light. It was at times like that, when
the air was fragrant with the scent of dying leaves, with perhaps a touch
of frost in it, and the cottages one by one opened red glowing eyes in
the dusk, that the boy began to dream of a home of his own and pleasant
domestic joys; of burning logs on the hearth and lighted candles, and a
dear slender figure moving about the room. He used to rehearse to himself
little meetings and partings; look at the roofs of the Dower House
against the primrose sky as he rode up the fields homewards; identify her
window, dark now as she was away; and long for Christmas when she would
be back again. The only shadow over these delightful pictures was the
uncertainty as to the future. Where after all would the home be? For he
was a younger son. He thought about James very often. When he came back
would he live at home? Would it all be James' at his father's death,
these woods and fields and farms and stately house? Would it ever come to
him? And, meanwhile where should he and Isabel live, when the religious
difficulty had been surmounted, as he had no doubt that it would be
sooner or later?

When he thought of his father now, it was with a continually increasing
respect. He had been inclined to despise him sometimes before, as one of
a simple and uneventful life; but now the red shadow of the Law conferred
dignity. To have been imprisoned in the Tower was a patent of nobility,
adding distinction and gravity to the commonplace. Something of the glory
even rested on Hubert himself as he rode and hawked with other Catholic
boys, whose fathers maybe were equally zealous for the Faith, but less
distinguished by suffering for it.

Before Anthony went back to Cambridge, he and Hubert went out nearly
every day together with or without their hawks. Anthony was about three
years the younger, and Hubert's additional responsibility for the estate
made the younger boy more in awe of him than the difference in their ages
warranted. Besides, Hubert knew quite as much about sport, and had more
opportunities for indulging his taste for it. There was no heronry at
hand; besides, it was not the breeding time which is the proper season
for this particular sport; so they did not trouble to ride out to one;
but the partridges and hares and rabbits that abounded in the Maxwell
estate gave them plenty of quarreys. They preferred to go out generally
without the falconer, a Dutchman, who had been taken into the service of
S