est fields on
the slopes dotted with rich sheaves of wheat; the coppices, in their
summer glory, here and there touched with the gold of early autumn, and
the slopes and meadows bright with lively green, a pleasant change for
eyes fresh from the bare, rugged mountain-side and the rank unwholesome
vegetation of Panama. Shaggy little Scottish oxen were feeding on the
dewy grass, their black coats looking sleek in the sun beyond the long
shadows of the thorns; but as Mary said, laughing, 'Only Farmer
Fitzjocelyn's cattle came here now,' and she stopped more than once to
be introduced to some notable animal, or to hear the history of
experiments in fatting beasts.

'There! they have found you out! That's for you,' said Louis, as a
merry peal of bells broke out from the church tower, and came joyously
up through the tranquil air. 'Yes, Ormersfield, you are greeting a
friend! You may be very glad, old place! I wish Mr. Holdsworth would
come up to breakfast! Is it too wet for you this way, Mary?'

This way was into Fernydell, and Mary answered, 'Oh, no--no; it is
where I most wanted to go with you. We have never been there together
since--'

'No, you never would walk with me after I could go alone!' said Louis,
with a playful tone of reproach, veiling deep feeling.

In silence he handed her down the rocky steps, plunging deeper among
the hazels and rowan-trees; then pausing, he turned aside the luxuriant
leaves of a tuft of hartstongue, and showed her, cut on a stone, veiled
both by the verdure and the form of the rock, the letters--

Deo Gratias,
L. F. 1847.

'I like that!' was all that Mary's full heart allowed her to say.

'Yes,' said Louis, 'I feel quite as thankful for the accident as for
the preservation.'

'And that dear mamma was with us,' added Mary. 'Between her and you,
it was a blessing to us all. I see these letters are not new; you must
have cut them out long ago.'

'As soon as I could get here without help,' he answered. 'I thought I
should be able to find the very spot where I lay, by remembering the
cross which the bare mountain-ash boughs made against the sky; but by
that time they were all leaf and flower; and now, do you see, there
they are, with the fruit just formed and blushing.'

'Like other things,' said Mary, reaching after the spray, 'once all
blossom, now--'

'Fruit very unripe,' as he said, between a smile and a sigh; 'but there
is som