intelligence, out of his face. He sat gazing, with his mouth open, waiting to hear what it could

mean.

"I will double your salary from the present time," said Mr Brownlow, smiling in spite of himself.

Then the young man rose up. His face became the colour of fire. The tears sprang into his eyes. "This was why you said you divined!" he said, with a voice that was full of tears and an ineffable softness. His gratitude was beyond words. His eyes seemed to shoot arrows into Mr Brownlow's very soul-arrows of sharp thanks, and praise, and grateful applause, which the lawyer could not bear. The words made him start, too, and threw a sudden flood of light upon the whole subject; but Mr Brownlow could not get the good of this, for he was abashed and shame-struck by the tender, undoubting, half-filial gratitude in the young man's eyes.

"But I don't deserve it," cried Powys, in his eagerness-"I don't deserve it, though you are so good. I have not been doing my work as I ought I know I have not. These bills have been going between me and my wits. I have not known what I was doing sometimes. Oh! sir, forgive me; I don't know what to say to you, but I don't deserve it-the other fellows deserve it better than I."

"Never mind the other fellows," said Mr Brownlow, collecting himself; "I mean to make a different use of you. You may be sure that it is not out of goodness I am doing this," he added, with a strange smile that Powys could not understand - "you may be sure it is because I see in you certain certain capabilities"

Mr Brownlow paused, for his lips were dry; he was telling the truth, but he did not mean it to be received as truth. This was how he went on from one step to another. To tell a lie, or to tell a truth as if it were a pleasant fic

tion, which was worst? The lie seemed the most straightforward, the most innocent of the two; and this was why his lips were dry, and he had to make a pause in his speech.

Powys sat down again, and leaned on the table, and looked across at his master, his benefactor. That was how the young man was calling him in his heart. His eyes were shining as eyes only do after they have been moistened by tears. They were soft, tender, eager, moved by those last words into a deeper gratitude still, an emotion which awoke all his faculties. "If I have any capabilities," he said, "I wish they were a hundred and a hundred times more. I can't tell you, sir-you can't imagine-how much you have done for me in a moment. And I was ashamed when you said you had divined! I have been very miserable. I have not known what to do."

"So that was all," said Mr Brownlow, drawing a long breath. "My young friend, I told you you should confide in me. I know sixty pounds a-year is very little, and so you must remember is twice sixty pounds a-year

66

Ah, but it is double," said young Powys, with a tremulous smile. "But I have not worked for it," he went on, clouding over

"I have not won it, I know I don't deserve it; only, sir, if you have something special-anything in this world, I don't care how hard that you mean to give me to do

"Yes," said Mr Brownlow, "I have something very special; I can't enter upon the details just now. The others in the office are very well; but I want some one I can depend upon, who will be devoted to me."

Upon this the young man smiled; smiled so that his face lighted up all over-every line in it answering as by an individual ray. "Devoted!" he said, "I should think so indeed not to the last drop of blood, for

that would do you no good-but to the last moment of work, whatever, however, you please

"Take care," said Mr Brownlow, "you may be too grateful; when a man promises too much he is apt to break down."

"But I shall not break down," Isaid the Canadian. "You took me in first when I had nobody to speak for me, and now you save from what is worse than starving-from debt and hopeless struggles. And I was beginning to lose heart; I felt as if we could not live on it, and nobody knew but me. I beg your pardon, sir, for speaking so much about myself

"No, no; go on about yourself," said Mr Brownlow. He was leaning back on his chair like a man who had had a fit and was recovering from it. His whole countenance had relaxed in a manner wonderful to behold. He listened to the young fellow's open-hearted babble as if it had been celestial music. It was music to his ears. It distilled upon him like the dew, as the Bible says, penetrating through and through, pervading his whole being with a sense of blessed ease and relief and repose. He lay back in his chair and was content to listen. He did not care to move or think, but only to realise that the crisis had passed over; that for the moment all was still rest and security and peace. It was the best proof how much his nerves had been tried in the former part of the day.

"But you must recollect," he said at last, "that this great for tune you have come into is, after all, only a hundred and twenty pounds a-year; it is a very small income. You will have to be very careful; but if you get into any difficulties again, the thing you ought to do is to come to me. I will always be ready to give you my advice, and perhaps help, if you want it. Don't thank me again; I shall have a great many things

for you to do, which will make up."

Nothing will ever make up for the kindness," said young Powys; and then he perceived that his audience was over. Already even the lines were beginning to tighten in Mr Brownlow's face. The young man withdrew and went back to his desk, walking on air as he thought. It was a very small matter to be so glad about, but yet there are circumstances in which ten pounds to pay and only five pounds to pay it with will make as much anguish as the loss of a battle or a kingdom

This

especially to the inexperienced, the sensitive, and proud. awful position he was suddenly relieved from when he saw no hope. And no wonder that he was elated. It was not a chronic malady to which he had grown accustomed. The truth was he had never been in debt before all his life. This may be accounted for by the fact that he had never had any money to speak of, and that he had been brought up in the backwoods.

