"Then you know the reason."

"I don't call it a reason. Really, you have no right to shut yourself up from everything. You will be getting moped to death."

"But do I look moped?" she said; and he looked at her, and couldn't help admitting to himself, reluctantly, that she did not. So he re-opened fire from another point.

"You will wear yourself out, nursing every old woman in the parish."

"But I don't nurse every old woman."

Yes, I do; I remember her ever since I was a child."

"Ah, I forgot; I have often heard her talk of you. Then you ought not to be surprised at anything I may do for her."

"She is a good, kind old woman, I know. But still I must say, Katie, you ought to think of your friends and relations a little, and what you owe to society."

"Indeed, I do think of my friends and relations very much, and I should have liked, of all things, to have been with you yesterday. You ought to be pitying me, instead of scolding me."

"My dear Katie, you know I didn't mean to scold you; and nobody admires the way you give yourself up to visiting,

only you ought to have a little pleasure sometimes. People have a right to think of themselves and their own happiness a little."

"Perhaps I don't find visiting, and all that sort of thing, as you call it, so very miserable. But now, Tom, you saw in my letter that poor Betty's son has got into trouble?"

"Yes; and that is what brought on her attack, you said."

"I believe so. She was in a sad state about him all yesterday,-so painfully eager and anxious. She is better to-day; but still I think it would do her good if you would see her, and say you will be a friend to her son. Would you mind?"

"It was just what I wished to do yesterday. I will do all I can for him, I'm sure. I always liked him as a boy; you can tell her that. But I don't feel, somehow, to-day, at least, as if I could do any good by seeing her."

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Oh, why not?"

"I don't think I'm in the right humour. Is she very ill?"

"Yes, very ill indeed; I don't think she can recover."

"Well, you see, Katie, I'm not used to death-beds. I shouldn't say the right sort of thing."

"How do you mean-the right sort of thing?"

"Oh, you know. her about her soul. and it isn't my place."

I couldn't talk to

I'm not fit for it,

"No, indeed, it isn't. But you can remind her of old times, and say a kind word about her son."

do

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Very well, if you don't think I shall any harm."

"I'm sure it will comfort her. And now tell me about yesterday."

They sat talking for some time in the same low tone, and Tom began to forget his causes of quarrel with the world, and gave an account of the archery party from his own point of view. Katie saw, with a woman's quickness, that he avoided mentioning Mary, and smiled to herself, and drew her own conclusions.

At last, there was a slight movement

"Well, Betty, I am very glad I have seen you once more; I shan't forget it. Harry shan't want a friend while I live."

"The Lord bless you, master Tom, for that word," said the dying woman, returning the pressure, as her eyes filled with tears. Katie, who had been watching her carefully from the other side of the bed, made him a sign to go.

"Good-bye, Betty," he said; "I won't forget, you may be sure; God bless you ;" and then, disengaging his hand gently, went out again into the porch, where he sat down to wait for his cousin.

In a few minutes the nurse returned, and Katie came out of the cottage soon afterwards.

"Now I will walk up home with you," she said. "You must come in and see papa. Well, I'm sure you must be glad you went in. Was not I right?"

"Yes, indeed; I wish I could have said something more to comfort her." "You couldn't have said more. was just what she wanted."

It

"But where is her son? I ought to see him before I go."

"He has gone to the Doctor's for some medicine. He will be back soon.'

"Well, I must see him; and I should like to do something for him at once. I'm not very flush of money, but I must give you something for him. You'll take it; I shouldn't like to offer it to him."

"I hardly think he wants money; they are well off now. He earns good wages, and Betty has done her washing up to this week."

Yes, but he will be fined, I suppose, for this assault; and then, if she should die, there will be the funeral expenses."

"Very well; as you please," she said; and Tom proceeded to hand over to her all his ready money, except a shilling or two. After satisfying his mind thus he looked at her, and said—

"Do you know, Katie, I don't think I ever saw you so happy and in such spirits?"

"There now! And yet you began talking to me as if I were looking sad enough to turn all the beer in the parish

"Well, so you ought to be, according to Cocker, spending all your time in sick rooms."

