es of Bliss sooner than another. Sensual faith in the
upper glories is something. "Let us remember," says The Pilgrim's Scrip,
"that Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of
the Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion of the spheres.
In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting that through
Nature only can we ascend. Cherished, trained, and purified, she is then
partly worthy the divine mate who is to make her wholly so. St. Simeon
saw the Hog in Nature, and took Nature for the Hog."

It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the young
man, he knew not how it was, for sadness and his forebodings vanished.
The soft wand touched him. At that moment, had Sir Austin spoken openly,
Richard might have fallen upon his heart. He could not.

He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue
his System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy of the
creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is unreflecting and
vindictive as jealousy of woman.

Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about
the Bellingham station. Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the
train, and drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the
chest. Leaving his father to the felicitations of the station-master,
he went into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had
received private orders through Berry to be in attendance with his
young master's mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in a plantation of
firs unenclosed on the borders of the road, where Richard, knowing his
retainer's zest for conspiracy too well to seek him anywhere but in the
part most favoured with shelter and concealment, found him furtively
whiffing tobacco.

"What news, Tom? Is there an illness?"

Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old
agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract
thought or sudden difficulty.

"No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard," he whinnied with a false grin,
as he beheld his master's eye vacantly following the action.

"Speak out!" he was commanded. "I haven't had a letter for a week!"

Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm, only
getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck, and looking very hard at
Tom without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making
him sincerely wish his master would punch his head at