could hear the ivy that crept up the red sandstone shafts of the windows rustling in the evening breeze; you could see the soft crumbling façade of the grand old house blushing redder and redder in the fading light; the perfume of wallflowers and pinks that crowded each other in out-of-the-way corners came over the grass; and in the distance your mind rested on the bosom of the river.

They never knew how much I enjoyed these occasional detentions after school-hours. The Dean of Wulstan was a divine of remarkably regular habits. He dined usually at four o'clock, immediately after evening service. At six o'clock his two daughters left the table, and his butler entered with a special bottle of port and a pair of small wax candles. Meanwhile the ladies walked several times over the lawn, looked out upon the river, sometimes plucked a flower, and then disappeared.

I could not have been more than fifteen at this time. What a long vista it is, looking down Time's weed-grown avenue to those days of romance and love! A long, long lane, peopled with shadows. I wander down the mystic path often in my sleep, and see the old sunshine and the old flowers. I think the grass was greener in my boyish days, and the flowers sweeter, and that there were softer purples and more glowing reds in the last glimmers of the sun. I wander along that mystic avenue, over weeds and briars, through storm and cloud, and I come at last to the fairest vision the sun ever shone upon. She seems to look at me out of her clear hazel eyes, and smile with her half parted lips. I have a rose which she gave me even now. It lies with other treasures in that cabinet by the western window of my favourite room in the old parsonage house of Summerdale.

Ruth Oswald was the Dean's youngest daughter. Nearly every boy at Wulstan College was secretly in love with her. It was a rare picture to see the two Misses Oswald come up the nave and into the choir on Sundays. The verger with his silver sceptre of office walked with a proud air as he conducted them to their curtained seat. Ruth was a brunette. She had a clear olive complexion that glowed with health. She had soft languishing eyes and dark brown hair. Dressed in a fashion now extinct, you could not fail to note the round contour of her figure. All the lines of beauty seemed to have met in that vision of loveliness. There was a tender eloquence in her eyes. Her lips, while they were sufficiently full and well-defined to denote generosity and a love of pleasure, had the delicacy of refinement and the graceful parting line which the physiognomist never sees but in

a high and noble nature. You felt better for looking upon Ruth Oswald. Her shadow fell upon you like a blessing. There was nothing demonstrative in her manner. No rustle of silk accompanied her. She made no noise. You could not hear her walk, though she had a firm elastic tread. Her presence was felt, not heard. You always saw her eyes first, her large soft dreamy eyes, full of sympathy and love, and shaded by long sweeping lashes, which touched her glowing cheek when her eyes were closed in prayer. She was neither tall nor short in stature, but of that fair proportion which painters agree in ascribing to our first mother, Eve. I fear me now that my prayers were not what they should have been on those Sunday mornings long ago. I sat nearly opposite to the Dean's pew, and often saw nothing and thought of nothing but that sweet young lady who leaned over the great open Prayer-book. I watched her parted lips in the responses, and the last sonorous sounds of the Amens seemed to linger about her and make her saint-like. My eyes would wander from hers to the angel choir of the western window, filling my soul with strange dreams of an earthly paradise.

The sister of my beloved was cast in an entirely different mould. Moreover, she was ten years Ruth's senior. Mary Oswald, I suppose, was about twenty-five when my worship at church was so much divided between the Dean's pew and Him whose chastening hand has since then been laid so heavily and yet so lovingly upon me. Mary was a tall, handsome, firm, determined woman, with light hair and gray eyes. She seemed to go through life as if it were all a matter of business. She accepted her position as if it belonged to her by Divine ordinance, and played her part with the full consciousness of her supremacy in Wulstan.

Mary Oswald was not unlike her father the Dean. He was a grand cleric of the old school. A tall, white-haired man, with a kind, benevolent face and large fleshy lips, which Lavater's experience led him to associate with sensuality and indolence. You could see that the Dean was fond of good living; everybody knew that the best of everything went to the Deanery, but no one could question the benevolence and generosity of the Dean's administration of his own and the Chapter's funds.

I almost feel inclined to rise from my chair, and stand up reverently, as my memory pictures the Dean, in his gown and hood, coming from the vestry into the choir, where every person rose until he had taken his seat. The vergers themselves, who preceded him, were far more imposing than the canons who usually followed. They were portly, well-fed gentlemen, the vergers of Wulstan Cathedral. They

stood firmly in their buckled shoes, and wore their semi-clerical gowns with an air of authority that overawed Wulstan College, and contributed in no small degree to maintain the dignity of the Establishment.

You will see over that cabinet, which is sweetened by the odour of a rose and all its blessed memories, a picture of a cathedral procession. It is my own work, and should have been hung in the Royal Academy. I thought so years ago; I think so now. It was painted under the inspiration of her love from one of my earliest sketches. A dark background, full of heavy, shadowy arches. A glimmer of yellow and purple light from a coloured window falls upon a procession coming through a darkened archway. A dull silvery flicker glints on the curious batons of the vergers. The Dean's crimson hood next catches the faint light, which falls at last upon the white-surpliced choristers. Dim, shadowy columns, with quaint bosses and heavy oaken pews, are the accessories, worked in with warm browns where the light fell, and cold heavy blues in the outer shadows.

