Lancelot, who had seemed to grow more and more restless every hour, said suddenly to his mother, "There's a fire in the little room; let me wheel your chair there. I want to tell you something.”

Mrs. Wolcombe consented, though looking as though she did not particularly covet any kind of revelation then; she was weary with the long physical efforts she had made to sit up. However, Lancelot was allowed to do as he pleased, and his mother's weakness rendered all apologies unnecessary for her withdrawal from the few remaining guests.

Lancelot waited not a moment to begin.

"Mother, I bring home news that will startle a friend of yours, and that you alone can make known to her." Lancelot's voice shook a little as he spoke, and there needed no more to warn the listener of what was coming. "Abel Drake

"Yes-is dead. He died many months ago in Canada, through an accident on the river."

"How did you happen to learn this ?”

"Because I made it my business to discover. I judged long ago he was dead, or he must have come back. I have seen one of his own officers, who told me so. Don't be surprised, mother, at what I have done. I could rest no longer without knowing the truth.”

"Indeed! Is it so, Lancelot ?"

"It is. And now, mother

"Well, Lancelot ?"

“You know how all is with me, and has been. Little as your letters told of her progress, you could not be quite silent, and I made much of what you did say. For months

past she has never been out of my thoughts. Well, I learned this, and then I wanted to see her once more; and now I have seen her. That's all."

The mother paused a long time, and Lancelot grew uneasy and impatient.

"You are grieved, mother?"

"No, I should have been, perhaps, a year ago; but I have grown to love Barbara almost like one of my own children, so how can I complain of your feeling towards her ?"

"But she-what will she say?"

"I cannot tell."

Lancelot seemed for the moment unpleasantly affected by this answer; evidently he had not anticipated it, perhaps had rather calculated on something very different. After looking down for a brief space, with his hands on his knees, he rose, saying, "Well, mother, let her know about him as soon as possible; to-night, if you can."

"And if, as I fear, this rather sends her heart away from you, or, in other words, back to him, what then ?" "You do not fear she would refuse me?"

"You would not ask her yet?"

"Of course not. I would not even talk to you now, but that I must go away before long, perhaps to stay away for years. Remember, he has been dead nearly a twelvemonth, and I am not bound to feel any special tenderness towards the memory of such a man; but I should not like to be refused. Do you fear that?"

"And if she did refuse, Lancelot, you are a man, and would get over the disappointment."

"Mother, I dare say it's all very absurd, but, in truth,

I have so long allowed myself to think of her as destined to be my future wife-that-that—”

Again the young soldier's voice became unsteady, and the mother's heart hastened to try to relieve and re-assure him by friendly counsel.

"Would yield; I am sure of that. At the worst, I could but bribe him by a promise to stay at home."

"What!" and the mother gave an imperceptible sigh over some secret thought; "would you resign the army and your prospects ?"

"Not if it can be helped."

"But if it can't?"

"Well, then, yes. I have weighed all that, and decided to-night with a firmness and rapidity that even Barbara would respect; and she's about the suddenest person in settling things of any woman I ever knew. You remember how she helped to march me off; it was a mercy she allowed me time for a clean shirt! But, mother, I don't want to be rejected, mind that!"

"So you wish to deprive poor Barbara of one privilege of her sex ?"

"That one, certainly. And now, mother, speak! How is it all to be? I'm not fond of talking, and particularly about such subjects, where one can't, you know, when perplexed by an enemy's feints or diplomacies, put an end to the nonsense by a straightforward bayonetcharge."

Well, I will tell Barbara the news you bring. After a few days I will draw her into conversation, and perhaps I may learn something that may guide you."

"That's it! Just say, Lancelot, you needn't hurry away, I think,' or something of that kind, and I shan't.” "And if

رو

"O hang the ifs! I shall understand but too well, if it comes to that."

What Barbara thought or felt on receiving Lancelot's news a few minutes later by Mrs. Wolcombe's bedside, no one ever knew. She asked-but it was as quietly as usual -if she could be spared to go to her mother's for the night, received the sympathetic answer with apparent coldness, and went away; to return not for three entire days. At the end of that time she came back, placidlooking and self-possessed, and resumed her duties without a word of explanation. And then Lancelot, who had grown irritable and absent-minded during the second day, and strangely depressed, moody, and solitary on the third, revived at once, and watched and waited from night to night for the promised signal. Not till nearly a fortnight had elapsed did his mother look at him in the way he knew she would look when ready to speak, and then, the moment they were alone, he needed only one glance at her face to guess what was coming.

"God bless you, my boy! I think you had better go." And he went, with a smile upon his face.

Some days after, when he was tossing on the stormy waves of the Atlantic, and amusing himself with a kind of ironical comparison between their tumult and the kindred agitation that reigned in his own breast, his poor mother was sending to him her last dying breath, in one passionate cry-" Lancelot! O my boy, Lancelot!" And he knew it not for months afterwards.

CHAPTER X.

JOB DISTURBED IN THE POETRY OF IDLENESS.

AGAIN our story takes a leap forwards. Job lay basking m the afternoon sun. He was not asleep. His dull, heavy eyes, shaded by the rim of his hat, kept a little open, fixed upon the fields of ripe corn. He was just conscious of the bird-boy's musical cry and rattle, now breaking faintingly and soothingly on his ear from afar off, and now shrill and near enough to make him wince by the sudden and unwelcome clamour.

In this uncertain state he believed himself to be only enjoying the singular beauty of the ripe summer afternoon in a kind of poetic trance, broken only from time to time by an incipient yawn.

Far as he could see before him lay the swelling uplands, rising higher and higher as they extended further and further off; and covered with green fields of corn, so ripe that if the least breeze touched it it gave out a low seething sound; hardly a rustle, as the ears pressed shelteringly together. Between Job and the nearest of the cornfields was a pond of stagnant water, from which a mist was rising. It looked hardly any cooler than the hot tongues of the cows standing in it, knee deep, and gazing dreamily straight before them, as though enjoying the heat