did. No honest parson would ever do it; of all mean acts it would be the meanest. Yet there are very few parsons' wives who are not prepared for the chance of it. And Mrs. Hales knew that she "had her faults," and that Mr. Hales was quite up to them. At any rate, here they were, and here they meant to live their lives out, having a pretty old place to see to, and kind old neighbours to see to them. Also they had a much better thing, three good children of their own; enough to make work and pleasure for them, but not to be a perpetual worry, inasmuch as they all were girls three very good girls, of their sort- thinking as they were told to think, and sure to make excellent women.

and the sun was beginning to curtail those brief attentions which he paid to Coombe Lorraine. He still looked fairly at it, as often as clouds allowed in the morning, almost up to eight o'clock; and after that he could still see down it, over the shoulder of the hill. But he felt that his rays made no impression (the land so fell away from him), they seemed to do nothing but dance away downward, like a lasher of glittering water.

Therefore, in this garden grew soft and gently natured plants, and flowers of delicate tint, that sink in the exhaustion of the sun-glare. The sun, in almost every garden, sucks the beauty out of all the flowers; he stains the sweet violet even in March; he spots the primrose and the periwinkle; he takes the down off the heartsease blossom; he browns the pure lily of the valley in May; and, after that, he dims the tint of every rose that he opens: and yet, in spite of all his mischief, which of them does not rejoice in him?

Alice Lorraine liked all these girls. They were so kind, and sweet, and simple; and when they had nothing whatever to say, they always said it so prettily. And they never pretended to interfere with any of her opinions, or to come into competition with her, or to talk to her father, when she was present, more The bold chase, cut in the body of the than she well could put up with. For she hill, has rugged sides, and a steep dewas a very jealous child; and they were scent for a quarter of a mile below the well aware of it. And they might let house - the cleft of the chalk on either their father be her mother's brother ten side growing deeper towards the mouth times over, before she would hear of any of the coombe. The main road to the "Halesy element"-as she once had house goes up the coombe, passing under called it coming into her family more the eastern scarp, but winding away from than it had already entered. And they it here and there to obtain a better footknew right well, while they thought it too ing. The old house, facing down the bad, that this young Alice had sadly hill, stands so close to the head of the quenched any hopes any one of them coombe, that there is not more than an might have cherished of being a Lady acre or so of land behind and between it Lorraine some day. She had made her and the crest, and this is partly laid out poor brother laugh over their tricks, when as a courtyard, partly occupied by outthey were sure that they had no tricks; and she always seemed to put a wrong construction upon any little harmless thing they did. Still they could afford to forget all that; and they did forget it, especially now when Hilary would soon be at home again.

It was now July, and no one had heard for weeks from that same Hilary; but this made no one anxious, because it was the well-known manner of the youth. Sometimes they would hear from him by every post, although the post now came thrice in a week; and then again for weeks together, not a line would he vouchsafe. And as a general rule, he was getting on better when he kept strict silence.

Therefore Alice had no load on her mind at all worth speaking of, while she worked in her sloping flower-garden, early of a summer afternoon. It was now getting on for St. Swithin's day;

buildings, stables, and so on, and the ruinous keep, ingloriously used as a limekiln; while the rest of the space is planted in and out with spruce and birch trees, and anything that will grow there. Among them winds a narrow outlet to the upper and open Downs too steep a way for carriage-wheels, but something in appearance betwixt a bridle-path and a timber-track, such as is known in those parts by the old English name, a “bostall."

