beech-trunks shone like silver, or like wonderful
frozen trees in some region of eternal ice and snow. It was a
wilderness in which a stranger would incontinently lose himself; but
every foot of the way was familiar to Vixen and Rorie. They had
followed the hounds by these green ways, and ridden and rambled here in
all seasons.

For some time they walked almost in silence, enjoying the beauty of the
night, the stillness only broken by the distant chorus of children
singing their pious strains--old hymn-tunes that Violet had known and
loved all her life.

"Doesn't it almost seem as if our old childish days had come back?"
said Roderick by-and-by. "Don't you feel as if you were a little girl
again, Vixen, going for a ramble with me--fern-hunting or
primrose-gathering?"

"No," answered Vixen firmly. "Nothing can ever bring the past back for
me. I shall never forget that I had a father--the best and dearest--and
that I have lost him."

"Dear Violet," Roderick began, very gently, "life cannot be made up of
mourning for the dead. We may keep their images enshrined in our hearts
for ever, but we must not shut our youth from the sunshine. Think how
few years of youth God gives us; and if we waste those upon vain
sorrow----"

"No one can say that I have wasted my youth, or shut myself from the
sunshine. I go to kettle-drums and dancing-parties. My mother and I
have taken pains to let the world see how happy we can be without papa."

"The dear old Squire!" said Rorie tenderly; "I think he loved me."

"I am sure he did," answered Vixen.

"Well, you and I seem to have entered upon a new life since last we
rode through these woods together. I daresay you are right, and that it
is not possible to fancy oneself back in the past, even for a moment.
Consciousness of the present hangs so heavily upon us."

"Yes," assented Vixen.

They had come to the end of the enclosure, and stood leaning against a
gate, waiting for the arrival of the children.

"And after all, perhaps, it is better to live in the present, and look
back at the past, as at an old picture which we shall sooner or later
turn with its face to the wall."

"I like best to think of my old self as if it were someone else," said
Violet. "I know there was a little girl whom her father called Vixen,
who used to ride after the hounds, and roam about the Forest on her
pony; and who was herself almost as wild as the Forest ponies. But I
can't associate her with this