I was not long in finding out that General MacNeill, like many military and naval men, was very strongly and simply religious in his character, and his religion entered into all his life, even to the extent of holding his naturally fiery temper greatly in check. Though, as he told me afterwards, the struggle between the flesh and the spirit was an ever-continuing one. I could not have imagined him without his peppery temper, and I have often thought that I could not be so fond of him if he had quite succeeded in driving out the old Adam. Still, he was one of those essentially manly men who are always soft and gentle towards women, so that his greatest irascibility towards myself had a touch of tenderness in it which took out all the sting. Yet I could imagine that with a man the dear old man might have been trying. He was dictatorial, when the flesh rather than the spirit had the upper hand, and I could well believe what Hawkins, his soldier servant, said of him, half regretfully: "Ah, Miss, the master isn't the man he was before he found religion! He never has none of the old rages now, and the langwidge he'd scatter in them days was--well, it was lively. Sometimes I do feel sorry for him tryin' to satisfy himself with 'dashes' and 'bloomin's', and often I've thought he'd do himself a mischief through not havin' the old words to let himself go on. Not but what he did change the face of the rig'mint before he left, an' a good thing too. An' terrible down on langwidge he was. Why, 'e got rid of the rig'mintal parrot because it wouldn't change its ways." But all this belongs to a later stage, when I had learned to appreciate and love the dear old General, and to bless the hour he came to settle at Rose Hill. CHAPTER XVIII. THE STORY OF A SORROW. After that I continued my work of arranging General MacNeill's library with a mind very much at rest, and in a spirit of thorough enjoyment. I saw now no necessary end to my use of this delightful place, for soon after we had made friends the General presented me with a key to the garden entrance of the library. "It's a symbol," he said, "of your right to come and go without consulting me or anyone else, and I thought you'd like to have it, though of course there'd be always someone to open the door to you, and no one at all to say you nay." He was quite right. That symbolical key did add to my happiness in the library, for I no longer felt an outsider, but as one who had an inalienable right there. The General never interfered with my work, except to approve of it, and occasionally to insist that I should sit down and read and rest myself when I was very anxious to get on with my librarian's work. "Very good, very good!" I would hear him say behind my back while I worked; and I would just toss him a greeting from off my ladder and go on, while he went briskly back to his own work. We never talked except during the more or less long half-hour we gave to our tea.