"People get over that, don't they?" said Jock, with an awestruck interrogation in his voice.

"They do; and I hope much from getting him into a warmer atmosphere, but the child is so much reduced that the risk is great, and I should not dare not to have his mother with him." Then, as Jock was silent, "I have told you because you can make a great difference to their comfort by not showing how much it costs you to let her go."

Jock drew the bed clothes over his face, and an odd stifled sound was heard from under them. He remained thus perdu, while directions were being given to John for the night, but as the doctor was leaving the room, emerged and said-

"Bring him in before he goes."

In a short time, for it was most important not to lose the fine weather, the doctor carried Armine in swathed in rugs and blankets, a pale, sunken, worn face, and great hollow eyes looking out at the top.

The mother said something cheerful about a live mummy, but the two poor boys gazed at one another with sad, earnest, wistful eyes, and wrung one another's hands.

"Don't forget," gasped Armine, labouring for breath.

And Jock answered-

"All right, Armie; good-bye. I'm coming to morrow," with a choking, quivering attempt at bravery.

"Yes, to-morrow," said poor Mother Carey, bending over him. "My boy- my poor good boy, if I could but cut myself in two! I can't tell you how thankful I am to you for being so good about it. That dear good Johnny will do all he can, and it is only till tomorrow. You'll sleep most of the time."

"All right, mother," was again all that Jock could manage to utter, and the kisses that followed seemed to him the most precious he had known. He hid his face again, bearing his trouble the better because the lull of violent pain quelled by opiates, so that his senses were all as in a dream bound up. When he looked up again at the clink of glass, it was Cecil whom he saw measuring off his draught.

"You!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, Medlicott said I might stay till four, and give the Monk a chance of a sleep. That fellow can always snooze away off hand, and he is as sound as a top in the next room; but I was to give you this at two."

"You're sure it's the right stuff?"

"I should think so. We've practice enough in the family to know how to measure off a dose by this time."

"How is it you are out here still? This is Thursday, isn't it? We meant to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches."

"I'm not going back this half, worse luck. They were mortally afraid these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest of us, so I've got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after churches and picture galleries and mountains," said Cecil, in a tone of infinite disgust. "I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight."

"Not this year."

"No, but next."

In this contemplation Cecil was silent, only fondling Chico, until Jock, instead of falling asleep again, said, "Evelyn, what does your doctor really think of the little chap?"

Cecil screwed up his face as if he had rather not be asked.

"Never you think about it," he said. "Doctors always croak. He'll be all right again soon."

"If I was sure," sighed Jock; "but you know he has always been such a religious little beggar. It's a horrid bad sign."

"Like my brother Walter," said Cecil gravely. "Now, Duke can be ever so snappish and peevish; I'm not half so much afraid for him."

"You never heard anything like the little fellow that night," said Jock, and therewith he gave his friend by far the most connected account of the adventure that had yet been arrived at. He even spoke of the resolution to which he had been brought, and in a tone of awe described how he had pledged himself for the future.

"So you see I'm in for it," he concluded; "I must give up all our jolly larks."

"Then I shan't get into so many rows with my mother and uncle," said Cecil, by no means with the opposition his friend had anticipated.

"Then you'll stand by me?" said Jock.

"Gladly. My mother was at me all last Easter, telling me my goings on were worse to her than losing George or Walter, and talking about my Confirmation and all. She only let me be a communicant on Easter Day, because I did mean to make a fresh start-and I did mean it with all my heart; only when that supper was talked of, I didn't like to stick out against you, Brownlow; I never could, you know, and I didn't know what it was coming to."

"Nor I," said Jock; "that's the worst of it. When a lark begins one doesn't know how far one will get carried on. But that night I thought about the Confirmation, and how I had made the promise without really thinking about it, and never had been to Holy Communion."

"I meant it all," said Cecil, "and broke it, so I'm worst."

"Well!" said Jock, "if I go back from the promise little Armie made me make about being Christ's faithful soldier and servant I could never face him again-no, nor death either! You can't think what it was like, Evelyn, sitting in the dead stillness-except for an awful crack and rumbling in the ice, and the solid snow fog shutting one in. How ugly, and brutish, and horrid all those things did look; and how it made me long to have been like the little fellow in my arms, or even this poor little dog, who knew no better. Then somehow came now and then a wonderful sense that God was all round us, and that our Lord had done all that for my forgiveness, if I only meant to do right in earnest. Oh! how to go on meaning it!"

"That's the thing," said Cecil. "I mean it fast enough at home, and when my mother talks to me and I look at my brothers' graves, but it all gets swept away at Eton. It won't now, though, if you are different, Brownlow. I never liked any fellow like you I knew you were best, even when you were worst. So if you go in for doing right, I shan't care for anyone else-not even Cressham and Bulford."

"If they choose to make asses of themselves they must," said Jock. "It will be a bore, but one mustn't mind things. I say, Evelyn, suppose we make that promise of Armine's over again together now."

"It is only the engagement we made when we were sworn into Christ's army at our baptism," said the much more fully instructed Cecil. "We always were bound by it."

"Yes, but we knew nothing about it then, and we really mean it now," said Jock. "If we do it for ourselves together, it will put us on our honour to each other, and to Christ our Captain, and that's what we want. Lay hold of my hand."

The two boys, with clasped hands, and grave, steadfast eyes, with one voice, repeated together-

"We, John Lucas Brownlow and Cecil Fitzroy Evelyn, promise with all our hearts manfully to fight under Christ's banner, and continue His faithful soldiers and servants to our lives' end. Amen."

Then Cecil touched Lucas's brow with his lips, and said-

"Fellow-soldiers, Brownlow."

"Brothers in arms," responded Jock.

It was one of those accesses of deep enthusiasm, and even of sentiment, which modern cynicism and false shame have not entirely driven out of youth. Their hearts were full; and Jock, the stronger, abler, and more enterprising had always exercised a fascination over his friend, who was absolutely enchanted to find him become an ally instead of a tempter, and to be no longer pulled two opposite ways.

"Ought we not to say a prayer to make it really firm? We can't stand alone, you know," he said, diffidently.

"If you like; if you know one," said Jock.

Cecil knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer and the collect for the Fourth Epiphany Sunday.

"That's nice," was Jock's comment. "How did you know it?"

"Mother made us learn the collects every Sunday, and she wrote that in my little book. I always begin the half with it, but afterwards I can't go on."

"Then it doesn't do you much good," was the not unnatural remark.

"I don't know," said Cecil, hesitating; "may be all this-your getting right, I mean, is the coming round of prayers-my mother's, I mean, for if you take this turn, it will be much easier for me! Poor mother! it's not for want of her caring and teaching."

"My mother doesn't bother about it."

"I wish she did," said Cecil. "If she had gone on like mine, you would have been ever so much better than I."

"No, I should have been bored and bothered into being regularly good- for-nothing. You don't know what she's really like. She's nicer than anyone-as jolly as any fellow, and yet a lady all over."

"I know that," said Cecil; "she was uncommonly jolly to me at Eton, and I know my mother and she will get on like a house on fire. We're too old to have a scrimmage about them like disgusting little lower boys," he added, seeing Jock still bristling in defence of Mother Carey.

This produced a smile, and he went on-

"Look here, Skipjack, we will be fellow-soldiers every way. My Uncle James can do anything at the Horse Guards, and he shall have us set down for the same regiment. I'll tell him you are my good influence."

"But I've been just the other way."

"Oh, but you will be-a year or two will show it. Which shall it be? Do you go in for cavalry or infantry? I like cavalry, but he's all for the other."

Jock was wearied enough not to have much contribution to make to the conversation, and he thus left Cecil such a fair field as he seldom enjoyed for Uncle James's Indian and Crimean campaigns, and for the comparative merits of the regiments his nephew had beheld at reviews.

He was interrupted by a message from the guide that there was a cloud in the distance, and the young Herr had better set off quickly unless he wished to be weather-bound.

Johnny was on his feet as soon as there was a step on the stairs, and was congratulated on his ready powers of sleeping.

"It's in the family," said Jock. "His brother Rob went to sleep in the middle of the examination for his commission."

"Then I should think he could sleep on the rack," said Cecil.

"I'm sure I wish I could," rejoined Jock.

"What a sell for the torturers, to get some chloroform!" said John. And so Cecil departed amid laughter, which gave John little idea how serious the talk had been in his absence.

The rain came on even more rapidly than the guide had foretold, and it was a drenched and dripping object that rode into the court of the tall hotel at Leukerbad, and immediately fell into the hands of Dr. Medlicott and Reeves, who deposited him ignominiously in bed, in spite of all his protestations and murmurs. However, he had the comfort of hearing that his little fag was recovering from the exhaustion of the journey. He had at first been so faint that the doctor had watched, fearing that he would never revive again, and he had not yet attempted to speak; but his breathing was certainly already less laboured, and the choking, struggling cough less frequent. "He really seems likely to have a little natural sleep," was Lord Fordham's report somewhat later, on coming in to find Cecil sitting up in bed to discuss a very substantial supper. "I hope that with Reeves and the doctor to look to him, his mother may get a little rest to-night."

"Have you seen her?"

"Only for a moment or two, poor thing; but I never did see such eyes or such a wonderful sad smile as she tried to thank us with. Medlicott is ready to do anything for her husband's sake; I am sure anyone would do the same for hers. To get such a look is something to remember!"

"Well done, Duke!" ejaculated Cecil under his breath, for he had never seen his senior so animated or so enthusiastic. "Then you mean to stay, and let Medlicott look after them?"

"Of course I do," said Fordham, in a much more decided tone than he had used in the morning. "I'm not going to do anything so barbarous as to leave them to some German practitioner; and when we are here, I don't see why they should have advice out from home-not half so good probably."

"You're a brick, Duke," uttered Cecil; and though Fordham hated slang, he smiled at the praise.

