it cannot be denied that Philip there and then knew that he loved Lucy Blyth, knew, moreover, that it was a love that would be all-absorbing, a love that time would not lessen, that trial would not weaken, that death would not destroy. No other idea could get in edgewise during that memorable walk. The radiant vision floated before his eyes, and thrilled him to the heart: the very trees seemed to whisper “Lucy” as they trembled in the breeze, and Philip Fuller knew from that hour that he had “found his fate.” Difference of rank, social barriers, his father’s exaggerated family pride, Nathan Blyth’s sturdy independence, Lucy’s possible denial, and kindred prosy considerations, did not occur to the smitten youth; or if they did they were wondrously minified by love’s inverted telescope into microscopic proportions, and through them all he held the juvenilian creed that “love can find out the way.” In his dreams that night, he re-enacted all the scene at Adam Olliver’s garden gate; saw again the sweetest face in the world or out of it to his glamour-flooded eyes; heard again the question, “Can this be little Lucy Blyth?” Men live rapidly in dreams, time flies like a flash. Difficulties do not count in dreams, they are ignored, and so it was that Philip answered the question in a _veni-vidi-vici_ kind of spirit, and shouted in dreamland over the garden gate, “Yes it can, and will be Lucy Fuller, by-and-bye!” Then, as John Bunyan says, he “awoke, and behold it was a dream.” Ah! Master Philip, Jason did not win the golden fleece without sore travail and fight; Hercules did not win the golden apple of Hesperides without dire conflict with its dragon guard, and if you imagine that this dainty prize is going to fall into your lap for wishing for, you will find it is indeed a dream from which a veritable thunderclap shall wake you. Will the lightning scathe you? Who may lift the curtain of the future? I would not if I could--better far, as honest Natty sings, to Do your honest duty, boys, and never, never fear. The next morning Master Philip left the breakfast-table to go out on a voyage of discovery. Bestriding a handsome bay horse, his father’s latest gift, he rode down to Nestleton Forge, and arrived just in time to hear the final strophes of Blithe Natty’s latest anvil song. That vivacious son of Vulcan was engaged in sharpening and tempering millers’ chisels, and as the labour was not hard, and the blows required were light and rapid, Natty’s song dovetailed with the accompaniment:-- Every cloud has a lining of light, Morning is certain to follow the night; Eve may be sombre, the shadows shall flee, Sunny and smiling the morrow shall be. Cheerily, merrily, sing the refrain, Setting suns ever are rising again.