penny pieces, pats, and admiring glances bestowed on these messengers, causing the men to linger, shrewdly guessing their delay will bring other messengers as small and as pretty in search of them also.

At this very moment the Hercules of the brewery is erecting himself in his leather-encased legs, and extending his bibbed chest, more proudly in the knowledge (though he appears oblivious) that a pair of minutest feet in the outer yard are toddling in his direction, climbing laboriously over the rough stones, "doing them," in fact, as though they were the Alps that lay between the small climber and her father.

There is the brewery patriarch, old Wharton, seated on the diminutive cask, called "a pin," whilst at his side on a firkin stand his yellow basin of tea and plate of bread and butter. His pretty daughter, the laundress, has just brought him this repast, and is still standing watching his enjoyment of it, with a basket of clean linen under her arm, while a barrow full of more baskets waits at the top of the yard.

Mr. Wharton feels himself a person of no little consequence to the Pelican, since on him devolves the duty of seeing the brewery closed, and delivering the keys into the watchman's hands. He looks at the men across the saucer of steaming tea balanced on his finger-tips with the superior air of a domestic pigeon watching the gathering of swallows for migration.

Another and strange reason for the loitering of the men is suggested by the glances, some impatient, some curious, some calmly expectant, which several of them direct towards Mr. Wharton's countenance. They may be waiting to hear his sage opinion on certain engrossing topics of the week. His apparent unconsciousness of anything of the kind being expected of him does not necessarily dispel the idea, for all who know him are aware that it is just when he is in possession of brewery secrets of more than ordinary importance, and when his mind is most powerfully exercised by them, that his pale, watery blue eye is fullest of the innocency of childhood and his sunken mouth seems smitten by a sort of imbecile silence.

This afternoon, his eyes appearing more than ever infantine in expression, and his mouth more innocent of either teeth or speech, it may be reasonably supposed that some matter of unusual consequence is in his thoughts.

“Come, Mr. Wharton," says a voiceless giant who can only speak in a large whisper, having lost his voice by carrying great weights against his chest. "You don't mean to say as we're not a-goin' to see the young master agen? I'd a walked twenty mile to a shook hands with him."

"Ay, and so ud I, I reckon," echoed three or four voices emphatically.

"Some says he went last night, some says he didn't," is the not very lucid comment of old Wharton as he stares into his basin of tea.

"I reckon as the Pelican ull feel the miss on him- more ways nor one," declares the Hercules, better known as Wil liam Treloggan, the Somersetshire man. His little child has reached him and is now in his arms, crushing the splendors of his scarlet cap.

"It's this day ten years ago I saved him from bein' crushed to death by the furnace wheel," says a stout cask-washer.

"Well, and that were fright of his father as made him hide there," observes a stableman who has stopped on his way to the dray just drawn up, to listen. "Ay, and it's nothing but his father's bullyin' as drives him away now."

"I d'zeem there'll be na luck for na one here when he's a-gonned," says William Treloggan.

"Ain't it most a pity," queries the voiceless giant, "as he couldn't make up his mind to give in, and marry the young lady, as old McIntyre wants him to, and bring a lot o' money into the firm? It's wanted bad enough by all accounts- eh, Mr. Wharton ?"

Old Wharton's blue eyes gleam round at the men with an excitement which expresses itself without movement of the lips.

"She wur most growed up when Master Allan were that 'igh," and he holds his shaking hand about half a yard above the stones.

"Oh, come now, father," protested the pretty laundress, "she's only ten years older, and I don't see as they mightn't a bin very happy, and I shud a had the washin' an' all."

"It wouldn't a prospered you if you had."

"Oh, don't tell me!" answers his daughter, throwing off her shyness in the ardor of her professional feeling. "She'd have bin just what I like livin' at home, and all to do regler. None of them goin' abroad, or leavin' you with more on your hands all at once than you can manage, and another time without a blessed pock

et'ankercher, or a havin' of her things powdered and machined to rags by some French Madam Somebody, and blaming it to you. No; for everythink always, and always certain, she'd a bin the nicest bit o' washin I ever had, and I ain't no patience with your young master, that I ain't."

