ness than ever to the old home, the old mountains, the old customs, turned against all that she saw. In her mind she was certainly grateful for the kindnesses shown her, but she regarded them as the listless eye of a dying bird regards the dainties which children hold to the wires of its cage to bribe it back to life and song. They had no power to comfort or to arouse her.

Day after day she went in obedience to Mrs. Chamberlayne's wish to walk about the garden, every yard of which, above and below, began to be a revelation of fresh beauty—such beauty as was not to be found in her wild mountain home-while the thick trees hid fuller choirs of birds than she had ever heard before, singing the prologue of the summer. She looked most often to the clouds, that best imitated her own hills. Mrs. Chamberlayne used to watch her looking up at them, and think how strange a fancy it was for such young eyes to seek so wistfully through blossoms and fresh green and sunshine for the clouds whose shadows dim their beauty.

When the minister's letter about Hugh reached her it increased her depression, and

seemed to make her more than ever sick of

the world.

The soft, rich beauty of the budding Kentish summer was too exquisite not to be apparent to her not to be a pain or a delight. It was a pain-it touched her to the quick-moving, yet sickening her spirit, like the passionate pleading of an unwelcome wooer.

Mrs. Chamberlayne watched and waited for improvement, but she watched and waited vainly. Perfectly tractable and gentle as her charge was in all her outward conduct, she felt her heart was yet as unapproachable and untamable in its pain as the wildest creature's in creation.

One morning she missed her. The poor bird was not as usual fluttering wearily about her sunny cage. She lay still in a corner of it, with dull, heavy eye, and dry, beating throat.

Mrs. Chamberlayne made her servants carry her on her light garden couch into Hirell's room, which was on the same floor as her own, and she found her in her bed too ill to move, moaning quietly, and murmuring piteously,

VOL. III.

8

"Father" and "Kezia," and other old home

names.

After that Mrs. Chamberlayne's doctor from Reculcester, whose handsome brougham used to stop twice a week regularly outside the ivied house, became a daily visitor at Brockhurst. Every evening, at dusk, Mr. Robert used to cross the lawn and sit in the American chair outside his mother's window, and they would talk together in low voices.

At one time the smart, lively servant-maids went about the house on tiptoe with faces and voices very much subdued. Mrs. Chamberlayne became pale and worn-looking. Mr. Robert paid brief visits to her window many times in the day. Straw was laid down on the road side of the house to deaden the rumbling of the carts and waggons.

CHAPTER VII.

THE REFUGE DISCOVERED.

BUT the dark time passed over; the patient's youth and fine constitution brought her safely through all the dangers by which she had been so fiercely beset. The straw was gathered away, the waggons rumbled by as heavily as before, the servants knocked with their brooms, and sang, and gossiped, and slammed doors. Mrs. Chamberlayne's faint colour returned to her cheek, her charge was still safe in her keeping.

One June morning this young kinswoman of Mrs. Chamberlayne's woke from a refreshing sleep, and looked with an affectionate and grateful gaze about her room. It was the look of a person whose life for many weeks had been as one dark night. She had a sweet and bright morning for her awakening. Its

light came through the striped dimity curtain that met across the open window, which admitted the scents of hay and lilac time.

"Thy servant liveth-thy sun is sweet," she said, and the tears stole softly and peacefully down the wasted cheeks.

The maid came in with her trim breakfast tray; the arrangement of which Mrs. Chamberlayne had superintended, looking at it before she let it go with her head on one side as lovingly as any would-be R.A. parting with his first picture.

A picture Hirell found it, with its old silver service, pretty pale pink china, delicate white loaf, so different from the coarse, almost black bread of Bod Elian, its pat of butter impressed with the prettiest of all the little wooden stamps kept for the purpose in the Brockhurst dairy, the freshly-gathered flowers on its snowy cloth, the magazine just come by post, the little pearl paper knife beside it-all these Hirell's soft, grateful eye took note of as the servant placed the tray upon her bed, and covered her shoulders, and told her she looked so much better, and "more nat'ral," and didn't she smell the hay? They were