"According to who?"

'According to Cocker." "Who is Cocker?"

"Oh, I don't know; some old fellow who wrote the rules of arithmetic, I believe; it's only a bit of slang. But, I repeat, you have a right to be sad, and it's taking an unfair advantage of your relations to look as pleasant as you do."

Katie laughed; "You ought not to say so at any rate," she said, "for you look all the pleasanter for your visit to a sick room.'

"Did I look very unpleasant before?" "Well, I don't think you were in a very good humour.”

"No, I was in a very bad humour, and talking to you and poor old Betty has set me right, I think. But you said her's was a special case. It must be very sad work in general."

"Only when one sees people in great pain, or when they are wicked, and quarrelling, or complaining about nothing; then I do get very low sometimes. But even then it is much better than keeping to oneself. Anything is better than thinking of oneself, and one's own troubles."

"I dare say you are right," said Tom, recalling his morning's meditations, "especially when one's troubles are homemade. Look, here's an old fellow who gave me a lecture on that subject before I saw you this morning, and took me for the apothecary's boy."

They were almost opposite David's door, at which he stood with a piece of work in his hand. He had seen Miss Winter from his look-out window, and had descended from his board in hopes of hearing news.

Katie returned his respectful and anxious salute, and said, "She is no worse, David. We left her quite out of pain and very quiet."

"Ah, 'tis to be hoped as she'll hev a peaceful time on't now, poor soul," said David; "I've a been to farmer Grove's, and I hopes as he'll do summat about

"I'm glad to hear it," said Miss Winter, "and my cousin here, who knew Harry very well when they were little boys together, has promised to help him. This is Harry's best friend," she said to Tom, "who has done more than any one to keep him right."

David seemed a little embarrassed, and began jerking his head about when his acquaintance of the morning, whom he had scarcely noticed before, was introduced by Miss Winter as my cousin."

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"I wish to do all I can for him," said Tom, "and I'm very glad to have made your acquaintance. You must let me know whenever I can help ;" and he took out a card and handed it to David, who looked at it, and then said,

"And I be to write to you, sir, then, if Harry gets into trouble?"

'Yes, but we must keep him out of trouble, even home-made ones, which don't leave good marks, you know," said Tom.

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as

"And thaay be nine out o' ten o' aal as comes to a man, sir," said David, I've a told Harry scores o' times." "That seems to be your text, David," said Tom, laughing.

"Ah, and 'tis a good un too, sir. Ax Miss Winter else. 'Tis a sight better to hev the Lord's troubles while you be about it, for thaay as hasn't makes wus for theirselves out o' nothin'. Dwon't em, Miss?"

"Yes; you know that I agree with you, David."

"Good-bye, then," said Tom, holding out his hand, "and mind you let me hear from you."

"What a queer old bird, with his whole wisdom of man packed up small for ready use, like a quack doctor," he said, as soon as they were out of hearing.

"Indeed, he isn't the least like a quack doctor. I don't know a better man in the parish, though he is rather obstinate, like all the rest of them."

"I didn't mean to say anything against him, I assure you," said Tom; "on the contrary I think him a fine old fellow. But I didn't think so this morning, when he showed me the way to Betty's cottage." The fact was that Tom

saw all things and persons with quite a different pair of eyes from those which he had been provided with when he arrived in Englebourn that morning. He even made allowances for old Mr. Winter, who was in his usual querulous state at luncheon, though perhaps it Iwould have been difficult in the whole neighbourhood to find a more pertinent comment on and illustration of the constable's text than the poor old man furnished, with his complaints about his own health and all he had to do and think of, and everybody about him. It did strike Tom, however, as very wonderful how such a character as Katie's could have grown up under the shade of, and in constant contact with, such an one as her father's. He wished his uncle goodbye soon after luncheon, and he and Katie started again down the villageshe to return to her nursing and he on his way home. He led his horse by the bridle and walked by her side down the street. She pointed to the Hawk's Lynch as they walked along, and said, "You should ride up there; it is scarcely out of your way. Mary and I used to walk there every day when she was here, and she was so fond of it."

