he was living over again, in the melodies that he played, his chequered past. Forms moved before him to the music, and faces, long since dust, smiled at him, and held converse with him, as the plaintive notes rose and fell and died away. Winds, sweetened by their sweep over miles of ling and herbage, and spiced with the scents of the garden-flowers that like a zone of colour encircled him, kissed his lips, and stole therefrom his melodies, bearing them onwards to the haunts of the wild fowl, or letting them fall where brooklets from the hills sang their silvery songs. Along the path by which he sat, all fringed with London-pride, the leaves spread dappled shadows--a mosaic of nature fit for the tread of angels or the dance of fairy sprites. Beyond the fence that fringed the little cottage rolled great waves of upland, shimmering in the heat of the midsummer glare--that hot breathing of the earth when wooed too fiercely by her wanton paramour, the sun--while the horizon discovered lines of dreamy sweep all crowned with haze, the vestibules to other hills grander and more distant. As the afternoon passed its golden hours, it passed them in companionship with the notes of old Enoch's flute. Oblivious to the time, oblivious to the surroundings, the musician heard not an approaching step, nor knew that a listener stood behind the garden bushes, with ear responsive to his melodies. How long he would have played, how long his listener would have remained undiscovered, it is hard to say--perhaps until the dews fell and the stars glimmered. This was not to be, however, for forth from the cottage door came his wife, who, with voice drowning the strain of the flute, cried: 'Enoch, owd lad! dun yo' see th' parson?' Ah, heedless Enoch! What was parson, what was wife to him? Was he not soaring far above theologies and domesticities, over continents traversed only by memory, amid ideals seen only with the eye of hope? But a woman's voice!--what is there it cannot shatter and dispel? 'Enoch! Enoch! dun yo' yer? Doesto see th' parson?' 'No, lass, I doan't,' said he, taking the flute from his lips. 'I welly think he's forgetten us this time, Enoch.' 'Nod he, lass; he's too fond o' thi butter-cakes and moufins (muffins) to forgeet. He's some fond o' thi bakin', I con tell thaa. Didn't he say as when he geet wed he'd bring his missis to thee to larn haa to mak' bread?' 'Yi, he did, for sure!' 'And so he will,' said Mr. Penrose, stepping from behind the garden bush. 'You see your husband is right, Mrs. Ashworth. I've not forgotten it is baking-day, or that I was due at your house to tea.' 'Theyer, Enoch, thaa sees what thi tootling on th' owd flute's done for thee,' said the old woman, in her surprise and chagrin. 'Thaa cornd be too careful haa thaa talks. Thaa sees trees hes yers as weel as stoan walls.'