the new conditions. The modern State is an evolution of to-day, and is not solved by a medieval formula. God and the soul have a constant relation, to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow; but organizations, whether civil or religious, are ever changing, and need new adaptations one to another. It is because the Church does not realize the modern State, that the wrangle over the child is disturbing the Christian world at this moment. The modern State may not be an ideal one. In its new found independence, it is full of the lust of power and the lust of pleasure, and is, The Independent Review.

perhaps, too conscious of its strength. Though its spiritual view is somewhat dimmed, it has a growing feeling of sympathy with humanity in its suffering and weakness. Efficiency is its political and economic gospel. It is not a "godless" state; and now and again catches a glimmer of the divine vision. It offers a fruitful field for a spiritual awakening to those who bring sympathy to bear on the understanding of its needs; but it will not tolerate religious arrogance, nor an ignorant interference with the necessities of its civil progress.

J. O'Donovan.

"Shel' I let your cat in, Sarah? I fancy I can hear him mewin' outside." "You let him alone. If you wait a minit he'll let hisself in."

Sarah Lake's speech was abrupt, but that was merely the result of character confirmed by habit. Had she been an earl's daughter, with every advantage of rank and education, instead of a peasant's wife, she could never have been moulded into a gentlewoman of soft manners and speech. Her large features and big frame usually gave the impression of a man masquerading in woman's dress; and her harsh dissonant voice was without the note of music that usually harmonizes the roughest of masculine intonation.

The square-faced eight-day clock, with its faint Arabic numerals, had just wheezed out the noontide hour, as Sarah and her husband were sitting down to dinner. Mrs. Nelson, her sister, from the neighboring parish of Tofton, was joining them, with her bonnet on because she had no cap with her; but, as a concession to manners, the strings were untied and floated rakishly over her shoulders.

James Lake, by the curious law of contrast that equalizes so many things in this unequal world, was a little man with wizened cheeks and iron-gray hair that hung raggedly round his forehead in a fringe of dark silver. From beneath this fringe peered a pair of bright, deep-set, blue eyes, which, as he was sparing of speech, were not seldom the only exponents of a mild cynicism of the kind that is so often allied with a large sympathetic heart-a union analogous to the queer good-fellowship existing between humor and pathos.

"There!" he exclaimed, as the kitchen door slowly opened and the body of a big black cat came edging itself through with tail erect and a calm lordly deliberation that indicated his status in the household. "Didn't Sairy tell ye he'd manage for hisself? Tony is as wise a cat as ever lived. Do you know how he done it?"

"No, I don't, an' I don't want to," said Mrs. Nelson shortly.

She shared her sister's abruptness of speech, but, being a smaller woman physically and mentally, it degenerated into what looked like a very bad tem

per. "I don't care for cats, I never did. They're unfaithful trech'rous things, and all the love they give you is just cupboard love."

"Now, now," said her brother-in-law, in his quiet voice, "you mustn't judge 'em all alike. We never had one like Tony afore; he's a deal more sensible, an' grateful too, than many a human bein', to say nothin' o' bein' better-tempered than most. Just you look here." The cat had jumped to his knee, and, with arching neck and a gentle pressure against the hand that caressed him, signified his reciprocal content at the meeting. At a word from his master he stepped softly on to the table, giving a short low note of satisfaction; then, digging a paw among some potatoes on Mr. Lake's plate, he presently carried them daintily to his mouth with the action of a child eating from its hand.

The old man's eyes grew brighter with twinkles of delight, his mouth curved into fresh wrinkles of satisfaction. His undemonstrative wife too, who was in the act of drinking tea, held her cup poised in three fingers while she watched Tony with as much pride, though more successfully concealed.

"Ain't that pretty now?" he asked of Mrs. Nelson triumphantly. "Could a child do it prettier? But he can do more'n that-"

"I s'pose 'tis because you never had no children that you make sech fules o' yourselves over cats," she said sourly. "I couldn't touch them taters if they was mine after a cat had been messin' over 'em like that. Besides, I don't think 'tis safe. I knew an old lady who used to feed her cat jest in the same way; she'd encourage it to eat from her plate and her mouth jest as you do, an' one day when she didn't feed him quite fast enough for his likin', seein' her t'roat movin' wi' swallerin' her food, the brute sprang at it an' tore it open. Of course she died of it, an' I've never liked cats since." James Lake was a little disconcerted at the grim story, and had no reply ready for the moment; but his wife, who was always a match for her sister, stepped into the breach.

"That was a nasty accident," she said calmly in her rough emphatic voice, "but that cat didn't mean no harm, poor thing. They allus go for anything movin'; look at 'em with a ball o' wool, or a mouse. 'Tis nothin' but their natur."

