chimneys indulge, it is often difficult to discover whether this mass of foliage be a dwelling built by human hands, or a piece of nature's architecture, a curious vegetable growth which the sun and the damp between them have contrived to rear. Nor are they built upon any intelligible pattern. There is no attempt at method. They maintain no fixed relation to each other. One is put down in the middle of an orchard. Another is put down at the roadside. There are no walls nor railings between them; only thick hedges of holly and hawthorn, which, at the time when I first beheld them, were fragrant with blossom. The high-road skirted the suburb, but failed to penetrate it; and its place was supplied by a labyrinth of shady lanes, which rambled round the dwellings in the idlest way imaginable, and broke out every now and then into little rustic bridges, when they came across any of the miniature streams which quietly trickled over the pure white pebbles, and bore away the yellow leaves as they fell one by one through the summer day upon the water. Shady the lanes are, even in the bare winter-time; but there is an atmosphere of shade everywhere, not the shade of hedges or of orchards only, but of noble forest trees.

Through this delightful land I had wandered for half a June day. There was a breathless silence upon the face of the earth-not a living creature stirred. And so I sauntered slowly on through the lanes, plucking now a wild flower from the roots of the hedges, now a branch of white hawthorn or of orange laburnum, now bending over the side of a wooden bridge to watch the

clear gliding water, now catching a glimpse of bright sunshine and blue sky through the branches of the great forest trees. But at last, in one of the stillest nooks of this choice wilderness, I came suddenly upon an open window—the house jutted quite out to the lane, and ran parallel with the hedge—a window raised slightly above the level of the roadway, round which the ivy clustered, and hung in green festoons. Enclosed in this rustic frame I beheld a face-one of those faces which once seen are never forgotten :-a profile very pale, perfectly motionless, so motionless that it might ages ago have been cut in marble; the dark heavy eyelashes studiously lowered upon the book which lay—I fancied on the lap, and contrasting with the exquisitely delicate life of the complexion; the wavy brown hair, twisted loosely back from the temples, and coiled into a purple and golden net; a glimpse of girlhood such as mighty Venetian artists have painted-mute, pensive, adorable.

'The sleeping princess !' I murmured to myself; but I dared not break the spell with spoken words. She did not notice me.

Then leaning back the small shapely head, she raised her eyes to the tops of the forest trees, where a streak of blue heaven, or it might be a glory of angels, was discernible through the summer leaves, and smiled to herself in a dreamy unconscious mood. The eyes were of the sad hazel sort-hazel, I think; but in looking at such a face my chemistry is at fault, and I am seldom able to discover of what colour the eyes are made. Yet

the face was full of ardent life; there were mystical depths in the eyes, but they were shrewd and vigorous, and disclosed a daring nature—an impression which the dreamy, delicate curve of the upper lip did not disturb; for, though finely cut, it had more than the composure of a man's. There was a will in that lip which, once roused, neither man nor woman could bend. But now, as she turned her face, you did not think of that. You thought only of the light which those wonderful eyes seemed to shed among the shadows-the sunshine in the shady place which they brought.

I passed on; but this face decided me. I had found the resting-place that I coveted. The town was near by, and yet I was in the midst of the forest. I could mix with men, while listening to the murmur of the brooks and the whisper of the woodland. And then this gracious face might sometimes shed a glory of light about me. Not, indeed, that she could ever be brought to welcome, with more than a child's welcome, the stiff soldier who had spent his youth in the wars, and whose season for love was gone. No such flattering imagination did I ever harbour in my most secret thoughts. But I might lie on the grass and watch the flight of the white-bosomed doves, and listen to their tender cooings in the cool deep places of the woods. She would find a mate to whose breast she could nestle; and it would be enough for me to know that the eyes had never been wet with other tears than those which are shed when we are happy, or when we love.

By a lucky chance I discovered that the adjacent house-which stood some two hundred yards away— wanted a tenant. The one was Laburnum Cottage, the other Laburnum Lodge. So I bought and paid for the Lodge. It had belonged to an old East Indian colonel, who ate his last currie during the snow-storm in the spring. I took it just as he left it. Had I judged of him from his surroundings, I might have fancied that he continued to adhere to the last to some of the rankest forms of idolatry. Little Indian idols, with fierce fixed eyes, rolled about on the mantelpiece. An African fetish hung from the drawing-room ceiling. Angular Chinese, in tails and curious perspective, paid their devotions to Confucius. Grotesque devils, with their mouths full of red fire, served as inkstands or as letter weights. It seemed as if the colonel had had a mania for bringing together all the superstitions which the sun looks down upon. In the centre of Christendom, within sight (figuratively speaking) of the office of the Record, I found a houseful of pagan idols. But being a man of peace, I did not disturb them, and they don't seem to disagree among themselves. So we get on very well together: only I sent the fetish (who had been attacked by the moths) away to the green-house, where he spends a secluded but not undignified immortality.

So you see me anchored at last; the spires of Hazeldean dimly visible through a break in the hedge, the forest trees dropping their leaves upon me as I quietly meditate on the life which now is and that which is

to come, or saunter through the garden with Letty Diamond, or her father, the Doctor, or her uncle, the Commodore, or her little sister Sissy. We live in the middle of an orchard, and the boundary that separates the Cottage from the Lodge is ill-defined and ill-observed. Letty is rather shy; but Sissy took me into her confidence from the first. She had shown me all her pets and all her plans within a week of my coming -her picture-books, and her Shetland pony, and her Skye terrier, and her speaking parrot, and the auriculas in her garden, and 'that swan's nest among the reeds.'* The little maiden was as idle as the day was long; and she was delighted to find another vagabond as idly inclined as herself. So she waits for me among the flower-beds outside till I have finished breakfast, conversing gravely with Donald, my sole retainer, upon the management of dogs, and horses, and pigs, and flowers, and poultry-and then she puts her hand in mine, and we march off to survey our territories. little Sissy, of Letty and Letty's lovers, of our neighbours in the woodland, and of our neighbours in the city, I may perhaps one day have something more to tell you. In the meantime, however, the autumn light begins to fail, and I must lay my pen aside. But I see

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