nial atmosphere of his pure and constant affection,
and interweave her aimless, sombre life with the busy, silvery web of
his own.

After forty years, God would grant him home, and wife, and hearthstone
peace.

What a flush and sparkle stole to this grave man's olive cheek, and
calm, deep blue eyes!

Ah! how hungrily he longed for the touch of her hand, the sight of her
face; and, snatching his hat, he put the paper in his pocket, and
hurried towards "Solitude."

In the holy hush of that hazy autumnal afternoon, nature--_Magna
Mater_,--

"The altar-curtains of whose hills
Are sunset's purple air,"
"Who dips in the dim light of setting suns
The spacious skirts of that vast robe of hers
That widens ever in the wondrous west,"

seemed slumbering and dreaming away the day.

The forests were gaudy in their painted shrouds of scarlet and yellow
leaves, and long, feathery flakes of purple bloom nodded over crimson
berries, emerald mosses, and golden-hearted asters.

Only a few weeks previous, Dr. Grey had driven along that road, and,
while the echo of harvest hymns rang on the hay-scented air, had asked
himself how men and women could become so completely absorbed in
temporal things, ignoring the solemn and indisputable fact of the
brevity of human life and the restricted dominion of man,--

"Whose part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills
Is, that his grave is green."

But to-day all sober-hued reflections were exorcised by the rapturous
_Jubilate_ that hope was singing through the sunlit chambers of his
happy heart; and when he entered the grounds of "Solitude" they seemed
bathed in that soft glamour, that witching "light that never was on
sea or land."

As he sprang from his buggy and opened the little gate leading into
the _parterre_, Robert came slowly forward, bearing a basket filled
with a portion of the crimson apples that flushed the orchard, just
beyond the low hedge.

"You could not have chosen a better time to come, Dr. Grey; and if I
were allowed to have my way you would have been here last night. Were
you sent for at last, or was it a lucky chance that brought you?"

"Merely an accident, as I received no summons. Robert, how is your
mistress?"

"God only knows, sir; I am sure I never can tell how she really is.
She has not seemed well since she took that journey to the North, and
for two weeks past she appears to have been slipping down by inches
into