a sheer descent into a glen below on the one
hand, and a precipitous acclivity rising far above
us on the other. Down in the glen there was a
brook breaking over a rocky course with a
liquid, babbling murmur, which was the only
sound that reached us as we ascended in the
profound repose of an autumn day among the
hills. On the other side of the glen lay another
range of hills, more rugged and barren, bearing
the tokens of storms that had rent their rocks,
and strewn the surface with sharp fragments,
among which only hardy foxglove plants and
rough ling could find a place to live. Still
farther off beyond rose the long, broad, curved
brows of more mountains, whose deeper and
colder tints told of the unseen valleys that
intersected them. As our path led us upward,
the sound of the stream ceased, and we saw it
lying motionless through the whole length of the
defined glen, with a shining cascade in the
distance, resting upon a fissure in the rocks. We
were come to softly undulating hollows, and
extensive flats of level lands, where flocks of quiet
sheep were pasturing amid dark green bosses of
gorse, bushes, and brightly-bronzed patches of
dying fern; and here and there were forests of
fir-trees and solitary yews, touching the gorgeous
scenery with a shade of gloom. Every line,
every pointed crag, every soft curve and glowing
colour was familiar to me, and yet possessed a
new language, like the reading of a letter written
to us long years since, and found again after we
have been disciplined into deeper feeling. I
regarded these hills as the type of the for-ever
peaceful home, where the pleasant ties of love
shoidd strengthen continually, till they were as
firm as these everlasting foundations.

Still as we ascended in mutual silence
befitting the solemn beauty around us, I began to
detect reluctantly a maturity in which there was
more and more a suggestion of quick decay.
The heath did not seem to spring again after
our feet had passed over it; and glancing back
upon the way we came, I could trace our steps
across the turf by the trodden moss, no longer
glistening in the dew. Where our shadows fell
upon the echoless path the rooks rose languidly,
with no other sound than the flutter of their
ponderous wings,aud flew slowly and with effort back
to their colony in the fir-coppice behind Elmeth;
the very air itself was listless, no longer caressing
like a summer breeze, nor bracing like the
wind of winter, and it brooded heavily, with a
weight of mist upon the summit of the mountain;
so silent, that the chirp of a bird in the
hawthorn bushes which here and there still
marked the ancient boundaries of our fields,
made us start guiltily, and draw nearer to one
another, we descended into the hollow of a
cluster of hillocks, where my old home lay. Its
walls of unhewn stones, built to defy the cold
and storms of winter, stood as square and
substantial as ever, though they looked naked and
deserted; but the large wooden bam was falling
into ruins, and showed great rifts of blackened
timber; while the basin-shaped pool beside it,
never stirred by the splashing hoofs of horses
and the slowly-drinking muzzles of cattle, was
stagnant, under a covering of yellow leaves. The
garden, once stretching up the southern slope
of a mound and sheltered by the fir-coppice, was
no longer enclosed from the open hill, and its
place was only indicated by the ranker growth
upon its beds of the weeds and nettles, that
scarcely flourished in the coarser mould of the
mountains. Down the uneven walks I led Daisy
to the door, through which Godfrey and I had
passed, in our early orphanage, to face the world
together; and across it from lintel to threshold
hung unbroken threads of cobweb, sparkling in
the dew and sunlight. I listened to the breathless
stillness, and looked around upon the desolation
of the homestead, till my hope nearly died away.

"Daisy!" I cried, "you do not know this
place. It is where we were born, Godfrey
and I. These are our hills and meadows
where we were children. When we came down
yonder hill, and I remembered the days before
we left home to live in your native town, and
thought of all that might have been, and all
that ought to have been, my spirit would have
fainted, but for the hope that this is his place
of hiding. If he be here now, Daisy, and the
clergyman, to whom I wrote when we found his
picture of Elmeth, says he has been living here
a long while, I look to you to restore my brother
to me. It was you who deprived me of him.
You must go to him with me. Forget your
miserable marriage, which was unconsecrated
and unblessed, and seek him as if you were the
simple girl he loved eight years ago. Give me
back my brother."

Tor a moment, as I spoke, a flush of youth
came back to Daisy's face, and a gleam of light
kindled upon it; but again as she turned from
me, and lifted up her eyes to the fair and peaceful hills
surrounding us, their dark irides dilated
with terror, as though, if I could see the images
painted on their retina, I should find a far
different vision there. Then the heavy lids closed
over them, the nervous fingers were twined
closely, and Daisy's lips moved in a whisper.
She seemed to utter a sort of prayer:

"Thou knewest that I was insensible to every
sorrow that did not come home to me, and touch
my own self; therefore Thou hast caused me to
pass through seas of suffering, until Thou hast
pierced even to my soul. Come a little nearer
to me, my father, that I may lean upon Thy
strength, now that my eyes are to see, and my
ears are to hear, this trouble which I alone have
wrought."

On the other side of the house, which faced a
a sudden dip in the outline of the hill,
overlooking the valley from whence I had seen the
red light the evening before, there was a second
entrance, through which Daisy and I found
unobstructed access into the large kitchen. I
noticed in a glance that with the impulse of
habit the chief pieces of furniture were arranged
in their accustomed places; but the stretchers
covered with canvas, the half-finished pictures
that were hung against the walls, and a bundle
of pencils lying upon the deal table, gave me