in request. If anybody was sick, Job was the chief nurse; and he had closed the dying eyes of at least four members of the family. He was verging now towards his seventieth year, but he was hale as ever; his hair of iron-gray stood up stiff on the top of his head, which gave him an independent and sturdy look, and, though age had abstracted something from his once florid countenance, yet the ruddy clover had retreated to the centre of his cheek, where it blossomed out fresh as ever, from amid the encroaching snows of threescore and ten. His rather bluff and granitic exterior might conceal from a stranger the rills of tenderness that were always trickling down his heart, unless indeed they brimmed over in his eyes and adown the clover of his cheeks, which they were rather apt to do. Within his jovial and sunny nature there was a vein of plaintive tunefulness, which, in the long leisure hours of the porter's lodge, found scope and exercise in humming snatches of old song. Along with this he had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a broad and never-failing good-humor, and if he looked upon other people's faults and blunders with other feelings than commiseration, it was only that he might distil out of them a little amusement for himself.

Job for a great many years had belonged to the tenantry of the Sayer estates; but the cloud came over his household from which the bolt of death had dropped four times into his family, and his wife and three out of his four children had slept for years together in a humble corner of the village

churchyard. But fortune had left him that untold and priceless treasure, whether of the poor man's cot or the rich man's hall, an only daughter. His dear Charlotte had not quite left him so long as he had her miniature in little Lottie. Lottie had now largely developed into the woman; but to her father she was always a child, for she still sat upon his knee, smoothed his brow, and kept the wrinkles from gathering there; laid her warm, dimpled cheek upon his to keep the clover-blossom fresh; listened to his songs, and sung them after him with a twinkling humor and drollery in the eye which she must have caught from him; printed every evening her fervent kiss upon his forehead, and gave him her loving "Good night";. became to him all his other children in one, while he was to her father and mother and sister and brother; so that Job's affections were preserved young and healthful, and bloomed under the snows of age like an everlasting

rose.

Job and Lottie had been domesticated in the family of Richard ever since his marriage; she was the favorite maid of her mistress, and had become indispensable to her comfort. If the glooms ever gathered about the kitchen, they were sure to get dissipated, either by Job's songs, or by the laughter in the dimpling cheeks of Lottie, or the broad beamings of her mirthful nature. And if there is sunshine in the kitchen, then, so far as our experience goes, it is apt to pervade the whole house, from cellar to attic. So much, for the present, of Job and Lottie, of whom perhaps we shall hear again when we get to Colchester.

Pleasant enough it was to look over the broad, level fields of Essex, where the sturdy yeomen were busy with their summer labors, and sweet was the breeze that came from the hay-fields to fan the faces of the travellers. But our two travellers, though jogging along side by side, have not precisely the same reflections.

We are apt to suppose that martyrs are composed of different stuff from other people; that God has them on hand ready made, and that it costs them no great effort to suffer and die. Alas! the long, deep, and silent agony, more terrible than death, the desperate grapplings and wrestlings that precede victory, we do not know; and the reason why death at last is met so serenely is, that the martyr comes to it out of a more dreadful anguish. The scene of Gethsemane comes first, and O the agony till its victory is accomplished! The struggle had been growing more and more desperate in the mind of Richard, and now it is upon him in its desperate energy.

"After all," he says to himself, "the lawyer is right. Who am I, to stand up alone against the opinions of all mankind? I begin to see clearly the distinction between the res in animo and the res gesta. We must conform outwardly to such times as these, and let God's great truth retreat far into the silent recesses of our thoughts, and there be kept safe and bide its time. Am I the man to stand out when all the bishops and lords have given in? Those that comply with the powers that be, and the necessities of to-day, are blest and smiled upon,

and come to honor and length of days. Does God ask his faithful ones to burn with Lollards and heretics, when a single thunderbolt of his could give them the victory?"

And then there was a lower deep.

"After all, what are virtue and integrity but a name? Other people act according to their selfinterest, and why should not I? This servility, that has come over the nation like a flood, bears all with it, except a few crazy people like the Maid of Kent and John Lambert. Christianity has been preached in this island now five hundred years, in all the churches and convents, and yet it is a thing which the King can turn and fashion into whatever he pleases. The King? No, not the King, but Nan Boleyn, or any vile woman he happens to lust for. Protestantism! Catholicism! one or the other, through all this realm, from bishops down to chimney-sweeps, according to the notions of the King's mistress! And that is religion, and that is conscience, a name and a sound!"

And there was a lower deep still.

"It is all, then, a cheat and a mockery!

There

is nothing real and substantial but beef and mutton and ale! The providence that rules in human affairs is the royal concubine, and the God we trusted in can be voted out of the state by the Parliament of a glutton king! It is a mere matter of forms and conveniences, and the name of God is nothing but a bugbear for kings or popes, as the case may be, to scare human animals and keep them in the right enclosures."

And then the sky above shut over him like a cover, and all was empty beyond. Beneath it the owls of Atheism hooted in mockery of human hopes.

"What we can see and touch and taste is, and that is all; and let us hasten to conform to it. We die to-morrow, and then we rot! Over all graves alike the obscene birds scream and stretch their black wings, but there is no cheerful sound that comes from above them! No virtue, no religion, no God in this world, and we only animals, driven to the crib or to the shambles at the convenience of kings and popes! O, why was I born, or why did I not die, ere I found out that religion was a trick; that this whole word is a jail, and kings and priests are the jailers; that overhead there is nothing but a copper sky, and under foot nothing but graves!"

There is something awful in the grief of manhood. Things are very much out of course when strong men weep. He tried to beckon off the giant shadows, but they came thicker and colder; he struggled against the might that was urging him down. the abyss, but in vain; and his stout frame was convulsed with the conflict, and the big tears found their way, at last, down his quivering features.

Job had not spoken a word. He saw the conflict coming on, he guessed something of its nature, and that it was too terrible for his philosophy. With characteristic delicacy he retired from the scene of it. He reined in his horse and fell in the rear, riding on in silence and awe.

So they journeyed through the farms of Essex, jogging on at first in funereal mood. Green fields