"So there was very ill things i' th' wind for the bell to tackle," said Nathan, in a low voice, smiling as he followed them into the chapel.

The marriage ceremony was quickly through. "And I wish ye God speed, and well through yer troubles, for you'll have plenty of them," said the old minister as he dismissed them.

"But nothing can't part us now," said Cassie, with a sigh of relief, as they came out again into the open air, "naythir ill report nor good report, and we two is one to bear them."

"Yes," observed Nathan, overhearing her, "two is better than one, because they has a good reward for their labour, for if one fall the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone. Ah," added he, with half a smile, as she took her husband's arm, "I dunnot believe as my Bessie ever linked' wi' any man but me a' her days as we was togither."

6

As they came back once more to the cottage they met Nanny, who had arrived to see the last of her friends.

"Well-a-day, I'm fine and pleased for to see you so content, and I'm hoping as it's all right, but marriage is a vera tickle thing-whiles better, whiles worser. I buried my first husband when Johnny were but two year old, and then I chanced upo' another, and I mid a'most a been as well without one. He were a sore un to drink, and so I had to fettle for mysen and him and the boy too."

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Nay," replied Nathan, "most things is kittle,-it's according as ye looks upon 'um. It's a sore thing to be alone, and it's what God A'mighty didn't see as it were good,—and it's ill convanient to ha' company as is not to yer mind. And I've a got both on 'um, it sims to me," he added in a low voice.

"I've a brought ye some pins and tapes, and a little o' all things as is agreeable," said Nanny, helping to give a final touch to the packings. "Ye'll feel mighty comikle, I tak' it, wi'out a carrier nor a 'sponsible body peddling about wi' a' ye need in those wild woods as German were a talking on. Ye'll want sore to be back again. I wish ye a' well through. Ye'll be a sore loss to me anyhow, I know that."

"Ha' ye got plenty o' thraps? The wind's high west to-day" (i.e. close upon north), " 'tis main cold. The sayin' is

Ne'er cast a clout
Till May be out," *

moralised Nathan ; "but I think as it shouldna be till July. I wish I were ten year younger, and I think I'd a gone wi' ye. Home's home, be it never so homely, but it'll seem cold and lonesome very for me when ye be a' flitted. Tak' heed," added he, to a boy who was wheeling off some of the goods in a wheelbarrow and dropped a fresh thing at every step. "Yer but a moithering chap."

""Tain't my fault," said he. "I canna help it."

* "Lord Monmouth using oft that saying." 1649.

"Eh, excuses ain't nowt-what were it Aaron said? I put in the gold and there came out a god,'" said Nathan, striving to be his old self and keep up their spirits."

He seemed altogether to have forgotten his intentions of marriage, and treated Lydia exactly as he did his niece.

A number of neighbours had come in to see the last of the emigrants, but they gradually dropped off, and only he and Nanny went on with them to the turning which led from their own valley to the high-road. The wrench to Lydia was great, and she suffered very much, though there was no outward sign of it in her quiet face. The tearing up by the roots as it were of all her old associations seemed to give her a separate pang with every stick and stone which they passed on their way. Cassie walked along by her husband's side in a kind of maze. The outer world was

nothing to her then. She was living in her own sensations, which seemed to her the only reality, and all other things, whether to go or stay, at home or abroad, indifferent for the time at least. "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and obey," seemed ringing in her ears. They all sat down on a bank with their bundles and awaited the waggon. They sat in silence; even Nanny did not utter a word. The soft carpet of thyme and cistus and eyebright under their feet gave forth a pleasant smell,—and smells have a singular power of association, and, at times, bring after them a whole history of recollections in places and years far removed. Ever after in Lydia's mind the scent of thyme brought back the whole scene, the bitter sweet of the parting, the rocky hills, the valley, the feathery wych elms, and the old man murmuring to himself.

"It won't be long now," said German, pointing to the waggon as it came slowly down the road, which wound like a white riband along the green hillside.

"Tain't for very long. Nothink ain't for very long, thank God," said the old man, half aloud.

"God bless yer, childer," he continued, rising solemnly as the sound of the jangling bells of the horses came near. "I shall see yer faces no more, but we shall meet o' the other side the river i' th' morning, please God, some time. God A'mighty kip yer in a' yer ways, and prosper ye in a' yer dealin's, and have mercy upon yer and upo' me, too," he ended, as he passed his hard hand over his eyes and turned sadly towards Youlcliffe.

Nanny was too busy stowing away bundles, helping to arrange cloaks and seats, to be quite aware that the last moment was come, till the heavy waggon was once again under way, when she burst into a wild kind of sob. "And I haven't so much as an old shoe to throw arter ye for luck!" she cried, holding out her arms towards them. It was the last they saw of their old home as they turned the shoulder of the hill.

They were obliged to sleep a night or two in Liverpool before the ship sailed, where the old sailor took them in hand; but though Roland looked

out anxiously for his father he could not find him. As the boat left the shore for the ship, however, with a host of sympathizers and friends standing about and a ringing final cheer, the crowd parted for an instant, and he saw the face he knew so well, looking earnestly after them, sad, dark, and lowering. As he caught his son's eye, however, he smiled, and raised his cap above his head with a shout and a cheer that went to Roland's heart.

"Is it him?" said Cassie, pressing close to his side as she saw him turn pale.

