damp, and hung in mouldy shreds from the
blank walls. The long narrow casements were
uncurtained, and the boarded floor had no carpet,
except a dingy rug on the hearth; a square,
uncovered table, where nothing was lying, stood
in the centre, and four chairs only broke the
straight line of the low lining of wainscot. The
room was a large one, and it wore an empty,
desolate, and chilling aspect.

"You shiver," said Felicia, in her soft voice,
which sounded caressingly though she spoke no
words of endearment; "there is a fire in the
schoolroom. We generally sit there now."

I had forgotten how low and dark the
unlighted passages were, and how bleak-looking
the whitewashed walls; and, when the massive
door of the schoolroom swung heavily from
Felicia's hold, I scarcely recognised the lofty
and spacious hall. It had the look of a
chapel, with its decorated ceiling high above
us, and the rostrum of black oak
surmounted by a sounding-board, which stood at
the opposite end; the fixed desks and forms
down each side; the horizontal windows with
diamond lattices and stone casements far
above; the memorial tablets inscribed with
the titles of deceased patrons; and the
doubtful shadows lurking about the furthest
corners, as if it were not worth while for the
darkness to leave altogether the ancient room,
oppressed me with the solemn, eerie feeling of
being in a church at twilight. I had thought
of it as a scene of frolic and boyish games; and
I turned uneasily to the huge corner fireplace,
where Felicia was stirring into a blaze a handful
of smouldering embers.

"I thought my father would have come
down," I said.

"He is either at his book or asleep," she
answered, sighing.

"Felicia," I cried, bursting into tears, "what
is the matter? Is this home? Are you always
like this?"

Before Felicia could answer, Pim came
forward from an obscure corner, and addressed me
in a quick, cheerful tone:

"Ay, little Miss Bessie," he said, "it is
home, but it's not to be always like this. Bless
you, the master's going to finish his big
book, and we shall all ride in our carriage. Or
Miss Bessie 'll be certain to marry some grand
gentleman, and make our fortunes. And Mr.
Edward, in Canada, he'll grow money on his
farm; 'specially when I go out to him, as I'm
waiting to do as soon as you're all settled here.
Lord love you! Whenever I feel a little down
in the mouth, I go and read inside Master
Garforth's desk. You look here, Miss Bessie,
what he's wrote. Here's 'Faint heart never
won fair lady;' 'Hope on, hope ever,' 'Never
say die;' and this here Latin, my dear, means
'Love conquers all;' and 'While there's life
there's hope.' He was a head boy, he was a
regular taw; and his desk's like a chapter out
of the Bible to me."

"But, Pim," I said, "I did not know——"
And then tears stopped my utterance.

"I could not tell you, Bessie," said Felicia,
sadly, "when all your letters were looked at
at school. But we were obliged to have a sale
to pay our debts; and there are no boys now but
the foundationers; and my father, Pim says, is
getting on with his book. During my absence
as a governess to the children of Colonel
Clarke"—here my sister unaccountably checked
herself—"he sunk deeper into the fatal habit
of opium-eating, and now he is so great a
slave to it that the instruction of the few poor
burgesses' sons who came to school, devolve upon
me. Our affairs were bad enough when you
went, if you had been old enough to notice.
And now, dear, we are very poor, and very
lonely."

I suppose Felicia was worn down to this
lifeless existence; at least she accepted it
with a grave patience peculiar to herself. Her
very footstep, languid and inelastic, might have
been timed to the measured ticking of the
school-clock, and her low voice never rose or
fell beyond a certain cadence, which bore in its
reiterated tone a monotony, as the harping
burden of some sorrowful song, like Barbara's
song of willow. From the household work to
the schoolroom, where the rough scholars grew
quiet in her quiet presence, and thence to the
almshouses, she passed daily in a dull routine,
with a meek acceptance of these duties, to
which I could never attain. Only once,
disturbed by some words of mine, there came a
wistful longing weary look into her blue eyes,
followed by rare but passionate weeping,
before which Pim himself was silenced, and
retreated into his own corner of the vast school-
room, whence he watched her with mute anxiety
and distress. My father spent most of his time
in the study, amidst a litter of books and papers,
where he could sleep in peace, unreproached by
our presence. Sometimes when I went past the
unfastened door, which had neither latch nor
lock, singing loudly—for I could still sing when
the sun shone brightly without—he would start
at the sound, and seize his pen quickly, like a
child caught in a fault; but the nerveless fingers
relaxed in a moment, and the grey head nodded
again over the half-written papers, while I stole
away guiltily, with a sense of shame at having
seen his miserable disablement and prostration.

Thus a year and a half passed away, taming
down the wild pulses of my youth. It was the
second winter since I had left school, but a
change was coming now—a very slight change,
but there was an element of excitement and
hope in it. Pim had been seeking constant
employment as rural messenger in the post-office,
by which he would earn fourteen shillings a
week. Another candidate for the office had
been recommended, and it was yet uncertain
whether he would succeed, and to-night he was
gone to hear the final decision. My father had
gone to bed, as his custom was, at nine, and I,
crouching beside the fire, was watching Felicia,
as she paced to and fro into the ruddy gleam of
the fire and back to the cold clear moonlight at
the upper end of the hall. There was an