66

A cart is standing there now, and the hot grains come raining down into it from the back window above, dimming the lustre of the orchard blossoms with steam, and sending a warm aroma up the brew ery yard, accompanied by the fragrance of the lilac just outside the brewery door. The two scents mingling seem to typify the spirits of labor and of rest which meet each other at the Pelican just now.

"Hark!" exclaims old Wharton suddenly, suspending his basin of tea midway between his mouth and the firkin.

There is a simultaneous movement among the men, for a well-known voice is heard at the outer gates shouting,

"Hollo! there. Tom, come and hold my horse, will you?"

Tom, Wharton's son, runs up to the gates. All the others turn with respectful and rather gloomy interest towards the new arrival. He at first goes in the direc tion of the house, but seeing so many of them collected together, comes up to them instead.

"Stripling" is the word that occurs to one at first sight of that tall, lithe figure, which evidently has not been in the world more than twenty years at most. But the face, though polished as marble in its smoothness and clearness, and most delicately cut, has the strength, courage, determination, and nerve of a young Bonaparte, whose portrait, indeed, it strikingly resembles. All these qualities are brought to the surface now by some powerfully restrained excitement, excitement so restrained, indeed, as to appear almost like a fine repose.

"Well, my men," he says, striding in amongst them, "I am glad you are still here. I have been riding like Old Nick to get in time to shake hands and wish you good-bye before I'm off."

"He's in the house, sir—in the balcony room," answer several voices at once, not very steadily.

The tall young figure goes through the inner doors, and through the yeasty-smelling darkness towards the narrow door that opens on the orchards. A few strides bring him to the bottom of some rustic steps. He clears these in an instant, and comes upon the balcony outside the favor. ite sitting-room of his father's partner, Mr. Jolliffe.

The Pelican dwelling-house, occupied by Mr. Jolliffe and his family, has been an old manor-house, and is spacious and pleasant, especially here at the back, where it looks out on the old manorial garden and orchards.

Jolliffe is known as the business partner of the firm of McIntyre and Jolliffe, Mclntyre residing two miles away at a lonely house on the hill, called the Poplars, and being seldom seen at the brewery.

Allan McIntyre finds Mr. Jolliffe seated at the end of the balcony, shaded by monthly roses in full bloom, reading his Guardian, and sipping sherry.

Jolliffe is in young middle-age, of a ruddy and white countenance, and easy and affable of manner. His wife, who sits at needlework just inside the sitting-room, is dark-eyed, stout, and débonnaire. Some flaxen-haired children are shouting in the buttercups of the meadow beyond the orchard with voices as sweet as anything in the summer air.

"I have come to wish you good-bye," said Allan McIntyre, looking from one to the other of the comely pair with affectionate eyes, "and to thank you for all your kindness to me."

Mrs. Jolliffe shakes hands with him first, then sinks back in her chair with the baby's pinafore, which she is making, at her eyes.

Jolliffe next holds his young friend's

hand and looks at him with great

ness.

"Must it really be, Allan?” "Yes, the break has come," answers Allan. "It is time it had."

"Your poor father," says Jolliffe, still holding his hand.

At this appeal Allan's eyes kindle with something besides courage and determination.

"Mr. Jolliffe," he says, "I could do anything for him, but I will not stay to foster his foibles. They have killed my mother, they would soon destroy any good there may be in me. It is quite as well that he has urged me to do this, which I have a right to refuse, and if my refusal brings on me his anger and dismissal, I cannot blame myself, as I should if I went away in cool blood. I long to get away and am thankful something has come to part us. It is time we were parted."

And Allan shakes Jolliffe's hand in a way that shows no more must be said on the subject. Jolliffe pours him a glass of sherry, which Allan declines. He takes up his hat to go, looking very reluctantly and gratefully round the bright little room. "I have spent some of the very hap piest hours of my life here," he says with a sigh-the only one that has escaped him at the thought of going from home.

A few cheery, ringing good-byes to the men, and presently the sound of the horse's feet in the dusty road is heard, and Jolliffe and his wife look at each other, and she shakes her head, and he sighs.

