his strong, kind arm through hers, and led her home. But as they neared the Lodge his steps hesitated.
"She was startled to see her father."
"My dear, I have a confession to make to you."
"A confession! Have you done something naughty, father?"
"Yes! I have taken pity on an undeserving young man. You know, Evelyn, this colony is full of educated young men who have gone hard down hill until reaching the bottom here in the bush. I have come across I can't tell you how many instances up country, men from our Universities and public schools, living from year's end to year's end in lonely huts, mere boundary-riders and whim drivers."
"Contemptible creatures!" exclaimed Miss Evelyn, with virtuous vigour. "I have no sympathy with them, not an atom!"
Though Gordon was still under her arm, the bushman who had seen better days had vanished quite out of her head, which contained, as we know, a strong mind, and was perhaps rather swollen by conscious strength.
The Bishop was not pleased.
"Come, come, Evelyn! I do not like to hear my dear girl settle questions in that way—questions of humanity, too. It was not our blessed Lord's way, Evelyn, my darling! However, the young man I speak of has done nothing to merit anyone's contempt—nothing, nothing," averred the Bishop, with disingenuous emphasis. "He is merely a young fellow who came out to the Colonies and—and has not as yet done as well as he hoped to do. And I found I had been at school with his father!"
"Where is he now?" asked Evelyn, divining that he was not far off.
"Here in the house," confessed the Bishop. "He goes on in the coach—it leaves in an hour, at seven; and, Evelyn, my dear, I'd rather you didn't see him before he went. He is going down to Sydney to get himself some decent clothes, and I have also asked him to have his beard shaved off, as he is quite a young man. The fact is, he will be back here in a fortnight, and you will see him then; for he is coming back as my Lay Reader!"
They covered some yards in silence. Then Evelyn casually inquired the young man's name, and her father told her that it was Follet; Christian name Samuel, after the Bishop's old schoolfellow. As they approached the house, the Bishop persuaded his daughter to efface herself until the coach had gone; it was not fair, he said, to meet the young man as he was, when in a few days he would come back a different being. It would have been inevitable, such a meeting, had Evelyn been in when they arrived; but now that it was so easily avoidable, would she not ave the strength of mind to avoid it? He knew she must feel very inquisitive. So she did; but she loved, above most things, an appeal to her strength of mind. She promised. To see, however, was not to meet. And strong-minded Evelyn contrived to see—through a window of the room in which the future reader was waiting herself unseen in the gathering shades.
She could not see much: a slim young man sitting over the fire; a bronzed face,
