I cannot tell you whether those linnets were his own friends and relations; but I think that, thanks to the Ornithologist’s true instinct, he was not far from his old home. And as the summer was all before him, and the hearts of linnets are kind, and Nature in sweet air repairs all damage quickly, I cannot doubt that his sky soon cleared, and that the heavy London thundercloud rolled far away out of his horizon. DOCTOR AND MRS. JACKSON Doctor and Mrs. Jackson were, for all we knew, the oldest pair in the parish: their heads were very grey, and they had an old-world look about them, and an air of wisdom and experience in life, that gave them a place of importance in our society and claimed the respect of us all. Yet I cannot remember that any of us noticed them until they became the intimate friends of the old Scholar. Then we all came to know them, and to feel as though we had known them all our lives. [Illustration: Doctor and Mrs. Jackson.] Their heads were grey, and their dress was black, and as they lived in the old grey tower of the church they seemed to have something ancient and ecclesiastical about them; no one inquired into their history or descent; we took it all for granted, as we did the Established Church itself. They were there as the church was there, looking out over meadows and ploughed fields as it had looked out since good souls built it in the reign of Henry III., and over these same fields Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked out with knowing eyes as they sat on their gurgoyles of a sunshiny morning. The water that collected on the tower roof was discharged by large projecting gurgoyles ending in the semblance of two fierce animal heads, one a griffin, and the other a wolf; and on these the Doctor and his wife loved to sit and talk, full in view of the old Scholar’s study room.