in their spiritual need. To leave a flock so devoted would stamp him
as an unworthy shepherd. The ceaseless stream of regrets at his
departure that had been poured into his ear during the last four days
he had decided at the last moment to pay heed to. He would remain
with them--on one condition.

There quivered across the sea of humanity below him a movement that
might have suggested to a more observant watcher the convulsive
clutchings of some drowning man at some chance straw. But the Rev.
Augustus Cracklethorpe was thinking of himself.

The parish was large and he was no longer a young man. Let them
provide him with a conscientious and energetic curate. He had such a
one in his mind's eye, a near relation of his own, who, for a small
stipend that was hardly worth mentioning, would, he knew it for a
fact, accept the post. The pulpit was not the place in which to
discuss these matters, but in the vestry afterwards he would be
pleased to meet such members of the congregation as might choose to
stay.

The question agitating the majority of the congregation during the
singing of the hymn was the time it would take them to get outside the
church. There still remained a faint hope that the Rev. Augustus
Cracklethorpe, not obtaining his curate, might consider it due to his
own dignity to shake from his feet the dust of a parish generous in
sentiment, but obstinately close-fisted when it came to putting its
hands into its pockets.

But for the parishioners of St. Jude's that Sunday was a day of
misfortune. Before there could be any thought of moving, the Rev.