f the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun
was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west; the hills
were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and
the wide moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north
in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter awakened in Van Tromp.

"Gad, Dick," he cried, "what value!"

An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so touching to
Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears: yes, here was the father of
whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic,
unworldly, kind, a painter at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.

And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside, and
something depending over the house door which might be construed as a
sign by the hopeful and thirsty.

"Is that," he asked, pointing with his stick, "an inn?"

There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached some
importance to the inquiry: Esther listened, hoping she should hear wit
or wisdom.

Dick said it was.

"You know it?" inquired the Admiral.

"I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all," replied Dick.

"Ah," said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head; "you are not
an old campaigner; you have the world to learn. Now I, you see, find an
inn so very near my own home, and my first thought is--my neighbours. I
shall go forward and make my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't
come; I shall not be a moment."

And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone with
Esther on the road.

"Dick," she exclaimed, "I am so glad to get a word with you; I am so
happy, I have such a thousand things to say; and I want you to do me a
favour. Imagine, he has come without a paint-box, without an easel; and
I want him to have all. I want you to get them for me in Thymebury. You
saw, this moment, how his heart turned to painting. They can't live
without it," she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michelangelo.

Up to that moment she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's behaviour.
She was too happy to be curious; and his silence, in presence of the
great and good being whom she called her father, had seemed both natural
and praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became conscious of
a barrier between her lover and herself, and alarm sprang up in her
heart.

"Dick," she cried, "you don't love me."

"I do that," he said heartily.

"But you are unhappy; you are str