ing in the wake of his long strides, pouring out her ardent fancies,
now and then getting an answer, but more often going on like a little
singing bird, through the midst of his avocations, and quite complacent
under his interruptions of calls to his dogs, directions to his
labourers, and warnings to her to mind her feet and not her chatter. In
the full stream of crusaders, he led her down one of the multitude of
by-paths cleared out in the hazel coppice for sporting; here leading up a
rising ground whence the tops of the trees might be overlooked, some
flecked with gold, some blushing into crimson, and beyond them the needle
point of the village spire, the vane flashing back the sun; there bending
into a ravine, marshy at the bottom, and nourishing the lady fern, then
again crossing glades, where the rabbits darted across the path, and the
battle of Damietta was broken into by stern orders to Fly to come to
heel, and the eating of the nuts which Humfrey pulled down from the
branches, and held up to his cousin with superior good nature.

'A Mameluke rushed in with a scimitar streaming with blood, and--'

'Take care; do you want help over this fence?'

'Not I, thank you--And said he had just murdered the king--'

'Vic! ah! take your nose out of that. Here was a crop, Nora.'

'What was it?'

'You don't mean that you don't know wheat stubble?'

'I remember it was to be wheat.'

'Red wheat, the finest we ever had in this land; not a bit beaten down,
and the colour perfectly beautiful before harvest; it used to put me in
mind of your hair. A load to the acre; a fair specimen of the effect of
drainage. Do you remember what a swamp it was?'

'I remember the beautiful loose-strifes that used to grow in that
corner.'

'Ah! we have made an end of that trumpery.'

'You savage old Humfrey--beauties that they were.'

'What had they to do with my cornfields? A place for everything and
everything in its place--French kings and all. What was this one doing
wool-gathering in Egypt?'

'Don't you understand, it had become the point for the blow at the
Saracen power. Where was I? Oh, the Mameluke justified the murder, and
wanted St. Louis to be king, but--'

'Ha! a fine covey, I only miss two out of them. These carrots, how their
leaves are turned--that ought not to be.'

Honora could not believe that anything ought not to be that was as
beautiful as the varied rosy tints of the hectic beauty of the
exquisitely s