us were in disgrace, settled on my father's brow at once. He gave Jack a covert shake that made him very wide awake in a moment, and left him with no sort of inclination to go to sleep again, and I heard no more of that particular sermon, for I knew Jack would discover for himself by and by that the way of transgressors is hard; and thinking how severe my father was and how strictly he brought us lads up, diverted my attention from the rest of the service. When we stood up for the last hymn, Jack sniffed instead of sang, and I remember saying to myself he might as well keep his tears till he wanted them, which he would be sure to do before long. I knew how my father used to visit his displeasure upon me when I was a small boy and fell asleep in church.

Well, Aunt Milly fretted when Jack was sent supperless to bed. She always did fret when the children were in trouble and I thought that to hear father scold the boy who stood turning red and white and twisting his hands together, and looking as frightened as a boy could well look, and afterwards to see father with little Grace on his knee and he showing her Bible pictures, you would hardly believe it was the same man.

Later, Aunt Milly said she would go out for awhile, only just up the street, she said, for a breath of air; it was a close evening, and she might sleep the better for stepping out for a few minutes. Aunt Milly was subject to bad nights. As she went, I fancied father exchanged a look with her, and it struck me as odd she should be so troubled whenever anything went the least wrong between any one. of us and father, for, after all, if stern, he was just; we always knew what would displease him, and had only got to avoid it to be as happy at home as any family we knew. I stole out after Aunt Milly, but though I had followed her almost directly she was nowhere in sight. I

stood for a minute or two looking up and down the street, where the lamps were lit by this time, for there was no moon, and then set off, for I could give a pretty good guess in my own mind as to which way she had gone.

CHAPTER II.

It was by this time growing dark, and once in the narrow road down which I turned, and away from the lamp-lit street, there was barely light enough to show me the figure I had expected to see just where I had thought to see it; Aunt Milly was walking fast in the direction of our old home.

For the first few hundred yards this lane was a street with houses on either side, but they grew further and further apart, until you came first to a length of wooden paling, and then to a green hedge. Our house was on the other side of this hedge, and behind the house lay the timber yard. My father used the yard still, renting it of his old landlord, and the dwelling had been let off by itself, but as yet, though we heard it had been taken, the people had not come in, and the house was shut up. Aunt Milly knew this as well as I did, who was often down at the yard on an errand for father; therefore I wondered to see her go up to the front door, and put her hand on the latch: she must have known there was no one to open it.

I stood back in the shadow of the hedge and watched what she would do next. What she did surprised me very much. There was no one near, the lane was always very quiet of a Sunday evening, indeed on most evenings at that hour, for if our neighbours stepped out it was generally to

But

go towards the town, and as all our neighbours were to the left of us, and to the right nothing but a country road, it fell out that few had ever passed our door after dark. Aunt Milly seemed listening for a footstep. She came half way from the house to the little gate in the hedge, and stood still for a moment, then turned back again, and shook the locked door gently, and I heard her call, first in very low tones, then louder, but not loud enough to be heard farther off than where I stood

"Grant, Grant, are you come?"

I was perfectly lost in amazement! Whoever "Grant" might be, she evidently expected him to be either within the house or somewhere about it. But who on earth was he? There was Grant, the saddler, in the High Street, a middle-aged man with a wife and a large family, it could hardly be him my aunt was calling for at this hour and in our old place. Besides, she hardly knew him to speak to. Aunt Milly kept herself to herself, and had scarcely made a friend since she came among us.

Presently she went round to the back of the house; I could just make out her figure moving amongst the timber in the yard, and once thought I heard her voice still calling "Grant," and then there really was a firm, quick tread coming down the lane behind me. Aunt Milly heard it at once, and came back to the front gate. I took good care not to stir, for I was full of curiosity, and if this was Grant" had a mind to see him, or rather hear him, for there was very little light now. In my curiosity I forgot or did not choose to remember that I had no business to be eavesdropping, and the voice I heard in another moment took from me all inclination to come forward and let Aunt Milly know I was there.

It was a familiar voice enough, for it was no other than my father who spoke.

"Again, Milly!" he said in his grave tones.

"He might come any time, you know," replied Aunt Milly, and by her voice I could tell that she was crying. "Let him come openly then: and you mind what I told you from the first? I won't have my boys"—

"They never shall! they never shall!" she cried, and I thought she wrung her hands together, and then bowed her head and hid her face in them. Crouched under the hedge as I was now, I could see her figure and that of my father standing up against the dark sky in which the stars were beginning to show one by one.

There was silence for a moment; but just as I was summoning courage to risk my father's displeasure and come forward, for it felt mean to be listening there in the dark, he spoke again—

"Come home," he said, pushing open the little gate across which they had been talking, "they'll be missing you by now."

She did not seem to hear him, for she never moved, though she spoke again in a quick low tone so that I could hardly follow what she said,

"When you are so hard on the boys, Jacob,-hard on them for little things-I get thinking what a terrible mistake it is to make them feared of you, as they are-and I get thinking of how it was with-him."

'You'd have me bring them up your way, bring them up soft," said my father quite angrily; "it answered, didn't it? answered finely?"

Not my doing, never my doing!" she cried; "I have not that to reproach myself with.

I think I should go mad if

I thought it was my doing, my fault."

"Whose then?"

"If from the first he was wrongly trained and I never let to interfere, and if the mistake was made, what was

there left to do but love him and try to soften him all I could? I tell you it never was my fault at first. I've stood by and seen him tremble and turn white, I've stood by and seen him treated so harshly and me not daring to say a word, and when fear, sheer fear, Jacob, drove him into wrong, what could I do but screen him when I was able? Don't tell me I had no business to do that! don't break my heart by telling me things might have been better, if I too had been hard with him."

"Well, well! come home, Milly. I am not telling you anything of the sort, am I?" My father seemed so sorry for her now, that he spoke gently.

"When I saw little Jack to-night," she went on, "it reminded me how I've seen him shake and tremble, and what came of it: it reminds me always ".

"Yes, I know," interrupted my father; "I know all about that; but you must let me go my own way; you went yours, and it's for me to say, as you say, 'What came of it? I've been patient with you, Milly; you're too good to my motherless children for me to pick a quarrel with you, and you my own sister, but you mind what I told you from the first-my lads shall not "—

"They never shall!" she said again.

"That's all very well; but if you come round here at evenings and they get wondering where you are, and why; and if you take to crying and making a fool of yourself whenever there's words amongst us, so that they begin to put two and two together, why, I say, what then, Milly? what then? and if you call this sort of thing keeping a promise, I don't."

"What else would you have me do? He may come any time, you know it as well as I; but I don't want to anger you, Jacob; you are only too good to me. See, I am coming home now, and I'll be careful for the future—very

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