with cheek as fair as woman's-he came back the stalwart man, with features embrowned, mind expanded, ideas altered-absence had worked a mental as well as a physical change -he was now a fearless soldier!

It shall be left to the reader's imagination, to fancy the abundant welcomes of the host. and hostess of the Cross Roads' Inn. They declared him to be like the De Bohun warriors on the dining-room walls, and believed, with old Simon, who stood by Master Moreton as if subsiding into petrifaction, that the young squire was destined to be a general!

When the rumbling phaeton reached its destination there was a very exuberance of greeting beneath the aged roof-tree of Elleringay Manor. Godfrey clutched his hand and his voice grew tremulous—Mrs. De Bohun threw her arms round the neck of her boy, and embraced him with all the fervour of a mother's love-the elder sisters impatiently kissed his roughened cheeks, and the younger, who had "shot up apace," silently contemplated the dangling sabre and

the dark curls of his upper lip. It was a scene that might have warmed the heart of a recluse -have given the lie to the gloomy misanthrope.

In due course of time the young squire visited several of the villagers, and many and strange were the questions which those lowly denizens asked relative to other lands. On the following Sunday when they saw him at church in his dashing uniform, every eye was riveted upon the handsome hero. Some who had numbered more than three score years and ten declared Moreton to be the very fac-simile of a grand uncle who fell in the American war, and others contended for likeness to Marlborough and Eugene, which great warriors adorned the walls of the village hostelry, and there was unanimity so far as pertained to Simon's conviction that he would be a general. He bent his comely head beneath many a humble lintel, where scantiness and penury were painfully apparent-where grey hairs and infirmity kept the "ingle chair;" and long and amusing were his descriptions of the New World. His

hearers in turn recapitulated divers changes which years had worked in the hamlet.

There was one cottage which he visited that widely differed from any other, and with which we have more concern. It was a dreamy dwelling-a spot where it might be supposed the world's strifes and the world's disquietudes could never come. Imbedded in a neighbouring wood, and placed so as to command a panoramic view over the vale of Elleringay, yet within a few hundred yards of the few scattered homes which constituted the hamlet-a residence could scarcely be imagined more peaceful and more romantic. In the neatly arranged garden bloomed, as if to blush unseen, many a beauteous flower. The fastidious neatness with which the parterres were kept, gave evidence of much labour by careful hands. There, in the earliest spring, were seen the yellow crocus, the pale lily, and the modest primrose, with here and there a host of pansies, a tuft of daisies, a clustering patch of the pretty polyanthus. At a more advanced period the tall hollyhock reared aloft its floral

spirals, the blushing peony displayed its thick-set head of scarlet petals, the "roses wept in morning dew," and over the smooth and velvety grass-plot the elegant fuchsia trailed its delicate tendrils.

The cot itself was small and unostentatious: the ivy-green, which in large patches covered the whitewashed walls, and then clustered in huge festoons on the thick thatch of many a strawy covering-the latticed casementsthe airy portico of painted green, through whose trellised sides had wound in fast embrace, and formed a leafy wall-the sweet clematis, and star-begemming jesamine-were realities which the limner loves to fix. And then to enter! On the basement-floor were a couple of cozy rooms, simple, and clean, and comfortable. The little parlour, with its buffet in the corner filled with China's shining ware; its book-case, stored with treasured volumes; the lined engravings of the grim Protector, and the melancholic William of Nassau; the Scripture piece, and the rustic sketch, those frame-protected works of schoolday tasks gone by, wrought into animals, and

fruits, and flowers; with many less prominent objects-rendered it the humble apartment of domestic peace; and many whose homes were halls of splendour might have envied the calm of Ivy Cottage.

A lady, whose intelligence and demeanour evinced a life not wholly passed in the excluded valley of Elleringay, was the occupant; she was waxing towards the evening of life, and though time had warred with beauty and figure, yet there remained sufficient of a fine countenance to verify the words of Euripides, that the very autumn of a form once fair retains its beauties. There was another who had not seen a third of the

former's summers, who who was young, and blooming, and joyous; whose eye of Chione, Tarsian lip, and form of exquisite model, rendered her the living divinity of the place: and who can wonder that a brave heart brought into companionship with such witcheries, was impressed by her charms? Soon Moreton felt he loved her; and his love, like the long-hidden fires within the volcano's bosom, when the sparks had been applied,