had been a non-juring clergyman, one of the many ejected from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662; and he himself had been educated as a Nonconformist at Mr. Morton's famous academy on Newington Green, where Daniel Defoe had preceded him as a pupil, and where he had heard John Bunyan preach. At the conclusion of his training there he was pitched upon to answer some pamphlets levelled against the Dissenters, and this set him on a course of reading which produced an effect he was far from intending: for instead of writing the answer he determined to renounce Dissent and attach himself to the Established Church. He dwelt at that time with his mother and an old aunt, themselves ardent Dissenters, to whom he could not tell his design. So he arose before daybreak one morning, tramped sixty miles to Oxford, and entered himself at Exeter College as a poor scholar. This was in August, 1683.

He took up his residence in Oxford with forty-five shillings in his pocket. He studied there five years, and during that time received from his family and friends just five shillings; obtained his Bachelor's degree, and departed seven pounds and fifteen shillings richer than when he entered the University. The winter of 1683 was a hard beginning for a scholar too poor to buy fuel, the cold being so severe in the Thames valley that coaches plied as freely on the river from the Temple to Westminster as if they had gone upon the land. Yet "I tarried," he afterwards wrote, "in Exeter College, though I met with some hardships I had before been unacquainted with, till I was of standing sufficient to take my Bachelor's degree; and not being able to subsist there afterwards, I came to London during the time of my Lord Bishop of London's suspension by the High Commission, and was instituted into deacon's orders by my Lord Bishop of Rochester, at his palace at Bromley, August 7th, 1688."

He had maintained himself by instructing wealthier undergraduates and writing their exercises for them (as a servitor he had to black their boots and run their errands); also by scribbling for John Dunton, the famous London bookseller, whose acquaintance he had made during his last year at Mr. Morton's. With all this he found time and the will to be charitable, and had visited the poor creatures imprisoned in the Castle at Oxford—many for debt. He lived to take the measure of this kindness, and to see it repeated by his sons.

Maggots: or Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled was no very marketable book of rhymes. Yet it served its purpose and helped him, through Dunton, to become acquainted with a few men of letters and learning. He had something better, too, to cheer his start in London. Dunton in 1682 had married Elizabeth, one of the many daughters of Dr. Samuel Annesley, the famous Dissenter, then preaching at a Nonconformist church which he had opened in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. Young Wesley, a student at Newington Green, had been present at the wedding, with a copy of verses in his pocket: and there, in a corner of the Doctor's gloomy house in Spital Yard, he came on the Doctor's youngest daughter, a slight girl of fourteen, seated and watching the guests.

She was but a child, and just then an unhappy one, though with no childish trouble. Minds ripened early in Annesley House, where scholars and divines resorted to discuss the battle raging between Church and Dissent. Susanna Annesley had listened and brooded upon what she heard; and now her convictions troubled her, for she saw, or thought she saw, the Church to be in the right, and herself an alien in her father's house, secretly rebellious against those she loved and preparing to disappoint them cruelly. She knew her father's beliefs to be as strong and deep as they were temperately expressed.

So it happened that Samuel Wesley, halting awkwardly (as a hobbledehoy will) before this slip of a girl and stammering some words meant to comfort her for losing her sister, presently found himself answering strange questions, staring into young eyes which had somehow surprised his own doubts of Dissent, and beyond them into a mind which had come to its own decision and quietly, firmly, invited him to follow. It startled him so that love dawned at the same moment with a lesser shock. He seated himself on the window cushion beside her, and after this they talked a very little, but watched the guests, feeling like two conspirators in the crowd, feeling also that the world was suddenly changed for them both.

And thus it came about that Samuel Wesley dropped his pen, packed his books, and tramped off to Oxford. He was back again now, after five years, with his degree, but no money as yet to marry on. He started with a curacy at 28 pounds a year; was appointed chaplain on board a man-of-war, when his income rose to 70 pounds; and began an epic poem on the Life of Christ, scribbling (since he had leisure) at the rate of two hundred couplets a day; but soon returned to London, where he obtained a second curacy and 30 pounds year. His pen earned him another 30 pounds, and on this he decided to marry.

Between him and Susanna Annesley there had been little talk of love, but no doubt at all. She was now close upon twenty, and ready to marry him when he named the day. So married they were, in 1689. Less than a year later their first child, Samuel, was born in their London lodgings, and soon after came an offer, from the Massingberd family, through the Marquis of Normanby, of the living of South Ormsby in Lincolnshire. Thither accordingly they journeyed on Midsummer Day, 1690, and there resided until the spring of 1697 in a vicarage little better than a mud-built hut. There Mrs. Wesley bare Emilia, Susannah and Molly, besides other children who died in infancy, and there the Rector put forth his Life of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. A heroic poem in ten books: besides such trifles as "The Young Student's Library: containing Extracts and Abridgments of the most Valuable Books printed in England and in the Foreign Journals from the year '65 to this time. To which is added A New Essay upon all sorts of Learning."

Close by the parish church stood the Hall, the great house of the Lord Marquis of Normanby who in 1694 made Mr. Wesley his domestic chaplain. The Marquis was a rake, and he and his mistresses gave the poor clergyman many searchings of heart. There was one who took a fancy to Mrs. Wesley and would be intimate with her. Coming home one day and finding this visitor seated with his wife, Mr. Wesley went up to her, took her by the hand and very fairly handed her out. It cost him his living: but the Marquis, being what is called a good fellow in the main, bore him no grudge; nay, rather liked his spirit, and afterwards showed himself a good friend to the amount of twenty guineas, to which the Marchioness (but this is more explicable) added five from her own purse.

By good fortune the living of Epworth fell vacant just then, and in accordance with some wish or promise of the late Queen Mary, to whom he had dedicated his Life of Christ, Mr. Wesley was presented to it, a decent preferment, worth about 200 pounds a year in the currency of those times. But by this time his family was large; he was in debt; the fees to be paid before taking up the living ate farther into his credit; a larger house had to be maintained, with three acres of garden and farm-buildings; and his new parishioners hated his politics and made life as miserable for him as they could. They were savage fighters, but they found their match. In 1702 they set fire secretly to the parsonage-house, and burned down two-thirds of it. In the winter of 1704 they destroyed a great part of his crop of flax. This was the year of Blenheim, and upon news of the victory Mr. Wesley sat down to commemorate it in heroic verse. The poem (published in the early days of 1705), if inferior to Mr. Addison's on the same occasion, ran to five hundred and ninety-four lines, and contained compliments enough to please the great Duke of Marlborough, who sent for its author, rewarded him with the chaplaincy of Colonel Lepelle's regiment, and promised him a prebend's stall. The Dissenters, who (with some excuse, perhaps) looked upon Mr. Wesley as that worst of foes, a deserter from their own ranks, using their influence in Parliament and at Court, had him deprived of his regiment and denied the stall. In April Queen Anne dissolved Parliament, and in May the late Tory members for the county of Lincoln, Sir John Thorold—and the Dymoke who then held—as his descendant holds to-day—the dignity of Royal Champion, fought and lost an election with the Whig candidates, Colonel Whichcott and Mr. Albert Bertie. The Dissenters of course supported these; and Mr. Wesley, scorning insults and worse, the unpopular side: with what results we may read in these extracts from letters to the Archbishop of York.

Epworth, June 7th, 1705.

I went to Lincoln on Tuesday night, May 29th, and the election began on Wednesday, 30th. A great part of the night our Isle people kept drumming, shouting, and firing of pistols and guns under the window where my wife lay, who had been brought to bed not three weeks. I had put the child to nurse over against my own house; the noise kept his nurse waking till one or two in the morning. Then they left off, and the nurse being heavy with sleep, overlaid the child. She waked, and finding it dead, ran over with it to my house almost distracted, and calling my servants, threw it into their arms. They, as wise as she, ran up with it to my wife and, before she was well awake, threw it cold and dead into hers. She composed herself as well as she could, and that day got it buried.

A clergyman met me in the castle yard and told me to withdraw, for the Isle men intended me a mischief. Another told me he had heard near twenty of them say, "if they got me in the castle yard, they would squeeze my guts out." My servant had the same advice. I went by Gainsbro', and God preserved me.

When they knew I was got home, they sent the drum and mob, with guns etc. as usual, to compliment me till after midnight. One of them, passing by on Friday evening and seeing my children in the yard, cried out "O ye devils! We will come and turn ye all out of doors a-begging shortly." God convert them, and forgive them!

All this, thank God, does not in the least sink my wife's spirits. For my own, I feel them disturbed and disordered. . . .

The rebuilding of the parsonage and some unhappy essays in farming his glebe had run the Rector still farther in debt: and now, not satisfied with winning the election, his enemies struck at him privily. His next letter is dated not three weeks later from the debtors' ward in Lincoln.

Lincoln Castle, June 25th, 1705.