At the cottage they found Harry Winburn. He came out, and the two young men shook hands, and looked one another over, and exchanged a few shy sentences. Tom managed with difficulty to say the little he had to say, but tried to make up for it by a hearty manner. It was not the time or place for any unnecessary talk; so in a few minutes he was mounted and riding up the slope towards the heath. "I should say he must be half a stone lighter than I," he thought, "and not quite so tall; but he looks as hard as iron, and tough as whipcord. What a No. 7 he'd make in a heavy crew! Poor fellow, he seems dreadfully cut up. I hope I shall be able to be of use to him. Now for this place which Katie showed me from the village street.”

He pressed his horse up the steep side of the Hawk's Lynch. The exhilaration of the scramble, and the sense of power, and of some slight risk, which

he felt as he helped on the gallant beast with hand and knee and heel, and the loose turf and stones flew from his hoofs and rolled down the hill behind him, made his eyes kindle and his pulse beat quicker as he reached the top and pulled up under the Scotch firs. "This was her favourite walk, then. No wonder. What an air, and what a view!" He jumped off his horse, slipped the bridle over his arm and let him pick away at the short grass and tufts of heath as he himself first stood, and then sat, and looked out over the scene which she had so often looked over. She might have sat on the very spot he was sitting on; she must have taken in the same expanse of wood and meadow, village and park, and dreamy, distant hill. Her presence seemed to fill the air round him. A rush of new thoughts and feelings swam through his brain and carried him, a willing piece of drift-man, along with them. He gave himself up to the stream, and revelled in them. His eye traced back the road along which he had ridden' in the morning, and rested on the Barton woods, just visible in the distance, on this side of the point where all outline except that of the horizon began to be lost. The flickering July air seemed to beat in a pulse of purple glory over the spot. The soft wind which blew straight from Barton seemed laden with her name, and whispered it in the firs over his head. Every nerve in his body was bounding with new life, and he could sit still no longer. He rose, sprang on his horse, and, with a shout of joy, turned from the vale and rushed away on to the heath, northwards, towards his home behind the chalk hills. He had ridden into Englebourn in the morning an almost unconscious dabbler by the margin of the great stream; he rode from the Hawk's Lynch in the afternoon over head and ears, and twenty, a hundred, ay, unnumbered fathoms below that, deep, consciously, and triumphantly in love.

But at what a pace, and in what a form! Love, at least in his first access, must be as blind a horseman as he is

peat-cutting and turf-cutting, and many a deep-rutted farm road, and tracks of heather and furze. Over them and through them went horse and manhorse rising seven, and man twenty off, a well matched pair in age for a wild ride -headlong towards the north, till a blind rut somewhat deeper than usual put an end to their career, and sent the good horse staggering forward some thirty feet on to his nose and knees, and Tom over his shoulder, on to his back in the heather.

Well, it's lucky it's no worse," thought our hero, as he picked himself up and anxiously examined the horse, who stood trembling and looking wildly puzzled at the whole proceeding; "I hope he hasn't overreached. What will the governor say? His knees are all right. Poor old boy," he said, patting him, "no wonder you look astonished. You're not in love. Come along; we won't make fools of ourselves any more. What is it?—

'A true love forsaken a new love may get,

But a neck that's once broken can never be set.'

What stuff; one may get a neck set for anything I know; but a new love -blasphemy!"

The rest of the ride passed off soberly enough, except in Tom's brain, wherein were built up in gorgeous succession castles such as-we have all built, I suppose, before now. And with the castles were built up side by side good honest resolves to be worthy of her, and win her and worship her with body, and mind, and soul. And, as a first instalment, away to the winds went all the selfish morning thoughts; and he rode down the northern slope of the chalk hills a dutiful and affectionate son, at peace with Mrs. Porter, and honouring her for her care of the treasure which he was seeking, and in good time for dinner.

"Well, dear," said Mrs. Brown to her husband when they were alone that night, "did you ever see Tom in such spirits, and so gentle and affectionate? Dear boy; there can be nothing the