when,
at last, an impulse that he could not restrain forced him to see the
place where his happiness had blossomed and died, no one knew that the
bent figure with grizzled hair was that of Desborough.

The same indecision prompted him at last to hire the old cottage that
stood on our moor, and thus it was that I came to see him.

A year afterwards I heard Desborough speak some very simple and touching
words to a rough audience of fishermen. The gnarled faces looked placid
as the clever, broken man talked on, and Desborough's own face seemed to
have grown spiritual. His eye had an expression of quiet sadness, but I
liked him better as a preacher than as a philosopher.

He seemed to be happier too, and before death came on him, like a summer
night falling over the stress of daytime, he had become very reverend,
and very lovable.

MR. CASELY.

I.

Young Mr. Ellington strolled down the narrow walk that led through the
woods from the Hall to the sea. The morning had lain heavy on his hands,
for he was without companionship, and he was not one of the happy folk
who can make resources or who find a sufficient delight in mere living.
A few sharp commonplaces delivered with dry imperiousness by the old
Squire; a little well-meaning babble from a couple of timid maiden
aunts--such was the range of his converse with his kind from day to day.
And this quiet dreariness had lasted for months past, and seemed likely
to last as far into the future that young Ellington faced his prospect
with a sort of pained confusion of mind, and began by slow degrees to
understand the bovine apathy of the ploughmen. Old Mr. Ellington was a
magnate who would have been commended by Mr. John Ruskin. The fashions
of other country people did not influence him to imitation, and he
steadfastly performed that feat of "living on the land" which is
supposed to bring such blessedness to all whom the land supports. For
fifty years he had never been twenty miles beyond the bounds of his
southernmost farm, and for fifty years the ugly Hall had never opened
its doors to an invited guest. People talked a good deal, and made
theories more or less malignant, but the hard old man minded them no
whit. He went on his own road with perfect propriety, outraging every
convention in the most virtuous manner, and opposing a dry reticence to
the curiosity and wonderment of the few neighbours who continued to have
any vivid remembrance of his existence. In fine