The "city of the legions" still bears traces of the Roman dominion, more proud of them than were the spirited Britons in the days when these walls and other Roman buildings meant subjection to a foreign power. The walls, which are nearly perfect, now provide a pleasant walk for the citizens, a surface five or six feet broad, with a coped parapet or iron railing on either side, and trees almost as old as the walls overshadowing some parts of them. The old gates have been destroyed or removed, and three modern archways now pierce the walls; but the memory of the ancient city defences lingers in the names of some of the principal streets—Northgate, Foregate, Bridgegate, Watergate streets, etc. The Dee was approached by two of these gates, one of which opened at the lower end of Bridge street on the old bridge, which still remains, while Watergate street was similarly connected with the river. Here stands the same old tower—Water Tower—which in mediæval times served to defend the gate. A Roman column and base, like that discovered in Bridge street, stand near it among the formal evergreens, and a strange low building, seemingly entire, which distinguishes this opening, is called by antiquaries a hypocaust or Roman warming apparatus. The walls of the tower still exhibit iron staples, showing that ships were anciently moored at this place, but the river has considerably receded since these were used, for even during the civil wars there was a wide space between the tower and the shore. Another of the old towers, the Phœnix, now called King Charles's Tower, is memorable as the spot whence Charles I. watched the defeat of his troops by Cromwell on Rowton Heath or Moor. It is approached by a small stone staircase with a wooden railing, and is only large enough to hold a dozen men. The ruins of St. John's, the old Norman cathedral—the church to which King Edgar, before it had become a bishop's seat, rowed up the river with six Welsh kings as his oarsmen, himself steering the barque—are very imposing, although here and there improvements of questionable taste have been added. The new park laid out around them sets them off to great advantage, and though the date of the architecture of Harold's Chapel disproves the legend attached to it, one is none the less glad to be reminded of the obstinate love and loyalty of Englishmen to the unsuccessful hero of the battle of Hastings. He was said to have fled to Chester, and lived as a hermit in a chapel near this cathedral: as to his widow, her stay in Chester after her husband's defeat and death is an historical fact. Harold shared the same poetical fate as Arthur, Charlemagne and Barbarossa, and for over a century he was believed by the people to be alive and plotting. Higden, the chronicler of St. Werburgh's Abbey (the church which since Henry VIII. has been the cathedral, and itself stood on the site of an older church dedicated in Roman and British times to Saints Peter and Paul), naturally adopted the legend and versified it. In Saxon times, though the city was included in a large diocese, St. Chad, which ruled all the kingdom of Mercia, it was practically independent, and in the possession of various monastic houses. Of these, the greatest was the abbey of St. Werburgh. Its shrine was the goal of pilgrimages, and is said to have been endowed by the daughter of King Alfred. The present building dates from the days of William Rufus, when Hugh d'Avranches—or Lupus, as he was surnamed—earl of Chester, and one of the Conqueror's old companions, became a monk in his newly-endowed abbey, which he peopled with Benedictine monks from Bec in Normandy. Thus, sturdy British Chester is connected ecclesiastically with the first two and perhaps greatest archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, both of whom were successively abbots of Bec, and the latter of whom spent some time with Lupus in Chester. In the north transept and along the north wall of the nave are remains of masonry said to belong to that precise period. The restoration, both of the exterior, whose warm red coloring (sandstone of the neighborhood) is not one of its least attractions, and of the interior, has been thorough and careful: all old things, such as a quaint boss in the Lady Chapel representing the murder of Saint Thomas à Becket, have been carefully handled, and new things, when introduced, are strictly in keeping with the old.

WATER TOWER, WITH ROMAN HYPOCAUST, CHESTER.

KING CHARLES'S TOWER, CHESTER.

The old episcopal palace, enlarged from the abbot's house after the Reformation and the raising of the abbey into a cathedral church, still presents some of the oldest Norman remains: it is now being altered to suit the needs of the cathedral school, a foundation of Henry VIII. for twenty-four boys, from whom were to be chosen the cathedral choristers. This, like all other old foundations of the kind, has grown and become enriched. Anthony Trollope's Warden gives a good picture of the abuses and anomalies resulting from the unforeseen increase of the funds of such institutions. One of the chief benefits still retained by Chester cathedral school is a yearly exhibition to either university. The old city schools of English boroughs, as well as the almshouses and hospitals dating from mediæval times, are among the most interesting and characteristic English foundations, and the old guilds or trade companies, with their property, privileges and insignia, no less so. In Chester there are still nominally twenty-four of the latter, though scarcely any have any property or importance except that of the goldsmiths, who have an assay-master and office, and claim the examination of all plate manufactured and for sale in Chester, Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales. They also have, or had, the old historic mace of the city corporation, which was first displayed in 1508 at the laying of the foundation-stone of the unfinished south-western tower of the cathedral, was taken with the sword by the Parliamentarians during their occupation of the staunch royalist city, and afterward restored at the end of the war. The sword dates from Richard II.'s reign, when he gave it to the city just before his disgrace at Flint Castle, a little lower down the Dee. In 1506, Henry VII. expressly ordained that the mayor of Chester and his successors "shall have this sword carried before them with the point upward in the presence of all the nobles and lords of the realm of England." It seems incredible that such a relic as the mace should have been made over to a goldsmith in exchange for "new plate," but such was the fact, and the present one dates only from 1668, and was a gift from Charles, earl of Derby, "lord of Man and the Isles," who was mayor of Chester for that year.

The greatest peculiarity of Chester—greater even than its Roman walls—lies in its sunken streets and the famous "Rows." These are unique in England, and indeed in Europe. Likenesses to them are seen in Berne, Utrecht and Thun, but nothing just the same, nothing so evidently systematic and prearranged, is to be found anywhere. The principal streets, especially the four great Roman ones that quartered the camp, are sunk and cut into the rock, while the Rows are on the natural level of the ground. The reason for this has been a standing problem to antiquaries. Some have supposed that the excavation of the streets dates from Roman times, and was only due to the necessity of making work for the soldiers during long periods of inaction. The effect is most singular. Hardly any description brings it satisfactorily before the eye of one who has not seen it. The best which I have met with, and a much better one than I should be able to give from my own experience, is that of a German traveller, J.G. Kohl: "Let the reader imagine the front wall of the first floor of each house to have been taken away, leaving that part of the house completely open toward the street, the upper part being supported by pillars or beams. Let him then imagine the side walls also to have been pierced through, to allow a continuous passage along the first floors of all the houses.... It must not be imagined that these Rows form a very regular or uniform gallery. On the contrary, it varies according to the size or circumstances of each house through which it passes. Sometimes, when passing through a small house, the ceiling is so low that one finds it necessary to doff the hat, while in others one passes through a space as lofty as a saloon. In one house the Row lies lower than in the preceding, and one has in consequence to go down a step or two; and perhaps a house or two farther one or two steps have to be mounted again. In one house a handsome, new-fashioned iron railing fronts the street; in another, only a mean wooden paling. In some stately houses the supporting columns are strong, and adorned with handsome antique ornaments; in others, the wooden piles appear time-worn, and one hurries past them, apprehensive that the whole concern must topple down before long. The ground floors over which the Rows pass are inhabited by a humble class of tradesmen, but it is at the back of the Rows themselves that the principal shops are to be found.... The Rows are in reality on a level with the surface of the ground, and the carriages rolling along below are passing through a kind of artificial ravine. The back wall of the ground floor is everywhere formed by the solid rock, and the courtyards of the houses, their kitchens and back buildings, lie generally ten or twelve feet higher than the street."

RUINS OF ST. JOHN'S, CHESTER.

The Rows are connected with the streets by staircases, and sometimes, when a lane breaks through the gallery entirely, there are two flights of stairs for the wayfarer to pass over. Many of the houses have latticed windows and strongly clasped doors, such as are seldom seen elsewhere in England except in old churches and towers. The gable ends of most houses facing the lanes are turned outward, and ornamented with strong woodwork curiously painted. The colors are quite traceable yet in many houses. There are also texts of Scripture and good common-sense mottoes carved or painted over some of the doors, especially of shops and inns. The lanes are very intricate and irregular: one of them, St. Werburgh's street, gives a glimpse of the cathedral, to which it leads. The Rows have served for trade, for shelter and for defence: they were considered a point of vantage during the siege, and were also useful as gathering-places for serious consultation. In those days, however, little shops along the outer edges of the footways themselves were more numerous than they are now, and the shops within the shelter of the Rows were not glazed, but closed at night with shutters, which in the day were fastened with hooks above the heads of the people. The siege tried the city sorely, and the streets were disputed foot by foot, yet the old half-timbered houses in the Foregate street date farther back than the time when Sir William Brereton, the Parliamentarian general, was quartered there and received messages of defiance from the mayor, to whom he had sent proposals of surrender and compromise. The city did not surrender until the king himself, despairing of his cause, sent the corporation word to make terms unless relieved within ten days.

We have already alluded to the Cop, or high bank, on the right side of the Dee, with the distant view of the Welsh mountains. The nearer view over the city and the river is picturesque also, though less wild, but there is more suggested than the present by the sight of Flint Castle, where the estuary begins, Mostyn, where it ends, Basingwerk Abbey ruins, and Holywell, the famous shrine of St. Winefred. At Flint, Froissart places an incident which shows the sagacity, if not the personal fidelity, of a dog. A greyhound (notoriously the least affectionate of all dog-kind) belonging to Richard II., and who was known never to notice any one but his master, suddenly began to fawn upon Bolingbroke and make "to hym the same frendly countinaunce and chere as he was wonte to do to the kynge. The duke, who knew not the grayhounde, demanded of the kynge what the grayhounde wolde do. 'Cosyn,' quod the kynge, 'it is a greit good token to you and an evyll sygne to me.' 'Sir, howe knowe you that?' quod the duke. 'I knowe it well,' quod the kynge. 'The grayhounde maketh you chere this daye as kynge of Englande, as ye shalbe, and I shalbe deposed. The grayhounde hath this knowledge naturallye: therefore take hym to you: he will folowe you and forsake me.'"

CATHEDRAL TOWER, FROM ST. JOHN'S STREET, CHESTER.

Castle Dinas Bran, above Llangollen, and Flint are the only two genuine ruined castles on the Dee. About halfway between Flint and Mostyn, and nearly side by side, opposite Neston in Cheshire, stand Basingwerk and Holywell. Though the smelting-works and vitriol-manufactories at Bagillt, a little above the Sands of Dee, disfigure the landscape, the mention of metals carries us back over a long stretch of history. The Romans worked this district of lead-mines pretty thoroughly, and the lead-trade in Elizabeth's reign was flourishing and far-reaching. "One of the local peculiarities of the case, which seems to be unique," says Dean Howson, "is the mode in which the lead-market is conducted at Holywell. Notices of the quantity and quality of the metal on sale are forwarded to managers of lead-works; samples are sent and tested; the purchasers meet at Holywell on a fixed Thursday in every month; the samples are ticketed; the prices are written on pieces of paper which are placed in a glass; the highest bidders are of course successful, and the ceremony ends with a friendly lunch." These gatherings have been called from time immemorial the "Holywell ticketings," but the crowds they drew were once as nothing compared with the concourse of pilgrims to St. Winefred's wonder-working well. The legend of her death and resurrection is one of the most marvellous in the annals of Saxon saints; but, unlike the patroness of Chester, St. Werburgh, the authentic character of whose life is supported by hosts of reliable chroniclers, historical proof is much lacking in this case. Yet the faith in her legend defied proof and even scepticism, and the outward signs of the popular belief in the healing virtues of her well, the waters of which were believed to have sprung miraculously from the spot where she was brought to life again and her head reunited to her body, with only a pink-tinged ring round her throat showing the place of severance, were multiplied century after century. Wales had many other holy wells of great repute, but this was always foremost. I believe that besides the natural purity of the water and the mediæval (and especially Celtic) tendency to belief in marvels, some national associations were connected with this spot, and that the Welsh prided themselves on the possession of a well so famous that Saxons from all parts of England, poor and rich alike, came humbly or sent alms lavishly for the privilege of partaking of its healing waters. Its fame continued long after the Reformation, when James II. visited it as a pilgrim. Pope Martin V. had two centuries before granted indulgences to its frequenters. Even at the present day local faith in its powers remains undisturbed, though the legend has faded from men's minds, and neither prayers nor alms are resorted to; but, as I have heard from one who visited it in company with Montalembert and the late Lord Dunraven (a very good antiquary), some small superstitious practices, chiefly the offering of a pin, are substituted. The chapel above the well, which is enclosed by massive arches, is quite a large building, and there is a churchyard around it. The chancel windows, though fine as a whole, are very Late Gothic, or rather Perpendicular.

