"Elizabeth Briggs," she commanded again, pointing at the little girl with her stick, "come in to your lesson this minute. And you, whatever you may call yourself, take yourself off at once or I'll get the police to you!" "Yes, do go away, nice little boy," said Miss Briggs; "but when you grow big, come back to the house of Rascarrel and Miss Briggs will marry you. And I will give you another kiss at the garden stile—and so will Peter!" she added. For she felt that some extra kindness and attention was due from her, to make up for the most unscriptural hardheartedness of her Aunt Robina. So the children took their way together to the garden stile, and as they went out of sight, Boy Hugh turned round to the dark-browed woman: "My name is Boy Hugh," he said, "but I'm not a beggar, awfu' woman!" The children went slowly and sorrowfully along a gravel walk thickly overgrown with chickweed and moss. Their feet made no sound upon it. On either side box borders rose nearly three feet, straggling untended over the walks. Still further over were territories of gooseberry bushes, senile and wellnigh barren, their thin-leaved, thorny branches trailing on the ground and crawling over each other. Beyond these again was a great beech hedge rising up into the sky. Boy Hugh looked at the dark Irish yews standing erect at the corner of every plot. He thought they were like the sentinels at the gate of Holyrood, at whom he used to look as often as he could slip away from the Tinklers' Lands. Then all suddenly and unexpectedly he began to cry. Miss Briggs stopped aghast. She was, like all womenfolk, well accustomed to her own sex's tears. But a male creature's emotion took her by surprise. "What is the matter?" she said; "tell me instantly, nice little boy." "This maun be heaven, after a'," said he, "an' your awfu' woman winna let Boy Hugh bide." Presently they came out upon a circular opening where the bounding beech edge bent into a circle, and the gloomy yew tree sentinels stood wider about. Overhead the crisp leafage of the beeches clashed and rustled. Here was a great garden seat of stone, and there at the back rose a fountain with stone nymphs—a fountain long since dry and overgrown with green moss. It seemed to Boy Hugh as if they could never get out of this vast enclosure. There was also a little stone building at the end down the vista of the gravel walk. Its door stood open and Boy Hugh looked within. It was empty like a church. The floor was made of unpainted wood in squares and crosses. There were painted pictures on the walls, and a shining thing with candles standing upon it at the far end. Behind this the sun shone through a window of red, and yellow, and blue. "Is that God?" said Hugh Boy, after gazing a long time at the glory of the shining crimson and violet panes and the shining gold upon the altar. But Miss Briggs dragged him away without making him any answer.