A day or two after the wedding, a letter was delivered at Mrs. Halliburton's residence, addressed to Gar. Its seal, a mitre, prepared Gar to find that it came from the Bishop of Helstonleigh. Its contents proved to be a mandate, commanding his attendance the following morning at the palace at nine o'clock. Gar turned nervous. Had he fallen under his bishop's displeasure, and was about to be reprimanded? Mr. Tait had gone back to London; Gar was to leave on the following day, Saturday; Frank meant to stay on for a week or two. It was his vacation.

"That's Gar all over!" cried Frank, who had perched himself on a side table. "Gar is sure to look to the dark side of things, instead of the bright. If the Lord Chancellor sent for me, I should set it down that my fortune was about to be made. His lordship's going to present you with a living, Gar."

"That's good!" retorted Gar. "What interest have I with the bishop?"

"He has known you long enough."

"As he has many others. If the bishop interested himself for all the clergymen who have been educated at Helstonleigh college school, he would have enough upon his hands. I expect it is to find fault with me for some unconscious offence."

"Go it, Gar! You'll get no sleep to-night."

"Frank, I must say the note appears a peremptory one," remarked Jane.

"Middling for that. It's short, if not sweet."

Whether Gar had any sleep or not that night, he did not say; but he started to keep the appointment punctually. His mother and Frank remained together, and Jane fell into a bit of quiet talk over the breakfast table.

"Frank," said she, "I am often uneasy about you."

"About me!" cried Frank in considerable wonderment.

"If you were to go wrong! I know what the temptations of a London life must be. Especially to a young man who has, so to say, no home."

"I steer clear of them. Mother darling, I am telling you the truth," he added earnestly. "Do you think we could ever fall away from such training as yours? No. Look at what William is; look at Gar; and for myself, though I don't like to boast, I assure you, the Anti-evil-doing Society—if you have ever heard of that respected body—might hoist me on a pedestal at Exeter Hall as their choicest model. You don't like my joking! Believe me, then, in all seriousness, that your sons will never fail you. We did not battle on in our duty as boys, to forget it as men. You taught us the bravest lesson that a mother can teach, or a child learn, when you contrived to impress upon us the truth that God is our witness always, ever present."

Jane's eyes filled with tears: not of grief. She knew that Frank was speaking from his heart.

"And you are getting on well?"

"What with stray briefs that come to me, and my literary work, and the fellowship, I make six or seven hundred a year already."

"I hope you are not spending it all?"

"That I am not. I put by all I can. It is true that I don't live upon bread and potatoes six days in the week, as you know we have done; but I take care that my expenses are moderate. It is keeping hare-brained follies at arm's-length that enables me to save."

"And now, Frank, for another question. What made you send me that hundred-pound note?"

"I shall send you another soon," was all Frank's answer. "The idea of my gaining a superfluity of money, and sending none to my darling mother!"

"But indeed I don't know what to do with it, Frank. I do not require it."

"Then put it by to look at. As long as I have brains to work with, I shall think of my mother. Have you forgotten how she worked for us? I wish you would come and live with me?"

Jane entered into all her arguments for deeming that she should be better with Gar. Not the least of them was, that she should still be near Helstonleigh. Of all her sons, Jane, perhaps unconsciously to herself, most loved her eldest: and to go far away from him would have been another trouble.

By-and-by, they saw Gar coming back. And he did not look as if he had been receiving a reprimand: quite the contrary. He came in almost as impulsively as he used to do in his schoolboy days.

"Frank, you were right! The bishop is going to give me a living. Mother, it is true."

"Of course," said Frank. "I always am right."

"The bishop did not keep me waiting a minute, although I was there before my time. He was very kind, and——"

"But about the living?" cried impatient Frank.

"I am telling you, Frank. The bishop said he had watched us grow up—meaning you, as well—and he felt pleased to tell me that he had never seen anything but good in either of us. But I need not repeat all that. He went on to ask me whether I should be prepared to do my duty zealously in a living, were one given to me. I answered that I hoped I should—and the long and the short of it is, that I am going to be appointed to one."

"Long live the bishop!" cried Frank. "Where's the living situated! In the moon?"

"Ah, where indeed? Guess what living it is, mother."

"Gar, dear, how can I?" asked Jane. "Is it a minor canonry?"

They both laughed. It recalled Jane to her absence of mind. The bishop had nothing to do with bestowing the minor canonries. Neither could a minor canonry be called a "living."

"Mother, it is Deoffam."

"Deoffam! Oh, Gar!"

"Yes, it is Deoffam. You will not have to go far away from Helstonleigh, now."

"I'll lay my court wig that Mr. Ashley has had his finger in the pie!" cried quick Frank.

But, in point of fact, the gift had emanated from the prelate himself. And a very good gift it was: four hundred a year, and the prettiest parsonage house within ten miles. The brilliant scholarship of the Halliburtons, attained by their own unflagging industry, the high character they had always borne, had not been lost upon the Bishop of Helstonleigh. Gar's conduct as a clergyman had been exemplary; Gar's preaching was of no mean order, and the bishop deemed that such a one as Gar ought not to be overlooked. The day has gone by for a bishop to know nothing of the younger clergy of his diocese, and he of Helstonleigh had Gar Halliburton down in his preferment book. It is just possible that the announcement of his name in the local papers, as having helped to marry his brother at Deoffam, may have put that particular living into the bishop's head. Certain it was, that, a few hours after the bishop read it, he ordered his carriage, and went to pay a visit at Deoffam Hall. During his stay, he took Mr. Ashley's arm, and drew him out on to the terrace, very much as though he wished to take a nearer view of the peacock.

"I have been thinking, Mr. Ashley, of bestowing the living of Deoffam upon Edgar Halliburton. What should you say to it?"

"That I should almost feel it as a personal favour paid to myself," was the reply of Mr. Ashley.

"Then it is done," said the bishop. "He is young, but I know a great many older men who are less deserving than he."

"Your lordship may rely upon it that there are few men, young or old, who are so intrinsically deserving as the Halliburtons."

"I know it," said the bishop. "They interested me as lads, and I have watched them ever since."

And that is how Gar became Vicar of Deoffam.

"You will be trying for a minor canonry now, Gar, I suppose, living so near to it?" observed Jane.

"Mrs. Halliburton, will you be so kind as not to put unsuitable notions into his head?" interrupted Frank. "The Reverend Gar must look out for a canonry, not a minor. And he won't stop there. When I am on the woolsack, in my place in the Lords, Gar may be opposite to me, a spiritual peer."

Jane laughed, as did Frank. Who knew, though? It all lay in the future.