ittle fool! Will you be like all the commentators? Will you
forget what Virgil has said and put your own nonsense into his golden
mouth?"

He stepped across, picked up the book, found the passage, and then
turning back a page or so, read out--

"Saepta armis _solioque alte subnixa_ resedit."

"_Alte! Alte!_" he screamed: "Dido sat on high: Aeneas stood at the
foot of her throne. Listen to this:--'Then Dido, bending down her
gaze . . . '"

He went on translating. A rapture took him, and the sun beat in
through the glass roof, and lit up his eyes. He was transfigured;
his voice swelled and sank with passion, swelled again, and then, at
the words--

"Quae te tam laeta tulerunt
Saecula? Qui tanti talem genuere parentes?"

It broke, the Virgil dropped from his hand, and sinking down on his
stool he broke into a wild fit of sobbing.

"Oh, why did I read it? Why did I read this sorrowful book?"
And then checking his sobs, he put a handkerchief to his mouth, took
it away, and looked up at me with dry eyes.

"Go away, little one, Don't come again: I am going to die very soon
now."

I stole out, awed and silent, and went home. But the picture of him
kept me awake that night, and early in the morning I dressed and ran
off to the glass-house.

He was still sitting as I had left him.

"Why have you come?" he asked, harshly. "I have been coughing.
I am going to die."

"Then I'll fetch a doctor."

"No."

"A clergyman?"

"No."

But I ran for the doctor.

Fortunio lived on for a week after this, and at length consented to
see a clergyman. I brought the vicar, and was told to leave them
alone together and come back in an hour's time.

When I returned, Fortunio was stretched quietly on the rough bed we
had found for him, and the Vicar, who knelt beside it, was speaking
softly in his ear.

As I entered on tiptoe, I heard--

". . . in that kingdom shall be no weeping--"

"Oh, Parson," interrupted Fortunio, "that's bad. I'm so bored with
laughing that the good God might surely allow a few tears."

The parish buried him, and his books went to pay for the funeral.
But I kept the Virgil; and this, with the few memories that I impart
to you, is all that remains to me of Fortunio.

THE OUTLANDISH LADIES.

A mile beyond the fishing village, as you follow the road that climbs
inland towards Tregarrick, the two tall hills to right and left of
the coombe diverge to make