Mr Brownlow did not change his position for some time after his clerk had left him. Passion was new to him, though he was on the declining side of life. The sharp tension, the sudden relief, the leap from anxiety, suspicion, and present danger into calm and tranquillity, was new to him. His mind had never been disturbed by such conflicts while he was young, and accordingly they came now in all their freshness, with a power beyond anything in his experience, to his soul. Thus he continued motionless, leaning back in his chair, taking the good of his respite. He knew it was only a temporary respite; he knew the danger was not past; but withal it was a comfort to him. And then, as he had this time disquieted himself in vain, who could tell if perhaps his other fears might vanish in the same way? God might be favourable to him, even though perhaps his cause was

not just such a cause as could with confidence be put into God's hands. It was not always justice that prevailed in this world; and perhaps So strangely does personal interest pervert the mind, that this was how John Brownlow, an upright man by nature and by long habit, calculated with himself. It seemed to him natural somehow that God should enter into the conspiracy with him-for he meant no harm even to the people who were to be his victims. Far from that; he meant, on the contrary, bit by bit, to provide for them, to surround them with comforts, to advance and promote in every way the young man whose inheritance he had so long enjoyed. He meant to be as good to him as any father, if only he could be successful in alienating for ever and ever his just right from him. Possibly he might still even carry out the plan he had conceived and abandoned, and give the crown of all his possessions, his beautiful child, to the lucky youth. Anything but justice. As he sat and rested, a certain sense of that satisfaction which arises from happiness conferred came into Mr Brownlow's mind. In the mean time, he had been very good to Powys. Poor young fellow! how grateful, how elated, how joyous he was-and all about a hundred and twenty pounds a-year! His trouble had involved only a little money, and how easy it was to make an end of that! It was not by a long way the first time in Mr Brownlow's life at which this opportunity of bringing light out of darkness had occurred to him. There were other clerks, and other men not clerks, who could, if they would, tell a similar tale. He had never been a hard man; he had been considerate, merciful, lending like the righteous man, and little exacting as to his recompense. He had served many in his day, and though he never boasted of it, he knew it. Was it in reason to give up without a struggle his power of

serving his neighbours, all the admirable use he had made of his fortune, when he might keep his fortune, and yet withal do better for the real heir than if he gave it up to him? The sense of coming ruin, and the awful excitement of that conflict for life and death which he had anticipated when he called Powys into his office, had exhausted him so entirely that he allowed himself to be soothed by all those softer thoughts. The danger was not over-he knew that as well as any one; but he had a reprieve. He had time to make of his adversary a devoted friend and vassal, and it was even for his adversary's good.

Such were the thoughts that went softly, as in a veiled and twilight procession, through his mind. After a while he raised himself up, and gathered together all the calculations at which he had been working so hard, and locked all his private drawers, and put all his memorandums by. As he did so, his halcyon state by degrees began to be invaded by gleams of the everyday daylight. He had doubled Powys's salary, and he had a right to do so if he pleased; but yet he knew that when he told it to Mr Wrinkell, that functionary would be much surprised, and that a sense of injury would be visible upon the countenances of the other clerks. Certainly a man has a right to do what he likes with his own, but then every man who does so must make up his mind to certain little penalties. He will always be able to read the grudge of those who have borne the burden and heat of the day in their faces, however silent they may be ; and even an emperor, much less a country lawyer, cannot fail to be conscious when he is tacitly disapproved of. How was he to tell Wrinkell of it even? how to explain to him why he had taken so unusual a step? The very fact was a kind of confession that something more was in it than met the

eye.

And Jack; but Jack and Wrinkell too would have greater cause of astonishment still, which would throw even this into the shade. Mr Wrinkell knocked at Mr Brownlow's door when he had come this length in his thoughts. The manager had not troubled him so long as he had been alone and apparently busy; but after the long audience accorded to young Powys, Mr Wrinkell did not see how he could be shut out. He came in accordingly, and already Mr Brownlow saw the disapproval in his eye. He was stately, which was no doubt a deportment becoming a head clerk, but not precisely in the private office of his principal; and he did not waste a single word in what he had to say. He was concise almost to the point of abruptness; all of which particulars of disapprobation Mr Brownlow perceived at once.

"Wrinkell," he said, when they had dismissed in this succinct way the immediate business in hand, "I want to speak to you about young Powys. I am interested in that young fellow. I want to raise his salary. But I should like to know first what you have got to say."

It was a hypocritical speech, but Mr Wrinkell happily was not aware of that; he pursed up his lips and screwed them tight together, as if, in the first place, he did not mean to say anything, but relented after a minute's pause.

