ing her brown nervous
hand on his blanched one.

'Then give me pen and paper and let me write to Mowbray. I wonder
whether the place has changed at all. Heigh ho! How is one to preach to
people who have stuffed you up with gooseberries, or swung you on gates,
or lifted you over puddles to save your petticoats? I wonder what has
become of that boy whom I hit in the eye with my bow and arrow, or of
that other lout who pummelled me into the middle of next week for
disturbing his bird-trap? By the way, is the Squire--is Roger
Wendover--living at the Hall now?'

He turned to his mother with a sudden start of interest.

'So I hear,' said Mrs. Elsmere drily. '_He_ won't be much good to you.'

He sat on meditating while she went for pen and paper. He had forgotten
the Squire of Murewell. But Roger Wendover, the famous and eccentric
owner of Murewell Hall, hermit and scholar, possessed of one of the most
magnificent libraries in England, and author of books which had carried
a revolutionary shock into the heart of English society, was not a
figure to be overlooked by any rector of Murewell, least of all by one
possessed of Robert's culture and imagination.

The young man ransacked his memory on the subject with a sudden access
of interest in his new home that was to be.

Six weeks later they were in England, and Robert, now convalescent, had
accepted an invitation to spend a month in Long Whindale with his
mother's cousins, the Thornburghs, who offered him quiet, and bracing
air. He was to enter on his duties at Murewell in July, the bishop, who
had been made aware of his Oxford reputation, welcoming the new recruit
to the diocese with marked warmth of manner.

CHAPTER VI

'Agnes, if you want any tea, here it is,' cried Rose, calling from
outside through the dining-room window; 'and tell mamma.'

It was the first of June, and the spell of warmth in which Robert
Elsmere had arrived was still maintaining itself. An intelligent
foreigner dropped into the flower-sprinkled valley might have believed
that, after all, England, and even Northern England, had a summer. Early
in the season as it was, the sun was already drawing the colour out of
the hills; the young green, hardly a week or two old, was darkening.
Except the oaks. They were brilliance itself against the luminous
gray-blue sky. So were the beeches, their young downy leaves just
unpacked, tumbling loosely open to the light. But the larches and the
birches