As this led to no dwelling-house for miles and miles away, but only to the crown of the hills and the desolate tract of sheep-walks, ninety-nine visitors out of a hundred to the house came up the coombe, so that Alice from her flowergarden commanding the course of the drive from the plains, could nearly always. foresee the approach of any interruption.. Here she had pretty seats under labur

"Well, you know what dear mamma is. She really fancied that we might seem (now there is so much going on) really unkind and heartless, unless we came up to see how you were. Papa would have come; but he feels it so steep, unless he is coming up to dinner; and the pony, you know- Oh she did

nums, and even a bower of jessamine, | said Alice; "but what could have made and a noble view all across the weald, you come up the hill, so early in the day, even to the range of the North Downs; dears?" so that it was a pleasant place for all who love soft sward and silence, and have time to enjoy that very rare romance of the seasons—a hot English summer. Only there was one sad drawback. Lady Valeria's windows straightly overlooked this pleasant spot, and Lady Valeria never could see why she should not overlook everything. Beyond and above such a thing! The wicked little dear, all other things, she took it as her own she got into the garden, and devoured special duty to watch her dear grand- 10 worth of the grand new flower, just daughter Alice; and now in her eighty-introduced by the Duchess Dallia,' or second year she was proud of her eye-Dellia,' I can't spell the name. And sight, and liked to prove its power. mamma was so upset that both of them "Here they come again!" cried Alice, have been unwell ever since." talking to herself or her rake and trowel; "will they never be content? I told them on Monday that I knew nothing, and they will not believe it. I have a great mind to hide myself in my hole, like that poor rag and bone boy. It goes beyond my patience quite to be crossexamined and not believed."

Oh, Dahlias!" answered Alice, whose grapes were rather sour, because her father had refused to buy any; "flaunty things in my opinion. But Caroline, Madge, and Cecil, have you ever set eyes on my new rose?"

Of course they all ran to behold the new rose; which was no other than the Those whom she saw coming up the "Persian yellow," a beautiful stranger, steep road at struggling and panting in- not yet at home. The countless petals of tervals, were her three good cousins brilliant yellow folding inward full of from the Rectory - Caroline, Margaret, light, and the dimple in the centre, shy of and Cecil Hales; rather nice-looking and yielding inlet to its virgin gold, and then active girls, resembling their father in the delicious fragrance, too refined for face and frame, and their excellent moth-random sniffers, these and other deer in their spiritual parts. The decorat- lights found entry into the careless beed period of young ladies, the time of holder's mind.

wearing great crosses and starving, and "It makes one think of astrologers," sticking as a thorn in the flesh of man-cried Caroline Hales; "I declare it does! kind, lay as yet in the happy future. A Look at all the little stars! It is quite parson's daughters were as yet content like a celestial globe." to leave the parish to their father, helping him only in the Sunday-school, and for the rest of the week minding their own dresses, or some delicate jobs of pastry, or gossip.

Though Alice had talked so of running away, she knew quite well that she never could do it, unless it were for a childish joke; and swiftly she was leaving now the pretty and petty world of childhood, sinking into that distance whence the failing years recover it. Therefore, instead of running away, she ran down the hill to meet her cousins, for truly she liked them decently.

"Oh, you dear, how are you? How wonderfully good to come to meet us! Madge, I shall be jealous in a moment if you kiss my Alice so. Cecil what are you thinking of? Why, you kissed your cousin Alice!"

"So it is, I do declare!" said Madge. But Cecil shook her head. She was the youngest, and much the prettiest, and by many degrees the most elegant of the daughters of the Rectory. Cecil had her own opinion about many things; but waited till it should be valuable.

"It is much more like a cowslip-ball," Alice answered, carelessly. "Come into my bower now. And then we can all of us go to sleep."

The three girls were a little hot and thirsty, after their climb of the chalky road; and a bright spring ran through the bower, as they knew, ready to harmonize with sherbet, sherry-wine, or even shrub itself, as had once been proved by Hilary.

"How delicious this is! How truly never sweet!" cried the eldest and perhaps most loquacious Miss Hales; "and how nice of you always to keep a glass! A spring is such a rarity on these hills;

"Oh yes, you have all done it very nicely. What more could I wish?"

papa says it comes from a different I came to your house and pried into some stratum. What a stratum is, I have no piece of gossip about you that I had idea. It ought to be straight, one may picked up in the village. Would you safely say that; but it always seems to be think that I had a right to do it?" crooked. Now, can you explain that, darling Alice? You are so highly taught, and so clever!"

