ered Simon; "I'll never
give her up."

To Phebe they were always old friends, whom she must care for as long as
she lived, however far she might travel from them or rise above them.
The free, homely life on the hills was as dear to her and the children
as their life in London. The little house, with its beautiful and
curious decorations; the small fields and twisted trees surrounding it;
the wide, purple moors, and all the associations Phebe conjured up for
them connected with their father, made the dumb old wood-carver's place
a second home to them.

The happiest season of the year to Mr. Clifford was that when Phebe and
Roland Sefton's children were in his neighborhood. Felicita remained
firm to her resolution that Felix should have nothing to do with his
father's business, and the boy himself had decided in his very childhood
that he would follow in the footsteps of his ancestor, Felix Merle, the
brave pastor of the Jura. There was no hope of having him to train up
for the Old Bank. But every summer they spent a few days with him, in
the very house where their father had lived, and where Felix could still
associate him with the wainscoted rooms and the terraced garden. When
Felix talked of his father and asked questions about him, Mr. Clifford
always spoke of him in a regretful and affectionate tone. No hint
reached the boy that his father's memory was not revered in his native
town.

"There is no stone to my father in the church," he said, one Sunday,
after he had been looking again and again at a tablet to his grandfather
on the church walls.

"No; but I had a granite cross put over his grave in Engelberg,"
answered Mr. Clifford; "when you can go to Switzerland you'll have no
trouble in finding it. Perhaps you and I may go there together some day.
I have some thoughts of it."

"But my mother will not hear a word of any of us ever going to
Switzerland," said Felix. "I've asked her how soon she would think us
old enough to go, and she said never! Of course we don't expect she
would ever bear to go to the place where he was killed; but Phebe would
love to go, and so would I. We've saved enough money, Phebe and I; and
my mother will not let me say one word about it. She says I am never,
never to think of such a thing."

"She is afraid of losing you as well as him," replied Mr. Clifford; "but
when you are more of a man she will let you go. You are all she has."

"Except Hilda," said the boy fondly, "and I know