"Yes, dearie, and he's a shouten to make as if he were main glad-poor feyther!"

It was almost the solitary piece of self-denial of Joshua's life; let us nope it was counted to him-it was his last gleam of good.

His children prospered in their new land. They had a hard fight to begin with, but they won their way to a farm in the backwoods in time. "Penetanguisheen "—the lake of the silver strand-became a very pleasant homestead, which they called Stone Edge, in spite of geography. They kept together. German never married; women such as he had been used to were scarce out there, and he had all that he wanted in his mother and in Cassie's home and children.

Roland always held that his father had struck no blow against Ashford, and that this made a great difference; Cassie, as a good wife, agreed with him, and Lydia held her tongue. She worked with head and heart and hands for them all, and was a happy woman in her loving toil and the love of them all in return. Sometimes as she nursed Cassie's numerous babes a dreamy look came over her face, and they knew she was thinking of her dead boy, and Cassie would come behind her with one of her old loving caresses-or, better still, send a small tyrant, her first-born, a little German, whom Lydia had tended in all their early struggles, and to whom she clung greatly and was supposed to spoil.

It was not much more than a month after they sailed when the horsedealer was taken up for some far inferior crime, and "Lawyer Gilbert getting scent of it, had the man put on his trial for the murder. He, of course, laid the chief blame upon Joshua, declared that he had suggested the robbery as a means of freeing himself from debts which he could not otherwise pay, that he had ridden behind him to the spot where Ashford was set upon, had held the horse and shared the spoil, with a great deal more which seemed to be apocryphal; but it was impossible to unravel the truth from the lies in his statement.

Joshua was still wandering under a feigned name about Liverpool, when one day, while he was boozing grimly and sadly in a low publichouse near the docks, a friendly voice said in his ear, "Tak' heed, they're arter ye."

He rose and went out, he hardly knew where. The sun was setting behind a mass of dark red angry-looking clouds, and the tall masts and

rigging stood out black and distinct against the sky as he came out on the shore. Far in the offing was a ship in full sail: he stood for a moment watching her, as she seemed to follow on the track of the only thing he had ever loved, his son; then his thoughts went back to his "troubles," as he called them. He had made a bad bargain with the Devil: the county notes had been of scarcely any value; the seeming treasure had turned into dead leaves, as in an old fairy tale.

"It were hardly worth while," he muttered to himself, as he came to a crowd of men unloading a timber vessel. It was not a lofty sentiment for such a crime, but some petty detail seems to fill a mind stupefied by guilt and drink to the utter exclusion of the great horror itself. In the bustle and confusion he was struck by a plank, and at the same moment a tipsy man hustled against him. "What for is thattens?" said Joshua, suspiciously, returning what he thought a blow. In the drunken squabble which ensued he lost his footing, and fell over the river wall among the stones on the shore, and was only rescued much injured and half-drowned. They took him to the workhouse, and when the slow constables of that day came upon his trail they found him dying. "Joshua Stracey?" said one of them, laying a hand on his arm gently. "Joshua Stracey it is," said he, mechanically, without opening his eyes. "It werena worth while,” he repeated again, and passed away.

The horsedealer was found guilty and executed.

An old guide-book of some fifty years ago, describing this part of the country, tells how a murder was committed in this valley, and after a solemn little sermon against highway robbery and murder, proceeds to say "that the murderer was hanged on the scene of his wickedness," and adds, without the smallest surprise or disgust, evidently as an ordinary event, that his body was hanging there in chains, on a gallows erected for it, when he (the guide-book) passed that way some time after.

There has been more change in the habits of thought and feeling among us during the last fifty years than had taken place during the previous eight hundred.

It was a bright autumn day in Canada some seven or eight years after. A building "bee" (work to be repaid in kind), in which all the few neighbours far and wide had joined, had just raised a new and larger loghouse for the family, which had pretty well outgrown the old shed. Roland and German, two tall, strong, bearded fellows, with axes in their hands, were just finishing a "snake " fence, while Cassie, now a handsome matronly woman, stood at the door, with a child on each side, calling them into supper.

"Where's mother?" said German.

calf?"

"Is she after the weaning

At that moment, however, she came in sight, with her little squire proudly carrying the calf's jug. Their course might be traced all over the farm by the incessant prattle of one of the loving pair, while the almost

entire silence of the other did not seem to prevent the most perfect sympathy between the friends.

She seemed now younger than Cassie, with that peculiarly placid other-world look which keeps the heart and the expression young till death.

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'You spoil un, mother," said Cassie, with a smile.

Nay, I dunna humour un, and 'tain't love that spoils the sun ma's the fruit rippen. I mind when I were a little un and hadn't got it," said she, with an answering smile.

"But we dunna see that the fruit didna rippen wi'out," said German affectionately.

They stood for a moment at the door of their new dwelling. It was on a promontory overlooking the beautiful lake: the forest spread wide all round the shore; their own clearing was the only bit of civilization in sight. The woods were touched with the magnificent colour of an American autumn, and there was a gorgeous sunset, besides, over all.

"Yer wouldn't hae seen such a sight as that in England," said Roland, looking west.

The women turned towards the old country in the east, where a little moon was rising in a pale delicate blue sky. A woman is generally more apt to look towards the past than forward: a man's mind inclines more towards the future than to recollect.

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Eh, there was fair things too in the dear old land," said they, "though things mebbe werena all so gaudy for the look."