Very uneasy had Persis felt while Sir Lacy was in the school-room; very anxiously she watched the porch, in hopes of seeing him and his visitors quit it. She could hear from beneath the sound of laughter; but it was laughter which raised in her soul a very opposite feeling to that of mirth. She listened intently; but her baby was fretful from cutting teeth, and his crying soon drowned every other noise. Persis fondled him in her arms, and hushed him on her bosom, and just as she had succeeded in quieting the child, saw, to her relief, the three strangers issue from under the porch. She did not, however, like their looks, still less the laughter which followed words of which she could not catch the exact meaning, but which she was certain had none which was good. Persis watched the three men till they disappeared down a turn in the road, and then heaved a long, anxious sigh. Lessons were evidently going on as usual below,—Persis knew that from the hum of voices from the school-room. She had to wait in restless expectation till the school broke up for an hour's recess, and she saw the stream of boys come issuing forth from the porch.

Their grave yet excited looks frightened the wife yet more. That something remarkable had happened was written on every young face, as the boys thronged together in knots of three or four, all seeming far more eager to speak than to listen. But Persis was not much longer to be kept in suspense; she knew the step of her husband; she saw him enter, looking paler than she had ever seen him before. Franks seated himself beside his wife, put his arm round her, and drew her tenderly towards him, unwilling to inflict pain, scarcely knowing how to break the news that he was a ruined man. Persis had guessed the truth before Franks said, in a tone which he vainly tried to make cheerful, "Well, sweetheart, you and I will have to set out on our travels together."

But when Ned gave his wife a more detailed account of what had occurred; when he told of the absurd questions, the mocking laughter, the insolent taunts which had made his blood boil, even natural anxiety concerning his future prospects was swallowed up for the time in passionate indignation. "I longed to strike him," exclaimed the late sailor, "and I had to chain even my tongue! Wife—wife—it is no easy matter to endure, or to forgive insults and injuries such as that man has heaped upon me! To hold me up to the contempt of my own boys,—that was the most intolerable wrong of all! I actually heard Sam Barker and Peter Core tittering behind me, the little sneaking—But your fire-ships are bearing down upon me full sail; I must not trust myself to speak on these matters,—I must try not to let my mind brood over them,—would that I could drive the whole scene out of my memory forever!"

Persis did not, as most wives would have done, stir up her husband's wrath to a blaze, and heap on it the fuel of her own grief, fears, and regrets. She tried in her gentle, loving way to make him look beyond second causes, to see that the trial—bitter as it was—was sent in wisdom and love, and that man could inflict no real injury except by drawing into sin. Persis did not say much, but she looked bright and hopeful, to keep up the spirits of her husband. If they were to leave their happy home at Colme, their pleasant occupation in the village, it might be because God had provided for them something better still, some wider field of usefulness in which they might humbly serve him. They were spared to one another, and their darling was left to them still. "Whilst I have you and our boy," cried Persis, as she rested her head on her husband's shoulder, "I feel that I could be contented in a hovel, or in a prison."

The news that Ned Franks, the one-armed school-master, had been dismissed by Sir Lacy, spread like wildfire through Colme. The tidings were received with almost universal regret and indignation, for both Ned and Persis were great favorites in the village. Mrs. Fuddles of the "Chequers," indeed, observed, as she wiped the dust from a bottle of whiskey, "I guess that Sir Lacy knows what he's about. It aint likely that a sailor that's been spending his life in mopping up decks should know much about hedication." But the publican's wife was almost the only person who did not regret the disgrace of the Frankses. Bat Bell, the miller, declared that to send off an honest fellow like Franks from the school was like damming up a mill-stream; and that everything would come to a dead lock,—while his little girl cried as if her heart would break, and wished that that wicked Sir Lacy never had come to make every one unhappy. Ben Stone the carpenter, on his bed of sickness, heard the news with less than his usual placid calmness.

"Sir Lacy," he observed to his wife, "is like the idiot who sawed at the branch on which he was seated. If he goes on with this kind of work he'll come down with a crash one of these days, though I shan't live to see it," added the invalid, whose increasing weakness warned him that his hours were numbered.

I will not say that the Clerk of Colme looked grave and solemn when he carried the tidings to his wife, for he never looked otherwise, except on the very rarest occasions; but his solemnity and melancholy were of a shade so much more intensely black than usual, that his Nancy exclaimed, as soon as she saw him, "Why, John Sands, has any one been murdered to-day?"

But when she heard that Ned Franks had been dismissed,—dismissed in disgrace as incompetent and ignorant,—the wrath of the clerk's wife blazed up with a sudden fierceness that showed that the old shrewish spirit was not quite dead in her yet. As her torrent of indignation poured forth like lava-streams from a volcano, John Sands scarcely knew whether he was glad or sorry to be so forcibly reminded of the Nancy of former days. Nancy was certain that the school would go to rack and ruin; they would never, never again see the like of Ned Franks and his wife!

But perhaps in no place did the news cause deeper regret than in the vicarage. Norah was almost overwhelmed by the sudden blow, and her letter to Sophy Claymore, informing her of what had happened, was wet with the young girl's tears. Mr. Curtis lay awake half the night, meditating over a second letter to Sir Lacy (which was—when written and sent—to meet with just the same fate as the first), and the invalid had, in consequence, a relapse of fever in the morning. Claudius Leyton, the young curate, broke through his resolution,—never again to enter the Hall, and, like a man on a forlorn hope, set out to endeavor to move and persuade his cousin to recall his hasty words. The nervous shyness of the curate was not lessened by his being handed into a room full of rollicking revellers; a room which in ancient days had been used as a chapel, but which was reeking, even at that early hour, with the fumes of tobacco and the odor of spirits. It need scarcely be added that the visit of the young clergyman was as unsuccessful as regarded its object, as it was to himself painful and disgusting. The baronet, laughing, said to his cousin, "My dear fellow, you have come a day too late for the fair. I have already written up to my friend, Dick Sharpey,—you know Dick,—all the world knows him as the luckiest card-player in London. I've bid him look out for a cute fellow who can teach the clods in the day, and be my billiard-marker at night. That's what I call killing two birds with one stone, ha! ha! ha!"

It was with a heavy heart that the curate again turned his back on the Hall, not surprised, though grieved, at the utter failure of his mission.

Mrs. Curtis, a very practical as well as kind woman, directed her efforts to writing to friends in various quarters to try by their means to procure some other situation for Franks before he should quit the one which at present he held. As Ned would have nothing to fall back upon except his very trifling pension as a disabled sailor, Mrs. Curtis knew that, unless he could procure some work, he and his family would be reduced to absolute want. She also quietly set on foot a subscription to raise a little fund to supply his immediate need and the expenses of removal to some new home, perhaps at a distance. "It is only right," said the vicar's wife, and her husband warmly seconded her proposal, "that a testimonial should be given, on his departure from Colme, to a school-master who has for years so faithfully performed his duties, and who has won the good will and respect of all whose approbation is worth having." Ned Franks and his wife knew nothing of this secret subscription. The most active agent in collecting it was Nancy Sands, who went from cottage to cottage gathering the pence given with willing hearts by the children, and the little offerings freely bestowed even by the old tenants of the almshouses in Wild Rose Hollow. Had the power of the villagers to give been equal to their will, Ned would have been the wealthiest man in Colme; but it needs a great weight in copper to make up a single sovereign's worth, and even the vicar, whose charity never left him a full purse, was unable to contribute largely, though he gave with all his heart.