"At the present moment, sir," said Mr Wrinkell, "I am doubtful what to say. Had you asked me three months since, I should have answered,' By all means.' If you had asked me one month since, I should have said, 'Certainly not.' Now, I avow my penetration is baffled, and I don't know what to say."

"You mean he is not doing so well as he did at first?" said Mr Brownlow. "Nobody ever does that I know of. And better than he did later? Is that what you mean to say?"

"Being very concise," said Mr Wrinkell, slowly, "I should say that was a sort of a summary. When he came first he was the best beginner I ever had in hand; and I did not leave him without signs of my approval. I had him to my 'umble 'ome, Mr Brownlow, as perhaps you are aware, and gave him the opportunity of going to chapel with us. I don't hesitate to avow," said Mr Wrinkell, with a little solemnity, "that I had begun to regard him as a kind of son of my own."

66

"And then there was a change?" said the lawyer, with a smile. "There was a great change," said Mr Wrinkell. It was no more the same young man-a cheerful bright young fellow that could laugh over his tea of a Sunday, and walk steadily to chapel after with Mrs Wrinkell and myself. We are not of those Christians who think a little cheerfulness out of season of a Sunday. But he changed of that. He would have no tea, which is a bad sign in a young man. He yawned in my very pew by Mrs Wrinkell's side. It grieved me, sir, as if he had been my own flesh and blood; but of course we had to give up. The last few weeks he has been steadier," Mr Wrinkell added, quickly, "there can't be any doubt about that."

"But he might decline tea and yawn over a sermon without going to the bad," said Mr Brownlow. "I hope so at least, for they are two things I often do myself."

"Excuse me," said Mr Wrinkell, who liked now and then to take high ground. "There is all the difference. I fully admit the right of private judgment. You judge for yourself; but a young man who has kind friends anxious to serve him there is all the difference. But he has been steady of late," the head clerk added, with candour; "I gladly acknowledge that."

"Perhaps he had something on his mind," said Mr Brownlow. "At all events I don't think much

harm has come of it. I take an interest in that young fellow. You will double his salary, Mr Wrinkell, next quarter-day."

"Double it!" said Mr Wrinkell, with a gasp. He fell back from his position by the side of the table, and grew pale with horror. "Double it?" he added, after a pause, inquiringly. "Did I understand, sir? was that what you said?"

"That was what I said," said Mr Brownlow; and, after the habit of guilty men, he began immediately to defend himself. "I trust," he said, unconsciously following the old precedent, "that I have a right to do what I like with my own."

"Certainly certainly," said Mr Wrinkell; and then there was a pause. "I shall put these settlements in hand at once," he resumed, with what the lawyer felt was something like eagerness to escape the subject. "Mr Robinson is waiting for the instructions you have just given me. And the Wardell case is nearly ready for your revision-and. May I ask if the-the-increase you mention in

Mr Powys's salary is to begin from next quarter - day, or from the last?"

"From the last," said Mr Brownlow, with stern brevity.

"Very well, sir," said Mr Wrinkell. "I cannot conceal from you that it may have a bad effect-a painful effect."

"Upon whom?" said Mr Brown

low.

"Upon the other clerks. They are pretty steady - neither very good nor very bad; and he has been both good and bad," said Mr Wrinkell, stoutly. "It will have an unpleasant effect. They will say we make favourites, Mr Brownlow. They have already said as much in respect to myself."

"They had better mind their own affairs," was all Mr Brownlow said; but, nevertheless, when he went out into the office afterwards, he imagined (prematurely, for it had not yet been communicated to them) that he read disgust in the eyes of his clerks; and he was not unmoved by it, any more than General Haman was by the contempt of the old man who sat in the gate.

It was not for some days that the clerks in Mr Brownlow's office found out the enormity of which their employer had been guilty which was almost unfortunate, for he gave them full credit for their disapproval all the time. As it was, Mr Wrinkell embodied within his own person all the disapprobation on a grand scale. It was not that he disapproved of Powys's advancement. Without being overwhelmingly clever or fascinating, the young Canadian was one of those open-hearted open-eyed souls who find favour with most good people. There was no malice nor envy nor uncharitableness about him; he was ready to acknowledge everybody's good qualities, ready to appreciate

whatever kindness might be offered to him, open to see all that was noble or pleasant or of good report—which is the quality of all others most generally wanting in a limited community, from an office up toeven a University. Mr Wrinkell was a head clerk and a Dissenter, and not a tolerant man to speak of, but he liked the more generous breadth of nature without very well knowing why; and he was glad in his heart that the young fellow had "got on." But still, for all that, he disapproved-not of Powys, but of Mr Brownlow. It was caprice, and caprice was not to be supported-or it was from consideration of capability, apart from all question of standing in the office,