nd the clambering honeysuckle
vines, are all as they were years ago. Even the groups of wild roses, by
the door, bud and bloom as if the autumn winds had never beaten them down.

We shall accuse the reader with having a bad memory, if he does not
recognise Joe Wilkes in the stalwart form and honest face of the gardener,
who occupies himself with tying up a refractory vine, which persists in
running wild over the new summer-house. It is he, indeed--the whilome
jailor of the Tombs, who has laid aside his ponderous prison-keys, and
taken up the shovel and the hoe.

III.

Two persons are standing at the "round window," where Bell and her brother
used to linger, dreamily, in the twilights of long ago. The rays of the
setting sun glance over the waves, and fall on the faces of Mortimer and
Daisy--Daisy Snarle no more, but little Maude Walters. Their honey-moon has
been of six years' duration, and to such as they, that sweet moon of
tenderness never wanes, but runs from full to full--never new and never
old! Strephon woos Chloe as of yore. The lover, as in some antique picture,
is ever kneeling at the feet of his mistress, and she, through the
gathering of years, looks down on him with the olden tenderness and the
April blushes of womanhood! To such as they, life plays on a dulcimer. The
golden age is not dead to them. They see the shepherd Daphnis seated on the
slopes of AEtna, and hear him pipe to the nymph Eschenais. This "bank-note
world," to them, is Arcady, and their lives are sweet and simple as
pastoral hymns!

But we, the author of this MS., are growing pastoral ourselves, and Heaven
forbid that we should venture into a field which one of our poets has
recently brought into disrepute by his indifferent blank verse.

Mortimer, leaning on the sill of the window, is looking at Daisy, who
stands a little in the background, with that kissable white hand of hers
shading the sun from as dangerous a pair of black eyes as ever looked "no"
when they meant "yes." She is watching a speck of a boat, which is dancing
up and down on the waves like a cork. Mortimer has just brought a telescope
to bear on the distant object, and we, with that lack of good-breeding
which has characterized all romancers from time immemorial, will look over
his shoulder. The delighted occupant of the boat is that audacious fellow,
Tim, who has taken a trip up to Ivyton from the great city, to spend a week
with "Mr. Mortimer." It may be well to say th