All about the little cottage was silent and desolate; even the shrill peacock, so wont to announce the coming stranger with his cry, sat voiceless and brooding on a branch; and except the dull flow of the river, not a sound was heard. After tapping lightly at the door and peering through the partially closed shutters, Conyers turned towards the garden at the back, passing as he went his favorite seat under the great sycamore-tree. It was not a widely separated “long ago” since he had sat there, and yet how different had life become to him in the interval! With what a protective air he had talked to poor Tom on that spot,--how princely were the promises of his patronage, yet not exaggerated beyond his conscious power of performance! He hurried on, and came to the little wicket of the garden; it was open, and he passed in. A spade in some fresh-turned earth showed where some one had recently been at work, but still, as he went, he could find none. Alley after alley did he traverse, but to no purpose; and at last, in his ramblings, he came to a little copse which separated the main garden from a small flower-plat, known as Miss Dinah's, and on which the windows of her own little sitting-room opened. He had but seen this spot from the windows, and never entered it; indeed, it was a sort of sacred enclosure, within which the profane step of man was not often permitted to intrude. Nor was Conyers without a sting of self-reproach as he now passed in. He had not gone many steps when the reason of the seclusion seemed revealed to him. It was a small obelisk of white marble under a large willow-tree, bearing for inscription on its side, “To the Memory of George Barrington, the Truehearted, the Truthful, and the Brave, killed on the 19th February, 18--, at Agra, in the East Indies.”