the purpose of clearing off the mortgage still remaining upon the house. One thing made his decision the harder. That afternoon Miss Kate Hewson had called in on some excuse or other. Her hand had remained in his longer than usual at parting, and she had—yes, there was no mistaking it distinctly returned his pressure. A small thing? Very; but to a soft, impressionable nature like Sim's it meant a great deal. In the imaginative picture that pressure summoned up came the difficulty; for, if you have before you an object, the attainment of which necessitates an acquaintance with the principles of £ s. d., it is hard to part with the multiples by which the sum can be worked out.
"Ah, Sim, you are getting selfish, you are getting selfish," he soliloquised. Then his honest, grey eyes looked straight into Phil's: "You shall have it," he said; "but you'll be careful, Phil: it's all I have." Not a word about his intentions: not a word about the mortgage. When Sim did a thing, you see, he did not do it by halves.
Three days after this interview there was considerable excitement in Hadlow. Give people something to talk about in a village, and you may rely upon them carrying out the contract. Item one—Philip Pentreath had disappeared. Item two—Miss Kate Hewson had disappeared also. Item three—there was a small discrepancy in Phil's accounts at the brewery, which, rumour said, amounted to £50. There was another item—a very inconsiderable one this—Simeon Pentreath was ill. All of which items were summed up in the general remark—"Poor old Sim!" To this pity Sim was indifferent, for the simple reason that he was oblivious either to censure or blame. He had a long struggle to regain that happy condition of consciousness to public opinion which he would have preferred being with out; but struggling had been in Sim's line, and, though he did not throw any particular heart in the present combat, he eventually, in spite of himself, and thanks mainly to a compassionate neighbour who nursed him day and night, succeeded in turning out the Dark Shadow which had hovered over his threshold. You would have quite understood the grim victory he achieved had you seen him afterwards. He himself was so much of a shadow that there were sufficient reasons why the other should have given up the competition.
Of course there came a letter of deep contrition from Phil, to which his newly-made wife—née Miss Kate Hewson—appended, in a neat postscript, "her love." Equally, as a matter of course, Phil was going to carve out a fortune in the—land—Australia which he had honoured with his presence, and intended to pay Sim tenfold for the "small sum" he had borrowed of him. Phil was kind enough to say all this, for which mark of brotherly regard (as well as the sisterly postscript) Sim should have been devoutly thankful. Only—Sim was so diffident—he never took the trouble to thus express himself. Those queer wrinkles deepened a bit, that was all. These alone told to the curious what his struggle had been.
There was one circumstance which prevented him from becoming quite a misanthrope. It occurred about eight years after his brother left Hadlow. Mrs. Cortis, the neighbour who had watched over him through his illness, herself succumbed to the fate from which she had saved him. Her husband followed within a few short months. They left a little girl, who could only just toddle. Mary was her name. This fatality—out of the husk of misery sometimes comes a kernel of happiness—was Sim's salvation. The child had no relatives in the village, and he adopted her. Strange foster-father and—mother! Yes, Sim was a "general utility man," no doubt of it.
The gnarled tree shot its arms around. this tendril, and held it fast. It expanded with its expansion. Sim had lost faith in mankind, taken in its adult branches. He wanted to discover if there was not an exception to the general stock, taken in its earlier growth. The experiment, he plainly foresaw, was a risky one; but life after all was an experiment. He had been taunted with having no hobby. Why should not he, like the rest of them, have one? Had he remained at this dubious stage, the hobby would not have proved a very hopeful or attractive one. When a person once starts analysis, the process is simply intellectual—not of the heart. Sim soon grew out of this. The child became to him not a problem, but a reality. She underwent this metamorphosis when she first lisped the name of "Father!" Sim then comprehended to the full his responsibilities, and, God helping him, he said, he would not shirk them.
And the child gave him back in interest all she received. The carpenter's shop, wrapped for so long in gloom, became