My Lord,—Now I am at rest, for I am come to the haven where I have long expected to be. On Friday last (June 23rd), when I had been, in christening a child, at Epworth, I was arrested in my churchyard by one who had been my servant, and gathered my tithe last year, at the suit of one of Mr. Whichcott's relations and zealous friends (Mr Pinder) according to their promise when they were in the Isle before the election. The sum was not thirty pounds, but it was as good as five hundred. Now they knew the burning of my flax, my London journey, and their throwing me out of my regiment had both sunk my credit and exhausted my money. My adversary was sent to, when I was on the road, to meet me, that I might make some proposals to him. But all his answer was that 'I must immediately pay the whole sum, or go to prison.' Thither I went, with no great concern to myself: and find much more civility and satisfaction here than in brevibus gyaris of my own Epworth. I thank God, my wife was pretty well recovered and churched some days before I was taken from her; and hope she'll be able to look to my family, if they don't turn them out of doors as they have often threatened to do. One of my biggest concerns was my being forced to leave my poor lambs in the midst of so many wolves. But the great Shepherd is able to provide for them and to preserve them. My wife bears it with that courage which becomes her, and which I expected from her.

I don't despair of doing some good here (and so I sha'n't quite lose the end of living), and it may be, do more in this new parish than in my old one: for I have leave to read prayers every morning and afternoon here in the prison, and to preach once a Sunday, which I choose to do in the afternoon when there is no sermon at the minster. And I'm getting acquainted with my brother jail-birds as fast as I can; and shall write to London next post, to the Society for propagating Christian Knowledge, who, I hope, will send me some books to distribute among them. . . .

The next letter, dated from prison on September 12th, proves that he had reasons only too good to be fearful.

The other matter is concerning the stabbing of my cows in the night since I came hither, but a few weeks ago; and endeavouring thereby to starve my forlorn family in my absence; my cows being all dried by it, which was their chief subsistence; though I hope they had not the power to kill any of them outright. . . .

The same night the iron latch of my door was twined off, and the wood hacked in order to shoot back the lock, which nobody will think was with an intention to rob my family. My housedog, who made a huge noise within doors, was sufficiently punished for his want of politics and moderation, for the next day but one his leg was almost chopped off by an unknown hand. 'Tis not every one could bear these things; but, I bless God, my wife is less concerned with suffering them that I am in the writing, or than I believe your Grace will be in reading them. . . . Oh, my lord! I once more repeat it, that I shall some time have a more equal Judge than any in this world.

Most of my friends advise me to leave Epworth, if e'er I should get from hence. I confess I am not of that mind, because I may yet do good there; and 'tis like a coward to desert my post because the enemy fire thick upon me. They have only wounded me yet and, I believe, can't kill me. I hope to be home by Xmass. God help my poor family! . . .

By the end of the year (the Archbishop and other friends assisting) a good part of his debts had been paid and Mr. Wesley was at home again. From Epworth he refused to budge; and there, for three years and more, the rage of his enemies slumbered and his affairs grew easier. John (if we do not count the poor infant overlaid) had been the last child born before his imprisonment. Now arrived Patty, in the autumn of 1706, and Charles, in December, 1707. A third was expected, and shortly, when in the night of February 9th, 1709, the parsonage took fire again and burned to the ground in fifteen minutes.

On Wednesday last, at half an hour after eleven at night, in a quarter of an hour's time or less, my house at Epworth was burned down to the ground—I hope by accident; but God knows all. We had been brewing, but had done all; every spark of fire quenched before five o'clock that evening—at least six hours before the house was on fire. Perhaps the chimney above might take fire (though it had been swept not long since) and break through into the thatch. Yet it is strange I should neither see nor smell anything of it, having been in my study in that part of the house till above half an hour after ten. Then I locked the doors of that part of the house where my wheat and other corn lay, and went to bed.

The servants had not been in bed a quarter of an hour when the fire began. My wife being near her time, and very weak, I lay in the next chamber. A little after eleven I heard "Fire!" cried in the street, next to which I lay. If I had been in my own chamber, as usual, we had all been lost. I threw myself out of bed, got on my waistcoat and nightgown, and looked out of window; saw the reflection of the flame, but knew not where it was; ran to my wife's chamber with one stocking on and my breeches in my hand; would have broken open the door, which was bolted within, but could not. My two eldest children were with her. They rose, and ran towards the staircase, to raise the rest of the house. There I saw it was my own house, all in a light blaze, and nothing but a door between the flame and the staircase.

I ran back to my wife, who by this time had got out of bed, naked, and opened the door. I bade her fly for her life. We had a little silver and some gold—about 20 pounds. She would have stayed for it, but I pushed her out; got her and my two eldest children downstairs (where two of the servant were now got), and asked for the keys. They knew nothing of them. I ran upstairs and found them, came down, and opened the street door. The thatch was fallen in all on fire. The north-east wind drove all the sheets of flame in my face, as if reverberated in a lamp. I got twice to the step and was drove down again. I ran to the garden door and opened it. The fire there was more moderate. I bade them all follow, but found only two with me, and the maid with another in her arms that cannot go; but all naked. I ran with them to an outhouse in the garden, out of the reach of the flames; put the least in the other's lap; and not finding my wife follow me, ran back into the house to seek her, but could not find her. The servants and two of the children were got out at the window. In the kitchen I found my eldest daughter, naked, and asked her for her mother. She could not tell me where she was. I took her up and carried her to the rest in the garden; came in the second time and ran upstairs, the flame breaking through the wall at the staircase; thought all my children were safe, and hoped my wife was some way got out. I then remembered my books, and felt in my pocket for the key of the chamber which led to my study. I could not find the key, though I searched a second time. Had I opened that door, I must have perished.

I ran down and went to my children in the garden, to help them over the wall. When I was without, I heard one of my poor lambs, left still above-stairs, about six years old, cry out, dismally, "Help me!" I ran in again, to go upstairs, but the staircase was now all afire. I tried to force up through it a second time, holding my breeches over my head, but the stream of fire beat me down. I thought I had done my duty; went out of the house to that part of my family I had saved, in the garden, with the killing cry of my child in my ears. I made them all kneel down, and we prayed to God to receive his soul.

I tried to break down the pales, and get my children over into the street, but could not; then went under the flame and got them over the wall. Now I put on my breeches and leaped after them. One of my maidservants that had brought out the least child, got out much at the same time. She was saluted with a hearty curse by one of the neighbours, and told that we had fired the house ourselves, the second time, on purpose! I ran about inquiring for my wife and other children; met the chief man and chief constable of the town going from my house, not towards it to help me. I took him by the hand and said "God's will be done!" His answer was, "Will you never have done your tricks? You fired your house once before; did you not get enough by it then, that you have done it again?" This was cold comfort. I said, "God forgive you! I find you are chief man still." But I had a little better soon after, hearing that my wife was saved; and then I fell on mother earth and blessed God.

I went to her. She was alive, and could just speak. She thought I had perished, and so did all the rest, not having seen me nor any share of eight children for a quarter of an hour; and by this time all the chambers and everything was consumed to ashes, for the fire was stronger than a furnace, the violent wind beating it down on the house. She told me afterwards how she escaped. When I went first to open the back-door, she endeavoured to force through the fire at the fore-door, but was struck back twice to the ground. She thought to have died there, but prayed to Christ to help her. She found new strength, got up alone and waded through two or three yards of flame, the fire on the ground being up to her knees. She had nothing on but her shoes and a wrapping gown, and one coat on her arm. This she wrapped about her breast, and got through safe into the yard, but no soul yet to help her. She never looked up or spake till I came; only when they brought her last child to her, bade them lay it on the bed. This was the lad whom I heard cry in the house, but God saved him almost by a miracle. He only was forgot by the servants, in the hurry. He ran to the window towards the yard, stood upon a chair and cried for help. There were now a few people gathered, one of whom, who loves me, helped up another to the window. The child seeing a man come into the window, was frightened, and ran away to get to his mother's chamber. He could not open the door, so ran back again. The man was fallen down from the window, and all the bed and hangings in the room where he was were blazing. They helped up the man a second time, and poor Jacky leaped into his arms and was saved. I could not believe it till I had kissed him two or three times. My wife then said unto me, "Are your books safe?" I told her it was not much, now she and all the rest were preserved. . . .

Mr. Smith of Gainsborough, and others, have sent for some of my children. . . . I want nothing, having above half my barley saved in my barns unthreshed. I had finished my alterations in the Life of Christ a little while since, and transcribed three copies of it. But all is lost. God be praised!

I hope my wife will recover, and not miscarry, but God will give me my nineteenth child. She has burnt her legs, but they mend. When I came to her, her lips were black. I did not know her. Some of the children are a little burnt, but not hurt or disfigured. I only got a small blister on my hand. The neighbours send us clothes, for it is cold without them.

