passed through it and presently found himself at the door of a square
red brick house, built with no other pretensions than to those of
comfort. This was the Rectory, now tenanted by the Reverend and
Honourable James Beach, to whom the living had been presented many years
before by Leonard's father, Mr. Beach's old college friend.

Leonard rang the bell, and as its distant clamour fell upon his ears a
new fear struck him. What sort of reception would he meet with in this
house? he wondered. Hitherto his welcome had always been so cordial that
until this moment he had never doubted of it, but now circumstances were
changed. He was no longer in the position of second son to Sir Thomas
Outram of Outram Hall. He was a beggar, an outcast, a wanderer, the son
of a fraudulent bankrupt and suicide. The careless words of the woman
in the carriage had let a flood of light into his mind, and by it he saw
many things which he had never seen before. Now he remembered a little
motto that he had often heard, but the full force of which he did not
appreciate until to-day. "Friends follow fortune," was the wording of
this motto. He remembered also another saying that had frequently been
read to him in church and elsewhere, and the origin of which precluded
all doubt as to its truth:--

"Unto every one that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not
shall be taken away even that which he hath."

Now, as it chanced, Leonard, beggared as he was, had still something
left which could be taken away from him, and that something the richest
fortune which Providence can give to any man in his youth, the love of
a woman whom he also loved. The Reverend and Honourable James Beach
was blessed with a daughter, Jane by name, who had the reputation, not
undeserved, of being the most beautiful and sweetest-natured girl that