"Now, we don't want a lecture," said Madge, the blunt one; "the hill is too steep to have that at the top. Alice knows everything, no doubt, in the way of science, and all that. But what we are dying to know is what became of that grand old astrologer's business."

"This is the seventh or eighth time now," Alice answered, hard at bay; "that you will keep on about some little thing that the servants are making mountains of. My father best knows what it is. Let us go to his room and ask him." "Oh no, dear! oh no, dear! How could we do that? What would dear uncle say to us? But come, now tell us. You do know something. Why are you so mysterious? Mystery is a thing altogether belonging to the dark ages, now. We have heard such beautiful stories that we cannot manage to sleep at night without knowing what they are all about. Now, do tell us everything. You may just as well tell us every single thing. We are sure to find it all out, you know: and then we shall all be down on you. Among near relations, dear mamma says, there is nothing to compare with candour." "Don't you see, Alice," Madge broke in, "we are sure to know sooner or later; and how can it matter which it is?”

"To be sure," answered Alice, "it cannot matter. And so you shall all know, later."

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No, dear, of course not. But nobody dares to gossip about us, you know. Papa would very soon stop all that."

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Of course he would. And because my father is too high-minded to meddle with it, am I to be questioned perpetually? Come in, Caroline, come in, Margaret, come in, dear Cecil; I know where papa is, and then you can ask him all about it."

"I have three little girls at their first sampler, such little sweets! " said Caroline; "I only left them for half an hour, because we felt sure you must want us, darling. It now seems as if you could hold your own in a cross-stitch we must not penetrate. It is nothing to us. What could it be? Only don't come, for goodness' sake, don't come rushing down the hill, dear creature, to implore our confidence suddenly."

"Dear creature!" cried Alice, for the moment borne beyond her young self-possession "I am not quite accustomed to old women's words. Nobody shall call me a 'dear creature' except my father (who knows better) and poor old Nancy Stilgoe."

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Now, don't be vexed with them," Cecil stopped to say in a quiet manner, while the two other maidens tucked up their skirts, and down the hill went, rapidly; "they never meant to vex you, Alice; only you yourself must feel how dreadfully tantalizing it is to hear such sweet things as really made us afraid of our own shadows; and then to be told

This made the three sisters look a lit-not to ask any questions!" tle at one another, quietly. And then, as a desperate resource, Madge, the rough one, laid eyes upon Alice, and, with a piercing look, exclaimed, "You don't even understand what it means yourself!"

"Of course, I do not," answered Alice; "how many times have I told you so, yet you always want further particulars! Dear cousins, now you must be satisfied with a conclusion of your own."

"I cannot at all see that," said Caroline.

ret.

"Really, you are too bad," cried Marga

66 "Do you asked Cecil.

think that this is quite fair?"

"I am sorry if I have been rude to your sisters," the placable Alice answered; "but it is so vexatious of them that they doubt my word so. Now, tell me what you have heard. It is wonderful how any foolish story spreads."

"We heard, on the very best authority, that the old astrologer appeared to you, descending from the comet in a fire-balloon, and warned you to prepare for the judgment-day, because the black-death would destroy in one night every soul in Coombe Lorraine; and as soon as you heard it you fainted away, and Sir Roland ran up and found you lying, as white as wax, in a shroud made out of the ancient gentleman's long foreign cloak."

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Then, beg cousin Caroline's pardon "You are too many for me, all of you," | for me. No wonder she wanted to hear Alice answered, steadfastly. "Suppose more. Suppose more. And I must not be touchy about

my veracity, after lying in my shroud so long. But truly I cannot tell you a word to surpass what you have heard already; nor even to come up to it. There was not one single wonderful thing-not enough to keep up the interest. I was bitterly disappointed; and so, of course, was every one."

