as long as her mother lived and chose to refuse her the use of it, at least without a law-suit, with which neither of us was inclined to have anything to do.  But I did not lose a penny by the affair.  For of the very first money Tom received after he had got his fellowship, he brought the half to me, and continued to do so until he had repaid me every shilling I had spent upon him.  As soon as he was in deacon’s orders, he came to assist me for a while as curate, and I found him a great help and comfort.  He occupied the large room over his father’s shop which had been his grandfather’s:  he had been dead for some years.

I was now engaged on a work which I had been contemplating for a long time, upon the development of the love of Nature as shown in the earlier literature of the Jews and Greeks, through that of the Romans, Italians, and other nations, with the Anglo-Saxon for a fresh starting-point, into its latest forms in Gray, Thomson, Cowper, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Keats, and Tennyson; and Tom supplied me with much of the time which I bestowed upon this object, and I was really grateful to him.  But, in looking back, and trying to account to myself for the snare into which I fell, I see plainly enough that I thought too much of what I had done for Tom, and too little of the honour God had done me in allowing me to help Tom.  I took the high-dais-throne over him, not consciously, I believe, but still with a contemptible condescension, not of manner but of heart, so delicately refined by the innate sophistry of my selfishness, that the better nature in me called it only fatherly friendship, and did not recognize it as that abominable thing so favoured of all those that especially worship themselves.  But I abuse my fault instead of confessing it.

One evening, a gentle tap came to my door, and Tom entered.  He looked pale and anxious, and there was an uncertainty about his motions which I could not understand.

“What is the matter, Tom?” I asked.

“I wanted to say something to you, sir,” answered Tom.

“Say on,” I returned, cheerily.

“It is not so easy to say, sir,” rejoined Tom, with a faint smile.  “Miss Walton, sir—­”

“Well, what of her?  There’s nothing happened to her?  She was here a few minutes ago—­though, now I think of it—­”

Here a suspicion of the truth flashed on me, and struck me dumb.  I am now covered with shame to think how, when the thing approached myself on that side, it swept away for the moment all my fine theories about the equality of men in Christ their Head.  How could Tom Weir, whose father was a joiner, who had been a lad in a London shop himself, dare to propose marrying my sister?  Instead of thinking of what he really was, my regard rested upon this and that stage through which he had passed to reach his present condition.  In fact, I regarded him rather as of my making than of God’s.