cross at one another, for we know she has little or nothing in them-but when she comes slowly and sedately down, looking slyly out of the corners of her eyes into the pails, I clap my hands and run to meet and help her; for I know then her burden is very precious and bounteous. And if you won't think it very rustic and milk-maidish, Mr. Rymer, I should say a full heart, like a full milk-pail, must be carried quietly, soberly, or it will overflow-as-look, you have made mine.' For great tears were rolling down her cheeks, even while her laughter rang gaily in his ears.

They found the carriage close by, waiting for them under a little avenue of trees; and the driver looking with sharp curiosity to see who it was the English gentleman had come to fetch at so unlikely an hour from Bod Elian.

The horses were striking the ground impatiently, thinking they had been there long enough, and the driver was standing at their head quieting them with his hand and voice, while his glances were turned towards the coming lady.

'Oh, Hirell Morgan, is that you?' he exclaimed, as she came up to him. He spoke with an air of familiarity not at all disrespectful, bnt intensely annoying to Cunliff.

'Now, my man, mount! I'll see to the rest,' he said irritably.

'Yes, David,' answered Hirell with a smile, and the faintest possible indication of increased colour. She knew David, he was one of their congregation, and her first thought was how she should like to run back and comfort Kezia by telling her that David Roberts was the driver; and that both going and returning she would be for a considerable time under his care.

For one single moment she looked back, but the next she saw how foolish it would be to keep her lover and the carriage waiting, without being able to give an intelligible reason; for she would not even seem to Mr. Rymer to have confidence in any but him; so with glad trust she dismissed the thought and entered the carriage. Cunliff followed, fastened the door after him, and away went the horses at a great pace, in obedience to Cunliff's hint of—

'Fast as you can!'

Cunliff had done well to strike a kind of mirthful keynote by his buoyant vivacity at the moment of departure, if his aim were simply and honestly to banish from Hirell's loving and filial heart all fear of her father's displeasure: there was some>

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thing so genial, so pure, so unlike aught that suggests danger or doubt, in his behaviour, that Hirell would as soon have questioned the beneficence of heaven, as her lover's truth on this sweet May morning.

Hirell wore her chapel dress, a very different one from that which had made so sweet a glow of colour in the market-place of Dolgarrog on the Sunday when Mr. Rymer first saw her.

Even if Elias had permitted her to keep one of the fine dresses of that time, she would not dare to be seen in it by a congregation among whom she was one of the poorest. But the experiences of that bright and busy time had made Hirell so cunning in the management of the poor clothes remaining to her, that she had been able to unite the prettiest fashion of the day with the austere simplicity demanded by her sect, in the common, coarse linsey which she now wore. Its colour reminded Cunliff of her own native mountains when the heather was in bloom-a kind of misty violet, not bright, but soft and rich. A train' in the chapel would have been thought almost as great a defilement to the stones as the cloven foot itself; therefore Hirell's dress was short, and looped up at each side over a snowy crimped frill which was Kezia's pride to keep, as she said, 'like the snow when it lies on the ribbed sands at Aber.' A little cape the same as her dress fitted closely to her figure. Her hat was also home-made. It was tuscan, of a rich, old-fashioned plait, and was made out of some ancient bonnet that had been left to the family with the effects of a rich grand-aunt of Elias Morgan's. Hirell had undone the straws and made them up again into as charming a little round hat as Cunliff had ever seen at picnic or croquet. As he looked he was again changing his opinion, and going back with fresh zest to his first impressions. And now he could not but notice that Hirell wore new and delicate kid gloves. It had been a matter of some consideration with Hirell, as she stood looking at them in her bedroom, whether she should or should not take them from the long resting-place for Cunliff's sake. There was something sacred about them as a lost friend's last gift. When Robert Chamberlayne was Mr. Lloyd's pupil, he had once taken Hirell into the chief shop of Dolgarrog on her birthday, and told her to choose whatever she liked best for a present. She had chosen a pair of bright, delicately coloured kid gloves, never having had such things on her hands before. And ever since, as the

birthday came round, a pair of gloves from Robert had arrived with it. Her latest birthday was in the week following Robert Chamberlayne's last visit; and thinking that visit would be a long one, he had brought his offering with him, daintily fresh and perfumed. Then when he found how things were between him and Elias and Hirell, he gave them into Kezia's charge. 'Ask her to accept the old present for the last time, Kezia,' he said; and added with a tone of unusual despondency, 'Who knows, Kezia, but what she may give her little hand away to some other fellow in that very glove? Somehow I feel she will.'

'It's a shame, Robert,' Hirell had said to herself as she put them on, while Cunliff was impatiently calling to her at the foot of the stairs that morning; 'but,' she said, touching the soft, scented surface with her lips, they shall not be defiled by the touch of any hand less honest and true than your own, Robert.'