There was a time when that picture made me weep. I gaze upon it now with a chastened sorrow. There is a sort of blissfulness of woe. You come to know yourself as time wears on, and sadness and sorrow seem to bring you nearer unto Him whose story falls like balm upon the wounded spirit. It comes into my mind often to feel that I am selfish and unrighteous in cherishing memories of the past so fondly. Even now there is an image which seems to stand between me and heaven, for late in the silent night and early in the morning my thoughts are of Ruth and our happy days.

This leads me often into pulpit warnings against the sin of indulgence in an earthly love that engrosses all other thoughts. I tell my wondering parishioners, with Young, that a God all mercy is a God unjust. I bid them prepare for the removal of their idol. I warn them that God is a jealous God. I urge them to strive against the passion and selfishness that sets up a temple in the heart to one being, be it parent, child, sister, brother, or lover. I condemn ambition, I denounce the desire for riches; but I tell my poor friends at the same time how hard it is to be pure and good and true and brave and generous; and I never let the erring one depart without words of hope and comfort and consolation. I have a fellow-feeling for the weak and wounded; and hath not He also who lived among us, and took compassion upon the adulteress and the thief?

An it be a sin to feel an inward rebellion against any heaven that does not give back to us our loved ones, my soul will never be purged

of its wickedness. It likes me well to labour always for the welfare of my little parish. I am conscious of no selfish thought or desire, unless it be selfish to wander back down that long dark vista of other days, and wish that the time having sped so fast when the sun shone would fly with more rapid wings now that the day is ended. I long for the night through which we enter the Promised Land.

True, as the wise and thoughtful Bishop Rust saith, it is not for any mortal creature to make a map of that Canaan which lies above, but it may be that some good, heaven-desiring pilgrim travelling thitherwards arrives sometimes near the borders of the new Jerusalem, and, getting upon the top of Pisgah, has the perfect prospect of a fair country which lies afar off and may not be described. I have stood in fancy on that holy hill, and seen the hazy light of the heavenly city; but oftener has my wandering fancy shown me the dim curtained radiance of a cathedral choir, and a boy chaunting the confessional responses, with his dreamy eyes upon the prayerful saint-like face of the Dean of Wulstan's daughter.

CHAPTER IV.

MY FATHER'S STUDIO.

It was in the left wing of an old timbered house in a back street of the city of Wulstan. The house had a curious history. It had sheltered a fugitive king. A knight of great fame had died in the little courtyard, after a battle in which his king was defeated. The knight had been wounded by a slug-shot in the knee. His enemy was a Roundhead. The battle had continued in the very streets of the city. Cromwell found among the prisoners the King's physician. He sent this doctor to the knight, and at the same time despatched a surgeon from his own staff; for the knight was a duke and a brave man. The doctors differed. The Cromwellian said there was no danger; the Royalist advised amputation. Between the two the patient died, and was buried before the high-altar in the Cathedral Church of Wulstan.

The Old House of Sidbree they call this timbered edifice in which I was born. It had a quaint outer hall and courtyard. The former was surrounded by a gallery supported on curious pillars, which served me to carry a swing and some other athletic appliances. Here and there the gallery was carved with strange devices. The roof was like a melancholy dream in wood. It required a stout heart to support you in this hall at midnight. Associated with

bloodshed and battle, with ancient religious rites, with days of lawlessness, it required no stretch of imagination to fill it with ghosts and goblins. It was a low-roofed house, hemmed in by a by a high wall. There was an old-fashioned garden on the other side of the house, opposite to the courtyard and entrance-hall. The garden was full of curious old trees, which made annual shambling efforts to break into leaf. My father would not have them cut down because he liked old trees, and loved to put them into weird pictures of knighthood and fairyland. The centre of the garden was filled with grass. Beneath the wall was a narrow border full of the same kind of commonplace sweet flowers as those which bloomed in the garden of the Deanery. Gillyflowers, lilies of the valley, primroses, violets, daisies, roses, were the plants most favoured by the gardeners of Wulstan, when I was a boy. Sweet-briar, lilac, and ivy were the ornamental shrubs, and these were all represented at the Old House of Sidbree.

When you entered the precincts of my father's house you did so through a pair of rusty gates, which had an outlet into the main street. You proceeded along a stony pathway, softened by grass that grew in the chinks of the boulders. Then you reached the outer hall, the shadow of which fell upon you like the weight of centuries. Glad to get through this dim region, you pulled at the great bell-handle which ornamented the inner doorway. by a sleek, silent housemaid opened the door, and at knew that you were in the house of a man of taste. tiled hall was full of pictures; so also was the oaken staircase. Mount upwards in imagination with me. My memory is as clear now as if I had only just left the place.

By and once you

The square

Our footsteps resound through the clean but uncarpeted corridors. Once we have to bend our heads to escape an oaken beam. The light comes to our aid through deep-set windows. Presently we stand before a heavy doorway. We will not knock, but enter quietly. It is my father's studio. A smell of paint and turpentine and fusty portfolios greets us on the threshold. On our left are three windows, springing from high seats. The ivy taps at the glass from without. On our right-hand the wall is partly covered with rough sketches of knights and ladies, Cromwellian figures and studies of Royalist heads; trunks of old trees and long knotty branches ornamented with a few straggling leaves; bits of ancient buildings, gable-ends, oriel windows, and effects of light and shade struggling with each other in castle turrets or cathedral vaults. On the floor, or reposing upon tables, are pieces of ancient armour, quaint cups and jars, a