It was a lovely evening, as he had said. September had been drifting on, in peace and suavity; and, this day, summer seemed to pause and watch the coming of inevitable autumn as a beautiful woman pauses and looks down the hill of life with a sweet resignation that lends her a new pathetic charm, unknown to the pride of her June or even to the exquisite promise of her April. The light was golden-yellow over the grass, where the shadows of the elms lay long. Now and then an early-withered leaf crackled under the parson’s foot. The rooks were cawing for their last muster of the day; the kine were lowing towards far-off byres. There was a tramp of feet along the road without the walls and the distant sound of voices. The whole air was full of the music of evening home-comings. A sense of peace descended on the good man’s soul, he bared his grey-crowned head and looked up at the placid sky, and felt a kind of faith in happiness. It was to him as if the striving, the heat and the burden of the day had passed from their lives, and God’s best gift, rest, was about to be bestowed at last. Even as he was drawing near the gates, Ellinor was alighting from the coach, pale, tired, anxious-eyed, followed by a dusty Barnaby, who carried under his arm a cross Belphegor. They hurried through the wicket into the green arms of the park. Obedient to his mistress’s gesture, the dumb boy with his burden struck immediately across the grass towards the rectory, while she paused to draw a deep breath and taste for a spell the sad delight of being once more in that beloved enclosure, which had been, and was still, all the world to her. Presently she was startled to find the reverend Horatio at her side. “Thrice welcome!” cried he, and there was unwonted emotion in his rich kind voice. She was folded in a paternal embrace. But, with both hands upon his shoulders, she drew back, to scan his countenance; and her eyes shot mingled joy and reproach upon him for that he looked so hale and placid. The while his gaze pitied the narrower oval of her flower face, the paled cheek that had been so warm-tinted, the shadowed eyes that had been so bright. “My dear, my dear,” he said, “you look very ill!” “And you, Uncle Horatio, singularly well!” She drew still further from him as she spoke. And suddenly a rush of indignant blood dyed her pallor. “Why have you brought me here?” she cried. “If—oh, sir, this is not right or kind!” With agitated gesture she sought a letter in her reticule. “Indeed, sir, you must have deceived me!” But the rector smiled on unperturbed. There was no guilt, but rather an expression of self-approval, writ upon his every line. Ellinor unfolded a letter: “My child, will you come and help nurse back to health a sick and weary man? I would not summon you, but that I know your kind heart, and that you give us love for love. I think the sight of you will go far towards making a cure. I shall expect you to-morrow.—Your old UNCLE HORATIO.”