nd then!--so this
must be my last letter, since I shall have nowhere to write to with you
rushing all across Europe and resting nowhere because of my impatience
to have you. The Mother-Aunt concedes a whole month, but Arthur will
have to leave earlier for the beginning of term. How little my two
dearest men have yet seen of each other! Barely a week lies between us:
this will scarcely catch you. Dearest of dearests, my heart waits on
yours.

LETTER XLIII.

My Dearest: See what an effect your "gallous young hound" episode has had
on me. I send it back to you roughly done into rhyme. I don't know
whether it will carry; for, outside your telling of it, "Johnnie Kigarrow"
is not a name of heroic sound. What touches me as so strangely complete
about it is that you should have got that impression and momentary
romantic delusion as a child, and now hear, years after, of his
disappearing out of life thus fittingly and mysteriously, so that his name
will fix its legend to the countryside for many a long day. I would like
to go there some day with you, and standing on Twloch Hill imagine all the
country round as the burial-place of the strong man on whose knees my
beloved used to play when a child.

It must have been soon after this that your brother died: truly,
dearest, from now, and strangely, this Johnnie Kigarrow will seem more
to me than him; touching a more heroic strain of idea, and stiffening
fibers in your nature that brotherhood, as a rule, has no bearing on.

A short letter to-day, Beloved, because what goes with it is so long.
This is the first time I have come before your eyes as anything but a
letter-writer, and I am doubtful whether you will care to have so much
all about yourself. Yet for that very reason think how much I loved
doing it! I am jealous of those days before I knew you, and want to have
all their wild-honey flavor for myself. Do remember more, and tell me!
Dearest heart, it was to me you were coming through all your scampers
and ramblings; no wonder, with that unknown good running parallel, that
my childhood was a happy one. May long life bless you, Beloved!

(_Inclosure._)

My brother and I were down in Wales,
And listened by night to the Welshman's tales;
He was eleven and I was ten.
We sat on the knees of the farmer's men
After the whole day's work was done:
And I was friends with the farmer's son.
His hands were rough as his arms were strong,
His