BOSS IN LADY CHAPEL, CHESTER.

The ruins of Basingwerk show a purer and simpler architecture. Dark old elms and sycamores fill up the gaps in the masonry, and through the lancet windows and pointed arches one catches glimpses of the sands illustrated by Canon Kingsley's ballad, "The Sands of Dee." On the opposite shore, at English West Kirby, the rule of this once mighty Welsh abbey was humbly and gratefully acknowledged, though the monks of Lupus's abbey of St. Werburgh once disputed the patronage of the parish church there, and on this occasion won their cause. Hilbree Island, and its smaller copy with its Eye-Mark and Beach-Mark, are plainly seen a few miles farther out; also the bank of the "Constable's Sands," which tradition connects with the miracle of the rescue of Lupus's son from the advancing tide through the intercession of St. Werburgh. A stone cross from the cell of the Hilbree anchorite is kept in a Liverpool museum. This cell, on a bare patch of sheep-pasture, rocky, surrounded by sands and rank reedy grass, is still part of St. Oswald's parish in Chester, and the two houses on the island contain the quota of parishioners. At present the island is used as a school and dépôt of buoys for the perpetual marking out of the very intricate navigable channels at the mouth of the Dee, and also as a lifeboat station, though the boat's crew lives on the mainland at Hoylake. Between West Kirby and Shotwick, on the Cheshire bank of the Dee, stretches a long plateau studded with country-houses, some belonging to old county families, but more to rich merchants and bankers.

Older memories cling to the Welsh side of the river, and of these there are not a few gathered round Mostyn Hall, the first country-house on the right-hand side of the river, sailing up from the sea. Though in describing such places one is obliged to repeat one's self, there is in reality a good deal that is individual and characteristic in each house, especially in those that keep the traces of their antiquity visibly upon them. The kernel of Mostyn dates from 1420, but without losing its old look the house has been added to and altered to suit the needs and tastes of its successive owners. The deer-park is large, and as well stocked as it is beautifully wooded, and the entrance, called Porth Mawr, leading into a fine avenue that ends at the hall-door, is suggestive, like many another of the kind, of the care taken of timber in England. There is no reckless and irregular cutting down of young wood unfit for anything but fuel: brushwood is cleared away systematically at certain intervals of from three to seven years, and various portions of the woods are cleared successively, instead of being all bared at once. Then, too, tracts are carefully planted with forest trees at proper distances, and these future groves fenced in, while in formerly neglected plantations the useless timber is thinned out and room given the older trees to grow and spread. The planting of lawns and pleasure-grounds with foreign specimen trees is one of the greatest delights of an English country gentleman, and the acres of young wellingtonias, diodaras, araucarias (or monkey-puzzlers—so named from their spiky leaves, that defy a monkey's climbing powers), various American pines and oaks, catalpas, tulip trees, etc., etc., are as much his pride as a flower-garden or a poultry-yard is the favorite hobby of his wife. Mostyn, however, well surrounded by trees, could afford to dispense with that attraction, considering its family museum and its valuable library of old British history and poetry. The Welsh manuscripts are a treasure in themselves, and a silver harp which has been in the family for more than three centuries is shown with as much pride as the pedigree, which occupies nearly fifty feet of parchment. The old family armor is also interesting. Among purely historical relics is a golden torque, or neck-band, worn by the princes of Wales in ancient times. Some of the royal jewelry of the Irish kings in the museum at Dublin, and one or two specimens I have seen at a private collector's near London, have much the same shape and general appearance, and the plaid-brooches now in common use in Scotland are not unlike the old pins for fastening cloaks of which these museums, public and private, are full.

OLD EPISCOPAL PALACE, CHESTER.

The road from Mostyn onward passes through Northup, whose high church-tower, encircled with strongly-defined bands of cusped work, is a very prominent object in one of the loveliest landscapes of the Dee. In some parts of the road oaks meet overhead for long distances, and between the trunks the views of the undulating cultivated fields, studded with broad tall trees, are continually changing. At high water there is a kind of likeness here to the scenery of the English lakes, though the mountains there are nearer and better defined; but at low water the Dutch likeness breaks out again, and the low-lying fields of wheat and hay melt away in the distance into vast flat sandbanks. Near Northup are Halkin Castle, a house of the duke of Westminster, formal and black, but with fine grounds and park, and Upper Soughton Hall, belonging to Mr. Howard—a low, irregular, gabled building in the style of Mostyn, gray and time-worn, and very attractive. Nearing Hawarden, the road passes by (but does not lead to) the ruins of Ewloc Castle, a place whose history is very slightly known, but whose walls, eight feet thick, and curious staircase, approached by a small gateway and enclosed in the wall, lead to more speculation than other and better-known places. Its odd situation in a deep, gloomy dell, suggestive, as Dean Howson says, of a Canadian forest-glen, is another attraction. Most ruins, castles especially, are conspicuous objects on hilltops or open plains. Ewloc is like some of the natural beauties of the Lake country, for a sight of which you have to climb steep slippery paths or go down rocky declines with fern on their glistening edges, lean over frail parapets, and cross bridges almost as swinging in their miniature proportions as the famous rope-bridges of Peru. The tall elms and beech trees that shroud Heron Bridge, belonging to Mr. Charles Potts, mark one of the most delightful of the Dee scenes. The house, a very unpretending one, is a statelier counterpart of Erbistock, with its double terraces, broken by flights of steps leading down to the water's edge. Netherlegh, once the home of an old extinct Chester family, the Cotgreaves, almost leans on one of the lodges of Eaton Hall, opposite which, but nearly two miles from the river, is Saighton Tower, formerly a country-house of the abbots of St. Werburgh, and already in earlier times held by the secular canons of that church, to whom the Domesday survey secured it for another half century. Of course it is a good deal altered now. By Bangor we pass a group of old historic houses, each still in the hands of the family that built or inherited it centuries ago—among others, Acton Hall, the birthplace of Judge Jeffreys; then some newer houses, one of which, a large one in the Italian style, belongs to Mr. Edmund Peel, one of the greatest land-owners of the neighborhood. Knolton Hall, near Erbistock, is one of the most beautiful of country-houses, yet not one that has a history as such. It shows what taste can do. Its front is black and white, the timber showing outside, as in many of the southern Cheshire and Shropshire houses, and its low, broad-capped tower, its dozen or so of gables, its stacks of twisted and carved chimneys, give it a very English and home look. How much of the old original farmhouse remains one can hardly tell. Mr. Cotton, brother of Lord Combermere, the Peninsular hero, bought the estate when the place was in a half-ruined condition, but saw that the house had great capabilities. I have known such a restoration, on a smaller scale, to be as successful, when the large kitchen was turned into a drawing-room, ingeniously pieced on to a new and large alcove opening by a glass door on to the flower-garden, and communicating by a tower staircase with the chapel beside it and the "boudoir" up stairs; which room had a mullioned oriel window over the glass door. A library, study and second drawing-room were made out of the existing rooms down stairs, while the oldest part of the house, an ivied square tower with an orthodox ghost-story, was turned into schoolroom and nursery; and on a lower level (a feature which made the hall quite different from any I ever saw in a large or a small house) were built out a covered stone porch, a dining-room with mullioned bay-window and a stone mantelpiece receding to the ceiling, and guarded by two carved lions bearing shields, and a line of servants' offices enclosing a courtyard and a spring of famous water.

BRIDGE STREET ROW, CHESTER.

Eaton Hall, the coldly magnificent pile of which we spoke before, has its rival in Wynnestay, the house of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, the largest landowner in Wales. No doubt the old house, burnt down in 1858, was less grand, but the loss of its collections of heirlooms, all things of historical and national interest to a Welshman, was a worse one than that of the building itself. Pennant, in his Tour in Wales nearly a century ago, describes it with the same comments on domestic arrangements as many of our architects now start on as guiding principles: "The most ancient part is a gateway of wood and plaster, dated 1616. On a tower within the court is this excellent distich, allusive to the name of the house, Wynne stay, or 'Rest satisfied with the good things Providence has so liberally showered on you:'

Cui domus est victusque decens, cui patria dulcis,
Sunt satis hæc vitæ, cætera cura labor.

The new part, built by the first Sir Watkin, is of itself a good house, yet was only a portion of a more extensive design. It is finished in that substantial yet neat manner becoming the seat of an honest English country gentleman, adapted to the reception of his worthy neighbors, who may experience his hospitality without dread of spoiling his frippery ornaments, becoming only the assembly-rooms of a town-house or the villa of a great city." The present house is splendid and enormous, severer in style than Eaton, but as wilderness-like in its magnificence. The trees in the park, which is enclosed by an eight-mile wall, are very old and grand, especially the Ruabon avenue, a mile in length, leading from the gates of the old church, where are the family monuments. Wynnestay formerly belonged to the founder of Valle Crucis Abbey, Madoc ap Gryfydd Maeler, and came to the Wynns by the inter-marriage of one of the Gwedyr family of that name with the heiress of Eyton Evans. This creation of almost princely lines by the union of so much land and influence in one family is characteristic of the Middle Ages in English history, and has its faint shadow even in these days, when you invariably find in each family its self-installed herald, sometimes an old maid, often an old bachelor or widower, given to poring over pictures and pedigrees, and dreamily recounting to mischievously attentive cousins the glories of such an alliance, the importance of a fifty-sixth "quartering," or the story of such and such an old love-affair that spoilt (or otherwise) the negotiation for another thousand acres of land. The Welsh are even more given to family pride than the English, but everywhere you find the old sentiment lingering in some remote corner of the family, sometimes cropping out in a beautiful illuminated volume, for which the head of the family generally has to pay, or oftener making the life-study and delight of some innocent, kind-hearted old bookworm. Luckily, we are spared the heraldic lawsuits of old times, such as were sustained by the Grosvenors and the Scropes in the reign of Richard II. respecting the arms they each claimed to bear, and during which the names of two famous men, Chaucer and John of Gaunt, were affixed as witnesses to the manuscript account of it, still preserved in the library at Eaton Hall. Owen Glendower and Hotspur were also called as witnesses at various times on this 'three years' trial.

ANCIENT HALF-TIMBERED HOUSES, FOREGATE STREET, CHESTER.