The child (Kezzy) was born and lived. The Rectory was rebuilt within a year, at a cost of 400 pounds. The day after the fire, as he groped among the ruins in the garden, Mr. Wesley had picked up a torn leaf of his Polyglot Bible, on which these words alone were legible: Vade; vende omnia quot habes; et attolle crucem, et sequere me. He had come to Epworth a poor man: and now, after fifteen years, he stood as poor as then; poorer, perhaps. He had served his parishioners only to earn their detestation. But he stood unbeaten: and as he stared out of his window there gripped him—not for the first time—a fierce ironical affection for the hard landscape, the fields of his striving, even the folk who had proved such good haters. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field—ay, and learn to relish it as no other food. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. Ah, but to go and surrender that ground to others—there lay the sting! With him, as with many another true man disappointed in his fate, his hopes passed from himself to fasten the more eagerly on his sons. He wanted them to be great and eminent soldiers of Christ, and he divined already that, if for one above the others, this eminence was reserved for John. But he wanted also a son of his loins to succeed him at Epworth, to hold and improve what painful inches he had gained; and again he could only think of John. Could a man devote his life to this forsaken parish and yet be a light set on a hill for the world? Had not his own life taught the folly of that hope?

He sighed and turned from the window. He had quite forgotten Hetty.

He stepped to the door to summon Johnny Whitelamb: but the sound of voices drew him across the passage to the best parlour, and there at the threshold his eyes fell on Sukey's headdress.

"Susannah!"

"Yes, father." Sukey stepped forward to be kissed.

"Take off that—that thing!"

"Yes, father." She untied the strings obediently.

"If your husband chooses to dress and carry you about the country like a figure of fun, I cannot prevent him. But in my house remember that I am your father, and take my assurance that, although Jezebel tired her head, she had the saving grace of not looking like a fool."

Mr. Wesley turned on his heel and strode back to his books.

"Why don't you stand up to him?" asked Mr. Dick Ellison suddenly, on the road to Kelstein.

"To father?" Hetty came out of her day-dreams with a start.

"Yes: you've been having a tiff this morning, anyone can see. Young man is poison to him, hey? Why don't you take a leaf out of my book? 'Paternal authority'—and a successor of the apostles into the bargain—that's his ground. Well, I don't allow him to take it. 'Beggars can't be choosers' is mine, and I pin him to it. Oh, yes, I'm poison to him, but it does him good. 'That cock won't crow,' I say. He's game enough on his own dunghill, but a high-blooded lass like you ought to be his master by this time. Hint that you'll cut the painter, kick over the traces—you needn't do it, y'know. Threaten you'll run and join the stage—nothing unlikely in that— and, by George, it'd bring him up with a clove hitch! Where's your invention?"

Hetty gazed at the horse's ears and considered. "It's easy for you, Dick, who have nothing in common with him, not even affection."

"Oh, I like the old fellow well enough, for all his airs with me," said Mr. Dick Ellison graciously.

"If they annoyed you more, you might understand him better—and me," replied Hetty.

Silence fell between them again and the gig bowled on.



BOOK II.



CHAPTER I.

The frozen canal ran straight towards the sunset, into a flooded country where only a line of pollard willows, with here and there an alder, marked the course of its left bank. But where Hetty waited the banks were higher, and the red ball on the horizon sent a level shaft down the lane between them.

She was alone. Indeed, the only living creature within sight was a red-breast, hunched into a ball and watching her from a wintry willow bough; the only moving object a windmill half a mile away across the level, turning its sails against the steel-gray sky—so listlessly, they seemed to be numbed.

She had strapped on a pair of skates—clumsy homemade things, and a birthday present from Johnny Whitelamb, who had fashioned them with pains, the Epworth blacksmith helping. Hetty skated excellently well—in days, be it understood, before the cutting of figures had been advanced to an art with rules and text-books. But as the poise and balanced impetus came natural to her, so in idle moments and casually she had struck out figures of her own, and she practised them now with the red-breast for spectator. She was happy—her bosom's lord sitting lightly on his throne—and all because of two letters she pulled from her pocket and re-read in the pauses of her skating.

The first was from her mother at Wroote, and told her that to-day or to-morrow her father would be arriving at Kelstein with her sister Patty. Hetty had been expecting this for some weeks. At Christmas (it was now mid-January) the Granthams had written praising her, and this had given Mr. Wesley the notion of proffering yet another of his daughters. Two days after receiving the letter he had ridden over to Kelstein with the proposal. Patty was the one chosen (Hetty could guess why), and poor Patty knew nothing of it at the time: but Mrs. Grantham had accepted almost effusively, and she was to come. In what capacity? Hetty wondered. She herself taught the children, and she could think of no other post in the household not absolutely menial. Was it selfish of her to be so glad? For one thing Patty had fewer whimsies than the rest of her sisters and, likely enough, would accept her lot as a matter of course. She seldom wept or grumbled: indeed Hetty, before now, had found her patience irritating. But to have Patty's company now seemed the most delightful thing in the world; to fling her arms around somebody who came from home!

The most delightful? Hetty turned to the second letter—and with that looked up swiftly as her ear caught the ringing sound of skates, and a young man descended, as it were, out of the sun's disc and came flying down the long alley on its ray. She put out both hands. He swooped around her in a long curve and caught them and kissed her as he came to a standstill, panting, with a flush on each handsome cheek.

"Hetty!"

No answer to this but a sound like a coo of rapture. He is, as we should think, a personable young fellow, frank, and taking to the eye, though his easy air of mastery provokes another look at Hetty, who is worth ten of him. But to her he is a young god above whom the stars dance. Splendid creature though she be, she must comply with her sex which commands her to be passive, to be loved. With his arm about her she shuts her eyes and drinks delicious weakness; with a sense of sinking through space supported by that arm—not wholly relying on him as yet, but holding her own strength in reserve, if he should fail her.

"I have raced."

She laughed. "I bargained for that. We have so little time!"

"How long?"

"Mrs. Grantham expects me back in an hour at latest. Father and Patty will be arriving before supper, and there are the children to be put to bed."

"Let us go up the canal, then. I have a surprise for you."

They took hands—both her hands in his, their arms held crosswise to their bodies—and struck out, stroke for stroke. By the third stroke they were swinging forward in perfect rhythm, each onrush held long and level on the outside edge and curving only as it slackened. The air began to sing by Hetty's temples; her skates kept a humming tune with her lover's. The back of his hand rested warm against her bosom.

"You skate divinely."

She scarcely heard. The world slipped past and behind her with the racing trees: she was a bird mated and flying into the sunset. Ah, here was bliss! Awhile ago she had been faint with love, as though a cord were being tightened around her heart: it had been hard for her to speak, hard even to draw breath. Now her lungs opened, the cord snapped and broke with a sob; and, as the sun's rim dipped, she flew faster, urgent to overtake and hold it there, to stay its red glint between the reed-beds, its bloom of brown and purple on the withered grasses. The wind of her skirt caught up the dead leaves freshly scattered on the ice and swept them along with her, whirling, like a train of birds. But, race as she would, the sun sank and the shadow of the world crept higher behind her shoulder. The last gleam died; and, lifting her eyes, Hetty saw over its grave, poised in a clear space of sky, the sickle moon.

She tried to disengage her hand, to point to it: but as his eyes sought hers with a question, she let it lie and nodded upwards instead. He saw and understood, and with their faces raised to it they held on their flight in silence: for lovers may wish with the new moon, but the first to speak will have wished in vain.

A tapping, as of someone hammering upon metal, sounded from a clump of willows ahead and upon their right. A woman's voice joined in scolding. This broke the spell; and with a laugh they disengaged hands, separated, and let their speed bear them on side by side till it slackened and they ran to a halt beside the trees.

A barge lay here, hopelessly frozen on its way up the canal. On its deck a woman, with arms akimbo, stood over a man seated and tinkering at a kettle. She nodded as they approached.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, sir—you and the lady."

Hetty looked at her lover.

"It's all right," he explained: "only a surprise of mine, which seems to have missed fire. I had planned a small picnic here and this good woman was to have had a dish of tea ready for you—"

"How was I to know that man of mine had been fool enough to fill the kettle before tramping off to the 'Ring of Bells'?" the good woman broke in. "Lord knows 'tisn' his way to be thoughtful, and when he tries it there's always a breakage. When I'd melted the ice, the thing began to leak like a sieve; and if this tinker fellow hadn't come along—by Providence, as you may call it—though I'd ha' been obliged to Providence for a quicker workman—"

Hetty was not listening. Her eyes had caught the tinker's, and the warm blood had run back from her face: for he was the man who had startled the sisters on the knoll, that harvest evening.

He nodded to her now with an impudent grin. "Good evening, missy! If I'd known the job was for Miss Wesley, I'd ha' put best speed into it: best work there is already."

"Hallo! Do you know this fellow?" her lover demanded.

"'Fellow'—and a moment back 'twas 'tinker'! Well, well, a man must look low and pick up what he can in these times, 'specially when his larger debtors be so backward—hey, miss? Why, to be sure I know Miss Wesley: a man don't forget a face like hers in a hurry. Glad to meet her, likewise, enjoyin' herself so free and easy. Shall I tell the old Rector, miss, next time I call, how well you was lookin', and in what company?"

