God's Good Man

It was May-time in England. The last breath of a long winter had blown its final farewell across the hills, -the last frost had melted from the broad, low-lying fields, relaxing its iron grip from the clods of rich, red-brown earth which, now, soft and broken, were sprouting thick with the young corn's tender green. It had been a hard, inclement season. Many a time, since February onward, had the too-eagerly pushing buds of trees and shrubs been nipped by cruel cold, -many a biting east wind had withered the first pale green leaves of the lilac and the hawthorn, -and the stormy caprices of a chill northe