The view of the Dee from the southern point of Wynnestay Park is perhaps, as a whole, the most remarkable on the river. It is very perfect, and combines the unchangeable with the progressive, showing as it does the swelling hills on both sides of the water, fishermen with coracles on their backs, autumn tints on the clustering trees, and the regular arches of the great railway viaduct. When the train is absent these look not unlike those arches on the Campagna near Rome of which every artist has a sketch and every traveller a recollection. Opposite Wynnestay—which is in Denbighshire—is a detached bit of Flintshire hemmed in between Cheshire and Shropshire, in which is Bettisfield, a house of Lord Hanmer. Owen Glendower's wife was a Hanmer, and tradition says she was married in Hanmer church. The present owner evidently prefers his native river to the greater but not more historic ones of the Continent, and has recorded his preference in some lines, of which the following form the opening:

By the Elbe and through the Rheinland I've wandered far and wide,
And by the Save with silver tones, proud Danube's queenly bride;
By Arno's banks and Tiber's shore; but never did I see
A river I could match with thine, old Druid-haunted
Dee.

VIEW OF CHESTER, FROM THE COP.

Other houses on or near the river are Chirk Castle, dating just nine hundred years back, the family-place of the Myddletons (now Biddulphs), where among the old portraits is an authentic one of Oliver Cromwell; Brynkinalt, where much of the youth of Wellington was spent with his relation, Lord Arthur Hill Trevor, the owner; Plas Madoc, belonging to the famous member of Parliament for Peterborough, whose rise in the House is always heralded by a well-bred titter; and near Llangollen—for this enumeration carries us up the stream again—Plas Newydd, the house of the "Ladies of Llangollen." Farther up is Rhaggatt, the seat of a very old Welsh family, the Lloyds, and opposite it was the old hall of Owen Glendower, of which a Welsh bard says that it had "nine halls with large wardrobes" (probably the retainers' rooms), and near this "a wooden house supported on posts, with eight apartments for guests." Of the park, warren, pigeon-house, mill, orchard, vineyard and fishpond, "every convenience for good living and every support to hospitality," of which Pennant speaks, there is hardly a trace now, though the moat is a self-evident relic. Rug (pronounced Reeg) came from the Vaughans to the Wynns by many stages of attainder, marriage and sale, and is famous as the place where King Gryffydd ap Cynan was betrayed into the power of Lupus, earl of Chester, who kept him a prisoner for twelve years in the city castle; and near Bala Lake is Palé Hall, a new house representing a very old one; Rhiwlas (pronounced Rovlas), whose owners, the Prices, suffered in the Stuart cause, a member of the Long Parliament, one of their family, being expelled on account of his loyalty to the king; and Glann-y-llyn, a comfortable shooting-box of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. Of course there are numberless other houses, the mere list of which one could not get through without the help of a county history and a court guide for each of the shires through which the Dee passes. Every library stored in these old houses or carefully brought there from still older ones forms an inexhaustible subject of interest, not only to the owners (who are often the least benefited by it), but to inquiring minds of various races and conditions. Even a lad let loose from college, his mind full of athletics and Alpine Club aspirations, can find something to admire in the relics or representations of ancient national games, while the scholar discovers details full of interest in looking over the books, manuscripts and curiosities. The size of the country-houses and the extent of their gardens and parks seem perhaps disproportionate compared with the confined space of the country itself: indeed, it is as much their frequency in the landscape as the general cultivation of the whole that has made England celebrated for its garden-like look; but the historic associations of these small rivers and small territories are on an equally large scale. Thousands of unnamed brooks on this side of the ocean run through forests or farms as large as an English or Welsh county, without rousing any save imaginary associations in the mind of the traveller or the angler: they are as large as, and more varied in scenery than, our "wizard stream;" but the old recollections, the castles, the ruins, the modernized homes, the national relics, the inherited traits of likeness between past and present, are wanting. In Wales it is easy to leap back a few hundred years. The costume of the market-women at the seacoast town of Aberystwith—not a sluggish place, by any means—is almost literally like the old one in pictures of "Mother Hubbard." I have seen young and pretty women wear it. The neatly-roofed hay and straw stacks, so different from the ungainly heaps so called in England, are thatched in the same way for which the Welsh farmers were famous two hundred years ago, while many of the poorer dwellings, especially in the slate districts, look just as they may have done to Owen Glendower himself. The character of the people, like that of the grave Highlanders, is stern and enduring, though their temper is fierce and hot: it is easy to understand how passionately certain forms of Methodism appealed to such temperaments, and developed among them an enthusiasm easy to stir up into a likeness of that of the old Cameronians.

MOSTYN HALL.

Lady Blanche Murphy.

BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN.

Before the change which has recently befallen the chief German watering-places, Baden—or, as it was more commonly called, Baden-Baden—was the most frequented, the most brilliant and the most profitable "hell" in Europe. Its baths and medicinal waters were a mere excuse for the coming thither of a small number of the vast concourse which annually filled its hotels. In any case, they sank into comparatively utter insignificance. It was not for water—at least not for the waters of any other stream than that of Pactolus—that the world came to Baden. Of course, the sums realized by the keepers of the hell were enormous; and they found it to be their interest to do all that contributed to make the place attractive on a liberal scale. Gardens, parks, miles of woodland walks admirably kept, excellent music in great abundance, vast salons for dancing, for concerts, for reading-rooms, for billiard-rooms, etc.—all as magnificent as carving and gilding and velvet and satin could make them—were provided gratuitously, not for those only who played at the tables, but for all those who would put themselves within reach of the temptation to do so. And this liberal policy was found to answer abundantly. Very many of the water-cure places in the smaller states of Germany had their hells also, and did as Baden did, on a more modest scale. Then came the German unification and the great uprising of a German national consciousness. And German national feeling said that this scandal should no longer exist. A certain delay was rendered necessary by the contracts which were running between the different small governments and the keepers of the gambling-tables. But it was decreed that when the two or three years which were required for these to run out should be at an end, they should not be renewed. It was a serious resolution to take, for some half dozen or so of these little pleasure-towns believed, not without good reason, that the measure would be at once fatal to their prosperity and well-nigh to their existence. And of course there were not wanting large numbers of people who argued that the step was a quixotic one, as needless and fallacious in a moral point of view as fatal on the side of economic considerations. Could it be maintained that the governments in question had any moral duty in the matter save as regarded the lives and habits of their own people? And these were not imperilled by the existence of the gambling-tables. For it was notorious that each of these ducal and grand-ducal patrons of the blind goddess strictly forbade their own subjects to enter the door of the play-saloons. And as to those who resorted to them, and supplied the abundant flow of gold that enriched the whole of each little state, could it be supposed that any one of these gamblers would be reformed or saved from the consequences of his vice by the shutting up of these tables? It was difficult to answer this question in the affirmative. No liquor law ever prevented men from getting drunk, nor could it be hoped that any closing of this, that or the other hell could save gamblers from the indulgence of their darling passion. Nevertheless, it can hardly be seriously denied that the measure was the healthy outcome of a genuinely healthy and highly laudable spirit. "Ruin yourself, if you will, but you shall not come here for the purpose, and, above all, we will not touch the profit to be made out of your vice." This was the feeling of the German government, and, considering the amount of self-denial involved in the act, Germany deserves no small degree of honor and praise for having accomplished it.

And now it is time to ask, Has Baden—for we will confine our attention to this ci-devant queen of hells—has Baden suffered that ruin which it was so confidently predicted would overtake her? Baden Revisited, by one who knew her well in the old days of her wickedness and wealth, supplies the means for replying to the question. Unquestionably, in the mere matter of the influx of gold the town has suffered very severely. How were some four-and-twenty large hotels, besides a host of smaller ones, which often barely sufficed to hold the crowds attracted by the gambling-tables, to exist when this attraction ceased? It might have been expected that a large number of these would at once have been shut up. But such has not been the case. I believe that not one has been closed. Nevertheless, a visitor's first stroll through the town, and especially in the alleys and gardens around the celebrated "Conversations-Haus," as it hypocritically called itself, is quite sufficient to show how great is the difference between Baden as it was and Baden as it is—between Baden the wealthy, gaudy, gay, privileged home of vice, and Baden moralized and turned from the error of its ways. And it cannot be denied that, speaking merely of the impression made upon the eye, the difference is all in favor of vice. "As ugly as sin" is a common phrase. But, unfortunately, the truth is that sin sometimes looks extremely pretty, especially when well dressed and of an evening by gaslight. And it did, it must be owned, look extremely pretty at Baden. The French especially came there in those days in great numbers, and they brought their Parisian toilettes with them. And somehow or other, let the fact be explained as it may—and, though perhaps easily explicable enough, I do not feel called upon to enter on the explanation here—one used in those wicked old days to see a great number of very pretty women at Baden, which can hardly be said to be the case at Baden moralized. The whole social atmosphere of the place was wholly and unmistakably different, and in outward appearance wicked Baden beat moral Baden hollow. It would not do in the old time to examine the gay scene which fluttered and glittered before the eyes much below the absolute exterior surface. The little town in those old days, as regarded a large proportion of the crowd which made it look so gay, was—not to put too fine a point upon it—a sink of more unmitigated blackguardism than could easily be found concentrated within so small a compass on any other spot of the earth. A large number of the persons who now congregate in this beautiful valley look, to tell the truth, somewhat vulgar. Vulgar? As if the flaunting crowds which seemed to insult the magnificent forests, the crystal streams and the smiling lawns with their finery were not saturated with a vulgarity of the most quintessential intensity! Yes, but that only showed itself to the moral sense of those who could look a little below the surface, whereas the vulgarity that may be noted sunning itself in the trim gardens and sprawling on the satin sofas which are the legacy of the departed wickedness is of the sort that shows itself upon the surface. In a word, moral Baden looks a little dowdy, and that wicked Baden never looked.

IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL AT BADEN.

