dence, and
the two young ladies each mounted a stout pony. Mr. Fellowes had
made friends with the Abbe Leblanc, who was of the old Gallican
type, by no means virulently set against Anglicanism, and also a
highly cultivated man, so that they had many subjects in common,
besides the question of English Catholicity. The two young cousins,
Ribaumont and D'Aubepine, were chiefly engaged in looking out for
sport, setting their horses to race with one another, and the like,
in which Charles Archfield sometimes took a share, but he usually
rode with the two young ladies, and talked to them very pleasantly
of his travels in Italy, the pictures and antiquities which had made
into an interesting reality the studies that he had hated when a
boy, also the condition of the country he had seen with a mind which
seemed to have opened and enlarged with a sudden start beyond the
interests of the next fox-hunt or game at bowls. All were, as he
had predicted, greatly shocked at the aspect of the country through
which they passed: the meagre crops ripening for harvest, the hay-
carts, sometimes drawn by an equally lean cow and woman, the haggard
women bearing heavy burthens, and the ragged, barefooted children
leading a wretched cow or goat to browse by the wayside, the gaunt
men toiling at road-mending with their poor starved horses, or at
their seigneur's work, alike unpaid, even when drawn off from their
own harvests. And in the villages the only sound buildings were the
church and presbytere by its side, the dwellings being miserable
hovels, almost sunk into the earth, an old crone or two, marvels of
skinniness, spinning at the door, or younger women making lace, and
nearly naked children rushing out to beg. Sometimes the pepper-box
turrets of a chateau could be seen among distant woods, or the walls
of a cloister, with a taper spire in the midst, among greener
fields; and the towns were approached through long handsome avenues,
and their narrow streets had a greater look of prosperity, while
their inns, being on the way to the place of warfare, were almost
luxurious, with a choice of dainty meats and good wines. Everywhere
else was misery, and Naomi said it was the vain endeavour to reform
the source of these grievances that had forced her father to become
an exile from his native country, and that he had much apprehended
that the same blight might gradually be brought over his adopted
land, on which Charles stood up for the con