Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family

“Well, I don’t know,” said John, quietly; “a mug of squire’s ale is nice, if Luke there will have one too.”

“Oh! I’ll join,” said Luke, heartily; and, after drawing it, Sage went up with Rue to her room, and she began to tease her about Luke, but ended with an affectionate embrace.

“I’d marry him any time, dear,” she said, “for I think he’s a good fellow, and if you are as happy as I am with dear old John you will be satisfied.”

“But uncle has said that it is not to be till Luke has five hundred a year,” said Sage, dreamily, “and that will not be for a long time; and – and, Rue, dear,” she faltered, “I – I don’t think I feel quite happy about it.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Sagey! Uncle will come round. He wants to see us quite happy.”

“But you misunderstand me, dear,” said Sage, thoughtfully. “I mean that I’m half afraid I’m not doing right in letting Luke Ross believe I love him, because – because – ”

“Because – because you are a goose,” cried Rue, merrily. “I felt just the same about John, and was ready to break it off, and now I think him the dearest and best fellow under the sun. Sage, dear.”

“Yes, Rue.”

“You are in the sugar-plum stage just now, and don’t know your own mind. I like Luke Ross. He’s frank and straightforward. Don’t play with him, for he’s a man to be trusted, and you’re lucky to have him care for you.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Sage, dreamily; “but it is not to be for a long time yet.”

As she spoke she was thinking of the past, and her sister’s love affair with Frank Mallow, who used to follow her whenever she was out for a walk; and then about the trouble at the rectory, when Frank Mallow went off all on a sudden. Of how poor Rue was nearly heartbroken, and used to tell Sage that she would go after him if he sent for her; but he never even wrote to her in spite of all his professions; and then they learned how badly he had behaved; and after that Rue never mentioned his name but in a quiet subdued way, and at her uncle’s wish accepted John Berry – a man of sterling qualities – and she had grown brighter and happier ever since she had been his wife.

The final preparations were made and the table spread long before the Churchwarden and his wife came back, with the chaise loaded up, and Mrs Portlock protesting that she would never go again if Joseph took a whip.

The culprit chuckled as Sage helped him with his overcoat, shouting orders all the while to Luke and John Berry, who were busy bringing in the load of parcels till it seemed wonderful how they could all have been packed into the chaise.

At last the final packet was in, and the cold air shut out; but hardly had the door been closed, and they were standing laughing at Rue’s little girls, who were staggering in and out of the great parlour with packets which they carried by the string, than the bell rang.

“Here’s Vinnicombe!” cried Portlock, and the doctor, in a fur cap tied down over his ears, blue spectacles over his eyes, and his tall lean form muffled in a long thick greatcoat, came in, stamping his feet.

“Here, help me off with this coat, somebody,” growled the doctor. “How do, girls? Take away those children, or I shall tread on ’em. Hate youngsters running about under one’s feet like black beetles. What have you got there?” he added, pointing to the parcels.

“Fal-lals and kickshaws. The old woman’s been pretty well emptying the grocer’s shop.”

“Now, Joseph, that is really too bad,” said Mrs Portlock, full of mild indignation. “Now you know you would persist in buying three-parts of what is there.”

“Humph! Thought you fancied you were going to be snowed up,” growled the doctor, shaking himself free of his coat, and holding out first one leg and then the other for Luke to pull off his goloshes. “That’s right, Luke Ross; I don’t see why you young fellows shouldn’t wait on us old ones. I had lots of trouble with you, you young rascal; fetched out of bed for you often.”

“Well, doctor,” cried Luke, “you see I’m willing enough,” and his cheeks flushed with pleasure to find that in spite of the Churchwarden’s serious treatment of his proposals, he was warmer than ever he had been before.

“There, look sharp, girls,” cried the Churchwarden. “Come, old lady, take off your things. Sage, put the doctor in the chimney-corner to thaw. He’ll soon come round.”

Dr Vinnicombe shook his fist at the speaker, and let Sage lead him to the glowing fire, while the next moment the Churchwarden was having what he called “a glorious cuddle,” four little chubby arms being fast about his great neck, and a couple of pairs of little red lips kissing him all over his rugged, ruddy face.

Part 1, Chapter XIV.
The Bad Shilling

Michael Ross, Luke’s father, came soon after with a couple of fellow-townsmen, and their chat about the state of affairs, social and political, that is to say, the state of affairs in connection with the rectory and the price of corn, was interrupted by the call for tea.