The general determination at Baden when the terrible decree which put an end to its career of wealth and wickedness came upon it like a thunder-bolt was of the kind expressed by the more forcible than elegant phrase, "Never say die!" The little town was determined to have a struggle for its existence. It still had its mineral waters, so highly valued by the Romans. The Romans, it may be remarked en passant, seem to have discovered and profited by every mineral spring in Europe. Hardly one of the more important springs can be named which cannot be shown, either by direct historic testimony or by the still existing remains of baths and the like, to have been known to the universal conquerors. Well, Baden still had its waters, good for all the ills to which flesh is heir—capiti fluit utilis, utilis alveo. It still had its magnificent forests—pine and oak and beech in most lovely juxtaposition and contrast. It had the interesting and charmingly picturesque ruins of its ancient castle on the forest-covered hill above the town, perched on one mighty mass of porphyry, and surrounded by other ranges of the same rock, thrown into such fantastic forms that they seem to assume the appearance of rival castellated ruins built on Nature's own colossal plan, and such a world of strange forms of turrets and spires and isolated towers and huge donjons that the Devil has "pulpits" and "bridges" and "chambers" there, as is well known to all tourists to be his wont in similar places. It had its other mediæval baronial residences situated in the depths of the forest at pleasant distances for either driving or walking. It had its delicious parks and gardens, beginning from the very door of the "Conversations-Haus," with brilliantly-lighted avenues, gay with shops and gas-lamps, and gradually wandering away into umbrageous solitudes and hillside paths lit by the moon alone—so gradually that she who had accepted an arm for a stroll amid the crowd in the bright foreground of the scene found herself enjoying solitude à deux before she had time to become alarmed or think what mamma would say. Then it had still the gorgeous halls, the ball-rooms, the concert-rooms, the promenading-rooms, with their gilding and velvet and satin furniture, which had been created by a wave of the wand of the great enchanter who presided at the green table. Why should not all these good things be turned to the service of virtue instead of vice? Why should not respectability and morality inherit the legacy of departed wickedness? Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins, with their pale blue eyes and pale blond hair, do their innocent flirting amid the bowers where the Parisian demi-monde had outraged the chaste wood-nymphs by its uncongenial presence? The loathsome patchouli savor of the denizens of the Boulevard would hardly resist the purifying breezes of one Black Forest winter. The notice to quit served on Mammon would be equally efficacious as regarded the whole of his crew. The whole valley would be swept clean of them, and sweetened and restored to the lovers of Nature in her most delicious aspect. Baden, emerging from the cold plunge-bath of its first dismay, determined that it should be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging-house-keepers, the livery-stable-keepers, the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their courage to the sticking-place and determined to go in for virtue, early hours and moderate prices. Well, yes! moderate prices! This was the severest cut of all. But there was no help for it. Virtue does prefer moderate prices. There could be no more of that reckless scattering of gold, no more of that sublime indifference to the figure at the foot of the bill, which characterized their former customers. What mattered a napoleon or so more or less in their daily expense to him or her whose every evening around the green table left them some thousands of francs richer or poorer than the morning had found them? There can be no doubt, I fear, that Baden would have much preferred a continuance in its old ways. But the choice was not permitted to it. It is therefore making a virtue of necessity, and striving to live under the new régime as best it may. And I am disposed to think that better days may yet be in store for it. At present, the preponderating majority of the visitors are Germans. There are naturally no French, who heretofore formed the majority of the summer population. There are hardly any Americans, and very few English. Those of the class which used to find Baden delightful find it, or conceive that they would find it, so no more. And English and Americans of a different sort seem to have hardly yet become aware that they would find there a very different state of things from that which they have been accustomed to associate in idea with the name of the place. It must be supposed, however, that they will shortly do so. The natural advantages and beauties of the place are so great, the accommodation is so good, and even in some respects the inheritance of the good things the gamblers have left behind them so valuable, that it is hardly likely that the place will remain neglected. Where else are such public rooms and gardens to be found? The charge made at present for the enjoyment of all this is about six or eight cents a day. Such a payment could never have originally provided all that is placed at the disposal of the visitor. He used in the old times to enjoy it all absolutely gratuitously, unless he paid for it by his losses at the tables. Play provided it all. But it is to be feared that the very modest payment named above will be found insufficient even to keep up the establishment which Mammon has bequeathed to Virtue. The ormolu and the carved cornices, and the fresco-painted walls and the embroidered satin couches and divans, and the miles upon miles of garden-walks, have not indeed disappeared, as, according to all the orthodox legends, such Devil's gifts should do, but they will wear out; and I do not think that any eight cents a day will suffice to renew them. But in the mean time you may avail yourself of them. You may lounge on the brocade-covered divans which used to be but couches of thorns to so many of their occupants, undisturbed by any more palpitating excitement than that produced by the perusal of the daily paper. The lofty ceilings echo no more the hateful warning croak of the croupier, "Faites votre jeu, messieurs. Le jeu est fait!" which used to be ceaseless in them from midday till midnight. There are no more studies to be made on the men and women around you of all the expressions which eager avarice, torturing suspense and leaden despair can impart to the human countenance. The utmost you can hope to read on one of those placidly stolid German burgher faces is the outward and visible sign of the inward oppression caused by too copious a repast at the one-o'clock table d'hôte. It is the less disagreeable and less unhealthy subject of contemplation of the two. But the truth remains that virtuous Baden does look somewhat dowdy.

Just seventy-three years ago a change as great as that which has transformed Baden happened to an establishment which represented the old-world social system of Europe as completely and strikingly as Baden the "watering-place"—that is the modern phrase—did the Europe of the latter half of the nineteenth century. In another green valley of this region, as beautiful as, or even more beautiful than, that of Baden, there existed a gathering-place of the sort produced by the exigencies of a different stage of social progress—the convent of Allerheiligen, or, as we should say, All Saints or Allhallows. It is within the limits of an easy day's excursion from Baden, and no visitor who loves "the merry green wood" should omit to give a day to Allerheiligen, for he will scarcely find in his wanderings, let them be as extensive as they may, a more perfect specimen of the loveliest forest scenery. It is an old remark, that the ancient ecclesiastics who selected the sites of the monastic establishments that were multiplied so excessively in every country in Europe showed very excellent judgment and much practical skill in the choice of them. And almost every visit made to the spot where one of these cloister homes existed confirms the truth of the observation, more especially as regards the communities belonging to the great Benedictine family. The often-quoted line about seeking "to merit heaven by making earth a hell," however well it may be applied to the practices of some of the more ascetic orders, especially the mendicants, cannot with any reason be considered applicable to the disciples of St. Benedict. In point of fact, at the time when the great and wealthy convents of this order were founded it was rather outside the convent-wall that men were making the world a hell upon earth. And for those who could school themselves to consider celibacy no unendurable evil it would be difficult to imagine a more favorable contrast than that offered by "the world" in the Middle Ages and the retreat of the cloister. A site well selected with reference to all the requirements of climate, wood and water, and with an appreciative eye to the beauties of Nature, in some sequestered but favored spot as much shut in from war and its troubles as mountains, streams and forests could shut it in; a building often palatial in magnificence, always comfortable, with all the best appliances for study which the age could afford; with beautiful churches for the practice of a faith entirely and joyfully believed in; with noble halls for temperate but not ascetic meals, connected by stairs by no means unused with excellent and extensive cellars; with lovely cloisters for meditative pacing, and well-trimmed gardens for pleasant occupation and delight,—what can be imagined more calculated to ensure all the happiness which this earth was in those days capable of affording?

Such a retreat was the convent of Allerheiligen. It was founded for Premonstratensian monks at the close of the twelfth century by Uta, duchess of Schawenburg, who concludes the deed of foundation, which still exists, with these words: "And if anybody shall do anything in any respect contrary to these statutes, he will for ever be subject to the vengeance of God and of all saints." Poor Duchess Uta! Could her spirit walk in this valley, as lovely now as when she gave it to her monks, and look upon the ruins of the pile she raised, she would think that the vengeance of God and all saints had been incurred to a considerable extent by somebody. The waterfalls—seven of them in succession—made by the little stream that waters the valley immediately after it has passed through the isolated bit of flat meadow-land on which the convent was built, continue to sing their unceasing song as melodiously as when the duchess Uta visited the spot and marked it out for the "Gottes Haus" she was minded to plant there. Her husband, the duke Welf, who had married her when she was a well-dowered widow, had been a very bad husband, which naturally tended to lead his neglected lady wife's mind in the direction of founding religious houses. He was duke of Altorf and Spoleto, the one possession lying on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and the other among the ilex-woods that overlook the valley of the Tiber—a strange conjunction of titles, which is in itself illustrative of the shape European history took in that day, and of the preponderating part which Germany played in Italy and among the rulers of its soil. Being thus duke of Spoleto, Welf resided much in Italy, but does not seem to have found it necessary to take his German wife with him to those milder skies and easier social moralities. Uta stayed at home amid the dark-green valleys of her native Black Forest, and planned cloister-building. Before the chart, however, which was to give birth to Allerheiligen was signed, Duke Welf came home, and having had, it would seem, his fling to a very considerable extent, had reached by a natural process that time of life and that frame of mind which inclined him to join in his long-neglected wife's pietistic schemes. So they planned and drew up the statutes together, and the convent was founded and built, a son of Uta by her first husband being, as is recorded, the first prior.

RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.

It was not long before the young community became rich. Such was the ordinary, the almost invariable, course of matters. Property was held on very unstable conditions even by the great and powerful. The most secure of all tenures was that by which the Church held what was once her own. And in a state of things when men were persuaded both that it was very doubtful whether they would be able to keep possession of their property, especially whether they would be able to secure such possessions to those who were to come after them, and that the surest way to escape that retribution in the next world which they fully believed to have been incurred by their deeds in this world was to give what they possessed to some monastic institution, it is not difficult to understand how and why monasteries grew rich. And it is equally intelligible that the result should have followed which did, as we know, follow almost invariably. As the monasteries became rich the monks became corrupt—first comfortable, then luxurious, then licentious. The Benedictines escaped this doom more frequently than the other orders. Even after their great convents had become wealthy and powerful landlords they were often very good landlords, and the condition of their lands and of their tenants and vassals contrasted favorably with that of the lands and dependants of their lay neighbors. The superiority of the Benedictines in this respect was doubtless due to their studious and literary habits and proclivities. It is constantly urged that the cause of learning and of literature owes a great debt of gratitude to the monks, but it should be said that this debt is due almost exclusively to the sons of St. Benedict.

But something more than this may be said for the community founded by Duchess Uta, the beautiful ruins of whose dwelling now complete the picturesque charm of this most exquisite valley. By a rare exception history has in truth nothing to say against them. Their record is quite clear. All remaining testimony declares that from their first establishment to the day of their dissolution the Allerheiligen monks lived studious and blameless lives. Possibly, the profound seclusion of their valley, literally shut in from the outer world by vast masses of thick roadless forests, may have contributed to this result, though similar circumstances do not in all cases seem to have ensured a similar consequence. Good fortune probably did much in the matter. A happy succession of three or four good and able abbots would give the place a good name and beget a good tradition in the community; and this in such cases is half the battle. "Such and such goings-on may do elsewhere, but they won't suit Allerheiligen"—such a sentiment, once made common, would do much for the continuance of a good and healthy tradition.

