At the end of the first three months, one hundred dollars were paid to the minister.  When he gave up his school, he sold it out to a person who wished to succeed him, for two hundred dollars.  The expense of removing to C—­, and living there for three months, had quite exhausted this sum.  Mr. Malcolm paid away his last dollar before the quarter’s salary was due, and was forced to let his bread-bill and his meat-bill run on for a couple of weeks; these were paid the moment he received his salary.

“I don’t like these bills at all,” said he to his wife, after they were paid.  “A minister should never owe a dollar; it does him no good.  Above all things, his mind should live in a region above the anxieties that a deficient income and consequent debt always occasion.  We must husband what we have, and make it go as far as possible.”

By the end of two months, the hundred dollars were all expended; but not a word had been said about the additional three or four hundred that had been promised, or that Mr. Malcolm fully believed had been promised.  Bills had now to be run up with the baker, grocer, and butcher, which amounted to nearly fifty dollars when the next quarter’s salary was paid.

Mr. Malcolm did not doubt but the additional amount promised when he consented to accept the call would be made up; still he could not help feeling troubled.  If things went on as they were going, by the end of the year he would be in debt at least two hundred dollars; and, of all things in the world, he had a horror of debt.

During this time, he was in familiar intercourse with the principal members of his church, and especially with the leading vestrymen who held out inducements to him beyond the fixed salary; but no allusion was made to the subject, and he had too much delicacy to introduce it.

At last, matters approached a climax.  The minister was about two hundred dollars in debt, and bills were presented almost every week, and their settlement politely urged.  This was a condition of things not to be endured by a man of Mr. Malcolm’s high sense of right and peculiar delicacy of feeling.  At length, after lying awake for half of the night, thinking over what was to be done, he came to the reluctant conclusion that it was his imperative duty to those he owed, to mention the necessities of his case to the vestry, and learn from them, without further delay, whether he had any thing beyond the four hundred dollars to expect.

The hardest task Mr. Malcolm had ever performed was now before him, and he shrunk from it with painful reluctance.  But the path of duty was plain, and he was not a man to hold back when he saw his way clear.  If there had been any hesitation, an imperative dun received before he sat down to breakfast, and another before nine o’clock, would have effectually dispelled it.

Mr. Malcolm went to the store of Mr. Elder, one of the vestrymen, and found him quite busy with customers.  He waited for half an hour for him to be disengaged, and then went out, saying, as he passed him at the counter, that he would call in again.