Hetty saw her lover ruffling and laid a hand on his arm.

"Tuppence if you please, ma'am, and I'll be going. William Wright was never one to spoil sport: but some has luck in this world and some hasn't, and that's a fact." He grinned again as he pocketed the money.

"If you don't take your impudent face out of this, I'll smash it for you," spoke up the young man hotly.

The plumber's grin widened as, slinging his bag of tools over his shoulder, he stepped on to the frozen towpath. "Ah, you're a bruiser, I dare say: for I've seen you outside the booth at Lincoln Fair, hail-fellow with the boxing-men on the platform. And a buck you was too, with a girl on each arm; and might pass, that far from home, for one of the gentry, the way you stood treat. But you're not: and if missy ain't more particular in her bucks, she'd do better with a respectable tradesman like me. As for smashing of faces, two can play at that game, belike: but William Wright chooses his time."

He was lurching away with a guffaw; for the tow-path here ran within two furlongs of the high road, and a man upon skates cannot pursue across terra firma.

But he had reckoned without Hetty, who had seated herself on the edge of the barge and who now shook her feet free of Johnny Whitelamb's rough clamps, and, springing from the deck to the towpath, took him by the collar as he turned.

"Go!" she cried, and with her open palm dealt him a stinging slap across the cheek. "Go!"

The man put up his hand, fell back a moment with a dazed face, and then without a word ran for the highway, his bag of tools rattling behind him.

Never was route more ludicrously sudden. Even in her wrath Hetty looked at her lover and broke into a laugh.

"Let me skate up the canal and head him off," said he. "Half a mile will give me lead enough to slip out of these things and collar him on the highway."

"He is not worth it. Besides, he may not be going towards Kelstein: in this light we cannot see the road or what direction he takes. Let him be, dear," Hetty persuaded, as the old woman called out from her cabin that the kettle boiled. "Our time is too precious."

Then, while he yet fumed, she suddenly grew grave.

"Was it truth he was telling?"

"Truth?" he echoed.

"Yes: about Lincoln Fair?"

"Oh, the boxing-booth, you mean? Well, my dear, there was something in it, to be sure. You wouldn't have me be a milksop, would you?"

"No-o," she mused. "But I meant what he said about—about those women. Was that true?"

He was on the point of answering with a lie; but while he hesitated she helped him by adding, "I am not a child, dear. I am twenty-seven, and older than you. Please be honest with me, always."

He was young, but had an instinct for understanding women. He revised the first lie and rejected it for a more cunning one. "It was before I met you," he said humbly. "He made the worst of it, of course, but I had rather you knew the truth. You are angry?"

Hetty sighed. "I am sorry. It seems to make our—our love— different somehow."

The bargewoman brought out their tea. She had heard nothing of the scrimmage on the bank, so swiftly had it happened and with so few words spoken.

"Halloa—is the tinker gone? And I'd cut off a crust for him. Well, I can eat it myself, I suppose; and after all he was low company for the likes of you, though any company comes well to folks that can't pick and choose." In the act of setting herself on the cabin top she sat up stiffly and listened.

"There's a horse upon the high road," she announced.

"A highwayman, perhaps, if all company's welcome to you."

"He won't come this way," said the woman placidly. "I loves to lie close to the road like this and see the wagons and coaches rolling by all day: for 'tis a dull life, always on the water. Now you wouldn't believe what a pleasure it gives me, to have you two here a-lovering, nor how many questions I'd put if you'd let me. When is it to be, my dear?"—addressing Hetty—"But you won't answer me, I know. You're wishing me farther, and go I will as soon as you've drunk your tay. Well, sir, I hope you'll take care of her: for the pretty she is, I could kiss her myself. May I?" she asked suddenly, taking Hetty's empty cup; and Hetty blushed and let her. "God send you children, you beauty!"

She paused with a cup in either hand, and in the act of squeezing herself backwards through the small cabin-door. "La, the red you've gone! I can see it with no help more than the bit of moon. 'Tis a terrible thing to be childless, and for that you can take my word." Wagging her head she vanished.

Left to themselves the two sat silent. The sound of the horse's hoofs died away down the road towards Kelstein. Had Hetty known, her father was the horseman, with Patty riding pillion behind him. Over the frozen floods came the note of a church clock, borne on the almost windless air.

"Five o'clock?" Hetty sprang up. "Time to be going, and past."

"You have not forgiven me," he murmured.

"Indeed, yes." She was, after all, a girl of robust good sense, and could smile bravely as she put an illusion by. "To be loved is marvellous and seems to make all marvels possible: but I was wrong to expect—this one. And if, since knowing me—"

"You have taught me all better things." He knelt on the ice at her feet and began to fasten her skates. "Let me still be your pupil and look up to you, as I am looking now."

"Ah!" she pressed her palms together, "but that is just what I need— to know that we are both better for loving. I want to be sure of that, for it makes me brave when I think of father. While he forbids us, I cannot help doubting at times: and then I look into myself and see that all the world is brighter, all the world is better since I knew you. O my love, if we trust our love, and help one another!—" Her rich voice thrilled and broke as she leaned forward and laid a hand on his forehead.

"See me at your feet," he whispered, looking up into eyes divinely dewy. "I am yours to teach: teach me, if you will, to be good."

They rose to their feet together—he but an inch or so the taller— and for a moment, as he took her in his arms, she held back, her palms against his shoulders, her eyes passionately seeking the truth in his. Then with a sob she kissed him and was gone.

For a moment she skated nervelessly, with hanging arms. But, watching, he saw her summon up her strength and shoot down the glimmering ice-way like a swallow let loose from his hand. So swift was her flight that, all unknowing, she overtook and passed the travellers jogging parallel with her on the high road; and had reached Kelstein and was putting her two small charges to bed, when her father's knock sounded below stairs.

Mr. and Mrs. Grantham, though pompous, were a kindly pair: and Mrs. Grantham, entering the library where Mr. Wesley and his daughter awaited her, and observing that the girl seemed frightened or depressed (she could not determine which), rang the bell at once and sent a maid upstairs for Hetty.

Hetty entered with cheeks still glowing and eyes sparkling; went at once to her father and kissed him, and running, threw her arms around Patty, who responded listlessly.

"She needs Kelstein air," explained Mr. Wesley. "I protest it seems to agree with you, Mehetabel."

"But tell me all the news, father," Hetty demanded, with an arm about her sister's waist and a glance at Mrs. Grantham, which asked pardon for her freedom.

"Your sister shall tell it, my dear," answered that good woman, "while I am persuading your father to sup with us. I have given them a room together," she explained to Mr. Wesley. "I thought it would be pleasanter for them."

"You are kindness itself, madam."

Hetty led the way upstairs. "It is all strange at first, dear: I know the feeling. But see how cosy we shall be." She threw the door open, and showed a room far more comfortably furnished than any at Wroote or Epworth. The housemaid, who adored Hetty, had even lit a fire in the grate. Two beds with white coverlets, coarse but exquisitely clean, stood side by side—"Though we won't use them both. I must have you in my arms, and drink in every word you have to tell me till you drop off to sleep in spite of me, and hold you even then. Oh, Patty, it is good to have you here!"

But Patty, having untied the strings of her hat, tossed it on to the edge of her bed and collapsed beside it.

"I wish I was dead!" she announced.



CHAPTER II.

John Romley was the cause of her exile. This young man had been a pupil of the Rector's, and studied divinity with him for a while before matriculating at Lincoln College, Oxford; where in due course he took his degree, and whence he returned, in deacon's orders, to take charge of the endowed school at Epworth and to help in the spiritual work of the parish. Mr. Wesley's experience of curates had been far from happy, but Romley promised to be the bright exception in a long list of failures. (It was he who discovered and introduced Johnny Whitelamb to the household.) He was sociable; had pleasant manners, a rotund figure not yet inclining to coarseness, a pink and white complexion, and a mellifluous tenor voice. To his voice, alas! he owed most of his misfortunes in life.

The Rector had no high opinion of his brains: but tolerated him, and at first looked on leniently enough when he began to pay his addresses to Patty. Indeed the courtship proceeded to the gentle envy of her sisters until one fatal night when Romley, in the rectory parlour at Wroote, attuned his voice to sing the Vicar of Bray. In his study Mr. Wesley heard it. He, of all men, was no Vicar of Bray, albeit he had abjured Dissent: but he felt his cloth insulted, and by this fribble of his own order. It was treason in short, and he bounced into the parlour as Mr. Romley carolled:

"When gracious Anne became our Queen, The Church of England's glory, Another face of things was seen, And I became a Tory; Occasional Conformists base—"

There was a scene, and it ended in Romley being shown the door and Patty forbidden to have speech with him. Actually she had not set eyes on him since that night: but the Rector unaccountably omitted to forbid their corresponding. Now Patty, the most literally minded of her sex, had a niggling obstinacy in pursuit of her ends. She would obey to a hair's breadth: but, nothing having been said about letters, letters passed. Piecing the truth together from her incoherent railings, Hetty learned that the Rector had happened upon a scrap of Romley's handwriting, had lost his temper furiously and given sentence of banishment.

