hand. This conversation between my father and the Dean might have no real significance. Now that happiness seemed to have come within my grasp, a sudden fear of misery took possession of me. I could not lose her now for worlds. I pictured her sitting at my fireside in my own home-some pretty cottage furnished under her own eye, with her dear pictures on the walls. I placed the cottage on the banks of a river, with trees waving over the roof. I could almost hear the rustling of her dress. And I hear it now, looking back into the past, as I then looked into the future. Yes, I hear the music of her presence in the room as I sit at my desk, haunted with the one dear memory of my life. "And Memory, too, with her dreams shall come- Dreams of a former happier day— When heaven was still the Spirit's home, "Glimpses of glory ne'er forgot, That tell like gleams on a sunset sea, CHAPTER X. BETWEEN THE LIGHTS. TWILIGHT and moonlight. Let us sit in the shadow and see the day melt into night. There come to me bright images and pathetic memories between the lights. They rise up out of the misty vapours and stand before me as did the visions that appeared to holy men in the days of the prophets; only that mine are familiar ghosts. I fear them not. They are no spirits to awe and command, but only the blossoms of thought and memory, only the friends of former days; they come to me in the twilight, just as the poppy odours of Somnus are stealing over the valley. They come when the first faint glint of the moon falls upon the retreating day. The trailing garments of the twilight hour sweep past me, and the breeze fans my soul into a wakefulness of memory. The old times come back, the old faces, the old memories, fresh and familiar as they were when I was of them, and when she was of the earth, an angel among mortals, an angel in black silk and a lace shawl. Let us sit in the twilight and be familiar and friendly in our conversation, dismissing Somnus and his poppies for the moment, and coming down to the level of Mr. Molineau and Mrs. Stamford. It seemed to me at the first blush of the meeting that the dinner party at the Dean's had been followed by breakfast and this happy river journey, though years had intervened. One often counts time by events. That first dinner-party, and this pic-nic on the river, were two incidents in my association with the Dean's family which I remember most distinctly, and in these two acts in the drama of my early life the same persons took part. If the conversation had been taken up where I left it at the dinner-party, it would have appeared quite natural. "It is indeed a lovely morning-lovely morning, Mister Dean," said the Rev. Canon Molineau, as the barge slipped from its moorings, and floated down the river. "Yes; oh, I see now," remarked Mrs. Stamford, the thin widow of a once fat pastor of two fat livings; "we are drawn along by a horse. I wondered how we were going to be propelled--how very interesting." "Very-yes, very," said the Canon ; "I think I like the autumn better than any time of the year—any time of the year.” "I have no choice for my part," said Mr. Pensax, to whom the Canon looked for an answer; "it is all one to me." Mr. Pensax conveyed most distinctly that whatever the season was he should be run down and scouted by the world. "You are of an accommodating nature, Mr. Pensax," said the Canon, with his blandest smile; "an accommodating nature," echoing back mysteriously from beneath his formally-cut clerical vest. "Yes, yes; I adapt myself to circumstances; but the world is very ungrateful." "So it is," said Mrs. Stamford, who had been looking at the Canon so sweetly that Mr. Molineau must have felt a pang of remorse that he had not taken compassion on the lady long ago, and offered her a seat at the head of his table. If Wulstan may be believed, the Canon kept an excellent table, and gave genial roystering dinners to his bachelor friends. "Do you think so ?—well, really, I do not think the world is so bad after all-after all," said the Canon; "what do you say, Miss Oswald?" "The world, Mr. Canon Molineau, is what we make it," replied Miss Oswald promptly. "I agree with you, Mary," said the Dean in his rich unctuous voice; "we make our own world." "A chastening hand is sometimes laid upon us, Mr. Dean, when we think we have made our world and filled it with happiness," observed my father, who was thinking of the tombstone we had passed on our way. "That is when we are forgetful of Him who made us. This is one of the besetting sins of the age and its discoveries. In our scientific investigations we are prone to forget Him; we try to account for everything without Him. And this is the great difficulty and danger of our lives." "A very good sermon in a few words, Mister Dean; very good indeed," said the Canon. "And enough for to-day," the Dean replied cheerfully; "we parsons, Mr. Himbleton, have a habit of preaching. If you find me drifting in that direction again to-day remind me that there is a time for everything." We were sitting beneath an awning in the centre of the ecclesiastical barge. Let me describe the picture as it comes up before me, subdued by the mist of years which has gathered about it. The Dean is the most imposing figure in the group, a tall, white-haired, florid-complexioned ecclesiastic, in his clerical hat and gaiters. On a low cushioned chair near his feet is seated Ruth Oswald, in a limp, clinging black silk dress with a short waist. She wears round her shoulders a white lace shawl, and thin, gauzy gauntlets partly cover her round white arms. Her hair hangs down her shoulders in a dark cluster of curls. There is a red rose in her hat, which brings out the olive hue of her cheeks, while the diamond in her shawl (negligently pinned at the throat) does not sparkle more brightly than her eyes. Behind her stands Mr. Erasmus Pensax, with his large hands and feet and his melancholy face, a contrast to Mr. Canon Molineau, his neighbour, all smiles and radiance, with bright eyes, and white teeth, and dark hair and whiskers, tinged here and there with grey hairs. On the Dean's left hand is Miss Mary