“Oh, dear!” he murmured to himself, with a long-drawn sigh, as he emerged upon the street, “is not this humiliating?  If I had engaged for only four hundred dollars a year, I would have lived on bread and water rather than have exceeded my income; but at least seven hundred were promised.  It was, however, an informal promise; and I was wrong, perhaps, in trusting to any thing so unsettled as this.  Of course, it will be paid to me when I make known my present situation; but the doing of that I shrink from.”

“Mr. T—­was here again for his bill,” were the first words that saluted the ears of the minister when he returned home.

“What did you say to him?” he asked.

“I told him that you would settle it very soon.  He said he hoped you would, for he wanted money badly, and it had been running for some time.”

“He was rude, then!”

“A little so,” replied the wife, in a meek voice.

Mr. Malcolm paced the floor with rapid steps; he felt deeply disturbed.

An hour afterwards, he entered the store of Mr. Elder, and found the owner disengaged.  He did not linger in preliminaries, but approached the subject thus:—­

“You remember, Mr. Elder, that in the interview I had with you and two of the vestry previous to my accepting the call of this parish, you stated that my income would not be limited to the four hundred dollars named as the minister’s salary, which I then told you was a smaller sum than I could possibly live upon?”

Mr. Elder exhibited a momentary confusion when the minister said this; but he immediately replied—­“Yes, I believe something was said on that subject, though I have not thought of it since.  We always had to make up something for Mr. Pelton, and I suppose we must do the same for you, if it is necessary.  Do you find your salary inadequate?”

“Entirely so; and I knew it would be inadequate from the first.  It is impossible for me to support my family on four hundred dollars; and had I not been assured that at least three or four hundred dollars extra would be made up during the year, I never would have dreamed of accepting the call.  It has been a principle with me not to go in debt; and since I have been a man, I have not, until this time, owed a dollar; and should not have owed it now, had I received, since I have resided in C—­the income I fully expected.”

Mr. Malcolm spoke with warmth, for he felt some risings of the natural man at the indifference with which a promise of so much consequence to him had been disregarded.

“How much do you owe?” inquired the vestryman.

“About two hundred dollars.”

“Indeed! so much?”

A bitter remark arose to the minister’s lips, but he forced himself to keep silence.  He was a man, with all the natural feelings of a man.

“Well, I suppose we must make it for you somehow,” said Mr. Elder, the tone in which he spoke showing that the subject worried him.  “Are any of the demands on you pressing?” he inquired, after a pause.