The flower may bloom, the flower may fade, As love brings joys or woes, Still in the heart of youth and maid That sacred blossom grows. ’Tis cherished through declining years, Amid death’s coming glooms, And watered by regretful tears, The flower eternal blooms. Nor death that rose from us can part, For when the body dies, All broken on the broken heart, That bud of heaven lies. Roylands Rectory was a comfortable-looking house, distant about a mile from the Grange, and near the village, which was an extremely small one. Indeed, although the parish was large, the Rector’s congregation was not, and his clerical occupation did not entail much work. Nevertheless, Stephen Carriston did his best to attend to the spiritual welfare of the souls under his charge; and if the hardest day’s work still left him with plenty of spare time on his hands, that could hardly be called his fault. The Rector abhorred idleness, which is said to be the mother of all the vices, and managed to fill up his unoccupied hours in a sufficiently pleasant manner by indulging in occupations congenial to his tastes. He was now engaged in translating the comedies of Aristophanes into English verse, and found the biting wit of the great Athenian playwright very delightful after the dull brains of his parishioners. For the rest, he pottered about his garden and attended to his roses, which were the pride of his heart, as well they might be, seeing that his small plot of ground was a perfect bower of loveliness. It is at this point that the pen fails and the brush should come in; for it would be simply impossible to give in bald prose an adequate description of the paradise of flowers contained within the red brick walls which enclosed the garden on three sides. The fourth side was the house, a quaint, low-roofed, old-fashioned place, with deep diamond-paned lattices, and stacks of curiously-twisted chimneys. Built in the reign of the Second Charles, it yet bore the date of its erection, 1666, the _annus mirabilis_ of Dryden, when half London was swept away by the fire, and half its inhabitants by the plague. Rector Carriston liked this house,—nay, like is too weak a word, he loved it,—as its antiquity, matching with his own, pleased him; and besides, having resided within its red-tiled roof for over thirty years, it was natural that he should be deeply attached to its quaint walls and still quainter rooms.