nt."

"What, uncle, you an author! Oh, fie! I should as soon have thought of
your wishing to dance on the tight-rope as to appear in print. But we
must look over these little effusions--eh, Miss Hope. We must unearth
this genius, and be the first to give his lucubrations to the world."

"If you were younger, sir, or I not quite so old, I would box your
ears," said the Major, who seemed hardly to know whether to laugh or be
angry. Finally he laughed, George and Janet chimed in, and all three
went back indoors.

After an early dinner the Major took rod and line and set off to capture
a few trout for supper. Aunt Felicite took her post-prandial nap
discreetly, in an easy-chair, and Captain George and Miss Hope were left
to their own devices. In Love's sweet Castle of Indolence the hours that
make up a summer afternoon pass like so many minutes. These two had
blown the magic horn and had gone in. The gates of brass had closed
behind them, shutting them up from the common outer world. Over all
things was a glamour as of witchcraft. Soft music filled the air; soft
breezes came to them as from fields of amaranth and asphodel. They
walked ever in a magic circle, that widened before them as they went.
Eros in passing had touched them with his golden dart. Each of them hid
the sweet sting from the other, yet neither of them would have been
whole again for anything the world could have offered. What need to tell
the old story over again--the story of the dawn of love in two young
hearts that had never loved before?

Janet went home that night in a flutter of happiness--a happiness so
sweet and strange and yet so vague that she could not have analysed it
even had she been casuist enough to try to do so. But she was content to
accept the fact as a fact; beyond that she cared nothing. No syllable of
love had been spoken between her and George: they had passed what to an
outsider would have seemed a very common-place afternoon. They had
talked together--not sentiment, but every-day topics of the world around
them; they had read together--poetry, but nothing more passionate than
"Aurora Leigh;" they had walked together--rather a silent and stupid
walk, our friendly outsider would have urged; but if they were content,
no one else had any right to complain. And so the day had worn itself
away--a red-letter day for ever in the calendar of their young lives.

CHAPTER XX.

THE NARRATIVE OF SERGEANT NICHOLAS.

One morning whe