have said, the merchant’s son was buried in the family vault. Arthur Phillips remembered the other funeral; that gloomy cortége, which had arrested his steps on that misty autumn day, when, assured of the success of his picture, he had come down to Barton Hall to see Phœbe. It was Autumn again at this second funeral, but the sun was shining brightly now, sending glints of coloured light from the oriel windows down the chancel of the old church, and glimmering upon the ceiling with a trembling reflection from the adjacent lake. The old church was full of people, not mourners, but lookers on: men and women come to see the murdered man’s funeral, just as many of them would go to see the man hanged who had killed him, if they had an opportunity. The old trees that had loomed forth dim and shadowy in the adjacent park, now stood forth in all their autumnal grandeur, and some of them cast long shadows in at the open doorway, upon the monumental pavements. The October wind moaned now and then round the old tower, and rustled the ivy, making it tap upon the windows in the midst of the parson’s solemn funereal words. And now and then a few brown leaves came rushing into the chancel, as if they sought sanctuary against the persecutions of the wind. When the sexton crumbled the dust upon the coffin-lid, these stray leaves shambled in also,--sad emblems of death and decay, but not without an eloquent suggestion to the thoughtful mind, of our reasonable faith in the resurrection of the dead; for autumn and winter are but the harbingers of spring. Arthur Phillips uttered a prayer that they whose sins brought their own punishment in this world, might thereby find forgiveness in the next for these same misdeeds. Mrs. Phillips and the Countess sat together at Montem watching the leaves whirl hither and thither; those leaves,--so wild, so weird, so beautiful, so sad, so eloquent to Amy--they flew along the terrace like flocks of birds, away over the green turf, until they lighted on the distant lake, and sailed about wherever the wind willed. And Amy told her dear friend how the leaves had whirled round those carriage-wheels on that autumn day, when she first saw her husband. They always recalled that day, these autumn leaves--always brought it back to Amy’s mind. These were her dead hopes, the leaves of her young love that had been nipped by the frost of neglect. She had watered them with her tears, and then bade them go whither they listed.