something," she resumed. "Do you know where he lives, Miss Burton?"

"No," answered Lucy; "but I will find out to-morrow, and ask him to come and see you."

"Well, that will be nice," returned Mattie. "Read to me, Mr. Spelt-anything you like."

The little tailor was very shy of reading before Lucy, but Mattie would hear of nothing else, for she would neither allow Lucy to read nor yet to go away.

"Don't mind me, Mr. Spelt," said Lucy, beseechingly. "We are all friends, you know. If we belong to the Somebody Mattie speaks about, we needn't be shy of each other."

Thus encouraged, Mr. Spelt could refuse no longer. He read about the daughter of Jairus being made alive again.

"Oh, dear me !" said Mattie. "And if I had gone dead when Syne was tormenting of me, He could have come into the room, and taken me by the hand and said, 'Daughter, get up.' How strange it would be if He said, 'Daughter' to me, for then He would be my father, you know. And they say He's a king. I wonder if that's why Mr. Kitely calls me princess. To have Mr. Kitely and Somebody," she went on, musingly, "both for fathers is more than I can understand. There's something about godfathers and godmothers in the Catechism, ain't there, Miss Burton?" Then, without waiting for a reply, she went on, "I wish my father would go and hear what that nice gentleman-not Mr. Potter-has got to say about it. Miss Burton, read the hymn about blind Bartimeus, and that'll do mother good, and then I'll go to sleep."

The next day, after she came from the Morgensterns', Lucy went to find Mr. Fuller. She had been to the week-evening service twice since Mattie began to recover, but she had no idea where Mr. Fuller lived, and the only way she could think of for finding him was to ask at the warehouses about the church. She tried one after another, but nobody even knew that there was any service therenot to say where the evening preacher lived. With its closed, tomblike doors, and the utter ignorance of its concerns manifested by the people of the neighbourhood, the great ugly building stood like some mausoleum built in honour of a custom buried beneath it, a monument of the time when men could buy and sell and worship God. So Lucy put off farther inquiry till the next week-evening service, for she had found already that Mr. Fuller had nothing to do with the Sunday services in that church.

How she wished that she could take Thomas with her the next time she went to receive Mr. Fuller's teaching! She had seen very little of her lover, as I have said, and had been so much occupied with Mattie, that she did not even know whether he had fulfilled his promise about telling his father. I suspect, however, that she had been afraid to ask him, foreboding the truth that he had in

fact let his promise lapse in time, and was yet no nearer towards its half-redemption in act, which was all that remained possible now. And, alas! what likelihood was there of the good seed taking good root in a heart where there was so little earth?

Finding Mr. Kitely in his shop door, Lucy stopped to ask after Mattie, for she had not seen her that morning. And then she told him what she had been about, and her want of success.

"What does the child want a clergyman for?" asked Mr. Kitely, with some tone of dissatisfaction. "I'm sure you're better than the whole lot of them, miss. Now I could listen to you—”

"How do you know that?" retorted Lucy smiling; for she wanted to stop the eulogium upon herself.

"Because I've listened to you outside the door, Miss Burton, when you was a-talking to Mattie inside."

66 That wasn't fair, Mr. Kitely."

"No more it wasn't, but it's done me no harm, nor you neither. But for them parsons!—they're neither men nor women. I beg their pardons-they are old wives."

"But are you sure that you know quite what you are talking about? I think there must be all sorts of them as well as of other people. I wish you would come and hear Mr. Fuller some evening with Mattie and me when she's better. You would allow that he talks sense, anyhow."

care.

"I ain't over hopeful, miss. And to tell the truth, I don't much I don't think there can be much in it. It's all an affair of the priests. To get the upper hand of people they work on their fears and their superstitions. But I don't doubt some of them may succeed in taking themselves in, and so go on like the fox that had lost his tail, trying to make others cut off theirs too."

Lucy did not reply, because she had nothing at hand to say. The bookseller feared he had hurt her.

"And so you couldn't find this Mr. Fuller? Well, you leave it to me. I'll find him, and let you know in the afternoon."

"Thank you, Mr. Kitely. Just tell Mattie, will you? I must run home now, but I'll come in in the afternoon to hear how you have succeeded."

About six o'clock Lucy re-entered Mr. Kitely's shop, received the necessary directions to find the "parson," ran up to tell Mattie that she was going, for the child had not come down-stairs, and then set out.

To succeed she had to attend to Mr. Kitely's rather minute instructions; for although the parsonage lay upon the bank of one of the main torrents of city traffic, it was withdrawn and hidden behind shops, and amongst offices, taverns, and warehouses. After missing the most direct way, she arrived at last, through lanes and courts, much to her surprise, at the border of a green lawn, on the opposite side of which rose a tree that spread fair branches

across a blue sky filled with pearly light, and blotted here and there with spongy clouds that had filled themselves as full of light as they could hold. The other half of the branches of the same tree spread themselves across the inside of a gable, all that remained of a tavern that was being pulled down. The gable was variegated with the incongruous papers of many small rooms, and marked with the courses of stairs, and the holes for the joists of the floors: and this dreariness was the background for the leaves of the solitary tree. On the same side was the parsonage, a long, rather low, and country-looking house, from the door of which Lucy would not have been surprised to see a troop of children burst with shouts and laughter, to tumble each other about upon the lawn, as smooth, at least, if not as green, as any of the most velvety of its kind. Óne side of the square was formed by a vague commonplace mass of dirty and expressionless London houses-what they might be used for no one could tell-one of them, probably, an eating-housemere walls, with holes to let in the little light that was to be had. The other side was of much the same character, only a little better; and the remaining side was formed by the long barn-like wall of the church, broken at regular intervals by the ugly windows, with their straight sides filled with parallelograms, and their half-circle heads filled with trapeziums-the ugliest window that can be made, except it be redeemed with stained glass, the window that makes the whole grand stretch of St. Paul's absolutely a pain. The church was built of brick nearly black below, but retaining in the upper part of the square tower something of its original red. All this Lucy took in at a glance as she went up to the door of the parsonage.

