who can pass at once in boyhood to the preparation for the precise kind of life they desire in manhood to live. Unhappy are those who have no choice either as boy or man, but must simply accept that which lies next, however unsuitable to their frames, their tastes, their special capabilities, or their natural desires. To the first belong the rich and favoured; to the last the bulk of the labourers here in the mine, as well as in a hundred other departments of industry.

'Do you feel for these unfortunates?' he asked.

Oh, yes! Will they always be so?

'Ah, David! what if I were to say that your life itself may be one of many serious and most important answers to that question?'

'Mine?' exclaimed the boy, in undisguised astonishment, yet colouring deeply, as if vaguely conscious of what must be meant.

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Do you belong to either of the two classes I have spoken of?'

"Yes

'Stop! consider well. Be just to your father, and fear not. Then answer.'

The boy became puzzled, confused; his countenance again began to darken.

Suppose now, David, let us only suppose it, that God has given you powers that are intended for more than your own welfare and enjoyment, but accompanied it with an inexorable condition, that you shall discipline yourself for this service, and the service of your fellow-creatures, by a period of pain, by labours disgusting to you, by humiliations that you kick against, not so much for their own sake as because you believe them to be so unnecessary. Suppose all this, and one, two, three years even pass-longer, I believe, quite out of the question-would you not think at the end of that time you were well repaid if you had kept your own conscience clear, had conquered your own will, won your father's respect and help, and from that time had only science in all its exactitude, beauty, and beneficence to study, away from here, in

London, meeting daily with men whose names burn like lights in the darkness of time. Ah, David, can you doubt, my dear boy, that after all your father is substantially right, that you must obey him, learn practically all he wants you to know, and then, too, you will have acquired by actual experience what experience alone can teach, to understand these hard-working little-thought-of heroes of ours who do, without repining, for others what others would not do for them. David, David, the mine is to you your initiation into a holy brotherhood, one in which some day your name shall be never heard but with kindly or grateful recollection.'

The lad's face showed how deeply his whole being was moved. Even where he did not quite understand all that was involved in the speaker's words, he still could sufficiently guess at his meaning.

"Here, David, is the whole thing for you in a nutshell. Tell me, had your father spoken to you as I have done, had he gone differently to work to attain the same end, don't you feel you would have been easy at once, and have forgotten all the horrors of the mine after an hour or two's acquaintance?'

"Yes--I think so—perhaps,' faltered David.

'Had I been your father, were I now Israel Mort thus appealing to you, could you hesitate? do you?'

The deputy paused, and the two gazed earnestly, longingly into each other's eyes, then suddenly, with a voice broken with emotion, the lad threw himself into the deputy's arms, murmuring—

say.

Help me! watch me! and I will do all I can, all you

And all your father says?

'Yes.'

And so the compact was sealed.

'Mind, David, what I am going to tell you. You don't know your father yet. I don't think anybody knows but God. Sometimes I fancy light has been vouchsafed to me, and that light, David, shows me Israel Mort as a true man, a strong man, a great man. At all events, be

to him a son, heed not his harsh words, and time-I promise you that, at all events, and in any case-will bring you a rich repayment.'

CHAPTER X.

'TWIXT CUP AND LIP.

HAS Israel Mort come?' asked Mr. Griffith Williams impatiently, the day after the funeral, as he entered through the French window into the sitting-room with an open letter in his hand.

'No, indeed,' said his wife, who, in the very deepest of mourning habiliments, was just then whisking down an unfortunate spider from some dim and hitherto undiscovered crevice with her long feather-headed broom, and at once with her foot putting him out of his pain.

Griffith rang the bell impatiently, and when the maidservant came, bade her look out, and see if Israel was coming.

Then he began to read his letter again, but stopping short, he called out with just a touch of annoyance in the tone, as if it were an old grievance

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Maggy, do stop that ceaseless bustle of spider-hunting, curtain-flapping, and rearranging everything. Such order becomes to me a kind of chaos made tidy-do stop. Leave all that to your servants, and to fitting times; and sit down here, I have something to say to you.'

She paused a moment-just where she stood, with the long feather brush raised high as she could reach to dust the centre ornament on the gilt cornice-as if trying to understand him; but failing to do so, she completed her job, then sat down near him with a smile on her genial face, and holding the long wand-like handle of the broom stuck upright, like an Amazonian spear turned to domestic

use.

He laughed as he saw her attitude, but said with a grave face

'Brother Jehoshaphat, it seems, was not content with astonishing people while he lived, but carefully provided a fund of amusement for them when he was dead. I have just received a letter by post from the solicitor of his wife, old Mrs. Jehoshaphat Williams, to say that after the will made in my favour, as regards the mine, he left another, which has only just been discovered in a secret drawer, expressly referring to and maintaining the first, but saddling me with a charge on the mine in the old woman's favour to the tune of three thousand a year, she having already got all the rest of his property!'

"Griffith! Griffith!'

'You may well exclaim. But I fear the matter is worse even than it looks, and that in the guise of a friendly gift my brother has deliberately conferred on me a most thankless labour and responsibility.'

'Dear, dear! Yes, indeed! Yes, indeed!' reiterated Mrs. Williams, with that rising inflection at the end of the sentence that is so characteristic of the Welsh, and so pretty in its women.

'Here,' continued her husband, just read the letter, and see if I have mistaken anything, for it has upset me greatly.'

The obedient wife puts down her weapon, and takes the letter, rather a long one for a lawyer's, as if Mrs. Jehoshaphat Williams had had a finger in the pie, in having so many details gone into.

'The mine, I find, has been producing about six thousand a year for some years past; so apparently there's three thousand a piece for us, and the burden of management upon me alone. Well; perhaps that's not unfair. But what do you say to this, Maggy? Israel Mort has been at Barrett repeatedly about the bad state of the mine, and the other day he came to me, even at the risk of Barrett's sending him adrift. And what do you think he said? Why that Jehoshaphat has so worked the mine→ taking everything he could get out of it, and putting

nothing he could help into it-that his motto must have been the same as that of the famous Prince Metternich-"After me the deluge!"

Seeing his wife's eyes already begin to wander, he rose and paced up and down the room, speaking now to himself, now to her, while her thoughts, however much she strives to detain them, are again far away. Now they penetrate below the crack in the floor, right down into the clean, darkish cellar; where, on a table, in their white cotton clothes, lie hams and flitches of bacon waiting to be salted, and ribs and loins and trotters to be wrapped up and sent to neighbours who have bespoken them, or, in special cases, as gifts.

Don't you see, Maggy, my position? I have all the repairs, however elaborate or costly, to make.'

Yes, indeed! It's a shame, Griffith.'

'So that if I have to spend the entire income for a year-a year, do I say? perhaps for many years-her three thousand must go on being paid!'

But Griffith, she can't live long, you know. No, indeed.'

'And then it may be worse for it is not a mere life interest, but a permanent charge, which she can and will leave to others. She may be reasonable, and inclined to help; but a stranger will of course stick to his bargain, and ask me if I am a rogue if I propose to modify it.'

Mrs. Williams sees not only the truth and force of all this, but manages at the same time to see besides, that there is a tap half driven into a beer barrel; that there is a dish of freshly-churned butter set down on the stones, within reach of the cat; that there is a pan of heaving and crackling dough at the kitchen fire. The vivid imagination can bear no more. She rises hastily, says

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Griffith, excuse me just a minute,' and disappears, to return no more till her husband has, as usual, forgotten her absence, and found new avocations elsewhere. That was easy now. For Israel's face appeared for a moment at the window, as he crossed and looked in, but was going on to enter more humbly by the door.