and poor; but now his feelings were much too personal for the atmosphere into which he was just about to enter. He stopped at the door to tell John that he would take a stroll round the garden before he came in, as he had a headache, and went on through the walks which were sacred to Lucy, not thinking of her, but wondering bitterly whether anybody would stand by him, or whether an utterly baseless slander would outweigh all the five years of his life which he had spent among the people of Carlingford. Meanwhile John stood at the door and watched him, and of course thought it was very "queer." "It ain't as if he'd a-been sitting up all night, like our young ladies," said John to himself, and unconsciously noted the circumstance down in his memory against the Curate.

When Mr Wentworth entered the sick-room, he found all very silent and still in that darkened chamber. Lucy was seated by the bedside, wrapped in a loose dressing-gown, and looking as if she had not slept for several nights; while Miss Wodehouse, who, notwithstanding all her anxiety to be of use, was far more helpless than Lucy, stood on the side next the door, with her eyes fixed on her sister, watching with pathetic unserviceableness the moment when she could be of some use. As for the patient himself, he lay in a kind of stupor, from which he scarcely ever could be roused, and showed no tokens at the moment of hearing or seeing anybody. The scene was doubly sad, but it was without the excitement which so often breathes in the atmosphere of death. There was no eager listening for the last word, no last outbreaks of tenderness. The daughters were both hushed into utter silence; and Lucy, who was more reasonable than her sister, had even given up those wistful beseeching looks at the patient, with which Miss Wodehouse still regarded him, as if perhaps he might be thus persuaded to speak. The nurse whom

Dr Majoribanks had sent to assist them was visible through an open door, sleeping very comfortably in the adjoining room. Mr Wentworth came into the silent chamber with all his anxieties throbbing in his heart, bringing life at its very height of agitation and tumult into the presence of death. He went forward to the bed, and tried for an instant to call up any spark of intelligence, that might yet exist within the mind of the dying man; but Mr Wodehouse was beyond the voice of any priest. The Curate said the prayers for the dying at the bedside, suddenly filled with a great pity for the man who was thus taking leave unawares of all this mournfulsplendid world. Though the young man knew many an ordinary sentiment about the vanity of life, and had given utterance to that effect freely in the way of his duty, he was still too fresh in his heart to conceive actually that any one could leave the world without poignant regrets; and when his prayer was finished, he stood looking at the patient with inexpressible compassion. Mr Wodehouse had scarcely reached old age; he was well-off, and only a week ago seemed to have so much to enjoy; now, here he lay stupefied, on the edge of the grave, unable to respond even by a look to the love that surrounded him. Once more there rose in the heart of the young priest a natural impulse of resentment and indignation; and when he thought of the cause of this change, he remembered Wodehouse's threat, and roused himself from his contemplation of the dying to think of the probable fate of those who must live.

"Has he made his will?" said Mr Wentworth, suddenly. He forgot that it was Lucy who was standing by him; and it was only when he caught a glance of reproach and horror from her eyes that he recollected how abrupt his question was. "Pardon me," he said; "you think me heartless to speak of it at such a time; but tell me, if you

know; Miss Wodehouse, has he made his will?"

"Oh, Mr Wentworth, I don't know anything about business," said the elder sister. "He said he would; but we have had other things to think of-more important things," said poor Miss Wodehouse, wringing her hands, and looking at Mr Wentworth with eyes full of warning and meaning, beseeching him not to betray her secret. She came nearer to the side of the bed on which Lucy and the Curate were standing, and plucked at his sleeve in her anxiety. "We have had very different things to think of. Oh, Mr Wentworth, what does it matter?" said the poor lady, interposing her anxious looks, which suggested every kind of misfortune, between the two.

"It matters everything in the world," said Mr Wentworth. "Pardon me if I wound you—I must speak; if it is possible to rouse him, an effort must be made.. Send for Mr Waters. He must not be allowed to go out of the world and leave your interests in the hands of-"

"Oh, hush, Mr Wentworth, hush! -oh, hush, hush! Don't say any more," cried Miss Wodehouse, grasping his arm in her terror.

Lucy rose from where she had been sitting at the bedside. She had grown paler than before, and looked almost stern in her youthful gravity. "I will not permit my father to be disturbed," she said. "I don't know what you mean, or what you are talking of; but he is not to be disturbed. Do you think I will let him be vexed in his last hours about money or anybody's interest?" she said, turning upon the Curate a momentary glance of scorn. Then she sat down again, with a pang of disappointment added to her grief. She could not keep her heart so much apart from him, as not to expect a little comfort from his presence. And there had been comfort in his prayers and his looks; but to hear him speak of wills and worldly affairs by her

father's deathbed, as any other man might have done, went to Lucy's heart. She sat down again, putting her hand softly upon the edge of the pillow, to guard the peace of those last moments which were ebbing away so rapidly. What if all the comfort in the world hung upon it? Could she let her kind father be troubled in his end for anything so miserable? Lucy turned her indignant eyes upon the others with silent resolution. It was she who was his protector

now.

