away from all that was good and beautiful. My thoughts were slimy, as if toads and filthy creeping things had made a thoroughfare of them. It seemed to me that the Dean of Wulstan had been grossly insulted, and that I had shared in calumniating him. The names of Ruth and Mary, to be familiar in the mouths of Mrs. Trigg and that person who had trained himself, parrot-like, to sound the praises of Pensax, was as if people had jeered at the Oswalds in the street. And the Dean's daughter to be married to Erasmus Pensax, who sat down to eat in common with the Triggs, and who dealt with bailiffs and issued writs! I could not believe it. That Ruth, the noblest and loveliest girl in all the world, and the daughter of a Dean, should some day become my wife, was a piece of wild romance that shadowed forth a condescension fit to be put into a ballad; but for Mary, a Cleopatra of women, a Juno in her way, as haughty as she was handsome, to be mated with a grovelling slave like Pensax; it could not be. Fortuna would never put this slight upon Beauty and Pride.

The Cathedral bells were chiming for afternoon service as I entered the College precincts. I saw Dean Oswald, his head erect and his face aglow with health, enter the cloisters. A strange sensation of dread passed over me. The Dean's shadow followed him through the dim arches as if it were an independent creation. A voice whispered in my ear, "The Dean is accursed, and Pensax is his devil." I hurried home afeared. My troubled mind pictured the Dean a prisoner behind the blistered door of Pensax's house, with Trigg and his master making mouths at him, while Mrs. Trigg compelled me to say, "Mr. Pensax is a kind man." The faces on the College Green gateway had eyes to leer out of their stone sockets as I passed, and when I entered the ancient hall of Sidbree House I brushed shoulders with the cavalier's ghost, and saw Robin of Portingale's wife glide out among the crooked fruit trees in the garden. What did all this mean? Had the Pensax household thrown me back upon some other reminiscence of a former state, sending a grating jar of discord through my nature? Or was there a fiend at my side, warning my soul of an awful time to come?

"You are as pale as if you had seen a ghost; what is the matter?” exclaimed my father.

"I think I am not well," I stammered.

"Well! you are not, indeed, George; what have you been doing?" "Frightening myself, I think."

I saw my father ring the bell, and heard him ask for a little

brandy. I thought Peter Trigg bounded into the room, and squatting on his thin haunches, and leering at me under his pale eyebrows, said, "Mr. Pensax is a kind man."

THERE is a blank in my life at this period, a blank of two months, during which memory made no notes upon the tablets of the brain. When I tried to remember what had happened all events halted at the blistered door of Pensax's house. I knew that something else had occurred. I had been ill. My wasted features, the presence of a nurse, a table with phials upon it and a little handbell told me this; but how long had I been ill? Vainly trying to interpret the interregnum, it seemed to me as some 'prentice hand had been practising upon memory's tablets. They were smudged and blurred. Here and there I traced a line of reason, but the moment I set myself to dissect the words they disappeared in a vague shadowy outline signifying nothing.

if

"You are to be dressed to-day, George, and make your appearance once more in my room. Do you think the smell of paint will hurt you?"

This was one of the earliest intimations I received both of my illness and my getting better. The speaker was my father. He addressed me in a whisper, and took my hand as if it were some delicate curiosity in danger of being broken.

"The paint! Oh, no, father, it will be very pleasant," I said, looking up wonderingly at him.

"I thought you would like the studio best," said my father; "we have had the old sofa carried into it, and the room made particularly comfortable. Thank God you are better, George. What a long weary time it has been for you, my dear fellow."

"Has it?" I asked. "No, I think not. I don't remember anything," I said; "very little, at all events, father. How long have I been lying here?"

"Two months, George; two long, weary months," said my father, with a sigh.

"Good heavens !" I exclaimed, "two months!"

"Two sad, eventful months, George, months full of strange events; but you must not talk any more at present; quiet, my boy, that is the great heal-all now."

"What of Ruth?" I asked, in a whisper, just as my father was leaving the room. "What of Miss Ruth Oswald?"

"She will be here to-day," he said, "and you will see her."

The thought of seeing Ruth sent a warm thrill of rapture to my heart.

It was in the month of November. I caught a glimpse of the weird fruit trees tossing about their gaunt limbs in the garden. My father put his arm round me when I was dressed, and helped me into the studio. He said I had grown. I was taller than he. I should soon get fat again, he said. He supposed I should want to take a walk alone, seeing how light and nimble I was. He talked to me all the way to his room as if I were a spoiled child, instead of a man ready for ordination, and looking forward to his first sermon. It seemed as if I were taking part in a dream—not in a dream of my own, in somebody else's dream. I was a shadow— the shadow of George Himbleton. Where was George Himbleton? I consulted my memory, but only to encounter the smudgy hieroglyphics of the 'prentice hand. The gaunt apple trees flung their arms up as we passed the little window in the corridor. The wind swept by with a moan. It came upon me for the moment like the voice of Ossian. O bard of drear November, how often since then have we been companions in the solitude!