"And now, Duke, be a good fellow, and give me some clothes. That brute Reeves has not brought me in one rag."

"Really it is hardly worth while. It is nearly eight o'clock, and I don't know where your portmanteau was put. Shall I get you a book?"

"No; but if you'd get me a pen and ink, I want to write to mother."

Such a desire was not too frequent in Cecil, and Fordham was glad enough to promote it, bringing in his own neat apparatus, with only a mild entreaty that his favourite pen might be well treated, and the sheets respected. He had written his own letter of explanation of his first act of independence, and he looked with some wonder at his brother's rapid writing, not without fear that some sudden pressure for a foolish debt might have been the result of his tete-a-tete with his dangerous friend. Cecil's letters were too apt to be requests for money or confessions of debts, and if this were the case, what would be Mrs. Evelyn's view of the conduct of the whole party in disregarding her wishes?

Had he been with his mother, he would have probably been called into consultation over the letter, but he was forced to remain without the privilege here offered to the reader:-

"Baden Hotel, Leukerbad, June 14.

"Dearest Mother,-Duke has written about our falling in with the Brownlows, and how pluckily Friar caught us up. It was a regular mercy, for the little one couldn't have lived without Dr. Medlicott, and most likely Lucas is in for a rheumatic fever. He has been telling me all about it, and how frightful it was to be all night out on the edge of the glacier in a thick fog with his ankle strained, and how little Armine went on with his texts and hymns and wasn't a bit afraid, but quite happy. You never would believe what a fellow Brownlow is. We have had a great talk, and you will never have to say again that he does me harm.

"Mammy, darling, I want to tell you that I was a horrible donkey last half, worse than you guessed, and I am sorrier than ever I was before, and this is a real true resolution not to do it again. Brownlow and I have promised to stand by one another about right and wrong to our lives' end. He means it, and what Brownlow means he does, and so do I. We said your collect, and somehow I do feel as if God would help us now.

"Please, dearest mother, forgive me for all I have not told you.

"Duke is very well and jolly. He is quite smitten with Mrs. Brownlow, and, what is more, so is Reeves, who says she is 'such a lady that it is a pleasure to do anything for her.'

"Your loving son, "C. F. E."

Cecil's letter went off with his brother's in early morning; but it was such a day as only mails and postmen encounter. Mountains, pine- woods, nay, even the opposite houses, were blotted out by sheets of driving rain, and it was impossible to think of bringing Jock down! Dr. Medlicott heard and saw with dismay. What would the mother say to him-nay, what ought he to have done? He could hardly expect her not to reproach him, and he fairly dreaded meeting her eyes when they turned from the streaming window.

But all she said was, "We did not reckon on this."

"If I had—" began the doctor.

"Please don't vex yourself," said she; "you could not have done otherwise, and perhaps the move would have hurt him more than staying there. You have been so very kind. See what you have done here!"

For Armine, after some hours that had been very distressing, had sunk into a calm sleep, and there was a far less oppressed look on his wan little face.

The doctor would have had her take some rest, but she shook her head. The only means of allaying the gnawing anxiety for Jock, and the despairing fancies about his suffering and Johnny's helplessness, was the attending constantly to Armine.

"Anyway, I will see him to-day," said Dr. Medlicott, impelled far more by the patient silence with which she sat, one hand against her beating heart, than he would have been by any entreaty. But how she thanked him when she found him really setting forth! She insisted on his taking a guide, as much for his own security as to carry some additional comforts to the prisoners, and she committed to him two little notes, one to each boy, written through a mist of tears. Yes; tears, unusual as they were with her, were called forth as much by the kindness she met with as by her sick yearning after the two lonely boys. And when she knew the doctor was on his way, she could yield to Armine's signs of entreaty, lie back in her chair and sleep, while Reeves watched over him.

When the doctor, by a strong man's determination, had made his way up the pass, he found matters better than he had dared to expect. The patient was certainly not worse, and the medicine had kept him in a sleepy, tranquil state, in which he hardly realised the situation. His young attendant was just considering how to husband the last draught, when the welcome, dripping visitor appeared. The patient was not in bad spirits considering, and could not but feel himself reprieved by the weather. He was too sleepy to feel the dulness of his present position, and even allowed that his impromptu nurse had done tolerably well. Johnny had been ready at every call, had rubbed away an attack of pain, hurt wonderfully little in lifting him, and was "not half a bad lot altogether"-an admission of which doctor and nurse knew the full worth.

Johnny himself was pleased and grateful, and had that sort of satisfaction which belongs to the finding out of one's own available talent. He had done what was pronounced the right thing; and not only that, but he had liked the doing it, and he declared himself not afraid to encounter another night alone with his cousin. He had picked up enough vernacular German to make himself understood, and indeed was a decided favourite with Fraulein Rosalie, who would do anything for her dear young Herr. It was possible to get a fair amount of sleep, and Dr. Medlicott felt satisfied that the charge was not too much for him, and indeed there was no other alternative. The doctor stayed as long as he could, and did his best to enliven the dulness by producing a pocketful of Tauchnitzes, and sitting talking while the patient dozed. Johnny showed such intelligent curiosity as to the how and why of the symptoms and their counteraction, that after some explanation the doctor said, "You ought to he one of us, my friend."

"I have sometimes thought about it," said John.

"Indeed!" cried the doctor, like an enthusiast in his profession; and John, though not a ready speaker, was drawn on by his notes of interest to say, "I don't really like anything so much as making out about man and what one is made of."

"Physiology?"

"Yes," said the boy, who had been shy of uttering the scientific term. "There's nothing like it for interest, it seems to me. Besides, one is more sure of being of use that way than in any other."

"Capital! Then what withholds you? Isn't it swell enough?"

Johnny laughed and coloured. "I'm not such a fool, but I am not sure about my people."

"I thought your uncle was Joseph Brownlow."

"My aunt would be delighted, but it is my own people. They would say my education-Eton and all that-was not intended for it."

"You may tell them that whatever tends to make you more thoroughly a man and gentleman, and less of a mere professional, is a benefit to your work. The more you are in yourself, the higher your work will be. I hope you will go to the university."

"I mean to go up for a scholarship next year; but I've lost a great deal of time now, and I don't know how far that will tell."

"I think you will find that what you may have lost in time, you will have gained in power."

"I do want to go in for physical science, but there's another difficulty. One of my cousins does so, but the effect on him has not made my father like it the better-and-and to tell the truth-" he half mumbled, "it makes me doubt-"

"The effect on his faith?"

"Yes."

"If faith is unsettled by looking deeper into the mysteries of God's works it cannot have been substantial faith, but merely outward, thoughtless reception," said the doctor, as he met two thoughtful dark eyes fixed on him in inquiry and consideration.

"Thank you, sir," after a pause.

"Had this troubled you?"

"Yes," said John; "I couldn't stand doubt there. I would rather break stones on the road than set myself doubting!"

"Why should you think that there is danger?"

"It seems to be so with others."

"Depend upon it, Doubting Castle never lay on the straight road. If men run into it, it is not simple study of the works of creation that leads them there; but either they have only acquiesced, and never made their faith a living reality, or else they are led away by fashion and pride of intellect. One who begins and goes on in active love of God and man, will find faith and reverence not diminished but increased."

"But aren't there speculations and difficulties?"

"None which real active religion, and love cannot regard as the mere effects of half-knowledge-the distortions of a partial view. I speak with all my heart, as one who has seen how it has been with many of my own generation, as well as with myself."

Johnny bent his head, and the young physician, somewhat surprised at finding himself saying so much on such points, left that branch of the subject, and began to talk to him about his uncle.



CHAPTER XXII. SHUTTING THE STABLE DOOR.



Presumptuous maid, with looks intent, Again she gazed, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between. Grey.

"Hurrah! It's Johnny!"

"Georgie. Recollect yourself."

"But, mamma, it was Johnny."

"Johnny does not come till evening. Sit still, children, or I shall have to send you to dine in the nursery."

"Somebody did pass the window, mamma, but I thought it was Rob," said Jessie, now grown into a very fine-looking, tall, handsome maiden, with a grandly-formed head and shoulders, and pleasant soft brown eyes.

"It was Johnny," reiterated little George; and at that moment the dining-room door opened, and the decorum of the luncheon dinner entirely giving way, the three little ones all precipitated themselves towards the entering figure, while Jessie and her mother rose at their two ends of the table, and the Colonel, no luncheon eater, came in from the study.

"What, Johnny, already!"

"The tidal train was earlier than I expected, so I have another half- day. "Well! are you all well?"

"Quite well. Why-how you are grown! I thought it was Rob when you passed my window," said his father.

"So did I at first," added Jessie, "but Rob is much broader."

"Yes," said his mother. "I am glad you are come back, Johnny; you look thin and pale. Sit down. Some mutton or some rabbit-pie? No, no, let Jessie help you; you shan't have all the carving; I'm sure you are tired; you don't look at all well."

"I was crossing all night, you know," said Johnny laughing, "and am as hungry as a hunter, that's all. What a blessing to see a nice clean English potato again without any flummery!"

"Ah! I thought so," said his mother; "they didn't know how to feed you. It was an unfortunate business altogether."

"How did you leave those poor boys, Johnny?" asked his father.

"Better," said Johnny. "Jock is nearly well,-will be quite so after the baths; and Armine is getting better. He sat up for an hour the day before I came away."

"And your aunt?" said his father.

"Wonderful," said John, with a quiver of feeling on his face. "You never saw anything like her. She keeps up, but she looks awfully thin and worn. I couldn't have left her, if Dr. Medlicott and Lord Fordham and his man had not all been bent on saving her whatever they could."

Her Serene Highness virtuously forbore a sigh. She never could believe those chains with which Caroline bound all men to her service to be either unconscious or strictly proper. However, she only said-

"It was high time that you came away; you were quite knocked up with being left a week alone with Lucas in that horrid place. I can't think how your aunt came to think of it."

