Saul Warren, making his slow way up the Mill lane from Coney Bottom, pulled up under some over-arching alders, and wiped his bald head with a flaming handkerchief. And gazing across at the rise and fall of downy landscape with the fixed firm look of the old and long-sighted, his brows drew suddenly down, and he made a shade of his hand to look the clearer at something which had come into his vision; so, for a good half-minute. "Then that explains it!" and he sank down on the slope of the bank as if he needs must. "There's some sorrow in the morning; I've felt it ever since day-dawn, an' wondered why, an' there it be writ on them feathered things in plain black an' white. Morning, Miss Povey; I were looking th❜other way an' didn't see yer. Nay, don't you look too— don't you, now! Wait till they be gone."

"What are they, Mr. Warren?" said a high thin voice, but with an odd catch in it.

"Two magpies, miss-down there anigh the pollards; an’—but what's this?—eh? eh ?—our Nora! There's only her can laugh like: that. Well, well! what freak is this, ye little elf? None so little either. You be coming up, lassie; but I don't know as I like to see yer tricked out in this woman's gear-gives me a pinch at the heart like. Nora, lass!"-with a sudden twist of face-"you're never going to grow up an' leave us, are yer? There be those—eh, Nora? you'll never fly from th' old nest? Is that the sorrow in the "

She stopped the rest in a way he well knew; and her arms went round his neck, and she looked close at him, half laughing and half in tears.

"I will never, never leave you, grandfer! and that wasn't the sorrow in the morning! I'll go home and take them off, and be just your little Nora, as though the tenth of May had never been. There's another for you, and here are four letters. And now I must go on my errand."

"Tenth o' May-your birthday, Nora; an' I never give it a thart! But so it is, for Dick's to see the Squire this very morning, an' date were fixed for tenth. How old now, Nora?— fifteen or sixteen, is it?"

"Seventeen, grandfer-seventeen and nine hours-for I looked it up in the old Bible, and-oh, I had forgotten! Do forgive me, grandfer! I didn't read the other, but I ought to have remembered. Poor mother!"

"Ay, ay, lass; but she could never be to you as she was to me. She died the same day, did little Eunice; an' she's been seeing

God ever since, if the text be true, for a purer-hearted creature never lived in this world. Letters? I must read them presently; nart of much account, I rackon. Well, dear, I wish yer all that wishes may. Time goes apace, an' my love for yer seems to grow with it. The Lord bless my Nora!"

He turned and kissed the soft cheek which, kitten-like, had been rubbing against his, and he watched with bemused eyes the slim figure step on towards the church and village. As it drew farther from him his vision of it became clearer, and something in the gait and bearing generally this morning struck him as new, and not a little painful; for once again his lines and wrinkles made a ruthful face. With a big sigh he leaned forward on his staff and gazed at the opposite bank, as he of the old poem did who saw the pictures on the "dead wall." At last he rose, and, the letters falling at his feet, he stooped to pick them up; but instead of going on he sat him down again, and, taking out his spectacle-case, adjusted his glasses, and proceeded to read them.

Meanwhile, Nora pursued her way in a more thoughtful mood. She was a stranger to such, and her young face had been so uniformly bright, as of one listening ever to pleasant inner music, that, as she entered the churchyard after calling at the Rectory, the old incumbent, just making for home after the morning prayers, started at the sight of her; and then curiously watched her as she tacked from the path towards a headstone over by the Palm Cross. Bringing up in front of the grey, lichened upright, Nora stood gazing with thoughtful eyes at the last sculptured words which chronicled her mother's name and date of death: "ALSO OF Eunice MARY WILDING, WHO DIED MAY 10TH, 188—, AGED 19 YEARS.” They were the last words on the stone, and space for more there was none; but now, for the first time in her life, the girl began a wondering filling-in of what might have followed had room permitted the recording chisel: "Relict of something Wilding, of somewhere, in such a county." She actually knew nothing of her father, save that he had died abroad, that his name was Wilding, and that he was never by any chance mentioned at the Manor Farm. She had grown up, and slid through the years, taking life and herself very much for granted, and though she had had her sombre and dour times, as she well knew, she had lived on the whole as blithely as a summer bird, and hardly less careless of her inception in the world. Yet she had been born of a woman, and a man had been her father, and in her were living on those two unknowns, and but for them and the love which, before God, had

made them one, she, Nora Wilding, had never been. And to live for seventeen years and hardly give it a thought! A queer creeping sense of shame went about her, and she felt her face warm under the wide shade of her hat.

"Alas, my dear, that you should never have known her! She was the sweetest and gentlest of women."

The Rector looked down at her flushed surprise, the "alas!" lingering in his kindly eyes.

Nora gazed away up the vale; there was a slight quivering at her lips.

"You knew her, then, Mr. Povey. It's so hard to realise that you have been here so long-and never once before have you mentioned her. But, tell me, did you know my father? I was thinking of them both at the moment."

"Only from hearsay, and that from your own people; he had left the country some months when I came to Brereton Dene. But it's about time you knew. How old are you, Nora?”

"Seventeen to-day, sir."

"Bless me!" Mr. Povey looked away, wrinkling with thought. A half-minute passed, and then slowly his soft brown eyes came round again and met the blue of hers. It was she who spoke.

