me notice that if ever I make an attempt to serve my country, they shall bring out their evidence to prove me incapable of ever holding any office or place of trust under the king."

"But if they cannot do it, Mr. Durell?" suggested Anna.

"They can. Ay: you look surprised: but they can. I never forgot my honour. I never took a bribe; for you know that your Jersey pie and ale were no bribe. But they can prove against me some things which they can no more pardon than I can pardon certain of their practices. If a base wretch joins a better man in evading the law, and then turns traitor, he is excused and rewarded: but if a man with a heart in his bosom gives a friendly warning to the careless, or passes over the first offence of the widow that toils for her little ones, he is under ban, and can never again serve his king. Such things they may prove against me."

"I doubt whether you may not still serve the king better than you have done yet," observed Anna. "I cannot call it doing the king any service to make the people hate their duty to him, and to teach them to defraud him. People should love their king very strongly, for instance, to wish to yield him their cheerful duty through all that my father has undergone in paying his taxes. If you do not collect the king's money any more, there are other ways of doing him service, which must be open to such a man Whatever makes his kingdom a as you are. more honourable and a happier place; whatever

I

makes his subjects a better or more contented people, is, in my mind, a true and faithful service of the king."

"That is what I have been saying," observed Mrs. Durell.

"And what was my answer?" said her husband: "that not all that the wisest and the most true-hearted of the people can do to promote science, and public and private morality, can make any stand against what these

"Pray do not call them names," entreated Anna. 66 They are men,-men said to be of honour and principle, whose lot it is to administer a bad system which they did not make. Do not let us blame them till we see that they take no pains to alter that which they cannot approve."

"Well: call them men or devils, or what you will. They administer a system which is enough of itself to keep us back in knowledge and art till all the world besides has passed us, and to do worse for our morals than all our clergy can cure. I can prove it. As for knowledge, only look at the paper tax, keeping books and newspapers out of the reach of those who want them most, and stinting the class above them of their fair share of that which God has given every man as free a right to as to the air of heaven. As for art,-when was there a nobler triumph of it than when man fixed a yellow star out above the sea, to gleam on the souls of thousands of tempest-tost wretches, like the gospel they trusted in, and to give the wanderer "his first welcome home?"

"Indeed we can say that," said Anna. "Such a light through the fog was the best sight we saw in all the sea, in coming; and I never shut my eyes to sleep now but I could fancy I see that light, hoping to pass under it before long."

"Well: there might now be a light far better than that, or any light that yet hangs above the sea; a light that would shine through the thickest fog, like a morsel of the copper sun that rises on an October morning, a light that would save thousands of poor wretches that must now go down into the deeps with the moans of their orphaned little ones in their ears: and this light we may not use."

"Because of the excise?"

"For no other reason. Glasses of a new construction would be required for the lighthouses and this new construction is not such as is set down in the excise laws. No glass-maker dares venture it, and the only hope is that we may get some foreign nation to do it for us.

Anna thought it was a poor way of serving the king to drown his subjects, and employ foreigners to work upon discoveries made at home, and all under pretence of taking care of the money of the state.

"This is only one instance out of many," Durell declared. "As for what I said about morality, I know of cheats enough to fill a jest book,"

"A jest-book!" said his wife, in a tone of

remonstrance.

"Nay, my dear, it is their fault, not mine, if,

when they have sharpened wits to cheat, the witty cheats are laughed at as good jokes. Last year, a very good joke was spoiled. The wits who made it laughed in their sleeves as long as it went on; and when it came out, every body else laughed, the excise and all, though the crime is really as great as robbing the widow of her mite, since the widow's mite must go to make up for the fraud. There is no duty on soap in Ireland; and some cunning Englishmen, who had made soap without paying the duty, packed it up for Ireland, got the drawback of 281. a ton, just as if they had paid the duty, and sent it off, smuggled it back again, packed it afresh, got the drawback again, and sent it off, and again smuggled it back; and so on, four times over. Now, for the idea of this cheat, for the lies that were told, for the false oaths that were taken in carrying it on, and for the making a sordid crime into a joke, the excise is answerable. And this is what the excise does for morality."

"And this is the way the money of the people is managed," observed Le Brocq; "wrenched from the honest working man with one hand, that it may be given away to the fraudulent great trader with the other!"

Mrs. Durell had been well pleased at the turn the conversation had taken, seeing that, while her husband's attention was occupied with matters of detail, he resumed more and more of his usual countenance, voice and manner. There was less fierceness in his eye, less effort in his speech,

and he sat almost upright. But Le Brocq spoiled all.

"I cannot but wonder at you, Durell, especially as you are a Jerseyman, that you, knowing the system so well, should have left it to the gentlemen to turn you out."

"Wonder at me!" said Durell, after a pause, during which he could not speak. "Wonder at me! Why don't you curse me and loathe me for being an abject wretch, for the sake of my children's bread? I thank God for taking their bread from them before my eyes, if it teaches them to despise their father and their father's business."

"O, husband!" cried Mrs. Durell.

"I mean what I say," he continued, with a forced calmness of voice and manner. "I am going to leave them-to leave them in your charge; and I command you to bring them up in horror of everything that is dishonest, and vile, and cruel; and if you bring them up to abhor everything that is dishonest, and vile, and cruel, you must bring them up either to forget their father and his employments, or to despise him for being so employed. I give you your choice, and only pray God that I may hide myself in my grave before either comes to pass.'

"Don't listen to him. Don't believe him,” I cried the wife, turning first to Le Brocq, and then to Anna. "You see he is not himself;

you see he is talking like—”

"Like a man who is waking from a morning dream," said her husband, whose excited senses