Sometimes in our English summers there is a mist of heat in the air, confusing all the lines of the landscape as much as a fog in winter--in which the hills and lakes and sky are nothing but one dazzle and faint glory of suppressed light and warmth--light confusing but penetrating: warmth perhaps stifling to the young and active, but consolatory to those whose blood runs chill. This was the mental condition in which the Squire was. His troubles seemed to die away, though he had so many of them. Randolph, his middle-aged son, ceased to be an assailant and invader, and dropped into the dark like other troublesome things--not a son to be proud of, but one to put up with easily enough. John? he did not remember much about John; but he remembered very distinctly his old playfellow little Johnny, his little brother. “Eighteen months--only eighteen months between them:” he almost could hear the tone in which his mother said that long ago. If Johnny had lived he would have been--how old would he have been now? Johnny would have been seventy-four or so had he lived--but the Squire did not identify the number of years. There was eighteen months between them, that was all he could remember, and of that he sat and mused, often saying the words over to himself with a soft dreamy smile upon his face. He was often not quite clear that it was not Johnny himself, little Johnny, with whom he had been playing on the water-side. This change affected him in all things. He had never been so entirely amiable. When Randolph returned to the assault, the Squire would smile and make no reply. He was no longer either irritated or saddened by anything his son might say--indeed he did not take much notice of him one way or another, but would speak of the weather, or take up a book, smiling, when his son began. This was very bewildering to the family. Randolph, who was dull and self-important, was driven half frantic by it, thinking that his father meant to insult him. But the Squire had no purpose of any kind, and Mary, who knew him better, at last grew vaguely alarmed without knowing what she feared. He kept up all his old habits, took his walks as usual, dressed with his ordinary care--but did everything in a vague and hazy way, requiring to be recalled to himself when anything important happened. When he was in his library, where he had read and written and studied so much, the Squire arranged all his tools as usual, opened his book, even began to write his letters, putting the date--but did no more. Having accomplished that beginning he would lean back in his chair and muse for hours together. It was not thinking even, but only musing; no subject abode with him in these long still hours, and not even any consistent thread of recollections. Shadows of the past came sailing--floating about him, that was all; very often only that soft, wandering thought about little Johnny, occupied all his faculties.--Eighteen months between them, no more! He rarely got