aused to notice him further than by a
momentary turn of the head. They had beheld such gentlemen before, not
exactly measuring the church so accurately as this one seemed to be
doing, but painting it from a distance, or at least walking round the
mouldy pile. At the same time the present visitor, even exteriorly, was
not altogether commonplace. His features were good, his eyes of the dark
deep sort called eloquent by the sex that ought to know, and with that
ray of light in them which announces a heart susceptible to beauty of
all kinds,--in woman, in art, and in inanimate nature. Though he
would have been broadly characterized as a young man, his face bore
contradictory testimonies to his precise age. This was conceivably
owing to a too dominant speculative activity in him, which, while it
had preserved the emotional side of his constitution, and with it the
significant flexuousness of mouth and chin, had played upon his forehead
and temples till, at weary moments, they exhibited some traces of being
over-exercised. A youthfulness about the mobile features, a mature
forehead--though not exactly what the world has been familiar with
in past ages--is now growing common; and with the advance of juvenile
introspection it probably must grow commoner still. Briefly, he had more
of the beauty--if beauty it ought to be called--of the future human type
than of the past; but not so much as to make him other than a nice young
man.

His build was somewhat slender and tall; his complexion, though a little
browned by recent exposure, was that of a man who spent much of his time
indoors. Of beard he had but small show, though he was as innocent as
a Nazarite of the use of the razor; but he possessed a moustache
all-sufficient to hide the subtleties of his mouth, which could thus be
tremulous at tender moments without provoking inconvenient criticism.

Owing to his situation on high ground, open to the west, he remained
enveloped in the lingering aureate haze till a time when the eastern
part of the churchyard was in obscurity, and damp with rising dew.
When it was too dark to sketch further he packed up his drawing, and,
beckoning to a lad who had been idling by the gate, directed him to
carry the stool and implements to a roadside inn which he named, lying a
mile or two ahead. The draughtsman leisurely followed the lad out of the
churchyard, and along a lane in the direction signified.

The spectacle of a summer traveller from