of campanology, old Grimes. The old fellow was rather unsteady on his legs, and looked altogether so much like a disreputable mummy as to make the new squire feel that the whole parish, from the parson down to the sexton, was in need of immediate and sweeping reform. All the poetry and romance that had seemed to hang over Hillswick when he first met Helen in the belfry had gone out, and had left nothing but an exceedingly dull country parish overgrown with weeds. The very church seemed to have lost its soul.

It was only satisfactory in one way, but that way was a great one. Hillswick and Copleston would give a new broom plenty to do.

So the time began, and so it went on-but no answer arrived from Helen. Yet she must have received his letter, and it was cruelly hard to be obliged to feel that the gulf she had set between herself and Victor Waldron was so immutably fixed that, by declaring himself, he had cut himself off from her absolutely. In any common case he could have invented a thousand reasons for her silence-the need of long and definite consideration, the miscarriage of his letter, the margin to be always allowed for chances and accidents; but he could not forget her look when she declared war against him to the end though he could not, after all that had passed between them, have dreamed of such endurance of enmity on the part of any woman towards any man, until now, when he was forced, not to dream, but to believe. Even he was beginning to find that there are limits of circumstance which no man can pass, do what he will.

It seemed wonderful to himself that he should be able to set about his plans of reform with Helen upon his heart and his mind. She might be right in refusing to take his help, and in taking his counsel by making her outward life one with her husband's; but she might have let him have one line of answer, out of the mere formal courtesy that is due, above all, to our enemies. In spite of the love for her that he could not even try to conquer-it was so far beyond the utmost reach of reason, his own pride and temper were wounded sorely. It had become a point of honour that he should go on with his plans and his work without reference to her, and yet still, in the inconsistent way of such things, for her sake, and because she refused to recognise the spirit in which his part of the duty of life was to be done. Nor would he leave her the least loophole for saying that, as long as he lived, he had used Copleston for his own advantage or pleasure. That must be his revenge.

It would be long to tell how even at the outset he, in the course of his labours without heart in them, began to grow less popular VOL. CCXLVII. NO. 1799.

M M

among the Hillswick people than he had been before they knew him. At first they had, by tacit consent, made a point of ignor. ing his nationality; by degrees, his American ways began to be talked about with an increasingly ominous stress upon the word "American." Presently they would become Yankee ways, and then Foreign, and then Un-English ways; and, when it came to that, there would be an end of them, so far as public opinion was concerned. But at present, public opinion had not got beyond American; though not a soul in Hillswick knew what American ways are.

It was very soon after "American" had come into common use as an adjective at Hillswick that he came across old Grimes again, just outside the gates of Copleston Park-an unusual distance from the "George" for the sexton to be found.

The old fellow had of late made a point of avoiding the new squire, and had indeed, whenever they met, passed by him with a sort of drunken dignity, or rather, with a manner half scornful and half shy. Victor set it down either to consciousness of drink or to an attempt to imitate the hardly less peculiar behaviour towards him of the Reverend Christopher. But on this occasion he stepped up and lifted his hat, in a half-hearted and grudging sort of way.

"I was coming up to the place o' purpose to see you, Mr. Waldron," said he.

"And I've got one or two things to say to you, Mr. Grimes," said Victor. "There are a great many things going on which do not satisfy me at all."

Mr. Grimes was evidently less deaf than usual to-day.

"This aren't 'Merica, where the people is slaves," said old Grimes. "Nor I aren't a black nor a negro, if it were. And if you're not satisfied, no more are I and my parson. If things aren't to be as they useten, we want to know the reason why."

Waldron had often been irritated by what seemed to him the servility of the British peasant, who cannot be induced to believe that one man is as good as another, or that a Reid or a Waldron can possibly be, by nature, the superior of a Grimes. He set himself, on principle, against the perpetual doffing of caps, and the eternal "Zir," --so he had no moral right to find anything offensive in the independent attitude of the Sexton towards the Squire. Besides, from time immemorial, public use had given old Grimes a charter to hear as much or as little as he liked, and to say whatever he pleased. "Well you first. I'm glad to hear you're dissatisfied. It's a sign of life. I suppose you think there's too much beer drunk in Hillswick? I quite agree with you, and I'm doing what I can. I

shall be glad both of your sympathy and of your example, Mr. Grimes."

"Eh? I'm mortal hard of hearing to-day, Beer? Ay-I won't object to a glass of beer, after walking all the way to Copleston at eighty year old. Maybe I wouldn't touch a drop of beer if I could get port and sherry like you. No; it's not the beer, Mr. Waldron. It's the Times. I'm not going to change 'em, and I'm not going to begin. And Mr. Skull-he'll say the same."

"I should not expect you to change."

"I can see how the land lies, Mr. Waldron, with the half of an eye, for all my ears is hard. You want to get rid of the parson, and

you want to get rid of me."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, now you look here. I'm not denying that Parson Skull is a bit old and ancient for his years, and his sermons aren't what they used to be. There's that sermon he preaches about the roaring lion that isn't half as good as it used to be forty year ago; and to tell you the downright honest truth, without a bit of a lie, I don't know where he'd be at times if it wasn't for me. But I'm another sort, I am, and I'll pull tenor, and dig a grave, and say amen, and bury ye and marry ye, with any man dead or alive. I've been at it sixty year, so I ought to know. You've no call to want to get rid of I. But I tell you what, Squire Waldron. I'll get rid of my own self, bell, bones, and all, if so be you'll make it worth your while. And what I do to-day, Parson Skull 'll do to-morrow; you see if you don't see."

