It was a winter's morning, and the family party round the breakfast table at William Halliburton's looked a cheery one, with its adjuncts of a good fire and good fare. Mr. and Mrs. Ashley and Henry were guests. And I can tell you that in Mr. Ashley they were entertaining no less a personage than the high sheriff of the county.

The gentlemen nominated for sheriffs, that year, for the county of Helstonleigh, whose names had gone up to the Queen, were as follows:—

Humphrey Coldicott, Esquire, of Coldicott Grange;

Sir Harry Marr, Bart., of The Lynch;

Thomas Ashley, Esquire, of Deoffam Hall. And her Majesty had been pleased to pick the latter name.

The gate of the garden swung open, and some one came hastily round the gravel-path to the house. Mary, who was seated at the head of the table, facing the window, caught a view of the visitor.

"It is Mrs. Dare!" she exclaimed.

"Mrs. Dare!" repeated Mr. Ashley, as a peal at the hall-bell was heard. "Nonsense, child!"

"Papa, indeed it is."

"I think you must be mistaken, Mary," said her husband. "Mrs. Dare would scarcely be out at this early hour."

"Oh, you disbelievers all!" laughed Mary. "As if I did not know Mrs. Dare! She looked scared and flurried."

Mrs. Dare, looking indeed scared and flurried, came into the breakfast-room. The servant had been showing her into another room, but she put him aside, and appeared amidst them.

What brought her there? What had she come to tell them? Alas! of their unhappy downfall. How the Dares had contrived to go on so long, without the crash coming, they alone knew. They had promised to pay here, they had promised to pay there; and people, tradespeople especially, did not much like to begin compulsory measures with old Anthony Dare, who had so long held sway in Helstonleigh. His professional business had almost left him—perhaps because there was no efficient head to carry it on. Cyril was just what mademoiselle had called Herbert, a vagabond; and Cyril was an irretrievable one. No good to the business was he—not half as much good as he was to the public-houses. Mr. Dare, with white hair, bent form, and dim eyes, would go creeping to his office most days; but his memory was leaving him, and it was evident to all that he was relapsing into his second childhood. Latterly they had lived entirely by privately disposing of their portable effects—as Honey Fair used to do when it fell out of work. They owed money everywhere; rent, taxes, servants' wages, large debts, small debts—it was universal. And now the landlord had put in his claim after the manner of landlords, and it had brought on the climax. They were literally without resource; they knew not where to turn; they had not a penny, or the worth of it, in the wide world. Mrs. Dare, in the alarm occasioned by the unwelcome visitor—for the landlord's man had made good his entrance that morning—came flying off to Mr. Ashley, some extravagant hope floating in her mind that help might be obtained from him.

"Here's trouble! Here's trouble!" she exclaimed by way of salutation, wringing her hands frantically.

They rose in consternation, believing she must have gone wild. William handed her a chair.

"There, don't come round me," she cried, as she flung herself into it. "Go on with your breakfast. I have concealed our troubles until I am heart-sick, and now they can be concealed no longer, and I have come for help to you. Don't press anything upon me, Mrs. William Halliburton; to attempt to eat would choke me!"

She sat there and entered on her grievances. How they had long been without money, had lived by credit, and by pledging things out of their house; how they owed more than she could tell; how a "horrible man" had come into their house that morning, as an emissary of the landlord.

"What are we to do?" she wailed. "Will you help us? Mr. Ashley, will you?—your wife is my husband's cousin, you know. Mr. Halliburton, will you help us? Don't you know that I have a right to claim kindred with you? Your father and I were first cousins, and lived for some time under the same roof."

William remembered the former years when she had not been so ready to own the relationship. He remembered the day when Mr. Dare had put a seizure into their house, and his mother had gone, craving grace of him. Mr. Ashley remembered it, and his eye met William's. How marvellously had the change been brought round! the right come to light!

"What is it that you wish me to do?" inquired Mr. Ashley. "I do not understand."

"Not understand!" she sharply echoed, in her grief. "I want the landlord paid out. You have ample means at command, Mr. Ashley, and might do this much for us."

A modest request, certainly! The rent due was for three years: considerably more than two hundred pounds. Mr. Ashley replied to it quietly.

"A moment's reflection might convince you, Mrs. Dare, that to pay this money would be fruitless waste. The instant this procedure gets wind—and in all probability it has already done so—other claims, as pressing, will be enforced."

