e full light of the evening sky, she looked again to Lucy like the Mary
of old. Neither spoke; their hearts were too full for words, but they
clasped each other's hands in a silence more eloquent than speech.

Both sisters' thoughts were full of the past rather than the present.

Mary seemed to see before her the little fair-haired boy who had been so
eager to mount Sir Philip's horse, and Sir Philip, with his radiant smile
and gracious kindliness, so ready to gratify the boy's desire, as he set
him on the saddle.

And Mary heard, too, again the ringing voice as little Ambrose said,--

'I would fain be a noble gentleman and brave soldier like Mr Philip Sidney.
I would like to ride with him far, far away.'

She recalled now the pang those words had caused her, and how she dreaded
the parting which came all too soon, and had been so bitter to her. Now,
she had her son restored to her, but she felt, as how many mothers have
felt since, a strange hunger of the soul, for her vanished child! Ambrose,
quiet and sedate, and eager to be an accomplished scholar, tall, almost
dignified, for his sixteen years, was indeed her son, and she could thank
God for him. Yet she thought with a strange regret, of the days when he
threw his arms round her in a rough embrace, or trotted chattering by her
side as she went about the farm, or, still sweeter memory, murmured in his
sleep her name, and looked up at her with a half-awakened smile, as he
found her near, and felt her kisses on his forehead.

From these thoughts Mary was roused by Ambrose himself,--

'Mother,' he said, 'this is too far for you to walk. You should not have
ventured down the hill. We have returned to find the house empty; and my
father is in some distress when he heard you had come so far.'

Ambrose spoke as if he were constituted his mother's caretaker; and Lucy,
laughing, said,--

'You need not look so mighty grave about it, Ambrose; your mother is not
tired. Forsooth, one would think you were an old man giving counsel, rather
than a boy.'

Ambrose disliked of all things to be called a boy; and, since his first
remark about the baby Philip, there had often been a little war of words
between aunt and nephew.

'Boys may have more wits than grown folk sometime,' he replied. 'Here comes
my father, who does not think me such a fool as, perchance, you do, Aunt
Lucy. He has brought a horse to carry my mother up the steep hill.'

'Well, I will leave her to your dou