ly reading Peregrine's affidavit, as indeed was
due to Colonel Archfield, so as to prove that this was no mere
pardon, though technically it had so to stand, but actual acquittal.
Nor was the struggle with evil at the end forgotten, nor the
surrender alike of love and of hatred, as well as of his own life,
which had been the final conquest, the decisive passing from
darkness to light.

It was a strange sermon according to present ideas, but not to those
who had grown up to the semi-political preaching of the century then
in its last decade; and it filled many eyes with tears, many hearts
with a deeper spirit of that charity which hopeth all things.

* * * * *

A month later Charles Archfield and Anne Jacobina Woodford were
married at the little parish church of Fareham. Sir Philip insisted
on making it a gay and brilliant wedding, in order to demonstrate to
the neighbourhood that though the maiden had been his grandson's
governess, she was a welcomed and honoured acquisition to the
family. Perhaps too he perceived the error of his middle age, when
he contrasted that former wedding, the work of worldly
conventionality, with the present. In the first, an unformed,
undeveloped lad, unable to understand his own true feelings and
affections had been passively linked to a shallow, frivolous, ill-
trained creature, utterly incapable of growing into a helpmeet for
him; whereas the love and trust of the stately-looking pair, in the
fresh bloom of manhood and womanhood, had been proved in the furnace
of trial, so that the troth they plighted had deep foundation for
the past, and bright hope for the future.

Nor was anybody more joyous than little Philip, winning his Nana for
a better mother to him than his own could ever have been

It was in a blue velvet coat that Colonel Archfield was married. He
had resigned his Austrian commission; and though the 'Salamander,'
was empowered to offer him an excellent staff appointment in the
English army, he decided to refuse. Sir Philip showed signs of
having been aged and shaken by the troubles of the winter, and
required his son's assistance in the care of his property, and
little Philip was growing up to need a father's hand, so that
Charles came to the conclusion that there was no need to cross the
old Cavalier's dislike to the new regime, nor to make his mother and
wife again suffer the anxieties of knowing him on active service,
while his duties lay at home.

Sedley Archfi