gether he had the appearance of a man who had passed
through many sorrows which had marked his body as well as his soul.
Looking at him, I doubted Mrs. Campbell's conclusion that he had not
"minded" giving up college. This man had given up much and felt it
deeply; but he had outlived the pain and the blessing of sacrifice had
come to him. His voice was very melodious and beautiful, and the brown
hand he held out to me was peculiarly long and shapely and flexible.

We went out to the garden in the scented moist air of a maritime
spring evening. Behind the garden was a cloudy pine wood; the house
closed it in on the left, while in front and on the right a row of
tall Lombardy poplars stood out in stately purple silhouette against
the sunset sky.

"Always liked Lombardies," said Abel, waving a long arm at them. "They
are the trees of princesses. When I was a boy they were fashionable.
Anyone who had any pretensions to gentility had a row of Lombardies at
the foot of his lawn or up his lane, or at any rate one on either side
of his front door. They're out of fashion now. Folks complain they die
at the top and get ragged-looking. So they do--so they do, if you
don't risk your neck every spring climbing up a light ladder to trim
them out as I do. My neck isn't worth much to anyone, which, I
suppose, is why I've never broken it; and _my_ Lombardies never look
out-at-elbows. My mother was especially fond of them. She liked their
dignity and their stand-offishness. _They_ don't hobnob with every
Tom, Dick and Harry. If it's pines for company, master, it's
Lombardies for society."

We stepped from the front doorstone into the garden. There was another
entrance--a sagging gate flanked by two branching white lilacs. From
it a little dappled path led to a huge apple-tree in the centre, a
great swelling cone of rosy blossom with a mossy circular seat around
its trunk. But Abel's favourite seat, so he told me, was lower down
the slope, under a little trellis overhung with the delicate emerald
of young hop-vines. He led me to it and pointed proudly to the fine
view of the harbour visible from it. The early sunset glow of rose and
flame had faded out of the sky; the water was silvery and mirror-like;
dim sails drifted along by the darkening shore. A bell was ringing in
a small Catholic chapel across the harbour. Mellowly and dreamily
sweet the chime floated through the dusk, blent with the moan of the
sea. The great revolving light a