The warm fire and the pleasant social meal did make the doctor come round, and very pleasant everything seemed as they afterwards sat about the blazing fire. Sage noted how happy and contented her sister was, with her pretty young matronly face, as she sat by her husband’s side and seemed to glow with content, as first one little golden-haired cherub and then the other was seated on Dr Vinnicombe’s knee, the soured old cynic telling them tales to which they all listened with almost childish delight.

Luke’s heart was full of joy, and he kept glancing across at Sage, who avoided his gaze in a timid, cast-down manner; but it did not displease him, for he thought she was all that was modest and sweet, and told himself that he was proud indeed to have won such a woman for his future wife.

Then there seemed to be a blank in the room, for Sage left with her sister to put the little ones to bed, Rue sending the blood flushing into her cheeks as she half mockingly said —

“How long will it be, Sage, before I am helping you to put a little Luke and a little Sage to sleep?”

They were very silent directly after, and Sage felt a kind of wondering awe as, in obedience to a word from their mother, the two little white-robed things, with their fair hair like golden glories round their heads, knelt at Aunty Sage’s knee to lisp each a little simple prayer to God to send his angels to watch round their couch that night; and then back came Rue’s merry words, and with them wondering awe, almost dread, at the possibility of such as these at her feet ever calling her mother, and looking to her for help.

They stayed for a few minutes to see the children sleep, with their rosy little faces on the same pillow, and then, with their arms around each other, Sage and Rue, happy girls at heart once more, descended to the dining-room, where their aunt was telling Doctor Vinnicombe about her troubles with her garden, while their uncle’s face was full of good-humoured crinkles as she spoke.

“Here, girls,” he said, putting down his pipe, “come and comfort me while I’m being flogged.”

“I’m not flogging you, Joseph,” said Mrs Portlock, speaking in a serious, half-plaintive way; “but it will soon be time for Dicky to be doing up my garden again, and I do say that it is a shame that in my own ground you will be always planting seeds and things that have no business there.”

“Never put in anything that isn’t useful,” chuckled the Churchwarden, with his arms round his nieces’ waists as they stood by his side.

“Useful, yes; but you ought not to sow carrot-seed amongst my mignonette, and plant potato-cuttings in amongst my tulips and hearts-ease. I declare, doctor, if my verbena-bed was not full of cabbage plants one day, and when I pulled them up he had them set again, and often and often I’ve allowed swedes, and mangolds, and rape to get ever so big in the garden before I’ve known what they were.”

“He’s a terrible rascal, Mrs Portlock, that he is; and if I were you I’d have a divorce,” said the doctor.

“Ah, do, old lady,” chuckled the Churchwarden, but he became serious directly as his wife rose from her seat and went and stood behind his chair, with her hands upon his shoulders.

“A divorce?” she said, smiling. “Thirty years we’ve been man and wife, Joseph;” and he leaned back his head and said softly —

“Ay, dear, and I worked five years till I was well enough off to give you a good home, and please God we’ll have thirty more years together – here, or in the better world.”

Luke Ross felt that the words were meant for him, and he tried to catch Sage’s eye, but she would not raise her face, and he sat thinking that after all the farmer was right.

There was a dead silence in the room for some minutes, and then Dr Vinnicombe exclaimed —

“Come, Churchwarden, here are Michael Ross and I famishing for a game at whist.”

“To be sure,” cried the Churchwarden. “Now, girls, let’s have the card-table. My word, what a night! It’s a nipper indeed. Let’s have another log on, old lady, and – What the dickens is the matter with those dogs?”

For just then, as the flames and sparks were roaring up the chimney, the two dogs in the yard set up a furious barking, growing so excited, and tearing so at their chains, that the Churchwarden went out to the door, opened it, and a rush of cold, searching wind roared into the room as he shouted —

“Down, Don! Quiet, Rover! Who’s there?”

“Port – lock, ahoy!” came in reply, and Rue turned pale, uttered a low moan, and clung to her sister, who trembled in turn as another voice shouted —

“Call off the dogs, Mr Portlock; it is only I.”

“Sage,” whispered Rue, with her face close to her sister’s ear, “let us go away.”

“Why, it must be Mr Frank Mallow,” cried Mrs Portlock, excitedly, and she glanced in a frightened way at her nieces.

“Yes, that it is,” she said, beneath her breath, as a tall, dark man with a heavy beard entered the room, closely followed by Cyril Mallow.

