your prayers
to-night, Harry? And say a prayer for me: I shall need it, though I
have more call to thank God for sending you."

A minute later I heard her tap on her father's door. He was awake
and dressed, apparently--for it seemed at any rate but a moment later
that her voice was guiding his blind footsteps by whispers down the
stairs. Had I guessed more of the ordeal before her, my eyes had
closed less easily than they did. As it was, I tumbled into bed and
slept almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.

I had forgotten to blow out the candles, and they were but half
burnt, yet extinguished, when I awoke from a dream that Isabel was
kneeling beside me in their dim light to find her standing at the
bed's foot in a fresh print gown and the room filled again with
sunshine. Her eyes were red. Poor soul! she had but an hour before
said good-bye to Archibald; and Spain and its battlefields lay before
him, and between their latest kiss and their next--if another there
might be. Yet she smiled bravely, telling me that all was well, and
that her father would be ready for me in the summer-house.

Major Brooks, when I found him there, made no allusion to the events
of the night. His face was mild and grave as at our first meeting.
At the sound of my footsteps he picked up his Virgil and motioned me
to be seated.

"Let me see," he began: "_liquidi fontes_, was it not?"--and
forthwith began to dictate at his accustomed pace.

"But seek a green-moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh,
And through the grass a streamlet fleeting by.
The porch with palm or oleaster shade--
That when the regents from the hive parade
Its gilded youth, in Spring--their Spring!--to prank,
To woo their holiday heat a neighbouring bank
May lean with branches hospitably cool.
And midway, be your water stream or pool,
Cross willow-twigs, and massy boulders fling--
A line of stations for the halting wing
To dry in summer sunshine, has it shipped
A cupful aft, or deep in Neptune dipped.
Plant cassias green around, thyme redolent,
Full-flowering succory with heavy scent,
And violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream.
And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam,
Of cork; or of the supple osier twined)
Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind
Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin:
--In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin.
Not p