"Tradespeople must wait," she answered, with irritation.

"Wait for what?" asked Mr. Ashley. "Do you expect to drop into a fortune?"

Wait for what, indeed? For complete ruin? There was nothing else to wait for. Mrs. Dare sat beating her foot against the carpet.

"Mr. Dare has grown useless," she said. "What he says one minute, he forgets the next; he is almost in a state of imbecility. I have no one to consult with, and therefore I come to you. Indeed, you must help me."

"But I do not see what I can do for you," rejoined Mr. Ashley. "As to paying your debts, it is—it is—in fact, it is not to be thought of. I have my own payments to make, my expenses to keep up. I could not do it, Mrs. Dare."

She paused again, playing nervously with her bonnet strings. "Will you go back with me, and see what you can make of Mr. Dare? Perhaps between you something may be arranged. I don't understand things."

"I cannot go back with you," replied Mr. Ashley. "I must attend the meeting which takes place this morning at the Guildhall."

"In your official capacity," remarked Mrs. Dare in not at all a pleasant tone of voice. "I forgot that you preside at it. How very grand you have become!"

"Very grand indeed, I think, considering the lowly estimation in which you held the glove manufacturer, Thomas Ashley," he answered, with a good-humoured laugh. "I will call upon your husband in the course of the day, Mrs. Dare."

She turned to William. "Will you return with me? I have a claim on you," she reiterated eagerly.

He shook his head. "I accompany Mr. Ashley to the meeting."

She was obliged to be satisfied, turned abruptly, and left the room, William attending her to the door.

"What d'you call that?" asked Henry, lifting his voice for the first time.

"Call it?" repeated his sister.

"Yes, Mrs. Mary; call it. Cheek, I should say."

"Hush, Henry," said Mr. Ashley.

"Very well, sir. It's cheek all the same, though."

As Mr. Ashley surmised, the misfortune had already got wind, and the unhappy Dares were besieged that day by clamorous creditors. When Mr. Ashley and William arrived there, for they walked up at the conclusion of the public meeting, they found Mr. Dare seated alone in the dining-room; that sad dining-room which had witnessed the tragical end of Anthony. He cowered over the fire, his thin hands stretched out to the blaze. He was not altogether childish; but his memory failed, and he was apt to fall into fits of wandering. Mr. Ashley drew forward a chair and sat down by him.

"I fear things do not look very bright," he observed. "We called in at your office as we came by, and found a seizure was also put in there."

"There's nothing much for 'em to take but the desks," returned old Anthony.

"Mrs. Dare wished me to come and talk matters over with you, to see whether anything could be done. She does not understand them, she said."

"What can be done, when things come to such a pass as this?" returned Anthony Dare, lifting his head sharply. "That's just like women—'seeing what's to be done!' I am beset on all sides. If the bank sent me a present of three or four thousand pounds, we might go on again. But it won't, you know. The things must go, and we must go. I suppose they'll not put me in prison; they'd get nothing by doing it."

He leaned forward and rested his chin on his stick, which was stretched out before him as usual. Presently he resumed, his eyes and words alike wandering:

"He said the money would not bring us good if we kept it. And it has not: it has brought a curse. I have told Julia so twenty times since Anthony went. Only the half of it was ours, you know, and we took the whole."

"What money?" asked Mr. Ashley, wondering what he was saying.

"Old Cooper's. We were at Birmingham when he died, I and Julia. The will left it all to her, but he charged us——"

Mr. Dare suddenly stopped. His eye had fallen on William. In these fits of wandering he partially lost his memory, and mixed things and people together in the most inextricable confusion.

"Are you Edgar Halliburton?" he went on.

"I am his son. Do you not remember me, Mr. Dare?"

"Ay, ay. Your son-in-law," nodding to Mr. Ashley. "But Cyril was to have had that place, you know. He was to have been your partner."

Mr. Ashley made no reply. It might not have been understood. And Mr. Dare resumed, confounding William with his father.

"It was hers in the will, you know, Edgar, and that's some excuse, for we had to prove it. There was not time to alter the will, but he said it was an unjust one, and charged us to divide the money; half for us, half for you; to divide it to the last halfpenny. And we took it all. We did not mean to take it, or to cheat you, but somehow the money went; our expenses were great, and we had heavy debts, and when you came afterwards to Helstonleigh and died, your share was already broken into, and it was too late. Ill-gotten money brings nothing but a curse, and that money brought it to us. Will you shake hands and forgive?"