"Worth my while? You mean you want to be bought out, I suppose? But suppose I don't think it worth my while?"

I

"Well, sir, I'll just keep on as I be for twenty year to come. buried an old chap last week that was ninety-nine, and he was always a weakly sort o' chap, and that I never were."

"I think you would certainly be the better for a few years of rest, Mr. Grimes, and it's true that you and I might not be able to pull quite so well together as we used to in the belfry. And you have earned a pension, too, after marrying and burying your neighbours for sixty years. You need not have come to me in such a money-or-your-life sort of fashion, for I think your proposal perfectly reasonable and fair. I'll think it over, and, on your release from office, allow you enough to make you comfortable for twenty years, or more, as the case may be. You're not married, I believe ?"

"No, sir, I aren't, though there's no knowing what mightn't happen any day to a single man. 'T aren't the fault of the wenches

I haven't married twice a year. So don't you go to make no mistake about that there."

"What is your pay now?"

"Nothing worth mentioning. You look here, Squire Waldron, I aren't neither a profligate nor a prodigal. But I know my own vally to the parish, and I'll be as content like an archdeacon with five hundred pound down on the nail, and a hundred pound every year. That's my vally, Squire Waldron, and for that I'll never bury another mortal man."

"Five hundred pounds, and a hundred a year! May I ask how long it is since you left the 'George'? You really rate your value to the parish so highly, and you consider your danger to me so great, that you are not to be bought out under five hundred pounds and a hundred a year?"

"Well, sir-no. There's an empty cottage belonging to you as I've got an eye on, and I'd ask to have thrown in, rent-free." "Anything more?"

"Well, sir, being dry, I'd like a pint o' beer thrown in."

"Let me see a hundred a year, five hundred pounds down, a house rent-free, and a pint of beer. I think that pint of beer is exorbitant, Mr. Grimes."

"Say a quart then, Squire Waldron. I aren't the man to cry off a fair bargain for a thing like a pint, one way or t'other one."

"Mr. Grimes, we Americans are a simple people, but there are bounds to even our simplicity. And you have a way of asserting your claims and your value that I good in this parish I must not let let myself be done."

don't understand. If I am to do myself be bullied and I must not

"Very good, Squire Waldron. rights and my dues, I must go to you first, natural, you being here, a Reid, as the tombs do testify. this here parish if you think to do me with 'Merican ways."

Then, if you won't give me my them as will, that's all. I come to and being a Waldron comes before But you won't do much good in

"I do not understand you, Mr. Grimes. Who else couldassuredly nobody else give you what you expect me to give you for nothing? After all, I think you had better keep your place. It will cost less on the whole."

"I thought you'd take a hint-"

"I never take hints, Mr. Grimes."

"Then, if you let I resign, 'twill cost you just five hundred pound, and the rent of a cottage, and a hundred a year,"

"And a pint of beer."

"Thank ye, Squire. But if you let I stay in, 'twill cost you just -Copleston. That's a hint and a half, I do seem."

"I suppose you are not quite drunk, Mr. Grimes I see you can stand."

"And I can, too. Them that hide can find; but them can find that don't hide.”

"No doubt. Well? You've got something to say to me about Copleston. Time's money in my country. Every minute you keep me waiting will be so much out of your retiring-pension. Now, then, out with it all at once, and look alive."

"So, sir, says I to myself, 'If one man can get all Copleston by groping about in a lot of old lumber, it seems to me I'd best turn antiquity, too.' So I roked and I roked till one fine day I found something in a box where it hadn't been put a hundred years ago." "Well ?"

"So, sir, I put this thing to that thing, and there I were. 'Twas one of them old chests you used to rummage, and 'twasn't likely anybody would go rummaging there again. There! That may be what you call a hint, but it's what I call a pretty strong one. And if you think best not to take it, I'll go to them as will. Ay, as will and that's the very word."

"What was it you found?"

Something I

But what's the

"Something I'll sell you for what I've named. found in a box that none but you ever groped in. use? You know. But I aren't going to show you, with you and me here all alone. If you'll come with me to the 'George,' where there's folks about, you'll see 'tisn't a cock nor a bull I've brought to the fair."

"I shall not do anything of the kind. Whatever it is, you've got it about you, because you've come here on purpose to show it me. Out with it"Eh?" asked old Grimes, with his hand to his ear. Ay-at the 'George,' where there's folks, you see. Ay, sure enough, at the 'George.'"

"I understand you to say that I have been hiding away something in the belfry, and that you have found it. Is that what you mean?"

“Eh?”

"And that you are afraid of my destroying it, if you show it me without witnesses-so that you may lose your hold over me? How can I tell what it's worth till I see it? Take it to Jackson-he's my lawyer here. Or, if you won't show it me here and now, take it to