e was a good fellow.'

'He was a very good fellow.'

'He would have been made a parson if he had lived--it was his great
wish. I, as his senior, and a man of the world as I thought myself,
used to chaff him about it when he was a boy, and tell him not to be a
milksop, but to enter the army. But I think Jack was right--the parsons
have the best of it, I see now.'

'They would hardly admit that,' said Somerset, laughing. 'Nor can I.'

'Nor I,' said the captain's sister. 'See how lovely you all looked with
your big guns and uniform when you entered Markton; and then see how
stupid the parsons look by comparison, when they flock into Markton at a
Visitation.'

'Ah, yes,' said De Stancy,

'"Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade;
But when of the first sight you've had your fill,
It palls--at least it does so upon me,
This paradise of pleasure and ennui."

When one is getting on for forty;

"When we have made our love, and gamed our gaming,
Dressed, voted, shone, and maybe, something more;
With dandies dined, heard senators declaiming;
Seen beauties brought to market by the score,"

and so on, there arises a strong desire for a quiet old-fashioned
country life, in which incessant movement is not a necessary part of the
programme.'

'But you are not forty, Will?' said Charlotte.

'My dear, I was thirty-nine last January.'

'Well, men about here are youths at that age. It was India used you up
so, when you served in the line, was it not? I wish you had never gone
there!'

'So do I,' said De Stancy drily. 'But I ought to grow a youth again,
like the rest, now I am in my native air.'

They came to a narrow brook, not wider than a man's stride, and Miss De
Stancy halted on the edge.

'Why, Lottie, you used to jump it easily enough,' said her brother. 'But
we won't make her do it now.' He took her in his arms, and lifted
her over, giving her a gratuitous ride for some additional yards, and
saying, 'You are not a pound heavier, Lott, than you were at ten years
old.... What do you think of the country here, Mr. Somerset? Are you
going to stay long?'

'I think very well of it,' said Somerset. 'But I leave to-morrow
morning, which makes it necessary that I turn back in a minute or two
from walking with you.'

'That's a disappointment. I had hoped you were going to finish out
the autumn with shooting. There's some, very fair, to be got here on
reasonab