knight, toiling along in the blazing summer weather, sweating in
burning metal, like poor Perillus in his own bull."

"Then the fairy knight is extinct in England!" asked Stangrave,
smiling.

"No man less; only he (not Vieuxbois, but his younger brother) has
found a wide-awake cooler than an iron kettle, and travels by rail
when he is at home; and when he was in the Crimea, rode a shaggy pony,
and smoked cavendish all through the battle of Inkermann."

"He showed himself the old Sir Lancelot there," said Stangrave,

"He did. Wherefore the lady married him when the Guards came home; and
he will breed prize pigs; and sit at the board of guardians; and take
in the Times; clothed, and in his right mind; for the old Berserk
spirit is gone out of him; and he is become respectable, in a
respectable age, and is nevertheless just as brave a fellow as ever."

"And so all things are changed, except the river; where still--

'Willows whiten, aspens quiver.
Little breezes dash and shiver
On the stream that runneth ever.'"

"And," said Claude, smiling, "the descendants of mediaeval trout snap
at the descendants of mediaeval flies, spinning about upon just the
same sized and coloured wings on which their forefathers spun a
thousand years ago; having become, in all that while, neither bigger
nor wiser."

"But is it not a grand thought," asked Stangrave,--"the silence and
permanence of nature amid the perpetual flux and noise of human
life?--a grand thought that one generation goeth and another cometh,
and the earth abideth for ever?"

"At least it is so much the worse for the poor old earth, if her doom
is to stand still, while man improves and progresses from age to age."

"May I ask one question, sir?" said Stangrave, who saw that their
conversation was puzzling their jolly companion. "Have you heard any
news yet of Mr. Thurnall!"

Mark looked him full in the face.

"Do you know him?"

"I did, in past years, most intimately."

"Then you knew the finest fellow, sir, that ever walked mortal earth."

"I have discovered that, sir, as well as you. I am under obligations
to that man which my heart's blood will not repay. I shall make no
secret of telling you what they are at a fit time."

Mark held out his broad red hand, and grasped Stangrave's till the
joints cracked: his face grew as red as a turkey-cock's; his eyes
filled with tears.

"His father must hear that! Hang it; his father must hear that! And
Grace