to us, were all-important to her.  The atonement, for instance, I never heard her mention, but Unitarianism was hateful to her, and Jesus was her God in every sense of the word.  On the other hand, she was partly Pagan, for she knew very little of that consideration for the feeble, and even for the foolish, which is the glory of Christianity.  She was rude to foolish people, and she instinctively kept out of the way of all disease and weakness, so that in this respect she was far below the commonplace tradesman’s wife, who visited the sick, sat up with them, and, in fact, never seemed so completely in her element as when she could be with anybody who was ill in bed.

Miss Leroy’s father was republican, and so was my grandfather.  My grandfather and old Leroy were the only people in our town who refused to illuminate when a victory was gained over the French.  Leroy’s windows were spared on the ground that he was not a Briton, but the mob endeavoured to show my grandfather the folly of his belief in democracy by smashing every pane of glass in front of his house with stones.  This drew him and Leroy together, and the result was, that although Leroy himself never set foot inside any chapel or church, Miss Leroy was often induced to attend our meeting-house in company with a maiden aunt of mine, who rather “took to her.”  Now comes the for ever mysterious passage in history.  There was amongst the attendants at that meeting-house a young man who was apprentice to a miller.  He was a big, soft, quiet, plump-faced, awkward youth, very good, but nothing more.  He wore on Sunday a complete suit of light pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper-and-salt on Sunday all his life.  He taught in the Sunday-school, and afterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a prayer-meeting, and to “take the service” in the village chapels on Sunday evening.  He was the most singularly placid, even-tempered person I ever knew.  I first became acquainted with him when I was a child and he was past middle life.  What he was then, I am told, he always was; and I certainly never heard one single violent word escape his lips.  His habits, even when young, had a tendency to harden.  He went to sleep after his mid-day dinner with the greatest regularity, and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire after dark.  I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying with his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the confusion of all who were around him.  He is dead now, but he lived to a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and he passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze.  He never read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not at work or at chapel he slumbered.  To the utter amazement of everybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he—­ George Butts—­were to be married.  They were about the last people in the world, who, it was thought, could be brought