It was comfortable indeed, the old studio. The English halberds, bills, and partisans had been carefully dusted, and packed in a corner with the familiar spears, swords, and Cromwellian boots; the pictures on the walls had been re-hung, the rough sketches of knights and ladies had been interspersed with bright bits of landscape that made the rugged trunks of trees sketched for weird pictures look more gaunt and rugged still. The mantel-shelf had been cleared of its nick-nacks, pipe-cases, crayons, and pencils, leaving the old vases to stand out in all their sombre beauty. Over the fireplace was hung "Robin of Portingale's Wife," with the text carefully painted in reddish-brown characters in the left hand corner :—

Up, then, came that lady fair,

With torches burning bright,

She thought to give Sir Gyles a drink,

And found her own wed knight.

A ruddy fire was blazing on the hearth, the glow of the wooden logs competing with the torchlight in the picture. There was an old-fashioned sofa near the fire with a screen round it, a screen covered with quaint sketches in colours and sepia. I was glad to reach the cushioned seat.

"I had no idea I was so weak, father," I said, as I slipped back among the rugs and pillows with which the sofa was filled.

"I had no idea you were so strong," my father replied. "Now you are to have this glass of sherry."

"My poor father," I said, "you are quite a nurse. I feel ashamed to give you so much trouble."

"Trouble, my dear boy! It is long since I was so happy as I am at this moment. There, your hand trembles—it is the unusual exercise you have had. Take it from me. That's it, that's it; you will soon

get on now, George."

I had been very seriously ill. My life had trembled in the balance. I had been in the shadow of the brighter land. I must have almost breathed the heavenly air. And yet I knew it not. Kind Death, to have held thine hand at last! Had I gone then I should have been spared a world of sorrow; but Oh! the sweets that have mingled with the bitters! The sweets of Ruth's dear voice, her hand resting in mine, our conversations by the fire, our wanderings by the river, our short journey of bliss, and the certainty of meeting again. No, I would not have had thee take me then, grim guide of the shades. It were far better as it is. And I chide thee not for what thou hast done. We are here but for a day. Our destination is beyond. We have just time enough to meet those we love and mark down our partners for the world to come. I have read the opinion of an able physician that in a dangerous illness a Christian has a better chance of recovery than an unbeliever; that religious resignation is a more soothing medicine than poppy, a better cordial than ether. The morbid apprehension of death in the unbeliever often hastens his end. His trembling hand shakes the glass in which his hours are numbered. Heaven was gracious to me in that illness of mine. The resignation of the Christian would not have made me content to leave Ruth. It was well that a veil was drawn over my mind, leaving me to grope my way in the dark; or my hand, governed by the consciousness of danger, had shaken the sands of life away.

Presently the nurse came into the room, and, with the smile of one who brings good news, whispered in my father's ear; and, looking on me with the expression of triumph which a good nurse's face wears on the first day that her patient is dressed, left the room.

"It is Ruth," my father said. "She has come to see you, George. Do not question her over much; let her talk in her own way. Heaven has laid great trials upon her during the last two months. I will bring her to you."

The minutes hung heavily on the dial between my father's

departure and his return. I listened for her footstep. The wood crackled in the fire. The trees in the garden creaked like rusty doors in a high wind. My heart beat wildly. And then a sudden fear fell upon me. I heard the voice of Pensax. Trigg dashed in upon my memory. These dread shadows fled when her hand touched the door. She had come up the stairs alone. My father thought it was better so. The strength of Hercules seemed to possess me for a moment when she entered the room. I received her in my arms. She laid her head upon my shoulder and sobbed. She could not speak. I could only say "Ruth, dear Ruth." How pale she was! Her eyes were sunken. There was no colour in her cheeks. She was loaded with crape. Her hands were thin. Had death been near her too? A cold, stark, wintry thought of graves came into my mind. What had happened? Something more than my illness. There was a hissing on the hearth, and the fire stood still for a moment. I looked up. The snow was falling thickly, drawing a white curtain outside the windows, and muffling the tap of the ivy leaves.

not question her over much," my father said. My soul had strange forebodings of sorrow. When I would have removed Ruth's arms from my neck she clung to me as if loth to trust herself to look into my eyes.

"My dear Ruth," I said presently, "will you not take off your

cloak ?"

She removed her arms, and I staggered to the sofa.

'Ah, how thoughtless of me," said Ruth, "to let you stand so long and make you miserable."

"I am much better, Ruth, and shall soon be quite well,” I said. "You must not look at me so earnestly, George; you will make me cry again if you do."

There was a deep, fervent longing in her dark eyes, a sympathetic tenderness, an eloquence of sorrow and sadness and yearning, which pained me.

"Let us sit together and talk, Ruth," I said, when she had removed her sombre cloak, and let her hair fall over her shoulders.

Ruth came and sat beside me. The fire leaped up the chimney with the renewed vigour of a freshly-lighted log which I laid upon the hearth. The snow drove against the windows with a soughing sound. I put my arm round Ruth and gathered her to my heart. "What has happened, Ruth?" I asked her, taking her hand in mine, and whispering the words gently in her ear. "It will relieve you to tell me, I am sure. The heart is better for dividing its sorrows, as well as its happiness, with another."