"Fancy marrying a lad like that for money!" he mutters, standing still, with his hand on the balcony. "And to a woman ten years older than himself!"

“And all to satisfy his own insane ambition to get into Parliament," adds Mrs. Jolliffe, alluding to the elder McIntyre.

"Well," says Jolliffe, turning round as the last sound of the horse's feet is dying away. "Poor lad, he was not much at mathematics, and would never have been but a poor classic, but he has in him the germs of a first-rate business man. And what is extraordinary with that, he is the soul of honor."

"And he's left the firm," sobs Mrs. Jolliffe, "and I should like to know how it's to prosper now."

"The backbone has gone from it, certainly," says Jolliffe contemplatively.

"And what's to become of the poor children who have nothing else to look to?"

"Then good-bye," my boy," says Jollife," and may the Father whose will you may not disobey be ever watching over you."

Allan does not wince at the implied though gentle rebuke. But his eyes soften as he says,

-

"It is for my father's sake more than for my own that I am disobeying him

now."

Although the gloom left by Allan McIntyre's departure pervaded the Pelican for some weeks, the silver lining prophesied by Jolliffe perhaps made itself felt in the greater freedom enjoyed by all, now that the active figure was no longer appearing at all times and seasons in the yards and offices, and the keen eye was no more to be dreaded in its quick discovery of neg. lected duty.

All seemed to go on more smoothly and comfortably. The elder McIntyre's visits had been few and far between before, now they were very rare events indeed.

The head clerk had it all his own way in the offices, but then he was so perfectly trustworthy, so Messrs. McIntyre and Jol liffe had always agreed; and even Jolliffe was obliged to own that it was no wonder he should have rather resented Allan McIntyre's interference with his method of managing his accounts.

So the years glided smoothly on. The blossoms in the Pelican orchards came and fell, leaving all things much the same.

Jolliffe's own household blossoms also drooped (in some childish malady), and he was left with but one of the little ones Allan had kissed when he went away, a little girl who had become the apple of his eye. His grief for his lost ones had been like his nature gentle; and he said to his wife that there would be one corner in the next world not altogether strange to them both when they should go there.

But on the whole he was as happy as ever, enjoying life to the utmost, and troubling himself with business as little as need be.

McIntyre up at the Poplars was still living much the same kind of life as when Allan left him. And even his son's place in his household was filled up. The lady he had wished him to marry had died of consumption, and left her fortune to a nephew, of whom she had made McIntyre guardian.

This necessarily distracted his attention still more from the brewery, which was left entirely in Jolliffe's hands.

CHAPTER II.

"STANDING AT BAY."

THE orchards about the Pelican are in blossom for the twentieth time since the young master came that June day to take leave of his friends there.

That the brewery is in difficulties is pretty well known, not only in Stoke Bassett, but for a very wide circuit round that respectable but stagnant old market town. It bears its decline as it bore its prosperity, jovially, and goes the road to ruin with gaily painted drays, and fat, glossy horses that shake their manes and silky fetlocks in defiance, however it may be hinted that they are eating their heads off and that McIntyre and Jolliffe have no right to keep them.

McIntyre is deeper than ever in his plans for getting into Parliament and having the malt tax abolished, so giving the Pelican a chance of rising to its former prosperity. Once in six months or so a friend gives him a lecture as to the state of the business, and he comes down in a panic to rouse Jolliffe, and tell him there must be a stronger hand held over things. Poor Jolliffe, who, what with gout and want of ready cash, has not a very strong hand to hold over anything, says, "Quite so, quite so," and gets out the sherry, and the partners go drifting off into dreams of the Malt Tax Bill being passed and all difficulties ended.

Mrs. Jolliffe coming in to inquire
VOL. XLIX. 2510

LIVING AGE.

"I suppose it must be another loan from Lovibond, just to tide over again?" Exactly, just to tide over," says Mclntyre, only too glad to get out of Mrs. Jolliffe's way, and back to his own dusty den of newspapers, blue-books, and pam. phlets.

