Chapter Three.

Chapter Three.The Rectory.The Reverend Bernard Oliphant, rector of Waterland, was a man of good family and moderate fortune. At the time when this tale opens he had held the living eighteen years. He had three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, Hubert, was just three-and-twenty, and, having finished his course at Oxford with credit, was spending a year or two at home previously to joining an uncle in South Australia, Abraham Oliphant, his father’s brother, who was living in great prosperity as a merchant at Adelaide. Hubert had not felt himself called on to enter the ministry, though his parents would have greatly rejoiced had he seen his way clear to engage in that sacred calling. But the young man abhorred the thought of undertaking such an office unless he could feel decidedly that the highest and holiest motives were guiding him to it, and neither father nor mother dared urge their son to take on himself, from any desire to please them, so awful a responsibility. Yet none the less for this did Hubert love his Saviour, nor did he wish to decline his service, or shrink from bearing that cross which is laid on all who make a bold and manly profession of faith in Christ Jesus. But he felt that there were some who might serve their heavenly Master better as laymen than as ministers of the gospel, and he believed himself to be such a one. His two younger brothers, not feeling the same difficulties, were both preparing for the ministry. Hubert had a passionate desire to travel; his parents saw this, and wisely judged that it would be better to guide his passion than to combat it; so, when his uncle proposed to Hubert to join him in Australia, they gave their full consent. They knew that a strong expression of dissuasion on their part would have led him to abandon the scheme at once; but they would not let any such expression escape them, because they felt that they were bound to consulthistastes and wishes, and not merely their own. They knew that his faith was on the Rock of Ages; they could trust his life and fortunes to their God. For Bernard Oliphant and his wife had but one great object set before them, and that was to work for God. The rector was warm and impulsive, the fire would flash out upon the surface, yet was it under the control of grace; it blazed, it warmed, but never scorched, unless when it crossed the path of high-handed and determined sin.Shewas all calmness and quiet decision; yet inhercharacter there ran a fire beneath the surface, sending up a glow into every loving word and deed. She had never been beautiful, yet always beautified by the radiance of true holiness. In her, seriousness had no gloom, because it was the seriousness of a holy love. She made even worldly people happy to be with her, because they felt the reality and singleness of her religion—it was woven up with every hour’s work, with every duty, with every joy. She lived for heaven not by neglecting earth, but by making earth the road to heaven. Her religion was pre-eminently practical, while it was deeply spiritual; in fact, it was the religion of sanctified common sense. The true grace of her character gained the admiration which she never sought. As some simple unadorned column rising in the midst of richly-carved sculptures arrests attention by its mere dignity of height and grace of perfect proportion, so in the unassuming wife of Bernard Oliphant there was a loftiness and symmetry of character which made people feel that in her was the true beauty of holiness.And the children trod in the steps of their parents. Mary Oliphant was the youngest; she was now just eighteen—slight in make, and graceful in every movement. Her perfect absence of self-consciousness gave a peculiar charm to all that she said and did; she never aimed at effect, and therefore always produced it. You could not look into her face without feeling that to her indifference and half-heartedness were impossible things; and the abiding peace which a true faith in Christ alone can give, was on those lovely features in their stillness. Such was the family of the Reverend Bernard Oliphant.Waterland was a rural parish in one of the midland counties. The rectory stood near one end of the village, which was like a great many other country villages. There were farm-houses, with their stack-yards and clusters of out-buildings, with their yew-trees and apple-orchards. Cottages, with low bulging white-washed walls and thatched roofs, were interspersed among others of a more spruce and modern build, with slated roofs, and neat little gardens. Then there were two or three shops which sold all things likely to be wanted in everyday village life, eatables and wearables nestling together in strange companionship; and, besides these, were houses which would not have been known to be shops, but for a faded array of peppermints and gingerbread, which shone, or rather twinkled, before the eyes of village children through panes of greenish glass. Of course there was a forge and a wheel-wright’s shop; and, equally of course, a public-house—there had been two, there was now but one, which could readily be known by a huge swinging sign-board, on which was the decaying likeness of a “Dun Cow,” supposed to be feeding in a green meadow; but the verdure had long since melted away, and all except the animal herself was a chaos of muddy tints. The “Dun Cow,” (a sad misnomer for a place where milk was the last beverage the visitors would ever think of calling for), was to many the centre both of attraction and detraction, for here quarrels were hatched and characters picked to pieces. The landlord had long since been dead, of the usual publican’s malady—drink fever. The landlady carried on the business which had carried her husband off, and seemed to thrive upon it, for there was never lack of custom at the “Dun Cow.” Just a stone’s-throw from this public-house, on the crest of the hill along which wound the village street, was the church, a simple structure, with a substantial square tower and wide porch. It had been restored with considerable care and taste by the present rector, the internal appearance being sufficiently in accordance with the proprieties of ecclesiastical architecture to satisfy all but the over-fastidious, and yet not so ornamental as to lead the mind to dwell rather on the earthly and sensuous than on the heavenly and spiritual. Behind the church was the rectory, a quaint old building, with pointed gables, deep bay-windows, and black beams of oak exposed to view. It had been added to, here and there, as modern wants and improvements had made expansion necessary. The garden was lovely, for every one at the rectory loved flowers: they loved them for their own intrinsic beauty; they loved them as God’s books, full of lessons of his skill and tender care; they loved them as resting-places for the eye when wearied with sights of disorder and sin; they loved them as ministering comfort to the sick, the aged, and the sorrowful to whom they carried them.Such was the village of Waterland. The parish extended two miles north and south of the church, a few farms and labourers’ cottages at wide intervals containing nearly all the rest of the population that was not resident in the village.It has been said that there were once two public-houses in Waterland, but that now there was but one. This was not owing to any want of success in the case of the one which had become extinct; on the contrary, the “Oldfield Arms” had been the more flourishing establishment of the two, and was situated in the centre of the village. Its sign, however, had long since disappeared; and it was now in the hands of the rector, its principal apartment having been transformed into a reading-room, and place for holding meetings. And how was this brought about? Simply thus. When Bernard Oliphant first came to Waterland, he found the “Oldfield Arms” doing a most excellent business; so far asthatcan be an excellent business which builds the prosperity of one upon the ruin of hundreds. People grumbled at the lowness of wages; wives were unable to procure money from their husbands for decent dress; children were half-starved and two-thirds naked; disease and dirt found a home almost everywhere; boys and girls grew up in ignorance, for their parents could not afford to send them to school; the men had no tidy clothes in which to appear at church. Yet, somehow or other, the “Oldfield Arms” was never short of customers; and customers, too, who paid, and paid well, sooner or later, for what they consumed. So the rector went among the people, and told them plainly of the sin of drunkenness, and pointed out the misery it brought, as their own eyes could see. They confessed the truth—such as he could manage to get hold of—and drank on as before. He was getting heart-sick and miserable. Preach as he might—and he did preach the truth with all faithfulness and love—the notices of ale, porter, and spirits, set up in flaming colours in the windows and on the walls of the “Oldfield Arms,” preached far more persuasively in the cause of intemperance.One day he came upon a knot of men standing just at the entrance of the yard that led to the tap-room. They were none of them exactly drunk; and certainly none were exactly sober. There were some among them whom he never saw at church, and never found at home. He was grieved to see these men in high discussion and dispute, when they ought to have been busily engaged in some lawful calling. He stopped, and taking one of them aside whose home was specially miserable, he said,—“James, I’m grieved to see you here, when I know how sadly your poor wife and children are in need of food and clothing.”The man looked half angry, half ashamed, but hung down his head, and made no reply. The rest were moving off.“Nay, my friends,” said the rector, kindly, “don’t go. I just want a word with you all. I want to say a few words of love and warning to you, as your clergyman. God has sent me here to teach and guide you; and oh, do listen to me now.”They all stood still, and looked at him respectfully. He went on:—“Don’t you see that drinking habits are bringing misery into the homes of the people in our parish—ay, into your own homes? You must see it. You must see how drunkenness stores up misery for you here and hereafter. What will become of you when you die, if you go on as you are doing now? What will become of your families? What will—”At this moment there was a loud shout of “Hoy! hoy!” from the lips of a carter who was coming with a brewer’s dray out of the inn-yard. The man had just been depositing several full casks, and was now returning with the empty ones. He did not see the rector at first; but when the group made way for him, and his eyes fell on Mr Oliphant, he touched his hat as he was passing, and said,—“I beg pardon, sir; I did not know as you was there.” Then suddenly pulling up his horse, he added— “Oh, if you please, sir, master bid me say he’s very sorry he hasn’t any of the ale you’ve been drinking ready just now, but he hopes you’ll let me leave this barrel of stout, it’s in prime order, he says.”“Very well,” replied Mr Oliphant; “you may leave it.”Then he turned again to the men: they were moving off. He would have taken up his earnest appeal where he left it; but somehow or other he felt a difficulty in speaking, and the deep attention was evidently gone from his hearers. He hesitated. They were already dispersing: should he call them back? He felt as if he could not. He turned sadly towards home, deeply vexed and chafed in his spirit. He blamed the ill-timed interruption of the carter; and yet he felt that there was something else lurking in the background with which he felt dissatisfied—something which wanted dragging out into the light.“And yet it’s so foolish!” he said to himself, as he walked slowly up the street. “My drinking in moderation has nothing in common with their drinking immoderately. Why should my use of intoxicating liquors fetter me in dissuading these poor creatures from their abuse? They ought to see the difference.” Then a voice, deeper in the heart, whispered— “They ought; but they do not, and their souls are perishing. They are your people: you must deal with them as they are, not as they ought to be.”That night the rector’s sleep was very troubled.It was about a week later that he was again near the “Oldfield Arms,” when a spruce-looking man—his wine-merchant’s agent—came out of the inn door, and walked up the street. Two men were standing with their backs to the rector just outside the yard. He was about to pass on; when he heard one say,—“What a sight of wine some of them parsons drink! Yon fine gent couldn’t afford all them gold chains and pins if it warn’t for the parsons.”“Ay,” said the other, “it’s the parsons as knows good wine from bad. I heerd yon chap say only this morning: ‘Our very best customers is the clergy.’”“Well,” rejoined the other, “I shouldn’t mind if they’d only leave us poor fellows alone, and let us get drunk when we’ve a mind. But it do seem a little hard thattheymay get drunk on their wine, but we mustn’t get drunk on our beer.”“Oh, but you know, Bill,” said the other, “this here’s the difference. When they get drunk, it’s genteel drunk, and there’s no sin in that; but when we poor fellows get drunk, it’s wulgar drunk, and that’s awful wicked.”Bernard Oliphant was deeply pained; he shrank within himself.“It’s a cruel libel and a coarse slander,” he muttered, and hastened on his way. “AmIanswerable,” he asked himself, “for the abuse which others may make of what I take moderately and innocently? Absurd! And yet it’s a pity, a grievous pity, that it should be possible for such poor ignorant creatures to speak thus of any of our holy calling, and so to justify themselves in sin.”Yes, he felt it to be so, and it preyed upon his mind more and more. He mentioned what he had heard to his wife.“Dear Bernard,” she replied, “I have thought a great deal lately on this subject, especially since you told me about your speaking to those men when you were interrupted by the drayman. I have prayed that you and I might be directed aright; and weshallbe. But do not let us be hasty. It does seem as though we were being called on to give up, for the sake of others, what does us personally no harm. But perhaps we may be wrong in this view. A great many excellent Christians, and ministers too, are moderate drinkers, and never exceed; and we must not be carried away by a mistaken enthusiasm to brand their use of fermented drinks as sinful because such frightful evils are daily resulting from immoderate drinking. We must think and pray, and our path will be made plain; and we must be prepared to walk in it, cost what it may.”