"She didn't think," said John, bluntly. "It was only a week, and it couldn't be helped. Besides it was rather jolly."

"But it knocked you up."

"Oh! that was only a notion of the doctor and my aunt. They said I was done up first because I caught cold, and I was glad to wait a day or two longer at Leukerbad, in hopes Allen and Bobus would have come out before I went."

"They come out! Not they!" said the Colonel. "'Tis not the way of young men nowadays to give up anything for their fathers and mothers. No, no, Bobus can't spare a week from his reading-party, but must leave his mother to a set of chance acquaintance, and Allen-whom poor Caroline always thinks the affectionate one, if he is nothing else-can't give up going to gape at the sun at midnight, and Rob was wanting to make one of their freight of fools, but I told him it was quite enough to have one son wandering abroad at other people's expense, when it couldn't be helped; and that I wouldn't have another unless he was prepared to lay down his share in the yacht, out of his pay and allowance. I'm glad you are come home, Johnny; it was quite right to come as soon as your aunt could spare you, poor thing! She writes warmly about you; I am glad you were able to be of use to her, but you ought not to waste any more time."

"No. I wrote to my tutor that I would be at Eton to-morrow night, in time to begin the week's work."

"Papa!" cried out Mrs. Brownlow, "you will never let him start so soon? He is so pulled down, I must have him at home to get him right again; and there are all his clothes to look over!"

Colonel Brownlow gave the odd little chuckling noise that meant to all the family that he did not see the force of mamma's objections, and John asseverated that he was perfectly well, and that his Eton garments were all at Hyde Corner, where he should take them up. Meantime, he thought he ought to walk to Belforest to report to his cousins, and carry a key which his aunt had sent by him to Janet.

"They will be coming in this evening," said his mother; "you had better stay and rest."

"I must go over, thank you," said John. "There is a book Armine wants to have sent out to him. Jessie, will you walk with me?"

"And me!" cried George.

"And me!" cried Edmund.

"And me, Lina go!" cried the smallest voice.

But the Colonel disconcerted the petitioners by announcing that he had business at Belforest, and would drive Johnny over in the dog- cart. So Jessie had to console herself by agreeing with her mother that Johnny looked much more manly, yes, and had an air and style about him which both admired very much, though, while Mrs. Brownlow deemed it the true outcome of the admixture of Friar and Brownlow, Jessie gave more credit to Eton and Belforest, for Jessie was really fond of her aunt, to whom she had owed most of her extra gaieties. Moreover, Mrs. Brownlow, though often chafing secretly, had the power of reticence, and would not set the minds of her children against one who was always doing them kindnesses. True, these favours were more than she could easily brook, since her pride and independence were not, like her husband's, tempered by warm affection. It was his doing that the expenses of Johnny's education had been accepted, and that Esther and Ellen had been sent by their aunt to a good school; thus gratitude, unpalatable though it were, prevented unguarded censure. She abstained from much; and as there was no quick intuition in the family, even Jessie, the most in her confidence, only vaguely knew that mamma thought Aunt Caroline too clever and fly-away; but mamma was grave and wise, and it was very nice to have an aunt who was young and lively, and always had pleasant things going on in her house. Jessie always had her full share, not indeed appreciating the intellect, but possessing beauty and charm enough to be always appreciated there. "Sweetly pretty," as Mrs. Coffinkey called her, was exactly what she was, for she was thoroughly good and unselfish, and a happy, simple nature looked out through her brown smiling eyes. She was very fond of her cousins, had shared all the anxieties of the last fortnight to the utmost, and was a good deal disappointed at being baulked of the walk with her brother, in which she would have heard so much more about Armine, Jock, and Aunt Caroline, than would be communicated in public.

Johnny, however, was glad of the invitation, even though a little shy of it. The tete-a-tete drive was an approach to the serious business of life, since it was evidently designed to give opportunity for answering a letter which he had thought out and written while laid up at Leukerbad by a bad cold and the reaction from his exertions at Schwarenbach.

Still his father did not speak till they had driven up the hill, and were near the gates of Belforest. Then he said-

"That was not a bad letter that you wrote me, Johnny."

Johnny flushed with pleasure. The letter had cost him much thought and pains, and commendation from his father was rare.

"But it will take a great deal of consideration."

"Yes," said Johnny. "You don't disapprove, do you, papa?"

"Well," said the Colonel, in his ponderous way, "you have advantages, you know, and you might do better for yourself."

There was a quivering impulse on Johnny's lips to say that it was not to himself that he wanted to do good; but when his father was speaking in that deliberate manner, he was not to be interrupted, and there was nothing for it but to hear him out.

"Your aunt is providing you with the best of educations, you have good abilities and industry, and you will be a well-looking fellow besides," added the Colonel, glancing over him with an approving eye of fatherly satisfaction; "and it seems to me that you could succeed in some superior line. Your mother and I had always hoped to see you at the bar. Every opportunity for distinction is given you, and I do not understand this sudden desire to throw them up for a profession of much greater drudgery and fewer chances of rising, unless it were from some influence of your aunt."

"She never spoke of it. She does not know that I have thought of it, nor of my letter to you."

"Then it is simply from enthusiasm for this young doctor?"

"Not exactly," said John, "but I always wished I could be like my uncle. I remember hearing mamma read a bit of one of the letters of condolence which said 'His was one of the most beautiful lives I have ever known,' and I never forgot it. It stayed in my mind like a riddle, till I gradually found out that the beauty was in the good he was always doing-"

"Ah!" said the Colonel, in a tone betokening that he was touched, and which encouraged John to continue,-

"Besides, I really do like and enter into scientific subjects better than any others; I believe it is my turn."

"Perhaps-you do sometimes put me in mind of your uncle. But why have you only spoken of it now?"

"I don't think I really considered what I should be," said John. "There was quite enough to think of with work, and cricket, and all the rest, till this spring, when I have been off it all, and then when I talked it over with Dr. Medlicott, he settled my mind about various things that I wanted to know."

"Did he persuade you?"

"No more than saying that I managed well for Jock when I was left alone with him, and that he thought I had the makings of a doctor in me. He loves his profession of course, and thinks it a grand one. Yes, papa, indeed I think it is. To be always learning the ways of God's working, for the sake of lessening all the pain and grief in the world-"

"Johnny! That's almost what my brother said to me thirty years ago, and what did it come to? Being at the beck and call night and day of every beggar in London, and dying at last in his prime, of disease caught in their service."

"Yes," said John, with a low, gruff sound in his voice, "but is not that like being killed in battle?"

"The world doesn't think it so, my boy," said the soldier. "Well! what is it you propose to do?"

"I don't suppose it will make much difference yet," said John, "except that at Oxford I should go in more for physical science."

"You don't want to give up the university?"

"Oh, no! Dr. Medlicott said a degree there is a great help, besides that, all the general study one can get is the more advantage, lifting one above the mere practitioner."

"That is well," said the Colonel. "If you are to go to the university, there is no need to dwell further on the matter at present. You will have had time to see more of the world, and you will know whether this wish only comes from enthusiasm for a pleasant young man who has been kind to you, or if it be your real deliberate choice, and if so, your mother will have had time to reconcile herself to the notion. At any rate we will say no more about it for the present. Though I must say, Johnny," he added, as he turned his horse's head between the ribbon borders of the approach, "you have thought and spoken like a sensible lad, and so like my dear brother, that I could not deny you."

If Johnny could hardly believe in the unwonted commendation which made his heart throb, and sent a flood of colour into his cheeks. Colonel Brownlow was equally amazed at the boy's attainment of a manly and earnest thought and purpose, so utterly unlike anything he had hitherto seen in the stolid Rob, or the easy-going Allen, or even in Bobus, who-whatever there might be in him-never thought it worth while to show it to his uncle.

However, discussion was cut short by a little flying figure which came rushing across the garden, and Babie with streaming hair clung to her cousin, gasping-

"Oh! Johnny, Johnny, tell me about Armie and Jock."

"They are ever so much better, Babie," said Johnny, lifting the slim little thing up in his arms, as he had lifted his own five-year-old brother; "I've got a thick parcel of acrostics for you, Armie makes them in bed, and Lord Fordham writes them out."

"Will you come to the rosary, Uncle Robert?" said Babie, recovering her manners, as Johnny set her down. "It is the coolest place, and they are sitting there."

"Why, Babie, what a sprite you look," said Johnny. "You look as if you were just off the sick-list too!"

"I'm all right," said Babie, shaking her hair at him, and bounding on before with the tidings of their coming, while her uncle observed in a low voice-

"Poor little thing! I believe she has been a good deal knocked up between the heat and the anxiety; there was no making her eat or sleep. Ah! Miss Elfie, are you acting queen of roses?" as Babie returned together with Elvira, who with a rich dark red rose over one ear, and a large bouquet at her bosom, justified the epithet at which she bridled, and half curtsied in her graceful stately archness, as she gave her hand in greeting, and exclaimed-

"Ah, Johnny! are you come? When is Mother Carey going to send for us?"

"When they leave Leukerbad I fancy," said John. "That's a tiresome place for anyone who does not need to lead the life of a hippo- potamus."

"It can't be more tiresome than this is," said Elvira, with a yawn. "Lessons all day, and nobody to come near us."

"Isn't this a dreadful place?" said John, merrily, as he looked into the rosary, a charming bowery circle of fragrance, inclosed by arches of trellis-work on which roses were trained, their wreaths now bearing a profusion of blossoms of every exquisite tint, from deep crimson or golden-yellow, to purest white, while their more splendid standard sisters bloomed out in fragrant and gorgeous magnificence under their protection.

At the shady end there was a little grass plat round a tiny fountain, whose feather of spray rose and plashed coolness. Near it were seats where Miss Ogilvie and Janet were discovered with books and work. They came forward with greetings and inquiries, which Johnny answered in detail.