Oswald. She sits upright, and with her feet firmly planted on the deck, a living example of duty, beauty, and decision. She wears a white dress, bound with black riband, a black lace shawl, and a hat like her sister's, trimmed with white riband and tied under the chin. A dark blue rug has been thrown over a chair near her. The colour harmonises with her fair face and light brown hair. (She was a magnificent woman, Mary Oswald. My father, I am sure, was thinking so as he sat beside her, plying her with repartee.) Mrs. Stamford, in a black spencer and grey curls, reclines in an easy chair, alternately smiling her approval of the remarks of Mr. Molineau or trembling with fear lest Miss Oswald should say something rude to my father, for whom Mrs. Stamford had, she assured me, the highest respect and admiration. I see myself wandering in and out of this group, a young, slim fellow of three or four and twenty, with grey, sanguine eyes and a somewhat shy, awkward gait. I see myself in these past days just as I see the boat, the river, and the landscape, a thing apart from the Curate of Summerdale. I am a reminiscence. I am to myself just now like the book-hero of a story. I seem to look back upon some dear friends of my youth, a boy and a girl, two pure, hopeful souls, unstained by the world's greed and traffic, glowing with youth, full of nobility of thought. I see the barge gliding through the meadows. Now and then the lazy horse stops to crop some herbage by the way, and then the rope splashes in the stream, making a long silver line in the river. I look down into the waters, and I see another barge there, floating along with white clouds and moving banks of reeds, and trees, and cornfields, and green pastures, and hop-yards. I see flocks of birds flitting hither and thither, enjoying their short vacation. All the spring and summer they have been building their nests and rearing their young. They feed upon the autumn grain and berries, and come and go in holiday throngs. Coveys of partridges start up with a whirr as the barge turns the bend of some quiet nook. They little think how near are the September guns. Like that happy group on board the barge, they dream not how close at hand is death and destruction and misery. What a glorious panorama is that slide out of memory's lantern! Hedge-rows, red and yellow with hips and haws; old timbered houses, with swallows sitting on the roofs, in rows, discussing their coming journey; long avenues of hops, like dreams of classic vineyards; fields full of lowing cattle; great yellow patches of waving corn; ferrymen moving long flat-bottomed boats across the river; peasants looking from underneath their sunburnt brows at the gay barge; fishermen sitting among the tall grass; old churches slumbering among trees. These are the pictures that float by the deck of the barge to the music of a rippling tap-tap-tap at the bow of the vessel, and a responsive wash-wash-wash of back-water on the banks of the river where the moor-hen hides among the rushes. There was a great deal of learned talk at the Abbey, in which Miss Oswald took part. Ruth selected a mossy bank near the western window of the ruins for a study of elms and corn. While she made her sketch, the other members of the party rambled about the ruins in twos and threes. I contrived to stay with Ruth. My father purposely neglected his pupil, and nobody cared much for my society. Miss Oswald argued many knotty points of monkish policy and architectural economy with Mr. Molineau and my father. The Dean and Mr. Pensax walked arm in arm, now and then talking in a confidential way that induced the others not to interrupt them. Mrs. Stamford glided to and fro, asking all kinds of curious questions about refectories, chapels, cells, and Henry VIII. And, as I said before, I contrived to stay by the side of Ruth. I unpacked her colours, washed her brushes, fixed her small easel in the mossy turf, sharpened her charcoal, and busied myself in a hundred ways about her until she had made an outline of her picture, first in charcoal and then in pencil. She soon brightened her palette with pigments, and rubbed into the canvas the first primary colours of her work. I sat down by her side. Why did I think of the Moabitish damsel that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab? Was it the artist's name and the waving corn, or the strong purpose that was in my heart? Ruth! What a soft, musical name, sweet and suggestive of sweetness, associated with rural life, with reapers and gleaners and pastoral songs. "You are very thoughtful to-day, Mr. Himbleton," said Ruth presently. "I wish you would move this branch of ivy which obstructs that glimpse of the cottage yonder. This branch by the corner of the stone, close to my right hand. Thank you!" The spray of ivy was removed in a moment. "And there is a little mouse under the wall, near my foot. I wish you could persuade it that it is in no danger: it wants to come out and see what we are doing. I think it is frightened at you." Ruth turned her great brown eyes upon me for a moment, and smiled the dear smile of years before when I gave her that glass of water in my father's studio. "You are not afraid of mice," I said, for lack of a better reply. "No, I am not afraid of anything," she said, plunging her brush into half a dozen different shades of yellow and brown, and laying in the foundation of her corn-field. "I make friends with frogs and mice and all kinds of living things when I am sketching. Hush! You see that gleam of sunshine creeping gradually across the wheat! Is it not beautiful? There! Now it comes sweeping along, a tidal wave of sunshine. See how these elms have broken the sunbeams into thousands of glints and splinters." I was almost startled at the animation of Ruth's face and manner as she watched the moving mass of light which swept over the corn and turned the smoke of the cottage into a sunny mist that lost itself among the surrounding trees. Suddenly, as her face had caught the inspiration of the sunshine, it reflected back the shadow. “Ah," she said, laying down her palette, as an army of clouds |