Things go on easily till the hop merchant or some one else is unreasonable enough to come and worry Jolliffe about "that long-standing account," whereupon Jolliffe dons his broad, easy walking shoes and limps off to the Poplars with a chaos of business papers in his little black bag. All at the Pelican soon know the result of his expedition a letter, lying ready for the afternoon's post, addressed "C. Lovibond, Esq., Solicitor, Lincoln's Inn." All this would have been far more dangerous and blamable in the partners if there did not happen to be something known to themselves, more than the commercial world, or indeed the world in general knew, concerning their affairs; something that might be said perhaps to excuse, if it did not exactly justify their conduct.

Jolliffe's daughter, who was herself heiress to a small fortune in the event of her marrying with her parents' consent, was engaged to McIntyre's rich ward. It was quite an understood thing that the young people were to take shares in the business. As Lovibond was an old friend of the family, it is possible the knowledge of these matters had something to do with his readiness to advance loans; but that may be more apparent hereafter.

And now all waited for the young people to make up their minds when the marriage was to take place. But, as is usually the case, all parties concerned being perfectly agreeable to, and decidedly anxious for, the marriage to take place, seemed to prove an obstacle rather than an inducement to their arranging for an early day.

Keith Cameron was twenty-five, Sophie Jolliffe twenty-three years of age, and they had been engaged two years, and seemed too happy to be in any hurry to change their condition.

They sang, played tennis, boated, rode and walked, and spent nearly half their time together. Jolliffe, though happy in their engagement, used to allow it was very provoking.

66

Here," he said, "had the fairy prince, who was to wake the business from its

"The matter," answered Jolliffe, with less than his usual gentleness, is, here's Lovibond standing at bay. He refuses another loan!"

"Bless me," exclaimed McIntyre, pushing back his books a little and thrusting his fingers through his hair. Just now. Why, is the man insane?"

66

"Or coming to his senses?" said Jolliffe, which is about as bad for us. At least he refuses another shilling unless we agree to his putting a business man on the premises to look through the books and take the whole management of the place till he can report the exact state of things to Lovibond."

"What is to be done?" asked McIntyre after a pause.

"I haven't the least idea," declared Jolliffe, rather curtly for him.

"Can't we," said McIntyre, with much hesitation and some childish complaining in his voice, "can't we concede to his proposal?"

"Mrs. Jolliffe declares it's impossible." No doubt no doubt. But

"Ah, yes. business is business, you know. What does he say about the man he wants to send?"

Jolliffe handed him the lawyer's letter. McIntyre ran his eye over it and read aloud the last paragraph.

"You will find Mr. Pascal the right man in the right place. He is of gentle

"I don't see how we can help ourselves," answered Jolliffe. He spoke almost gloomily and added: "But I don't know how Mrs. Jolliffe will endure it; the very idea has made her quite ill."

"Need he be in the house?"

"If he comes at all we must receive him with good grace," answered Jolliffe. Good-morning, McIntyre, I will not disturb you any longer."

He spoke rather wearily, and less cordially than usual. McIntyre looked vaguely disquieted, and followed him to the door.

"Assure Mrs. Jolliffe of my deep sympathy in this new trial," said he, more feelingly than he had spoken for a long

time.

Poor Jolliffe dreaded his return to his wife more than he cared McIntyre to know. He made the best of things, however, and set her an example of patience and meek endurance that none could quite ignore.

"It won't be for long, my love," he reasoned cheerily, "Keith and Sophie seemed very serious, I thought, as I saw them together in the garden just now. Depend upon it, things will all be settled suddenly, and we shall frighten Lovi bond's martinet away with wedding bells. Come and see how they are getting on with the new geranium bed," and he patted Mrs. Jolliffe's ample shoulder as they went down the rustic steps and hummed his favorite song, —

The summer days are coming, Jane,
And the bloom is on the rye.

CHAPTER III.

RUMORS IN THE YARDS.

AGAIN there is a gathering of scarlet caps round the afternoon tea equipage of the brewery Methuselah, Mr. Wharton. He is once more watching the men preparing to depart for the week, for it is Saturday afternoon. Evidently he feels as much at home as in his own cottage, and eyes with the complacency of a proprietor the clean casks neatly piled under the malt-house window, the open coolers