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friend here is going. You can send me your address, Felton. Good-day.'

The man thanked him and, taking up his hat, went. 'Some one out of luck?' said Clode.

'Yes.'

'I did not much like his looks,' the curate remarked. 'He is not a townsman, or I should know him.'

The rector felt that his discretion was assailed, and hastened to defend himself. He is respectable enough,' he said carelessly. 'As a fact, he is Lord Dynmore's valet.'

'But has Lord Dynmore come back?' the curate exclaimed, his hand arrested in the act of taking down a book from a high shelf, and his head turning quickly. If he expected to learn anything, however, from his superior's demeanour he was disappointed. Lindo was busy locking the cupboard, and had his back to him.

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'No, he has not come back,' the rector explained, but he has sent the man home, and the foolish fellow lost his money on the boat coming over, and wants an advance until his master's return.'

'But why on earth does he come to you for it?' cried the curate, with undisguised astonishment.

The rector shrugged his shoulders. 'Oh, I do not know,' he said, a trifle of irritation in his manner. 'He did, and there is an end of it. Is there any news?'

Mr. Clode seemed to find a difficulty in at once changing the direction of his thoughts. But he did so with an effort, and, after a pause, answered, 'No, I think not. There is a good deal of interest felt in the question of the churchyard sheep, I fancywhether you will take your course or comply with Mr. Bonamy's whim.'

'I do not know myself,' the young rector answered, turning and facing the curate, his feet apart and his hands thrust deep into his pockets. I do not, indeed. It is a serious matter.'

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It is. Still you bear the responsibility,' said the curate with diffidence, and, without expressing any view of my own on the subject, I confess.

'Well?'

"I think if I bore the responsibility, I should feel called upon to do what I myself thought right in the matter.'

The younger man shook his head doubtfully. There is something in that,' he said; but, on the other hand, one cannot look on the point as an essential, and, that being so, perhaps one should

prefer peace. But there, enough of that now, Clode. I think you said you were not going to the Hammonds' this evening?' 'No, I am not.'

The rector almost wished he were not. However sociable a man may be, a few days of solitude and a little temporary depression will render him averse to society if he be in the least degree sensitive. Lindo as a man was not very sensitive; he held too good an opinion of himself. But as a rector he was, and as he walked across to the Town House to dinner he anticipated anything but enjoyment.

In a few minutes, however-has it not some time or other happened to all of us?—everything was changed with him. He felt as if he had entered another world. The air of culture and refinement which surrounded him from the hall inwards, the hearty kindness of Mrs. Hammond, the pretty rooms, the music and flowers, Laura's light laughter and pleasant badinage, all surprised and delighted him. The party might almost have been a London party, it was so lively. The archdeacon, a redfaced, cheery, white-haired man, whose acquaintance Lindo had already made, and his wife, who was a mild image of himself, were of the number, which was completed by their daughter and four or five county people, all prepared to welcome and be pleased with the new rector. Lindo, sprung from gentlefolk himself, had the ordinary experience of society; but here he found himself treated, as a stranger and a dignitary, to a degree of notice and a delicate flattery of which he had not before tasted the sweets. Perhaps he was the more struck by the taste displayed in the house, and the wit and liveliness of his new friends, because he had so little looked for them-because he had insensibly judged his parish by his experience of Mr. Bonamy, and had come expecting this house to be as his.

If, under these circumstances, the young fellow had been unaffected by the incense offered to him he would have been more than mortal. But he was not. He began, before he had been in the house an hour, to change, all unconsciously of course, his point of view. He began to wonder especially why he had been so depressed during the last few days, and why he had troubled himself so much about the opinions of people whose views no sensible man would regard.

Perhaps the girl beside him-he took Laura in to dinner-contributed as much as anything to this. It was not only that she was

bright and sparkling-nay, in the luxury of her pearls and evening dress even enchanting-nor only that the femininity which had enslaved Stephen Clode began to have its effect on her new neighbour. But Laura had a way while she talked to him, while her lustrous brown eyes dwelt momentarily on his, of removing herself and himself to a world apart-a world in which downrightness seemed more downright and rudeness an outrage. And so, while her manner gently soothed and flattered her companion, it led him almost insensibly to-well, to put it in the concrete, to think scorn of Mr. Bonamy.

'You have had a misunderstanding,' she said softly, as they stood together by the piano after dinner, a feathering plant or two fencing them off in a tiny solitude of their own, with Mr. Bonamy, have you not, Mr. Lindo?'

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From anyone else, perhaps from her half an hour before, he would have resented mention of the matter. Now he did not

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seem to mind. Something of the kind,' he said, laughing.

