"I was to say that Mrs. Maitland recommended me. I held her pony just now," interposed Everard. This ended the discussion; and in a minute or two Everard found himself, scythe in hand, busily mowing the little lawn, to the great discomfort of his torn hands, which he had to bind afresh as well as he could. However, he got through his task in a couple of hours, swept the turf clean, nailed up a creeper or two, and did one or two odd jobs about the place for the damsel who had dismissed him with such scorn, and did not leave the cottage till after dark. Whenever he paused in his work and looked up, he saw Mrs. Everard's eyes bent wistfully upon him, and knew that she was comparing his features with Leslie's. Marion had not recognized the playfellow and companion of her youth, but this woman's eyes were made keen-sighted by love and sorrow, and traced out the ordinary fraternal resemblance beneath the disguise of the weather-browned, tattered vagrant. His heart warmed to her and to the child, who ran about, prattling and getting in the way of his unsuspected kinsman. If Leslie had been alive, he felt that he could have asked him for succor. That night he passed on a half-made rick of hay, a fragrant, warm, and luxurious couch, sheltered from the sky by a sheet of sailcloth spread tent-wise to keep off showers. He thought it better not to seek work so near the town, since he had wherewith to get food for the day, so he set off northward, and walked as far as his wounded leg would let him, revolving many schemes for escape in his mind as he went along. He took out his tract, "Plain Words for Plain Men," and read it with inward sarcasm. It was beautifully written. and lucidly expressed; by the Rev. Canon Maitland, Rector of St. Swithun's, at some country town, Rural Dean; author of several religious works set down in due order. "So he is a canon, is he?" muttered Everard, fiercely, as he limped along in the burning sunshine. "How long does it take to grow into an archbishop, I wonder? And how much damned hypocrisy and lying treachery does it take to make one?" and he tore the paper into a hundred fragments and dashed it into the road dust, where he stamped savagely upon it. Then he thought of Marion and the sweet children who were kind to the ragged vagrant, and his heart contracted with a wild pain. At noon he rested in a wood, where a thick undergrowth of hazels made a shelter from eyes as well as from the sun. On the mosses and tangled roots of an ash-tree, he sat at the edge of the hazel wall, just where the ground sloped down to a little stream, which bickered over its mossy pebbles with a pleasant sound, and caught in its tiny wave the cool lights glancing through the wind-stirred boughs above it. This was better than prison, Everard thought, as he stretched his weary, hot limbs at length on the dry, short grass, and gazed up through the gently waving, sun-steeped leaves at glimpses of blue sky, and listened to the brook's low and soothing song and the whispering of the laughing leaves, and smelled the vague, delicious scent of the woodlands, and forgot the aching of his wounds and the cough which had shaken him since chills of the night in the wet elm tree. For the moment he wanted nothing more. It would be sweet, after those long years of toil and prison, to wander thus forever in the sweet summer weather quite alone, his whole being open to the half-forgotten influences of free earth and sky, fields and streams and woods, sunrises and sunsets and solemn nights marked by the quiet marshaling of the stars, till he was healed of the grievous hurts of his long agony. Even the hunted feeling, the necessity for hiding and being ever on the alert, even the danger that dogged every step, was refreshing and stimulating. This wild life was full of adventure, and roused his faculties, which the iron hand of bondage had benumbed. The simple meal he had purchased tasted deliciously, the brook's water was like sparkling wine in comparison with that of the prison. For company his cell boasted at most an occasional spider; while here in the wood were a thousand of friendly guests, flying, creeping, swimming, humming, peeping at him with bright, shy eyes, chirping, and even singing a fragmentary song in the noonday heat. A wren, beguiled by his long stillness and the tempting crumbs he strewed, hopped up within an inch of his motionless hand, and pecked pertly at the unusual dainty. Everard remembered the wren he had seen on his last day of liberty, the wren which nestled on Lilian's muff and let her touch him, while he and Cyril looked on, and Cyril said that it was Lilian's guilelessness which gave her such power over dumb creatures. He remembered asking Cyril how he, who was equally guileless, had lost his power, and Cyril's agonized rejoinder, "Henry, I am a man." FLIGHT. BY CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY. [1831-1884.] O MEMORY! that which I gave thee Gone, fled, as ere autumn is ended The yellow leaves flee from the oak I had thought to lead up conversation Of the moment, that masterly pun. I had fancied young Titterton's chuckles, In fits at my slyness what can it Have all been about? I know 'twas the happiest, quaintest What had I been reading? The Standard: Through some chapters of "Vanity Fair." Did it hinge upon "parting asunder”? Stuff! locks! There are probably many Good things to be said about those. Give me time that's the best guess of any "Lock" has several meanings, one knows. iron-gray locks. "deadlock That would set up an everyday wit: Iron locks a Then of course there's the obvious "wedlock"; But that wasn't it. No! mine was a joke for the ages; A feast for your scholars and sages How it would have rejoiced Sydney Smith! 'Tis such thoughts that ennoble a mortal; And, singling him out from the herd, Fling wide immortality's portal But what was the word? |