"But it must be done," said Mr Wentworth. "You will understand me hereafter. Miss Wodehouse, you must send for Mr Waters, and in the mean time I will do what I can to rouse him. It is no such cruelty as you think," said the Curate, with humility; "it is not for money or interest only-it concerns all the comfort of your life."

This he said to Lucy, who sat defending her father. She, for her part, looked up at him with eyes that broke his heart. At that moment of all others, the unfortunate Curate perceived, by a sudden flash of insight, that nothing less than love could look at him with such force of disappointment and reproach and wounded feeling. He replied to the look by a gesture of mingled entreaty and despair.

words which began to be audible. Lucy had risen up also and stood looking at her father still with her look of defence. As the feeble lips babbled forth unintelligible words, Lucy's pale face grew sterner and sterner. As for Miss Wodehouse, she stood behind, crying and trembling. "Oh, Mr Wentworth, do you think it is returning life-do you think he is better?" she cried, looking wistfully at the Curate; and between the two young people, who were leaning with looks and feelings so different over his bed, the patient lay struggling with those terrible bonds of weakness, labouring to find expression for something which wrought him into a fever of excitement. While Mr Wentworth bent his ear closer and closer, trying to make some sense of the inarticulate torrent of sound, Lucy, inspired by grief and horror and indignation, leaned over her father on the other side, doing everything possible to calm him. "Oh, papa, don't say any more-don't say any more; we understand. you," she cried, and put her soft hands upon his flushed forehead, and her cheek to his. "No more, no more," cried the girl in the dulled ear which could not hear. "We will do everything you wish-we understand all," said Lucy. Mr Wentworth withdrew vanquished in that strange struggle -he stood looking on while she caressed and calmed and subdued into silence the dying passion which he would have given anything in the world to stimulate into clearer utterance. She had baffled his efforts, made him helpless to serve her, perhaps injured herself cruelly; but all the more the Curate loved her for it, as she expanded over her dying father, with the white sleeves hanging loose about her arms like the white wings of an angel, as he thought. Gradually the agony of utterance got subdued, and then Lucy resumed her position by the bed. "He shall not be disturbed," she said again, through lips that were parched with emotion; and so sat watchful over him, a guarVOL. XCV.-NO. DLXXIX.

dian immovable, ready to defy all the world in defence of his peace.

Mr Wentworth turned away with his heart full. He would have liked to go and kiss her hand or her sleeve or anything belonging to her; and yet he was impatient beyond expression, and felt that she had baffled and vanquished him. Miss Wodehouse stood behind, still looking on with a half perception of what had happened; but the mind of the elder sister was occupied with vain hopes and fears, such as inexperienced people are subject to in the presence of death.

"He heard what you said," said Miss Wodehouse; "don't you think that was a good sign? Oh, Mr Wentworth, sometimes I think he looks a little better," said the poor lady, looking wistfully into the Curate's face. Mr Wentworth could only shake his head as he hurried away.

"I must go and consult Mr Waters," he said as he passed her. "I shall come back presently ;" and then Miss Wodehouse followed him to the door, to beg him not to speak to Mr Waters of anything particular-"For papa has no confidence in him," she said, anxiously. The Curate was nearly driven to his wits' end as he hastened out. He forgot the clouds that surrounded him in his anxiety about this sad household; for it seemed but too evident that Mr Wodehouse had made no special provision for his daughters; and to think of Lucy under the power of her unknown brother, made Mr Wentworth's blood boil.

The shutters were all put up that afternoon in the prettiest house in Grange Lane. The event took Carlingford altogether by surprise; but other events just then were moving the town into the wildest excitement; for nothing could be heard, far or near, of poor little Rosa Elsworthy, and everybody was aware that the last time she was seen in Carlingford she was standing by herself in the dark, at Mr Wentworth's garden-door.

E

THE constant ebb and flow of our national life has worked such change in most of our old towns, that the modern English pilgrim (say a gentleman travelling in the hardware line) who visits Winchester, and spares an hour for the Cathedral and the College, has need to look at his guide-book to remember that he stands in what was, for something like four centuries, the capital of England; where Egbert, and the Conqueror, and the Red King, and Henry the Scholar, held their courts, and which, even so late as the reign of Henry III., disputed precedency with the citizens of London. In the old minster there the most famous of the WestSaxon kings were buried; nay, though disturbed by the Danes, their very bones are at this day reputed to lie (somewhat confused indeed, and of doubtful authenticity) in those wooden arks of quaint workmanship comparatively modern, yet ancient enough to be often taken for the original receptacles which rest in the chancel of the present Cathedral. But a local antiquarian, of any zeal for the honour of his city, would have far more than this to tell. Did not the great Arthur himself "flos regum"-build him a castle here, in days when the Saxon was not yet in the land? Was not this Camelot? Does not the wondrous Round Table itself, a great fact (only that nothing is so deceptive as facts), hang to this day over the heads of her Majesty's judges, like Damocles's sword, in the Nisi Prius Court there? Again, was it not here that Guy of Warwick slew Colbrand the Dane, that "Goliah of the pagans," and, like a second David, laid the huge head and casque at the feet of Athelstan in the Danemarke? The giant's very axe might have been seen and touched, as a relic of the combat, but that it was stolen, with other