"Cousin Alice," Cecil answered, looking at her pleasantly, "you are different from us, or, at any rate, from my sisters. You scarcely seem to know the way to tell the very smallest of small white lies. I am very sorry always; still I must tell some of them."

"No, Cecil, no. You need tell none; if you only make up your mind not to do it. You are but a very little older than I am, and surely you might begin afresh. Suppose you say at your prayers in the morning, Lord, let me tell no lie today!'

With these words, she disappeared; and when the good rector had mounted the hill, "Alice, Alice!" resounded vainly from the drive among the shrubs and flowers, and echoed from the ramparts of the coombe.

CHAPTER XX.

ONE part of Coombe Lorraine is famous for a seven-fold echo, connected by tradition with a tale of gloom and terror. Mr. Hales, being proud of his voice, put this echo through all its peals, or chime of waning resonance. It could not quite answer, "How do you do?" with "Very well, Pat, and the same to you" and its tone was rather melancholy than sprightly, as some echoes are. But of course a great deal depended on the weather, as well as on the time of day. Echo, for the most part, sleeps by daylight, and strikes her gong as the sun goes down.

"Now, Alice, you know that I never could do it. When I know that I mean Failing of any satisfaction here, the to tell ever so many; how could I hope Rev. Struan Hales rode on. "Ride on, to be answered? No doubt I am a story-ride on !" was his motto always; and he teller - just the same as the rest of us; and to pray against it, when I mean to do it, would be a very double-faced thing."

"To be sure it would. It never struck me in that particular way before. But Uncle Struan must know best what ought to be done in your case."

We must not make a fuss of trifles," Cecil answered, prudently; "papa can always speak for himself; and he means to come up the hill to do it, if Mr. Gate's pony is at home. And now I must run after them, or Madge will call me a little traitor. Oh, here papa comes, I do declare. Good-bye, darling, and don't be

vexed."

"It does seem a little too bad," thought Alice, as the portly form of the rector, mounted on a borrowed pony, came round the corner at the bottom of the coombe, near poor Bonny's hermitage-"a little too bad that nothing can be done without its being chattered about. And I know how annoyed papa will be, if Uncle Struan comes plaguing him again. We cannot even tell what it means ourselves; and whatever it means, it concerns us only. I do think curiosity is the worst, though it may be the smallest vice. He expects to catch me, of course, and get it all out of me as he declared he would. But sharp as his eyes are, I don't believe he can have managed to spy me yet. I will off to my rockwork, and hide myself, till I see the heels of his pony going sedately down the hill again."

seldom found it fail. Nevertheless, as he rang the bell (which he was at last compelled to do), he felt in the crannies of his heart some wavers as to the job he was come upon. A coarse nature often despises a fine one, and yet is most truly afraid of it. Mr. Hales believed that in knowledge of the world he was entitled to teach Sir Roland; and yet he could not help feeling how calmly any impertinence would be stopped.

The clergyman found his brother-inlaw sitting alone, as he was too fond of doing, in his little favourite book-room, walled off from the larger and less comfortable library. Sir Roland was beginning to yield more and more to the gentle allurements of solitude. Some few months back he had lost the only friend with whom he had ever cared to interchange opinions, a learned parson of the neighbourhood, an antiquary, and an elegant scholar. And ever since that he had been sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of isolation and privacy. For hours he now would sit alone, with books before him, yet seldom heeded, while he mused and meditated, or indulged in visions mingled of the world he read of and the world he had to deal with. As no less an authority than Dr. Johnson has it "This invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being, is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach. The dreamer retires to his apartment, shuts out the cares and interruptions of

mankind, and abandons himself to his | better and kinder team of maids is not to own fancy." And again-"This cap- be found in thirteen parishes. Speak to tivity it is necessary for every man to the contrary who will." break, who has any desire to be wise or useful. To regain liberty, he must find the means of flying from himself; he must, in opposition to the Stoic precept, teach his desires to fix upon external things; he must adopt the joys and the pains of others, and excite in his mind the want of social pleasures and amicable communication."