born, when those tall elms were thin, fragile, tender saplings, there stood, no doubt, a grand old picturesque mansion in the centre of those park-like grounds. Doubtless, the Nugents were wont, in those days, to issue forth with their armed retainers, and strike a gallant stroke for altar and for crown." "I'm afraid they were Puritans!" exclaimed Gertrude, laughing.

66

Well, then, for freedom and for faith!" replied Miss Beverley, rapidly adjusting her romantic visions to the exigencies of prosaic history.

"Wounded knights," she continued, "have been borne bleeding up that avenue, lovely damsels have climbed the hill, to watch for father or brother or lover returning from the wars. I do hope Mr. Nugent will some day recover his position, repurchase all his ancestral estates, and be M.P. for the county, High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant into the bargain! I think him so interesting! He always looks as if he were somebody who, for excellent reasons, thought it expedient to wear a temporary disguise."

Gertrude now produced the jewels presented to her by Lady Maud, and due admiration having been lavished on them, she bade Miss Beverley good night, and hurried to her bedroom. Here she occupied herself with arranging the room afresh, altering the situation of chairs and tables, changing books, distributing her ornaments in new situations. There was over the mantelpiece a picture of a Madonna (a small copy of a Guido), and in front was placed an elegant little marble figure of Flora, scattering flowers round her. Gertrude took away the picture, and hung it in another part of the room, placing a copy of Beatrice Cenci in its place. Then she removed the Flora, and placed instead of it her new illuminated prayer-book, with two alabaster Cupids playing together on one side, and on the other a stuffed bullfinch under a glass case, trying to catch a faded butterfly. She seemed pleased with this arrangement, and completed the effect by a vase of flowers at each end of the mantelpiece. Then decking herself in the whole of the jewels lately presented to her by her mother, she stood before the lookingglass investigating her appearance for about ten minutes. At length an expression of weariness began to settle upon that pretty face, mingled with self-reproach, and, taking off her ornaments, she rang abruptly, and retired to rest.

23

CHAPTER III.

THE TWO PRISONERS.

MISS Beverley was not far from the truth in assuming that Nugent's ancestors had been great people in their day. They had owned the land which he now rented, and a great many broad acres besides. Once an old manorial residence rose in varied but picturesque proportions upon the gentle slope of that wooded hill-side, towards which the avenue of elms, already described, formed a stately approach. Some heavy fines, inflicted for political offences under the agreeable régime of the Stuarts, followed up by an inroad of the sea that carried havoc over the low lands in the district, had shaken the stability and curtailed the resources of the family. The property was burdened with mortgage after mortgage, until the owners were little better than collectors of rent for the benefit of expectant creditors.

When Nugent's father succeeded to the possessions of his ancestors, he found himself a penniless gentleman, surrounded by an empty pageant of hill and dale, rich meadow and productive arable, the rent of which he never touched, and a fine old house decaying for want of repairs, which he could scarcely afford to keep warm and habitable. His great aim and secret ambition was by degrees, however slowly, to pay off the debts that crippled and crushed the estate, and to come forth once more an independent man. He strove hard to conquer the difficulties bequeathed to him, but it was a severe and trying struggle.

In the midst of it an accident happened, which at first sight appeared disastrous, but proved most beneficial. The Manor-house, in his absence from home, was set on fire through the carelessness of a servant, and completely gutted by the flames that fed voraciously on its old wainscots and well-dried timbers, its roof of Spanish chesnut, its floors of polished oak. He was for a time prostrated by the accumulated misfortunes which beset him. But his strong spirit speedily rallied. Some kind friends and relations urged the rebuilding of his house in its ancient style at any cost or sacrifice. He inquired drily how much they would contribute towards the work, and was very shortly left alone to his

reflections. He drew from the quarter where he had invested them half the savings of several years' steady self-denial and frugality, employed this sum in completing the destruction of his house and erecting on the site of the old stables the unpretending abode we have briefly described, finally took into his own hands a few hundred acres convenient to the house, and turned farmer in sober earnest.

The needy squire began to be transformed into the thriving yeoman. He married a lady, young, handsome, and well educated; for a lady, poor—for a farmer's wife, tolerably well off. Her sweet and gentle disposition softened the harshness of her husband's temper, and mitigated its natural austerity. When Oliver, their only son, grew up to man's estate, the old man summoned him into his private room, and put it to him whether he would prefer to sneak and shuffle through life as a pauper gentleman, or look the best man in the realm boldly in the face as an upright independent yeoman?

Oliver's choice was soon made. The father and son cut off the entail of the still burdened estate, sold the whole of it except about 600 acres immediately around the house, paid their debts, and settled down on the unembarrassed property, now in every sense their own, and continued to farm it with activity and success.

