At length he bestirred himself. He knocked out the ashes of his pipe, replaced it in the rack and, with a last silent survey of his family, as though to say, "I am going, but remember what I've said; I'll still have my eye on ye!" he went into the hall, put on his square felt hat with the smooth well-brushed nap, took up his heavy ash stick and was out of the house without a word. This was his usual method of departure. He never said good-bye. Let them guess where he was

going in his spare time, to a meeting, to the council or to the club; let them remain uncertain as to his return, as to its time and the nature of his mood; he liked to make them jump at his sudden step in the hall. That was the way to keep them in order and it would do them a deal of good to wonder where he went, he thought, as the front door closed behind him with a slam.

Nevertheless, the removal of his actual presence seemed to bring some measure of relief to his family, and with his departure a cloud of constraint lifted from the room. Mrs. Brodie relaxed the muscles which for the last hour had been unconsciously rigid and, while her shoulders sagged more limply, the tension of her mind was released and her spirit revived feebly.

"You'll clear up, won't you, Mary?" she said mildly. "I feel kind of tired and far through to-night. It'll do me no harm to have a look at my book."

“Mamma," replied Mary, adding dutifully as was expected of her every evening, "You've earned a rest. I'll wash up the dishes myself."

Mrs. Brodie nodded her inclined head deprecatingly, but none the less in agreement, as she arose and, going to her own drawer in the dresser, took from its place of concealment a book, "Devenham's Vow," by one Amelia B. Edwards, which, like every book she read, was on loan from the Levenford Borough Library. Holding the volume tenderly against her heart she sat down, and soon Margaret