"Heartily," replied William, taking his wasted hand.

"But you had to struggle, and the money would have kept struggle from you. It was many thousands."

"Who knows whether it would or not?" cheerily answered William. "Had we possessed money to fall back upon, we might not have struggled with a will; we might not have put out all the exertion that was in us, and then we should never have got on as we have done."

"Ay; got on. You are looked up to now; you have become gentlemen. And what are my boys? The money was yours."

"Dismiss it entirely from your memory, Mr. Dare," was William's answer, given in true compassion. "I believe that our not having had it may have been good for us in the long-run, rather than a drawback. The utter want of money may have been the secret of our success."

"Ay," nodded old Dare. "My boys should have been taught to work, and they were only taught to spend. We must have our luxuries indoors, forsooth, and our show without; our servants, and our carriages, and our confounded pride. What has it ended in?"

What had it! They made no answer. Mr. Dare remained still for a while, and then lifted his haggard face, and spoke in a whisper, a shrinking dread in his face and tone.

"They have been nothing but my curses. It was through Herbert that she, that wicked foreign woman, murdered Anthony."

Did he know of that? How had the knowledge come to him! William had not betrayed it, except to Mr. Ashley and Henry. And they had buried the dreadful secret down deep in the archives of their breasts. Mr. Dare's next words disclosed the puzzle.

"She died, that woman. And she wrote to Herbert on her death-bed and made a confession. He sent a part of it on here, lest, I suppose, we might doubt him still. But his conduct led to it. It is dreadful to have such sons as mine!"

His stick fell to the ground. Mr. Ashley held him, while William picked it up. He was gasping for breath.

"You are not well," cried Mr. Ashley.

"No; I think I am going. One can't stand these repeated shocks. Did I see Edgar Halliburton here? I thought he was dead. Is he come for his money?" he continued in a shivering whisper. "We acted according to the will, sir: according to the will, tell him. He can see it in Doctors' Commons. He can't proceed against us; he has no proof. Let him go and look at the will."

"We had better leave him, William," murmured Mr. Ashley. "Our presence only excites him."

In the opposite room sat Mrs. Dare. Adelaide passed out of it as they entered. Never before had they remarked how sadly worn and faded she looked. Her later life had been spent in pining after the chance of greatness she had lost, in missing Viscount Hawkesley. Irrevocably lost to her; for the daughter of a neighbouring earl now called him husband. They sat down by Mrs. Dare, but could only condole with her: nothing but the most irretrievable ruin was around.

"We shall be turned from here," she wailed. "How are we to find a home—to earn a living?"

"Your daughters must do something to assist you," replied Mr. Ashley. "Teaching, or——"

"Teaching! in this overdone place!" she interrupted.

"It has been somewhat overdone in that way, certainly of late years," he answered. "If they cannot get teaching, they may find some other employment. Work of some sort."

"Work!" shrieked Mrs. Dare. "My daughters work!"

"Indeed, I don't know what else is to be done," he answered. "Their education has been good, and I should think they may obtain daily teaching: perhaps sufficient to enable you to live quietly. I will pay for a lodging for you, and give you a trifle towards housekeeping, until you can turn yourselves round."

"I wish we were all dead!" was the response of Mrs. Dare.

Mr. Ashley went a little nearer to her. "What is this story that your husband has been telling about the misappropriation of the money that Mr. Cooper desired should be handed to Edgar Halliburton?"

She threw her hands before her face with a low cry. "Has he been betraying that? What will become of us?—what shall we do with him? If ever a family was beaten down by fate, it is ours."

Not gratuitously by fate, thought Mr. Ashley. Its own misdoings have brought the evil upon it. "Where is Cyril?" he asked aloud. "He ought to bestir himself to help you, now."

"Cyril!" echoed Mrs. Dare, a bitter scowl rising to her face. "He help us! You know what Cyril is."

As they went out, they met Cyril. What a contrast the two cousins presented, side by side!—he and William might be called such. The one—fine, noble, intellectual; his countenance setting forth its own truth, candour, honour; making the best in his walk of life, of the talents entrusted to him by God. The other—slouching, untidy, all but ragged; his offensive doings too plainly shown in his bloated face, his inflamed eyes: letting his talents and his days run to worse than waste; a burden to himself and to those around him. And yet, in their boyhood days, how great had been Cyril's advantages over William Halliburton's!