Patty in love showed none of her sister's glorious fervour: but stared obtusely, even sulkily, when Hetty hinted at her own secret and, pressing her waist, spoke of love with fearless elation, yet as of a sacred thing.

"Oh, you're too poetical for me!" she interrupted.

This was depressing.

"And I wish I was in my grave," added Patty, looking like a martyr in a wet blanket.

Thinking to put spirit into her, Hetty became more explicit and proved that love might find out a way between Epworth and Kelstein— nay, even spoke of her own clandestine meeting that very afternoon. Her cheeks glowed. Nor for a minute did she observe that Patty, listless at the beginning of the tale, was staring at her with round eyes.

"You mean to tell me that you meet him!"

"Why, of course I do."

"But father forbade it!"

"To be sure he did."

"Then all I can say is"—Patty rose to her feet in the strength of her disapproval—"that I call it disgraceful, and I'm perfectly ashamed of you!"

"But, good Heavens! he forbade you to see Romley."

"But not to write."

"O-o!" Hetty mused with her pretty mouth shaped to the letter. "And now, I suppose, he has forbidden that too?"

"Of course he has."

"And are you going to obey?"

"Of course I am."

It was Hetty's turn to stare wide-eyed. "You are going to give Romley up?" she asked very slowly.

"Yes, yes, yes—and I wish I was in my grave!" Patty collapsed again dismally, but sat upright after a moment. "As for your behaviour, 'tis positively wicked, and I think father ought to be told of it!"

Hetty put out both hands; but instead of shaking her sister (as she was minded to do) she let the open palms fall gently upon her shoulders and looked her in the face.

"Then I advise you not to tell him, dear. For in the first place it would do no good."

"Do no good?"

"Well, then, it would make no difference."

"You mean to—run away—with him?" gasped Patty, her eyes involuntarily turning towards the window.

The glance set Hetty's laughter rippling. "Pat—Pat! don't be a goose. I shall not run away with him from this house. I promised mother."

"You—promised—mother!" Patty was reduced to stammering echoes.

"Dear me, yes. You must not suppose yourself the only one of her children she understands." Hetty, being human, could not forgo this little slap. "Now wash your face, like a good girl, and come down to supper: and afterwards you shall tell me all the news of home. There's one thing"—and she eyed Patty drolly—"I can trust you to be accurate."

"Do you mean to tell me that you can look father in the face—" But here Patty broke off, at the sound of hoofs on the gravel below.

"There will be no need," said Hetty quietly, "if, as I think, he is mounting Bounce to ride home."

"Bounce? How did you know that Bounce brought us?"—for Bounce was Mrs. Wesley's nag, and the Rector usually rode an old gray named Mettle, but had taken of late to a filly of his own breeding.

"I ought to remember Bounce's shuffle," answered Hetty. "Nay, I should have recognised it on the road two miles back if—if I hadn't been—"

She came to a full stop, in some confusion. Nevertheless she was right; and the girls arrived downstairs to learn from Mrs. Grantham that their father had ridden off, declining her offer of supper and scoffing at her fears of highwaymen.

And the days went by. Hetty could not help telling herself that Patty was a disappointment. But she was saved from reflecting on it overmuch: for Mrs. Grantham (after forty years of comfort without one) had conceived a desire to be waited on and have her hair dressed by a maid, and between Mrs. Grantham's inability to discover precisely what she wanted done by Patty, and Patty's unhandiness in doing it, and Mrs. Grantham's anxiety to fill up Patty's time, and Patty's lack of inventiveness, the pair kept Hetty pretty constantly near her wit's end.

Concerning her lover she attempted no more confidences. But, alone, she pondered much on Patty's reproof, which set her arguing out the whole case afresh. For, absurd though its logic was, it had touched her conscience. Was it conscience (she asked herself) or but the old habit of trembling at her father's word, which kept her so uneasy in disobeying him?

She came to no new conclusion; for a sense of injustice gave a twist to her thinking from the start. All his daughters held Mr. Wesley in awe: they never dreamed, for instance, of comparing their lovers with him in respect of dignity or greatness. They assumed that their brothers inherited some portion of that greatness, but they required none in the men to whom they were ready to give their hands; nay, perhaps unconsciously rejoiced in the lack of it, having lived with it at home and found it uncomfortable.

They were proud of it, of course, and knew that they themselves had some touch of it, if but a lunar glow. They read the assurance in their mother's speech, in her looks; and, moving among the Epworth folk as neighbours, yet apart, they had acquired a high pride of family which derived nothing from vulgar chatter about titled, rich and far-off relatives; but, taking ancestry for granted, found sustenance enough in the daily life at the parsonage and the letters from Westminster and Oxford. Aware of some worth in themselves, they saw themselves pinched of food, exiled from many companions, shut out from social gatherings for want of pocket-money and decent attire, while amid all the muddle of his affairs their father could tramp for miles and pledge the last ounce of his credit to scrape a few pounds for John or Charles. They divined his purpose: but they felt the present injustice.

They never regarded him as just. And this was mainly his own fault, or at least the fault of his theory that women, especially daughters, were not to be reasoned with but commanded. Hetty, for example, had an infinite capacity for self-sacrifice. At an appeal from him she would have surrendered, not small vanities only, but desires more than trivial, for the brothers whom in her heart she loved to fondness. But the sacrifice was ever exacted, not left to her good-nature; the right word never spoken.

And now, under the same numbing deference, her mother had failed her at a moment when all her heart cried out in its need. Hetty loved her lover. Perhaps, if allowed to fare abroad, consort with other girls, and learn, with responsibility, to choose better, she had never chosen this man. She had chosen him now. Poor Hetty!

But that she did wrong to meet him secretly her conscience accused her. She had been trained religiously. Had she no religion, then, upon which to stay her sense of duty?

Where a mother has failed, even the Bible may fail. Hetty read her Bible: but just because its austerer teaching had been bound too harshly upon her at home, she turned by instinct to the gentler side which reveals Christ's loving-kindness, His pity, His indulgence. All generous natures lean towards this side, and to their honour, but at times also to their very great danger. For the austerity is meant for them who most need it. Also the austere rules are more definite, which makes them a surer guide for the soul desiring goodness, but passionately astray. It spurns them, demanding loving-kindness; and discovers too late that loving-kindness dictated them.



CHAPTER III.

Two mornings after Patty's arrival, Hetty sat in the schoolroom telling a Bible story to her pupils, George Grantham and small Rebecca; the one aged eight, the other barely five. They were by no means clever children; but they knew a good story when they heard one, and Hetty held them to the adventures of Joseph and his Brethren, although great masses of snow were sliding off the roof, and every now and then toppling down past the window with a rush— which every child knows to be fascinating. For the black frost had broken up at last in a twelve hours' downfall of snow, and this in turn had yielded to a soft southerly wind. The morning sunshine poured in through the school-room window and took all colour out of the sea-coal fire.

"One night Joseph dreamed a dream which he told next morning to his brothers. And his dream was that they were all in the harvest-field, binding sheaves: and when Joseph had bound his sheaf, it stood upright, but the other sheaves around slid and fell flat, as if they were bowing on their faces before it. When he told this, it made his brothers angry, because it seemed to mean that he would be a greater man than any of them."

"I don't wonder they were angry," broke in George, who was the Granthams' son and heir, and had a baby brother of whom he tried hard not to be jealous. "Joseph wasn't the oldest, was he?"

"No: he was the youngest of all, except Benjamin."

"And even if he dreamed it, he needn't have gone about bragging. It was bad enough, his having that coat of many colours. I say, Miss Wesley—you're not a boy, of course—but how would you feel if your father made everything of one of your brothers?"

"I wonder if he dreamed it on a Friday?" piped Rebecca.

"Why, child?"

"Because Martha says"—Martha was the Granthams' cook—"that Friday's dream on Saturday told is bound to come true before you are old."

"We shall find out if it came true. Go on, Miss Wesley."

"But if it was Friday's dream," Rebecca persisted, "and he wanted it to come true, he couldn't help telling it."

"Couldn't help being a sneak, I suppose you mean!"

A sound outside the window cut short this argument. All glanced up: but it came this time from no avalanche of snow. Someone had planted a ladder against the house, and the top of the ladder was scraping against the window-sill.

"Too short by six feet," Hetty heard a voice say, and held her breath. The ladder was joggled a little and fixed again. Footsteps began to ascend it. A face and a pair of broad shoulders rose into sight over the sill. They belonged to William Wright.

"I—I think, dears, we had better find some other room."

Hetty had sprung up and felt herself shaking from head to foot. For the moment he was not looking in, but stood at the top of the ladder with his head thrown back, craning for a view of the water-trough under the eaves.

