"They were helping Bradley to make tarts," said Mrs. Atheling, "when I called them, and they have gone back to their pastry and jam. Let them alone. Dear me! I remember how proud I was when I first cut pastry round the patty pans with my thumb," and Mrs. Atheling looked at Kate, who smiled and nodded at her own similar memory. They were soon seated in the large parlour, where all the windows were open, and a faint little breeze stirring the cherry leaves round them. Then the Squire began to talk of the Indian news; and Piers told, with a pitiful pathos, the last tragic act in Cecil's and Annabel's love and life. And when he had finished the narration, greatly to every one's amazement, the Squire rose to his feet, and, lifting his eyes heavenward, said solemnly,-- "I give hearty thanks for their death, so noble and so worthy of their faith and their race. I give hearty thanks because God, knowing their hearts and their love, committed unto them the dismissing of their own souls from the wanton cruelty of incarnate devils. I give hearty thanks for Love triumphant over Death, and for that faith in our immortality which could command an immediate re-union, 'Come quickly, Cecil!' "There is nothing to cry about," he added, as he resumed his seat. "Death must come to all of us. It came mercifully to these two. It did not separate them; they went together. Somewhere in God's Universe they are now, without doubt, doing His Will together. Let us give thanks for them." After a little while, Kate and her mother went away. They had many things to talk over about which masculine opinions were not necessary, nor even desirable. And the Squire and Piers had, in a certain way, a similar confidence. Indeed the Squire told Piers many things he would not have told any one else,--little wrongs and worries not worth complaining about to his wife, and perhaps about which he was not very certain of her sympathy. But with Piers, these crept into his conversation, and were talked away, or at least considerably lessened, by his son-in-law's patient interest.