One day he married again and brought home a slim, pale-faced girl--a certain Priscilla Howe--to be the mistress of his house.

There were stories rife in the village that her step-children were too much for poor, pretty Priscilla; that while her husband wrote his sermons in the little brown room the young wife pined and moped in her green sitting-room.
Uncle Max found a picture of her one day in a garret where they stored apples; a faint musty smell clung to the canvas.

'Priscilla Howe' was written in one corner; there was a childish look on the small oval face; large melancholy eyes seemed appealing to one out of the canvas.

She was dressed in a heavy white material like dimity, and held a few primroses between her fingers.

What an innocent, pathetic little bride the stern-faced vicar must have brought home! I read her epitaph afterwards when Uncle Max showed me her grave,--'Priscilla, wife of Ralph Combermere, aged twenty, and her infant son.' What a sad little inscription! But Uncle Max read something sadder still one day.