seer with that strange flock of little starvelings, and your fierce Watchman for their guardian! My heart as surely bleeds for the stormy seas through which Master Luke and his inamorata are passing, as it rejoices for the steadfastness of their affection.

"Looking at these two turtle doves I see how their affection for one another is more passionate if perhaps less delicate-tiré à quartre épingles-than the emotion manifests itself in the more privileged classes. And yet I do see how this uncultivated bloom of the sweetbriar may exemplify more reserve in its simple beauty than the éclatante garden-rose, too heavy with fragrance and languor. I do greatly affect Charity for her devotion to infancy and all weak creatures; and lastly for this adventurous escapade to rescue her lover-even though her struggle with H.M.'s lieutenant may seem something unmaidenly! Perchance she discovers a certain helplessness in that mighty beau of hers and therefore pities and l'aime eperdument is not pity the first step in female affection? Indeed I discover this helplessness in Hercules. May it not be that he rightly apprehended this female quality and most artfully essayed domestic duties that should enlist Omphale's pity for and surrender to him?

"As you will not permit me to send you money until you ask for it (and I do heartily wish it were oftener) could I not help these new pensioners of your heart with a substantial donative? Indeed, my purse now exceeds altogether my needs. . . My dear father advises me that I am become part owner of the new mill built upon my land at Crutchdale, where, to my infantile eyes, the great waters did pour straight from the blue sky and scattered silver stars and rainbow jewels all among the steamy spray. I trust the builders of the great wheel have been careful to preserve the native grandeur of the place.

"We still have no news of Reginald, and my Lord Walrond's anxiety increases. His lordship's health and

age render him doubly solicitous, and his agents are, I understand, making enquiry throughout the country, and at every likely foreign resort. He fully believes that R.'s sending in of his papers and disappearance had but one object-the re-establishment of his good name. The strange rumour reaches me that R. refused to fight a duel with a brother-officer. To me this is incredible : for his valour both at Wilhelmstahl and at Gibraltar is established beyond equivocation. How many of his endeavours pour se ranger have I not lived through! And there are no limits to the heart's capacity for breaking?"

Thus the letter rambles.

But even from the social standpoint, the union had proved indefensible. The Hon. Reginald Walrondwhose ancestor had been raised to the peerage by the Merry Monarch, in full discharge of gaming debtsrapidly dissipated his mother's fortune and laid siege to his wife's. His dull mind became steadily more incapable of any companionship with his wife. In his earlier days he had not been entirely vicious. His narrow world of guardsmen and gamesters and gay ladies knew that he adored her; and it was not perhaps altogether untrue when, in blustering self-commiseration, he asserted that, had his wife loved him, she might have done what she would with him. Whence her quickly discovered aversion remains unknown; but certainly her intimacy with Mr. Trevenna became the chief support of an almost impossible life. The revival of this friendship appears not to have begun till four years after her marriage-not until the beautiful and witty Evangeline Fakenham had changed into a pale and suffering woman. Had the hard-drinking major been a more ordinarily bad man, her griefs possibly had not been so poignant. But the recurrent courtings of an ardently affectionate rake, always sincere in their fragile promises of amendment, made her position the more

deplorable and her dislike quickly became unconquerable. She surrendered to him not only the substantial allowance made by her father but even her jewels, to satisfy his cock-fighting extravagances and losses at pharo and hazard. So that when the Earl discovered on one of her visits to Welton Priory, that she no longer wore them, he realized to the full his responsibility in the marriage. Thereafter he never invited his son-in-law to visit him; and he insisted that Lady Evangeline should come home with her two children whenever her house in town became intolerable. The Earl's threat of withholding supplies was sufficient to make this possible, and Lady Evangeline, having neither sister nor mother, confided to her Aunt Betty, who presided at Welton, the story of her correspondence with her humble acquaintance, Mr. Trevenna. Of this, presumably, the Earl tacitly approved-perhaps not unwilling that his daughter should enjoy this intellectual pleasure, and quite sure that any such interest in a gentleman so much beneath her in rank, could never exceed the limits of a correct friendship.

Six years later Lady Betty died. During the last five years Lady Evangeline's increasing wealth had enabled her to pension her husband generously and to make him understand that this income was the limit. As one consequence of this pecuniary independence, Lady Evangeline might indulge the happiness of sending her reverend and dear friend an occasional bank note.

No presents, however, could ease the trouble which Luke and Charity were bearing. But they belonged to a class that held as definite views of their natural rights as the aristocracy of their inheritances.1 Where a fine lady meekly sacrificed her most sacred feelings to the parental law, the farmer's daughter could defy her father in defence of something paramount in worth to obedience and duty. Hence, while the Lady Evangeline was in her girlhood constrained by such pleasing 1 Vide Appendix K.

conventions as the delicacy of the female mind or the fear of fashionable opinion, Mistress Cherry would act with no school-room maxims to hold in leash impulses altogether respectable.

TEN

CHAPTER X

YOUNG LAMBS TO SELL!

EN days after their arrival at St. Neot's, Hoblyn came for the children. He had left them so long a time, knowing that the parson's good feeding would be to his and their own advantage. He arrived unexpectedly while they were sitting in the kitchen on milking stool, milk-pails, boxes and a form brought down from the church, and awaiting their breakfast of bread, cream and honey, and Sukey's morning yield of milk. During these ten days, they had responded to that creature's generosity with a consent that was wonderful, and the affection that they had come to feel towards the horned labourer in the field was like a calf's for its mother. Those who had spent most of their life in the poorhouse, knew little more of country ways than children in city slums. "No attempt has been made to educate them," wrote Mr. Trevenna," and the world of Life is quite meaningless. They do not even know the notes of the birds, still less their plumage and domestic manners.

"No one, save perhaps Calvin himself, could ever again believe in the curse of original sin, had he seen that which was vouchsafed to myself only yesterday morning. I was, as you know is my custom, up before the sun, and my heart felt young with joy after my dip in the sea. Then I ran up to see how my twolegged lambs were faring, and, as I came forth the