"Yes, they are both better. Armine sat by the window for an hour the day before I came away."

"Will they be able to come back to Eton after the holidays?" asked his father.

"Certainly not Armine, but Jock seems to be getting all right. If he was to catch rheumatism he did it at the right place, for that's what Leukerbad is good for. Oh, Babie, you never saw such a lark! Fancy a great room, and where the floor ought to be, nothing but muddy water or liquid mud, with steps going down, and a lot of heads looking out of it, some with curly heads, some in smoking-caps, some in fine caps of lace and ribbons."

"Oh! Johnny; like women!"

"Like women! They are women."

"Not both together."

"Yes, I tell you, the whole boiling of them, male and female. There's a fat German Countess, who always calls Jock her liebes Kind, and comes floundering after him, to his very great disgust. The only things they have to show they are human still, and not frogs, are little boards floating before them with their pocket-handkerchiefs and coffee-cups and newspapers."

"Oh! like the little blacks in the dear bright bays at San Ildefonso," cried Elvira.

"You don't mean that they have no clothes on?" said Babie, with shocked downrightness of speech that made everybody laugh; and Johnny satisfied her on that score, adding that Dr. Medlicott had made a parody of Tennyson's "Merman," for Jock's benefit, on giving him up to a Leukerbad doctor, who was to conduct his month's Kur. It was to go into the "Traveller's Joy," a manuscript magazine, the "first number of which was being concocted and illustrated amongst the Leukerbad party, for the benefit of Babie and Sydney Evelyn. As a foretaste, Johnny produced from the bag he still carried strapped on his shoulder, a packet of acrostics addressed to Miss Barbara Brownlow, and a smaller envelope for Janet.

"Is it the key?" asked Colonel Brownlow.

"Yes," said Janet, "the key of her davenport, and directions in which drawer to find the letters you want. Do you like to have them at once, Uncle Robert?"

"Thank you-yes, for then I can go round and settle with that fellow Martin, which I can't do without knowing exactly what passed between him and your mother."

Janet went off, observing-"I wonder whether that is a possibility;" while Miss Ogilvie put in an anxious inquiry for Mrs. Brownlow's health and spirits, and a good many more details were elicited than Johnny had given at home. She had never broken down, and now that she was hopeful, was, in spite of her fatigue, as bright and merry as ever, and was contributing comic pictures to the "Traveller's Joy," while Lord Fordham did the sketches. Those kind people were as careful of her as any could be.

"And what are her further plans?" asked Miss Ogilvie. "Has she been able to form any?"

"Hardly," said Johnny. "They must stay at Leukerbad for a month for Jock to have the course of waters rightly, and indeed Armine could hardly be moved sooner. I think Dr. Medlicott wants them to keep in Switzerland till the heat of the weather is over, and then winter in the south."

"And when may I go to Armine?"

"When shall we get away from here?" asked Babie and Elfie in a breath.

"I don't quite know," said John. "There is not much room to spare in the hotel where they are at Leukerbad, and it is a dreadfully slow place. Evelyn is growling like a dozen polar bears at it."

"Why isn't he gone back with you to Eton?"

"I believe it was settled that he was not to go back this half, for fear of his lungs, and you see he is a swell who takes it easily. He would have been glad enough to return with me though, and would scarcely have endured staying, but that he is so fond of Jock."

"What is there to be done there?"

"Nothing, except to wade in tepid mud. Fordham has routed out a German to read Faust with, and that puts Evelyn into a sweet temper. They go on expeditions, and do sketching and botany, which amuses Armine; but they get up some fun over the queer people, and do them for the mag., but it is all deadly lively, not that I saw much of it, for we only got down from Schwarenbach on Monday, and they kept me in bed all the two next days; but Jock and Evelyn hate it awfully. Indeed Jock is so down in the mouth altogether I don't know what to make of him, and just when the German doctors say the treatment makes people particularly brisk and lively."

"Perhaps what makes a German lively makes an Englishman grave," sagely observed Babie.

"Jock grave must be a strange sight," said the Colonel; "I am afraid he can't be recovering properly."

"The doctor thinks he is," said John; "but then he doesn't know the nature of the Skipjack. But," he added, in a low voice, "that night was enough to make any one grave, and it was much the worst to Jock, because he kept his senses almost all the time, and was a good deal hurt besides to begin with. His sprain is still so bad that he has to be carried upstairs and to go to the baths in a chair."

"And do you think," said the Colonel, "that this young lord is going to stay on all this time in this dull place for the sake of an utter stranger?".

"Jock and Evelyn were always great friends at Eton," said John. "Then my uncle did something, I don't know what, that Medlicott is grateful for, and they have promised to see Armine through this illness. The place agrees with Fordham; they say he has never been so well or active since he came out."

"What is he like?" inquired Babie.

"Like, Babie? Like anything long and limp you can think of. He sits all in a coil and twist, and you don't think there's much of him; but when he gets up and pulls himself upright, you go looking and looking till you don't know where's the top of him, till you see a thin white face in washed-out hair. He is a good fellow, awfully kind, and I suppose he can't help being such a tremendous-" John hesitated, in deference to his father, for a word that was not slang, and finally chose "don."

"Oh," sighed Babie, "Armie said in his note he was jolly beyond description."

"Well, so he is," said John; "he plays chess with Armie, and brings him flowers and books, and waits on him as you used to do on a sick doll. And that's just what he is; he ought to have been a woman, and he would have been much happier too, poor fellow. I'd rather be dead at once than drag about such a life of coddling as he does."

"Poor lad!" said his father. "Did Janet understand that I was waiting for those letters, I wonder?"

"You had better go and see, Babie," said Miss Ogilvie. "Perhaps she cannot find them."

Babie set off, and John proceeded to explain that Mrs. Evelyn was still detained in London by old Lady Fordham, who continued to be kept between life and death by her doctors. Meantime, the sons could dispose of themselves as they pleased, while under the care of Dr. Medlicott, and were not wanted at home, so that there was little doubt but that they would remain with Armine as long as he needed their physician's care.

All the while Elfie was flitting about, pelting Johnny with handfuls snatched from over-blown roses, and though he returned the assault at every pause, his grey travelling suit was bestrewn with crimson, pink, cream, and white petals.

At last the debris of a huge Eugenie Grandet hit him full on the bridge of his nose, and caused him to exclaim-

"Nay, Elfie, you little wretch; that was quite a good rose—not fair game," and leaping up to give her chase in and out among the beds, they nearly ran against Janet returning with the letters, and saying "she was sorry to have been so long, but mother's hoards were never easy places of research."

Barbara came more slowly back, and looked somewhat as if she had had a sharper rebuke than she understood or relished.

Poor child! she had suffered much in this her first real trouble, and a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to come peeping and worrying.

Janet had given a most violent start when she opened the door of her mother's bedroom where the davenport stood; and Janet much resented being startled; no doubt that was the reason she was so cross, thought Barbara, but still it was very disagreeable.

That room was the child's also. She had been her mother's bed-fellow ever since her father's death, and she felt her present solitude. The nights were sultry, and her sleep had been broken of late.

That night she was in a slumber as cool as a widely-opened window would make it, but not so sound that she was not haunted all the time by dread for Armine.

Suddenly she was awakened to full consciousness by seeing a light in the room. No, it was not the maid putting away her dresses. It was Janet, bending over her mother's davenport.

Babie started up.

"Janet! Is anything the matter?"

"Nothing! Nonsense! go to sleep, child."

"What are you about?"

"Never mind. Only mother keeps her things in such a mess; I was setting them to rights after disturbing them to find the book."

There was something in the tone like an apology.

Babie did not like it, but she well knew that she should be contemptuously put down if she attempted an inquiry, far less a remonstrance, with Janet. Only, with a puzzled sort of watch-dog sense, she sat up in bed and stared.

"Why don't you lie down?" said Janet.

Babie did lie down, but on her back, her head high up on the pillow, and her eyes well open still.

Perhaps Janet did not like it, for she gave an impatient shuffle to the papers, shut the drawer with a jerk, locked it, took up her candle, and went away without vouchsafing a "good-night."

Babie lay wondering. She knew that the davenport contained all that was most sacred and precious to her mother, as relics of her old life, and that only dire necessity would have made her let anyone touch it. What could Janet mean? To speak would be of no use. One- and-twenty was not likely to listen to thirteen, though Babie, in her dreamy wakefulness, found herself composing conversations in which she made eloquent appeals to Janet, which she was never likely to utter.

At last the morning twitterings began outside, doves cooed, peacocks miawed, light dawned, and Babie's perceptions cleared themselves. In the wainscoted room was a large closet, used for hanging up cloaks and dresses, and fortunately empty. No sooner did the light begin to reflect itself in its polished oak-panelled door, than an idea struck Babie, and bounding from her bed, she opened the door, wheeled in the davenport, shut it in, turned the big rusty key with both hands and a desperate effort, then repairing to her own little inner room, disturbed the honourable retirement of the last and best-beloved of her dolls in a pink-lined cradle in a disused doll's house, and laying the key beneath the mattress, felt heroically ready for the thumbscrew rather than yield it up. She knew Armine would say she was right, and be indignant that Janet should meddle with mother's private stores. So she turned over on the pillow, cooled by the morning breeze, and fell into a sound sleep, whence she was only roused by the third "Miss Barbara," from her maid.

She heard no more of the matter, and but for the absence of the davenport could really have thought it all a dream.

She was driving her two little fairy ponies to Kenminster with Elvira, to get the afternoon post, when a quiet, light step came into the bedroom, and Janet stood within it, looking for the davenport, as if she did not quite believe her senses. However, remembering Babie's eyes, she had her suspicions. She looked into the little girl's room and saw nothing, then tried the closet door, and finding it locked, came to a tolerably correct guess as to what had become of it, and felt hotly angry at "that conceited child's meddling folly."

