quite harmless. They were loitering about the main thoroughfare of Ambleside, with their hands in the pockets of their knickerbockers, gazing in at a stationer's window, or regarding a brace of setters that a keeper standing in front of a hotel had in leash. They did not even look narrowly at the knees of our horses-an ordinary piece of polite impertinence. They were wellmeaning and well-conducted persons; and the worst that could be said of them, that they were tourists, has been said about many good and respectable people. A man may have climbed Loughrigg Fell, and yet be an attentive husband and affectionate father; while knickerbockers in themselves are not an indictable offence. My Lady made no answer to these humble representations; but asked for how long the horses would have to be put up, before we started again.

Bell's enthusiasm of the morning had given way to something of disappointment, which she tried hard to conceal. Ambleside, one of the places she had been dreaming about for years, looked painfully modern now. In thinking about it, down in our southern home, she had shut out of the picture hotels, shops, and fashionablydressed people, and had dwelt only on the wild and picturesque features of a neighborhood that had at one time been as familiar to her as her mother's face. But now, Ambleside seemed to have grown big, and new, and strange; and she lost the sense of proprietorship which she had been exhibiting in our drive through the scenery of the morning. Then Loughrigg Fell did us an evil turn-gathering up all the clouds that the wind had driven over, and sending them gently and persistently down into the valley of the Rothay, so that a steady rain had set in. The Lieutenant did not care much how the sky might be clouded over, so long as Bell's face remained bright and happy; but it was quite evident that she was disappointed, and he in vain attempted to reassure her by declaring that these two days had convinced him that the Lake country was the most beautiful in the world. She could not foresee then that this very gloom, that seemed to mean nothing but constant rain, would procure for us that evening by far the most impressive sight that we encountered during the whole of our long summer ramble.

Our discontent with Loughrigg Fell

took an odd turn when it discharged itself upon the Duke of Wellington. We had grown accustomed to that foolish picture of the Waterloo Heroes, in which the Duke, in a pair of white pantaloons, stands in the attitude of a dancing-master, with an idiotic simper on his face. All along the road, in public-houses, inns, and hotels, we had met this desperate piece of decoration on the walls, and had only smiled a melancholy smile when we came upon another copy. But this particular print seemed to be quite offensively ridiculous. If Henry the Eighth had been inside these long white pantaloons and that tight coat, my Lady could not have regarded the figure with severer contempt. We picked out enemies among the attendant generals, just as one goes over an album of photographs and has a curious pleasure in recording mental likes and dislikes produced by unknown faces. Somehow all the Waterloo Heroes on this evening looked stupid and commonplace. It seemed a mercy that Napoleon was beaten; but how he had been beaten by such a series of gabies and nincompoops none of us could make out.

Then the Lieutenant must needs grumble at the luncheon served up to us. It was a good enough luncheon, as hotels go; and even my lady was moved to express her surprise that a young man who professed himself able to enjoy any thing in the way of food, and who had told us amusing stories of his foraging adventures in campaigning time, should care whether there were or were not lemon and breadcrumbs with a mutton cutlet.

is

"Madame," said the Lieutenant, " that very well in a campaign, and you are glad of any thing; but there is no merit in eating badly-cooked food-none at all."

"A soldier should not mind such trifles," she said; but she smiled as though to say that she agreed with him all the same.

"Well, I think," said the young man, doggedly, "that it is no shame that any one should know what is good to eat, and that it is properly prepared. It is not any more contemptible than dressing yourself in good taste, which is a duty you owe to other people. You should see our old generals-who are very glad of some coarse bread, and a piece of sausage, and a tumbler of sour wine, when they are riding across a country in the war-how they

study delicate things, and scientific cookery, and all that, in Berlin."

And do you follow their example when you are at home?"

"Not always; I have not enough time. But when you come to my house in Berlin, Madame, you will see what luncheon you shall have."

"Can't you tell us about it now ?" says Tita.

"Pray do," echoes Bell, after casting another reproachful glance at the rain out of doors.

The Lieutenant laughed; but seeing that the women were quite serious, he proceeded in a grave and solemn manner to instruct them in the art of preparing luncheon.

First," said he, "you must have Russian black bread and French white bread cut into thin slices-but you do not use the black bread yet awhile; and you must have some good Rhine wine, a little warmed if it is in the winter; some Bordeaux, a bottle of green Chartreuse, and some champagne, if there are ladies. Now, for the first, you take a slice of the white bread, you put a little butter on it, very thin, and then you open a pot of real Russian caviare, and you put that on the slice of bread three-quarters of an inch thick, not less than that. You must not taste it by little and little, as all English ladies do, but eat it boldly, and you will be grateful. Then half a glass of soft Rhine wine-if it is a good Marcobrunner, that is excellent. Then you eat one slice of the black bread, with butter on it, more thick than on the white bread. Then you have two, perhaps three, Norwegian anchovies"

"Would you mind my writing these things down ?" says my Lady.