“Yes,” said her husband; “I am getting more and more convinced that there is something exceptional in this matter—that we cannot deal with this sin of drunkenness as we deal with other sins. But we will wait a little longer for guidance; yet not too long, for souls are perishing, and ruin is thickening all round us.”They had not to wait long; their path was soon made clear.It was on a bitter and cheerless November evening that Mr Oliphant was returning to the rectory from a distant part of his parish. He was warmly clad; but the keen wind, which drove a prickly deluge of fine hail into his face, seemed to make its way through every covering into his very bones. He was hurrying on, thankful that home was so near, when he suddenly stumbled upon something in the path which he had not noticed, being half blinded by the frozen sleet. With difficulty he saved himself from falling over this obstacle, which looked in the feeble moonlight like a bundle of ragged clothes. Then he stooped down to examine it more closely, and was horrified at hearing a low moan, which showed that it was a living creature that lay on the path. It was plainly, in fact, some poor, half-frozen fellow-man, who lay coiled together there, perishing of cold in that bitter night. The rector tried to raise the poor wretch from the ground, but the body hung like a dead weight upon him.“Come,” he said, “my poor fellow; come, try and rouse yourself and get up. You’ll die if you lie here.”The miserable bundle of humanity partly uncoiled itself, and made an effort to rise, but sunk back again. Mr Oliphant shouted for help. The shout seemed partly to revive the prostrate creature, and he half raised himself.“Come,” said the rector again,— “come, lean on my arm, and try and get up. You’ll die of cold if you stay here.”“Die!” said a thick, unearthly voice from out of that half-frozen mass of flesh and blood. “In Adam all die.”“Who and what are you?” cried the rector, in extreme astonishment and distress.“What am I? Ah, what am I?” was the bewildered, scarce audible reply.By this time help had arrived. Two men came up, and assisted Mr Oliphant to raise the poor man, and support him to the “Oldfield Arms,” where he was immediately put to bed; one of the men being sent off by the rector to fetch the nearest medical man, while he himself gave orders that everything should be done to restore the unhappy sufferer to warmth and consciousness.“Please, Mrs Barnes,” said he to the landlady, “be so good as to send up to the rectory, and let me know, when the doctor comes, if he says that there is any danger. If his report is favourable, I will leave a night’s rest to do its work, and will look in again early to-morrow. And pray let the poor man have everything that he needs, and send up to the rectory if you are short of anything.”“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs Barnes. “I will see that he is properly looked to.”The rector then went home, and in another hour received a message from the inn that the doctor had been, and that there was no danger of any immediately fatal result; that he would call again on his patient the following morning, and should be glad to meet the rector at the inn.Accordingly, the following day at the appointed hour Bernard and the doctor went up together into the sick man’s room. As they opened the door they were astonished to hear the patient declaiming in a loud voice,—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”Bernard’s heart grew sick. Could it be? Could this miserable creature be one of his own profession? Were these words the ramblings of one who had been used to officiate as a Church minister? And, if so, what could have brought him to such a state of utter destitution? The doctor seemed to read his thoughts, and shook his head sadly. Then, putting his mouth to his ear, he said,—“It’s the drink; the smell of spirits is still strong on him.”“Poor wretched creature!” said Mr Oliphant. “Can it be that the love of drink has brought a man of position and education to such a state as this? What can be done for him?”“Not much at present,” was the reply, “beyond keeping him quiet, and nursing him well till the fever has run its course. And one thing is clear—we must keep all intoxicants from him. They are downright poison to a man of his constitution; and should he get hold of any spirits before his health is thoroughly established again, I would not answer for his life.”The rector called Mrs Barnes, and told her what the doctor had said, adding,—“You must find a trustworthy nurse for him—one who will strictly attend to the doctor’s orders.”The landlady promised she would do so; and the rector left the sick-chamber with a sorrowful look and troubled heart.In ten days’ time the patient was well enough to sit up in bed and converse with Mr Oliphant.“My poor friend,” said the rector, “I grieve to see you in your present state, especially as I cannot but perceive that you have seen better days, and moved among people of education. However, there is great cause to thank God that he has so far spared your life.”A deep flush overspread the sick man’s face as he replied,—“Yes, indeed, I owe you, my dear sir, a debt of gratitude I can never repay. You say the truth—Ihaveseen better days. I was sought after in good society once, little as you might think it.”“I can believe it,” said the rector, quietly. “But do not distress yourself by referring to the past, if it gives you pain.”“As to that,” replied the other, “it matters to me little now what I once was; but it may interest you to know, and may serve as a warning. I was a popular preacher once. I was an ordained minister of the Church of England. Crowds flocked to my church. I threw all my energies into my preaching. I was a free man then; at least I believed myself so. While I proclaimed the love of God to sinners, I also preached vehemently against sin. I never felt myself more at home than when I was painting the miserable bondage of those whom Satan held in his chains. I could speak with withering scorn of such as made a profession while they were living in any known wickedness. I was specially severe upon the drunkard’s sin. But preaching such as mine, and in a large church, was very exhausting. I found that I wanted support; so I began with an egg beaten up with brandy, and took it just before going into the pulpit. This made me doubly fervent; some of my hearers thought me almost inspired. But the exhaustion was terrible at the end; so I added another glass of egg and spirits after the sermon. Then I found that, somehow or other, I could not preach in the evening after taking much solid food; so I substituted liquids for solids, and lived on Sundays almost entirely on malt liquors and spirits. When these failed to keep me up to the mark, I had to increase the quantity. At last I saw that my churchwarden began to look a little strangely and suspiciously at me; ugly sayings reached my ears; the congregation began to thin. At last I received a letter from a Christian man of my flock, telling me that himself and many others were pained with the fear that I was beginning to exceed the bounds of strict temperance: he urged total abstinence at once; he was a total abstainer himself. I was startled—prostrated—humbled to the very dust. I reflected on the quantity of intoxicants I was now takingdaily, and I shuddered. I thanked my friendly adviser with tears, and promised to return to strict moderation. Total abstinence I would not hear of; it was quite out of the question. I could no more do without alcoholic stimulants then than I can do now.”He paused, and fixed a peculiar look on Mr Oliphant; who, however, did not, or would not, understand it. So he went on:—“I tried moderation; but it would not do. I prayed for strength to be moderate; but I knownowthat I never really desired what I prayed for. It was too late to be moderate; my lust had got the bit between its teeth, and I might as well have pulled at the wind. I went from bad to worse. Desertion, disgrace, ruin, all followed. Everything has gone—church, home, money, books, clothes—the drink has had them all, and would have them again if they were mine at this moment. For some years past I have been a roaming beggar, such as you found me when you picked me up in the road.”He said all this with very little emotion; and then lay back, wearied with his exertions in speaking.“And have you any—” The rector did not know how to finish the sentence which he had begun after a long pause.“Have I any family? you would ask,” said the other. “I had once. I had a wife and little child; my only child—a little girl. Well, I suppose she’s better off. She pined and pined when there was next to nothing to eat in the house; and they tell me—for I was not at home when she died—that she said at the last, ‘I’m going to Jesus; they are not hungry where he is.’ Poor thing!”“And your wife?” exclaimed Bernard, his blood running cold at the tone of indifference in which this account was given.“Oh, my wife? Ah, we did not see much of one another after our child’s death! I was often from home; and once, when I returned, I found that she was gone: they had buried her in my absence. She died—so they said—of a broken heart. Poor thing! it is not unlikely.”Mr Oliphant hid his head in his hands, and groaned aloud. He had never before conceived it possible—what he now found to be too true—that long habits of drunkenness can so utterly unhumanise a man as to reduce him to a mere callous self, looking upon all things outside self as dreamy and devoid of interest, with but one passion left—the passion for the poison which has ruined him.At last the rector raised his head, and said slowly and solemnly,—“And if God spares you, will you not strive to lead a new life? Will you not pray for grace to conquer your besetting sin?”The wretched man did not answer for a while. Then he said,—“I have only one thing to live for, and that is the drink. I cannot live without it. Oh, I implore you to let me have some spirits! You do not, you cannot, know how I crave them, or in pity you would not withhold them from me.”Mr Oliphant rose.“Compose yourself, my poor friend,” he said. “I dare not grant your request; it might be your death. Farewell for the present. May God, with whom all things are possible, help you through your present trouble, and enable you in the end to conquer.”The wretched man called imploringly after him; but he closed the door, and summoning Mrs Barnes, begged her to look well after him, and to see that the nurse did all in her power to keep him calm, and to soothe him to rest.Two days after this he called again.“How is your patient to-day, Mrs Barnes?” he said to the landlady, whom he met on the landing.“I cannot quite tell you, sir, for I have not been in to see him this morning. He was so much better yesterday that the doctor said Mrs Harper might go home. I went to look at him after he had taken his tea, and I found old Jane Hicks with him. She had called to speak with Mrs Harper, and the poor gentleman got her to go and borrow him a newspaper which he wanted to see. I think I heard her come back twice since Mrs Harper left; but perhaps he wanted something else. He said I had better not wake him very early, as he thought he should sleep well; so I haven’t disturbed him yet.”A strange misgiving crept over the rector.“Let us go in at once,” he said.They knocked at the bed-room door—there was no answer; they opened it softly and went in. The sick man lay on his back, apparently asleep, but when they came closer they saw that he was dead. A stain on the sheet attracted Mr Oliphant’s notice; he hastily turned it down, uncovering the hands; in the right was a bottle—it had held spirits; there was nothing in it now.So died the miserable victim of drink; so died the once flourishing professor; so died the once acceptable preacher.Mr Oliphant knelt by the bed-side and poured out his heart to God in prayer, entreating to be directed aright, and to be kept from ever in any degree disgracing his profession as this unhappy man had done. He was reminded that he was not alone by the sobs of the landlady, who had fallen on her knees near him.“Mrs Barnes,” he said, on rising, “I have resolved, God helping me, to be a total abstainer from this day forward. I have nothing to do with the consciences of others, but for myself I feel that I shall be a happier and a wiser man if I wholly abstain from those stimulants which have power to make such a shipwreck as this.”She did not answer except by tears and a deep sigh; and he made his way sadly and thoughtfully home.From that day forward the drink was wholly banished from the rectory; there was no difference of opinion between Bernard and his wife—they would bring up their children without the ensnaring stimulant. Mr Oliphant showed his colours at once; and he preached as well as practised total abstinence, not in the place of the gospel, but as a handmaid to the gospel. And Mrs Barnes was the first who joined him.“I’ve long hated selling beer and spirits,” she said. “I’ve seen the misery that the drink has brought even into our little village. But I didn’t see my way nor my duty plain before, but I see them now. You’ve set me the example, sir; and, please God, I’ll follow. You know my poor master left me the farm for my life, and I shall be happier there with a little than I could be if I were to stop here and be making ever so much.”She kept to her resolution. So the “Oldfield Arms” was closed, to the astonishment of all the neighbours. What was the foolish woman about? Had she lost her senses? Why, the inn was doing a capital business. Sir Thomas Oldfield himself came down on purpose from Greymoor Park, when he heard what she was going to do, and tried to talk and laugh her out of it. But she was firm. The house was her own freehold, and she would neither use it herself as an inn, nor let any one else rent it for the same purpose. Of course, she was a fool in the eyes of the world, but she did not care for that; and any one who saw her bright face as she walked about her farm, would have perceived that, whether fool or no, she had the enjoyment of peace in her heart.But the “Oldfield Arms” was not long without a tenant. The rector took it, as we have before said, and used it partly as shops, and the large public room as a reading-room. And thus it was that the “Dun Cow” remained without a rival as the dispenser of strong drink to the inhabitants of Waterland.