'About the sheep in the churchyard, was it not?' she continued.

'Yes.'

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'Well, will you pardon me saying something?' Resting both her hands on the raised lid of the piano, she looked up at him, and it must be confessed that he thought he had never seen eyes so soft and brilliant before. It is only this,' she said earnestly'that I hope you will not give way to him. He is a wretched cross-grained fidgety man and full of crotchets. You know all about him, of course?' she added, a slight ring of pride in her voice.

'I know that he is my churchwarden,' said the rector, half in seriousness.

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"Yes!' she replied. "That is just what he is fit for !' "You think so?' Lindo retorted, smiling. Then you really mean that I should be guided by him? That is it?'

She looked brightly at him for a moment. 'I have not known you long,' she murmured, but I think you will be guided only by yourself'; and, blushing slightly, she nodded and left him, to go to another guest.

They were all in the same tale. He is a rude overbearing man, Mr. Lindo,' Mrs. Hammond said roundly, even her good nature giving place to the odium theologicum. 'And I cannot imagine why Mr. Williams put up with him so long.'

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'No, indeed,' said the archdeacon's wife, complacently smoothing down her skirt. But that is the worst of a town parish. You have this sort of people.'

Mrs. Hammond looked for the moment as if she would like to deny it. But under the circumstances this was impossible. 'I am afraid we have,' she admitted gloomily. "I hope Mr. Lindo will know how to deal with him.'

"I think the archdeacon would,' said the other lady, shaking her head sagely.

But, naturally enough, the archdeacon was more guarded in his expressions. 'It is about removing the sheep from the churchyard, is it not?' he said, when he and Lindo happened to be left standing together and the subject came up. been there a long time, you know.'

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"That is true, I suppose,' the rector answered. But,' he continued rather warmly you do not approve of their presence there, archdeacon?'

'No, certainly not.'

'Nor do I. And, thinking the removal right, and the responsibility resting upon me, ought I not to undertake it?'

Possibly,' replied the older man cautiously. But pardon me making a suggestion. Is not the thing of so little importance that you may with a good conscience prefer quiet to the trouble of raising the question?'

'If the matter were to end there, I think so,' replied the new rector, with perhaps too strong an assumption of wisdom in his tone. But what if this be only a test case ?-if to give way here means to encourage further trespass on my right of judgment? The affair would bear a different aspect then, would it not?'

'Oh, no doubt. No doubt it would.'

And that was all the archdeacon, who was a cautious man and knew Mr. Bonamy, would say. But it will be observed that the rector on his part had both altered his standpoint and done another thing which most people find easy enough: he had discovered an answer to his own arguments.

CHAPTER VIII.

TWO SURPRISES.

On the evening of the Hammonds' party, Mr. Clode sat alone in his room, trying to compose himself to work. His lamp burned brightly, and his tea-kettle-he had sent down his frugal dinner an hour or more—murmured pleasantly on the hob. But for some reason Mr. Clode could do no work. He was restless, been aroused in

gloomy, ill-satisfied. The suspicions which had his breast on the evening of the rector's arrival had received, up to to-day at least, no confirmation; but they had grown, as suspicions will, feeding on themselves, and with them had grown the jealousy which had fostered them into being. The curate saw himself already overshadowed by his superior, socially and in the parish; and this evening felt this the more keenly that, as be sat in his little room, he could picture perfectly the gay scene at the Town House, where, for nearly two years, not a party had taken place without his presence, not a festivity been arranged without his co-operation. The omission to invite him to-night, however natural it might seem to others, had for him a tremendous significance; so that from a jealousy that was general he leapt at once to a jealousy more particular, and conjured up a picture of Laura—with whose disposition he was not unacquainted-smiling on the stranger, and weaving about him the same charming net which had caught his own feet.

At this thought the curate sprang up with a passionate gesture and began to walk to and fro, his brow dark. He felt sure that Lindo had no right to his cure, that he had been appointed by mistake; but he knew also that the cure was a freehold, and that to oust the rector from it something more than a mere mistake would have to be shown. If the rector should turn out to be very incompetent, if he should fall on evil times in the parish, then, indeed, he might find his seat untenable when the mistake should be discovered; and with an eye to this the curate had already dropped a word here and there-as, for instance, that word which had reached Mr. Bonamy. But Clode was not satisfied with that now. Was there no shorter, no simpler course possible? There was one; one only. The rector might be shown to have been aware of the error when he took advantage of it. In that case his appointment would be vitiated, and he might be compelled to forego it.

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