suddenly disappeared from the court and from his master's retinue, and was never heard of by the great world again. Yet he was not far away. He had not the resolution to leave England, the land which enshrined the lady of his love,--and he had lost all inclination to return to France. He therefore retired into the depths of the sweet English country, among the then unspoilt forests and woodlands, and there happening to find a small manor-house for immediate sale, surrounded by a considerable quantity of land, he purchased it for the ready cash he had about him and settled down in it for the remainder of his life. Little by little, such social ambitions as he had ever possessed left him, and with every passing year he grew more and more attached to the simplicity and seclusion of his surroundings. He had leisure for the indulgence of his delight in books, and he was able to give the rein to his passion for poetry, though it is nowhere recorded that he ever published the numerous essays, sonnets and rhymed pieces which, written in the picturesque caligraphy of the period, and roughly bound by himself in sheepskin, occupied a couple of shelves in his library. He entered with animation and interest into the pleasures of farming and other agricultural pursuits, and by-and-bye as time went on and the former idol of his dreams descended from her fair estate of virtue and scandalised the world by her liaison with Lord Mountjoy, he appears to have gradually resigned the illusions of his first love, for he married a simple village girl, remarkable, so it was said, for her beauty, but more so for her skill in making butter and cheese. She could neither read nor write, however, and the traditions concerning the Sieur Amadis relate that he took a singular pleasure in teaching her these accomplishments, as well as in training her to sing and to accompany herself upon the lute in a very pretty manner. She made him an excellent wife, and gave him no less than six children, three boys and three girls, all of whom were brought up at home under the supervision of their father and mother, and encouraged to excel in country pursuits and to understand the art of profitable farming. It was in their days that Briar Farm entered upon its long career of prosperity, which still continued. The Sieur Amadis died in his seventieth year, and by his own wish, expressed in his "Last Will and Testament," was buried in a sequestered spot on his own lands, under a stone slab which he had himself fashioned, carving upon it his recumbent figure in the costume of a knight, a cross upon his breast and a broken sword at his side. His wife, though several years younger than himself, only lived a twelve-month after him and was interred by his side. Their resting-place was now walled off, planted thickly with flowers, and held sacred by every succeeding heir to the farm as the burial-place of the first Jocelyns. Steadily and in order, the families springing from