"But why should it be held such a secret? I don't want you to break it, sir. I must talk with grandfather; but tell me one thing: What was my father, and where did he come from? Was he a gentleman, a tradesman, a farmer, or what?"

"He was a gentleman-I can tell you that-and sprung from a famous line of such."

Nora smiled, and her head lifted, but she said nothing, only seemed to grow taller under the musing regard of the other.

"He was what they call a cadet-the youngest of three brothersall as wild as young horses, and as quarrelsome as game cockerels, as Warren would say; and your father, I have heard, was the worst of the trio. He fell in love and married your poor mother; had high words on that account with old Sir Justin; sold his commission straightway, then took up another in the Austrian army. He was shot in a duel just as Mrs. Wilding was about to join him. She returned to her home and you were born."

"Sold his commission? He was an officer, then?"

"A captain in the Dragoons."

Nora's eyes lit again, and very pretty was the proud curve of her lips.

"I seem to understand myself better now," said she, after the

little silence. "We are such mysteries to ourselves till we begin to realise that we are made up of other selves, and that, in a way, they live on again through us. I think I know now why I'm so often divided in two, why, as grandfer says, I can be such a tomboy and such a little nun in one round of the clock. But, oh, Mr. Povey-I wish I could tell you everything! I love Charlton, and the downs, and the sea, and the great spreading sky-it's all so large and spacious. Yet there are times when I feel as if—as if-but how silly it is to talk about it! I must stay here now, and—and—I think I'll get home, Mr. Povey."

"Perhaps I ought not to have told you," said the Rector, a trifle troubled; "but I think we agreed that you should know when you were old enough, and your grandfather left it to me to speak first. Your mother, I may tell you, bequeathed me certain responsibilities concerning you; but I've been in no hurry to exercise them, for it was Mrs. Wilding's wish that you should be brought up very much as she was herself, simply and naturally, but not without a view to future possibilities as Captain Wilding's daughter. And we have not made such a bad job of you"-beaming down upon her-" not at all a bad job. But now-dear me! how the years have flown! I really must speak to Warren," he added to himself; "his affection is one thing, and her future is another. There are only two livesor is it only one ?-between her and the-what is it, my dear?"

Nora had come to a stand, pulled up by a sudden thought. "Sir Justin-my other grandfather-is it part of the secret that he would have nothing to do with me? And is that why his name has never passed ?—why till to-day I had never even heard of him?" Mr. Povey wrinkled again.

"The fact is, Nora, Sir Justin is a very peculiar man; not a bad man by any means—you might even like him. But when you were born, when I had informed him of the fact, and of your mother's wishes concerning you, he simply wrote, in effect, Very well; I have nothing to say against it; but if anything should go wrong, remember that I have my obligations too.'"

"Then he was not a bad man!" said Nora, her face clearing. "He saw how it was, and just left grandfer and you with free hands. Nothing has happened; but, oh! I wish I had known! wish-no, I don't-how wicked of me!

"Quite true, my dear, and I see we have done well. For some day, when you are well out of the Happy Valley and in the great world beyond-you can't always be here, you know-you will look back on your earlier years at Brereton as probabl the happiest you

have ever known. And now good-morning, and tell Mr. Warren I shall be calling some time this evening. By the way, I've sent to ask him for the loan of your Jenny; Laura wants her for a run over to Blackhurst and back with me. You don't mind? Thanks. Good-bye."

He watched her as she passed up the path to the lych-gate.

"It was time she knew; but it won't spoil her-she rings trueand I'm glad enough Sir Justin hasn't interfered. Probably he has forgotten all about her; but she must be brought to his mind again, and then-well, what then? Quis omnia prævidere potest?"

A few minutes later there sprang up against the skyline of the down which lifted its broad, rounded back above the Manor Farm the figures of a horse and rider. They were the young, taper-legged mare which the Rector has just bespoken, and Nora Wilding, her white straight-up form almost gleaming against the deep blue of the beyond. She waved a hand to someone below, loosened rein, gave a sharp hark-away cry, and away with long glad leaps the good horse sped. Dick, from the stable doorway, stood and watched them; nor was it a wistful look which shone from under his straight dark brows. From the shadow of a stall-place he had seen Nora enter by the steading gate, had seen her run up to Hugh, who was tightening Jenny's girths, with much strong English at her friskiness, had seen her put her little foot on the man's ready hand, and, regardless of Leah's Sunday gown or a fine show of ankles, spring laughing to the saddle; for it had been patent to them all that Jenny much needed a sobering spin to fit her for the timid Miss Povey. And so away they had gone. And as Dick watched the dear white figure till it disappeared over the shoulder of the hill he gave a great lift of his chest and turned to the yard-man. Hugh, go and find the governor ; he wants to see me before I set out, and told me to wait. I'll see to Diamond."

He looked up again to the down, tapping his leggings with his stock. "Now what can grandfer mean by sending me to the Squire on this errand? Wants the first refusal of that land, and says the words with a writ in his pocket for that last lot of bone-dust ! And what does Nora mean by changing from a dogrose to a full-blown damask between a sunset and a sunrise? And what does Dick Warren mean by being the blithest son of Adam that ever lost heart to a maid? Nora shall tell me to-night."

And at that very moment Nora was resolving once again so to do. For by that "persistence of vision" so peculiar to young hearts when love is at game with them, Dick's comely up-gazing face and