'How often shall I recall this last meeting by the fallen tree, when you are far, far away from Revelstoke and--me,' said Dulcie. 'You will often come here to be reminded of me?' 'Do you think, Florian, I will require to be reminded of you?' asked the girl, with a little tone of pain in her sweet voice, as she kissed the silver locket containing his likeness, and all the sweet iteration of lover-talk, promises, and pledges went on for a time, and new hopes began to render this last interview more bearable to the young pair who were on the eve of separation, without any very distinct arrangement about correspondence in the interval of it. The sun was setting now redly, and amid dun winter clouds, beaming on each chimney-head, on Revelstoke Church, and the leafless tree-tops his farewell radiance. Florian took a long, long kiss from Dulcie, and with the emotion of a wrench in his heart, was gone, and she was alone. A photo and a lock of red-golden hair were all that remained to him of her--both to be looked upon again and again, till his eyes ached, but never grew weary. Dulcie's were very red with weeping, and the memory of that parting kiss was still hovering on her quivering lips when, in a lonely lane not far from her home, she found herself suddenly face to face with Shafto. She had known him from his boyhood, ever since he came an orphan to Lennard Melfort's cottage; and although she always distrusted and never liked him, his face was a familiar one she might never see more; thus she resolved to part with him as with the best of friends, and to remember that he was the only kinsman of Florian, whose companion and fellow-traveller he was to be on a journey the end of which she scarcely understood. So, frankly and sweetly, with a sad smile in her eyes, she proffered her pretty hand, which Shafto grasped and retained promptly enough. CHAPTER VIII. THE SILVER LOCKET. Shafto had just been with her father. How contemptuously he had eyed the corner and the high old stool on which he had sat in the latter's legal establishment, and all its surroundings; the fly-blown county maps of Devon and Cornwall; advertisements of sales--property, mangold wurzel, oats and hay, Thorley's food for cattle, and so forth; the tin boxes of most legal aspect; dockets of papers in red tape; the well-thumbed ledgers; day and letter books, and all the paraphernalia of a country solicitor's office. Ugh! How well he knew and loathed them all. Now it was all over and done with. The three poor lads in the office, whose cheap cigars and beer he had often shared at the Ashburton Arms, he barely condescended to notice, while they regarded him with something akin to awe, as he gave Lawyer Carlyon his final 'instructions' concerning the disposal of the lease of the Major's pretty cottage, and of all the goods and chattels that were therein.