“Beg pardon,” he said, in a curious, half-cynical way. “Didn’t expect to see me, I suppose. Only got back this afternoon; thought I should like to see all old friends.”

“Hearty glad to see you back again,” said the Churchwarden, frankly. “Sit down, Mr Cyril,” he continued, as the new-comer shook hands. “Take a chair, Mr Frank. It’s like old times to see you here again.”

“Hah! yes. How well you look, farmer, and you too, Mrs Portlock. Miss Sage, I presume? Why, what a change! Grown from a slip of a girl to a charming woman. And how is Miss Rue Portlock?” he said, with mock deference, as he fixed the pale, shrinking face with his dark eyes.

“I am quite well, Mr Frank,” said Rue, making an effort to be composed, but not taking the visitor’s extended hand. “John, dear,” she continued, turning to her husband, “this is Mr Frank Mallow, of whom you have heard me speak.”

“Ah! to be sure,” said John Berry. “Glad to know my little wife’s friends. How are you, sir – how are you?”

Frank Mallow’s eyes closed slightly, and he gazed in a half-curious, contemptuous way at John Berry as he shook hands, and then turned to Luke Ross.

“And is this Miss Sage’s husband?” he said, laughingly, but in a sarcastic way that turned Sage cold.

“Well, no; I am not Miss Portlock’s husband, Mr Mallow,” said Luke, smiling, and taking the extended hand, his tone saying plainly enough that he hoped soon to be.

“Ah, well, we all get married some time or other,” said the visitor, in a careless, unpleasant way.

“Have you got married then, my lad?” said the Churchwarden, reaching a cigar-box from the fireplace cupboard.

“No, not yet,” he replied, “not yet. Cyril and I are particular, eh, Cil, old man? I’ve come over to fetch myself a wife perhaps. Cigar? Yes; thanks. Take one, Cil? Hah! how cosy this old room seems! I’ve spent some pleasant hours here.”

“Ay, you’ve smoked many a pipe with me, Mr Frank. That was when you were in your farming days.”

“Farming days?”

“Ay,” chuckled the Churchwarden, “sowing thy wild oats, my lad.”

“Ha, ha, ha! Why, Portlock, you’re as fond of a joke as ever. Ladies, I hope you won’t mind so much smoking,” he said, puffing away vigorously all the same, while Luke Ross gazed uneasily from one brother to the other, till he caught Cyril looking at him in a haughty, offended manner, when in spite of himself his eyes fell.

“Old folks surprised to see you, eh, sir?” said the Churchwarden, to break the blank in the conversation.

“Yes, preciously,” was the short reply.

“Humph!”

Frank Mallow, who was staring at Rue, while his brother was trying to catch her sister’s eye, turned at this loud grunt and smiled.

“Oh, you’re there!” he exclaimed. “And how is Doctor Vinnicombe?”

“Doctor Vinnicombe is in very good health, and in the best of spirits,” said the doctor, sarcastically, “for one of his old patients has come back, evidently to pay a heavy bill that his father refused to acknowledge.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Frank Mallow.

“And how have you got on, Mr Frank?” said the Churchwarden. “I hope you’ve made a better hit of it than Mr Cyril there, and after all the teaching I gave him about sheep.”

“Better hit? Well, I hope so. Nice fellow he was to come out to the other side of the world, and never call upon his brother.”

“You took precious good care not to let us know your address,” retorted Cyril.

“And what may you have been doing, Mr Frank?” said the Churchwarden, who was beginning to have an uneasy idea that the visitors were not adding to the harmony of the evening, and also recalling the ugly little affairs that had to do with Frank’s departure.

“Doing?”

“Yes; sir; did you try tillage?”

“Not I, farmer,” exclaimed Frank Mallow, staring hard at Rue, who kept her eyes fixed upon the carpet, or talked in a low voice to Sage, while bluff John Berry listened eagerly for what seemed likely to be an interesting narrative.

“Let’s see, Mr Frank, you went to New Zealand?”

“Yes, but I did not stay there; I ran on to Australia, and tried the diggings.”

“And did you get any gold, sir?” said John Berry, eagerly.

“Pretty well,” replied Frank Mallow; “enough to buy and stock a good sheep farm; and now I’m as warm as some of them out there,” he added, with a coarse laugh, “and I’ve come back home for a wife to take care of the house I’ve built.”

“That’s right, sir,” said John Berry, nodding his head, and smiling at Rue; “nothing like a good wife, sir, to keep you square.”