The Reverend Bernard Oliphant, rector of Waterland, was a man of good family and moderate fortune. At the time when this tale opens he had held the living eighteen years. He had three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, Hubert, was just three-and-twenty, and, having finished his course at Oxford with credit, was spending a year or two at home previously to joining an uncle in South Australia, Abraham Oliphant, his father’s brother, who was living in great prosperity as a merchant at Adelaide. Hubert had not felt himself called on to enter the ministry, though his parents would have greatly rejoiced had he seen his way clear to engage in that sacred calling. But the young man abhorred the thought of undertaking such an office unless he could feel decidedly that the highest and holiest motives were guiding him to it, and neither father nor mother dared urge their son to take on himself, from any desire to please them, so awful a responsibility. Yet none the less for this did Hubert love his Saviour, nor did he wish to decline his service, or shrink from bearing that cross which is laid on all who make a bold and manly profession of faith in Christ Jesus. But he felt that there were some who might serve their heavenly Master better as laymen than as ministers of the gospel, and he believed himself to be such a one. His two younger brothers, not feeling the same difficulties, were both preparing for the ministry. Hubert had a passionate desire to travel; his parents saw this, and wisely judged that it would be better to guide his passion than to combat it; so, when his uncle proposed to Hubert to join him in Australia, they gave their full consent. They knew that a strong expression of dissuasion on their part would have led him to abandon the scheme at once; but they would not let any such expression escape them, because they felt that they were bound to consulthistastes and wishes, and not merely their own. They knew that his faith was on the Rock of Ages; they could trust his life and fortunes to their God. For Bernard Oliphant and his wife had but one great object set before them, and that was to work for God. The rector was warm and impulsive, the fire would flash out upon the surface, yet was it under the control of grace; it blazed, it warmed, but never scorched, unless when it crossed the path of high-handed and determined sin.Shewas all calmness and quiet decision; yet inhercharacter there ran a fire beneath the surface, sending up a glow into every loving word and deed. She had never been beautiful, yet always beautified by the radiance of true holiness. In her, seriousness had no gloom, because it was the seriousness of a holy love. She made even worldly people happy to be with her, because they felt the reality and singleness of her religion—it was woven up with every hour’s work, with every duty, with every joy. She lived for heaven not by neglecting earth, but by making earth the road to heaven. Her religion was pre-eminently practical, while it was deeply spiritual; in fact, it was the religion of sanctified common sense. The true grace of her character gained the admiration which she never sought. As some simple unadorned column rising in the midst of richly-carved sculptures arrests attention by its mere dignity of height and grace of perfect proportion, so in the unassuming wife of Bernard Oliphant there was a loftiness and symmetry of character which made people feel that in her was the true beauty of holiness.

And the children trod in the steps of their parents. Mary Oliphant was the youngest; she was now just eighteen—slight in make, and graceful in every movement. Her perfect absence of self-consciousness gave a peculiar charm to all that she said and did; she never aimed at effect, and therefore always produced it. You could not look into her face without feeling that to her indifference and half-heartedness were impossible things; and the abiding peace which a true faith in Christ alone can give, was on those lovely features in their stillness. Such was the family of the Reverend Bernard Oliphant.

Waterland was a rural parish in one of the midland counties. The rectory stood near one end of the village, which was like a great many other country villages. There were farm-houses, with their stack-yards and clusters of out-buildings, with their yew-trees and apple-orchards. Cottages, with low bulging white-washed walls and thatched roofs, were interspersed among others of a more spruce and modern build, with slated roofs, and neat little gardens. Then there were two or three shops which sold all things likely to be wanted in everyday village life, eatables and wearables nestling together in strange companionship; and, besides these, were houses which would not have been known to be shops, but for a faded array of peppermints and gingerbread, which shone, or rather twinkled, before the eyes of village children through panes of greenish glass. Of course there was a forge and a wheel-wright’s shop; and, equally of course, a public-house—there had been two, there was now but one, which could readily be known by a huge swinging sign-board, on which was the decaying likeness of a “Dun Cow,” supposed to be feeding in a green meadow; but the verdure had long since melted away, and all except the animal herself was a chaos of muddy tints. The “Dun Cow,” (a sad misnomer for a place where milk was the last beverage the visitors would ever think of calling for), was to many the centre both of attraction and detraction, for here quarrels were hatched and characters picked to pieces. The landlord had long since been dead, of the usual publican’s malady—drink fever. The landlady carried on the business which had carried her husband off, and seemed to thrive upon it, for there was never lack of custom at the “Dun Cow.” Just a stone’s-throw from this public-house, on the crest of the hill along which wound the village street, was the church, a simple structure, with a substantial square tower and wide porch. It had been restored with considerable care and taste by the present rector, the internal appearance being sufficiently in accordance with the proprieties of ecclesiastical architecture to satisfy all but the over-fastidious, and yet not so ornamental as to lead the mind to dwell rather on the earthly and sensuous than on the heavenly and spiritual. Behind the church was the rectory, a quaint old building, with pointed gables, deep bay-windows, and black beams of oak exposed to view. It had been added to, here and there, as modern wants and improvements had made expansion necessary. The garden was lovely, for every one at the rectory loved flowers: they loved them for their own intrinsic beauty; they loved them as God’s books, full of lessons of his skill and tender care; they loved them as resting-places for the eye when wearied with sights of disorder and sin; they loved them as ministering comfort to the sick, the aged, and the sorrowful to whom they carried them.

Such was the village of Waterland. The parish extended two miles north and south of the church, a few farms and labourers’ cottages at wide intervals containing nearly all the rest of the population that was not resident in the village.

It has been said that there were once two public-houses in Waterland, but that now there was but one. This was not owing to any want of success in the case of the one which had become extinct; on the contrary, the “Oldfield Arms” had been the more flourishing establishment of the two, and was situated in the centre of the village. Its sign, however, had long since disappeared; and it was now in the hands of the rector, its principal apartment having been transformed into a reading-room, and place for holding meetings. And how was this brought about? Simply thus. When Bernard Oliphant first came to Waterland, he found the “Oldfield Arms” doing a most excellent business; so far asthatcan be an excellent business which builds the prosperity of one upon the ruin of hundreds. People grumbled at the lowness of wages; wives were unable to procure money from their husbands for decent dress; children were half-starved and two-thirds naked; disease and dirt found a home almost everywhere; boys and girls grew up in ignorance, for their parents could not afford to send them to school; the men had no tidy clothes in which to appear at church. Yet, somehow or other, the “Oldfield Arms” was never short of customers; and customers, too, who paid, and paid well, sooner or later, for what they consumed. So the rector went among the people, and told them plainly of the sin of drunkenness, and pointed out the misery it brought, as their own eyes could see. They confessed the truth—such as he could manage to get hold of—and drank on as before. He was getting heart-sick and miserable. Preach as he might—and he did preach the truth with all faithfulness and love—the notices of ale, porter, and spirits, set up in flaming colours in the windows and on the walls of the “Oldfield Arms,” preached far more persuasively in the cause of intemperance.

One day he came upon a knot of men standing just at the entrance of the yard that led to the tap-room. They were none of them exactly drunk; and certainly none were exactly sober. There were some among them whom he never saw at church, and never found at home. He was grieved to see these men in high discussion and dispute, when they ought to have been busily engaged in some lawful calling. He stopped, and taking one of them aside whose home was specially miserable, he said,—

“James, I’m grieved to see you here, when I know how sadly your poor wife and children are in need of food and clothing.”

The man looked half angry, half ashamed, but hung down his head, and made no reply. The rest were moving off.

“Nay, my friends,” said the rector, kindly, “don’t go. I just want a word with you all. I want to say a few words of love and warning to you, as your clergyman. God has sent me here to teach and guide you; and oh, do listen to me now.”

They all stood still, and looked at him respectfully. He went on:—

“Don’t you see that drinking habits are bringing misery into the homes of the people in our parish—ay, into your own homes? You must see it. You must see how drunkenness stores up misery for you here and hereafter. What will become of you when you die, if you go on as you are doing now? What will become of your families? What will—”

At this moment there was a loud shout of “Hoy! hoy!” from the lips of a carter who was coming with a brewer’s dray out of the inn-yard. The man had just been depositing several full casks, and was now returning with the empty ones. He did not see the rector at first; but when the group made way for him, and his eyes fell on Mr Oliphant, he touched his hat as he was passing, and said,—

“I beg pardon, sir; I did not know as you was there.” Then suddenly pulling up his horse, he added— “Oh, if you please, sir, master bid me say he’s very sorry he hasn’t any of the ale you’ve been drinking ready just now, but he hopes you’ll let me leave this barrel of stout, it’s in prime order, he says.”

“Very well,” replied Mr Oliphant; “you may leave it.”

Then he turned again to the men: they were moving off. He would have taken up his earnest appeal where he left it; but somehow or other he felt a difficulty in speaking, and the deep attention was evidently gone from his hearers. He hesitated. They were already dispersing: should he call them back? He felt as if he could not. He turned sadly towards home, deeply vexed and chafed in his spirit. He blamed the ill-timed interruption of the carter; and yet he felt that there was something else lurking in the background with which he felt dissatisfied—something which wanted dragging out into the light.

“And yet it’s so foolish!” he said to himself, as he walked slowly up the street. “My drinking in moderation has nothing in common with their drinking immoderately. Why should my use of intoxicating liquors fetter me in dissuading these poor creatures from their abuse? They ought to see the difference.” Then a voice, deeper in the heart, whispered— “They ought; but they do not, and their souls are perishing. They are your people: you must deal with them as they are, not as they ought to be.”

That night the rector’s sleep was very troubled.

It was about a week later that he was again near the “Oldfield Arms,” when a spruce-looking man—his wine-merchant’s agent—came out of the inn door, and walked up the street. Two men were standing with their backs to the rector just outside the yard. He was about to pass on; when he heard one say,—

“What a sight of wine some of them parsons drink! Yon fine gent couldn’t afford all them gold chains and pins if it warn’t for the parsons.”

“Ay,” said the other, “it’s the parsons as knows good wine from bad. I heerd yon chap say only this morning: ‘Our very best customers is the clergy.’”

“Well,” rejoined the other, “I shouldn’t mind if they’d only leave us poor fellows alone, and let us get drunk when we’ve a mind. But it do seem a little hard thattheymay get drunk on their wine, but we mustn’t get drunk on our beer.”

“Oh, but you know, Bill,” said the other, “this here’s the difference. When they get drunk, it’s genteel drunk, and there’s no sin in that; but when we poor fellows get drunk, it’s wulgar drunk, and that’s awful wicked.”

Bernard Oliphant was deeply pained; he shrank within himself.

“It’s a cruel libel and a coarse slander,” he muttered, and hastened on his way. “AmIanswerable,” he asked himself, “for the abuse which others may make of what I take moderately and innocently? Absurd! And yet it’s a pity, a grievous pity, that it should be possible for such poor ignorant creatures to speak thus of any of our holy calling, and so to justify themselves in sin.”

Yes, he felt it to be so, and it preyed upon his mind more and more. He mentioned what he had heard to his wife.

