-bush.

You see, Mr. Hardcastle, who belonged to the Navy, hadn't felt the need to
trouble himself about a deserter from the sister service; and Mounseer
Raynold had found a cousin, and naturally felt no concern in chasing a man
to strengthen the British army.

"My dear madam!" said Dr. Clatworthy, and led Miss St. Maur towards the
arbour. For certain he had recognised Miss Sophia; but maybe he let her
go then and there from his thoughts. And Miss St. Maur by his side was
weeping bitterly.

Dr. Clatworthy wasn't used to a woman in tears. He took Miss St. Maur's
hand, and by and by, finding her sobs didn't stop, he pressed it,
and . . .

Well, that's all the story. I've heard my mother tell it a score of
times, and always when she came to this point, she'd laugh and tell me to
marry for choice before I came to fifty, or else trust to luck and buy a
handkerchief.

THE BEND OF THE ROAD.

I.

Just outside the small country station of M---- in Cornwall, a viaduct
carries the Great Western Railway line across a coombe, or narrow valley,
through which a tributary trout-stream runs southward to meet the tides of
the L---- River. From the carriage-window as you pass you look down the
coombe for half a mile perhaps, and also down a road which, leading out
from M---- Station a few yards below the viaduct, descends the left-hand
slope at a sharp incline to the stream; but whether to cross it or run
close beside it down the valley bottom you cannot tell, since, before they
meet, an eastward curve of the coombe shuts off the view.

Both slopes are pleasantly wooded, and tall beeches, interset here and
there with pines--a pretty contrast in the spring--spread their boughs
over the road; which is cut cornice-wise, with a low parapet hedge to
protect it along the outer side, where the ground falls steeply to the
water-meadows, that wind like a narrow green riband edged by the stream
with twinkling silver.

For the rest, there appears nothing remarkable in the valley: and
certainly Mr. Molesworth, who crossed and recrossed it regularly on
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, on his way to and from his banking
business in Plymouth, would have been puzzled to explain why, three times
out of four, as his train rattled over the viaduct, he laid down his
newspaper, took the cigar from his mouth, and gazed down from the window
of his first-class smoking carriage upon the green water-meadows and the
curving road. The G