headlong into the pitfall. He little knows that
the house is all dry-rot, and the chancel a
plastered-up ruin.

Ferker (ahout to marry one of the late
incumbent's daughters) makes a playful survey,
and generously sums up the dilapidations at
twenty-seven pounds ten shillings and four-
pence-halfpenny. The fixtures, estimated at
twenty-four pounds six shillings and twopence,
do not leave a very large margin for Mr. Fifold
to receive; but in the ignorance of
innocence he is happy and delighted. He papers
one room, does some whitewashing, and
then settles down among his new friends and
new duties; he spends half a year's income in
enlarging the village schoolroom at his own
expense; and, in the sunshine of calmer days, his
quiet life flows on. What are dilapidations to
the Reverend Augustus Fifold now, but a dream
of the past?

Seven years of uninterrupted happiness;
parish improved, church enlarged, school
increased, walls built round rectory garden, more
fruit-trees, great improvements to front entrance
—perhaps rather too many for Fifold's income,
seeing that John is gone to Eton, and that the
three girls require a governess.

By-and-by a cloud comes. Fifold catches a
malignant fever from praying beside the bed of
a sick man, in one of those miserable close
cottage's bedrooms. In spite of two London
physicians, his naturally good constitution pulls
him through, and he emerges again to the
light, but by no means the same man. Some
vital organ has been touched; he does not
rally, his walks get shorter, he feels the
exertion of preaching more. He has to cease first
his night-school, then his bi-weekly lecture.

His wife will not see the change, but his
friends do, and sorrow over it. One Sunday,
while reading the prayers, he faints; next
Sunday, while preaching, his speech becomes
singularly thick, and he is obliged to pause and
plead illness. Next day, when out walking,
visiting the poor, he feels lame and benumbed.
The same night he is seized with paralysis. He
goes away for change, returns slightly better,
He preaches before he is recovered, contrary to
the express command of the doctor. He cannot
afford a substitute, for there is Johnny's outfit
for the Navy to buy. He has a second seizure.
He sinks gradually in a few months into a
broken old man. He is led about by his
gardener, the clerk. One day a fatal drowsiness
comes over him; he is struck with apoplexy,
and dies.

The grave closes over poor Fifold, rector of
Little Caddleton. A few weeks afterwards,
while the widow's heart is still bleeding, a light
alert knock comes at the front door, and the
servant announces the Reverend Mr. Harker—a
little smart jerky man, sharp and glib as a
commercial traveller. With conventional expressions
of sympathy, he introduces himself as newly
appointed to Little Caddleton. The widow tries
to repress her tears, but it is a hard struggle.
She now begins to taste the real bitterness of
her loss. She invites the smirking man to lunch.
He discusses the parish, and hints at improvements
and a new régime. She extols the past,
and enlarges on the good done by him who is
now dead. Mr. Harker glances at the blinds
and the bookcases, and says they may do with
a little alteration. He is very sorry, but he
feels he cannot allow the widow a day beyond
the legal two months. Expense and inconveni-
ence of delay, enormous. Will she sell all her
furniture? No? Should have liked to purchase
it at a valuation.

After his lunch, the little man trips out, gaily
lectures the poor on their improvidence, tells
them that he means to turn over a new leaf
with all the clubs, runs to see the stables as
he wishes to keep a pony-carriage, shakes his
head at the rather leaky chancel, wishes that
the rectory had three more bedrooms, is
inducted with nonchalance, and dashes off in a fly
he has sent for, to catch the London train—
7.30 P.M. express—having first measured all
the rooms and named his surveyor for dilapidations.

Odious supplanter, selfish and unfeeling,
thinks the widow, and contrasts him with the
dead, who still seems to sit in his old place and
to fill the well-known seat. Dilapidations,
indeed, and everything new, and of the best
quality? Aroused by a letter from the new
rector, the widow tardily, as a mere matter of
form, appoints a surveyor to meet whomsoever
Mr. Harker shall appoint. The dilapidations on
her husband's coming into the living were, she
remembers, twenty-seven pounds ten shillings
and fourpence-halfpenny; the fixtures, twenty-
four pounds six shillings and twopence.
Now, of course, the dilapidations will be far
less, and the fixtures more. The remaining
profit will pay for the moving, or even add
something to the money on which she has
to live and to support her children. She
looks round the house with sorrow, for it must
soon be left. She regards it with pride, because
it is so neat and so like the house of a gentleman.
There is nothing for her husband's
successor to complain of.

The surveyors come. A long business letter
awakes her from her dream. The gay and careless
Mr. Harker had gathered quite enough
from her to serve his purpose. His surveyor
reports a total decay of all the bedroom floors,
leaky thatch, defective roof; a wood-house
(removed fourteen years before by the late rector)
must be rebuilt, and a wall rebuilt in the
chancel—total, four hundred and thirty-four
pounds six shillings and sevenpence-halfpenny.
The surveyor adds a note, to the effect that
the bedroom floors are of English deal instead
of Norwegian, and that but for the goodness
of the brick in the side walls the
rectory would have had to be entirely rebuilt.
The chancel alone will cost eighty-two pounds
ten shillings. New walls built cannot be
allowed for. Mr. Fifold's widow will derive
no benefit from the gates Mr. Fifold put up,
or the melon-frames he bought, or the