hat he and
Eustace were much richer men than he had reckoned on being.

Mrs. Sam Alison had arrived safely, but rather surprised not to find
people walking on their heads, as she had been told everything was
upside down. Her son had so far recovered that he could undertake such
employment in writing as it was possible to procure. The mother and
son were very happy together, but Harold winced as if a sore were
touched when he spoke of their meeting.

I was anxious that he should hear of nothing to vex him that night, for
there was more than enough to annoy him another day, and I talked on
eagerly about the arrangements for the wedding. Hippolyta had insisted
on making it a mingled archery and hunt-wedding. She was to wear the
famous belt. The bridegroom, her brothers, and most of the gentlemen
were to be in their pink; we bridesmaids had scarlet ribbons, and the
favours had miniature fox brushes fastened with arrows in the centre;
even our lockets, with their elaborate cypher of E's, A's, and H's,
depended from the head of a fox.

Prometesky looked amazed, as well he might. "Your ladies are changed,"
he said. "It would formerly scarcely have been thought feminine to
show such ardour for the chase."

"Perhaps it is not now," I said.

"Or is it in honour of the lady's name? Hippolyta should have a
Midsummer wedding, and 'love the musick of her hounds,'" continued the
old gentleman, whom I found to have Shakespeare almost by heart, as one
of the chief companions of his solitude.

As soon as Harold heard his boxes arriving, he went to work to disinter
the wedding present he had provided--a pretty bracelet of New Zealand
green jade set in gold. There was a little parcel for me, too, which
he gave me, leading me aside. It was also a locket, and bore a cypher,
but how unlike the other! It was a simple A; and within was a lock of
silver hair. There was no need to tell me whose it was. "She said she
wished she had anything to send you," were Harold's words, "and I cut
off this bit of her hair;" and when I wondered over her having taken
thought of me, he said, "She blessed you for your kindness to me. If I
could only have brought her to you--"

I secured then, as the completion of his gift, one of his thick curls
of yellow-brown hair. He showed me the chain he had brought for Dora,
and gave me one glance at a clear, pure, crystal cross, from spar found
in New Zealand, near the gold-fields. Would he ever be