She was shown into a small study, where Mr. Fuller sat. She told him her name, that she had been to his week-evening service with Mattie, and that the child was ill and wanted to see him.

"Thank you very much," said Mr. Fuller. "Some of the city clergymen have so little opportunity of being useful! I am truly grateful to you for coming to me. A child in my parish is quite a godsend to me—I do not use the word irreverently-I mean it. You lighten my labour by the news. Perhaps I ought to say I am sorry she is ill. I daresay I shall be sorry when I see her. But meantime, I am very glad to be useful."

He promised to call the next day; and after a little more talk, Lucy took her leave.

Mr. Fuller was a middle-aged man, who all his conscious years had been trying to get nearer to his brethren, moved thereto by the love he bore to the Father. The more anxious he was to come near to God, the more he felt that the high-road to God lay through the forest of humanity. And he had learned that love is not a feeling to be called up at will in the heart, but the reward as the result of an active exercise of the privileges of a neighbour.

Like the poor parson loved of Chaucer, "he waited after no pomp

ne reverence;" and there was no chance of preferment coming in search of him. He was only a curate still. But the incumbent of St. Amos's, an old man, with a grown-up family, almost unfit for duty, and greatly preferring his little estate in Kent to the city parsonage, left everything to him, with much the same confidence he would have had if Mr. Fuller had been exactly the opposite of what he was, paying him enough to live upon—indeed, paying him well for a curate. It was not enough to marry upon, as the phrase is, but Mr. Fuller did not mind that, for the only lady he had loved, or ever would love in that way, was dead; and all his thoughts for this life were bent upon such realizing of divine theory about human beings, and their relation to God and to each other, as might make life a truth and a gladness. It was therefore painful to him to think that he was but a City curate, a being whose thirst after the relations of his calling amongst his fellows reminded himself of that of the becalmed mariner, with "water, water, everywhere, but water none to drink." He seemed to have nothing to do with them, nor they with him. Perhaps not one individual of the crowds that passed his church every hour in the week would be within miles of it on the Sunday; for even of those few who resided near it, most forsook the place on the day of rest, especially in the summer; and few indeed were the souls to whom he could offer the bread of life. He seemed to himself to be greatly overpaid for the work he had it in his power to do—in his own parish, that is. He had not even any poor to minister to. He made up for this by doing his best to help the clergyman of a neighbouring parish, who had none but poor; but his heart at times burned within him to speak the words he loved best to speak, to such as he could hope had the ears to hear them; for amongst the twelve people-a congregation he did not always have-that he said he preferred to the thousand, he could sometimes hardly believe that there was one who heard and understood. More of his reflections and resolutions in regard to this state of affairs, we shall fall in with by-and-by. Meantime, my reader will believe that this visit of Lucy gave him pleasure, and hope of usefulness. The next morning he was in Mr. Kitely's shop as early as he thought the little invalid would be able to see him.

"Good morning, sir," said Mr. Kitely, brusquely as usual. "What can I do for you this morning?"

If Mr. Fuller had begun looking at his books, Kitely would have taken no notice of him. He might have stayed hours, and the bookseller would never have even put a book in his way; but he looked as if he wanted something in particular, and therefore Mr. Kitely spoke.

"You have a little girl that's not well, haven't you?" returned Mr. Fuller.

"Oh! you're the gentleman she wanted to see. She's been asking

ever so often whether you wasn't come yet. She's quite impatient to see you, poor lamb!"

While he spoke, Kitely had drawn nearer to the curate, regarding him with projecting and slightly flushed face, and eyes that had even something of eagerness in them.

"I would have come earlier, only I thought it would be better not," said Mr. Fuller.

Mr. Kitely drew yet a step nearer, with the same expression on his face.

You won't put any nonsense into her head, will you, sir?” he said, almost pleadingly.

"Not if I know it," answered Mr. Fuller, with a smile of kind humour. "I would rather take some out of it."

"For you see," Kitely went on, "that child never committed a sin in her life. It's all nonsense; and I won't have her talked to as if she was a little hell-cat."

"But you see we must go partly by what she thinks herself; and I suspect she won't say she never did anything wrong. I don't think I ever knew a child that would. But, after all, suppose you are right, and she never did anything wrong-"

"I don't exactly say that, you know," interposed Mr. Kitely, in a tone of mingled candour and defence. "I only said she hadn't committed any sins."

"And where's the difference?" asked Mr. Fuller quietly.

66

Oh! you know quite well. Doing wrong, you know-why, we all do wrong sometimes. But to commit a sin, you know-I suppose that's something serious. That comes in the way of the Ten Commandments."

"I don't think your little girl would know the difference." "But what's the use of referring to her always?"

"Just because I think she's very likely to know best. Children are wise in the affairs of their own kingdom."

"Well, I believe you're right; for she is the strangest child I ever saw. She knows more than any one would think for. Walk this way, sir. You'll find her in the back room."

"Won't you come too, and see that I don't put any nonsense into her head?"

"I must mind the shop, sir," objected Kitely, seeming a little ashamed of what he had said.

Mr. Fuller nodded content, and was passing on, when he bethought himself, and stopped.

"Oh, Mr. Kitely," he said, "there was just one thing I was going to say, but omitted. It was only this, that suppose you were right about your little girl, or suppose even that she had never done anything wrong at all, she would want God all the same. And we must help each other to find him."

If Mr. Kitely had any reply ready for this remark, which I doubt,