From the breezy hill of Cotmanhaye come Sir Henry and Lady Clavering, from Bilts’ Farm walks down the sunny and sensible Elizabeth, whilst George is ever to and fro, superintending both farms at the same time. Every few days Letty Thorsby comes driving over with her children. Children? Yes, did I not tell you that she has a little fairy-like daughter, bright Ann Woodburn Thorsby, as well as that sturdy growing Leonard, who is always wanting to go to Fair Manor, to hear Tom Boddily play on that wonderful pipe and lark whistle? and on Sundays, over comes Thorsby, and there is a life in the house with the young people, and children and nurses, comers and goers, that is better than any of the old times. Thorsby has always some pleasant story of somebody or other to relate, and the other day he was amusing them with an account of an old aunt of his, who says it is a lucky thing her memory fails so. She had heard of a man who had written a book about the pleasures of memory, but for her part she thought it was a pleasure to forget. “It is a pleasure that old age brings,” she says, “for then things come new again to us. It is because people forget that they tell their old stories over again, and read their old books. Not to forget would be to be poor; to forget is to enjoy twice, and sometimes much oftener.” But a word about Thorsby and forgetting. There are things that he has not yet learned to forget, and they keep him sober. Cheerful and even joyous, as he often seems in his own intimate circle of friends, there are dark thoughts that often come across him; and at times he is low, very low and desolate in heart, and it then requires all Letty’s genial glow of nature’s and affection’s sunshine to keep him up and keep him going. The days of his folly and his guilt come back upon him, and he remembers the dark, estranged and even contemptuous bearing of his most respected townsmen towards him; and he knows, that if he had not had a Letty Woodburn for his wife, but some proud and indignant dame who would have spurned the dust of his threshold from her, and abandoned him to the more than seven devils that were in his blood, he would now have been a lost man, lost body and soul for ever.