"An' a very nasty natur too, I call it. But there, folks wi' no children must be silly wi' somethin', an' cats is as good as anything else, I s'pose."

"A sight better'n some children, I think," said Mr. Lake, stroking tenderly the fine black fur of Tony's back. "It's a deal safer to set your affections on cats than on children. They may scratch your hand sometimes athout thinkin', but they never break your hearts wi' their misdoin'."

Later that same afternoon, when her husband had gone to work, and Mrs. Nelson had returned to her own home, Sarah Lake was standing at the back door, her dust-color poke bonnet pushed well over her face as a protection from the scorching July sun. hand was curled telescope-fashion before one eye, as she peered anxiously across the "piece" they rented.

Her

"My eyes aren't so good as they were," she muttered, “but I believe that man is measurin'. I'll wait a bit; maybe he'll be down here directly."

The Lakes lived in a four-roomed cottage, situated in a peaceful green lane, an offshoot of the village of Northorpe, and a full mile away from its main street. It was a pleasant little backwater, where the dozen or so families lived in that amity which is the usual result of mutual interde. pendence. They criticised each other with outspoken freedom, and as freely gave help to any of their number in trouble; in their leisure they cultivated the quarter-acre of garden that went with each house; and as few of them could read they were sublimely, contentedly ignorant of all that went on outside their charmed circle of Arcadia, which whispers from the Great World rarely came to disturb.

James Lake had an important distinction from his fellows. He was able, chiefly owing to the lie of the land, to rent a couple of acres instead of the regular quarter-acre, and this, in the days previous to the Allotments Act, was a quite unusual stroke of luck. With no children, and an energetic wife, things had gone smoothly, and years of unremitting toil had made of those two acres of land a humble paradise.

As Sarah looked out from her back door that July afternoon it lay stretched before her eyes like a map. To the right lay the "corn piece," the shining fringes of its barley faintly stirred at intervals by a hot wind; to the left, a section of turnips, bright green and thriving; facing the house was the big fruit-garden, the very heart and jewel of the whole, sloping gently upwards to a thick hedge which separated it from the high meadowland beyond. What a garden it was! Full, almost too full, of strong young fruit-bushes, now gleaming with ripe

gem-like berries; above them towered sheltering apple-trees, whose twisted and picturesque limbs, covered with moss and gray lichen, any horticulturist would have condemned to immediate destruction. Bees hummed drowsily as they fared to and from their hives, sipping sweets from the wanton faces of the dainty China roses that, with the more useful elder-bushes, formed a boundary line between the corn piece and the garden.

Sarah was right. The man and the boy who was helping came nearer, along the narrow path, and presently their measurements brought them be. fore the door of the cottage.

"Good afternune," she commenced tentatively, looking with eyes that questioned the newcomer. Then, with the direct dealing characteristic of this strong masculine woman, she immediately asked, "What might you be doin' that for?"

"I'm measuring the land about here." the man replied with a frank pleasant glance from under his wide hat, "and it's hot work a day like this. haven't such a thing as a glass of home-brewed about, I suppose?"

You

"No, we drank the last a week ago, an' I haint brewed again yet," said Sarah, who was longing to know his business on her land, but diplomatic enough to understand that he would be more inclined to tell her after quenching his thirst. "Could you drink a drop o' mead? "Tis my own make; we keep bees, y'know."

"I could drink anything just now, except water, perhaps. Water isn't healthy drink in hot weather, is it?" he said with a knowing twinkle.

Sarah went into the cottage and presently returned with two coarse blue-rimmed yellow mugs, in which the brown syrupy liquid sparkled in bright bubbles. After giving one to the man, she handed the smaller of the two to the boy, who stood a little dis

tance off, and then walked back to where the surveyor stood, and anxiously waited for more news when he should have finished drinking.

"Thank you," he said heartily, as he gave her the mug; "that's the best drink I've tasted for a long while."

Mrs. Lake paid no heed to his compliment by smile or word. She was absorbed in curiosity to know what had brought him there. During the five-and-forty years that she and her husband had lived in their cottage no person of his occupation had ever been seen on the land, and she feared it boded evil.

"Who are you measurin' for?" she asked.

"I'm not sure that I ought to tell you," he replied; "however, if I do, you mustn't make a song of it. The Asylum people are in treaty for all the land about here. As good as bought it, I fancy, from what I hear." A dull unformed fear gripped at Sarah's heart, though her grim weatherlined face was still impassive. "What do they want wi' the land?" she asked sharply.

"Why, to build a new Asylum on, of course. The old one isn't half big enough; they're always having to turn lunatics away."