Accordingly, it was long before the sentence of dissolution went forth against the monastery of Allerheiligen—that sentence which was to produce a change in the place and all around it as momentous as that other sentence which some seventy years later went forth against Baden-Baden. It was not till 1802 that the monastery of Allerheiligen was dissolved; and its extinction was due then not to any reason or pretext drawn from the conduct of the inmates, but to the religious dissensions and political quarrels of princes and governments. But the doom was all the more irrevocably certain. In all the countries in which monasteries have been abolished and Church property confiscated tales eagerly spread, and by no means wholly disbelieved even by the spoilers themselves, are current of the "judgments" and retribution which have sooner or later fallen on those who have been enriched by the secularization of Church property or who have taken part in the acts by which the Church has been dispossessed. But rarely has what the world now calls "chance" brought about what the Church would call so startlingly striking a manifestation of the wrath of Heaven against the despoilers of "God's house." St. Norbert was the original founder of the Premonstratensian rule. And it was precisely on St. Norbert's Day next after the dissolution of the monastery of Allerheiligen that a tremendous and—the local chroniclers say—unprecedented storm of thunder, lightning and hail broke over the woodland valley and the devoted fabric in such sort that the lightning, more than once striking the buildings, set them on fire and reduced the vast pile to the few picturesque ruins which now delight the tourist and the landscape painter. Could the purpose and intent of the supernal Powers have been more strongly emphasized or more clearly marked? Truly, the scattered monks may have been excused for recalling with awe, not unmingled with a sense of triumph, the prophetic denunciation of their foundress Uta, which has been cited above, against whoso should undo the pious deed she was doing. For more than six hundred years her work had prospered and her will had been respected, and now after all those centuries the warning curse was still potent. Neither thunder nor lightning, nor the anger of St. Norbert, however, availed to rebuild the monastery or recall the monks. Their kingdom and the glory thereof has passed to another, even to Herr Mittenmeyer, Wirth und Gastgeber, who has built a commodious hostelry close by the ruins, which are mainly those of the church, and on the site of the monastic buildings, and who distributes a hospitality as universal, if not quite so disinterested, as that practised by his cowled predecessors. There, for the sum of six marks—about a dollar and a half—per diem you may find a well-furnished cell and a fairly well-supplied refectory, and may amuse yourself with pacing in the walks where St. Norbert's monks paced, looking on the scenes of beauty on which they gazed, and casting your mind for the nonce into the mould of the minds of those who so looked and mused. You may do so, indeed, thanks to Herr Mittenmeyer, with greater comfort, materially speaking, than the old inmates of the valley could have done. For the most charming and delicious walks have been made through the woods on either side of the narrow valley, and skilfully planned so as to show you all the very remarkable beauties of it. These, in truth, are of no ordinary kind. The hillsides which enclose the valley are exceedingly steep, almost precipitous indeed in some places, though not sufficiently so to prevent them from being clothed with magnificent forests. Down this narrow valley a little stream runs, and about a quarter of a mile from the spot on which the convent stood, and the ruins stand, makes a series of cascades of every variety of form and position that can be conceived. All these falls, together with the crystalline pools in huge caldrons worn by the waters out of the rocks at their feet, were no doubt well known to the vassal fishermen who brought their tribute of trout to the convent larder. But the majority of the holy men themselves, I fancy, lived and died without seeing some of the falls, for they would be by no means easily accessible without the assistance of the paths which by dint of long flights of steps, constructed of stones evidently brought from the ruins of the abbey, carry the visitor to every spot of vantage-ground most favorable for commanding a view of them. If, however, you have the advantage over the monks in this respect, your retreat will be less adapted to the purposes of retirement in another point of view. Ten or a dozen carriages a day filled with German tourists, all in high spirits and all very thirsty ("Thanks be!" says Herr Mittenmeyer), are not appropriate aids to the indulgence of contemplation. Scott advised his readers if they "would view fair Melrose aright, to visit it by the pale moonlight." And to those who would view Allerheiligen aright I would add the recommendation that the moon should be an October moon. The usual holiday-making months in Germany are by that time over. The professors have gone back to their chairs in the different universities; the privat-docents have reopened their courses; the substantial burghers have returned to their shops; and the raths of all sorts and degrees have ensconced themselves once more behind their official desks, and have ceased to "babble of green fields" any more till this time twelvemonth. The tourists will have gone, and the autumnal colors will have come into the woods. There is much beech mixed with the pine in these forests, and the beech in October is as gorgeous a master of color as Rubens or Veronese. Herr Mittenmeyer's mind, too, will have entered into a more placid and even-tempered phase. A stout, thickset man is Herr Mittenmeyer, with broad, rubicund face and short bull neck, of the type that suggests the possibility of an analogous shortness of temper under the pressure of being called in six different directions at once. Altogether, it is better in October. The song of the waterfall will not then be the only one making the woods melodious. There will be a fitful soughing of the wind in the forest. There will be a carpeting of dry, pale-brown oak-leaves on all the paths which "will make your steps vocal." Again and again, when slowly and musingly climbing the steep homeward path up the valley in the dark hour, when the sun has set and before the moon has yet risen, you will fancy that you hear the tread among the leaves of a sandalled foot behind you. But it is well that the path leads you, for there is no more any vesper-bell flinging its sweet and welcome notes far and wide over hill and vale to guide the returning wanderer through the forest.

Then the whole of this Black Forest region is full of legends and traditional stories, which live longer and are more easily preserved among a people where the sons and the daughters live and marry and die for the most part under the shadow of the same trees and the same thatch beneath which their fathers and mothers did the same. Of course, the Black Huntsman is as well known as of yore, though perhaps somewhat more rarely seen. But his habits and specialties have become too well known to all readers of folk-lore to need any further notice. Less widely known histories, each the traditional subject of inglenook talk in its own valley, may be found at every step. There is a rather remarkable grotto or cavern in the hill above Allerheiligen, the main ridge which divides that valley from Achern and the Rhine. It is, you are told, the Edelfrauengrab (the "Noble Lady's Grave"). And you will be further informed, if you inquire aright, how that unhallowed spot came to be a noble lady's grave, and something more than a grave. 'Twas at the time of the Crusades—those mischief-making Crusades, which, among all the other evil which they produced, would have absolutely overwhelmed the divorce courts of those days with press of business if there had then been any divorce courts. This noble lady's lord went to the Crusades. How could a gallant knight and good Christian do aught else? Of course he went to the Crusades! And of course his noble lady felt extremely dull and disconsolate during his absence. What was she to do? There was no circulating library; and even if there had been, she would not have been able to avail herself of its resources, for, though tradition says nothing upon the subject, it may be very safely assumed that she could not read. And needlework in the company of her maids must have become terribly wearisome after a time. She could go to mass, and to vespers also. Probably she did so at the new church of the recently-established community nestling in so charming a spot of the lovely valley beneath her. Let us hope that it was not there that she fell in with one whom in an hour of weakness she permitted to console her too tenderly for the absence of her crusading lord. Had she waited with patience but only nine months longer for his return, all would have been well. For he did return as nearly as possible about that time; and, arriving at his own castle-door, met one whom he at once recognized as his wife's confidential maid coming out of the house and carrying a large basket. The natural inquiry whither she was going, and what she had in her basket, was answered by the statement—uttered with that ingenuous fluency and masterly readiness for which ladies' maids have in all countries, and doubtless in all ages, been celebrated—that the basket contained a litter of puppies which she was taking to the river to drown. Alas! the girl had adhered but too nearly to the truth. There were seven living and breathing creatures in the basket, and the confidential maid had been sent on the very confidential errand of drowning them. Woe worth the day! They were seven little unchristened Christians, doomed to die one death as they had been born at one birth—the result of that erring noble lady's fault. The methods of injured husbands were wont to be characterized by much simplicity and directness of purpose in those days. The noble crusader invoked the aid of no court, either spiritual or lay. He happened to remember the existence of a certain dismal cavern in the sandstone rock not far from his dwelling. The entrance to it was very easily walled up. That cavern became the noble lady's prison and deathbed, as well as her grave! And a valuable possession has that lady's death and grave become to the descendants of her lord's vassals, for many a gulden is earned by guiding the curious to see the spot and by retailing the tragic history.

Well! and of the two changes, the two abolitions, which have been here recorded, which was the most needed, which the most salutary, which the least mingled in its results with elements of evil? Poor Baden piteously complains that it does not take half the money in the course of the year that it used to receive as surely as "the season" came round in the old times. And the poor, wholly unconverted by maxims of political economy, declare that there have been no good times in the land since the destruction of the monasteries. After all, Abbot Fischer (that was the name of the last of the long line) and his monks were less objectionable than M. Benazet and his croupiers. Could we perhaps keep the scales even and make things pleasant all round by re-establishing both the abolished institutions—restoring the croupiers and "makers of the game" to their green table, and requiring them out of their enormous gains to re-endow the convent? "C'est une idée, comme une autre!" as a Frenchman says.

T. Adolphus Trollope.

SONG.

Sweet wind that blows o'er sunny isles
The softness of the sea!
Blow thou across these moving miles
News of my love to me.

Ripples her hair like waves that sweep
About this pleasant shore:
Her eyes are bluer than the deep
Round rocky Appledore.

Her sweet breast shames the scattered spray,
Soft kissed by early light:
I dream she is the dawn of day,
That lifts me out of night.

Oscar Laighton.

"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER IV.

WISHING WELL AND ILL.

Lottie's birthday had dawned, the fresh morning hours had slipped away, the sun had declined from his midday splendor into golden afternoon, and yet to Lottie herself the day seemed scarcely yet begun. Its crowning delight was to be a dance given in her honor, and she awaited that dance with feverish anxiety.

It was nearly three o'clock when the dog-cart from Brackenhill came swiftly along the dusty road. It was nearing its destination: already there were distant glimpses of Fordborough with its white suburban villas. Percival Thorne thoroughly enjoyed the bright June weather, the cloudless blue, the clear singing of the birds, the whisper of the leaves, the universal sweetness from far-off fields and blossoms near at hand. He gazed at the landscape with eyes that seemed to be looking at something far away, and yet they were observant enough to note a figure crossing a neighboring field. It was but a momentary vision, and the expression of his face did not vary in the slightest degree, but he turned to the man at his side and spoke in his leisurely fashion: "I'll get down here and walk the rest of the way. You may take my things to Mr. Hardwicke's."

The man took the reins, but he looked round in some wonder, as if seeking the cause of the order. His curiosity was unsatisfied. The slim girlish figure had vanished behind a clump of trees, and nothing was visible that could in any way account for so sudden a change of purpose. Glancing back as he drove off, he saw only Mr. Percival Thorne, darkly conspicuous on the glaring road, standing where he had alighted, and apparently lost in thought. The roan horse turned a corner, the sound of wheels died away in the distance, and Percival walked a few steps in the direction of Brackenhill, reached a stile, leaned against it and waited.

"Many happy returns of the day to you!" he said as the girl whom he had seen came along the field-path.

Light leafy shadows wavered on her as she walked, and, all unconscious of his presence, she was softly whistling an old tune.

The color rushed to her face, and she stopped short. "Percival! You here?" she said.

"Yes: did I startle you? I was driving into the town, and saw you in the distance. I could not do less—could I?—than stop then and there to pay my respects to the queen of the day. And what a glorious day it is!"

Lottie sprang over the stile, and looked up and down the road. "Oh, you are going to walk?" she said.

"I'm going to walk—yes. But what brings you here wandering about the fields to-day?"

She had recovered her composure, and looked up at him with laughing eyes: "It is wretched indoors. They are so busy fussing over things for to-night, you know."

"Exactly what I thought you would be doing too."

"I? Oh, mamma said I wasn't a bit of use, and Addie said that I was more than enough to drive Job out of his mind. The fact was, I upset one of her flower-vases. And afterward—well, afterward I broke a big china bowl."

"I begin to understand," said Percival thoughtfully, "that they might feel able to get on without your help."

"Yes, perhaps they might. But they needn't have made such a noise about the thing, as if nobody could enjoy the dance to-night because a china bowl was smashed! Such rubbish! What could it matter?"

"Was it something unique?"

"Oh, it was worse than that," she answered frankly: "it was one of a set. But I don't see why one can't be just as happy without a complete set of everything."

"There I agree with you," he replied. "I certainly can't say that my happiness is bound up with crockery of any kind. And, do you know, Lottie, I'm rather glad it was one of a set. Otherwise, your mother might have known that there was something magical about it, but one of a set is prosaic—isn't it? Suppose it had been a case of—

If this glass doth fall,
Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!"

"Well, the luck would have been in uncommonly little bits," she replied. "I smashed it on a stone step, and they were so cross that I was crosser, so I said I would come out for a walk."

"And do you feel any better?" he asked in an anxious voice.

"Yes, thank you. Being in the open air has done me good."

"Then may I go with you? Or will nothing short of solitude effect a complete cure?"

"You may come," she said gravely. "That is, if you are not afraid of the remains of my ill-temper."

"No, I'm not afraid. I don't make light of your anger, but I believe I'm naturally very brave. Where are we going?"

She hesitated a moment, then looked up at him: "Percival, isn't this the way to the wishing-well? Ever since we came to Fordborough, three months ago, I've wanted to go there. Do you know where it is?"

"Oh yes, I know it. It is about a mile from here, or perhaps a little more. That won't be too far for you, will it?"

"Too far!" She laughed outright. "Why, I could walk ten times as far, and dance all night afterward."

