knew the vicar expected. A hand was softly laid upon my bowed head, and although I knew that Mr. Claverton stood beside me waiting for my answer, I was silent. At last he asked, softly, "Which is it to be?"

For a moment I did not answer, and then I cried impetuously, "It isn't fair to ask me. I can't go; oh, I can't give up everything and go away to die by myself. It is all so horrible, and there is such a lot I want to live for. Oh, Mr. Claverton, don't, don't make me go away and die like a poisoned rat in a hole."

"Your own health and life prevent you doing work for the Master?" the Vicar said, in tones of gentle reproach. "You are of no use here. No one wants you. Your friends are anxious to be rid of you, you told me, and yet you hesitate." He sat beside me in the pew, and gently passed his arm round my waist.

"Tell me what prevents you," he whispered. "You will not consent for the sake of the Cause. Will you consent for mine?"

I hesitated. It was so hard to sacrifice everything, and at eighteen life seems so precious, and yet"When do you go?" I asked him, by way of gaining time.

"The work is not for me," he answered sadly. "My health would not permit it."

I looked up in surprise. "But if we are going to die there anyway," I began, and then stopped, abashed at my own temerity. The Vicar shook his head in a pained and an enigmatical silence, and the unfairness

of the whole proceeding striking me again, I burst into uncontrollable sobs.

He soothed me as though I had been a fractious child, and then he said, "You must have a year's training first. When will you begin?" It was of no avail. I was completely exhausted, and he had me at his mercy. I said faintly, "When you like," and as I spoke the words that consigned me to a living death, he sealed the compact with a most unclerical kiss.

CHAPTER II

SISTER KEZIAH

In the shadowy aisles of the incense-haunted church I had faltered the first solemn promise of my life, hardly comprehending the full import of it, and perhaps impelled by the sacred associations of my surroundings, and the hysterical abandon of the religious service in which I had just shared.

But during my lonely walk towards home through the clear frosty air-a vigorous contrast to the vitiated, sensuous atmosphere of the heated church-I had ample time to review the situation, and I must confess that I looked upon the leper project without enthusiasm. Mr. Claverton had said that as the saints of old had laid down their lives for the sake of the Gospel, so was it even now imperative that we should sacrifice ourselves for our suffering brethren in distant lands. It was a noble and self-abnegating sentiment; but I still rebelled. I knew I should be a martyr, but I also knew that I should be a martyr under severe protest.

I said nothing at home that evening about my proposed vocation, but launched the intelligence upon

the assembled family the next morning during breakfast.

"I have made up my mind to go away and nurse some lepers," I said, projecting a conversational bombshell into their midst.

A dead silence ensued.

"And I'm going into some hospital to learn how to do it," I added placidly, when I thought the family was sufficiently prepared for a second shock.

"My dear, what did I tell you?" my father asked my mother, in tones of gloomy triumph, while entirely ignoring my own observations. To which she replied apologetically and with her customary and irritating vagueness

"But you know, dear, he only wanted to take the spoons."

“And died in an asylum," retorted my father, with eminent satisfaction.

From these inscrutable remarks I gathered that reference thus discreetly veiled was being made to my mother's only brother, who had, to the undisguised relief of his relatives closed a brief and an amiably-insane career in the manner indicated. I further surmised that the mantle of this undesirable Elijah was supposed to have descended upon my shoulders, and that, if I continued in the course I had proposed to adopt, I should probably end by seeking refuge in a similar establishment. But beyond this disconcerting diologue, my statement was completely overlooked, their minds being most probably fully occupied with the memory of the

many embarrassing incidents which had marked "poor dear Henry's" career. Thus, without a word of advice or sympathy, when both were so strongly needed, I was callously abandoned, although not quite nineteen, to the wayward impulses of a morbid and impressionable nature.

I have since thought that this attitude of supreme indifference was, perhaps, adopted in the conviction that meeting with no encouragement I should relinquish my scheme with the same facility with which I had, apparently, embraced it. But entirely different treatment would, I think, have been far more effectual; for my proposed career was, after all, only the outcome of a pernicious habit of introspection. If the severe parental discipline had been tempered with the appearance at least of interest in my concerns, and with the expression of a little natural affection, my thoughts would probably have been turned into a far more healthy channel, and a long series of more or less unpleasant experiences have been avoided.

As matters stood, however, such studied indifference only strengthened my wavering resolutions. I went upstairs to my room, and cried a good deal over a chapter of horrors from "Foxe's Book of Martyrs,” in the mournful conviction that henceforward such was the only appropriate literature for my perusal ; and then, as an initial step towards the great end, I started out to call upon the Vicar for directions.

Mr. Claverton was in his study, and by his greeting, had apparently expected me. The remembrance