acy of her features like some quaint setting. Her hand trembled
as she bade her young guest farewell. As he looked back from the
doorway she was like some exiled queen in a peasant's lodging, such
dignity and sweet patience were in her look. "I think you bring good
fortune," she said. "Nothing can make me so happy as to have my
husband find a little pleasure."

As the young man crossed the outer room the familiar eyes of the old
portrait caught his own with wistful insistency. He suddenly suspected
the double reason: he had been dreaming of other eyes, and knew that
his fellow-traveler had kept him company. "Madam Bellamy," he said,
turning back, and blushing as he bent to speak to her in a lower
voice,--"the portrait; is it like any one? is it like your
granddaughter? Could I have seen her on my way here?"

Madam Bellamy looked up at his eager face with a light of unwonted
pleasure in her eyes. "Yes," said she, "my granddaughter would have
been on her way to Whitfields. She has always been thought extremely
like the picture: it is her great-grandmother. Good-by; pray let us
see you at Fairford again;" and they said farewell once more, while
Tom Burton promised something, half to himself, about the Christmas
hunt,

_"Je vous en prie, Belle amie,"_

he whispered, and a most lovely hope was in his heart.

"You have been most welcome," said the Colonel at parting. "I beg that
you will be so kind as to repeat this visit. I shall hope that we may
have some shooting together."

"I shall hope so too," answered Tom Burton, warmly. Then, acting from
sudden impulse, he quickly unslung his gun, and begged his old friend
to keep it--to use it, at any rate, until he came again.

The old Virginian did not reply for a moment. "Your grandfather would
have done this, sir. I loved him, and I take it from you both. My own
gun is too poor a thing to offer in return." His voice shook; it was
the only approach to a lament, to a complaint, that he had made.

This was the moment of farewell; the young man held the Colonel's hand
in a boyish eager grasp. "I wish that I might be like a son to you,"
he said. "May I write, sometimes, and may I really come to Fairford
again?"

The old Colonel answered him most affectionately, "Oh yes; we must
think of the Christmas hunt," he said, and so they parted.

Tom Burton rode slowly away, and presently the fireless chimneys of
Fairford were lost to sight behind the clustering trees. The noond