growing beside the porch, and a sickly-hued
chrysanthemum raises its head to peer
over the low rough wall of the graveyard.
Other growth, save nettles, dock leaves,
and dank, shadow-loving, nameless weeds,
there is none.

Hard by the church stands the vicarage
house. It is a lonely dwelling. There is
no habitation of any kind within a mile of
it: none above the rank of a peasant's
cottage within two miles.

Shipley vicarage is either not old enough
or too old, to be picturesque. It was built
in the middle of what may be termed,
emphatically, the ugly age; the period,
namely, during which the four Georges
successively occupied the throne of these
realms. It is a nearly square house of
yellowish-brown brick. Its rooms are oblong
and rectangular, its windows mean, its
staircases narrow. There is no break or relief
in the flat wall-surfaces, nor in the blank
desert of the whitewashed ceilings.

Behind the house extends a large garden,
the high wall of which skirts a bye-lane
branching from the main high-road to Shipley
Magna. In front is a lawn, cut in two
by a long straight gravel path that leads
from an iron wicket in the box hedge, up to
the hall door. This lawn is only divided by
a paddock from St. Gildas's churchyard.

Two quivering poplars whisper to each
other and nod mysteriously from either
side of the iron gate: and the windows of
the lower rooms in the front of the house,
are darkened by clumps of evergreens,
among which an old yew-tree rises gloomily
conspicuous.

The vicarage faces due south, and looks
across the common and the marsh, to where
tufty woodlands break the level, and hide
the distant spires of Danecester.

The Reverend Charles Levincourt, vicar
of St. Gildas, arrived to take possession
of his new home on a dreary day in the
autumn; when the rain dripped sadly
from the sombre evergreens, and low, lead-
coloured clouds were, melting into slant
showers over the common.

"It is not a hopeful scene," said he, as he
looked about him, and shivered.

He afterwards saw the scene under a
countless variety of aspects; but that first
dispiriting impression of Shipley struck the
key-note of the place, and became an abiding
under-tone, sounding through all subsequent
changes.

CHAPTER III. A WARD.

MR. LEVINCOURT had been established
some years at Shipley, when one day he
received a letter from the junior partner
in a London firm of solicitors, Frost and
Lovegrove, informing him that he (the
Reverend Charles Levincourt, vicar of
Shipley-in-the-Wold), had been appointed
co-executor with the writer (Augustus
Lovegrove) of the will of the late Mrs.
Desmond, relict of Sidney Power Desmond,
Esquire, formerly of Desmond Court,
county Cork; and further requesting the
vicar's presence in town as soon as might
be.

Communication between the country
clergyman and the family of his old pupil
had long since worn away and died out.
The old pupil himself had died, at five-
and-twenty; his sorrowing father had not
long survived him; and this was the first
intimation Charles Levincourt received of
the widowhood and death of his old love.

He journeyed without delay to London,
and saw Mr. Lovegrove. The latter
informed him that their joint responsibility,
as regarded the administration of Mrs.
Desmond's will, would not be an onerous
one: the property she had had to leave
being very small.

"But," added the solicitor, "your share
of the business will be more troublesome.
Here is a letter which I solemnly
promised our poor friend to deliver into your
own hand. She informed me of its main
object. It is to request you to undertake
the guardianship of her daughter."

"Her daughter?"

"Yes; a nice little girl about nine years
old. The only surviving child of a large
family. But I thought you knew all the
circumstances. You were one of Mrs.
Desmond's oldest friends, were you not?"

"I—I—yes; I was a friend of Mrs.
Desmond's family many years ago. But
Time flies away very fast; and many
things fly with him. Was not Mr.
Desmond wealthy? I had always understood
so."

"My dear sir, Sidney Power Desmond
ran through a fine fortune, aud sent his
paternal acres to the hammer. I saw a
good deal of him, and of her too, at one
time, when I was professionally engaged
in 'winding-up his affairs,' as he would
persist in calling it. A tangled skein, that
refused to be wound, I can tell you. Mrs.
Desmond was a sweet woman. She had
a bad life of it, I'm afraid. Not that he
treated her ill. He was fond of her,
in his way. But he shook her children's
inheritance away out of the dice-box, and
then he died, several years later than he