’You’ll be churchwarden before all’s over,
  And so arrive at wealth and fame.’

Instead of writing po-o-o-etry?  Do you recollect that morning, and the black draught?  Oh dear, my side!”

And Tom heard him keckling to himself up the garden walk to his house; went off to see that Elsley was safe; and then home, and slept like a top; no wonder, for he would have done so the night before his execution.

And what was little Mary doing all the while?

She had gone up to the room, after telling her father, with a kiss, not to forget to say his prayers.  And then she fed her canary bird, and made up the Persian cat’s bed; and then sat long at the open window, gazing out over the shadow-dappled lawn, away to the poplars sleeping in the moonlight, and the shining silent stream, and the shining silent stars, till she seemed to become as one of them, and a quiet heaven within her eyes took counsel with the quiet heaven above.  And then she drew in suddenly, as if stung by some random thought, and shut the window.  A picture hung over her mantelpiece—­a portrait of her mother, who had been a country beauty in her time.  She glanced at it, and then at the looking-glass.  Would she have given her fifty thousand pounds to have exchanged her face for such a face as that?

She caught up her little Thomas a Kempis, marked through and through with lines and references, and sat and read steadfastly for an hour and more.  That was her school, as it has been the school of many a noble soul.  And, for some cause or other, that stinging thought returned no more; and she knelt and prayed like a little child; and like a little child slept sweetly all the night, and was away before breakfast the next morning, after feeding the canary and the cat, to old women who worshipped her as their ministering angel, and said, looking after her:  “That dear Miss Mary, pity she is so plain!  Such a match as she might have made!  But she’ll be handsome enough, when she is a blessed angel in heaven.”

Ah, true sisters of mercy, whom the world sneers at as “old maids,” if you pour out on cats and dogs and parrots, a little of the love which is yearning to spend itself on children of your own flesh and blood!  As long as such as you walk this lower world, one needs no Butler’s Analogy to prove to us that there is another world, where such as you will have a fuller and a fairer (I dare not say a juster) portion.

* * * * *

Next morning Mark started with Tom to call on Elsley, chatting and puffing all the way.

“I’ll butter him, trust me.  Nothing comforts a poor beggar like a bit of praise when he’s down; and all fellows that take to writing are as greedy after it as trout after the drake, even if they only scribble in county newspapers.  I’ve watched them when I’ve been electioneering, my boy!”

“Only,” said Tom, “don’t be angry with him if he is proud and peevish.  The poor fellow is all but mad with misery.”