sat, his spectacles astride his nose, and a reading lamp casting its illumination over his features and the document in his hands.

I cannot pretend to give the legal phrases in which the last wishes of my dear supposed parent were expressed, nor to give their minor points. That part of the will which related to Pansie and to me at once, and for ever, solved the mystery resting between us. To his dear and sole daughter, Dorothea, called by himself and Lady Trevor in love Pansie Trevor, he left Crowland Abbey, &c. &c. To his adopted daughter, Violet Trevor, sometime in infancy called Martha Goldering, was left the sum of twenty thousand pounds. Then followed, clearly and concisely stated, the reason of my adoption, and the terms upon which I had been given up to them.

My heart throbbed with conflicting emotions when I heard that simple statement read. How just, how generous they had been to me from the beginning to the end! What noble hearts theirs had been! how great, to Pansie and me, was the loss of them!

Lord Haig leaned over the back of Pansie's chair; I heard him whisper,

"Am I reinstated in my old position now?"

Pansie silently slid her hand into his. I did not hear the concluding passages of the will, neither, I am convinced, did they.

When the reading was over, and the parchment was re-folded and laid by, Pansie rested her left hand on mine. Gleaming in the lamplight, on one of her slender fingers, was Lord Haig's ring, the legendary stones forming a quaint device. It had not been there when she came to me in my room above.

"We are sisters still, Violet. You and Hugh must always look upon Crowland as your home."

Yes, sisters still, little Heartsease! for what power can sever hearts knitted together by ties and associations such as those that unite ours?

THE END.

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE CLERESTORY;

OR, SIDE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH.

BY TIMOTHY B. VANE, ESQ., LL.D.

CHAPTER IX.-DR. SHARPE TELLS HIS STORY.

"I was born in Shropshire, not very far from the border. My father was a large farmer, and I his only son. He was English, but my mother was a native of Montgomeryshire, and came from the neigh

bourhood of W I can only just remember her. She died whilst I was some four years old, and left my father, a man of some forty years of age, with myself-his only child. He was a large, powerful man, skilled in all the exercises of the field, the sports of which he followed with a passionate delight. I was accustomed to horses almost from the cradle. I could ride as soon as I could walk, and before I was eight years of age I had followed the hounds belonging to the Shropshire Hunt on a little pony which father had brought me from the Breconshire hills-a stout, sturdy little animal, which, if it could not jump hedges, climbed them, and always took me in to the death very near the old huntsman himself. The death of my mother made no change in the habits and pursuits of my father. He was still the same ardent sportsman, and, if anything, gave himself with greater devotion to the pleasures of the chase. He never neglected his farm; for, though a man of large property (his farm was, indeed, his own estate), he had a keen eye to business, and had proved the truth of the old proverb that the hand of the diligent maketh rich.' No cornfields looked to him so promising as Sharpe's. He sent the best cattle to the great Herefordshire fairs, while his cheese, made under the superintendence of a servant who had been with my grandfather, was famous all the country round. But, spite of all this, father clung to his sports. His horse, his dog, his gun, his rod,-all were the treasures of his heart. They shared with me in his affections, and he strove to kindle in my breast the passion which blazed in his own.

"I said that the death of my mother made no change in the external habits of my father. This is true. But never was man so altered in all character and disposition. He had been careless, freespoken, with much even that now and then shocked the circle in which he moved, and though my mother had done much to soften and restrain him, he was until her death much the same boisterous, turbulent spirit that had made him when a young man at once the delight, and sometimes terror, of the neighbourhood. All this, however, was changed. He became silent, thoughtful, gentle as a child, and persons who had never known him until after mother's death were at times astonished by some effort that he suddenly would put forth. He would seem to rouse all the strength he possessed, and with the old vigour exert it either in physical, or at times intellectual effort; for, though a countryman, my father was a man who had received a very liberal education, and was a diligent and extensive reader. This change rendered him the more fascinating. There was something peculiarly impressive in his form. His hair was beginning to turn white; his large grey eyes were soft and gentle as a girl's; his smile, for now he never laughed, seemed to pass over his whole face, and reminded one of a gleam

of sunshine breaking through the clouds, and passing swiftly up and over the distant hills of the Welsh shires. I simply idolised him, and hardly ever left him. Day and night I was with my father-we were inseparable.

"When I was somewhere about ten years of age, a sister of my mother's came to visit us. She was a pleasant, motherly woman, with a good deal of the vivacity which marks the Welsh people, who had presented her husband with nine blooming boys and girls, and managed them, including her 'master,' as she called him, with undoubted skili and wifely accomplishment. She was a woman of faculty, one of those cheerful, bustling people who take the management of everything and everybody they come across; before you have time to resist, they have caught you, popped you into the seat which exactly suits, trimmed you out if you are well, nursed you up if you are ill, taken you generally into control. And if you are not satisfied, all the worse for your reason or common-sense, for they are most abundantly content.

"Aunt Peg had not been in the house two minutes before she called me to her, and adjusted my collar, which had been disarranged in a romp with Fido, my dear old spaniel; gave my locks a rub over with her hand to set them a little straight, and then turning to father, said, Well, Harry, how often does the barber come and do that boy's hair?'

"I did not wait to hear the rest, but instantly ducked, and escaped my worthy aunt's grasp, disappeared through the hall, and was not forthcoming any more that day.

