After a few days, however, all traces of winter again disappeared from those smiling valleys and shaggy woodlands that border the Severn Sea. Not a patch of white was left to spot the swarthy uplands where Dunkerry Beacon lords it over the moor, and along the warm sheltered coast from Watermouth to Watchet, summer seemed to have returned only softer and kinder for her desertion. But the fairest flower in Devon languished and faded in the genial sunshine, more obviously than she had drooped beneath the storm. Nelly Carew, in deep mourning for her grandfather, looking none the less beautiful in her sorrow, felt so lonely and unprotected now, that in her moments of despondency she almost wished she could die too, like the others, and be at rest. Katerfelto vainly endeavoured to persuade her that by accompanying him in his flight to the Continent she might probably join John Garnet, who must surely have preceded them to some of the usual refuges for such political outlaws, believing, no doubt, that, accompanied by so beautiful an associate, he could ply his old trade with every prospect of success; but the girl's own sense of right forbade her to think for an instant of such a scheme, and he, too, went his way, after Master Carew's funeral, leaving Nelly entirely forsaken and alone. The neighbours, though liberal in expressions of sympathy, and offers of help which was not required, shook their heads and whispered to each other that there was something unlucky about the lass--things went wrong with all who took a fancy to her. The old grandfather, who couldn't keep his eyes off her, and thought gold wasn't good enough for her to eat off, he died--well--a man in years certainly, but still very little over eighty after all! Then there was that godless parson who broke his neck just above the Witches' Wash-pot, and indeed every bone of his body, so that they could scarce straighten him decently for burial. Was he not a lover of Mistress Nelly's? As to the young spark, a comely lad, forsooth, and a gallant, who came and went with his grey horse like a flash of lightning, so that nobody in Porlock ever knew what was gone with him, why it wasn't likely, was it? that she would ever set eyes on _him_ again! Altogether, Nelly felt very unhappy and despondent. It seemed hard, at her age, to be left so friendless, so utterly alone in the world. But one afternoon, when the days were at their shortest, came a letter by the weekly post from Taunton, stamped with a French mark, tied in a bright new ribbon, and directed in a bold masculine hand to Mistress Nelly Carew. From the date of its receipt the neighbours could not but observe how the girl's eye grew brighter, and the colour returned to her cheek. The hope that had nearly died out in her heart began to bloom once more, and her trust came back in John Garnet, just as poor Waif's did, but with better reason, and a happier result.