d-fashioned,
non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of
which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and
where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our
first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and
flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson
Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by
Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without whose joint
ministration on the occasion neither Janet nor myself would have
believed the marriage ceremony had been properly solemnised, both my
sister and myself standing in much awe of the learned divine and his
inseparable "double," and holding to the creed that the austere pair
represented the very quintessence of orthodoxy.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

A PRESENTMENT OF THE PAST.

After Elsie and I got "spliced," to use the old familiar language of my
boyhood, the expressive _argot_ of the sea, for which I shall always
retain a passionate love, only second to that I bear towards my dear
wife, we set off for the Continent, having determined to spend the happy
period of our honeymoon abroad, like the fine folk of the fashionable
world with whom, though, there is little in common between us, their
ways otherwise not being our ways, nor their thoughts, ambitions, hopes
or desires in any respect akin to ours.

First we went up the Seine to Rouen, where I had passed a couple of
years of my school life, studying French and teaching the young scions
of the Gallic race, with whom I was associated for the time the
exigencies of football, as we play the game in Lancashire, varied by an
occasional illustrative exhibition explanatory of the merits of _la boxe
Anglaise_.

Time passed swiftly with so sweet and sympathetic a companion; our
tastes were similar, both taking the greatest delight in ancient
buildings and lovely scenery; the weather, too, was charming, and
altogether we were as happy as two mortals can be on this earth.

Elsie and I saw all that was to be seen in the old city we first
visited, which, in addition to its architectural beauties, should have a
special charm for all Englishmen from the fact of the dauntless Richard
Coeur de Lion having such an affection for the town that he bequeathed
it his lion heart, and then we journeyed on through _la belle
Normandie_, loitering here and there at those historic spots, woven into
the