For the awkward thing was that the clasped memorandum-book, containing "Magnum Bonum," was in her hand, locked out of, instead of into, its drawer.

When searching for the account-book for her uncle, it had, as it were, offered itself to her; and though so far from being green, with "Garden" marked on it, it was Russia leather, and had J. B. upon it. She had peeped in and read "Magnum Bonum" within the lid. All day the idea had haunted her, that there lay the secret, in the charge of her little thoughtless mother, who, ignorant of its true value, and deterred by uncomprehended words and weak scruples, was withholding it from the world, and depriving her own family, and what was worst of all, her daughter, of the chances of becoming illustrious.

"I am his daughter as much as hers," thought she. "Why should she deprive me of my inheritance?"

Certainly Janet had been told that the great arcanum could not be dealt with by a woman; but this she did not implicitly believe, and she was in consequence the more curious to discover what it really was, and whether it was reasonable to sacrifice the best years of her life to preparing for it. The supposed unfairness of her exclusion seemed to her to justify the act, and thus it was that she had stolen to the davenport when she supposed that her little sister would be asleep, and finding it impossible to attend or understand with Babie's great brown eyes lamping on her, she had carried off the book.

She had been reading it even till the morning light had surprised her, and had been able to perceive the general drift, though she had leaped over the intermediate steps. She had just sufficient comprehension of the subject for unlimited confidence that the achievement was practicable, without having knowledge enough to understand a tithe of the difficulties, though she did see that they could hardly be surmounted by a woman unassisted. However, she might see her way by the time her studies were completed, and in the meantime her mother might keep the shell while she had the essence.

However, to find the shell thus left on her hands was no slight perplexity. Should she, as eldest daughter left in charge, demand the desk, Barbara would produce her reasons for its abstraction, and for this Janet was not prepared. Unless something else was wanted from it, so as to put Babie in the wrong, Janet saw no alternative but to secure the book in her own bureau, and watch for a chance of smuggling it back.

Thus Babie escaped all interrogation, but she did not release the captive davenport, and indeed she soon forgot all about it in her absorption in Swiss letters.



CHAPTER XXIII. THE LOST TREASURE.



But solemn sound, or sober thought The Fairies cannot bear; They sing, inspired with love and joy, Like skylarks in the air. Of solid sense, or thought that's grave, You find no traces there. Young Tamlane.

When old Lady Fordham's long decay ended in death, Mrs. Evelyn would not recall her sons to the funeral, but meant to go out herself to join them, and offered to escort Mrs. Brownlow's daughters to the meeting-place. This was to be Engelberg, for Dr. Medlicott had decided that after the month at Leukerbad all his patients would be much the better for a breath of the pine-woods on the Alpine height, and undertook to see them conveyed thither in time to meet the ladies.

This proposal set Miss Ogilvie free to join her brother, who had a curacy in a seaside place where the season began just when the London season ended. Her holiday was then to begin, and Janet was to write to Mrs. Evelyn and declare herself ready to meet her in London at the time appointed.

The arrangement was not to Janet's taste. She thought herself perfectly capable of escorting the younger ones, especially as they were to take their maid, a capable person named Delrio, daughter of an Englishwoman and a German waiter, and widow of an Italian courier, who was equal to all land emergencies, and could speak any language. She belonged to the young ladies. Their mother, not liking strangers about her, had, on old nurse's death, caused Emma to learn enough of the lady's maid's art for her own needs at home, and took care of herself abroad.

Babie was enraptured to be going to Mother Carey and Armine, and Elvira was enchanted to leave the schoolroom behind her, being fully aware that she always had more notice and indulgence from outsiders than at home, or indeed from anyone who had been disappointed at her want of all real affection.

"You are just like a dragon fly," said Babie to her; "all brightness outside and nothing within."

This unusually severe remark came from Babie's indignation at Elvira's rebellion against going to River Hollow to take leave. It would be a melancholy visit, for her grandfather had become nearly imbecile since he had had a paralytic stroke, in the course of the winter, and good sensible Mrs. Gould had died of fever in the previous autumn.

Elvira, who had never liked the place, now loathed it, and did not seem capable of understanding Babie's outburst.

"Not like to go and see them when they are ill and unhappy! Elfie, how can you?"

"Of course I don't! Grandpapa kisses me and makes me half sick."

"But he is so fond of you."

"I wish he wasn't then. Why, Babie, are you going to cry? What's the matter?"

"It is very silly," said Babie, winking hard to get rid of her tears; "but it does hurt me so to think of the good old gentleman caring more for you than anybody, and you not liking to go near him."

"I can't see what it matters to you," said Elvira; "I wish you would go instead of me, if you are so fond of him."

"He wouldn't care for me," said Babie; "I'm not his ain lassie."

"His lassie! I'm a lady," exclaimed the senorita, with the haughty Spanish turn of the neck peculiar to herself.

"That's not what I mean by a lady," said Babie.

"What do you mean by it?" said Elvira, with a superior air.

"One who never looks down on anybody," said Babie, thoughtfully.

"What nonsense!" rejoined the Elf; "as if any lady could like to hear grandpapa maunder, and Mary scold and scream at the farm people, just like the old peahen."

"Miss Ogilvie said poor Mary was overstrained with having more to attend to than she could properly manage, and that made her shrill."

"I know it makes her very disagreeable; and so they all are. I hate the place, and I don't see why I should go," grumbled Elvira.

"You will when you are older, and know what proper feeling is," said Miss Ogilvie, who had come within earshot of the last words. "Go and put on your hat; I have ordered the pony carriage."

"Shall I go, Miss Ogilvie?" asked Babie, as Elfie marched off sullenly, since her governess never allowed herself to be disobeyed.

"I think I had better go, my dear; Elfie may be under more restraint with me."

"Please give old Mr. Gould and Mary and Kate my love, and I will run and ask for some fruit for you to take to them," said Babie, her tender heart longing to make compensation.

Miss Ogilvie and her pouting companion were received by a fashionable-nay, extra fashionable—looking person, whom Mary and Kate Gould called Cousin Lisette, and the old farmer, Eliza Gould. While the old man in his chair in the sun in the hot little parlour caressed, and asked feeble repetitions of questions of his impatient granddaughter, the lady explained that she had thrown up an excellent situation as instructress in a very high family to act in the same capacity to her motherless little cousins. She professed to be enchanted to meet Miss Ogilvie, and almost patronised.

"I know what the life is, Miss Ogilvie, and how one needs companionship to keep up one's spirits. Whenever you are left alone, and would drop me a line, I should be quite delighted to come and enliven you; or whenever you would like to come over here, there's no interruption by uncle; and he, poor old gentleman, is quite-quite passe. The children I can always dismiss. Regularity is my motto, of course, but I consider that an exception in favour of my own friends does no harm, and indeed it is no more than I have a right to expect, considering the sacrifices that I have made for them. Mary, child, don't cross your ankles; you don't see your cousin do that. Kate, you go and see what makes Betsy so long in bringing the tea. I rang long ago."

"I will go and fetch it," said Mary, an honest, but harassed-looking girl.

"Always in haste," said Miss Gould, with an effort at good humour, which Miss Ogilvie direfully mistrusted. "No, Mary, you must remain to entertain your cousin. What are servants for but to wait on us? She thinks nothing can be done without her, Miss Ogilvie, and I am forced to act repression sometimes."

"Indeed we do not wish for any tea," said Miss Ogilvie, seeing Elvira look as black as thunder; "we have only just dined."

"But Elfie will have some sweet-cake; Elfie likes auntie's sweet- cake, eh?" said the old man.

"No, thank you," said Elfie, glumly, though in fact she did care considerably for sweets, and was always buying bonbons.

"No cake! Or some strawberries-strawberries and cream," said her grandfather. "Mr. Allen always liked them. And where is Mr. Allen now, my dear?"

"Gone to Norway. It's the fifth time I've told him so," muttered Elvira.

"And where is Mr. Robert? And Mr. Lucas?" he went on. "Fine young gentlemen all of them; but Mr. Allen is the pleasant-spoken one. Ain't he coming down soon? He always looks in and says, 'I don't forget your good cider, Mr. Gould,'" and there was a feeble chuckling laugh and old man's cough.

"Do let me go into the garden; I'm quite faint," cried Elvira, jumping up.

It was true that the room was very close, rather medicinal, and not improved by Miss Gould's perfumes; but there was an alacrity about Elfie's movements, and a vehemence in the manner of her rejection of the said essences, which made her governess not think her case alarming, and she left her to the care of the young cousins, while trying to make up for her incivility by courteously listening to and answering her grandfather, and consuming the tea and sweet-cake.

When she went out to fetch her pupil to say goodbye, Miss Gould detained her on the way to obtain condolence on the "dreadful trial that old uncle was," and speak of her own great devotion to him and the children, and the sacrifices she had made. She said she had been at school with Elvira's poor mamma, "a sweetly pretty girl, poor dear, but so indulged."

And then she tried to extract confidences as to Mrs. Brownlow's intentions towards the child, in which of course she was baffled.

Elvira was found ranging among the strawberries, with Mary and Kate looking on somewhat dissatisfied.

Both the poor girls looked constrained and unhappy, and Miss Ogilvie wondered whether "Cousin Lisette's" evident intentions of becoming a fixture would be for their good or the reverse.

"Are you better, my dear?" asked she, affectionately.

"Yes, it was only the room," said Elvira.

"You are a good deal there, are not you?" said Miss Ogilvie to Mary, who had the white flabby look of being kept in an unwholesome atmosphere.

"Yes," said Mary, wistfully, "but grandpapa does not like having me half so much as Elvira. He is always talking about her."

"You had better come back to him now, Elfie," said Miss Ogilvie.

"It makes me ill," said Elvira, with her crossest look.

