Among the pleasantest memories of my earlier days is one of an old gabled farmhouse overlooking the sea. It is a July afternoon, calm and hot. The sea is pale blue and its surface glassy smooth; but the passage of a storm somewhere to the eastward causes long slumberous undulations to lapse shorewards. They break upon the Devil's Ribs--that low black reef about half a mile out--and the sound is borne to our ears some seconds after the white-foam line has marked itself against the blue and vanished. There is a fine throb of sun-loving insects in the air, which we may hear if we listen for it; but more immediately audible is the guttural drawing of old Jack Poyntz's meerschaum pipe, and the delicate clicking of his sweet daughter Agatha's polished knitting-needles. From within doors comes the fillip of water and the clink of chinaware--good Mrs. Poyntz washing up the dinner-things. For we have just dined, and the blessing of a good digestion is upon all of us. Yes; there we three sit, in my memory, side by side upon the stone bench outside the farmhouse door. The projecting eaves throw a quiet, transparent shadow over us. Two or three venerable hens are scratching and nestling in the hot sandy soil near yonder corner, and conversing together in long-drawn comfortable croakings. The fragrant smoke from Poyntz's pipe-bowl circles upwards on the air, until it takes the sunlight high over head. Truly a pleasant time, whose peacefulness is still present with me after so many years. I am old, who then was young; but that July sunshine is warm in my heart to-day. Poyntz was an ancient mariner--not lean and uncanny, however; but burly, jovial, and brown; with a huge grizzled beard spreading over his mighty chest, a voice as deep and mellow as a sea-lion's, and eyes as blue and clear as the ocean upon which they had looked for more than sixty years. He had been a successful sailor, had visited many lands and brought home many cargoes, and was, in a rough simple way, a thorough cosmopolitan. After his last voyage he had settled down in the ancestral farmhouse, and applied himself to agriculture. He was as prosperous, contented, and respected a man as any in the neighbourhood; and during the fortnight or so that I had lodged beneath his roof, I had grown into a hearty liking for him. While as to Agatha--ah, it was not liking that I felt for her! Strange that that fair, finely-moulded, queenly creature was only a sailor's daughter! Much as I honoured Poyntz, I could not help sometimes feeling surprised at it. At all events, she was as perfect a lady as ever stepped on high-arched feet; and I fancied that the old mariner and his wife treated her in a manner more befitting a distinguished visitor than a child of their own. There was sturdy little Peter, now--he whose brown legs were visible beneath the low spreading bough of a scrub-oak beside the mill-stream yonder--there could be no doubt as to _him_. But what a brother for Agatha!