“Dear Bernard,” she replied, “I have thought a great deal lately on this subject, especially since you told me about your speaking to those men when you were interrupted by the drayman. I have prayed that you and I might be directed aright; and weshallbe. But do not let us be hasty. It does seem as though we were being called on to give up, for the sake of others, what does us personally no harm. But perhaps we may be wrong in this view. A great many excellent Christians, and ministers too, are moderate drinkers, and never exceed; and we must not be carried away by a mistaken enthusiasm to brand their use of fermented drinks as sinful because such frightful evils are daily resulting from immoderate drinking. We must think and pray, and our path will be made plain; and we must be prepared to walk in it, cost what it may.”

“Yes,” said her husband; “I am getting more and more convinced that there is something exceptional in this matter—that we cannot deal with this sin of drunkenness as we deal with other sins. But we will wait a little longer for guidance; yet not too long, for souls are perishing, and ruin is thickening all round us.”

They had not to wait long; their path was soon made clear.

It was on a bitter and cheerless November evening that Mr Oliphant was returning to the rectory from a distant part of his parish. He was warmly clad; but the keen wind, which drove a prickly deluge of fine hail into his face, seemed to make its way through every covering into his very bones. He was hurrying on, thankful that home was so near, when he suddenly stumbled upon something in the path which he had not noticed, being half blinded by the frozen sleet. With difficulty he saved himself from falling over this obstacle, which looked in the feeble moonlight like a bundle of ragged clothes. Then he stooped down to examine it more closely, and was horrified at hearing a low moan, which showed that it was a living creature that lay on the path. It was plainly, in fact, some poor, half-frozen fellow-man, who lay coiled together there, perishing of cold in that bitter night. The rector tried to raise the poor wretch from the ground, but the body hung like a dead weight upon him.

“Come,” he said, “my poor fellow; come, try and rouse yourself and get up. You’ll die if you lie here.”

The miserable bundle of humanity partly uncoiled itself, and made an effort to rise, but sunk back again. Mr Oliphant shouted for help. The shout seemed partly to revive the prostrate creature, and he half raised himself.

“Come,” said the rector again,— “come, lean on my arm, and try and get up. You’ll die of cold if you stay here.”

“Die!” said a thick, unearthly voice from out of that half-frozen mass of flesh and blood. “In Adam all die.”

“Who and what are you?” cried the rector, in extreme astonishment and distress.

“What am I? Ah, what am I?” was the bewildered, scarce audible reply.

By this time help had arrived. Two men came up, and assisted Mr Oliphant to raise the poor man, and support him to the “Oldfield Arms,” where he was immediately put to bed; one of the men being sent off by the rector to fetch the nearest medical man, while he himself gave orders that everything should be done to restore the unhappy sufferer to warmth and consciousness.

“Please, Mrs Barnes,” said he to the landlady, “be so good as to send up to the rectory, and let me know, when the doctor comes, if he says that there is any danger. If his report is favourable, I will leave a night’s rest to do its work, and will look in again early to-morrow. And pray let the poor man have everything that he needs, and send up to the rectory if you are short of anything.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs Barnes. “I will see that he is properly looked to.”

The rector then went home, and in another hour received a message from the inn that the doctor had been, and that there was no danger of any immediately fatal result; that he would call again on his patient the following morning, and should be glad to meet the rector at the inn.

Accordingly, the following day at the appointed hour Bernard and the doctor went up together into the sick man’s room. As they opened the door they were astonished to hear the patient declaiming in a loud voice,—

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

Bernard’s heart grew sick. Could it be? Could this miserable creature be one of his own profession? Were these words the ramblings of one who had been used to officiate as a Church minister? And, if so, what could have brought him to such a state of utter destitution? The doctor seemed to read his thoughts, and shook his head sadly. Then, putting his mouth to his ear, he said,—

“It’s the drink; the smell of spirits is still strong on him.”

“Poor wretched creature!” said Mr Oliphant. “Can it be that the love of drink has brought a man of position and education to such a state as this? What can be done for him?”

“Not much at present,” was the reply, “beyond keeping him quiet, and nursing him well till the fever has run its course. And one thing is clear—we must keep all intoxicants from him. They are downright poison to a man of his constitution; and should he get hold of any spirits before his health is thoroughly established again, I would not answer for his life.”

The rector called Mrs Barnes, and told her what the doctor had said, adding,—

“You must find a trustworthy nurse for him—one who will strictly attend to the doctor’s orders.”

The landlady promised she would do so; and the rector left the sick-chamber with a sorrowful look and troubled heart.

In ten days’ time the patient was well enough to sit up in bed and converse with Mr Oliphant.

“My poor friend,” said the rector, “I grieve to see you in your present state, especially as I cannot but perceive that you have seen better days, and moved among people of education. However, there is great cause to thank God that he has so far spared your life.”

A deep flush overspread the sick man’s face as he replied,—

“Yes, indeed, I owe you, my dear sir, a debt of gratitude I can never repay. You say the truth—Ihaveseen better days. I was sought after in good society once, little as you might think it.”

“I can believe it,” said the rector, quietly. “But do not distress yourself by referring to the past, if it gives you pain.”

“As to that,” replied the other, “it matters to me little now what I once was; but it may interest you to know, and may serve as a warning. I was a popular preacher once. I was an ordained minister of the Church of England. Crowds flocked to my church. I threw all my energies into my preaching. I was a free man then; at least I believed myself so. While I proclaimed the love of God to sinners, I also preached vehemently against sin. I never felt myself more at home than when I was painting the miserable bondage of those whom Satan held in his chains. I could speak with withering scorn of such as made a profession while they were living in any known wickedness. I was specially severe upon the drunkard’s sin. But preaching such as mine, and in a large church, was very exhausting. I found that I wanted support; so I began with an egg beaten up with brandy, and took it just before going into the pulpit. This made me doubly fervent; some of my hearers thought me almost inspired. But the exhaustion was terrible at the end; so I added another glass of egg and spirits after the sermon. Then I found that, somehow or other, I could not preach in the evening after taking much solid food; so I substituted liquids for solids, and lived on Sundays almost entirely on malt liquors and spirits. When these failed to keep me up to the mark, I had to increase the quantity. At last I saw that my churchwarden began to look a little strangely and suspiciously at me; ugly sayings reached my ears; the congregation began to thin. At last I received a letter from a Christian man of my flock, telling me that himself and many others were pained with the fear that I was beginning to exceed the bounds of strict temperance: he urged total abstinence at once; he was a total abstainer himself. I was startled—prostrated—humbled to the very dust. I reflected on the quantity of intoxicants I was now takingdaily, and I shuddered. I thanked my friendly adviser with tears, and promised to return to strict moderation. Total abstinence I would not hear of; it was quite out of the question. I could no more do without alcoholic stimulants then than I can do now.”

He paused, and fixed a peculiar look on Mr Oliphant; who, however, did not, or would not, understand it. So he went on:—

“I tried moderation; but it would not do. I prayed for strength to be moderate; but I knownowthat I never really desired what I prayed for. It was too late to be moderate; my lust had got the bit between its teeth, and I might as well have pulled at the wind. I went from bad to worse. Desertion, disgrace, ruin, all followed. Everything has gone—church, home, money, books, clothes—the drink has had them all, and would have them again if they were mine at this moment. For some years past I have been a roaming beggar, such as you found me when you picked me up in the road.”

He said all this with very little emotion; and then lay back, wearied with his exertions in speaking.

“And have you any—” The rector did not know how to finish the sentence which he had begun after a long pause.

“Have I any family? you would ask,” said the other. “I had once. I had a wife and little child; my only child—a little girl. Well, I suppose she’s better off. She pined and pined when there was next to nothing to eat in the house; and they tell me—for I was not at home when she died—that she said at the last, ‘I’m going to Jesus; they are not hungry where he is.’ Poor thing!”

“And your wife?” exclaimed Bernard, his blood running cold at the tone of indifference in which this account was given.

“Oh, my wife? Ah, we did not see much of one another after our child’s death! I was often from home; and once, when I returned, I found that she was gone: they had buried her in my absence. She died—so they said—of a broken heart. Poor thing! it is not unlikely.”

Mr Oliphant hid his head in his hands, and groaned aloud. He had never before conceived it possible—what he now found to be too true—that long habits of drunkenness can so utterly unhumanise a man as to reduce him to a mere callous self, looking upon all things outside self as dreamy and devoid of interest, with but one passion left—the passion for the poison which has ruined him.

At last the rector raised his head, and said slowly and solemnly,—

“And if God spares you, will you not strive to lead a new life? Will you not pray for grace to conquer your besetting sin?”

The wretched man did not answer for a while. Then he said,—

“I have only one thing to live for, and that is the drink. I cannot live without it. Oh, I implore you to let me have some spirits! You do not, you cannot, know how I crave them, or in pity you would not withhold them from me.”

Mr Oliphant rose.

“Compose yourself, my poor friend,” he said. “I dare not grant your request; it might be your death. Farewell for the present. May God, with whom all things are possible, help you through your present trouble, and enable you in the end to conquer.”

The wretched man called imploringly after him; but he closed the door, and summoning Mrs Barnes, begged her to look well after him, and to see that the nurse did all in her power to keep him calm, and to soothe him to rest.

Two days after this he called again.

“How is your patient to-day, Mrs Barnes?” he said to the landlady, whom he met on the landing.

“I cannot quite tell you, sir, for I have not been in to see him this morning. He was so much better yesterday that the doctor said Mrs Harper might go home. I went to look at him after he had taken his tea, and I found old Jane Hicks with him. She had called to speak with Mrs Harper, and the poor gentleman got her to go and borrow him a newspaper which he wanted to see. I think I heard her come back twice since Mrs Harper left; but perhaps he wanted something else. He said I had better not wake him very early, as he thought he should sleep well; so I haven’t disturbed him yet.”

A strange misgiving crept over the rector.

“Let us go in at once,” he said.

They knocked at the bed-room door—there was no answer; they opened it softly and went in. The sick man lay on his back, apparently asleep, but when they came closer they saw that he was dead. A stain on the sheet attracted Mr Oliphant’s notice; he hastily turned it down, uncovering the hands; in the right was a bottle—it had held spirits; there was nothing in it now.

So died the miserable victim of drink; so died the once flourishing professor; so died the once acceptable preacher.

Mr Oliphant knelt by the bed-side and poured out his heart to God in prayer, entreating to be directed aright, and to be kept from ever in any degree disgracing his profession as this unhappy man had done. He was reminded that he was not alone by the sobs of the landlady, who had fallen on her knees near him.

“Mrs Barnes,” he said, on rising, “I have resolved, God helping me, to be a total abstainer from this day forward. I have nothing to do with the consciences of others, but for myself I feel that I shall be a happier and a wiser man if I wholly abstain from those stimulants which have power to make such a shipwreck as this.”

She did not answer except by tears and a deep sigh; and he made his way sadly and thoughtfully home.

From that day forward the drink was wholly banished from the rectory; there was no difference of opinion between Bernard and his wife—they would bring up their children without the ensnaring stimulant. Mr Oliphant showed his colours at once; and he preached as well as practised total abstinence, not in the place of the gospel, but as a handmaid to the gospel. And Mrs Barnes was the first who joined him.

“I’ve long hated selling beer and spirits,” she said. “I’ve seen the misery that the drink has brought even into our little village. But I didn’t see my way nor my duty plain before, but I see them now. You’ve set me the example, sir; and, please God, I’ll follow. You know my poor master left me the farm for my life, and I shall be happier there with a little than I could be if I were to stop here and be making ever so much.”

