you, dear girl, but the wherefores (various)
must be explained when we meet. Come
on Saturday and sleep. We will bring you
back when we drive in to church the next
day, if it needs must be so. Tom and Bobby
send you their best— (Bobby amends my
phrase. He insists on very best)—love.
Present our regards to the vicar.
        Ever, dear Maud,
                          Your loving friend,
                                                     N. S.

This was on Monday. Maud easily
obtained the vicar's permission to accept
Mrs. Sheardown's invitation.

"Oh, certainly," he said. " Go by all
means. It would be hard to expect you to
give up your friends and share the loneliness
of my life."

The fact was that the vicar's life was not
lonely. Maud, as she thought of the
companions he chose, and the society he had
voluntarily abandoned, felt that a lonely life
would have been better for her guardian
than that which he led. However, she
looked forward eagerly to her visit to
Lowater.

But before the appointed Saturday
arrived, an event happened which put
everything else out of Maud's mind for awhile.
She had been out one morning, visiting
some poor sick people in the village, and
her way homeward lying in the neighbourhood
of Mrs. Plew's cottage, she had called
there, to have a chat with the old lady. It
was rather later than she had intended when
she left Mrs. Plew's; and she hastened home
fearing to be late for the two o'clock
dinner. When she reached the vicarage, the
house-door stood ajar. That was no new
thing. Maud entered quietly and looked
into the dining-room. There was no one
there, nor in the parlour. Her guardian
had not yet come in, then. The house was
very silent. She called Joanna. No one
answered, and there was no sound of voices
in the kitchen. Maud ran down-stairs, and
found the kitchen empty; but through the
lattice window she saw Joanna, Catherine,
and Joe Dowsett, the groom, apparently in
eager conversation. They were standing
beside the stable door at some distance from
the house.

"Joanna," called Maud. "Is it not
dinner time? Where is Mr. Levincourt?"

"Lord a mercy, there's Miss Maudie!"
cried Joanna, as excitedly as though the
young girl's apparition was of the most
unexpected and tremendous nature. Then
she hobbled quickly up to the kitchen
door, where Maud stood, followed by
Catherine.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Maud.

"Not a bit on it, Miss Maudie. Don't
ye be flustered. Only the master's not
coming home to dinner. He's gone to
Shipley Magna."

"To Shipley Magna!"

"Yes: here's Joe Dowsett as'll tell you
all about it. Joe, Joe, come here! And
who do you. think, Miss Maudie, my dear,
is at the Crown Inn there?"

"At the Crown Inn? What do you
mean?"

"Why, Miss Veronica! At least Miss
Veronica as was. And her new
husband."

         BYEGONE CANT.

WHAT is cant? we ask our informant;
as a beginning. (We know it is what we
call " Slang " in our own day; but we ask
him.)

Cant—he answers; from a fading,
brown-stained, yellow page; in attenuated, pallid
lettering—is gibberish; pedler's French.
And there he dismisses the subject as too
insignificant for more attending to. Probing
him a little further (if only for vexation),
we elicit from him that to cant is to
talk after the manner of gipsies and rogues;
said gentry being—as far as they were
gipsies—a crew of pilfering stragglers,
pretending, under pretence of being
Egyptians (whence, of course, their rubbed-down
title), to tell people's fortunes; and
being—as far as they were rogues—villains
also, and knaves, and cheats, and sturdy
beggars. A nice set of folks, truly, to
maim, and cripple, and overlay the English
of King George the Second! And they
would not call to cant to cant, either! It
became with these pedler's Frenchmen, these
gibberish-utterers, to stamflesh; and so a
new tongue might be created by them, and
we might stand by, and have no
understanding of a word!

Of a word, did we say? Nay. A word
was altered into a whid—as spermaceti
was mouthed into par-ma-ce-ti by the fine
lord who enraged Hotspur; and if our
friends had required us to speak warily,
they would have cried out, " Stow your
whids!" and have looked blackly enough,
if we had not had comprehension. With
what would they have looked? Their
eyes? Oh! dear no! Their ogles! That
is how they would have put it. And