“Then you are not going to stay?” said the Churchwarden.

“Stay! what here? No thanky; I had enough of England when I was here. Other side of the world for me.”

The Churchwarden was right in his ideas, for, as the night wore on, Frank Mallow seemed to be trying to pique Rue by his strange bantering ways, while all the time he was so persevering in his free attentions to Sage that Luke’s face grew red, and a frown gathered upon his forehead.

Cyril saw it too, and as he found that his brother’s conduct annoyed both Sage and Luke, he increased his attentions, laughingly telling Frank not to monopolise the ladies, but to leave a chance for some one else.

“And they call themselves gentlemen!” thought Luke Ross, as he listened gravely to all that was said, and tried to keep from feeling annoyed at the free and easy way of the two brothers, who seemed to have put on their Australian manners for the occasion, and refused to believe in Mrs Portlock being troubled and her nieces annoyed.

They had the greater part of the conversation, and thoroughly spoiled the evening, so that it was with a feeling of relief that Luke heard Cyril Mallow say —

“Well, come along; we must get back. Past twelve; and the governor likes early hours in the country.”

“Let him,” said Frank Mallow, lighting his fourth cigar.

“But the mater said she should wait up to see you before she went to bed,” said Cyril.

“Poor old girl! then I suppose we must go,” said Frank, rising. “Ladies, I kiss your hands, as we say in the east. Good-night!”

He shook hands all round, holding Rue Berry’s hand very tightly for a moment, at the same time that her brother had Sage’s little trembling fingers in his clasp.

“Good-night, gentlemen; you don’t go our way.”

The next minute Mrs Portlock uttered a sigh of relief, for the dogs were barking at the visitors whom Churchwarden Portlock was seeing to the gate.

“There’s a something I like about that young fellow,” said John Berry, breaking the silence, as the sisters stood hand clasped in hand, with Mrs Portlock looking at them in a troubled way. “I’ve heard a good deal of evil spoke of him, but a young fellow who is fond of his mother can’t be so very bad. Good-night, doctor; good-night, Mr Ross; good-night, Luke Ross. I’ll walk with you to the gate.”

The “good-night” between Luke and Sage was not a warm one, for the girl felt troubled and ill at ease, but Luke was quiet and tender.

“She’s very tired,” he said, “and I promised her – yes, I promised her – ”

He did not say what he promised her, as he went thoughtfully home, leaving his father and Doctor Vinnicombe to do all the talking; but as they parted at the doctor’s door in the High Street, the latter turned sharply, and said —

“Good-night, Luke Ross. I say, Michael Ross, I don’t think you need envy the parson his good fortune in the matter of boys.”

“I don’t envy him, Luke, my boy,” said the little thin, dry old man, as soon as they were out of hearing; “and if I were you, my boy, I’d have precious little to do with these young fellows.”

“Don’t be alarmed, father,” said Luke, laughing; “they would think it an act of condescension to associate with me.”

“No,” he said to himself, as he stood at last in his clean, plainly-furnished bedroom in the quaint little market-place, “I should be insulting Sage if I thought she could care for any one but me.”

But all the same Luke Ross’s dreams were not of a very pleasant kind that night; and those of the two sisters of a less happy character still.

Part 1, Chapter XV.
The Prodigal Sons

To look at the red-brick gabled rectory, with its rose and wistaria-covered trellis-work, the latter at its season one mass of lovely pendent lavender racemes, and the former in some form or other brightening the house with blossoms all the year round, it might have been thought that it was the home of peace and constant content. The surrounding gardens were a model of beauty, the Rector sparing no expense to make them perfect in their way; but he had long enough before found that beauty of garden and choicest interior surroundings would not bring him peace.

His first great trouble had been the illness of his wife, who, after the birth of Cynthia, had for years and years been taken to this famous specialist, to that celebrated physician, and from both to springs all over the Continent, till, finding no relief, Mr Mallow had yielded to the suffering woman’s prayer.

“It is hopeless, dear,” she had said, with a calm look of resignation in her pensive eyes. “Let us go home, and I will pray for strength to bear my lot.”

They returned then, and it was for her sake that the garden was made to bloom with flowers, and the hothouses to produce the most delicious fruits. Their income was large from private resources, while the Lawford living was good, so that all that money could bring to alleviate the suffering woman’s trouble was there, and the Rector was almost constantly at her side.