She kept to her resolution. So the “Oldfield Arms” was closed, to the astonishment of all the neighbours. What was the foolish woman about? Had she lost her senses? Why, the inn was doing a capital business. Sir Thomas Oldfield himself came down on purpose from Greymoor Park, when he heard what she was going to do, and tried to talk and laugh her out of it. But she was firm. The house was her own freehold, and she would neither use it herself as an inn, nor let any one else rent it for the same purpose. Of course, she was a fool in the eyes of the world, but she did not care for that; and any one who saw her bright face as she walked about her farm, would have perceived that, whether fool or no, she had the enjoyment of peace in her heart.

But the “Oldfield Arms” was not long without a tenant. The rector took it, as we have before said, and used it partly as shops, and the large public room as a reading-room. And thus it was that the “Dun Cow” remained without a rival as the dispenser of strong drink to the inhabitants of Waterland.

Chapter Four.The Park.It was a great vexation to Sir Thomas Oldfield that Mrs Barnes would neither keep the “Oldfield Arms” open herself, nor let it as a public-house to any one else. The “Dun Cow” was quite an inferior place altogether, and nothing but rebuilding it could turn it into anything like a respectable house; but it did very well for the villagers to sot in. There was a good fire, and plenty of room in its parlour, so the “Dun Cow” kept its name, and reigned alone. Sir Thomas, indeed, had no wish to see the public-houses multiplied, for he highly disapproved of drunkenness, so there was no encouragement to set up another house in a fresh place. And, indeed, though there was always custom in abundance for one such establishment, a second would, at the time of the opening of our story, have driven but a poor trade; for the example and appeals of the rector for some seventeen years as a Christian total abstainer, together with the knowledge that all the rectory household were consistent water-drinkers, had been greatly blessed in Waterland. Many had left their drunkenness; a happy change had taken place in several homes; and a flourishing total abstinence society, which included many members from other parishes and villages, held its monthly meetings in the large temperance room under the presidency of Bernard Oliphant.Sir Thomas Oldfield hated drunkenness, and was very severe upon drunkards, under ordinary circumstances, when brought before him as a magistrate. But, on the other hand, he hated total abstinence very cordially also. He was fond of making sweeping assertions, and knocking timid opponents down with strong asseverations, which passed for excellent arguments at assize dinners, and at parties at Greymoor Park; for it is wonderful what exceedingly loose logic will satisfy even highly-educated people when employed on the side of their appetites or prejudices. Once, indeed, the squire was very considerably staggered, but he never liked a reference to be made afterwards to the occasion. He was presiding at a harvest-home given to his own tenants, and had passed from a warm eulogium on temperance and moderation to a vehement harangue against total abstinence and total abstainers. He was, however, cut short in the midst of his eloquence by a sturdy-looking labourer, who struggled forward, beer-jug in hand, and, tottering at every step, spluttered out,—“Hooray, hooray, Sir Thomas! Here’s long life to the squire—here’s long life to moderation. Hooray lads, hooray! Here’s three cheers for the squire and moderation. Stand fast to your principles, like me; as for them total abstainers, they haven’t got a leg to stand on.”With that he tumbled forward, and, unable to recover his balance, fell flat on the ground before Sir Thomas, and lay there utterly unable to rise.As was the squire, so had he brought up his family.Greymoor Park was a noble property, which had come down to him through a long line of ancestors. The house stood on a rocky height, and was surrounded, but not encumbered, by noble groups of trees, from the midst of which it looked out over sloping terraced gardens, glowing with flower-beds, which enamelled the smoothest of turf, across the park from which the estate took its name. The original house was old, but while the fine bay-windows, massive porch, stately gables, and wide staircases, with their carved oak balustrades and pendants, had been preserved untouched, all such modern improvements had been added as would soften off the inconveniences of a less luxurious age. The park itself was remarkable for the size and grouping of its timber, and was well-stocked with deer. A fine sheet of water also spread itself out over an open space between the trees, so as to form a delightful variety to the view from the great bay-windows. Indeed, if the things of the present life could have made a man happy, Sir Thomas had abundant grounds for happiness in this world. Yes,inthis world, but not beyond it. For Sir Thomas was just simply and thoroughly a man of the world, and a most respectable man of the world too. No man could place his finger on a blot in his character or conduct. He lived for the world, and the world applauded him. He lived to please self, and to a considerable extent he succeeded.Lady Oldfield wished to be something higher. She knew the emptiness of the world, at least in theory. She wished to be a Christian, but was not. The glow of a pure gospel faith, caught by intercourse with true Christians, might be often found in her words, but it went no farther; as the pavement on which the rich hues of a stained glass window fall, is but a cold colourless pavement after all, so was her heart cold, worldly, colourless for God. She was careful to have her children taught religiously—the Bible lesson, the catechism, were learnt both regularly and perfectly. No child might omit its prayers night or morning, nor be absent from the daily family worship. No household was more strict in its attendance at church; and nothing brought down more speedily and severely her ladyship’s displeasure than negligence to go to God’s house, or irreverence or inattention during the service. Thomas, the eldest son, and heir to the baronetcy, was at present abroad with his regiment; the second son, Frank, was just one-and-twenty; the rest of the children were daughters.Ever since the coming of Bernard Oliphant to Waterland, there had been free intercourse between the two families at the hall and the rectory; for Mr Oliphant was a distant relation of the Oldfields, and it was through Sir Thomas that he had been presented to the living. So the young people grew up together, though there was, strictly speaking, more intimacy than friendship between them, especially as the total abstinence principles of the rectory were a bar to any great cordiality on the part of the squire and his lady. On this point the baronet and his wife were entirely agreed. She was less openly severe, yet quite as determined and bitter in her opposition as he. So the two families met, and were civil, and exchanged calls, and the Oliphants dined at the hall occasionally, and the children of both houses had little gatherings and feastings together from time to time. Thus had things gone on for some years after Mr Oliphant had first shown his colours as a total abstainer; Lady Oldfield jealously watching her children, lest any of them should be corrupted by the absurd notions, as she counted them, of the rector and his wife on this subject of total abstinence. She had, however, nothing to fear on this score, as regarded her eldest son. He had never taken much to the Oliphants as a boy, and his absence from home at school and the university had kept him out of the reach of their influence till he left England with his regiment. It was otherwise with the second son, Frank, who was specially his mother’s idol, and indeed almost every one else’s too. From his earliest boyhood he took people’s hearts by storm, and kept them. No one could see him and not love that open, generous, handsome face, with its laughing blue eyes, and setting of rich brown curling hair. No one could hear his joyous, confiding voice, and the expressions of unaffected and earnest interest with which he threw himself into every subject which fairly engaged his attention or affections, without feeling drawn with all the cords of the heart to the noble boy. There was such a thorough openness and freedom in all that he did and said, yet without recklessness and without indifference to the feelings of others. And when, through thoughtlessness or forgetfulness, as was not unfrequently the case, he happened to find himself in some awkward scrape or perplexity, he would toss back his waving hair with a half-vexed half-comical expression, which would disarm at once his mother’s anger, spite of herself, and turn her severe rebuke into a mild remonstrance. Alas, that sin should ever mar such a lovely work of God! Frank loved the look of nature that lay open all around him, but not his own books. He abhorred study, and only submitted to it from a sense of duty. His father, at Lady Oldfield’s urgent request, kept him at home, and engaged a private tutor for him, whose office would have been a sinecure but for the concern it gave him to find his pupil so hard to drag along the most level paths of learning. Dog’s-ears disfigured Frank’s books, the result simply of restless fingers; and dog’s heads; executed in a masterly style, were the subjects of his pen. He loved roaming about, and there was not an old ruin within many miles round of which he did not know every crevice, nor any birds of song or prey with whose haunts and habits he was not intimately acquainted. In fishing, riding, swimming, he was an early adept, and every outdoor sport was his delight. All the dogs in the neighbourhood rejoiced in him, and every cottager’s wife blessed him when he flung his bright smiles around him as he passed along. At no place was he more welcome than at the rectory, nor was there any house in which he felt so happy, not even excepting his own home. With all his wildness he felt the most sincere love and respect for Mr and Mrs Oliphant, and rejoiced in a day spent with their children. And there was one of these towards whom he was drawn with feelings of peculiar tenderness. He was not conscious of it, and would have laughed at the idea had it been suggested to him; yet it was true that when he was but just sixteen Mary Oliphant had begun to wind herself around his heart with those numberless invisible cords which would by degrees enchain him in bonds which no power on earth could break. Mary, of course, mere child as she then was, and brought up by her parents as a child should be, obedient, gentle, unobtrusive, delighted in the companionship of the lively, open-hearted boy, without a thought beyond, and heartily enjoyed many a happy ramble with him and her brothers among the woods and meadows. Frank Oldfield could not but be struck by the love and harmony which reigned in the Oliphant family. He saw the power of a religion which made itself felt without thrusting itself forward into notice. He could not but reflect sometimes, and then evenhissunny brow was clouded, that he wanted a something which the children at the rectory possessed; that he wanted a great reality, without which he could not be fully happy. He saw also the bright side of total abstinence when he spent a day with the rector’s family. At home there was always abundance of beer and wine upon the table, and he drank it, like others; and not only drank it, but thirsted for it, and felt as if he could not do without it. It was not so when he dined at the rectory, at their simple one o’clock meal, for he enjoyed his food, and seemed scarcely to miss the stimulant.One day, when he was sitting at the rectory table, he said to Mr Oliphant, looking up with one of his bright smiles,—“I wish I was a total abstainer.”“Well,” said Mr Oliphant in reply, with a smile, “I wish you were; but why doyouwish it just now, my dear boy?”“Oh, I’ve been thinking a good deal about it lately. I see you smile, Hubert, but I really have been thinking—yes, thinking—I’ve been thinking that I should like to do as you all do; you’re just as happy without beer and wine, and just as well too.”“And is that your only reason, dear Frank?” asked Mrs Oliphant.“Oh no! that’s not all; the plain truth is this, I can’t help thinking that if I keep getting fonder and fonder of beer and wine, as I’m doing now, I shall get too fond of it by-and-by.”Mr Oliphant sighed, and poor Mary exclaimed,—“Oh, Frank, don’t say that.”“Ay, but it’s true; don’t you think, Mr Oliphant, that I should be better and safer without it?”“I do, most sincerely, my dear boy,” answered the rector; “yes, both better and safer; and specially the latter.”“I know,” said Frank, “that papa and mamma are not fond of total abstinence; but then, I cannot think that they have really looked into the matter as you have.”“No, Frank, your father and mother do not see the matter in the same light as myself and I have no right to blame them, for, when I first came to Waterland, I thought nearly the same as they do. Perhaps they will takemyview by-and-by.”Frank shook his head, and then went on,—“But you do think it the best thing for young people, as well as grown-up people, to be abstainers?”“Yes, assuredly; and I will tell you why. I will give you a little illustration. There is a beautiful picture representing what is called the ‘Lorelei,’ a spirit fabled to haunt some high rocks that overlook the Rhine. This spirit is represented in the picture as a beautiful female, with a sweet but melancholy expression of countenance. She kneels on the top of the rock, and is singing to a harp, which she strikes with her graceful fingers. Below is a boat with two men in it, the one old, and the other young. The boat is rapidly nearing the rocks, but both the men are utterly unconscious of their danger—the old man has ceased to hold the helm, the young man has dropped the oars, and both are fondly stretching out their hands towards the deceiving spirit, wholly entranced with her song—a few moments more and their boat will be a wreck. Now, it is because the drink is such an enticing thing, like the Lorelei spirit; because it seems to sing pleasantly to us, and makes us forget where we are; because it lures on old and young to their ruin, by robbing them of their self-control;—it is for these reasons that I think it such a happy thing to put every safeguard between ourselves and its snares.”