‘It is safe enough with me; but I can’t quite see why you should call it weakness. Look here, Michael, we both know how that lady is situated, and you say you wish she had not got twelve hundred a year of her own. Take my word for it, if she knew that, she would curse her money. Don’t go to suppose that I have not eyes in my head, and ears to hear with.’ They had clasped hands, and the train had begun very slowly to move. Roger went on rapidly— ‘I hoped at first that you never would care for her, when I began to see that she attracted you. Now I believe she is the woman to make you happy, as you are the man to do the same thing by her. Go in, and win, Michael, and never heed what the black things about her may say. Good-bye, old friend, and luck go with you.’ There was a hard pressure of the two hands, which then had to be unclasped. The train glided out. Michael was left upon the platform, looking after it. When it had disappeared, he went outside again, found his dogcart, gave a coin to the boy who had held the horse—for he had brought no servant, wishing to have Roger to himself on the drive; and now he set off on his return journey. When he drove out of Darlington it was after eleven o’clock; there was a radiant full moon hanging in the sky, and the whole land was flooded with its beauty and its brilliance. The roads, after he had got out of the town, were solitary and silent, as country roads, late on a Sunday night, are wont to be. He had all the beauty, all the glamour of the night to himself, and it sank into his soul, and the words which Roger had uttered resounded in his mind, like a refrain. He did not drive very fast. He was in no mood to tear along, but was rather disposed to taste to the full the cup of beauty and graciousness that was offered to him. One by one, he drove through the chain of exquisite villages which make that road one of the most beautiful in all England,—Coniscliffe, Piercebridge, Gainford, and Winston, arrived at which place, for the sheer pleasure of the farther drive, and the enjoyment of the pure night air, and the magic of the scene and the hour, he turned off, instead of pursuing his way straight, to one side, and took the roundabout and surpassingly beautiful road which leads through Ovington, and past Wycliffe Hall and wood, and its ancient little church of solemn beauty, and so across Whorlton Bridge to Bradstane. Every inch of the way was beautiful. And that which lent the greatest charm to it was the river, which, ever as he drove, he had near him. Now he lost it; again it gleamed suddenly on his sight, emerging unexpectedly into the open, from some deep wood, or rushing in a sweeping curve into view; now sunk between marly banks, now making its way ‘o’er solid sheets of marble gray.’ Grand old Tees! thought Michael, paying it a parenthetical tribute, in the midst of the many other thoughts which just then crowded his mind, and made the long drive