-

treasures, during the Great Rebellion. But if we listen to the store of legends which are written in Winchester chronicles, we shall never get to the College at all, within the compass of these pages; and it is to the College, good reader, that our special pilgrimage is to be made.

Leave the city streets, then, and pass across the Cathedral Closestopping for one instant, if you please, to look in through the open door of the noble vista of the nave, and make a short turn to your left into the lane which is called College Street, and which, excepting an undue proportion of pastrycooks' and fruiterers' shops, has little to betoken the approach to so ancient and illustrious a seat of learning. We pass a long and somewhat blank wall, and stand before the gateway tower of St Mary's College. If your mind is preoccupied with the architectural fame of its great founder, and his princely munificence,' you may possibly be disappointed at first sight. Built on the very outskirts of the city, in the warlike days of the Plantagenets, the exterior of the college was designed with at least as much regard to security as ornament. windows, few and narrow, and closely barred-two or three quaint little oriels which appear in old prints have long been blocked upgive a somewhat blind and prisonlike look to the street-front, which is not altogether inviting. You have to remember what the good old times of Richard II. were, and what sort of visitors were apt occasionally to knock at your gates and look in at your drawing-room windows in those days, before you can fully appreciate the suitableness of the design to the circumstances.

The

"In those days," says the chronicler Froissart, "there reigned in England a priest called William of Wykeham; this William of Wyke

ham was so much in favour with the King of England that everything was done by him, and nothing was done without him." He did "reign," indeed, for some years, almost as really as Dunstan; and might have been almost pardoned if he had written of Edward Longshanks as Wolsey is said to have done of his royal patron-" Ego et rex meus." He did something of the kind, which wellnigh got him into trouble early in his life; for, having been appointed royal surveyor and architect, and in that capacity having rebuilt Windsor Castle for his majesty, he had the vanity to set up in some conspicuous part of his new works the legend, sys MADE WUKEHAMan assumption which his enemies at court rebuked as little short of treason. His friends made an excuse for him which it is to be hoped he was much too honest to make for himself, but which enthusiastic Wykehamists, in biographies and otherwise, profess to believe to this day-that he intended to express that the castle was the making of him; a prophetical foresight of future royal favours scarcely less presumptuous. However, Wykeham-or William Long, for if he had any real patronymic, it was that weathered that storm, and others more perilous afterwards; became twice Lord Chancellor, and Bishop of Winchester. He was perhaps the greatest pluralist in an age of pluralities, holding something like seventeen canonries in different dioceses, Welsh and English, besides a deanery and an archdeaconry; to which accumulation of good things if any stout church-reformer made objection, it might be answered that he applied the proceeds to better purpose than any ordinary seventeen canons, dean, and archdeacon put together. He did many munificent acts besides, as his diocese and cathedral bear witness; but more especially he founded and endowed, of his

own sole charges, the two great colleges of St Mary of Winchester in Oxford (commonly known as New College), and St Mary College in Winchester; this latter as a nursery for the former.

Long before this, Winchester had been known as "a school of kings." There Egbert had placed his son Ethelwulf under the teaching of Bishop Helmstan, and there the great Alfred had sat at the feet of St Swithun. The Saxon Athelwold, whose praise was in all the churches, a true saint and scholar, was in all likelihood educated there; and his biographer, Archbishop Alfric, has an evident pride, near nine hundred years ago, in writing himself down "Wintonensis alumnus."* There had been a "High School" there from time that had become almost immemorial even in Wykeham's days; and even that, tradition would have said, was a mere modern institution-a temple of Apollo had preceded the monks' cloister. But later and more personal memories influenced Wykeham's choice. In that High School he had himself been educated by a rich friend's liberality; he saw it now falling into decay; he saw young scholars, poor but deserving, much in need of the same help which he had found; and his first idea seems to have been to re-establish and endow his old school for this purpose. He was not a man to do things by halves; and in 1373 he appears to have reopened it at once with seventy scholars, for whose charges he undertook to provide. They were lodged on St Giles's Hill, just outside the city; and there, under Richard de Herton and other masters, the infant community remained for twenty years. Meanwhile, Wykeham was gradually carrying out the rest of his plan; purchasing "Otterbourne Mead and other lands in Winchester, for the site of his college there, and gradually establishing in Oxford the mother institution-the "New Col