They walked away arm-in-arm, William and Mr. Ashley. A short visit to the manufactory in passing, and then they continued their way home, taking it purposely through Honey Fair.

Honey Fair! Could that be Honey Fair? Honey Fair used to be an unsightly, inodorous place, where mud, garbage, and children ran riot together: a species, in short, of capacious pigsty. But look at it now. The paths are well kept, the road is clean and cared for. Her Majesty's state coach-and-eight might drive down it, and the horses would not have to tread gingerly. The houses are the same; small and large bear evidence of care, of thrift, of a respectable class of inmates. The windows are no longer stuffed with rags, or the palings broken. And that little essay—the assembling at Robert East's, and William Halliburton—had led to the change.

Men and women had been awakened to self-respect; to the duty of striving to live well and to do well; to the solemn thought that there is another world after this, where their works, good or bad, would follow them. They had learned to reflect that it might be possible that one phase of a lost soul's punishment after death, will lie in remembering the duties it ought to have performed in life. They knew, without any effort of reflection, that it is a remembrance which makes the sting of many a death-bed. Formerly, Honey Fair had believed (those who had thought about it) that their duties in this world and any duties which lay in preparing for the next, were as wide apart as the two poles. Of that they had now learned the fallacy. Honey Fair had grown serene. Children were taken out of the streets to be sent to school; the Messrs. Bankes had been discarded, for the women had grown wiser; and, for all the custom the "Horned Ram" obtained from Honey Fair, it might have shut itself up. In short, Honey Fair had been awakened, speaking from a moderate point of view, to enlightenment; to the social improvements of an advancing and a thinking age.

This was a grand day with Honey Fair, as Mr. Ashley and William knew, when they turned to walk through it. Mr. Ashley had purchased that building you have heard of, for a comparative trifle, and made Honey Fair a present of it. It was very useful. It did for their schools, their night meetings, their provident clubs; and to-night a treat was to be held in it. The men expected that Mr. Ashley would look in, and Henry Ashley had sent round his chemical apparatus to give them some experiments, and had bought a great magic-lantern. The place was now called the "Ashley Institute." Some thought—Mr. Ashley for one—that the "Halliburton Institute" would have been more consonant with fact; but William had resolutely withstood it. The piece of waste land behind it had been converted into a sort of playground and garden. The children were not watched in it incessantly, and screamed at:—"You'll destroy those flowers!" "You'll break that window!" "You are tearing up the shrubs!" No: they were made to understand that they were trusted not to do these things; and they took the trust to themselves, and were proud of it. You may train a child to this, if you will.

As they passed the house of Charlotte East, she was turning in at her garden gate; and, standing at the window, dandling a baby, was Caroline Mason. Caroline was servant to Charlotte now, and that was Charlotte's baby; for Charlotte was no longer Charlotte East, but Mrs. Thorneycroft. She curtsied as they came up.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. I have been round to the rooms to show them how to arrange the evergreens. I hope they will have a pleasant evening!"

"They!" echoed Mr. Ashley. "Are you not coming yourself?"

"I think not, sir. Adam and Robert will be there, of course; but I can't well leave baby!"

"Nonsense, Charlotte!" exclaimed William. "What harm will happen to the baby? Are you afraid of its running away?"

"Ah, sir, you don't understand babies yet."

"That has to come," laughed Mr. Ashley.

"I understand enough about babies to pronounce that one a most exacting infant, if you can't leave it for an hour or two," persisted William. "You must come, Charlotte. My wife intends to be there."

"Well, sir,—I know I should like it. Perhaps I can manage to run round for an hour, leaving Caroline to listen."

"How does Caroline go on?" inquired Mr. Ashley.

"Sir, never a better young woman went into a house. That was a dreadful lesson to her, and it has taught her what nothing else could. I believe that Honey Fair will respect her in time."

"My opinion is, that Honey Fair would not be going far out of its way to respect her now," remarked William. "Once a false step is taken, it is very much the fashion to go tripping over others. Caroline, on the contrary, has been using all her poor endeavours ever since to retrieve that first mistake."

"I could not wish for a better servant," said Charlotte. "Of course, I could not keep a servant for housework alone, and Caroline nearly earns her food helping me at the gloves. I am pleased, and she is grateful. Yes, sir, it is as you say—Honey Fair ought to respect her. It will come in time."

"As most good things come, that are striven for in the right way," remarked Mr. Ashley.