economized words. “Come this way, then.” And to the stationmaster, who stepped forward, thin and alert: “This is the Reverend Deane, our new Vicar.”

Again the parson shook hands, but that was nothing; because an eternal handshaking is as essential a part of a clergyman’s life as putting on his trousers: it was the absence of the Andrew that went home to him. All his life he had been dogged by an undignified “Andy,” which was even more unclerical than the curls. Now he meant to drop it forever. No one here had known him before at school or college—no one here was acquainted with the aunt by marriage and the cousins who had been his family since the age of sixteen—he would drop the boyish “Andy” into the limbo of the past.

From all this it will be gathered, and rightly, that the Reverend Andrew Deane had obtained a living almost as soon as it was legally possible, and that he had a boyish air which made everyone treat him like a boy.

“There’s a good strawberry bed in the Vicarage garden,” said Mr. Thorpe, as he settled himself in the cart. “Gee-up, mare!”

Then he seemed to think he had said all there was to say, and they jogged on silently through the quiet lanes.

After the hurry and bustle of the growing years, and the time at college, and the London curacy, Andy seemed, as he sat there, to have come out into some quiet place where he could look round and listen. He felt, unconsciously, as a man does who has stood on a country road to watch a noisy procession pass: the last straggler vanishes in the cloud of dust behind it—the clash of music and shouting dies away—and a lark that has sung unnoticed all the time, goes on singing.

This is the voice of peace grown audible at last, and those are very happy who hear it.

“H-hem,” said Mr. Thorpe, rousing himself at a sharp corner. “Funny you should be a bachelor. We seem in for unmarried parsons.”

“In the present day, there are many——” began Andy. But when Mr. Thorpe started a speech, he had a sort of steam-roller habit of finishing it.

“I was looking at the church-books the other day—they only go back to 1687—and the first vicar whose name stands there was a bachelor. He was there fifty years. He signed himself Will Ford, though he’s called Gulielmus now on his grave by the churchyard path. Gee-up, mare!”

But in that minute Andy saw it all, and across the 

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