ped for the
fight, and the little town huddled close under its protection. What
wars had there blustered, what rumours blown, what fears whispered,
what sorrows moaned! But were there not now just as many evils as
then? Let the world improve as it may, the deeper ill only breaks out
afresh in new forms. Time itself, the staring, vacant, unlovely time,
is to many the one dread foe. Others have a house empty and garnished,
in which neither Love nor Hope dwells. A self, with no God to protect
from it, a self unrulable, insatiable, makes of existence to some the
hell called madness. Godless man is a horror of the unfinished--a
hopeless necessity for the unattainable! The most discontented are
those who have all the truthless heart desires.

Thoughts like these were coming and going in Donal's brain, when he
heard a slight sound somewhere near him--the lightest of sounds
indeed--the turning of the leaf of a book. He raised his head and
looked, but could see no one. At last, up through the tree-boles on
the slope of the hill, he caught the shine of something white: it was
the hand that held an open book. He took it for the hand of a lady.
The trunk of a large tree hid the reclining form. He would go back!
There was the lovely cloth-striped meadow to lie in!

He rose quietly, but not quietly enough to steal away. From behind the
tree, a young man, rather tall and slender, rose and came towards him.
Donal stood to receive him.

"I presume you are unaware that these grounds are not open to the
public!" he said, not without a touch of haughtiness.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Donal. "I found the gate open, and the
shade of the trees was enticing."

"It is of no consequence," returned the youth, now with some
condescension; "only my father is apt to be annoyed if he sees any
one--"

He was interrupted by a cry from farther up the hill--

"Oh, there you are, Percy!"

"And there you are, Davie!" returned the youth kindly.

A boy of about ten came towards them precipitately, jumping stumps, and
darting between stems.

"Take care, take care, Davie!" cried the other: "you may slip on a root
and fall!"

"Oh, I know better than that!--But you are engaged!"

"Not in the least. Come along."

Donal lingered: the youth had not finish his speech!

"I went to Arkie," said the boy, "but she couldn't help me. I can't
make sense of this! I wouldn't care if it wasn't a story."

He had an old folio under one a