The Lieutenant of course assents; she produces a small bunch of ivory tablets; and I know the horrible purpose that fills her mind as she proceeds to jot down this programme.

"You must have the caviare and the anchovies of real quality, or every thing is spoiled. With the anchovies you may eat the black bread, or the white, but I think without butter. Then half a glass of Rhine wine"

"Those half-glasses of Rhine wine are coming in rather often," remarks Bell.

"No, Mademoiselle, that is the last of the Rhine wine. Next is a thin slice of white bread, very thin butter, and a very

"My dear," I say to Tita, "be sure you put down This is optional!"

"With it you have a glass of good and soft Bordeaux wine. Then, Madame, we come to the reindeer's tongue. This is the pièce de résistance, and your guests must eat of it just as they have their hour for dinner in the evening. Also, if they are ladies, they may prefer a sparkling wine to the Bordeaux, though the Bordeaux is much better. And this is the reason: After the reindeer's tongue is taken away, and you may eat an olive or two, then a pâté de foie gras-real from Strasburg

66

Stop!" cries one of the party. "If I have any authority left, I forbid the addition to that disastrous catalogue of another single item! I will not suffer their introduction into the house! Away with them!"

"But, my dear friend," says the Lieutenant, "it is a good thing to accustom yourself to eat the meats of all countries— you know not where you may find yourself."

"Yes," says Bell, gently, "one ought to learn to like caviare, lest one should be thrown on a desert island."

"And why not?" says the persistent young man. "You are thrown on a desert island-you catch a sturgeon-you take the roe, and you know how to make very good caviare

"But how about the half-glass of Rhine wine ?" says my Lady.

"You can not have every thing in a desert island; but in a town, where you have time to study such things"

"And where you can order coffins for half-past ten," it is suggested.

A good luncheon is a good

thing." "Ladies and gentlemen," said Bell, "the rain has ceased."

And so it had. While we had been contemplating that imaginary feast, and paying no attention to the changes out of doors, the clouds had gradually withdrawn themselves up the mountains, and the humid air showed no more slanting lines of rain. But still overhead there hung a heavy gloom; and along the wet woods, and on the troubled bosom of the lake, and up the slopes of the hills, there seemed to lie an ominous darkness. Should we reach Grasmere in safety? The Lieutenant had

the horses put to with all speed; and presently Bell was taking us at a rapid pace into the wooded gorge that lies between Nab Scar and Loughrigg Fell, where the gathering twilight seemed to deepen with premonitions of a storm.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AT NIGHT ON GRASMERE.

"Ye who have yearned

With too much passion, will here stay and pity,
For the mere sake of truth; as 'tis a ditty
Not of these days, but long ago 'twas told
By a cavern wind unto a forest old;
And then the forest told it in a dream
To a sleeping lake."

We drove into the solitude of this deep valley without uttering a word. How could we tell what the strange gloom and silence might portend? Far away up the misty and rounded slopes of Loughrigg the clouds lay heavy and thick, and over the masses of Rydal Fell, on the other side of the gorge, an ominous darkness brooded. Down here in the chasm the trees hung cold and limp in the humid air, crushed by the long rain. There was no sign of life abroad, only that we heard the rushing of the river Rothay in among the underwood in the channel of the stream. There was not even any motion in that wild and gloomy sky, that looked all the stranger that the storm-clouds did not

move.

But as we drove on, it seemed to become less likely that the rain would set in again. The clouds had got banked up in great billows of vapor; and underneath them we could see, even in the twilight, the forms of the mountains with a strange distinctness. The green of the distant slopes up there grew more and more intense, strengthened as it was by long splashes of a deep purple where the slate was visible; then the heavy gray of the sky, weighing upon the summits of the hills.

But all this was as nothing to the wild and gloomy scene that met our view when we came in sight of Rydal water. We scarcely knew the lake we had loved of old, in bright days, and in sunshine, and blowing rain. Here, hidden away among reeds, lay a long stretch of dark slate-blue, with no streak of white along the shores, no ripple off the crags, to show that it was water. So perfect was the mirror-like surface, that it was impossible to say in the

gathering gloom where the lake ended and the land began. The islands, the trees, the fields, and the green spaces of the hills, were as distinct below as above; and where the dark blue of the lake ran in among the reeds, no one could make out the line of the shore. It was a strange and impressive scene, this silent lake lying at the foot of the hills, and so calm and deathlike that the motionless clouds of the sky lay without a tremor on the sheet of glass. This was not the Rydal Water we had been hoping to see, but a solitary and enchanted lake, struck silent and still by the awful calmness of the twilight and the presence of the lowering clouds.