But Fate, as has been said, who had endowed the Rev. Eli Mallow with wealth, a handsome presence, and with good intellect, had not been chary in the matter of what commercial people term set-offs. Trouble besides his wife’s sickness came upon him thickly, principally in the persons of his handsome, manly-looking sons.

Frank had been a difficulty from childhood. He had not been more spoilt than most boys are, though certainly his invalid mother had been most indulgent; but there was a moral bias by nature in his disposition, which somehow seemed to make him, just as he was apparently going straight for a certain goal, turn right off in a very unpleasantly-rounded curve.

Quite early in his youth he had to be recalled, to save expulsion from a certain school, on account of his heading a series of raids upon various orchards, and in defiance of divers corrections on the principal’s part.

He had to return home from his two next schools for various offences against their rules, and finally his college career came to an end with rustication.

Frank laughed, and said that he did not know how it was. One thing, he said, was evident: he was not cut out for the church, and he would not go back to college when the term of his rustication was at an end.

A clerkship was obtained for him then, through great interest, in the Treasury, and here for three or four years he got along pretty well, the confinement not being great, and the number of friends he met with being of a character to suit his taste.

There were bounds, though, even in those days, to the limits accorded to a gentlemanly clerk of good birth, and when Frank took to absenting himself from the office for a week at a time, matters became serious.

For the first time or two the plea of illness was accepted, but when another absence occurred, also from illness, and Mr Frank Mallow was seen by his superiors riding a showy-looking hack in the park, and was known to have given a bachelors’ party in the same week, to which several fellow-clerks were invited, it became necessary to hint to the peccant youth that the next time he was unwell, a certificate to that effect would be necessary from some well-known medical man.

Frank was ill again, so he sent in word to the office, and stayed away for another week, after which, on presenting himself, he received a warning – one which he bore in mind for a couple of months, and then his head must have once more been very bad, for there was a fresh absence, and this endured so long that Frank’s seat in the Treasury knew him no more.

“Well, it don’t matter, mother,” he said. “It was a wretched set-out, and I was sick of the eternal copying.”

“But it was such a pity, dear,” his mother said, in a tone of remonstrance.

“Pity? Stuff! Eighty pounds a year, and a rise of ten pounds annually! Not bricklayer’s wages, and all the time people think it’s such a tremendous thing to be a Treasury clerk.”

“Poor papa is so vexed and grieved, for he took such pains to get you the appointment.”

“Then poor papa must get pleased again,” said the young man, petulantly. “I cannot, and I will not, stand a clerk’s desk. I’d sooner enlist.”

“Frank!” cried his mother, reproachfully.

“Well, I declare I would, mother,” he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and walking up and down the room.

“To find freedom?” said his mother, with a smile.

“Oh! I dare say there would be discipline to attend to, and officers to obey; but there would be some change. I should not have to be tied down to a wretched writing-table, copy, copy, copy, the whole day long.”

“Change?” said Mrs Mallow, and she gazed wistfully in her son’s face.

“Yes, of course; one must have some excitement.”

He stood gazing out of the window, and did not notice the strange despairing look in his mother’s eyes, one which seemed to tell of her own weary hours – weary years, passed upon that couch, with no hope of change save that of some day sinking into the eternal rest. It was evident that she was contrasting the selfishness of her son and his position with her own, and she sighed as she closed her eyes and lay there in silence for a time, uttering no reproach.

Then came the day when the Rector was goaded almost to madness by the young man’s follies, and the reports constantly reaching his ears of Frank’s exploits at the principal hotel in billiard-playing and various unsavoury pursuits with one or other of the young farmers round. Reports these that lost nothing doubtless in the telling, and which never failed to reach the Rector in a way that seemed to suggest that he was answerable for his son’s misdoings.

Then followed other troubles, culminating in an affray with the keepers, an affair which, from the family friendship with old Lord Artingale, could easily have been hushed up; but the Rector jumped at the opportunity he found in his son’s dread and evident anxiety to get away from the neighbourhood, so quite in a hurry Frank was shipped off to New Zealand.

And there was peace at the Rectory? Nothing of the kind. There was the misery of hearing endless little stories of Frank’s “carryings on,” as they were termed; some bill was constantly being brought to the house, with a request that the Rector would pay it, and, to hide his son’s disgrace, this he sometimes did. But the annoyance was none the less, and the Rector used to declare plaintively to his wife that if it were not for Julia and Cynthia he would run right away.

“And for me, Eli,” said the suffering woman, with a smile.