"Then we'll go," said Percival. And, crossing the road, they passed into the fields on the opposite side. A pathway, too narrow for two to walk abreast, led them through a wide sea of corn, where the flying breezes were betrayed by delicate tremulous waves. Lottie led the way, putting out her hand from time to time as she went, and brushing the bloom from the softly-swaying wheat. She was silent. Fate had befriended her strangely in this walk. The loneliness of the sunlit fields was far better for her purpose than the crowd and laughter of the evening, but her heart almost failed her, and with childish superstition she resolved that she would not speak the words which trembled on her lips until she and Percival should have drunk together of the wishing-well. He followed her, silent too. He was well satisfied to be with his beautiful school-girl friend, free to speak or hold his peace as he chose. Freedom was the great charm of his friendship with Lottie—freedom from restraint and responsibility. For if Percival was serenely happy and assured on any single point, he was so with regard to his perfect comprehension of the Blakes in general, and Lottie in particular. He had some idea of giving his cousin Horace a word of warning on the subject of Mrs. Blake's designs. He quite understood that good lady's feelings concerning himself. "I'm nobody," he thought. "I'm not to be thrown over, because I introduced Horace to them; besides, I'm an additional link between Fordborough and Brackenhill, and Mrs. Blake would give her ears to know Aunt Middleton. And I am no trouble so long as I am satisfied to amuse myself with Lottie. In fact, I am rather useful. I keep the child out of mischief, and I don't give her black eyes, as that Wingfield boy did." And from this point Percival would glide into vague speculation as to Lottie's future. He was inclined to think that the girl would do something and be something when she grew up. She was vehement, resolute, ambitious. He wondered idly, and a little sentimentally, whether hereafter, when their paths had diverged for ever, she would look back kindly to these tranquil days and to her old friend Percival. He rather thought not. She would have enough to occupy her without that.

It was true, after a fashion, that Lottie was ambitious in her dreams of love. Her lover must be heroic, handsome, a gentleman by birth, with something of romance about his story. A noble poverty might be more fascinating than wealth. There was but one thing absolutely needful: he must not be commonplace. It was the towering yet unsubstantial ambition of her age, a vision of impossible splendor and happiness. Most girls have such dreams: most women find at six or seven and twenty that their enchanted castles in the air have shrunk to brick-and-mortar houses. Tastes change, and they might even be somewhat embarrassed were they called on to play their parts in the passionate love-poems which they dreamed at seventeen. But the world was just opening before Lottie's eyes, and she was ready to be a heroine of romance.

"This way," said Percival; and they turned into a narrow lane, deep and cool, with green banks overgrown with ferns, and arching boughs above. As they strolled along he gathered pale honeysuckle blossoms from the hedge, and gave them to Lottie.

"How pretty it is!" said the girl, looking round.

"Wait till you see the well," he replied. "We shall be there directly: it is prettier there."

"But this is pretty too: why should I wait?" said Lottie.

"You are right. I don't know why you should. Admire both: you are wiser than I, Lottie."

As he spoke, the lane widened into a grassy glade, and Lottie quickened her steps, uttering a cry of pleasure. Percival followed her with a smile on his lips. "Here is your wishing-well," he said. "Do you like it, now that you have found it out?"

She might well have been satisfied, even if she had been harder to please. It was a spring of the fairest water, bubbling into a tiny hollow. The little pool was like a brimming cup, with colored pebbles and dancing sand at the bottom, and delicate leaf-sprays clustered lightly round its rim. And this gem of sparkling water was set in a space of mossy sward, with trees which leant and whispered overhead, their quivering canopy pierced here and there by golden shafts of sunlight and glimpses of far-off blue.

"It is like fairy-land," said Lottie.

"Or like something in Keats's poems," Percival suggested.

"I never read a line of them, so I can't say," she answered with defiant candor, while she inwardly resolved to get the book.

He smiled: "You don't read much poetry yet, do you? Ah, well, you have time enough. How about wishing, now we are here?" he went on, stooping to look into the well. "Your wishes ought to have a double virtue on your birthday."

"I only hope they may."

"What! have you decided on something very important? Seventeen to-day! Lottie, don't wish to be eighteen: that will come much too soon without wishing."

"I don't want to be eighteen. I think seventeen is old enough," she answered dreamily.

"So do I." He was thinking, as he spoke, what a charming childish age it was, and how, before he knew Lottie, he had fancied from books that girls were grown up at seventeen.

"Now I am going to wish," she said seriously, "and you must wish after me." Bending over the pool, she looked earnestly into it, took water in the hollow of her hand and drank. Then, standing back, she made a sign to her companion.

He stepped forward, and saying, with a bright glance, "My wishes must be for you to-day, Queen Lottie," he followed her example. But when he looked up, shaking the cold drops from his hand, he was struck by the intense expression on her downward-bent face. "What has the child been wishing?" he wondered; and an idea flashed suddenly into his mind which almost made him smile. "By Jove!" he said to himself, "there will be a fiery passion one of these fine days, when Lottie falls in love." But even as he thought this the look which had startled him was gone.

"We needn't go back directly, need we?" she said. "Let us rest a little while."

"By all means," Percival replied, "I'm quite ready to rest as long as you like: I consider resting my strong point. What do you say to this bank? Or there is a fallen tree just across there?"

"No. Percival, listen! There are some horrid people coming: let us go on a little farther, out of their way."

He listened: "Yes, there are some people coming. Very likely they are horrid, though we have no fact to go upon except their desire to find the wishing-well: at any rate, we don't want them. Lottie, you are right: let us fly."

They escaped from the glade at the farther end, passed through a gate into a field, and found themselves once more in the broad sunlight. They paused for a moment, dazzled and uncertain which way to go. "Why did those people come and turn us out?" said Thorne regretfully. A shrill scream of laughter rang through the shade which they had just left. "What shall we do now?"

"I don't mind: I like this sunshine," said Lottie. "Percival, don't you think there would be a view up there?"

"Up there" was a grassy little eminence which rose rather abruptly in the midst of the neighboring fields. It was parted from the place where they stood by a couple of meadows.

"I should think there might be."

"Then let us go there. When I see a hill I always feel as if I must get to the top of it."

"I've no objection to that feeling in the present case, as the hill happens to be a very little one," Percival replied. "And the shepherds and shepherdesses in our Arcadia are unpleasantly noisy. But I don't see any gate into the next field."

"Who wants a gate? There's a gap by that old stump."

"And you don't mind this ditch? It isn't very wide," he said as he stood on the bank.

"No, I don't mind it."

He held out his hand: she laid hers on it and sprang lightly across, with a word of thanks. A few months earlier she would have scorned Cock Robin's assistance had the ditch been twice as wide, as that day she would have scorned any assistance but Percival's. It was well that she did not need help, for his outstretched hand, firm as it was, gave her little. It rather sent a tremulous thrill through her as she touched it that was more likely to make her falter than succeed. She was not vexed that he relapsed into silence as they went on their way. In her eyes his aspect was darkly thoughtful and heroic. As she walked by his side the low grass-fields became enchanted meads and the poor little flowers bloomed like poets' asphodel. A lark sang overhead as never bird sang before, and the breeze was sweet with memories of blossom. When they stood on the summit of the little hill the view was fair as Paradise. A big gray stone lay among the tufts of bracken, as if a giant hand had tossed it there in sport. Lottie sat down, leaning against it, and Percival threw himself on the grass at her feet.

She was nerving herself to overcome an unwonted feeling of timidity. She had dreamed of this birthday with childish eagerness. Her fancy had made it the portal of a world of unknown delights. She grew sick with fear, lest through her weakness or any mischance the golden hours should glide by, and no golden joy be secured before the night came on. Golden hours? Were they not rather golden moments on the hillside with Percival? He loved her—she was sure of that—but he was poor, and would never speak. What could she say to him? She bent forward a little that she might see him better as he lay stretched on the warm turf unconscious of her eyes. Through his half-closed lids he watched the little gray-blue butterflies which flickered round him in the sunny air, emerging from or melting into the eternal vault of blue.

"Percival!"

She had spoken, and ended the long silence. She almost fancied that her voice shook and sounded strange, but he did not seem to notice it.

"Yes?" he said, and turned his face to her—the face that was the whole world to Lottie.

"Percival, is it true that your father was the eldest son, and that you ought to be the heir?"

He opened his eyes a little at the breathless question. Then he laughed: "I might have known that you could not live three months in Fordborough without hearing something of that."

"It is true, then? Mayn't I know?"

"Certainly." He raised himself on his elbow. "But there is no injustice in the matter, Lottie. The eldest son died, and my father was the second. He wanted to have his own way, as we most of us do, and he gave up his expectations and had it. He did it with his eyes open, and it was a fair bargain."

"He sold his birthright, like Esau? Well, that might be quite right for him, but isn't it rather hard on you?"

"Not at all," he answered promptly. "I never counted on it, and therefore I am not disappointed. Why should I complain of not having what I did not expect to have? Shall I feel very hardly used when the archbishopric of Canterbury falls vacant and they pass me over?"

"But your father shouldn't have given up your rights," the girl persisted.

"Why, Lottie," he said with a smile, "it was before I was born! And I'm not so sure about my rights. I don't know that I have any particular rights or wrongs." There was a pause, and then he looked up. "Suppose the birthright had been Jacob's, and he had thrown it away for Rachel's sake: would you have blamed him?"

"No," said Lottie, with kindling eyes.

"Then Jacob and Rachel's son is not hardly used, and has no cause to complain of his lot," Percival concluded, sinking back lazily.

Lottie was silent for a moment. Then she apparently changed the subject: "Do you remember that day Mrs. Pickering called and talked about William?"

"Oh yes, I remember. I scandalized the old lady, didn't I? Lottie, I'm half afraid I scandalized your mother into the bargain."

"I've been thinking about what you said," Lottie went on very seriously—"about being idle all your life."

"Ah!" said Percival, drawing a long breath. "You are going to lecture me? Well, I don't know why I should be surprised. Every one lectures me: they don't like it, but feel it to be their duty. I dare say Addie will begin this evening." He was amused at the idea of a reproof from Lottie, and settled his smooth cheek comfortably on his sleeve that he might listen at his ease. "Go on," he said: "it's very kind of you, and I'm quite ready."

"Suppose I'm not going to lecture you," said Lottie.

"Why, that's still kinder. What then?"

"Suppose I think you are right."

"Do you?"

"Yes," she answered simply. "William Pickering may spend his life scraping pounds and pence together. Men who can't do anything else may as well do that, for it is nice to be rich. But if you have enough, why should you spend your time over it—the best years of your life which will never come back?"

"Never!" said Percival. "You are right."

There was a long pause. Lottie pulled a bit of fern, and looked at him again. There was a line between his dark brows, as if he were pursuing some thought which her words had suggested, but he held his head down and was silent. She threw the fern away and pressed her hands together: "But, Percival, you do care for money, after all. You set it above everything else, as they all do, only in a different way. You are right in what you say, but they are more honest, for they say and do alike."

"Do I care for money? Lottie, it's the first time I have ever been charged with that."

"Because you talk as if you didn't. But you do. Why did you say you would never marry an heiress? The color went right up to the roots of your hair when they talked about it, and you said it would be contemptible: that was the word—contemptible. Then I suppose if you cared for her, and she loved you with all her heart and soul, you would go away and leave her to hate the world and herself and you, just because she happened to have a little money. And you say you don't care about it!"

"Lottie, you don't know what you are talking about." His eyes were fixed on the turf. She had called up a vision in which she had no part. "You don't understand," he began.

