NY SUNDAY
XXVI. MRS. BRANDON ASKS A QUESTION
XVII. THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY
XXVIII. MELCOMBE
XXIX. UNHEARD-OF LIBERTIES
XXX. A CHAPTER OF TROUBLES
XXXI. A WOMAN'S SYMPATHY
XXII. MR. BRANDON IS MADE THE SUBJECT OF AN
HONOURABLE COMPARISON
XXXIII. THE TRUE GHOST STORY
XXXIV. VALENTINE AND LAURA
XXXV. A VISIT TO MELCOMBE
XXVI. A PRIVATE CONSULTATION
XXXVII. HIS VISITOR

CHAPTER I.

A WATCHER OF LILIES.

"Unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no
secrets are hid."--_Collect, English Communion Service._

In one of the south-western counties of England, some years ago, and in
a deep, well-wooded valley where men made perry and cider, wandered
little and read less, there was a hamlet with neither farm nor cottage
in it, that had not stood two hundred and fifty years, and just beyond
there was a church nearly double that age, and there were the mighty
wrecks of two great oak-trees, said to be more ancient still.

Between them, winding like a long red rut, went the narrow road, and was
so deeply cut into the soil that a horseman passing down it could see
nothing of its bordering fields; but about fifty yards from the first
great oak the land suddenly dipped, and showed on the left a steep
cup-like glen, choked with trees, and only divided from the road by a
few dilapidated stakes and palings, and a wooden gate, orange with the
rust of lichens, and held together with ropes and bands.

A carriage-drive was visible on the other side of the gate, but its
boundaries were half obliterated by the grass and weeds that had grown
over it, and as it wound down into the glen it was lost among the trees.
Nature, before it has been touched by man, is almost always beautiful,
strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given
it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and
helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it,
and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity,
and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by
his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it cannot
for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully and as
well as it did before.

There was nothing to prevent a stranger from entering this place, and if
he did so, its meaning very soon took hold of him; he perceived that he
had walked into the world of some who