“And for you, dear,” he said, tenderly, and there was peace until some new peccadillo of the eldest son was discovered.

Then to the Rector’s dismay he found that Cyril – his mother’s darling – seemed to have taken a leaf out of his brother’s book. If the younger brother’s career had been to run upon a tram-line laid down by his elder brother, he could not have followed in the course more truly, and just as the Rector was beginning to feel calmed down and happy in the society of his two pretty daughters, troubles concerning Cyril kept cropping up.

“Nice chaps for a parson’s sons,” said Jabez Fullerton, the principal draper at Lawford, who could afford to speak out, as Mrs Mallow and her daughters sent to Swan and Edgar’s for everything. And he did speak out; for, as deacon at his chapel and occasional preacher, he never lost an opportunity of saying a few words by way of practice.

“Nice chaps for a parson’s sons! This is the sort of stuff they send to college, and then send back to teach us, in their surplices which we have to pay for the washing of, though we never go to church. Nice fellows they’ll be to preach sermons – out of books too – read ’em. We at chapel never read our sermons, eh?”

There was a murmur of acquiescence here, and Mr Jabez Fullerton felt happy.

Not that the Rev. Eli Mallow had thought of making his sons clergymen after testing them for a short time. Cyril had, like his brother, been to college, and with a view to his succeeding to the living of Lawford, but, as in the case of Frank, the Rector soon gave him up in despair.

Matters grew worse; then worse still. Expostulation, prayer, anger, all were tried in vain, and, having to bear the trouble to a great extent in silence, so as to hide it from the sick mother, who idolised Cyril, the Rector was at times almost beside himself.

At last there came a crash, and the Rector determined to get this son away before something worse should result.

Emigration was being much talked of just then, and plenty of young men were going out to the various colonies to commence life as squatters both in the far east and west. A couple of the young farmers of the neighbourhood of Lawford were about to start, and, after a stormy scene with his father, Cyril came one day to propose that he should be furnished with a little capital and an outfit, so that he could go and try his luck in Australia.

For a few moments the Rev. Eli Mallow was aghast at the idea. He wished Cyril to leave the town, but not to go abroad.

“I don’t care where I go,” said Cyril; “I’ll either try Australia, or go and hunt out Frank and chum with him.”

“But we don’t know where he is,” said the Rector.

“New Zealand.”

“Yes, but New Zealand is large.”

“Not so large but what a fellow might find out Frank. Everyone would know him.”

The Rector sighed, and wished his sons were not so popular with a certain class, and then he thought over the position, and shrank from giving his consent. Knowing the mother’s intense love for her son, he felt that the parting would nearly break her heart, and after a few moments’ pause he said so.

“Oh, you need not fidget about that,” said the young man. “I’ve talked to her about it for days past.”

“And what does she say?”

“Well, it upset her a bit at first, but she soon came round, and she thinks it would be the best thing I could do.”

It was then with a sense of relief that made him feel ashamed, that the father, after a liberal endowment of money, saw his son sent from Liverpool, after the heartiest promises on the part of the young man to do battle with life and make himself a name and a position in the colony.

“If not for my sake, Cyril, for your mother’s,” the father had said, as he held his son’s hand upon the deck of the Great Central liner.

“Depend upon me this time, father,” was the earnest reply, and Cyril went his way across the sea, fully believing in himself that his wild oats were sown, and that now he was about to make a position of substantial basis for himself.

It was a strange thing, and as if a curious kind of clairvoyance made him prophetic, for the Rev. Eli Mallow went home, and that evening busied himself over his next Sunday’s sermon, involuntarily choosing the parable of the Prodigal Son, and not waking up to the fact of what he had done till he sat there in his study reading the manuscript over by the light of his shaded lamp.

“Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,” he muttered in a low voice, as, with the manuscript in his hand, he sat gazing straight before him into the darker part of the room, and then became silent.

“And took his journey into a far country,” he muttered again, in the same dreamy abstracted manner, and then there was a longer pause, followed by a deep sigh.

The Rev. Eli Mallow rose slowly from his seat, and, with an agonised look in his face, walked up and down the room for some time before sinking back into his chair.

“And there wasted his substance with riotous living.”

It did not seem to be his voice that spoke in the silence of that room; but he knew it was his that exclaimed piteously as the king of old – “Ah, Cyril, my son, my son!” Again there was absolute silence in that room, till, quoting once more from the parable which he had made the subject of his discourse, the Rector said softly —