inter's day.'

When two or three additional hours had merged the same afternoon in
evening, some moving outlines might have been observed against the sky
on the summit of a wild lone hill in that district. They circumscribed
two men, having at present the aspect of silhouettes, sitting in a
dog-cart and pushing along in the teeth of the wind. Scarcely a solitary
house or man had been visible along the whole dreary distance of open
country they were traversing; and now that night had begun to fall,
the faint twilight, which still gave an idea of the landscape to
their observation, was enlivened by the quiet appearance of the planet
Jupiter, momentarily gleaming in intenser brilliancy in front of them,
and by Sirius shedding his rays in rivalry from his position over their
shoulders. The only lights apparent on earth were some spots of dull
red, glowing here and there upon the distant hills, which, as the driver
of the vehicle gratuitously remarked to the hirer, were smouldering
fires for the consumption of peat and gorse-roots, where the common was
being broken up for agricultural purposes. The wind prevailed with but
little abatement from its daytime boisterousness, three or four small
clouds, delicate and pale, creeping along under the sky southward to the
Channel.

Fourteen of the sixteen miles intervening between the railway terminus
and the end of their journey had been gone over, when they began to pass
along the brink of a valley some miles in extent, wherein the wintry
skeletons of a more luxuriant vegetation than had hitherto surrounded
them proclaimed an increased richness of soil, which showed signs of far
more careful enclosure and management than had any slopes they had yet
passed. A little farther, and an opening in the elms stretching up from
this fertile valley revealed a mansion.

'That's Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian's,' said the driver.

'Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian's,' repeated the other mechanically.
He then turned himself sideways, and keenly scrutinized the almost
invisible house with an interest which the indistinct picture itself
seemed far from adequate to create. 'Yes, that's Lord Luxellian's,' he
said yet again after a while, as he still looked in the same direction.

'What, be we going there?'

'No; Endelstow Vicarage, as I have told you.'

'I thought you m't have altered your mind, sir, as ye have stared that
way at nothing so long.'

'Oh no; I am interested in the house, th