Her governess laid her hand on her shoulder, and told her in a few decided words, in the lowest possible voice, that she was not going away till she had taken a properly respectful and affectionate leave of her grandfather. Whereupon she knew further resistance was of no use, and going hastily to the door of the room, called out-

"Good-bye, then, grandpapa."

"Ah! my little beauty, are you there?" he asked, in a tone of bewildered pleasure, holding out the one hand he could use.

Elvira was forced to let herself be held by it. She hoped to kiss his brow, and escape; but the poor knotted fingers which had once been so strong, would not let her go, and she had to endure many more kisses and caresses and blessings than her proud thoughtless nature could endure before she made her escape. And then "Cousin Lisette" insisted on a kiss for the sake of her dear mamma; and Elfie could only exhale her exasperation by rushing to the pony-carriage, avoiding all kisses to her young cousins, taking the driving seat, and whipping up the ponies more than their tender-hearted mistress would by any means have approved.

Miss Ogilvie abstained from either blame or argument, knowing that it would only make her worse; and recollecting the old Undine theory, wondered whether the Elf would ever find her soul, and think with tender regret of the affection she was spurning.

The next day the travellers started, sleeping a couple of nights in Hyde Corner, for convenience of purchases and preparations.

They were to meet Mrs. Evelyn at the station; but Janet, who foretold that she would be another Serene Highness, soured by having missed the family title, retarded their start till so late that there could be no introduction on the platform; but seats had to be rushed for, while a servant took the tickets.

However, a tall, elderly, military-looking gentleman with a great white moustache, was standing by the open door of a carriage.

"Miss Brownlow," said he, handing them in-Babie first, next Janet, and then Elvira.

He then bowed to Miss Ogilvie, took his seat, handed in the appurtenances, received, showed, and pocketed the tickets, negotiated Janet's purchase of newspapers, and constituted himself altogether cavalier to the party.

Sir James Evelyn! Janet had no turn for soldiers, and was not gratified; but Elvira saw that her blue eyes and golden hair were producing the effect she knew how to trace; so she was graciously pleased to accept Punch, and to smile a bewitching acceptance of the seat assigned to her opposite to the old general.

Barbara was opposite to Mrs. Evelyn, and next to Sydney, a girl a few months older than herself, but considerably taller and larger. Mother and daughter were a good deal alike, save that the girl was fresh plump, and rosy, and the mother worn, with the red colouring burnt as it were into her thin cheeks. Yet both looked as if smiles were no strangers to their lips, though there were lines of anxiety and sorrow traced round Mrs. Evelyn's temples. Their voices were sweet and full, and the elder lady spoke with a tender intonation that inspired Babie with trustful content and affection, but caused Janet to pass a mental verdict of "Sugared milk and water."

She immersed herself in her Pall Mall, and left Babie to exchange scraps of intelligence from the brother's letters, and compare notes on the journey.

By-and-by Mrs. Evelyn retired into her book, and the two little girls put their heads together over a newly-arrived acrostic, calling on Elfie to assist them.

"Do you like acrostics?" she said, peeping up through her long eyelashes at the old general.

"Oh, don't tease Uncle James," hastily interposed Sydney, as yet inexperienced in the difference between the importunities of a merely nice-looking niece, and the blandishments of a brilliant stranger. Sir James said kindly-

"What, my dear?"

And when Elvira replied-

"Do help us to guess this. What does man love most below?" he put on a droll face, and answered-

"His pipe."

"O Uncle James, that's too bad," cried Sydney.

"If Jock had made this acrostic, it might be pipe," said Babie; "but this is Armine's."

It was thereupon handed to the elders, who read, in a boyish hand- writing-

Twins, parted from their rocky nest, We run our wondrous race, And now in tumult, now at rest, Flash back heaven's radiant face.

1. While both alike this name we bear, And both like life we flow, 2. And near us nestle sweet and fair What man most loves below.

Alike it is our boasted claim To nurse the precious juice 3. That maddened erst the Theban dame, With streaming tresses loose.

4. The evening land is sought by one, One rushes towards midday, One to a vigil song has run, One heard Red Freedom's lay.

Tall castles, glorious battlefields Graced this in ages past, But now its mighty power that yields 5. To work my busy last.

"Is that your brother Armine's own?" asked Sir James, surprised.

"O yes," said Janet with impressive carelessness, "all my brothers have a facility in stringing rhymes."

"Not Bobus," said Elvira.

"He does not think it worth while," said Janet, again absorbing herself in her paper, while the public united in guessing the acrostic; and the only objection was raised by the exact General, who would not allow that the "Marseillaise" was sung at the mouth of the Rhone, and defended Ino's sobriety.

Barbara and Sydney lived upon those acrostics in their travelling bags till they reached Folkestone, and had grown intimate over them. Sir James looked after the luggage, putting gently aside Janet's strong-minded attempt to watch over it, and she only retained her own leathern travelling case, where she carried her personals, and which, heavy as it was, she never let out of her immediate charge.

They all sat on deck, for there was a fine smooth summer sea, and no one was deranged except the two maids, whom every one knew to be always disabled on a voyage.

Janet had not long been seated, and was only just getting immersed in her Contemporary, when she received a greeting which gratified her. It was from somewhat of a lion, the author of some startling poems and more startling essays much admired by Bobus, who had brought him to some evening parties of his mother's, not much to her delectation, since there were ugly stories as to his private character. These were ascribed by Bobus to pious malevolence, and Janet had accepted the explanation, and cultivated a bowing acquaintance.

Hyde Corner was too agreeable a haunt to be despised, and Janet owed her social successes more to her mother's attractions than her own. Conversation began by an inquiry after her brothers, whose adventures had figured in the papers, and it went on to Janet's own journey and prospects. Her companion was able to tell her much that she wanted to know about the university of Zurich, and its facilities for female study. He was a well-known advocate of woman's rights, and she scrupled not to tell him that she was inquiring on her own account. Many men would have been bored, and have only sought to free themselves from this learned lady, but the present lion was of the species that prefer roaring to an intelligent female audience, without the rough male argumentative interruption, and Janet thus made the voyage with the utmost satisfaction to herself.

Mrs. Evelyn asked Babie who her sister's friend was. The answer was, "Do you know, Elfie? You know so many more gentlemen than I do."

"No," replied Elvira, "I don't. He looks like the stupid sort of man."

"What is the stupid sort of man?" asked the General, as she intended.

"Oh! that talks to Janet."

"Is everyone that talks to Janet stupid?"

"Of course," said Elvira. "They only go on about stupid things no better than lessons."

Sir James laughed at her arch look, and shook his head at her, but then made a tour among the other passengers, leaving her pouting a little at his desertion. On his return, he sat down by his sister- in-law and mentioned a name, which made her start and glance an inquiry whether she heard aright. Then as he bent his head in affirmation, she asked, "Is there anything to be done?"

"It is only for the crossing, and she is quite old enough to take care of herself."

"And it is evidently an established acquaintance, for which I am not responsible," murmured Mrs. Evelyn to herself.

She was in perplexity about these friends of her son's. Ever since Cecil had been at Eton, his beloved Brownlow had seemed to be his evil genius, whose influence none of his resolutions or promises could for a moment withstand. If she had acted on her own judgment, Cecil would never have returned to Eton, but his uncle disapproved of his removal, especially with the disgrace of the champagne supper unretrieved; and his penitent letter had moved her greatly. Trusting much to her elder son and to Dr. Medlicott, she had permitted the party to continue together, feeling that it might be life or death to that other fatherless boy in whom Duke was so much interested; and now she was going out to judge for herself, and Sir James had undertaken to escort her, that they might together come to a decision whether the two friends were likely to be doing one another good or harm.

Mrs. Evelyn had lived chiefly in the country since her husband's death, and knew nothing of Mrs. Joseph Brownlow. So she looked with anxiety for indications of the tone of the family who had captivated not only Cecil, but Fordham, and seemed in a fair way of doing the same by Sydney. The two hats, brown and black, were almost locked together all the voyage, and indeed the feather of one once became entangled with the crape of the other, so that they had to be extricated from above. There was perhaps a little maternal anxiety at this absorption; but as Sydney was sure to pour out everything at night, her mother could let things take their course, and watch her delight in expanding, after being long shut up in a melancholy house without young companions.

Elvira had a tone of arch simplicity which, in such a pretty creature, was most engaging, and she was in high spirits with the pleasure of being with new people, away from her schoolroom and from England, neither of which she loved, so she chattered amiably and amusingly, entertained Mrs. Evelyn, and fascinated Sir James.

Janet and her companion were less complacently regarded. Certainly the girl (though less ancient-looking at twenty-one than at fourteen) had the air of one well used to independence, so that she was no great subject for responsibility; but she gave no favourable impression, and was at no pains to do so. When she rejoined the party, Mrs. Evelyn asked whether she had known that gentleman long.

"He is a friend of my brother Robert," she answered. "Shall I introduce you?"

Mrs. Evelyn declined in a quiet civil tone, that provoked a mental denunciation of her as strait-laced and uncharitable, and as soon as the gentleman returned to the neighbourhood, Janet again sought his company, let him escort her ashore, and only came back to the others in the refreshment-room, whither she brought a copy of a German periodical which he had lent her. With much satisfaction Mrs. Evelyn filled the railway carriage with her own party, so that there was no room for any addition to their number. Nor indeed did they see any more of their unwelcome fellow-traveller, since he was bound for the Hotel du Louvre, and, to Janet's undisguised chagrin, rooms were already engaged at the Hotel Castiglione.

They came too late for the table d'hote, and partook of an extemporised meal in their sitting-room immediately on their arrival, as the start was to be early. Then it was that Janet missed her bag, her precious bag! Delrio was sent all over the house to make inquiries whether it had been taken to any other person's room, but in vain. Mrs. Evelyn said she had last seen it when they took their seats on board the steamer.

"Yes," added Elvira, "you left it there when you went to walk up and down with that gentleman."

