She enters warmly into all her husband's schemes of usefulness, and finds her best happiness in increasing the joy of other lives. The sight of her calm face, the smile which welcomes him home after his day's work, is the highest reward for which Andrew looks, and of itself more than atones for the past years of weary waiting and hopeless love. Happiness has not made him selfish, but has added rather to the yearning which his soul feels to diffuse warmth and sunshine around him, and to lighten the burdens which press down aching hearts to the ground. And Cornelius Maynard-what of him? Margie has not forgotten her old lover. She thinks kindly of him, and if ever she revisits her old home her first inquiry is after him and his family. But they seldom if ever meet. Strangely enough, he could not forgive her marriage to his old rival, and when he heard she was about to become the wife of the man to whom he owed his life, felt as if a personal wrong had been done to him, and made no secret of his unreasonable displeasure. Otherwise, from a worldly point of view, things have prospered in every way with Cornelius. He has the best breed of cattle in the country, and the beasts he rears are in great demand both at Wyndover and in the London market. He himself takes constant journeys to town to superintend the sale of his fat oxen, and his stalwart form is familiar to many of our leading agriculturists. In King's Marden he is respected as the wealthiest farmer of the place, and is even held by some to be on a footing with the landed gentry in right of his freehold property. This presumption is encouraged by the fact that Squire Russell frequently asks him to shoot, and that his wife, Lady Jane, calls on Mrs. Maynard; while shortly before the recent election which took place for the county, it is well known that a haunch of venison from West Marden Park found its way to the Manor-house. Besides these titles to the respect and consideration of his fellow-villagers which Cornelius enjoys, his home is brightened by the presence of three daughters and a son, whose birth, after twelve years of married life, was a great satisfaction to his father. His wife's health has improved of late; and he himself allows that, on the whole, he has suffered less from bad seasons and agricultural losses than any of the farmers in King's Marden. And yet, for all this, Cornelius Maynard is not a happy man. The habitual expression of his face is sullen and dissatisfied to a degree which strikes most observers, and certainly mars his handsome features. To hear him talk, you would think he was a hardly used man, who had found little in life worth the pains which it had cost him to attain his present position. His ruling passion—a greed for gain, and love of making money by every possible means in his power-has, it is observed, grown upon him of late years in a very unpleasant manner; and in King's Marden, where he is otherwise generally esteemed, he has the character of being tight-handed and grasping in money matters, and of driving hard bargains whenever he has the chance. His aims and ends are bounded by a narrow horizon, and his mind, absorbed in material cares and needs, has little power to rise out of the low groove in which it is imprisoned. Perhaps, in later life, gentler influences will reach him yet, and bring back the tenderer feelings and higher aspirations of youth. But it is a perilous thing to shut our ears to the spiritual voices which come to us at any time of our lives; and when we have persistently chosen the lower line of action because it is the easier one, and have set up self and love of ease as the idols of our worship, it is hard to shake off the fetters which bind us, and rise to a nobler life. Yet some do it, and then, we are told, the angels rejoice. THE END. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. WORKS RECENTLY ISSUED. ANCIENT HISTORY FROM THE MONUMENTS. This Series of Books is chiefly intended to illustrate the Sacred Scriptures by the results of recent Monumental Researches in the East. Fcap. 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. each. SINAI: from the Fourth Egyptian Dynasty to the Present Day. By HENRY S. PALMER, Major R.E., F.R.A. S. With Map. BABYLONIA (THE HISTORY OF). By the late GEORGE SMITH, Esq. Edited by the Rev. A. H. Sayce, Assistant Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford. GREEK CITIES AND ISLANDS OF ASIA MINOR. W. VAUX, M.A., F.R.S. By W. S. ASSYRIA: from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Nineveh. By the late GEORGE SMITH, Esq. EGYPT: from the Earliest Times to B.C. 300. By S. BIRCH, LL.D., &c. PERSIA: from the Earliest Period to the Arab Conquest. By W. S. W. VAUX, M.A,, F.R.S. 2 B |