seem to him a short one; where was it to be matched for beauty and stateliness, and natural grandeur, and wild, unbounded variety? How different here, as it flowed on steady and strong, from what it was as it came, little more than a fierce, brawling mountain stream, tearing over the wild moors near its source! It had been his friend and companion through many a weary year, as he had gone his rounds, wide and long as the valley itself. Like all such friends, ungifted with the deceitful power of human language, it had always had the very voice that suited his mood. In his youth, no longings had been too high, and no hopes too feverish for it to encourage. And for ten years, since he had been a veritable man, it had been his constant guide and associate. In spring it rushed joyfully along, singing a song of encouragement; in summer its cool surface and the soothing murmur of its flow had many a time made tolerable the burden and heat of the day. He had heard its autumn roar, and in wilder moods had ridden races with it; and he knew its aspect in winter, gray and sullen, or even iron-bound almost all its length, from mouth to source; in its smoother expanses covered with skaters, or laden with blocks of ice, which, when the thaw wind began to blow, split and parted with reports like explosions, and then went sailing in beautiful glistening blocks towards the sea. Just now, in this May moonlight, at the hour which was neither night nor day—for midnight was past—it fulfilled its spring vocation; and as he drove along, its murmur swelled out into the night, and held out promises—promises so brave and high that he mistrusted them almost. And yet, a voice in his heart told him, with an unerring whisper, that he might believe these promises; that if he went and asked Eleanor Askam to confirm their truth, she would do so. The knowledge thrilled him; it was pungent—half-bitter, half-sweet. It gave him a new sense of youth, a conquering confidence to which he had long been a stranger. He rejoiced in it, and rejoiced greatly all the while that he shook his head, and said within himself ‘impossible,’ and repeated that he wished she were not so rich—so much richer than he was. If anything should happen—some transitory misfortune, by which she might for one moment feel herself quite poor, and believe she had no resting-place for her head, and he the next moment might bid that dear head rest where it should ever be welcome—on his own heart—ah, Bradstane town and the cobble-stoned streets, the Red Gables and reality! On the following day he heard that Ada Dixon had gone to stay with her father’s widowed sister, at some remote Devonshire village. The sister had been housekeeper to a great family in the neighbourhood; had married the butler, and was now living partly on the fruits of her own savings, partly on a pension from the said family.