A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH

by

F. MARION CRAWFORD

1886







TO My MOTHER

I DEDICATE THIS TALE A MEAN TOKEN OF A LIFELONG AFFECTION

SORRENTO, Christmas Day, 1885




CHAPTER I.


The Reverend Augustin Ambrose would gladly have given up taking pupils.
He was growing old and his sight was beginning to trouble him; he was
very weary of Thucydides, of Homer, of the works of Mr. Todhunter of
which the green bindings expressed a hope still unrealised, of conic