difficult, and where there are so many other ways, is almost as if Warkworth Castle, five miles inland, on the winding Coquet, had been built to protect the shores of Northumberland from the invading Dane: or as if Chepstow above the muddy Wye had been built for the defence of Bristol. There, however, the castle is, and a very noble picture it made as the boat slowly voyaged through the Sound. The declining sun, not yet sunk too low behind Bryher, clothed it with light and splendour, and brought out the rich colour of grey rock and yellow fern upon the steep hillside behind. Beyond the castle, in the midst of the Sound, rose a pyramidal island, a pile of rocks, seventy or eighty feet high, on whose highest carn some of Oliver Cromwell's prisoners were hanged, according to the voice of tradition, which, somehow, always goes dead against that strong person. Roland, who had exhausted the language of delight among the Outer Islands, contemplated this picture in silence. 'Do you not like it?' asked the girl. 'Like it?' he repeated. 'Armorel! It is splendid.' 'Will you make a sketch of it?' 'I cannot. I must make a picture. I ought to come here day after day. There must be a good place to take it from--over there, I think, on that beach. Armorel! It is splendid. To think that the picture is to be seen so near to London, and that no one comes to see it!' 'If you want to come day after day, Roland,' she said, softly, 'you will not be able to go away to-morrow. You must stay longer with us on Samson.' 'I ought not, child. You should not ask me.' 'Why should you not stay if you are happy with us? We will make you as comfortable as ever we can. You have only to tell us what you want.' She looked so eagerly and sincerely anxious that he yielded. 'If you are really and truly sure,' he said. 'Of course I am really and truly sure. The weather will be fine, I think, and we will go sailing every day.' 'Then I will stay a day or two longer. I will make a picture of Cromwell's Castle--and the hill at the back of it and the water below it. I will make it for you, Armorel; but I will keep a copy of it for myself. Then we shall each have a memento of this day--something to remember it by.' 'I should like to have the picture. But, oh! Roland!--as if I could ever forget this day!' She spoke with perfect simplicity, this child of Nature, without the least touch of coquetry. Why should she not speak what was in her heart? Never before had she seen a young man so brave, so gallant, so comely: nor one who spoke so gently: nor one who treated her with so much consideration. He turned his face: he could not meet those trustful eyes, with the innocence that lay there: he was abashed by reason of this innocence. A child--only a child. Armorel would change. In a year or two this trustfulness would vanish. She would become like all other girls--shy and reserved, self-conscious in intuitive self-defence. But there was no harm as yet. She was a child--only a child.