"About two feet to the right," he called to someone below. "No use shifting the ladder; 'twon't reach. Stay a minute, though—I don't believe 'tis a leak at all. Here—"

He felt the closed window with the palm of his hand, then peered through it into the room; and his eyes and Hetty's met.

"Well, I do declare! Good morning, miss: 'tis like fate, the way I keep running across you. Now would you be so kind as to lift the latch on your side and push the window gently? The frame opens outwards and I want to steady myself by it."

She obeyed, and was turning haughtily to follow the children when George, who loitered in the doorway watching, called out:

"Is he coming into the room, Miss Wesley?"

She glanced over her shoulder and halted. The man clearly did not mean to enter, but had scrambled up to the sill, and balanced himself there gripping the window-frame and leaning outwards at an angle which made her giddy. The sill was narrow, too, and sloping. She caught her breath, not daring to move.

He seemed to hear her, for he answered jocularly: "'Tis to be hoped the hinges are strong—eh, missy?—or there's an end of William Wright."

"Do, please, be careful!"

"What's that to you? You hate me bad enough. Look here—send the child out of the room and give me a push: a little one'd do, and you'll never get a better chance."

Still she held her breath; and he went on, gazing upwards and apparently speaking to the eaves.

"Not worth it, I suppose you'll say?—Don't you make too sure. Now if I can get my fingers over the launder, here—" He worked his way to the right, to the very edge of the sill, and reached sideways and upwards, raising himself higher and higher on tip-toe. Hetty heard a warning grunted from below.

"No use," he announced. "I can't reach it by six inches."

"What are you trying to do?" Hetty asked in a low voice, with a hand over her heart.

"Why, there's a choke here—dead leaves or something—and the roof-water's running down the side of the house."

She glanced hurriedly about the room, stepped to the fireplace and picked up a poker—a small one with a crook at the end. "Will this help?" she asked, passing it out.

"Eh? the very thing!" He took it, and presently she heard it scraping on the pipe in search of the obstruction. "Cleared it, by Jingo! and that's famous." He lowered himself upon the flat of his broad soles. "You ought to ha' been a plumber's wife. My! if I had a headpiece like that to think for me—let alone to look at!"

"Give me back the poker, please."

"No tricks, now!" He handed it back, chuckled, and lowering himself back to the topmost rung of the ladder, stood in safety. "You're as white as a sheet. Was you scared I'd fall? Lord, I like to see you look like that! it a'most makes me want to do it again. Look here—"

"For pity's sake—"

Was the man mad? And how was it he held her listening to his intolerable talk? He was actually scrambling up to the sill again, but paused with his eyes on hers. "It hurts you? Very well, then, I won't: but I owe you something for that slap in the face, you know."

"You deserved it!" Hetty exclaimed, flushing as she recoiled from terror to unreasonable wrath, and at the same moment hating herself for arguing with him.

"Did I? Well, I bear ye no malice. Go slow, and overlook offences— that's William Wright's way, and I've no pride, so I gets it in the end. Now some men, after being treated like that, would have sat down and wrote a letter to your father about your goings-on. I thought of it. Says I, 'It don't take more than a line from me, and the fat's in the fire.' Mind, I don't say that I won't, but I ha'n't done it yet. And look here—I'm a journeyman, as you know, and on the tramp for jobs. I push on for Lincoln this afternoon; and what I say to you before leaving is this—you're a lady, every inch. Don't you go and make yourself too cheap with that fella. He's a pretty man enough, but there ain't no honesty in him."

He was gone. Hetty drew a long breath. Then, having waited while the ladder too was withdrawn, she fetched back the children and set them before their copy-books.

"Honesty is the best policy."—She saw Master George fairly started on this text, with his head on one side and his tongue working in the corner of his mouth; and drawing out paper and ink began to write a letter home.

"Dear Mother—," she wrote, glanced at George's copy-book, then at the window. Five minutes passed. She started and thrust pen and paper back into the drawer. Patty must write.



CHAPTER IV.

1. From the Rev. Samuel Wesley to his son John, at Christ Church, Oxford.

Wroote, January 5, 1725.

Dear Son,—Your brother will receive 5 pounds for you next Saturday, if Mr. S. is paid the 10 pounds he lent you; if not, I must go to H. But I promise you I shan't forget that you are my son, if you do not that I am:

Your affectionate father, Samuel Wesley.

2. From the same to the same.

Wroote, January 26, 1725.

Dear Son,—I am so well pleased with your decent behaviour, or at least with your letters, that I hope I shall not have occasion to remember any more some things that are past; and since you have now for some time bit upon the bridle, I'll take care hereafter to put a little honey upon it as oft as I am able. But then it shall be of my own mero motu, as the last 5 pound was; for I will bear no rivals in my kingdom.

I did not forget you with Dr. Morley, but have moved that way as much as possible; though I must confess, hitherto, with no great prospect or hopes of success. As for what you mention of entering into Holy Orders, it is indeed a great work; and I am pleased to find you think it so, as well as that you do not admire a callow clergyman any more than I do.

And now the providence of God (I hope it was) has engaged me in such a work wherein you may be very assistant to me, I trust promote His glory and at the same time notably forward your own studies; for I have some time since designed an edition of the Holy Bible, in octavo, in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Septuagint and Vulgar Latin, and have made some progress in it: the whole scheme whereof I have not time at present to give you, of which scarce any soul yet knows except your brother Sam.

What I desire of you in this article is, firstly, that you would immediately fall to work, read diligently the Hebrew text in the Polyglot, and collate it exactly with the Vulgar Latin, which is in the second column, writing down all (even the least) variations or differences between them. To these I would have you add the Samaritan text in the last column but one, which is the very same with the Hebrew, except in some very few places, only differing in the Samaritan character (I think the true old Hebrew), the alphabet whereof you may learn in a day's time, either from the Prolegomena in Walton's Polyglot, or from his grammar. In a twelvemonth's time, sticking close to it in the forenoons, you will get twice through the Pentateuch; for I have done it four times the last year, and am going over it the fifth, collating the Hebrew and two Greek, the Alexandrian and the Vatican, with what I can get of Symmachus and Theodotian, etc. Nor shall you lose your reward for it, either in this or the other world.

In the afternoon read what you will, and be sure to walk an hour, if fair, in the fields. Get Thirlby's Chrysostom De Sacerdotio; master it—digest it. I like your verses on Psalm lxxxv., and would not have you bury your talent. All are well and send duties.

Work and write while you can. You see Time has shaken me by the hand, and Death is but a little behind him. My eyes and heart are now almost all I have left; and bless God for them. I am not for your going over-hastily into Orders. When I am for your taking them, you shall know it.

Your affectionate father, Sam. Wesley.

3. From Mrs. Wesley to her son John.

February 25th, 1725.

Dear Jackey,—I was much pleased with your letter to your father about taking Orders, and like the proposal well; but it is an unhappiness almost peculiar to our family that your father and I seldom think alike. I approve the disposition of your mind and think the sooner you are a deacon the better, because it may be an inducement to greater application in the study of practical divinity, which I humbly conceive is the best study for candidates for Orders. Mr. Wesley differs from me, and would engage you (I believe) in critical learning; which, though accidentally of use, is in no wise preferable to the other. I dare advise nothing: God Almighty direct and bless you! I long to see you. We hear nothing of Hetty, which gives us some uneasiness. We have all writ, but can get no answer. I wish all be well. Adieu.

Susanna Wesley.

4. From the Rev. Samuel Wesley to his son John.

Wroote, March 13, 1724-5.

Dear Son,—I have both yours, and have changed my mind since my last. I now incline to your going this summer into Orders. But in the first place, if you love yourself or me, pray heartily. I will struggle hard but I will get money for your Orders, and something more. Mr. Downes has spoken to Mr. Morley about you, who says he will inquire of your character.

"Trust in the Lord, and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed." This, with blessing, from your loving father,

Samuel Wesley.

5. From Emilia Wesley to her brother John.

Wroote, April 7th, 1725.

Dear Brother,—Yours of March 7th I received, and thank you for your care in despatching so speedily the business I desired you to do. It is the last of that kind I shall trouble you with. No more shall I write or receive letters to and from that person. But lest you should run into a mistake and think we have quarrelled, I assure you we are perfect friends; we think, wish and judge alike, but what avails it? We are both miserable. He has not differed with my mother, but she loves him not, because she esteems him the unlucky cause of a deep melancholy in a beloved child. For his own sake it is that I cease writing, because it is now his interest to forget me.

Whether you will be engaged before thirty or not, I cannot determine; but if my advice be worth listening to, never engage your affections before your worldly affairs are in such a position that you may marry very soon. The contrary practice has proved very pernicious in our family; and were I to live my time over again, and had the same experience as I have now, were it for the best man in England, I would not wait one year. I know you are a young man, encompassed with difficulties, that has passed through many hardships already, and probably must pass through many more before you are easy in the world; but, believe me, if ever you come to suffer the torment of a hopeless love, all other afflictions will seem small in comparison of it. And that you may not think I speak at random, take some account of my past life, more than ever I spoke to anyone.