Of these thoughts Cunliff knew nothing, nor needed to know. As he finished his examination of her, he said to

himself:

'Whence comes this wondrous instinct of woman for selfadornment? By heaven, she is artistically perfect, and I was a most conventionally-minded ass to doubt it!'

On the bridge, over which they went at a walking pace, they met the postman who delivered letters along the road beyond Dolgarrog, and whose beat included Bod Elian.

Hirell looked wistfully towards him, then suddenly lowered the window, and putting her head out, said to the man : 'Any letters for us, Richard Pugh?

'Eh! Miss Morgan, that you? Yes, there is one.'

Indeed! I am so glad I stopped you,' said Hirell, continuing to talk in order to cover her anxiety while he ransacked his bag. I am so anxious about Hugh and my father,' she said, turning to Cunliff as half apologizing for the delay, for he had immediately called to the driver to stop, on understanding her wish.

A rather bulky-looking letter was at last discovered and given to Hirell, who looked at it with obvious surprise; and after a moment or two of hesitation put it in her pocket, and begged Cunliff to tell the driver to go on.

Cunliff wondered, and did as he was bid; then wondered why he had wondered, and answered himself by the mental

comment that he had seen the address, that it was not from Elias, that it was from some one who wrote a formal, but handsome and manly-looking hand.

Who could be the writer?

Hirell on her part did not seem in the least conscious he was or might be putting such questions to himself; and there was some thing so naïve, simple, and frank in her behaviour under these, as Cunliff thought them, peculiar circumstances, that he could not help giving her for the first time credit for some little taint of the wisdom of the serpent in modification of the innocence of his dove.

'Your letter, Hirell; pray don't mind me,' he said, after a brief pause.

'Oh, I had forgotten it already,' said Hirell, with a look that Cunliff thought conscious of guilt; and he was the more satisfied of this when he observed she made no movement to correct the omission.

The sight of the people in the market-place, gathering for some holiday excursion, stopped for a moment further questioning.

As they passed through Dolgarrog, Cunliff drew back into the obscurity of his corner as far as possible, and in doing so noticed that Hirell did the same. But the charming tint that her secret thought had raised on her cheek had, he felt, no response on his; and the fact once more began to make him very thoughtful.

For a moment or two only. He had come into this day's work with a determination not to think, not at least until the inevitable hour when all must be made known.

'Now, Hirell, hey for England!' said Cunliff, gaily, as they cleared the town of Dolgarrog, and began the long and picturesque ascent round the shoulder of Criba Ban.

For England!' exclaimed Hirell, with eyes dilating, and a momentary spasm of fear, which passed away in a sweet shame as she saw his enjoyment of her surprise. 'I have never been there.'

'Is it possible? Never in England!'

'Never! But oh, Mr. Rymer, how can we do that, and be home again to-night?'

'Easily,' was the answer. 'We do just advance a little way into England beyond the Welsh border, that is all.'

'Ah, well! I am so glad. It is something to say one has been there at last.'

Somehow this little incident set Cunliff thinking in silence to himself as to many things about Hirell which he fancied so secluded and inexperienced a life must involve; but suddenly he began to explain the course of their journey, as including two or three hours of the present conveyance, then rail for a like space, then again some vehicle for half an hour to reach their destination, the great house where Mr. Rymer was to meet his friend, the steward of the estate, and where—

And there Mr. Rymer' as the sweet musical lips continued to call him, stopped; with the abrupt reflection that, however she might receive what he then proposed to say to her, it would be cruel to risk telling her while so much of the bright, happy day remained, and which his words might

A kind of thrill ran through him as he thought and thought of what lay before them, and especially as he pictured the having to travel together homeward.

He felt for her, no doubt; while obeying the prudent philosophy of his and our teachers-felt as much as it was in his nature to do. Cunliff unhappily shared-but as a victim rather than as an originater-in the heartlessness of intellect which is one of the most deplorable phenomena of our time; and which seems to be chiefly due to the egotism of the national character when not restrained by noble aims, and a vigorous activity of life in the effort to realise them; but when rather as with us now-it is fostered by the itch for and habit of ceaseless criticism. We are all of us nothing if we are not critical. The trader who has not an idea beyond his ledger, the woman whose one thought is fashion, the boy and girl with their eyes just opening on life, the rich and poor, the idle and industrious, are each and all as critical as the cultured teacher who steps forth from his studies prepared to show the hollowness of everything that old-fashioned men have been accustomed to revere; or as the practised statesmen so called, who, originating nothing, stand ever on the watch to attack with their destructive criticism those who attempt to build in the light of faith, and with the results of the knowledge of the past. And all the while they seem to have no idea—these insatiable critics-that their process is one that may or may not achieve what they expect from it, but is sure to destroy the best part of themselves. One can hardly help asking if this