Tom went to find Martha, and I to find Ethelwyn.

“It is all right,” I said, “even to the shame I feel at having needed your reproof.”

“Don’t think of that.  God gives us all time to come to our right minds, you know,” answered my wife.

“But how did you get on so far a-head of me, wifie?”

Ethelwyn laughed.

“Why,” she said, “I only told you back again what you have been telling me for the last seven or eight years.”

So to me the message had come first, but my wife had answered first with the deed.

And now I have had my revenge on her.

Next to her and my children, Tom has been my greatest comfort for many years.  He is still my curate, and I do not think we shall part till death part us for a time.  My sister is worth twice what she was before, though they have no children.  We have many, and they have taught me much.

Thomas Weir is now too old to work any longer.  He occupies his father’s chair in the large room of the old house.  The workshop I have had turned into a school-room, of the external condition of which his daughter takes good care, while a great part of her brother Tom’s time is devoted to the children; for he and I agree that, where it can be done, the pastoral care ought to be at least equally divided between the sheep and the lambs.  For the sooner the children are brought under right influences—­I do not mean a great deal of religious speech, but the right influences of truth and honesty, and an evident regard to what God wants of us—­not only are they the more easily wrought upon, but the sooner do they recognize those influences as right and good.  And while Tom quite agrees with me that there must not be much talk about religion, he thinks that there must be just the more acting upon religion; and that if it be everywhere at hand in all things taught and done, it will be ready to show itself to every one who looks for it.  And besides that action is more powerful than speech in the inculcation of religion, Tom says there is no such corrective of sectarianism of every kind as the repression of speech and the encouragement of action.

Besides being a great help to me and everybody else almost in Marshmallows, Tom has distinguished himself in the literary world j and when I read his books I am yet prouder of my brother-in-law.  I am only afraid that Martha is not good enough for him.  But she certainly improves, as I have said already.

Jane Rogers was married to young Brownrigg about a year after we were married.  The old man is all but confined to the chimney-corner now, and Richard manages the farm, though not quite to his father’s satisfaction, of course.  But they are doing well notwithstanding.  The old mill has been superseded by one of new and rare device, built by Richard; but the old cottage where his wife’s parents lived has slowly mouldered back to the dust.

For the old people have been dead for many years.