After the fire, when I was seventeen years old, I was left alone with my mother, and lived easy for one year, having most necessaries, though few diversions, and never going abroad. Yet after working all day I read some pleasant book at night, and was contented enough; but after we were gotten into our house, and all the family were settled, in about a year's time I began to find out that we were ruined. Then came on London journeys, Convocations of blessed memory, that for seven years my father was at London, and we at home in intolerable want and affliction. Then I learnt what it was to seek money for bread, seldom having any without such hardships in getting it that much abated the pleasure of it. Thus we went on, growing worse and worse; all us children in scandalous want of necessaries for years together; vast income, but no comfort or credit with it. Then I went to London with design to get into some service, failed of that, and grew acquainted with Leybourne. Ever after that I lived in close correspondence with him. When anything grieved me, he was my comforter; and what though our affairs grew no better, yet I was tolerably easy, thinking his love sufficient recompense for the absence of all other worldly comforts. Then ill fate, in the shape of a near relation, laid the groundwork of my misery, and—joined with my mother's command and my own indiscretion-broke the correspondence between him and I [sic].

That dismal winter I shall ever remember; my mother was sick, confined even to her bed, my father in danger of arrests every day. I had a large family to keep, and a small sum to keep it on; and yet in all this care the loss of Leybourne was heaviest. For nearly half a year I never slept half a night, and now, provoked at all my relations, resolved never to marry. Wishing to be out of their sight, I began first to think of going into the world. A vacancy happening in Lincoln boarding school, I went thither; and though I had never so much as seen one before, I fell readily into that way of life; and I was so pleased to see myself in good clothes, with money in my pocket, and respected in a strange manner by everyone, that I seemed gotten into another world.

Here I lived five years and should have done longer, but the school broke up; and my father having got Wroote living, my mother was earnest for my return. I was told what pleasant company was at Bawtry, Doncaster, etc., and that this addition to my father, with God's ordinary blessing, would make him a rich man in a few years. I came home again, in an evil hour for me. I was well clothed, and, while I wanted nothing, was easy enough. But this winter, when my own necessaries began to decay and my money was most of it spent, I found what a condition I was in—every trifling want was either not supplied, or I had more trouble to procure it than it was worth.

I know not when we have had so good a year, both at Wroote and Epworth, as this year; but instead of saving anything to clothe my sister or myself, we are just where we were. A noble crop has almost all gone, beside Epworth living, to pay some part of those infinite debts my father has run into, which are so many (as I have lately found out) that were he to save 50 pounds a year he would not be clear in the world this seven years. One thing I warn you of: let not my giving you this account be any hindrance to your affairs. If you want assistance in any case, my father is as able to give it now as any time these last ten years; nor shall we be ever the poorer for it. We enjoy many comforts. We have plenty of good meat and drink, fuel, etc.; have no duns, nor any of that tormenting care to provide bread which we had at Epworth. In short, could I lay aside all thoughts of the future, and be content with three things, money, liberty, and clothes, I might live very comfortably. While my mother lives I am inclined to stay with her; she is so very good to me, and has so little comfort in the world beside, that I think it barbarous to abandon her. As soon as she is in heaven, or perhaps sooner if I am quite tired out, I have fully fixed on a state of life; a way indeed that my parents may disapprove, but that I do not regard. And now:

"Let Emma's hapless case be falsely told By the rash young, or the ill-natured old."

You, that know my hard fortune, I hope will never hastily condemn me for anything I shall be driven to do by stress of fortune that is not directly sinful. As for Hetty, we have heard nothing of her these three months past. Mr. Grantham, I hear, has behaved himself very honourably towards her, but there are more gentlemen besides him in the world.

I have quite tired you now. Pray be faithful to me. Let me have one relation I can trust: never give any hint to anyone of aught I write to you: and continue to love,

Your unhappy but affectionate sister, Emilia Wesley.

6. From the Rev. Samuel Wesley to his son John.

Wroote, May 10, 1725.

Dear Son,—Your brother Samuel, with his wife and child, are here. I did what I could that you might have been in Orders this Trinity; but I doubt your brother's journey hither has, for the present, disconcerted our plans, though you will have more time to prepare yourself for Ordination, which I pray God you may, as I am your loving father,

Samuel Wesley.

7. From Mrs. Wesley to her son John.

Wroote, June 8th, 1725.

Dear Son,—I have Kempis by me; but have not read him lately. I cannot recollect the passages you mention; but believing you do him justice, I do positively aver that he is extremely wrong in that impious, I was about to say blasphemous, suggestion that God, by an irreversible decree, has determined any man to be miserable, even in this world. His intentions, as Himself, are holy, just and good; and all the miseries incident to men here or thereafter spring from themselves.

Your brother has brought us a heavy reckoning for you and Charles. God be merciful to us all! Dear Jack, I earnestly beseech Almighty God to bless you. Adieu.

Susanna Wesley.

8. From the Rev. Samuel Wesley to his son John.

Bawtry, September 1st, 1725.

Dear Son,—I came hither to-day because I cannot be at rest till I make you easier. I could not possibly manufacture any money for you here sooner than next Saturday. On Monday I design to wait on Dr. Morley, and will try to prevail with your brother to return you 8 pounds with interest. I will assist you in the charges for Ordination, though I am just now struggling for life. This 8 pounds you may depend on the next week, or the week after.

S. Wesley.

9. From the same to the same.

Gainsborough, Sept. 7th, 1725.

Dear Son John,—With much ado, you see I am for once as good as my word. Carry Dr. Morley's note to the bursar. I hope to send you more, and, I believe, by the same hand. God fit you for your great work. Fast—watch—pray—endure—be happy; towards which you shall never want the ardent prayers of your affectionate father,

S. Wesley.

On Sunday, September 19th, 1725, John Wesley, being twenty-two years old, was ordained deacon by Dr. John Potter, Bishop of Oxford, in Christ Church Cathedral.



CHAPTER V.

Of the letters received from home by him during the struggle to raise money for his Ordination fees, the above are but extracts. Let us go back to the month of May, and to Kelstein.

"Patty dear," asked Hetty one morning, "have you heard lately of John Romley?"

She was sitting up in bed with a letter in her hand. It had come yesterday; and Patty, brushing her hair before the glass, guessed from whom. She did not answer.

"He is at Lincoln; he has gone to try for the precentorship of the cathedral," Hetty announced.

"You know perfectly well that we do not correspond. I have too much principle."

"I know, dear," sighed Hetty, with her eyes fixed meditatively upon her sister's somewhat angular back. "I hope he is none the worse for it: for I have my reasons for wishing to think of him as a good man." Patty paused with brush in air, her eyes on Hetty's image in the glass; but Hetty went on inconsequently: "But surely you get word of him, now and then, in those letters from home which you hide from me? Patty, I am a stronger woman than you: and you may think yourself lucky I haven't put you through the door before this, laid violent hands on the whole budget, and read them through at my leisure. You invite it, too, by locking them up; which against a determined person would avail nothing and is therefore merely an insult, my dear."

"You know perfectly well why I do not show you my letters. They are all crying out for news of you—mother, and Emmy and Molly: even poor honest Nan breaks off writing about John Lambert and when the wedding is to be and what she is to wear, and begs to hear if there be anything wrong. And all I can answer is, that you are well, with a line or two about the children. They must think me a fool, and it has kept me miserable ever since I came. But more I will not say. At least—" She seemed about to correct herself, but came to an abrupt halt and began brushing vigorously. Hetty could not see the flush on her sallow face.

"Dear old Molly!" Hetty murmured the name of her favourite sister. "But I could not write without telling her and loading her poor conscience."

"Much you think of conscience, with a letter from him in your hand at this minute!"

"But I do think of conscience. And the best proof of it is, I am going home."

"Going home!" Patty faced about now, and with a scared face.

"Yes." Hetty put her feet out of bed and sat for a moment on the edge of it. "Mrs. Grantham paid me my wages yesterday, and now I have three pounds in my pocket. I am going home—to tell them."

"You mean to tell them!"

"Not a doubt of it. But why look as if you had seen a ghost?"

"And what do you suppose will happen?"

"Mother and Molly will cry, and Emmy will make an oration which I shall interrupt, and Kezzy will open her eyes at such a monster, and father will want to horsewhip me, but restrain himself and turn me from the door. Or perhaps he will lock me up—oh Patty, cannot you see that I'm weeping, not joking? But it has to be done, and I am going to be brave and do it."

"Very well, then. Now listen to me.—You cannot."

"Cannot? Why?"

"There's no room, to begin with—not a bed in the house. Sam and his wife are there, and the child, on a visit."