"At night when father came to bed, I was wide awake, for I had a kind of premonitory suspicion all was not right, that Aunt Peg had been managing, and I was the probable subject of management. Asleep, Curly?' said my father, as he came into the room. "No,' I said, and with one leap was in his arms.

666

"Where has my boy been all the morning?' said father, gently laying me down again upon the bed, and as he did so I felt a hot tear drop upon my arm, and I knew that the poor widowed heart had been bleeding afresh that night.

"I made no reply, but just said, 'Aunt Peg won't come to settle me in bed, will she, papa ?' My father rose, and quietly went to the door and locked it; quite unnecessary as regards the intrusive intentions of my worthy aunt, for that good body had retired early, and was by that time most probably far advanced in dreams of her husband and well-managed children.

"When my father returned to the bedside, he said in a quiet voice, 'What would my boy say to going to school? '

"Going to school?' I replied. 'Where, papa ?' and it at once flashed across my mind that my worthy aunt had been giving my

father her opinion that it was high time he sent that child to school. My notion of school was limited to the parish school, which was somewhere about a mile from our house, and to which the children of our labourers, with a few from the families of the villagers, trudged each morning 'like snails unwillingly.'

My father went on, 'Your aunt has been saying that her boys go to a very good school at W——, and that she is quite sure you would be happy and at home there

"Before he finished the sentence I had again jumped up, and was clinging round his neck. The thought of leaving him was too bitter for me then to bear. He soothed me, and at last, I suppose crying myself to sleep, I lost all remembrance of Aunt and W—, and the school and her well-managed children, to find myself aroused next morning by my father's coming into the room and laying a little rabbit, that he had just shot, against my cheek.

"But I am wearying you, Mr. Vane," said Sharpe, "with this story of my childhood. I never know when to finish if I once begin the story of my father."

"Go on," answered I; "I am interested."

"Not to dwell upon the events of that visit of my aunt's, it must suffice to say that it was at last decided, not without much weeping on my part, and many lectures from her, while father all the while grew gentler, tenderer in speech and in manner, that I should set off for W at the beginning of the next quarter, and be enrolled a pupil of Mr. Edwards's academy.

"It was a sad day when I parted from father in Mr. Edwards's little drawing-room. I fancied I should never see him again. I expected all sorts of hardships at the establishment of which I had now become an inmate. I thought of my pony unridden, my little fishing-rod left idle in the corner; I wondered who would sit upon my father's knee in the evening; would he ever tell the tales of his boyhood's freaks to any one when I was not there? Nothing could tempt me to leave him; I felt sure that if I let go his hand for a moment he would escape and I should lose him. Mrs. Edwards did all she could to console me, and even the master himself was graciously condescending, and had no doubt the little man would soon be quite at home. But all was in vain, until at last my father rose and said, 'Now, my boy, I must go. Don't be afraid. I shall come and see you very soon, and Christmas will shortly be here, and you shall come back and see us all again.' I felt him rise, quietly put me off his knee-he kissed me, and I knew for the first time in life that I was alone.

"The newness of life and change of circumstances soon had their effect upon a child, and in a week or two I found myself looking forward to my father's promised visit, rather than looking back to

his leaving me. The school people were all very kind. The work was not hard, and I began to feel quite at home. There was one boy, however, with whom I speedily struck up a friendship. He was two years my senior, a fair, blue-eyed lad, full of frolic, but learning so easily and well that he was always found at the top of his classes, unless in disgrace through some trick into which his high spirits had tempted him. He was an English lad, but his home was in Anglesey, where his father was a proprietor of some mines that yielded him a large income. Frederick Lyon had the freest allowance of pocket-money of any boy in school, and spent it with no niggard hand. He was generous, frank, winning the affection and admiration of all who came near him. Mrs. Edwards's servants would do anything for Master Fred. He was a close ally of the cook's, and it was said that even the boy who blacked our shoes and carried in the dinner had more than once taken upon himself a greater share of blame in some mad trick of Lyon's when he had induced poor Charlie to join him. Not that Lyon would allow another to suffer, for in many cases I have known him take punishment when he had nothing to do with the offence; and yet, spite of all this, there was not one who oftener received invitations to take tea with the master, or had more treats from the various authorities of Dalehouse.

"We took to each other at once. When he saw me looking uncomfortable and sad the day after my father had left me, he came up and spoke kindly and cheeringly, and established himself as my faithful friend and protector that very day. We were thenceforth firm allies. Lyon and I continued as brothers for many years after we had left Edwards's school. I must pass over my school days, interspersed as they were by the pleasant visits of my father, and broken by the holidays so earnestly expected, so gloriously spent-school days that lasted until I was about sixteen, when I left the home and kindly motherliness of Mrs. Edwards. Lyon had gone away some year or so before. He was, as I told you, older than myself, and, after spending some months of idleness, and, I doubt not, getting into many a scrape at his father's home, he was placed under the care and tuition of a reverend scholar who, having little to do in his parish, and not much for it, eked out his slender income and employed his time by tutoring young lads who were going up to one of the Universities. To this place I also was sent, as we were both intended for one of the colleges at Oxford, and were to receive some two years' reading with this tutor before entrance. These were happy days. We worked well, but enjoyed especially the hours of sport which our tutor allowed us, and in which, at least the fishing part of it, he often joined.