We got down from the phaeton. The horses were allowed to walk quietly on with Tita in charge, while we sauntered along the winding road, by the side of this somber sheet of water. There was no more fear of rain. There was a firmness about the outlines of the clouds that became more marked as the dusk fell. But although the darkness was coming on apace, we did not hasten our steps much. When should we ever again see such a picture as this, the like of which Bell, familiar with the sights and sounds of the district from her childhood, had never seen before?

What I have written above conveys nothing of the impressive solemnity and majesty of this strange sight as we saw it; and indeed I had resolved, before entering the Lake district, to leave out of the jottings of a mere holiday traveler any mention of scenes which have become familiar to the world through the imperishable and unapproachable descriptions of the great masters who lived and wrote in these regions. But such jottings must be taken for what they are worth-the hasty record of hasty impressions; and how could our little party have such a vision vouchsafed to them without at least noting it down as an incident of their journey?

We walked on in the darkness. The slopes of Nab Scar had become invisible. Here and there a white cottage glimmered out from the roadside; and Bell knew the name of every one of them, and of the people who used to occupy them.

"How surprised some of our friends would be," she said to Tita, "if we were to call on them to night, and walk in without saying a word."

"They would take you for a banshee,"

that were fast asleep in among the tall weeds.

We forsook this shallower end of the lake, and, with some more hissing of horsetails, pushed out and into the world of moonlight and still water; and then, as Tita took the oars, and just dipped them now and again to give us a sense of motion, Bell rested her guitar on her knee and began to sing to us. What should she sing under the solitude of the hills, when all our laughter of dinner-time was over, and we were as silent as the lake itself? There was not even a breath of wind stirring; and it was in a very low voice, with something of a tremor in it, that Bell began to accompany the faint touching of the guitar.

“I've heard the lilting at our ewe-milking," she sang, and her voice was so low and tremulous that Tita forgot to dip the oars into the water, that she might listen to the girl.

"We hear nae mair lilting at our ewe-milking; Women and bairns are heartless and wae; Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaningThe Flowers o' the Forest are a' wede away." -there was a sort of indistinctness in her notes; and when the Lieutenant said that it was the finest English song that he had yet heard, and that the air was so very different from most of the old English tunes, she could not answer him for a minute or two.

But when she did answer him, fancy our astonishment!

"It isn't English," she said, with just a trace of contempt in her tone. "When did you find the English able to write a song or an air like that ?"

"Grant me patience!" cries my Lady, with a fine theatrical appeal to the moonlight overhead. "This girl, because she was born in Westmoreland, claims the possession of every thing north of the Trent."

"Are not you also English, Mademoiselle ?" says the Lieutenant.

"I belong to the North Country," says Bell proudly; "and we are all the same race up here."

Now you should have seen how this cue was seized by the Lieutenant. The boy had about as much knowledge of the colonization of this country as most youths pick up at schools; but the manner in which he twisted it about to suit the wild and audacious statement that Bell had uttered was truly alarming. Before we knew where we were, we were plunged into the history of Strathclyde, and invited to consider the consistency of character that must have prevailed in the great Welsh kingdom that stretched from Dumbarton to Chester. We had also some pleasant little excursions into Bernicia and Deira, with abundance of proof that the Lowland Scotch speak the best English now going -a piece of information which we accepted with meekness. We were treated to a recapitulation of the settlements of the Angles, together with a learned disquisition on the aims of Ida. This was all very well. It passed the time. Bell thought she was firmly established in her position.

Her traditional reverence for the "North Coun

try" and all its belongings had, it turned out, some definite historical justification. She had a right to claim the songs of the Lowland Scotch; was she not herself of that favored race? At length, Queen Tita burst into a merry fit of laughter!

"I don't know what you mean to prove, Count von Rosen," she said; "you prove so much. At one time you insist that Bell is Scotch; at another time you show us that she must be Welsh, if all the people in Strathclyde were Welsh. But look at her, and what becomes of all the theories? There is no more English girl in all Eng

land than our Bell."

"That is no harm said of her," replied the Lieutenant, abandoning all his argu

ments at once.

"I suppose I am English," said Bell, obstinately, "but I am North Country English."

Nobody could dispute that; and doubtless the Lieutenant considered that Bell's division of this realm into districts mapped out in her imagination was of much more importance than the idle inquiries of historians into the German occupation of England.

Then we pulled away over to the island, and round underneath the shadows of its