be something like her in this respect also. His whole soul was pervaded with a 'dim religious light' from infancy, which grew brighter by degrees—or, some might say, darker.

Mrs. Dayrell, moreover-fortunately for Charlie-with all her romantic enthusiasm, was not one of those foolish mothers who are blind to the faults of their children which everybody else can discern. Nor, seeing them, was she afraid to tell him of them-albeit he was an only son, who, we are told, is invariably spoiled. Sometimes she had to hint that he was getting too good an opinion of himself, and then he felt profoundly abashed for a time; and though the need grew again, as with most clever, high-spirited young folk till they go to school, he was so far chastened in this matter at home, that a very little of the rough sarcasm of school was sufficient to make him thereafter as modest and humble-minded as any of his favourite knights, in whom, his mother reminded him, such qualities were among their most conspicuous graces. But there was a more dangerous and difficult foe to overcome.

'Charlie, you really must learn to curb that quick temper of yours, or it will bring you into trouble some day.'

'Mother, how can I?' asked the boy impatiently.

'As you curb your pony, my boy, when he tries to get the bit between his teeth and run away with you.' Then she added softly, when he seemed to have taken in that idea, 'Do you remember how you admired our Lord for bearing so gently with His cruel persecutors, and what you said about the Apostle Peter after reading his First Epistle, and what a noble character you thought him, to have conquered all his angry passions?'

'Yes, mother; and how you said he could only have done that because he had remembered the warning to watch and pray.' So the boy set himself to overcome his angry passions also.

Mr. Dayrell was not by any means a potent influence on his son's life at any time. Yet it might have been well for the boy and man if more of that stately, high-principled, 'fine old English gentleman's' character and views of life could have entered into his being. It was, however, scarcely possible it should be so. Mr. Dayrell lived in a lofty region, far removed from the sphere even of his wedded wife, and was not likely to concern himself much with a sensitive, impulsive child of tender years, or a rollicking yet dreamy schoolboy. He took rather more interest in him when grown to young man's estate, but then the young man's character was pretty well formed. There was not even the common ground between them, usually found in such circles, in a love of field sports; for while Charlie as a boy was ardently fond of sporting, and was allowed the services of a gamekeeper, a mild amount of game-preserving, lots of dogs of every description, and a thoroughbred pony, his father 'cared for none of these things,' looked on the whole business as insufferably barbarous and stupid, and regarded politics as the only serious pursuit worthy of a rational being.

Mr. Dayrell's enjoyments in the country were reading the Morning Chronicle and Times, biographies, travels, Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs,' and Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion,' varied with infrequent billiards, his regular magisterial duties, and an occasional stroll in his own grounds, rare and furtive attempts at angling, and a daily quiet amble on a strong but aged cob. His heart, however, was always in London, wherever his body might be. The House of Commons-of which he had long been a silent, slightly supercilious, but much-interested member-his club, his dinner-parties and invariable 'rubber,' at decorous evening hours, constituted the sphere of his life and being.

Yet there was one point on which Mr. Dayrell and his

little son might have fraternized had they but known it, or cared to be better acquainted. His family was a very old one-not a branch of the Kent or Buckinghamshire Dayrells, but the genuine representative of the Dayrell who was a knight sans peur et sans reproche of King Arthur's days, or at all events of the Crusades, and of whom Mr. Dayrell was exceedingly proud. This was the less to be wondered at, because he certainly had a good deal himself of the true knight in his composition. There was that lofty purity of heart. characteristic of the loyal chevalier in his ideal, and often most real, state-that scorn of all that was mean or false, that perfect hatred of anything approaching to sensuality and sins of the flesh. A character, in short, somewhat more rare in those days than now among English gentlemen: yet less rare in any days than some evil minds may suppose.

Hence it is evident how warmly (had they but known it) both son and father, as well as the mother, could have sympathized in the matter of chivalry, and how cordially they must have agreed as to the gratitude they felt to the written records of chivalry for the help they had given them in striving to cherish and wear 'the white flower of a blameless life.'

On one or two rare occasions only did Charlie seem to snatch a glimpse into his father's inner life. Once was when Mr. Dayrell was recounting to his wife, as he stood on the hearthrug before dinner, the injustice he had been witnessing that day at Quarter Sessions in some poaching case, and against which he had protested with a warmth that surprised his friends as much as his enemies. No doubt his want of sympathy with boundless fox-hunting and exaggerated game-preserving, his smothered indignation, also, at the mischief done thereby to the farmers' crops and henroosts, and his own also, helped him in this matter to see and protest against the cruel wrong that was being committed by the 'Quorum.' But his

wife knew well, and his son soon learnt, that it was a great trouble and cross for him to come into personal collision with his brother magistrates, and one from which he would certainly have shrunk, had his conscience allowed him to shirk the task. Moreover, both wife and son saw with admiration that he went to town to interview the Home Secretary, and afterwards supported the quasi-poacher's wife and children while the poor fellow was in prison.

CHAPTER II.

ONE summer's afternoon, when Charlie was about eight years old, his mother, sitting in her pleasant boudoir which looked on the park, heard him bounding upstairs, calling 'Mother, oh, mother!' but in such a happy tone that she was not alarmed-not that it was easy to alarm her at any time. In another second the bright, beautiful young scapegrace burst into the room, dancing about, and then, throwing his arms round her neck, he exclaimed, 'Oh mother, I have seen them-have really seen them!'

'What? the fairies?'

'No, no; I wish I had,' and a slight momentary shade of regret passed over his face; 'no, but the next best thingI've seen the Gipsies!' and with his head thrown back he looked eagerly in his mother's face for sympathy in his joy. She could give him that, though with drawbacks.

'Ah,' she answered, 'how charming!'

'And they really do live in the forest day and night, all the summer through, and in real tents, and little houses on wheels, all among the trees, and fern, and deer, in the woods near Wootton, you know.'

'That is romantic.'

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'Yes; and I've spoken to them, and they were so kind, and they offered me something to eat when I told them who I was, but that was nasty; and there was such a beautiful little lady gipsy, with great black eyes, and a dark skin and black hair, and a red handkerchief, and bright colours, and she walked part of the way back with me beside my pony, to show me the shortest way--'

'Upon my word! Why, my young knight has found an adventure, I declare!'

'Yes, mother, and she told me all about them-how they came last from Egypt, but before that from India, and how four hundred years ago their leaders, who were a Duke and a Count (think of that !)—rode into some place in Austria so splendidly dressed, all the way from Egypt, and they had a lot of beautiful hunting-dogs following them, and above three hundred followers, and they had a safe something' 'Safe conduct,' suggested his mother.

'Yes, from the Emperor of Germany himself, Sigis something-but never mind that; and then about ten years later they were at Paris, the Duke and the Count, with at least ten gipsy knights, and in Spain they were very great folks indeed.'

'What an interesting race!'

'Oh, but that's not near all, mother. Only three hundred years ago, 1505 I think she said, King James IV. of Scotland showed great honour to their leader, Gaggy something, and styled him those were her very words, mother, "styled him"-Count of Little Egypt, and gave him a letter of recommendation, signed with his own hand. and the boy's eyes sparkled with delight. these gipsies I've been talking to are not the common gipsies. They belong to the Stanleys, the young lady told me, and that is the family of their Kings And oh ! there was such a fine young chap, some years older than I, who

Think of that!'

And, mother,