It was evening when we reached the goal of a long journey by sea and land, and saw, brought out into picturesque relief by the red-setting sun and the dun clouds around it, the broad and singular mansion that was thenceforth to be my home. As we paused for a moment at the gate, difficult to move from long disuse, and swinging slowly back on its obelisks of stone, I clung with a feeling of vague terror to my companion's arm, and my eyes dwelt anxiously on his features, as if in their impassible calm I could read my future.

This stranger-for I had never seen his face nor heard his name, until, armed with some authority none dared or cared to dispute, he stood in Taunton Tower, and claimed the right to convey me to a new home in a foreign land, and to relatives I had never known-now seemed my nearest friend. Insensibly during our long journey, his quiet voice and manner had stolen and won my entire confide

in the amot of me

His gaze, his smile, his tones, his very gestures, were instinct with a latent melancholy power-potent with a nature like my own, quick to impetuosity; yet, now he did not notice me, inten as he had heretofore been on my slightest requisitions ; but gazing forward with a strange eagerness I had not marked in him previously, he murmured between his set teeth:

"God grant us good tidings; what may not have happened during this long and cruel absence ?"

The carriage, which had brought us from the nearest town,, now wound through the shadowed gravel road that led to the mansion's front-a road evidently little used for such a purpose, for the dark, unpruned branches above us swept constantly across its roof and windows with a harsh, grating sound that made my blood curdle.

"They seem to be trying to drive us back," I said at last. "They? To whom do you refer, Lilian ?" asked Dr. Quintil, starting as if from reverie. Have you seen any one?"

Only the branches," I replied with a little childish laugh that ended in a long-drawn sigh. "Oh dear! I wish we were on the sea again; I was so happy there!" And I clasped his hand timidly.

"Be pacified, Lilian. You shall still be happy if there is power in affection to render you so. You are led here, I trust for some wise though yet undeveloped purpose, known only to God."

"I did not know you were a preacher before, Dr. Quintil," I said, impressed by the solemn fervor of his words, and unconscious of the slightest irony in mine.

A half smile curled his lip. "Nor am I, Lilian-nor am I.

my

im

ed

And the memory of those I had loved, swept across my soul with surpassing bitterness. I wept aloud.

"Child, child; this will not do," said Dr. Quintil, almost sternly. "A little patience, a little self-command, are necessary What moves you thus ?"

now.

"I was thinking of my grandmother," I answered, wiping my eyes as quickly and quietly as I could. 'Oh, Dr. Quintil, you did not see her when she was laid at rest, or you could never forget her! Such a sweet, noble face; such snow-white hair, brought low on her thin pale cheeks; and a smile of such perfect peace lying on her mouth like sunshine on a grave! I was thinking of her thus, ast I shall never see her again."

He listened to me with a grave attention; yet it seemed to me he was scarcely able to repress a sort of sad smile, peculiar to him, as he inclined his ear to hear me. Strange to say, this encouraged me to proceed, for its source I knew was in sympathy, not derision.

They say she was very old," I continued; "and that I ought to be reconciled to her death because of her great age. But I think we love people the more the older they grow; don't you, Dr. Quintil?"

"Not always," he said at last. "Old people are often selfish

and hard hearted and then they surely are not lovely"