"Sam there! And you never told me.—Oh, Pat, Pat, and I might have missed him!" She sprang up from the bed and began her dressing in a fever of haste.

"But what will you do?"

"Go home and find Sam, of course."

"I don't see how Sam can help you. He did not help Emmy much: and his wife will be there, remember."

There was no love lost between Sam's sisters and Sam's wife—a practical little woman with a sharp tongue and a settled conviction that her husband's relatives were little better than lunatics. She understood the Rectory's strict rules of conduct as little as its feckless poverty (for so she called it). That a household which held its head so high should be content with a parlour furnished like a barn, sit down to meals scarcely better than the day-labourers' about them, and rest ignored by families of decent position in the neighbourhood, puzzled and irritated her. "Better he paid his debts and fed his children," was her answer when Sam put in a word for his father's spiritual ambitions. Her slight awe of the Wesleys' abilities—even she could not deny them brains—only drove her to entrench herself more strongly behind her practical wisdom; and she never abandoned her position (which had saved her in a thousand domestic arguments) that her sisters-in-law had been trained as savages in the wilds. She had a habit of addressing them as children: and her interference, some years before, between Emilia and young Leybourne, had been conducted by letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Wesley and without pretence of consulting Emilia's feelings.

Hetty pondered this for a moment, but without pausing in her dressing.

"Besides," urged Patty, "they may be gone by this time. Mother did not say how long the visit was to last; only that Sam had brought his bill for Jacky and Charles, and it is enormous. Father will be in the worst possible temper."

"Of all the wet blankets—" began Hetty, but was interrupted by the ringing of a bell in the corner above her bed. It summoned her to run and dress Rebecca, who slept in a small room opening out of Mrs. Grantham's.

Hetty departed in a whirl. Patty stood considering. "She never would! 'Tis a mercy sometimes she doesn't mean all she says."

But this time Hetty meant precisely what she said. Having dressed Rebecca, she suddenly faced upon Mrs. Grantham, who stood watching her as she turned back the bed-clothes to air, and folded the child's nightdress.

"With your leave, madam, I wish to go home to-day."

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated Mrs. Grantham. "You must be mad."

"I know how singular you must think it: and indeed I am very sorry to put you out. Yet I have a particular reason for asking."

"Quite impossible, Miss Wesley."

But, as Mr. Grantham had afterwards to tell her, a householder has no means in free England of coercing a grown woman determined to quit the shelter of his roof and within an hour. The poor lady was nonplussed. She had not dreamed that life's tranquil journey lay exposed to a surprise at once so simple and so disconcerting, and in her vexation she came near to hysterics.

"What to make of your sister, I know not," she cried, twenty minutes later, seating herself to have her hair dressed by Patty.

"Her temper was always a little uncertain," said Patty sagely. "I think father spoilt her by teaching her Greek and poetry and such things."

"Greek! You don't tell me that Greek makes a person want to walk out of a comfortable house at a moment's notice and leave my poor darlings on the stream!"

"Oh, no," agreed Patty. "You will not allow it, of course?"

"Perhaps you'll tell me how to prevent it? In all my life I don't remember being so much annoyed."

So Hetty had her way, packed a small bundle, and was ready at the gate for the passing of the carrier's van which would set her down within a mile of home. She had acted on an impulse, unreasoning, but not to be resisted. She felt the crisis of her life approaching and had urgent need, before it came on her, to make confession and cleanse her soul. She knew she was hurrying towards a tempest; but, whatever it might wreck, she panted for the clear sky beyond. In her fever the van seemed to crawl and the miles to drag themselves out interminably.

She was within a mile of her journey's end when a horseman met and passed the van at a jog-trot. Hetty glanced after him, wrenched open the door and sprang out upon the road with a cry—

"Father!"

Mr. Wesley heard her and turned his head; then reined up the filly and came slowly back. The van was at a standstill, the driver craning his head and staring aft in wholly ludicrous bewilderment.

"Dropped anything?" he asked, as Hetty ran to him. She thrust the fare into his hand without answering and faced around again to meet her father.

He came slowly, with set jaws. He offered no greeting.

"I was expecting this," he said. "Indeed, I was riding to Kelstein to fetch you home."

"But—but why?" she stammered.

"Why?" A short savage laugh broke from him, almost like a dog's bark; but he held his temper down. "Because I do not choose to have a decent household infected by a daughter of mine. Because, if sisters of yours must needs be exposed to the infection, it shall be where I am present to watch them and control you. I have received a letter—"

She stared at him dismayed, remembering the man Wright and his threat.

"And upon that you judge me, without a hearing?" She let her arms drop beside her.

"Will you deny it? Will you deny you have been in the habit of meeting—no, I see you will not. Apparently Mrs. Grantham has dismissed you."

"Sir, Mrs. Grantham has not dismissed me. I came away against her wish, because—"

"Well?" he waited, chewing his wrath.

It was idle now to say she had come meaning to confess. That chance had gone.

"I ask you to remember, sir, that I never promised not to meet him." Since a fight it must be, she picked up all her courage for it. "I had no right to promise it."

His mouth opened, but shut again like a trap. He had the self-control to postpone battle. "We will see about that," he said grimly. "Meanwhile, please you mount behind me and ride."

As they jogged towards Wroote, Hetty, holding on by her father's coat, seemed to feel in her finger-tips the wrath pent up and working in his small body. She was profoundly dejected; so profoundly that she almost forgot to be indignant with William Wright; but she had no thought of striking her colours. She built some hope upon Sam, too. Sam might not take her part openly, but he at least had always been kind to her.

"Does Sam know?" she took heart to ask as they came in sight of the parsonage.

"Sam?"

"Patty tells me he is here with his wife and little Philly."

"I am glad to say that Patty is mistaken. They took their departure yesterday."



CHAPTER VI.

"Oh, Hetty!" was all Molly could find to say, rushing into the back garret where Hetty stood alone, and clinging to her with a long kiss.

Hetty held the dear deformed body against her bosom for a while, then relaxing her arms, turned towards the small window in the eaves. "My dear," she answered with a wry smile, "it had to come, you see, and now we must go through with it."

"But who could have written that wicked letter? Mother will not tell us—even if she knows, which I doubt."

"I fancy I know. And you must not exaggerate, even in your love for me. I don't suppose the letter was wicked, though it may have been spiteful."

"It accused you of the most dreadful things."

"If it be dreadful to meet the man you love, and in secret, then I have been behaving dreadfully."

"O-oh!"

"And that is just what I came home to confess." She paused at the sight of Molly's face. "What! are you against me too? Then I must fight this out alone, it seems."

"Darling Hetty, you must not—ah, don't look so at me!"

But Hetty turned her back. "Please leave me."

"If you had only written—"

"That would take long to explain. I am tired, and it is not worth while; please leave me."

"But you do not understand. I had to come, although for the time father has forbidden us to speak with you—"

Hetty stepped to the door and held it open. "Then one of his daughters at any rate shall be dutiful," she said.

Molly flung her an imploring look and walked out, sobbing.

"Is Hetty not coming down to supper?" Emilia asked in the kitchen that evening. Mrs. Wesley with her daughters and Johnny Whitelamb supped there as a rule when not entertaining visitors. The Rector took his meals alone, in the parlour.

"Your father has locked her in. Until to-morrow he forbids her to have anything but bread and water," answered Mrs. Wesley.

"And she is twenty-seven years old," added Molly.

All looked at her; even Johnny Whitelamb looked, with a face as long as a fiddle. The comment was quiet, but the note of scorn in it could not be mistaken. Molly in revolt! Molly, of all persons! Molly sat trembling. She knew that among them all Johnny was her one ally—and a hopelessly distressed and ineffective one. He had turned his head quickly and leaned forward, blinking and spreading his hands—though the season was high summer—to the cold embers of the kitchen fire; his heart torn between adoration of Hetty and the old dog-like worship of his master.

"Molly dear, she has deceived him and us all," was Mrs. Wesley's reproof, unexpectedly gentle.

"For my part," put in Nancy comfortably, "I don't suppose she would care to come down. And 'tis cosy to be back in the kitchen again, after ten days of the parlour and Mrs. Sam. Emmy agrees, I know."

But Emmy with fine composure put aside this allusion to her pet foe. "Molly and Johnny should make a match of it," she sneered. "They might set up house on their belief in Hetty, and even take her to lodge with them."

John Whitelamb sprang up as if stung; stood for a moment, still with his face averted upon the fire; then, while all stared at him, let drop the arm he had half-lifted towards the mantel-shelf and relapsed into his chair. He had not uttered a sound.

Mrs. Wesley had a reproof upon her tongue, and this time a sharp one. She was prevented, however, by Molly, who rose to her feet, tottered to the door as if wounded, and escaped from the kitchen.

Molly mounted the stairs with bowed head, dragging herself at each step by the handrail. Reaching the garrets, she paused by Hetty's door to listen. No light pierced the chinks; within was silence. She crept away to her room, undressed, and lay down, sobbing quietly.