Anticipating the possibility of his son's gaining a higher position in society than himself, he thought it right that Oliver should have an excellent education: an education that should amply accord with any future improvement in his worldly circumstances. He did not indeed send him to either of the universities; but a few years at a public school, and a year or two with an excellent tutor, proved sufficient for the object in view.

Three years had elapsed since the death of Oliver's parents at the period when the present narrative commences; but for some time before his father's decease Nugent had assumed and carried on the management of the small estate still belonging to his family.

In addition to the freehold property, he rented two or three hundred acres of adjacent land, once his father's, but since passed into the hands of strangers.

The management of a farm of this extent requires experience, ability, and vigour. Nugent possessed these qualifications; but he had one fault, by no means a rare one, he was a little too fond of his own opinion. He examined a

matter honestly, but when he had made up his mind had difficulty in believing that he might possibly be mistaken. In practice he often gave up his opinion, but it was rather in the spirit of a martyr than of a convert.

Nugent was strongly and sincerely under the influence of religion. A little of a puritan, he was nevertheless a fairly loyal servant of the Church of England. A respect for discipline and order, an abhorrence of wrangling and confusion, were strong motives to retain him in a society in which the truth was substantially taught, even if occasionally infected by error; a society comprising so many excellent and pious. men, and extending over the length and breadth of the land so salutary an influence.

The day after Lady Maud's visit to the Manor-house Farm, Nugent, just returned from his usual ride over the estate, threw the reins of his strong active Galloway to one of his men, and, entering the house, proceeded to a long low room which went by the name of the library; although, to say the truth, the few shelves, and those scantily provided with books, ranged round the room, did not impart to it a very literary aspect.

You descended into it by three steps, and as the ceiling was of dark oak boards crossed by heavy horizontal ribs of the same material, remnants of the ancient mansion, the first impression received was not lively. The latticed window was indeed broad, but the level of the floor being below the external ground, much light was not admitted; especially when the roses and honeysuckles had made their summer shoots, and hung over and beset the window on all sides, as if struggling to force their way in. The chimneypiece was composed of fragments of carved stone; two massive blocks on each side supporting a slab of sandstone, under which two corbels were inserted--weather-beaten faces of an unearthly expression, whose grirn but dignified severity was enhanced by a slight stain of smoke arising from proximity to the fire. The furniture of the room was of a plain, almost meagre, description. The walls were covered with a cheap and sicklylooking paper; green baize was spread over the floor. Above the old chimneypiece hung the portrait of a lady of middle age, of a sweet and serious countenance, and quiet nobility of aspect.

There was a cupboard full of papers and account-books. Against one side of the room a gun or two, a brace of pistols,

a hunting-whip, and three ancient swords, of the dates respectively of Agincourt, the Armada, and the Commonwealth, were suspended. The remaining walls were ornamented by an agricultural almanac mounted map-like on a roller, a handsome barometer, a portrait of a favourite horse, a coloured drawing of various fungi and insects hostile to the growth of plants, five walking-sticks of various shapes and sizes, and a few book-shelves. On the chimneypiece were two or three small canvass bags containing samples of grain or seed, a small model of a drilling-machine, an antique snuff-box filled with copper caps, and a small paper parcel containing a specimen of superphosphate of lime. The books on the shelves were principally on agricultural subjects, but there were a few works of general instruction. A Greek Testament, Virgil's Georgics, Hesiod, two gigantic folics reposing one a-top of the other (one of them Scott's Commentary, the other a Greek Lexicon), and a heap of dusty pamphlets, tracts, and venerable newspapers.

Nugent entered, sat down to the table, pulled a large desk towards him, and, placing his watch on one side of it, commenced writing two or three letters. One of the letters was addressed to Sir Laurence Clinton, Bart., The Grotto, Coppiceon-Shingle. It was a letter expressive of sympathy, unaffected but cordial, with the old man on account of the dangerous illness of his only surviving son, a few months before one of the handsomest and gaye st habitués of Paris and Florence; now, a weak and wasted invalid, with hollow cheeks and dreamy eye, drawn about in a bat h-chair on sunny days up and down the esplanade, his old father walking by his side and occasionally holding his hand.

It is a delicate matter for any man to write a letter of condolence on an affliction which may produce a great change for the better in his own circumstances. But Nugent did not feel embarrassment; he was simple and direct in what he took in hand; was not vehemently in terested in the possible effects Reginald Clinton's death might have upon his worldly fortunes, but sincerely grieved for the distracted father, and wrote accordingly.

After giving some directions to one or two men who were waiting for him outside, Nugent, going through the garden, and passing through a gate at the upper end, under some tall fir-trees, was soon upon a breezy down overlooking his whole farmstead to the left, and on the right giving a fine view of