from the country for a time, leaving their
mud hovel locked up, and the door-key, as
the neighbours said, buried in a hedge bank.
The Gregsons had re-appeared much about
the same time that Mr. Gray came to Hanbury.
He had either never heard of their
evil character, or considered that it gave
them all the more claims upon his Christian
care, and the end of it was that this rough,
untamed, strong giant of a heathen was loyal
slave to the weak, hectic, nervous,
self-distrustful person. Gregson had also a kind of
grumbling respect for Mr. Horner; he did
not quite like the steward's monopoly of his
Harry; the mother submitted to that with a
better grace, swallowing down her maternal
jealousy in the prospect of her child's
advancement to a better and more respectable
position than that in which his parents had
struggled through life. But Mr. Horner, the
steward, and Gregson, the poacher and
squatter, had come into disagreeable contact
too often in former days for them to be
perfectly cordial at any future time. Even
now, when there was no immediate cause for
anything but gratitude for his child's sake on
Gregson's part, he would skulk out of Mr.
Horner's way, if he saw him coming; and it
took all Mr. Horner's natural reserve and
acquired self-restraint to keep him from
occasionally holding up his father's life as a
warning to Harry. Now Gregson had nothing
of this desire for avoidance with regard to
Mr. Gray. The poacher had a feeling of
physical protection towards the parson;
while the latter had shown the moral courage,
without which Gregson would never have
respected him, in coming right down upon
him more than once in the exercise of
unlawful pursuits, and simply and boldly telling
him he was doing wrong, with such a quiet
reliance upon Gregson's better feeling, at the
same time, that the strong poacher could not
have lifted a finger against Mr. Gray, though
it had been to save himself from being
apprehended and taken to the lock-ups the very
next hour. He had rather listened to the
parson's bold words with an approving
smile, much as Mr. Gulliver might have
hearkened to a lecture from a Lilliputian.
But when brave words passed into kind
deeds, Gregson's heart mutely acknowledged
its master and keeper. And the beauty of it
all was, that Mr. Gray knew nothing of the
good work he had done, or recognised
himself as the instrument which God had
employed. He thanked God, it is true, fervently
and often, that the work was done; and
loved the wild man for his rough gratitude;
but it never occurred to the poor young
clergyman, lying on his sick-bed, and praying,
as Miss Galindo had told us he did, to be
forgiven for his unprofitable life, to think of
Gregson's reclaimed soul as anything with
which he had to do. It was now more than
three months since Mr. Gray had been at
Hanbury Court. During all that time he
had been confined to his house, if not to his
sick-bed, and he and my lady had never met
since their last discussion and difference
about Farmer Hale's barn.

This was not my dear lady's fault; no one
could have been more attentive in every way
to the slightest possible want of either of the
invalids, especially of Mr. Gray. And she
would have gone to see him at his own house,
as she sent him word, but that her foot had
slipped upon the polished oak staircase, and
her ancle had been sprained.

So we had never seen Mr. Gray since his
illness, when one November day he was
announced as wishing to speak to my lady.
She was sitting in her room—the room in
which I lay now pretty constantly—and I
remember she looked startled when word
was brought to her of Mr. Gray's being at
the Hall.

She could not go to him, she was too lame
for that, so she bade him be shown into
where she sate.

"Such a day for him to go out!" she
exclaimed, looking at the fog which had crept
up to the windows, and was sapping the little
remaining life in the brilliant Virginian
creeper leaves that draperied the house on
the terrace side.

He came in white, trembling, his large
eyes wild and dilated. He hastened up to
Lady Ludlow's chair, and, to my surprise,
took one of her hands and kissed it, without
speaking, yet shaking all over.

"Mr. Gray!" said she quickly, with sharp,
tremulous apprehension of some unknown
evil. "What is it? There is something
unusual about you."

"Something unusual has occurred," replied
he, forcing his words to be calm, as with a
great effort. "A gentleman came to my
house, not half-an-hour ago—a Mr. Howard.
He came straight from Vienna."

"My son!" said my dear lady, stretching
out her arms in dumb questioning attitude.

"The Lord gave and the Lord taketh
away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

But my poor lady could not echo the words.
He was the last remaining child. And once
she had been the joyful mother of nine.

          GERTRUDE'S WYOMING.

THERE is a coal-mine where once upon a
time, if Thomas Campbell's poetry be fact,

    The happy shepherd swains had nought to do
    But feed their flocks on green declivities.

In the matter of vegetation it is true that
Wyoming has always been a happy valley.
It is twenty-one miles long and three miles
broad. Possibly there is no especial
guarantee of happiness in those dimensions;
But it is a valley of rich plains, here level,
and here rolling, between two lines of hill
or mountain; one a luxuriant upland slope,