“Yes,” said Frank thoughtfully; “I know the drink is becoming a snare to me, or may become so. What shall I do? Ought I to give it up altogether?”“It is a very difficult thing to answer that question,” replied the rector. “I could hardly urge you to give up beer and wine altogether, if your father and mother positively forbid your doing so; there is no sin, of course, in the simple taking of fermented liquors, and therefore I could not advise you to go directly contrary to your parents’ orders in this matter.”“There is no harm, however, in my trying to give up beer and wine, if my father and mother will allow me?”“Certainly not, my dear boy; and may God make your way plain, and remove or overcome your difficulties.”The day after this conversation, Frank was sitting in his place at the dinner-table of the hall. The butler brought him a glass of beer. “No, thank you,” he said. A little while after he filled a tumbler with water, and began to drink it.“Frank, my boy,” said his father, “are not you well? Why don’t you take your beer as usual?”“I’m quite well, thank you, papa; but I’d rather have the water.”“Well, put some port wine in it, at any rate, if you don’t fancy the beer to-day.”“I’d rather have neither beer nor wine, thank you, papa.”By this time Lady Oldfield’s attention was drawn to what was passing between her husband and son.“Dear Frank,” she said, “I shall not allow you to do anything so foolish as to drink water. James, hand the beer again to Master Frank.”“Indeed, dear mamma,” he urged, “I mean what I say; I really should rather have water.”“Absurd!” exclaimed her ladyship angrily; “what folly has possessed you now? You know that the medical men all say that wine and beer are necessary for your health.”“I’m sure, mamma, the medical men needn’t trouble themselves about my health. I’m always very well when I have plenty of air and exercise. If ever I feel unwell, it is when I’ve had more wine or beer than usual.”“And who, pray, has been putting these foolish notions into your head? I see how it is; I always feared it; the Oliphants have been filling your head with their extravagant notions about total abstinence. Really, my dear,” she added, turning to Sir Thomas, “we must forbid Frank’s going to the rectory, if they are to make our own child fly in the face of our wishes.”“Mamma,” cried Frank, all on fire with excitement and indignation, “you’re quite mistaken about the Oliphants; they have none of them been trying to talk me over to their own views. I began the subject myself, and asked Mr Oliphant’s advice, and he told me expressly that I ought not to do what you would disapprove of.”“And why should you ask Mr Oliphant’s advice? Cannot you trust your own father and mother? I am not saying a word against Mr Oliphant as a clergyman or a Christian; he preaches the gospel fully and faithfully, and works hard in his parish, but on this subject of total abstinence he holds views which neither your father nor I approve of; and, really, I must not have you tampered with in this matter.”“Well, dear mamma, I’ve done; I’ll do as you wish. Farewell water—welcome beer and wine; James, a glass of ale.”It was two years after this that a merry company from the hall and rectory set out to explore a remarkable ruin about five miles distant from Waterland. Frank was leader of the party; he had never given his parents any more anxiety on the score of total abstinence—on the contrary, he had learned to take so freely of wine and beer, that his mother felt at times a little alarmed lest he should seriously overpass the bounds of moderation. When at the rectory, he never again alluded to the subject, but rather seemed eager to turn the conversation when any remark fell from Mr or Mrs Oliphant on the evils arising from intemperance. And now to-day he was in the highest spirits, as he rode on a sprightly little pony by the side of Mary Oliphant, who was mounted on another pony, and was looking the picture of peaceful beauty. Other young people followed, also on horseback. The day was most lovely, and an inspiriting canter along lane and over moor soon brought them to the ruin. It was a stately moss-embroidered fabric, more picturesque in its decay than it ever could have been in its completeness. Its shattered columns, solitary mullions, and pendent fragments of tracery hoary with age, and in parts half concealed by the negligent profusion of ivy, entranced the mind by their suggestive and melancholy beauty; while the huge remnant of a massive tower seemed to plead with mute dignity against the violence which had rent and marred it, and against the encroaching vegetation, which was climbing higher and higher, and enveloping its giant stones in a fantastic clothing of shrub and bramble.Frank and his party first shut up their horses in the old refectory, closing the entrance with a hurdle, and then dispersed over the ruins. Mary had brought her drawing-pad, that she might sketch a magnificent pillar, and the remains of a transept arch which rose gracefully behind it, crowned with drooping ivy, and disclosing in the back ground, through a shattered window, the dreamy blue of the distant hills. She sat on the mutilated chapiter of a column, and was soon so wholly absorbed in her work, that she never turned her eyes to notice Frank Oldfield, who, leaning against a low archway, was busily engaged in a vigorous sketch, of which herself was the prominent object. And who could blame him? for certainly a lovelier picture, or one more full of harmonious contrast, could hardly have been found, than that presented by the sweet and graceful figure of the rector’s daughter, with its surroundings of massive masonry and majestic decay. She all life, a creature of the present, and yet still more of the future, as bright with the sunshine of a hope that could never die; and they, those mouldering stones, that broken tracery, those mossy arches, sad in the desolation of the present, sadder still in the memories of an unenlightened past. Frank finished his sketch, and, holding it behind him, stole gently up to the side of Mary Oliphant.“Ah!” he exclaimed, “a most lovely little bit; and yet, I have the vanity to think that my choice of a subject has been better than your own.”“The drawing is, no doubt,” she answered; “but I hardly think you can find such a picturesque group as this in any other part of the ruins.”“Let us compare, then,” he said, and placed his own sketch by the side of hers.“Oh, Frank,” she cried, “how can you be so foolish?”At the same time the colour which flushed her face, and the bright smile which lighted it, showed that the folly was not very reprehensible in her eyes.“Is it so very foolish?” he asked, half seriously, half playfully. “Well; I wish I had shown the same kind of folly in my choice of some other things as I have in the choice of a subject.”She was about to reply, when suddenly, without any warning, a savage-looking dog dashed into the open space before them, and, making a fierce rush at Mary, caught her by the dress.“Down, you brute, down!” shouted Frank; but the dog still retained his hold, and growled and tossed himself about savagely. Frank had no stick nor weapon of any kind in his hands, but he darted to a heap of loose stones, and snatching one up turned towards the dog. In the meantime, Mary, in extreme terror, had dropped her drawing-pad, and plucking her dress from the fierce creature’s mouth, fled with all her speed across the pavement, and sprang up the projecting stones of an old archway. The dog, with a loud yell, followed her, and easily overtook her, as the ascent up which she had climbed presented a broad footing. Utterly terrified, and unconscious of what she was doing, the poor girl clambered higher and higher to escape her enemy. Frank had now turned upon the dog, and hurled one huge stone at him; it passed near, but did not touch him. Mary’s terror only excited the furious animal to follow, and as she saw him close upon her again, with a wild cry she leaped right across to an old fragment of a turret which stood out by itself in an angle of the wall. The dog hesitated, but, before it could decide to follow her, another stone from Frank had struck it full in the side. With a tremendous howl it tumbled down into the court and fled. Poor Mary! she gasped for breath, and could not for a long time recover her self-possession. When at last she became more calm, soothed and encouraged by the kind voice and earnest entreaties of Frank, it was only to awake to the extreme danger of her present position. Fear had made her take a leap which she could never have dared to attempt in her calm senses. She looked across the chasm over which she had sprung, and shuddered. Could she try the leap back again? No; she dared not. In the meantime, the stones to which she was clinging began to loosen beneath her weight. She looked down, and became giddy.“Oh, save me—save me—I shall fall!” she cried. She clutched at a strong stem of ivy which was climbing up the wall close by, and so supported herself; but it was evident that she could not long retain her hold in that constrained position, even if the stonework did not give way beneath her feet. All the party had now gathered in the open space below, and some began to climb the path by which she had mounted. Frank, in the meanwhile, was making desperate efforts to reach the poor girl.“Hold on—hold on—dear Mary!” he cried; “a few moments, and I shall be with you; don’t lose courage—keep a firm grasp on the ivy; there—I’ve got a landing on the top of this old arch; now, I’m only a few feet off—steady, steady—don’t stir for your life—only a few moments more and I shall be at your side.”It was perilous work indeed; and all who beheld him held their breath as he made his way towards where the object of their deep anxiety was crouched. Now he was clinging to a rough projecting stone, now swinging by a rusty bar, now grasping ivy or brambles, and every now and then slipping as the old masonry gave way beneath his feet. At last, with immense exertion, he gained a ledge a little below where the terrified girl was perched, half lying, half crouching. Here he had firm standing-ground. Placing his hand gently upon her, he bade her slide down towards him, assuring her that she would have a firm footing on the ledge. She obeyed at once, feeling his strong arm bearing her up and guiding her. Another moment, and she stood beside him. But now, how were they to descend? She dared not attempt to leap back to the spot from whence she had sprung in her terror, and there was no regular descent from the slab on which they were perched, but only a few projecting stones down the perpendicular face of the wall, and these at wide intervals.“There’s no way but a roundabout climb down by the ivy,” said Frank at last. “Trust to me, dear Mary, and do exactly what I tell you. I will go first, and do you place hand and foot just as I bid you. There—put your foot in that crevice—now take firm hold of that branch; there—now the other foot—now the next step a little to the right, the good ivy makes a noble ladder—now we’re nearly landed; there—be careful not to slip on that round stone—one step more, and now we’re safe. Oh, thank God,you’resafe!”He clasped her to his heart; she knew that heart was hers; she could not resent that loving embrace; it was but for a moment. He released her, and was turning to the friends who were gathering and pressing round, when a heavy stone, loosened in their descent, fell on his outstretched arm, and struck him to the ground.Mary sprang towards him with a cry of deep distress.“Frank, dear Frank—you’re hurt—you’re dreadfully hurt, I’m sure.”“No, no; not much, I hope,” he said, springing up, but looking very pale. “It’s an awkward blow rather, but don’t distress yourself—we’ll make the best of our way home at once—just one of you see to the horses.”He spoke with effort, for he was evidently in great pain. Mary’s heart ached for him, but exhaustion and anxiety quite deprived her of the power of speaking or thinking collectively.The horses were speedily brought. Frank held out his uninjured arm to help Mary Oliphant to mount her pony.“I’m so very, very sorry,” she said, “to have caused this disaster, and spoiled our happy day through my foolish timidity.”“Nay, nay; you must not blame yourself,” said Frank. “I am sure we all feel for you. It was that rascal of a dog that did the mischief, but I gave him such a mark of my respect as I don’t think he’ll part with for a long time.”Poor Frank, he tried to be cheerful; but it was plain to all that he must be suffering severely. They were soon on their way home, but a cloud rested on their spirits. Few words were said till they reached the spot where the roads to the hall and the rectory parted. Then Frank turned to Mary and said, with a look full of tenderness, rendered doubly touching by his almost ghastly paleness,—“Farewell; I hope you’ll be none the worse, dear Mary, for your fright. I shall send over to-morrow to inquire how you are. It was a happy escape.”“Good-bye, good-bye!” she cried; “a thousand thanks for your noble and timely rescue! Oh, I hope—I hope—”She could not say more, but burst into tears.“All right—never fear for me!” he cried cheerily as he rode off, leaving Mary and a groom to make their way to Waterland, while himself and the rest of the party hastened on to Greymoor Park.They had not far to ride, but Frank was evidently anxious to reach home as speedily as possible. With clenched teeth and knit brow, he urged on his pony to a gallop. Soon they reached the lodge; a few moments more and they had passed along the drive and gained the grand entrance. Lady Oldfield had just returned from a drive, and was standing on the top step.“You’re early home,” she remarked. “Dear Frank, I hope there’s nothing amiss,” she added, noticing the downcast looks of the whole party.Her son did not answer, but, dismounting with difficulty, began to walk up the steps. She observed with dismay that he tottered as he approached her. Could he have been drinking so freely as to be unable to walk steadily? Her heart died within her. The next moment he staggered forward, and fainted in her arms.