"Then why did not you take care of it? I don't mean Elfie-nobody expects her to be of any use; but you, Babie?"

"You never told me!" gasped Babie, aghast.

"You ought to have seen; but you never think of anything but your own chatter."

"It is a very inconvenient loss," said Mrs. Evelyn, kindly. "Have you sent to the station?"

"I shall, as soon as I am satisfied that it is not here. I can send out for the things I want for use; but there are books and papers of importance, and my keys."

"The key of mother's davenport?" cried Babie. "Was it there? O Janet, Janet!"

"You should have attended to it, then," said Janet sharply.

Delrio knocked at the door with an account of her unsuccessful mission, and Sir James, little as the young lady deserved it, concerned himself about sending to the station, and if the bag were not forthcoming there, telegraphing to Boulogne the first thing in the morning.

While Janet was writing particulars and volubly instructing the commissionaire, Mrs. Evelyn saw Babie's eyes full of tears, and her throat swelling with suppressed sobs. She held out an arm and drew the child to her, saying kindly, "I am sure you would have taken care of the bag if you had been asked, my dear."

"It's not that, thank you," said Babie, laying her head on the kind shoulder, "for I don't think it was my fault; but mother will be so sorry for her key. It is the key of her davenport, and father's picture is there, and grandmamma's, and the card with all our hairs, and she will be so sorry."

And Babie cried the natural tears of a tired child, whom anything would overcome after her long absence from her mother. Mrs. Evelyn saw how it was, and, as Delrio was entirely occupied with the hue and cry, she herself took the little girl away, and helped her to bed, tenderly soothing and comforting her, and finding her various needments. Among them were her "little books," but they could not be found, and her eyes looked much too tired to use them, especially as the loss again brought the ready moisture. "My head feels so funny, I can't think of anything," she said.

"Shall I do as I used when Sydney was little?" and Mrs. Evelyn knelt down with her, and said one or two short prayers.

Babie murmured her thanks, nestled up to her and kissed her, but added imploringly, "My Psalm. Armie and I always say our Psalm at bed-time, and think of each other. He did it out on the moraine."

"Will it do if you lie down and I say it to you?"

There was another fond, grateful nestling kiss, and some of the Psalms were gone through in the soft, full cadences of a voice that had gained unconscious pathos by having many times used them as a trustful lullaby to a weary sufferer.

If Babie heard the end, it was in the sweetness of sleep, and when Mrs. Evelyn left her, it was with far less judicial desire to inquire into the subject of that endless conversation which had lasted, with slight intermission, from London to Paris. She was not long left in ignorance, for no sooner had Sydney been assured that nothing ailed Barbara but fatigue, than she burst out, "Mamma, she is the nicest girl I ever saw."

"Do you like her better than Elvira?"

"Of course I do," most emphatically. "Mamma, she loves Sir Kenneth of the Leopard as much as I do."

Mrs. Evelyn was satisfied. While Sir Kenneth of the Leopard remained the object of the young ladies' passion, there was not much fear of any nonsense that was not innocent and happy.

No news of the bag. Janet was disposed to go back herself or send Delrio, but Sir James declared this impossible; nor would the Evelyns consent to disturb the plan of the journey, and disappoint those who expected them at Engelberg on Saturday by waiting at Paris for tidings. Janet in vain told herself that she was not under their control, and tried to remain behind by herself with her maid. They had a quiet, high-bred decisive way of taking things for granted, and arranging for her and she found herself unable to resist; but whenever, in after times, she was unpleasantly reminded of her loss, she always charged it upon them.

Otherwise the journey was prosperous. Elfie was on the terms of a saucy pet with the General, and Babie's bright, gentle courtesy and unselfishness won Mrs. Evelyn's heart, while she and Sydney were as inseparable as ever.

In fact Sydney had been made free of Jotapata. That celebrated romance had been going on all these years with the elision of several generations; because though few members of the family were allowed to see their twenty-fifth year, it was impossible to squeeze them all into the crusading times; and besides the reigning favourites must be treated to an adventure with Coeur de Lion.

Even thus abridged, it bade fair to last throughout the journey, both the little maidens being sufficiently experienced travellers to care little for the sights from the French railway, and being only stimulated to talk and listen the more eagerly when interrupted by such trifles as meals, companions, and calls to look at objects far less interesting.

"Look, my dears; we are coming to the mountains. There is the first snowy head."

"Yes, mamma," but the hats were together again in the corner.

"Come, Sydney, don't lose this wonderful winding valley."

"I see, Uncle James. Beautiful!" popping back instantly with, "Go on, Babie, dear. How did Sir Gilbert get them out of that horrid defile full of Turks? It is true, you said."

"True that Louis VII. and Queen Eleanor got into that dreadful mess. Armine found it in Sismondi, but nobody knew who Sir Gilbert was except ourselves; and we are quite sure he was Sir Gilbert of the Ermine, the son of the brother who thought it his duty to stay at home."

"Sir Philibert? Oh, yes! I know."

"There are some verses about the Iconium Pass, written out in our spotted book, but I can say some of them."

"Oh, do!"

"'The rock is steep, the gorge is deep, Mount Joye St. Denys; But King Louis bold his way doth hold, Mount Joye St. Denys.

Ho ho, the ravine is 'narrow I ween, Lah billah el billah, hurrah. The hills near and far the Frank's way do bar, Lah billah el billah, hurrah.'

"It ought to be 'Allah el Allah,' but you know that really does mean a holy name, and Armine thought we ought not to have it. It was delightful making the ballad, for all the Christian verses have 'Mount Joye St. Denys' in the different lines, and all the Turkish ones 'Lah billah,' till Sir Gilbert comes in, and then his war-cry goes instead-

"'On, on, ye Franks, hew down their ranks, Up, merry men, for the Ermine! For Christian right 'gainst Pagan might, Up, merry men, for the Ermine!'

but one day Jock got hold of it, and wrote a parody on it."

"Oh what a shame! Weren't you very angry?"

"It was so funny, one could not help laughing.

"'Come on, old Turk, you'll find hot work- Pop goes the weasel! They cut and run; my eyes, what fun!— Pop goes the weasel!'"

"How could you bear it? I won't hear a bit more. It is dreadful."

"Miss Ogilvie says if one likes a thing very much, parodies don't hurt one's love," said Babie.

"But what did Sir Gilbert do?"

"He rode up to where Louis was standing with his back against a rock, and dismounted saying 'My liege-'"

"I thought he was an Englishman?"

"Oh, but you always called a king 'my liege,' whoever you were. 'My liege,' he said-"

"Look at that charming little church tower."

"I see, thank you."

"I see, Uncle James. No, thank you, I don't want to look out any more. I saw it. Well, Babie, 'My liege-'"

"Never mind, James," said Mrs. Evelyn, "one can't be more than in Elysium."

There were fewer conveniences for the siege on the last day of the journey, when railroads were no more; but something could be done on board the steamer in spite of importunities from those who thought it a duty to look at the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and when arrival became imminent, happy anticipation inclined Barbara to a blissful silence. Mrs. Evelyn saw her great hazel eyes shining like stars, and began to prefer the transparent mask of that ardent little soul to the external beauty which made Elvira a continual study for an artist.



CHAPTER XXIV. THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN.



To your eager prayer, the Voice Makes awful answer, "Come to Me." Once for all now seal your choice With Christ to tread the boisterous sea. Keble.

The Leukerbad section of the party had only three days' start of the others, for Jock was not released till after a whole month's course of the baths, and Armine's state fluctuated so much that the journey would not have been sooner possible.

It had been a trying time. While Dr. Medlicott thought he could not rouse Mrs. Brownlow to the sense of the little fellow's precarious condition, deadly alarm lay couched in the bottom of her heart, only kept at bay by defiantly cheerful plans and sanguine talk.

Then Jock was depressed, and at his age (and, alas! at many others) being depressed means being cross, and very cross he was to his mother and his friend, and occasionally to his brother, who, in some moods, seemed to him merely a rival invalid and candidate for attention, and whom he now and then threatened with becoming as frightful a muff as Fordham. He missed Johnny, too, and perhaps longed after Eton. He was more savage to Cecil than to any one else, treating his best attentions with growls, railings, and occasionally showers of slippers, books, and cushions, but, strange as it sounds, the friendship only seemed cemented by this treatment, and this devoted slave evidently preferred being abused by Jock to being made much of by any one else.

The regimen was very disagreeable to his English habits, and the tedium of the place was great. His mother thought it quite enough to account for his captiousness, and the doctor said it was recovery, but no one guessed how much was due to the good resolutions he had made on the moraine and ratified with Cecil. To no one else had he spoken, but all the more for his reserve did he feel himself bound by the sense of the shame and dishonour of falling back from vows made in the time of danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would have been infinitely better tempered.

For to poor Jock steadiness appeared renunciation of all "jest and youthful jollity," and religion seemed tedious endurance of what might be important, but, like everything important, was to him very wearisome and uninteresting. To him all zest and pleasure in life seemed extinguished, and he would have preferred leaving Eton, where he must change his habits and amaze his associates. Indeed, he was between hoping and fearing that all this would there seem folly. But then he would break his word, the one thing that poor half-heathen Jock truly cared about.

Meantime he was keeping it as best he knew how under the circumstances, by minding his prayers more than he had ever done before, trying to attend when part of the service was read on Sundays, and endeavouring to follow the Evelyn sabbatical code, but only succeeding in making himself more dreary and savage on Sunday than on any other day.

By easy journeys they arrived at Engelberg early on a Friday afternoon, and found pleasant rooms in the large hotel, looking out in front on the grand old monastery, once the lord of half the Canton, and in the rear upon pine-woods, leading up to a snow-crowned summit. The delicious scent seemed to bring invigoration in at the windows.

