rey."

He folded the paper very slowly, and handed it back to the post-boy.

"Very well, then. For Merton."

The house lay but a very little distance beyond Wimbledon.
Its blinds were drawn as Lieutenant Lapenotiere alighted from the
chaise and went up to the modest porch.

His hand was on the bell-pull. But some pressure checked him as he
was on the point of ringing. He determined to wait for a while and
turned away towards the garden.

The dawn had just broken; two or three birds were singing. It did
not surprise--at any rate, it did not frighten--Lieutenant
Lapenotiere at all, when, turning into a short pleached alley, he
looked along it and saw _him_ advancing.

--Yes,_ him_, with the pinned sleeve, the noble, seamed, eager face.
They met as friends. . . . In later years the lieutenant could never
remember a word that passed, if any passed at all. He was inclined
to think that they met and walked together in complete silence, for
many minutes. Yet he ever maintained that they walked as two friends
whose thoughts hold converse without need of words. He was not
terrified at all. He ever insisted, on the contrary, that there, in
the cold of the breaking day, his heart was light and warm as though
flooded with first love--not troubled by it, as youth in first love
is wont to be--but bathed in it; he, the ardent young officer, bathed
in a glow of affection, ennobling, exalting him, making him free of a
brotherhood he had never guessed.

He used also, in telling the story, to scandalise the clergyman of
his parish by quoting the evangelists, and especially St. John's
narrative of Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre.

For the door of the house opened at length; and a beautiful woman,
scarred by knowledge of the world, came down the alley, slowly,
unaware of him. Then (said he), as she approached, his hand went up
to his pocket for the private letter he carried, and the shade at his
side left him to face her in the daylight.

THE CASK ASHORE.(1807).

I.

RUM FOR BOND.

At the head of a diminutive creek of the Tamar River, a little above
Saltash on the Cornish shore, stands the village of Botusfleming; and
in early summer, when its cherry-orchards come into bloom, you will
search far before finding a prettier.

The years have dealt gently with Botusfleming. As it is to-day, so--
or nearly so--it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807,
when the Reverend Edward Spettigew, Curate-