"Then I s'pose," said Sarah slowly, as the dim horror took shape in her brain, and flitted before her mental vision like a nightmare, "I s'pose we shan't be able to rent the land next year."

"No, I don't think you will, nor your cottage either for the matter of that. But there's one comfort, you'll all be in the same boat; every one in the lane 'll have to turn out and all the cottages will be pulled down; except one or two of the best perhaps, that they'll keep for the Asylum servants."

But the "comfort" contained in the latter half of his sentence fell on deaf -ears. Sarah Lake, engrossed by the

agonizing thought that they would have to leave their land and cottage, turned into her house, entirely forgetful of the young man, who, telling the boy to place his empty mug on the window-sill, resumed his work.

Sarah sat down in her straightbacked chair beside the fireless grate. Her light blue eyes, beginning to be veiled by the impalpable film wherewith age quenches the fire that lights up youth, stared vacantly into space; her hands were laid awkwardly in her lap, which was still covered by the blue check working-apron that she usually laid aside when sitting down, and the horrible sentence "we must leave land and cottage" kept racing with dull persistence through her brain. Presently her thoughts cleared, arranged themselves, and she began to realize all that this dreadful change, this upheaval, would mean to them. The land was more than an allotment to Sarah and her husband; more than a spot hallowed by all the sweet remembrances of early married life; it was a barrier, a shield between them and the gaunt spectres Want and Dependence that make old age an Age of Terror for the poor. Week by week during the summer the produce of their holding--fruit, vegetables, butter, honey

had been carted by Mike, their donkey, to Campsey the market town, and the resulting gains jealously added to the growing hoard that was to keep them from the workhouse when James could no longer work for a master. Besides, with the garden they could have gone on earning indefinitely, far into the eventide of life-but it was all over now.

She sat there, staring with unseeing eyes at a shaft of yellow sunlight that had fallen slantwise through the door, till her husband came in to tea at six o'clock, oblivious of the fact that the fire was still unlighted, and that no preparations had been made for tea.

"Oh, you're home," she remarked dully. "Are you arly?"

"Arly? No; 'tis past six o'clock. When are we goin' to hev tea?"

"Dear me!" she exclaimed, starting up hurriedly, "I'd forgotten all about tea. I shorn't be long a-gettin' it ready."

With her usual capable precision she set to work, replying only in monosyllables to her husband's remarks, keeping back the dreadful information with her accustomed self-command, till, as she said to herself, "James had made a good tea."

She ate nothing herself, and to her husband's inquiries murmured indistinctly of headache. But when the meal was finished and James sat stroking the cat between the intervals of feeding it with some choice morsel, his wife remarked:

wantin' housen too! Hows'ever, we must do the best we can, but 'twill be a bad day's work for us when we hev to go."

The six months' notice came at Michaelmas, to be carried into effect the following Lady-day. Seven other families had notice to quit at the same time, and, as James Lake had foretold, every empty house in that and the neighboring parish of Tofton could have been let twice over. In common with many others, they had been obliged to arrange for a temporary refuge with relatives while they waited for their turn as the cottages became vacant.

It was a sad autumn and winter. Each crop they garnered reminded them sorrowfully that it was the last they would ever gather there; with

"Oh," he said quietly, "what is it?" Perhaps the firm self-control that each possessed was the greatest bond of likeness between this couple who were outwardly so unlike. As she told her story, which, commonplace as it might be to the outside world, was to these old people the tragic uprooting of all they held dearest, he went on mechanically smoothing the cat's fur, though his withered hand trembled slightly, and the red had faded for a moment from his wrinkled cheeks.

"Well, well," he said patiently, with a touch of bitterness, "the land is theirs to do what they like wi' it. We shell jest hev to do as we're bid, like other poor folks."

"We shall likely hev six months' notice, the man said this afternune; time to look about for another house," answered his wife, anxious to make the best of it to her husband.

"Empty housen are allus scarce round about here, as scarce as piebald sparrers; and if all the Lane folks are

no one in that desolated spot could be induced to take them, and Sarah Lake looked on with grim face and an aching heart as the dealer in second-hand furniture from Campsey carried away the horsehair sofa that after many years of married life had been proudly added to the furniture of their roomy kitchen. That, and many other cherished household goods, had to go because they would have to lodge with Mrs. Nelson for a while-months, or even years it might be, before they could secure a cottage-and her small rooms and shed could only store a portion of the Lakes' belongings.

It was a bitter day at the end of March when James and Sarah Lake said a final good-bye to their old home. A cutting east wind had brought with it a black, bone-searching frost, and Mike, the gray donkey, flicked his long ears and stamped with his fore-hoofs as he waited with the stolid patience of his kind at the little front gate while numerous odd parcels were packed in the cart.