"It is you who don't understand," she answered desperately. "You men judge girls—I don't know how you judge them—not by themselves: by their worldly-wise mammas, perhaps. Do you fancy we are always counting what money men have or what we have? It's you who think so much about it. Oh, Percival!" the strong voice softened to sudden tenderness, "do you think I care a straw about what I shall have one day?"

"Good God!" Percival looked up, and for the space of a lightning flash their eyes met. In hers he read enough to show him how blind he had been. In his she read astonishment, horror, repulsion.

Repulsion she read it, but it was not there. To her dying day Lottie will believe that she saw it in his eyes. Did she not feel an icy stab of pain when she recognized it? Never was she more sure of her own existence than she was sure of this. And yet it was not there. She had suddenly roused him from a dream, and he was bewildered, shocked—sorry for his girl-friend, and bitterly remorseful for himself.

Lottie knew that she had made a terrible mistake, and that Percival did not love her. There was a rushing as of water in her ears, a black mist swaying before her eyes. But in a moment all that was over, and she could look round again. The sunlit world glared horribly, as if it understood and pressed round her with a million eyes to mock her burning shame.

"No, I never thought you cared for money," said Percival, trying to seem unconscious of that lightning glance with all its revelations. He had not the restless fingers so many men have, and could sit contentedly without moving a muscle. But now he was plucking nervously at the turf as he spoke.

"What does it matter?" said Lottie. "I shall come to care for it one of these days, I dare say."

He did not answer. What could he say? He was cursing his blind folly. Poor child! Why, she was only a child, after all—a beautiful, headstrong, wilful child, and it was not a year since he met her in the woods with torn frock and tangled hair, her long hands bleeding from bramble-scratches and her lips stained with autumn berries. How fiercely and shyly she looked at him with her shining eyes! He remembered how she stopped abruptly in her talk and answered him in monosyllables, and how, when he left the trio, the clear, boyish voice broke instantly into a flood of happy speech. As he lay there now, staring at the turf, he could see his red-capped vision of Liberty as plainly as if he stood on the woodland walk again with the September leaves above him. He felt a rush of tender, brotherly pity for the poor mistaken child—"brotherly" in default of a better word. Probably a brother would have been more keenly alive to the forward folly of Lottie's conduct. Percival would have liked to hold out his hand to the girl, to close it round hers in a tight grasp of fellowship and sympathy, and convey to her, in some better way than the clumsy utterance of words, that he asked her pardon for the wrong he had unconsciously done her, and besought her to be his friend and comrade for ever. But he could not do anything of the kind: he dared not even look up, lest a glance should scorch her as she quivered in her humiliation. He ended as he began, by cursing the serene certainty that all was so harmless and so perfectly understood, which had blinded his eyes and brought him to this.

And Lottie? She hardly knew what she thought. A wild dream of a desert island in tropic seas, with palms towering in the hot air and snow-white surf dashing on the coral shore, and herself and Cock Robin parted from all the world by endless leagues of ocean, flitted before her eyes. But that was impossible, absurd.

"FOR THE SPACE OF A LIGHTNING FLASH THEIR EYES MET."—Page 551.

He was laughing at her, no doubt—scorning her in his heart. Oh, why had she been so mad? Suppose a thunder-bolt were to fall from the blue sky and crush him into eternal silence as he lay at her feet pulling his little blades of grass? No! Lottie did not wish that: the thought was hideous. Yet had not such a wish had a momentary life as she stared at the hot blue sky? Was it written there, or wandering in the air, or uttered in the busy humming of the flies, so that as she gazed and listened she became conscious of its purport? Surely she never wished it. Why could not the gray rock against which she leaned totter and fall and bury her for ever, hiding her body from sight while her spirit fled from Percival? Yet even that was not enough: they might meet in some hereafter. Lottie longed for annihilation in that moment of despair.

This could not last. It passed, as the first faintness had done, and with an aching sense of shame and soreness (almost worse to bear because there was no exaltation in it) she came back to every-day life. She pushed her hair from her forehead and got up. "I suppose you are not going to stay here all day?" she said.

Percival stretched himself with an air of indolent carelessness: "No, I suppose not. Do you think duty calls us to go back at once?"

"It is getting late," was her curt reply; and he rose without another word.

She was grave and quiet: if anything, she was more self-possessed than he was, only she never looked at him. Perhaps if he could have made her understand what was in his heart when first he realized the meaning of her hasty words, she might have grasped the friendly hand he longed to hold out to her. But not now. Her face had hardened strangely, as if it were cut in stone. They went down the hill in silence, Percival appearing greatly interested in the landscape. As they crossed the level meadows Lottie looked round with a queer fancy that she might meet the other Lottie there, the girl who had crossed them an hour before. At the ditch Thorne held out his hand again. She half turned, looked straight into his eyes with a passionate glance of hatred, and sprang across, leaving him to follow.

He rejoined her as she reached the glade. While they had been on the hill the sun had sunk below the arching boughs, and half the beauty of the scene was gone. The noisy picnic party had unpacked their hampers, the turf was littered with paper and straw, and a driver stood in a central position, with his head thrown back, drinking beer from a bottle. Lottie went straight to the well and took another draught.

"Two wishes in one day?" said Percival.

"Second thoughts are best," she answered, turning coldly away. "Is there no other way home? I hate walking the same way twice."

"There is the road: I'm afraid it may be hot, but it would be a change."

"I should prefer the road," she said.

That walk seemed interminable to Percival Thorne. He was ready to believe that the road lengthened itself, in sheer spite, to leagues of arid dust, and that every familiar landmark fled before him. At last, however, they approached a point where two ways diverged—the one leading straight into the old town, while the other, wide and trimly kept, passed between many bright new villas and gardens. At that corner they might part. But before they reached it a slim, gray-clad figure appeared from the suburban road and strolled leisurely toward them. Percival looked, looked again, shaded his eyes and looked. "Why, it's Horace!" he exclaimed.

Lottie made no reply, but she awoke from her sullen musing, a light flashed into her eyes, and she quickened her pace toward the man who should deliver her from her tête-à-tête with Percival.

CHAPTER V.

WHY NOT LOTTIE?

Percival advanced to meet his cousin. "You here, Horace?" he said.

"So it seems," the other replied, in a voice which sounded exactly as if Percival had answered his own question.

The two young men were wonderfully alike, though hardly one person in a hundred could see it. They were exactly the same height, their features were similar, they walked across the room in precisely the same way, and unconsciously reproduced each other's tricks of manner with singular fidelity. Yet any remark on this resemblance would almost certainly encounter a wondering stare, and "Oh, do you think so? Well, I must confess I can't see much likeness myself;" the fact being that the similarity was in form and gait, while both color and expression differed greatly. Horace's hair had the same strong waves as Percival's, but it was chestnut-brown, his eyes were a clear light gray, his complexion showed a fatal delicacy of white and red. His expression was more varying, his smile was readier and his glance more restless.

He had once taken a college friend, whose hobby was photography, to Brackenhill. Young Felton arrived with all his apparatus, and photographed the whole household with such inordinate demands on their time, and such atrocious results, that every one fled from him in horror. Horace was the most patient of his victims, and Felton declared that he would have a good one of Thorne. But even Horace was tired out at last, and said very mildly that he didn't particularly care for the smell of the stuff, and he was afraid his portraits wouldn't help him to a situation if ever he wanted one—apply, stating terms and enclosing carte; that he thought it uncommonly kind of Felton to take so much trouble, but if ever he let him try again, he'd be—Sissy was there, and the sentence, which had been said over his shoulder as he leaned out of the window, ended in a puff of smoke up into the blue. Felton begged for one more, and persuaded Sissy to be his advocate. "I've an idea that something will come of it," said the hapless photographer. Horace yielded at last, and sat down, grimly resolute that he would yield no more. Something did come of it. Felton got it very much too dark, and the result was a tolerable photograph and a startling likeness of Percival.

The incident caused some little amusement at Brackenhill, and visitors were duly puzzled with the portrait. But it was not long remembered, and people dropped into their former habit of thinking that there was but a slight resemblance between the cousins. Only, Percival carried off the photograph, and was interested for a week or two in questions of doubtful identity, looking up a few old cases of mysterious claimants, and speculating as to the value of the testimony for and against them.

Horace shook hands with Lottie, and uttered his neatly-worded birthday wishes. Her answer was indistinctly murmured, but she looked up at him, and he paused, struck as by something novel and splendid, when he encountered the dark fire of her eyes. "I left them wondering what had become of you," he said. "They thought you were wandering about alone somewhere, and had lost yourself."

"Instead of which we met on the road, didn't we?" said Percival.

"Yes," she answered indifferently.—"And you came to look for me?"

"Of course. I was on my way to hunt up the town-crier and to make our loss known to the police. In half an hour's time we should have been dragging all the ponds."

"I think I'd better go and set mamma's anxious mind at rest," said Lottie with a short laugh. "Good-bye for the present." She was gone in a moment, leaving the young men standing in the middle of the road. Horace made a movement as if to follow her, then checked himself and looked at his cousin.

Percival made haste to speak: "So you have come down for the birthday-party, too? Where are you staying?"

"Oh, the Blakes find me a bed. I'm off again to-morrow morning."

"You are now at Scarborough with my aunt? I have it on Sissy's authority."

"There's no occasion to disturb that faith," said Horace lightly. "Are you going into the town? I'll walk a little way with you."

"You are not going to see them at Brackenhill before you leave?"

Horace shook his head: "Say nothing about me. Did you tell them where you were going?"

"No. I don't suppose they know of the Blakes' existence."

"So much the better. I'm not going to enlighten them."

They strolled on side by side, and for a minute neither spoke. Horace was chafing because it had occurred to him that afternoon that Mrs. Blake seemed rather to take his devotion to Addie for granted. His path was made too smooth and obvious, and it was evident that the prize might be had for the asking. Consequently, Master Horace, who was not at all sure that he wanted it, was irritable and inclined to swerve aside.

"Are not you playing a dangerous game?" said Percival. "Sooner or later some one will mention the fact of these visits to the squire, and there'll be a row."

"Well, then, there must be a row. It's uncommonly hard if I'm never to speak to any one without going to Brackenhill first to ask leave," said Horace discontentedly. "How should you like it yourself?"

"Not at all."

"No more do I. I'm tired of being in leading-strings, and the long and short of it is that I mean to have my own way in this, at any rate."

"In this? Is this a matter of great importance, then? Horace, mind what you are after with the Blakes."

"You're a nice consistent sort of fellow," said Horace.

"Oh, you may call me what you like," Percival replied.

"Who introduced me to these people before they came to Fordborough? Who comes down to Brackenhill—the dullest hole, now there's no shooting—because it's Lottie Blake's birthday? Whose name is a sort of household word here—Percival this and Percival that? Percival without any Thorne to it, mind."

"I plead guilty. What then?"

"What then? Why, I wish you to remark that this is your example, while your precept is—"

"Take care what you are about with the Blakes. Yes, old fellow, you'd better leave my example alone, and stick to the precept. My wisdom takes that form, I admit." He spoke with more meaning than Horace perceived.

"Well, thanks for your advice," said the young man with a laugh. "Though I can't see any particular harm in my coming down to-day."

"No harm. Only remember that there is such a place as Brackenhill."

"The governor oughtn't to find fault with me, since you're in the same boat. He never thinks you can do wrong."

"Never."

"You're a lucky fellow to have only yourself to please."

"Very lucky," said Percival dryly. "Will you change places with me?"

"Change places? What do you mean?"

The other looked fixedly at him, and said in a pointed manner, "I fancy it might easily be managed—with Addie Blake's help."

The suggestion was unpleasant. Horace winced, and vented his displeasure in a random attack: "And why Addie, I should like to know? How can you tell it is Addie at all?"

