agricultural poor rose to agony point, and soon after Thomas Wanless's marriage an outbreak of popular discontent, based on hunger, stirred a little the smooth

ming to better, the peasant's lot. Mass meetings were held, parsons and even bishops threw themselves into the movement, patron

f those inheritors of the ancient marauders and appropriators of the soil, with all that is on it and under it, for whom the people have been kept as slaves for many generations. No; none of these things did the servants of the British deity, that idealisation of the sacred rights of feudal property, advocate. Far be such traitor conduct from them. Their cure for the agricultural distress was the "a

lp. Few, indeed, amongst his neighbours could have helped him. His wife was as uneducated as himself, so he had to be contented with gathering the purport of what was going on from those he met at market or mill. As far as his

if we can do wi' it, and let's take our chance. Why shouldn't I be able to keep cows and grow corn as well as the farmer? He often wastes more than three labourers'

of Jesus College, Cambridge, was in fact a young man of liberal, not to say democratic tendencies. He had been sufficiently impressed by some of the more glorious precepts of the faith he came to teach to wish in a general sort of a way to do good. Left to follow his higher impulses he probably might have led a life of active philanthropy, and the democratic thoroughness of the Christian faith might have enabled him to do something to lift the down-trodden people who formed the bulk of his flock. It was well, at all events, that Mr. Codling began with good intent. He was hardly warm in the parish before he went into

determined to start a night school, and if possible get the grown lads and young men to attend. He succeeded in inducing nearly thirty youths to come to this night class, and among the first to do so was Thomas Wanless. Here was his chance, he thought, and he seized it with avidity. Soon the numbers thinned away. Some left because they could see no good in learning, but most of them because their masters on hearing of the class threatened to dismiss them at once unless they promised to stop "going to play the fool with that young Varsity ninny o' a parson, as knew nowt o' plain country folks' wants;" and at the end of a month the young schoolmaster had only seven pupils. To these he stuck fast, and th

ginning to tell on his unsophisticated mind. He met with little overt opposition, for that might have been both troublesome and impolitic. But quiet social forces worked on him continually to bring him round to a proper sense of his position as local priest of feudalism. When he dined out, which often happe

er their wine after dinner at Squire Wiseman's: "Tell you what it is; we must get you a wife; blest if that woul

ight, and the parson blushed

just the girl for you, Codling-at least my wife does, f

had entered the room, "Timms would like to speak wi' you. He says he's found poacher's sn

inner in peace! Tell him to go to the devil, R

But, sir, T

you hear what I say?" roared t

fter playing absently with his glass for a minute or two, got up hastily, and muttering

and two shoemakers from Warwick-were caught

vicar was going to get married. The servants at the Gr