thing to be done. He felt it would be unwise
to speak of the matter in any way to her--she was a woman who would
certainly find it difficult to believe that she had won, or could
possibly win the love of a lover at her age;--she might even resent
it,--no one could tell. And so the days of April paced softly on, in
bloom and sunlight, till May came in with a blaze of colour and
radiance, and the last whiff of cold wind blew itself away across the
sea. The "biting nor'easter," concerning which the comic press gives
itself up to senseless parrot-talk with each recurrence of the May
month, no matter how warm and beautiful that month may be, was a "thing
foregone and clean forgotten,"--and under the mild and beneficial
influences of the mingled sea and moorland air, Helmsley gained a
temporary rush of strength, and felt so much better, that he was able to
walk down to the shore and back again once or twice a a day, without any
assistance, scarcely needing even the aid of his stick to lean upon. The
shore remained his favourite haunt; he was never tired of watching the
long waves roll in, edged with gleaming ribbons of foam, and roll out
again, with the musical clatter of drawn pebbles and shells following
the wake of the backward sweeping ripple,--and he made friends with many
of the Weircombe fisherfolk, who were always ready to chat with him
concerning themselves and the difficulties and dangers of their trade.
The children, too, were all eager to run after "old David," as they
called him,--and many an afternoon he would sit in the sun, with a group
of these hardy little creatures gathered about him, listening entranced,
while he told them strange stories of foreign lands and far
travels,--travels which men took "in search of gold"--as he would say,
with a sad little smile--"gold, which is not nearly so much use as it
seems to be."

"But can't us buy everything with plenty of money?" asked a
seven-year-old urchin, on one of these occasions, looking solemnly up
into his face with a pair of very round, big brown eyes.

"Not everything, my little man," he answered, smoothing the rough locks
of the small inquirer with a very tender hand. "I could not buy _you_,
for instance! Your mother wouldn't sell you!"

The child laughed.

"Oh, no! But I didn't mean me!"

"I know you didn't mean me!" and Helmsley smiled. "But suppose some one
put a thousand golden sovereigns in a bag on one side, and you in your
rough little torn clo