It was a great vexation to Sir Thomas Oldfield that Mrs Barnes would neither keep the “Oldfield Arms” open herself, nor let it as a public-house to any one else. The “Dun Cow” was quite an inferior place altogether, and nothing but rebuilding it could turn it into anything like a respectable house; but it did very well for the villagers to sot in. There was a good fire, and plenty of room in its parlour, so the “Dun Cow” kept its name, and reigned alone. Sir Thomas, indeed, had no wish to see the public-houses multiplied, for he highly disapproved of drunkenness, so there was no encouragement to set up another house in a fresh place. And, indeed, though there was always custom in abundance for one such establishment, a second would, at the time of the opening of our story, have driven but a poor trade; for the example and appeals of the rector for some seventeen years as a Christian total abstainer, together with the knowledge that all the rectory household were consistent water-drinkers, had been greatly blessed in Waterland. Many had left their drunkenness; a happy change had taken place in several homes; and a flourishing total abstinence society, which included many members from other parishes and villages, held its monthly meetings in the large temperance room under the presidency of Bernard Oliphant.

Sir Thomas Oldfield hated drunkenness, and was very severe upon drunkards, under ordinary circumstances, when brought before him as a magistrate. But, on the other hand, he hated total abstinence very cordially also. He was fond of making sweeping assertions, and knocking timid opponents down with strong asseverations, which passed for excellent arguments at assize dinners, and at parties at Greymoor Park; for it is wonderful what exceedingly loose logic will satisfy even highly-educated people when employed on the side of their appetites or prejudices. Once, indeed, the squire was very considerably staggered, but he never liked a reference to be made afterwards to the occasion. He was presiding at a harvest-home given to his own tenants, and had passed from a warm eulogium on temperance and moderation to a vehement harangue against total abstinence and total abstainers. He was, however, cut short in the midst of his eloquence by a sturdy-looking labourer, who struggled forward, beer-jug in hand, and, tottering at every step, spluttered out,—

“Hooray, hooray, Sir Thomas! Here’s long life to the squire—here’s long life to moderation. Hooray lads, hooray! Here’s three cheers for the squire and moderation. Stand fast to your principles, like me; as for them total abstainers, they haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

With that he tumbled forward, and, unable to recover his balance, fell flat on the ground before Sir Thomas, and lay there utterly unable to rise.

As was the squire, so had he brought up his family.

Greymoor Park was a noble property, which had come down to him through a long line of ancestors. The house stood on a rocky height, and was surrounded, but not encumbered, by noble groups of trees, from the midst of which it looked out over sloping terraced gardens, glowing with flower-beds, which enamelled the smoothest of turf, across the park from which the estate took its name. The original house was old, but while the fine bay-windows, massive porch, stately gables, and wide staircases, with their carved oak balustrades and pendants, had been preserved untouched, all such modern improvements had been added as would soften off the inconveniences of a less luxurious age. The park itself was remarkable for the size and grouping of its timber, and was well-stocked with deer. A fine sheet of water also spread itself out over an open space between the trees, so as to form a delightful variety to the view from the great bay-windows. Indeed, if the things of the present life could have made a man happy, Sir Thomas had abundant grounds for happiness in this world. Yes,inthis world, but not beyond it. For Sir Thomas was just simply and thoroughly a man of the world, and a most respectable man of the world too. No man could place his finger on a blot in his character or conduct. He lived for the world, and the world applauded him. He lived to please self, and to a considerable extent he succeeded.

Lady Oldfield wished to be something higher. She knew the emptiness of the world, at least in theory. She wished to be a Christian, but was not. The glow of a pure gospel faith, caught by intercourse with true Christians, might be often found in her words, but it went no farther; as the pavement on which the rich hues of a stained glass window fall, is but a cold colourless pavement after all, so was her heart cold, worldly, colourless for God. She was careful to have her children taught religiously—the Bible lesson, the catechism, were learnt both regularly and perfectly. No child might omit its prayers night or morning, nor be absent from the daily family worship. No household was more strict in its attendance at church; and nothing brought down more speedily and severely her ladyship’s displeasure than negligence to go to God’s house, or irreverence or inattention during the service. Thomas, the eldest son, and heir to the baronetcy, was at present abroad with his regiment; the second son, Frank, was just one-and-twenty; the rest of the children were daughters.

Ever since the coming of Bernard Oliphant to Waterland, there had been free intercourse between the two families at the hall and the rectory; for Mr Oliphant was a distant relation of the Oldfields, and it was through Sir Thomas that he had been presented to the living. So the young people grew up together, though there was, strictly speaking, more intimacy than friendship between them, especially as the total abstinence principles of the rectory were a bar to any great cordiality on the part of the squire and his lady. On this point the baronet and his wife were entirely agreed. She was less openly severe, yet quite as determined and bitter in her opposition as he. So the two families met, and were civil, and exchanged calls, and the Oliphants dined at the hall occasionally, and the children of both houses had little gatherings and feastings together from time to time. Thus had things gone on for some years after Mr Oliphant had first shown his colours as a total abstainer; Lady Oldfield jealously watching her children, lest any of them should be corrupted by the absurd notions, as she counted them, of the rector and his wife on this subject of total abstinence. She had, however, nothing to fear on this score, as regarded her eldest son. He had never taken much to the Oliphants as a boy, and his absence from home at school and the university had kept him out of the reach of their influence till he left England with his regiment. It was otherwise with the second son, Frank, who was specially his mother’s idol, and indeed almost every one else’s too. From his earliest boyhood he took people’s hearts by storm, and kept them. No one could see him and not love that open, generous, handsome face, with its laughing blue eyes, and setting of rich brown curling hair. No one could hear his joyous, confiding voice, and the expressions of unaffected and earnest interest with which he threw himself into every subject which fairly engaged his attention or affections, without feeling drawn with all the cords of the heart to the noble boy. There was such a thorough openness and freedom in all that he did and said, yet without recklessness and without indifference to the feelings of others. And when, through thoughtlessness or forgetfulness, as was not unfrequently the case, he happened to find himself in some awkward scrape or perplexity, he would toss back his waving hair with a half-vexed half-comical expression, which would disarm at once his mother’s anger, spite of herself, and turn her severe rebuke into a mild remonstrance. Alas, that sin should ever mar such a lovely work of God! Frank loved the look of nature that lay open all around him, but not his own books. He abhorred study, and only submitted to it from a sense of duty. His father, at Lady Oldfield’s urgent request, kept him at home, and engaged a private tutor for him, whose office would have been a sinecure but for the concern it gave him to find his pupil so hard to drag along the most level paths of learning. Dog’s-ears disfigured Frank’s books, the result simply of restless fingers; and dog’s heads; executed in a masterly style, were the subjects of his pen. He loved roaming about, and there was not an old ruin within many miles round of which he did not know every crevice, nor any birds of song or prey with whose haunts and habits he was not intimately acquainted. In fishing, riding, swimming, he was an early adept, and every outdoor sport was his delight. All the dogs in the neighbourhood rejoiced in him, and every cottager’s wife blessed him when he flung his bright smiles around him as he passed along. At no place was he more welcome than at the rectory, nor was there any house in which he felt so happy, not even excepting his own home. With all his wildness he felt the most sincere love and respect for Mr and Mrs Oliphant, and rejoiced in a day spent with their children. And there was one of these towards whom he was drawn with feelings of peculiar tenderness. He was not conscious of it, and would have laughed at the idea had it been suggested to him; yet it was true that when he was but just sixteen Mary Oliphant had begun to wind herself around his heart with those numberless invisible cords which would by degrees enchain him in bonds which no power on earth could break. Mary, of course, mere child as she then was, and brought up by her parents as a child should be, obedient, gentle, unobtrusive, delighted in the companionship of the lively, open-hearted boy, without a thought beyond, and heartily enjoyed many a happy ramble with him and her brothers among the woods and meadows. Frank Oldfield could not but be struck by the love and harmony which reigned in the Oliphant family. He saw the power of a religion which made itself felt without thrusting itself forward into notice. He could not but reflect sometimes, and then evenhissunny brow was clouded, that he wanted a something which the children at the rectory possessed; that he wanted a great reality, without which he could not be fully happy. He saw also the bright side of total abstinence when he spent a day with the rector’s family. At home there was always abundance of beer and wine upon the table, and he drank it, like others; and not only drank it, but thirsted for it, and felt as if he could not do without it. It was not so when he dined at the rectory, at their simple one o’clock meal, for he enjoyed his food, and seemed scarcely to miss the stimulant.

One day, when he was sitting at the rectory table, he said to Mr Oliphant, looking up with one of his bright smiles,—

“I wish I was a total abstainer.”

“Well,” said Mr Oliphant in reply, with a smile, “I wish you were; but why doyouwish it just now, my dear boy?”

“Oh, I’ve been thinking a good deal about it lately. I see you smile, Hubert, but I really have been thinking—yes, thinking—I’ve been thinking that I should like to do as you all do; you’re just as happy without beer and wine, and just as well too.”

“And is that your only reason, dear Frank?” asked Mrs Oliphant.

“Oh no! that’s not all; the plain truth is this, I can’t help thinking that if I keep getting fonder and fonder of beer and wine, as I’m doing now, I shall get too fond of it by-and-by.”

Mr Oliphant sighed, and poor Mary exclaimed,—

“Oh, Frank, don’t say that.”

“Ay, but it’s true; don’t you think, Mr Oliphant, that I should be better and safer without it?”

“I do, most sincerely, my dear boy,” answered the rector; “yes, both better and safer; and specially the latter.”

“I know,” said Frank, “that papa and mamma are not fond of total abstinence; but then, I cannot think that they have really looked into the matter as you have.”

“No, Frank, your father and mother do not see the matter in the same light as myself and I have no right to blame them, for, when I first came to Waterland, I thought nearly the same as they do. Perhaps they will takemyview by-and-by.”

Frank shook his head, and then went on,—

“But you do think it the best thing for young people, as well as grown-up people, to be abstainers?”

“Yes, assuredly; and I will tell you why. I will give you a little illustration. There is a beautiful picture representing what is called the ‘Lorelei,’ a spirit fabled to haunt some high rocks that overlook the Rhine. This spirit is represented in the picture as a beautiful female, with a sweet but melancholy expression of countenance. She kneels on the top of the rock, and is singing to a harp, which she strikes with her graceful fingers. Below is a boat with two men in it, the one old, and the other young. The boat is rapidly nearing the rocks, but both the men are utterly unconscious of their danger—the old man has ceased to hold the helm, the young man has dropped the oars, and both are fondly stretching out their hands towards the deceiving spirit, wholly entranced with her song—a few moments more and their boat will be a wreck. Now, it is because the drink is such an enticing thing, like the Lorelei spirit; because it seems to sing pleasantly to us, and makes us forget where we are; because it lures on old and young to their ruin, by robbing them of their self-control;—it is for these reasons that I think it such a happy thing to put every safeguard between ourselves and its snares.”

“Yes,” said Frank thoughtfully; “I know the drink is becoming a snare to me, or may become so. What shall I do? Ought I to give it up altogether?”

“It is a very difficult thing to answer that question,” replied the rector. “I could hardly urge you to give up beer and wine altogether, if your father and mother positively forbid your doing so; there is no sin, of course, in the simple taking of fermented liquors, and therefore I could not advise you to go directly contrary to your parents’ orders in this matter.”

