With fierce jealousy in her bloated face, Mrs. Bateman looked after the retiring form of Rebekah Holdich, whom she regarded as an enemy and supplanter. "Go to her cottage indeed," she muttered; "I'll see the woman hanged first! Marion, you shall take the child." And clutching hold of Edith by the shoulder with a roughness which brought a faint flush of pain to the little invalid, she rather dragged than led her to the table, to partake from a chased-silver plate of half-cold food, for which no appetite was felt.

"What misery is often endured by helpless innocents in the nurseries of the wealthy and great!" thus reflected Mrs. Holdich, as she bent her steps. towards home. "That poor nestling is like her favourite-a prisoner in a gilded cage. Is there no guilt incurred by those who, by neglect, cast gloom over the sunshine of childhood; who fill tender minds with superstitious horrors; who teach those to fear, whom Providence intended to love? Surely an account must one day be rendered for all the needless pain inflicted on the helpless and young; and for the deceit and evil taught when the mind, like a blank page, lies prepared to receive its first indelible impressions."

A

reception.

IV.

The Youthful Eriles.

ND did your father really invite all the workmen to come to the lecture to-day?" asked Rebekah of her son, as she prepared her large back room for the clergyman's

"He

"He did I heard him," replied Ned. spoke just in his plain, short way, telling them that he should work an hour later to make up for the time, and that I should do the same also."

It must have required some courage to speak to those men on a subject so strange to them," observed Rebekah, who ever shrank from saying or doing what might provoke ridicule, or give offence.

"I couldn't have done it," cried Ned. "You can't think how awkward I felt, though I had not to come forward at all. But father went at the business

boldly-just like himself. He did not steal on step by step-feeling his way, as it were-watching to see what others would think, but he said out what he had to say, let the fellows take it as they might."

"And how did they take it?" asked Rebekah, with some anxiety as well as interest.

"Just as they might have taken an invitation to sup upon coal-dust. Some laughed, some looked surprised, as if a lecture were a thing which they never had heard of before; one or two turned on their heels, muttering something about my father which it made me so savage to hear!"

I fear," sighed Rebekah, "that your father will have enemies in this place."

"You may be certain of that," said the deep voice of Holdich, as he entered the cottage, and hung up his cap on a peg on the wall. His wife and son had returned to the small front room, the door of which opened on the path which led towards the castle.

"Oh, Robert, have we not been imprudent, would it not have been better had we made more sure of our ground, before taking any step so decided as this?"

Wife," said Holdich cheerfully, "when one has a brook to leap over, 'tis better to take it at the run, than to hang doubting and delaying at the edge. A standing jump is the hardest of all."

"I don't think, father, that you'll get many to follow you in your bold leap here;" said Ned, who was now standing at the open door. "I can't see

one of the workmen coming, still less any of the gold-knotted, powder-wigged swaggerers from the castle. Ah, there's the sound of wheels! And here

comes the little lady in her fairy carriage, our only guest, and she one whom we never should have dreamed of inviting."

Rebekah went out with her husband to meet the little heiress, who appeared in an elegant perambulator, emblazoned with the arms of the Lestranges. She was wrapped up in an ermine mantle; her face expressed a shy pleasure; she seemed a little afraid. of Holdich, as he bent to lift her out of her carriage, but either the kindness of his manner reassured her, or by intuition the child discovered the chivalrous gentleness which seems a part of manly natures, as the hardest steel is capable of taking the smoothest polish. The only arm-chair in the cottage had been placed for Edith's accommodation; Holdich folded his great-coat for a cushion, Marion stood behind, shy and sulky, afraid to meet her pastor, angry at being compelled thus to do so, shrinking from the thought of a searching religious lecture, as a patient might from that of the surgeon's probe. She almost started at the first sound of Mr. Eardley's voice as he entered the cottage, but tried to conceal her confusion under the mask of affected indifference. Why should she care what he said? The days were past when those tones had power to move her. Why should they bring back to memory the venerable grey stone walls within which she so often had heard them, the church under whose shadow lay a grassy mound, beneath which, Marion dared not pursue the thread

of such recollections; not only the form of a sainted parent, but her own holiest hopes, her own purest joys, had been buried low in that grave.

Edith had no such painful feelings to struggle with, but she experienced a sensation of awe in the presence of one whose whole life was spent in showing others the way to heaven. Timidly she glanced up at the clergyman through her long dark lashes; but that glance was sufficient to set her at her ease. No child could ever fear Mr. Eardley. She watched him as he fixed his large coloured picture on the wall, and then placing her tiny hand in that of Mrs. Holdich, who had taken a seat beside her, Edith listened with curiosity and interest to the explanation of its subject.

A small assembly truly was that which met in the steward's cottage; but Mr. Eardley remembered the promise to the two or three gathered together, and would not let his heart give way to discouragement. He saw before him representatives of the classes into which the church may be divided. The strong man walking in the fear of God, and knowing no other fear. The more timid believer who, though with lingering step, treads the path towards Zion. The young joyous spirit that knows nothing of the dangers of the way, confident because careless. The child clinging in loving trustfulness to the hand that would guide it to the feet of the Saviour; and the poor wilful wayward wanderer, turning back from the path of peace,