CHAPTER 2.

IT WAS WITH A SOMEWHAT clouded aspect that the young pastor rose from his solitary breakfast-table next morning to devote himself to the needful work of visiting his flock. The minister’s breakfast, though lonely, had not been without alleviations. He had the “Carlingford Gazette” at his elbow, if that was any comfort, and he had two letters which were more interesting; one was from his mother, a minister’s widow, humbly enough off, but who had brought up her son in painful gentility, and had done much to give him that taste for good society which was to come to so little fruition in Carlingford. Mr. Vincent smiled sardonically as he read his good mother’s questions about his “dear people,” and her anxious inquiry whether he had found a “pleasant circle” in Salem. Remembering the dainty little household which it took her so much pains and pinching to maintain, the contrast made present affairs still more and more distasteful to her son. He could fancy her trim little figure in that traditionary black silk gown which never wore out, and the whitest of caps, gazing aghast at Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tozer. But, nevertheless, Mrs. Vincent understood all about Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tozer, and had been very civil to such, and found them very serviceable in her day, though her son, who knew her only in that widowed cottage where she had her own way, could not have realised it. The other letter was from a Homerton chum, a young intellectual and ambi