begins to shake. A bad man can't influence people without words and threats, or bribes, and then that which is best in people goes against him, and only the weak and mean are on his side. I know power does not go from rulers the moment they begin to misuse it, but it begins to go then, though it may seem to increase. Moths don't destroy a good garment in a week, but they make sure work of it.'

'It seems ridiculous to me to see grown-up people made babies of,' said Robert. 'Think, Tom, the Squire's sister thought the snowy lanes would look prettier with some bright colours moving about. So, last year, on New Year's Day, she gave all her pensioners, the old women and the little girls, scarlet cloaks. I think that was rather too much, even for their meekness! They wear them as little as they can. The boys call the girls "Madam's

robin red-backs."

Mrs. Black laughed. 'Well,' she said, 'I wouldn't have done just so. I'd have given something plain and useful, and would have put the coloured cloth into the clothing club, to be bought out, and would have worn something scarlet myself to set the fashion. But the Squire's sister means well. There's no denying the red is pretty in winter-time.' She twitched

her own shawl. I got this to keep the dear old goodies in countenance,' she explained to Tom, 'and now I would not exchange it for any duller colour. I told them all that if they'd heeded their Bibles they needn't have waited for the Squire's sister to teach them what the wise woman knew in Solomon's time.'

'It seems to me there is a great deal too much of the Squire's sister and the Squire,' said Robert. The Blacks had apparently encouraged him to speak his mind freely, and he saw no reason to suppress his adverse opinions. Nobody can build a house without the Squire seeing the plans.'

'That ended in keeping a second publichouse with a strange master out of Stockley,' put in Mrs. Black. 'The Old Red Lion is quite enough for the place, and its host knows. his guests, and begins his wisdom where theirs leaves off.'

'It's a terrible power for one man to have,' persisted Robert. Tom Ollison gave his head an inscrutable little shake. Mr. Black spoke at last, and what he said was,—

'You can't get power better placed than with a good man. You may make the best o' laws and the best o' organizations; but it all comes down to the man at last. If he's good,

they'll do, and if he ain't, they won't. And if he's good and they're bad, they won't matter much; and if he's bad and they're good, they won't be much account.'

'Then what's to be done if the man is bad?' said Robert.

Mr. Black gave a quiet chuckle.

'We must

take care that he isn't,' he answered. Each man has got to look after one man, and that's himself.'

'That's exactly what I say!' exclaimed Robert, while Tom remembered that cynical utterance of Mr. Sandison's which had so puzzled him on his arrival in Penman's Row.

'Take care you're not misunderstood, John,' warned Mrs. Black.

'Each man has got to look after his own duties and other folk's rights,' said the good miller; 'and after he's done that, honest, for a little while, he'll find the two fit like hand and glove. And now, hark to the waits! I've heard them every Christmas Eve o' my life. We stick to the old hymns o' these festivals, though we try a new one sometimes in the choir o' Sundays. There's a time for bringing in new things, and a time for keeping up old ones; and I remember a verse my father used to repeat :

OM OLLISON found his tw visit to Stockley Mill all to

for the wonders and deli

the quiet, deeply-stored, old-world life seemed to him rather fresh than new, he had known it before in story and He seemed almost to have lived before that Christmas morn when the househo the mill walked over the snow, gleaming sunshine, to the little ivy-covered Surely the rich glow of the old painted w was not something he had never seen And the voices of the choir and the children singing, 'O come, all ye f came to him like an echo from a dream. when the simple service was over, and a silent prayer which follows the benedio

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