“There is no harm, however, in my trying to give up beer and wine, if my father and mother will allow me?”

“Certainly not, my dear boy; and may God make your way plain, and remove or overcome your difficulties.”

The day after this conversation, Frank was sitting in his place at the dinner-table of the hall. The butler brought him a glass of beer. “No, thank you,” he said. A little while after he filled a tumbler with water, and began to drink it.

“Frank, my boy,” said his father, “are not you well? Why don’t you take your beer as usual?”

“I’m quite well, thank you, papa; but I’d rather have the water.”

“Well, put some port wine in it, at any rate, if you don’t fancy the beer to-day.”

“I’d rather have neither beer nor wine, thank you, papa.”

By this time Lady Oldfield’s attention was drawn to what was passing between her husband and son.

“Dear Frank,” she said, “I shall not allow you to do anything so foolish as to drink water. James, hand the beer again to Master Frank.”

“Indeed, dear mamma,” he urged, “I mean what I say; I really should rather have water.”

“Absurd!” exclaimed her ladyship angrily; “what folly has possessed you now? You know that the medical men all say that wine and beer are necessary for your health.”

“I’m sure, mamma, the medical men needn’t trouble themselves about my health. I’m always very well when I have plenty of air and exercise. If ever I feel unwell, it is when I’ve had more wine or beer than usual.”

“And who, pray, has been putting these foolish notions into your head? I see how it is; I always feared it; the Oliphants have been filling your head with their extravagant notions about total abstinence. Really, my dear,” she added, turning to Sir Thomas, “we must forbid Frank’s going to the rectory, if they are to make our own child fly in the face of our wishes.”

“Mamma,” cried Frank, all on fire with excitement and indignation, “you’re quite mistaken about the Oliphants; they have none of them been trying to talk me over to their own views. I began the subject myself, and asked Mr Oliphant’s advice, and he told me expressly that I ought not to do what you would disapprove of.”

“And why should you ask Mr Oliphant’s advice? Cannot you trust your own father and mother? I am not saying a word against Mr Oliphant as a clergyman or a Christian; he preaches the gospel fully and faithfully, and works hard in his parish, but on this subject of total abstinence he holds views which neither your father nor I approve of; and, really, I must not have you tampered with in this matter.”

“Well, dear mamma, I’ve done; I’ll do as you wish. Farewell water—welcome beer and wine; James, a glass of ale.”

It was two years after this that a merry company from the hall and rectory set out to explore a remarkable ruin about five miles distant from Waterland. Frank was leader of the party; he had never given his parents any more anxiety on the score of total abstinence—on the contrary, he had learned to take so freely of wine and beer, that his mother felt at times a little alarmed lest he should seriously overpass the bounds of moderation. When at the rectory, he never again alluded to the subject, but rather seemed eager to turn the conversation when any remark fell from Mr or Mrs Oliphant on the evils arising from intemperance. And now to-day he was in the highest spirits, as he rode on a sprightly little pony by the side of Mary Oliphant, who was mounted on another pony, and was looking the picture of peaceful beauty. Other young people followed, also on horseback. The day was most lovely, and an inspiriting canter along lane and over moor soon brought them to the ruin. It was a stately moss-embroidered fabric, more picturesque in its decay than it ever could have been in its completeness. Its shattered columns, solitary mullions, and pendent fragments of tracery hoary with age, and in parts half concealed by the negligent profusion of ivy, entranced the mind by their suggestive and melancholy beauty; while the huge remnant of a massive tower seemed to plead with mute dignity against the violence which had rent and marred it, and against the encroaching vegetation, which was climbing higher and higher, and enveloping its giant stones in a fantastic clothing of shrub and bramble.

Frank and his party first shut up their horses in the old refectory, closing the entrance with a hurdle, and then dispersed over the ruins. Mary had brought her drawing-pad, that she might sketch a magnificent pillar, and the remains of a transept arch which rose gracefully behind it, crowned with drooping ivy, and disclosing in the back ground, through a shattered window, the dreamy blue of the distant hills. She sat on the mutilated chapiter of a column, and was soon so wholly absorbed in her work, that she never turned her eyes to notice Frank Oldfield, who, leaning against a low archway, was busily engaged in a vigorous sketch, of which herself was the prominent object. And who could blame him? for certainly a lovelier picture, or one more full of harmonious contrast, could hardly have been found, than that presented by the sweet and graceful figure of the rector’s daughter, with its surroundings of massive masonry and majestic decay. She all life, a creature of the present, and yet still more of the future, as bright with the sunshine of a hope that could never die; and they, those mouldering stones, that broken tracery, those mossy arches, sad in the desolation of the present, sadder still in the memories of an unenlightened past. Frank finished his sketch, and, holding it behind him, stole gently up to the side of Mary Oliphant.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “a most lovely little bit; and yet, I have the vanity to think that my choice of a subject has been better than your own.”

“The drawing is, no doubt,” she answered; “but I hardly think you can find such a picturesque group as this in any other part of the ruins.”

“Let us compare, then,” he said, and placed his own sketch by the side of hers.

“Oh, Frank,” she cried, “how can you be so foolish?”

At the same time the colour which flushed her face, and the bright smile which lighted it, showed that the folly was not very reprehensible in her eyes.

“Is it so very foolish?” he asked, half seriously, half playfully. “Well; I wish I had shown the same kind of folly in my choice of some other things as I have in the choice of a subject.”

She was about to reply, when suddenly, without any warning, a savage-looking dog dashed into the open space before them, and, making a fierce rush at Mary, caught her by the dress.

“Down, you brute, down!” shouted Frank; but the dog still retained his hold, and growled and tossed himself about savagely. Frank had no stick nor weapon of any kind in his hands, but he darted to a heap of loose stones, and snatching one up turned towards the dog. In the meantime, Mary, in extreme terror, had dropped her drawing-pad, and plucking her dress from the fierce creature’s mouth, fled with all her speed across the pavement, and sprang up the projecting stones of an old archway. The dog, with a loud yell, followed her, and easily overtook her, as the ascent up which she had climbed presented a broad footing. Utterly terrified, and unconscious of what she was doing, the poor girl clambered higher and higher to escape her enemy. Frank had now turned upon the dog, and hurled one huge stone at him; it passed near, but did not touch him. Mary’s terror only excited the furious animal to follow, and as she saw him close upon her again, with a wild cry she leaped right across to an old fragment of a turret which stood out by itself in an angle of the wall. The dog hesitated, but, before it could decide to follow her, another stone from Frank had struck it full in the side. With a tremendous howl it tumbled down into the court and fled. Poor Mary! she gasped for breath, and could not for a long time recover her self-possession. When at last she became more calm, soothed and encouraged by the kind voice and earnest entreaties of Frank, it was only to awake to the extreme danger of her present position. Fear had made her take a leap which she could never have dared to attempt in her calm senses. She looked across the chasm over which she had sprung, and shuddered. Could she try the leap back again? No; she dared not. In the meantime, the stones to which she was clinging began to loosen beneath her weight. She looked down, and became giddy.

“Oh, save me—save me—I shall fall!” she cried. She clutched at a strong stem of ivy which was climbing up the wall close by, and so supported herself; but it was evident that she could not long retain her hold in that constrained position, even if the stonework did not give way beneath her feet. All the party had now gathered in the open space below, and some began to climb the path by which she had mounted. Frank, in the meanwhile, was making desperate efforts to reach the poor girl.

“Hold on—hold on—dear Mary!” he cried; “a few moments, and I shall be with you; don’t lose courage—keep a firm grasp on the ivy; there—I’ve got a landing on the top of this old arch; now, I’m only a few feet off—steady, steady—don’t stir for your life—only a few moments more and I shall be at your side.”

It was perilous work indeed; and all who beheld him held their breath as he made his way towards where the object of their deep anxiety was crouched. Now he was clinging to a rough projecting stone, now swinging by a rusty bar, now grasping ivy or brambles, and every now and then slipping as the old masonry gave way beneath his feet. At last, with immense exertion, he gained a ledge a little below where the terrified girl was perched, half lying, half crouching. Here he had firm standing-ground. Placing his hand gently upon her, he bade her slide down towards him, assuring her that she would have a firm footing on the ledge. She obeyed at once, feeling his strong arm bearing her up and guiding her. Another moment, and she stood beside him. But now, how were they to descend? She dared not attempt to leap back to the spot from whence she had sprung in her terror, and there was no regular descent from the slab on which they were perched, but only a few projecting stones down the perpendicular face of the wall, and these at wide intervals.

“There’s no way but a roundabout climb down by the ivy,” said Frank at last. “Trust to me, dear Mary, and do exactly what I tell you. I will go first, and do you place hand and foot just as I bid you. There—put your foot in that crevice—now take firm hold of that branch; there—now the other foot—now the next step a little to the right, the good ivy makes a noble ladder—now we’re nearly landed; there—be careful not to slip on that round stone—one step more, and now we’re safe. Oh, thank God,you’resafe!”

He clasped her to his heart; she knew that heart was hers; she could not resent that loving embrace; it was but for a moment. He released her, and was turning to the friends who were gathering and pressing round, when a heavy stone, loosened in their descent, fell on his outstretched arm, and struck him to the ground.

Mary sprang towards him with a cry of deep distress.

“Frank, dear Frank—you’re hurt—you’re dreadfully hurt, I’m sure.”

“No, no; not much, I hope,” he said, springing up, but looking very pale. “It’s an awkward blow rather, but don’t distress yourself—we’ll make the best of our way home at once—just one of you see to the horses.”

He spoke with effort, for he was evidently in great pain. Mary’s heart ached for him, but exhaustion and anxiety quite deprived her of the power of speaking or thinking collectively.

The horses were speedily brought. Frank held out his uninjured arm to help Mary Oliphant to mount her pony.

“I’m so very, very sorry,” she said, “to have caused this disaster, and spoiled our happy day through my foolish timidity.”

“Nay, nay; you must not blame yourself,” said Frank. “I am sure we all feel for you. It was that rascal of a dog that did the mischief, but I gave him such a mark of my respect as I don’t think he’ll part with for a long time.”

Poor Frank, he tried to be cheerful; but it was plain to all that he must be suffering severely. They were soon on their way home, but a cloud rested on their spirits. Few words were said till they reached the spot where the roads to the hall and the rectory parted. Then Frank turned to Mary and said, with a look full of tenderness, rendered doubly touching by his almost ghastly paleness,—

“Farewell; I hope you’ll be none the worse, dear Mary, for your fright. I shall send over to-morrow to inquire how you are. It was a happy escape.”

“Good-bye, good-bye!” she cried; “a thousand thanks for your noble and timely rescue! Oh, I hope—I hope—”

She could not say more, but burst into tears.

“All right—never fear for me!” he cried cheerily as he rode off, leaving Mary and a groom to make their way to Waterland, while himself and the rest of the party hastened on to Greymoor Park.

They had not far to ride, but Frank was evidently anxious to reach home as speedily as possible. With clenched teeth and knit brow, he urged on his pony to a gallop. Soon they reached the lodge; a few moments more and they had passed along the drive and gained the grand entrance. Lady Oldfield had just returned from a drive, and was standing on the top step.

“You’re early home,” she remarked. “Dear Frank, I hope there’s nothing amiss,” she added, noticing the downcast looks of the whole party.

Her son did not answer, but, dismounting with difficulty, began to walk up the steps. She observed with dismay that he tottered as he approached her. Could he have been drinking so freely as to be unable to walk steadily? Her heart died within her. The next moment he staggered forward, and fainted in her arms.

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