butcher, and believing the builder, was inclined to institute investigations; but as such a course was not likely to lead the butcher to repentance, he resolved instead to consult with him how his premises might be included in the defense.  The butcher chuckled with conscious success, and for some months always chuckled when sharpening his knife; but by and by the coals of fire began to scorch, and went on scorching—­the more that Mr. Drake very soon became his landlord, and voluntarily gave him several advantages.  But he gave strict orders that there should be no dealings with him.  It was one thing, he said, to be good to the sinner, and another to pass by his fault without confession, treating it like a mere personal affair which might be forgotten.  Before the butcher died, there was not a man who knew him who did not believe he had undermined the wall.  He left a will assigning all his property to trustees, for the building of a new chapel, but when his affairs came to be looked into, there was hardly enough to pay his debts.

The minister was now subject to a sort of ague, to which he paid far too little heed.  When Dorothy was not immediately looking after him, he would slip out in any weather to see how things were going on in the Pottery.  It was no wonder, therefore, that his health did not improve.  But he could not be induced to regard his condition as at all serious.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE MINISTER’S STUDY.

Helen was in the way of now and then writing music to any song that specially took her fancy—­not with foolish hankering after publication, but for the pleasure of brooding in melody upon the words, and singing them to her husband.  One day he brought her a few stanzas, by an unknown poet, which, he said, seemed to have in them a slightly new element.  They pleased her more than him, and began at once to sing themselves.  No sooner was her husband out of the room than she sat down to her piano with them.  Before the evening, she had written to them an air with a simple accompaniment.  When she now sung the verses to him, he told her, to her immense delight, that he understood and liked them far better.  The next morning, having carried out one or two little suggestions he had made, she was singing them by herself in the drawing-room, when Faber, to whom she had sent because one of her servants was ill, entered.  He made a sign begging her to continue, and she finished the song.

“Will you let me see the words,” he said.

She handed them to him.  He read them, laid down the manuscript, and, requesting to be taken to his patient, turned to the door.  Perhaps he thought she had laid a music-snare for him.

The verses were these: 

  A YEAR SONG.

    Sighing above,
      Rustling below,
    Through the woods
      The winds go. 
    Beneath, dead crowds;
      Above, life bare;
    And the besom winds
      Sweep the air.
  Heart, leave thy woe;
  Let the dead things go.