We have been in Devonshire a month now, and still we do not talk of going back to Surrey. It is lovely to be staying with Aunt Constance, and I am trying to be brave and cheerful, and to go out in the village as I used to do. The Gidger loves the dear old cottage folk, and they love her, and it is perfect having father. The Hickley Woods are just as beautiful, only my heart breaks when I walk about in them. It has turned hot, even I am warm enough and don’t need fires at night. This evening there was a most gorgeous sunset, the sky was all ablaze with emerald and blue and gold. The distant hills had a bloom on them such as there is sometimes on bunches of purple grapes. I saw father alone in the garden after dinner, and I felt I wanted to tell him what I hoped about the little son, so I went and stood beside him, and slipped my arm through his, and we wandered out into the woods as we have done many times before. After I had told him, father said, with a very tender look upon his face,— ’And so The Shepherd Beautiful is giving you another of His lambs to mind.’ I thought it was such a perfect name for Him, it appealed to me more at that moment than any of the other lovely ones that daddy calls Him by. After a little while father said,— ’Shall I tell you something, darling, that I have never told any one before?’ ’Please, father.’ ’It was many years ago, quite soon after I was married. Your mother and I were walking over the downs. They were all "trimmed" with sheep. She was so amused at the lambs, because she thought they were dreadfully impertinent to their mothers sometimes, and then she said with a sweet look in her eyes,— ’"Anthony, The Shepherd Beautiful is going to give us one of His lambs to mind." ’Instead of being pleased I got in a sudden panic about it, as husbands do sometimes, and your mother laughed at me and shook my arm, and looked round at all the sunny grasslands filled with sheep and said,— ’"Oh, Anthony, don’t grieve for me, because it’s only like walking in a sunny meadow dappled with shade. When I come to the shadow at the end, I know that if I just walk round the corner, I shall find the Shepherd Beautiful doling out lambs. Oh, Anthony" (and she shook my arm again) "wouldn’t it be amusing if the morning I got there He was a bit absent-minded or got muddled with His counting, and doled me out two instead of one to mind. Oh, I would run away so fast with them lest He should ask for one of them back.’" Then, after a pause, father added,— ’And you see, darling, He was a "bit absent-minded" that morning, and now He’s just asked for one of them back.’ ’Oh, father,’ I exclaimed, with a sudden rush of tears, ’and the one He’s asked for back was always called "the lamb"!’ And then the horror of that ’perilous stuff’ swept over me, and all the despair and doubt and misery of the last few months surged up like a great flood that presently would overwhelm me, and I cried,—