Yet, oh, young eyes looking forward, And, oh, old eyes looking back, Be it noon-tide--be it sunset, That is shining on the track-- Life is beautiful and happy, Unto _all_ who look on high-- Unto _all_ whose hopes are centred, In the Heavenly by-and-by! [Illustration] FATHER ANTHONY. CHAPTER I. It was a glorious summer morning in the year of grace 1635, when a boy, aged some ten years, and a pretty fair-haired maiden five years his junior, were lolling in the shade of a gigantic copper-beech, which towered in front of the old manor house known by the name of Combe Abbey. Hugh Travers, the heir and only child of Sir Ralph Travers, was a sturdy, well-grown lad, who bade fair to follow in his father's footsteps as a soldier and a courtier, for even now his manner towards his little cousin, Cecily Wharton, was marked by gentleness and good breeding, and he was ever her protector and guardian in any childish scrapes or difficulties in which they might involve themselves. Cecily was the orphan daughter of Lady Travers's only sister. The child had lost both her parents soon after her birth by the small-pox, and her aunt had brought her to Combe that she might be trained and educated under her own eyes, and fitted for the position which would be hers when she came of age, for she was no penniless waif, and also that she might be a companion for her own son Hugh. Lady Wharton, though a devoted mother, tempered her devotion with common-sense, and she well knew the temptation to selfishness and egotism which must assail a lad in her Hugh's position were he brought up without companions of his own standing, and amid the society of his elders only. Her plan had so far been marked by success. Hugh's gentle nature had been brought more to the fore by the companionship of the little girl, and her society had taught him that there was the pleasure of others to be thought of as well as his own. On the morning in question the two young people had been for a long ramble in the park with their dogs, and had returned in time for the midday meal, the summons to which they were awaiting under the beech-tree. As they thus rested, their gaze and their conversation had turned on the old pile of buildings facing them. "Then Uncle Ralph did not build it," Cecily was saying, in connection with some remark of Hugh's on the weather-beaten appearance of the mansion. "Uncle Ralph! Indeed, no! Why, Cecily, it was old, very old, before my father was thought of, or, for the matter of that, his father, and grandfather before him." "Then it must be old! And didn't his father live here?" "Yes; and his grandfather, too." "Oh!"--in a puzzled tone from the child, as if her ideas were not equal to going back so far; and then, in a brighter key, consequent on feeling on safer ground, "Then who did build it?" "The monks." "What monks?"