"Who, then?"

"Why not Lottie?" The words were uttered without a moment's thought, and might have been forgotten as soon as said. But Percival was taken by surprise, and a look of utter incredulity flashed across his face. Horace caught it and was piqued. "Unless you understand her so well that you are sure that no one else has a chance. Of course, if that is the case—"

"Not at all," Percival exclaimed. "It's not for me to pretend to understand Lottie: I'm not such a fool as that."

"All the same," Horace said to himself, "you think you understand her better than I do, and you don't believe I should have a chance if I tried to cut you out. Well, Mr. Percy, you may be right, but, on the other hand, you may be mistaken." And, as he walked back to the Blakes, Horace hurriedly resolved to teach his cousin that he was not to consider Lottie his exclusive property. He knew the folly of such a proceeding, but who was ever hindered from obeying the dictates of wounded vanity by the certainty that he had much better not?

Percival sincerely wished the evening over. He dared not stay away, lest his absence should provoke comment, but he feared some childish outbreak of petulance on Lottie's part. When he saw her he was startled by her beauty. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were full of brilliant meaning. She cast a defiant glance at him as she went by. She was burning with shame, and maddened by the cruel injustice of her fate. A white light seemed to have poured in upon her, and she found it incredible that she could ever have felt or acted as she had felt and acted that afternoon. She said to herself that she might as well have been punished for her conduct in a dream.

Percival plucked up courage enough to go and ask her to dance. He was distressed and pitiful, and longing to make amends, and stood before her like the humblest of suitors. She assented coolly enough. No one saw that there was anything amiss, though he was quick to remark that she gave him only square dances. No more waltzes with Lottie for him. But Horace had one, and when it was over he leaned almost exhausted against the wall, while Lottie stood by his side and fanned herself. The fan seemed to throb in unison with her strong pulses, quickened by the dance and slackening as she rested.

"That was splendid," said Horace with breathless brevity. "Best waltz I ever had."

"Ah!" said Lottie, turning toward him. "Suppose Addie heard that, Mr. Thorne?"

They looked straight into each other's eyes, and Horace felt a strange thrill run through him. He evaded her question with a laugh. "Why do you call me Mr. Thorne?" he asked. "If you call that fellow by his Christian name, why not me? Mine isn't such a mouthful as Percival: try it."

"We knew him first, you see," Lottie replied with much innocence.

"As if that had anything to do with it! If you had known my grandfather first, I suppose you would have called him Godfrey?"

"Perhaps he wouldn't have asked me," said Lottie.

Horace smiled: "Well, perhaps he wouldn't. He isn't much given to making such requests, certainly. But I do ask you. Look!" he exclaimed, with sudden animation, "there's Mrs. Blake taking that dried-up little woman—what is her name?—to the piano. I may have the next dance, I hope."

"How many more things are you going to ask for all at once?" The bright fan kept up its regular come and go, and Lottie's eyes were very arch above it. "I'm sure you don't take after your grandfather."

"Believe me," said Horace, "you would be awfully bored if I did. But you haven't given me an answer. This dance?"

"I've promised it to Mr. Hardwicke. Adieu, Horace!" And before he could utter a syllable she was across the room, standing by the little spinster who was going to play, and helping her to undo a clashing bracelet of malachite and silver which hung on her bony wrist.

Horace, gazing after her, felt a hand on his shoulder and looked round.

"I'm off when this dance is over," said Percival, who seemed weary and depressed. "You still wish me not to say that I have seen you?"

Horace nodded: "I shall be at Scarborough again to-morrow night. There's no occasion to say anything."

"All right. You know best."

"Who can tell what may happen?" said Horace. "Why should one be in a hurry to do anything unpleasant? Put it off, and you may escape it altogether. For instance, the governor may change all at once, as people do in tracts and Christmas books. I don't say it's likely, but I feel that I ought to give him the chance."

"Very good," said Percival; and he strolled away. Horace noted his preoccupied look with a half smile, but after a moment his thoughts and eyes went back to Lottie Blake, and he forgot all about his cousin and Brackenhill.

CHAPTER VI.

HER NAME.

Most country towns have some great event which marks the year, or some peculiarity which distinguishes them from their neighbors. This one has its annual ball, that its races, another its volunteer reviews. One seems to relish no amusement which has not a semi-religious flavor, and excels in school-feasts, choir-festivals, and bazaars. Some places only wake up on the fifth of November, and some are devoted to amateur theatricals. Fordborough had its agricultural show.

Crowds flocked to it, not because they cared for fat cattle, steam ploughs and big vegetables, but because everybody was to be seen there. You stared at the prize pig side by side with the head of one of the great county families, who had a faint idea that he had been introduced to you somewhere (was it at the last election?), and politely entered into conversation with you on the chance. You might perhaps suspect that his remembrance of you was not very clear, when you reflected afterward that he

Asked after my wife, who is dead,
And my children, who never were born;

but at any rate he meant to be civil, and people who saw you talking together would not know what he said. Or you might find the old friend you had not seen for years, gold eye-glass in hand, peering at a plate of potatoes. Or you were young, and there was a girl—no, the girl, the one girl in all the world—bewitchingly dressed, a miracle of beauty, looking at Jones's patent root-pulper. You lived for months on the remembrance of the words you exchanged by a friendly though rather deafening threshing-machine when her mamma (who never liked you) marched serenely on, unconscious that Edith was lingering behind. Then there was the flower-show, where a band from the nearest garrison town played the last new waltzes, and people walked about and looked at everything except the flowers. Fordborough was decked with flags and garlands, and appropriate sentiments on the subject of agriculture, in evergreen letters stitched on calico, were lavishly displayed. Every one who possessed anything beyond a wheelbarrow got into it and drove about, the bells clashed wildly in the steeple, and everything was exceedingly merry—if it didn't rain.

People in that part of the world always filled their houses with guests when the time for the show came round. Even at Brackenhill, though the squire said he was too old for visitors, he made a point of inviting Godfrey Hammond, while Mrs. Middleton, as soon as the day was fixed, sent off a little note to Horace. It was taken for granted that Horace would come. Aunt Harriet considered his invariable presence with them on that occasion as a public acknowledgment of his position at Brackenhill. But the day was gone by when Mr. Thorne delighted to parade his grandson round the field, showing off the slim handsome lad, and proving to the county that with his heir by his side he could defy the son who had defied him. Matters were changed since then. The county had, as it were, accepted Horace. The quarrel was five-and-twenty years old, and had lost its savor. It was tacitly assumed that Alfred had in some undefined way behaved very badly, that he had been very properly put on one side, and that in the natural course of things Horace would succeed his grandfather, and was a nice, gentlemanly young fellow. Mr. Thorne had only to stick to what he had done to ensure the approval of society.

But people did not want, and did not understand, the foreign-looking young man with the olive complexion and sombre eyes who had begun of late years to come and go about Brackenhill, and who was said to be able to turn old Thorne round his finger. This was not mere rumor. The squire's own sister complained of his infatuation. It is true that she also declared that she believed the newcomer to be a very good young fellow, but the complaint was accepted and the addition smiled away. "It is easy to see what her good young man wants there," said her friends; and there was a general impression that it was a shame. Opinions concerning the probable result varied, and people offered airily to bet on Horace or Percival as their calculations inclined them. The majority thought that old Thorne could never have the face to veer round again; but there was the possibility on Percival's side that his grandfather might die intestate, and with so capricious and unaccountable a man it did not seem altogether improbable. "Then," as people sagely remarked, "this fellow would inherit—that is, if Alfred's marriage was all right." No one had any fault, except of a negative kind, to find with Percival, yet the majority of Mr. Thorne's old friends were inclined to dislike him. He did not hunt or go to races: he cared little for horses and dogs. No one understood him. He was indolent and sweet-tempered, and he was supposed to be satirical and scheming. What could his grandfather see in him to prefer him to Horace? Percival would have answered with a smile, "I am not his heir."

Mr. Thorne was happy this July, his boy having come to Brackenhill for a few days which would include the show.

It was the evening before, and they were all assembled. Horace, coffee-cup in hand, leant in his favorite attitude against the chimney-piece. He was troubled and depressed, repulsed Mrs. Middleton's smiling attempts to draw him out, and added very little to the general conversation. "Sulky" was Mr. Thorne's verdict.

Percival was copying music for Sissy. She stood near him, bending forward to catch the full light of the lamp to aid her in picking up a dropped stitch in her aunt's knitting. Close by them sat Godfrey Hammond in an easy-chair.

He was a man of three or four and forty, by no means handsome, but very well satisfied with his good figure and his keen, refined features. He wanted color, his closely-cut hair was sandy, his eyes were of the palest gray, and his eyebrows faintly marked. He was slightly underhung, and did not attempt to hide the fact, wearing neither beard nor moustache. His face habitually wore a questioning expression.

Godfrey Hammond never lamented his want of good looks, but he bitterly regretted the youth which he had lost. His regret seemed somewhat premature. His fair complexion showed little trace of age, he had never known what illness was, and men ten or fifteen years younger might have envied him his slight active figure. But in truth the youth which he regretted was a dream. It was that legendary Golden Age which crowns the whole world with far-off flowers and fills hearts with longings for its phantom loveliness. The present seemed to Hammond hopeless, commonplace and cold, a dull procession of days tending downward to the grave. He was thus far justified in his regrets, that if his youth were as full of beauty and enthusiasm as he imagined it, he was very old indeed.

"What band are they going to have to-morrow, Percival?" asked Sissy.

"I did hear, but I forget. Stay, they gave me a programme when I was at the bookseller's this afternoon." He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of papers and letters. "It was a pink thing—I thought you would like it: what has become of it, I wonder?"

As he turned the papers over a photograph slipped out of its envelope. Sissy saw it: "Percival, is that some one's carte? May I look?"

"What!" said Godfrey Hammond, sticking a glass in his eye and peering short-sightedly, "Percy taking to carrying photographs about with him! Wonders will never cease! What fair lady may it be?—Come, man, let us have a look at her."

Percival colored very slightly, and then, as it were, contradicted his blush by tossing the envelope and its contents across to Godfrey: "No fair lady. Ask Sissy what she thinks of him."

"Why, it's young Lisle!" said Hammond. Mr. Thorne looked up with sudden interest.

Percival reclaimed the photograph: "Here, Sissy, what do you say? Should you like him for your album?"

"For my album? A man I never saw! Who is he?" Miss Langton inquired. "Oh, he's very handsome, though, isn't he?"

Percival saw his grandfather was looking. "It's Mr. Lisle's son," he said.

"And very handsome? Doesn't take after his father."

(Mr. Lisle had been Percival's guardian for the few months between his father's death and his majority. It had been a great grief to Mr. Thorne. Something which he said to his grandson when he first came to Brackenhill had been met by the rejoinder, very cool though perfectly respectful in tone, "But, sir, if Mr. Lisle does not disapprove—" The power-loving old man could not pardon Mr. Lisle for having an authority over Percival which should have belonged to him.)

He put on his spectacles to look at the photograph which Sissy brought. It was impossible to deny the beauty of the face, though the style was rather effeminate: the features were almost faultless.

"Is it like him?" said Sissy, looking up at young Thorne.

"Very like," he replied: "it doesn't flatter him at all, if that is what you mean: does it, Hammond?"

"Not at all."

"He used to sing in the choir of their church," Percival went on. "They photographed him once in his surplice—a sort of ideal chorister. All the old ladies went into raptures, and said he looked like an angel."

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINEOFPOPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

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