However, Jock and Armine were both tired enough to be sent to bed, if not to sleep, immediately after the-as yet, scantily filled table d'hote. The former was lying dreamily listening to the evening bells of the monastery, when Cecil came in, looking diffident and hesitating.

"I say, Jock," he began, "did you see that old clergyman at the table d'hote?"

"Was there one?"

"Yes; and there is to be a Celebration on Sunday."

"O! Then Armine can have his wish."

"Fordham has been getting the old cleric to talk to your mother about it."

Armine was unconfirmed. The other two had been confirmed just before Easter, but on the great Sunday Jock had followed his brother Robert's example and turned away. He had recollected the omission on that terrible night, and when after a pause Cecil said, "Do you mean to stay?" he answered rather snappishly, "I suppose so."

"I fancied," said Cecil, with wistful hesitation, "that if we were together it would be a kind of seal to—"

Jock actually forced back the words, "Don't humbug," which were not his own, but his ill-temper's, and managed to reply-

"Well, what?"

"Being brothers in arms," replied Cecil, with shy earnestness that touched the better part of Jock, and he made a sound of full assent, letting Cecil, who had a turn for sentiment, squeeze his hand.

He lay with a thoughtful eye, trying to recall some of the good seed his tutor had tried to sow on a much-trodden way-side, very ready for the birds of the air. The outcome was-

"I say, Evelyn, have you any book of preparation? Mine is-I don't know where."

Neither his mother, nor Reeves, nor, to do him justice, Cecil himself, would have made such an omission in his packing, and he was heartily glad to fetch his manual, feeling Jock's reformation his own security in the ways which he really preferred.

Poor Jock, who, whatever he was, was real in all his ways, and could not lead a double life, as his friend too often did, read and tried to fulfil the injunctions of the book, but only became more confused and unhappy than ever. Yet still he held on, in a blind sort of way, to his resolution. He had undertaken to be good, he meant therefore to communicate, and he believed he repented, and would lead a new life-if-if he could bear it.

His next confidence was-

"I say, Cecil, can you get me some writing things? We-at least I- ought to write and tell my tutor that I am sorry about that supper."

"Well, he was rather a beast."

"I think," said Jock, who had the most capacity for seeing things from other people's point of view, "we did enough to put him in a wax. It was more through me than any one else, and I shall write at once, and get it off my mind before to-morrow."

"Very well. If you'll write, I'll sign," said Cecil. "Mother said I ought when I saw her in London, but she didn't order me. She said she left it to my proper feeling."

"And you hadn't any?"

"I was going to stick by you," said Cecil, rather sulkily; on which Jock rewarded him with something sounding like-

"What a donkey you can be!"

However, with many writhings and gruntings the letter was indited, and Jock was as much wearied out as if he had taken a long walk, so that his mother feared that Engelberg was going to disagree with him. He had not energy enough to go out in the evening of Saturday to meet the new arrivals, but stayed with Armine, who was in a state of restless joy and excitement, marvelling at him, and provoking him by this surprise as if it were censure.

With his forehead against the window, Armine watched and did his utmost to repress the eagerness that seemed to irritate his brother, and at last gave vent to an irrepressible hurrah.

"There they are! Cecil has got his sister! Oh! and there she is! Babie-holding on to mother, and that must be Mrs. Evelyn with Fordham-and there's Elf making up already to the Doctor! Aren't you coming down, Jock?"

"Not I! I don't want to see you make a fool of yourself before everybody!-I say-you'll have to come up stairs again, you know! Shut the door I say!"-shouted Jock, as he found Armine deaf to all his expostulations, and then getting up, he banged it himself, and then shuffling back to the sofa, put his hands over his face and exclaimed, "There! What an eternal brute I am!"

A few moments more and the door was open again, and Cecil, with his arm round his sister, thrust her forwards, exclaiming-"Here he is, Syd."

Jock had recovered his gentlemanly manners enough to shake hands courteously, as well as to receive and return Babie's kiss, when she and Armine staggered in together, reeling under their weight of delight. Janet kissed him too, and then, scanning both brothers, observed to her mother-

"I think Lucas is the more altered of the two." In which sentiment Elvira seemed to agree, for she put her hands behind her and exclaimed-

"O Jock, you do look such a fright; I never knew how like Janet you were!"

"You are letting every one know what a spiteful little Elf you can be," returned Janet, indignantly. "Can't you give poor Jock a kinder greeting?"

Whereupon the Elf put on a cunning look of innocence and said-

"I didn't know it was unkind to say he was like you, Janet."

The Evelyn pair had gone-after this introduction of Jock and Sydney- to their own sitting-room, which opened out of that of the Brownlows, and the door was soon unclosed, for the two families meant to make up only one party. The two mothers seemed as if they had been friends of old standing, and Mrs. Evelyn was looking with delighted wonder at her eldest son, who had gained much in flesh and in vigour ever since Dr. Medlicott's last and most successful prescription of a more pressing subject of interest than his own cough.

She had an influence about her that repressed all discords in her presence, and the evening was a cheerful and happy one, leaving a soothing sense upon all.

Then came the awakening to the sounds of the monastery bells, and in due time the small English congregation assembled, and one at least was trying to force an attention that had freely wandered ever before.

The preacher was the chance visitor, an elderly clergyman with silvery hair. He spoke extempore from Job xxviii.

Where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, "It is not in me:" And the sea saith, "It is not with me." It cannot be gotten for gold. Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

What he said was unlike any sermon the young people had heard before. It began with a description of the alchemist's labours, seeking for ever for the one great arcanum, falling by the way upon numerous precious discoveries, yet never finding the one secret which would have rendered all common things capable of being made of priceless value. He drew this quest into a parable of man's search for the One Great Good, the wisdom that is the one thing necessary to give weight, worth, and value to the life which, without it, is vanity of vanities. Many a choice gift of thought, of science, of philosophy, of beauty, of poetry, has been brought to light in its time by the seekers, but in vain. All rang empty, hollow, and heartless, like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, till the secret should be won. And it is no unattainable secret. It is the love of Christ that truly turneth all things into fine gold. One who has attained that love has the true transmuting and transforming power of making life golden, golden in brightness, in purity, in value, so as to be "a present for a mighty King."

Then followed a description of the glory and worth of the true, noble, faithful manhood of a "happy warrior," ever going forward and carrying through achievements for the love of the Great Captain. Each in turn, the protector of the weak, the redresser of wrong, the patriot, the warrior, the scholar, the philosopher, the parent, the wife, the sister, or the child, the healthful or the sick, whoever has that one constraining secret, the love of Christ, has his service even here, whether active or passive, veritably golden, the fruit unto holiness, the end everlasting life.

Perhaps it was the cluster of young faces that led the preacher thus to speak, and as he went on, he must have met the earnest and responsive eyes that are sure to animate a speaker, and the power and beauty of his words struck every one. To the Evelyns it was a new and beautiful allegory on a familiar idea. Janet was divided between discomfort at allusions reminding her of her secret, and on criticisms of the description of alchemy. Her mother's heart beat as if she were hearing an echo of her husband's thoughts about his Magnum Bonum. Little Armine was thrilled as, in the awe of drawing near to his first Communion, this golden thread of life was put into his hand. But it was Jock to whom that discourse came like a beam of light into a dark place. When upon the dreary vista of dull abnegation on which he had been dwelling for a month past, came this vision of the beauty, activity, victory, and glory of true manhood, as something attainable, his whole soul swelled and expanded with joyful enthusiasm. The future that he had embraced as lead had become changed to gold! Thus the whole ensuing service was to him a continuation of that blessed hopeful dedication of himself and all his powers. It was as if from being a monk, he had become a Red Cross Knight of the Hospital. Yet, after his soiled, spoiled, reckless boyhood, how could that grand manhood be attained?

Later in the afternoon, when the denizens of the hotel had gone their several ways, some to look and listen at Benediction in the Convent church, some to climb through the pine-woods to the Alp, some to saunter and rest among the nearer trees, the clergyman, with his Greek Testament in his hand, was sitting on a seat under one of the trees, enjoying the calm of one of his few restful Sundays; when he heard a movement, and beheld the pale thin lad, who still walked so lame, who had been so silent at the table d'hote, and whose dark eyes had looked up with such intensity of interest, that he had more than once spoken to them.

"You are tired," said the clergyman, kindly making room for him.

"Thanks," said the boy, mechanically moving forward, but then pausing as he leant on his stick, and his eyes suddenly dimmed with tears as he said, "Oh, sir, if you would only tell me how to begin-"

"Begin what?" said the old man, holding out his hand.

"To turn it to gold," said Jock. "Can I, after being the mad fool I've been?"

They talked for more than an hour; even till Dr. Medlicott, coming down from the Alp, laid his hand on Jock's shoulder, and told him the evening chill was coming, and he must sit still no longer. And when the boy looked up, the restless weary distress of his face was gone.

Jock never saw that old clergyman again, nor heard of him, unless it were his death that he read of in the paper six months later. But he never heard the name of Engelberg without an echo of the parting benediction, and feeling that to him it had indeed been an Angel mountain.

This had been a happy day to several others. Cecil, after ten minutes with his mother, which filled her with hope and thankfulness, had gone to show his sister the charms of the place, and Armine and Babie, on a sheltered seat, were free to pour out their hearts to one another, ranging from the heights of pure childish wisdom to its depths of blissful ignorance and playful folly, as they talked over the past and the future.

Armine knew there was no chance of an immediate and entire recovery for him, and this was a severe stroke to Babie, who was quite unprepared. And, as her face began to draw up with tears near the surface, he hugged her close, and consolingly whispered that now they would be together always, he should not have to go away from his own dear Babie Bunting, and there was a little kissing match, ending by Babie saying, disconsolately, "But you did like Eton so, and you were going to get the Newcastle and the Prince Consort's prize, and to be in the eleven and all-and you were so sure of a high remove! Oh, dear!" and she let her head drop on his shoulder, and was almost crying again.