eaks musically."

"As one can fancy Melpomene did. Does she come here often?"

"Every day, I fancy;--but not generally when I am here. Not but what
she and I are great friends. She will sometimes go with me into town
on a Thursday morning, on her way to the meeting house."

"Lucky fellow!" Roden shrugged his shoulders as though conscious that
any luck of that kind must come to him from another quarter, if it
came at all.

"What does she talk about?"

"Religion generally."

"And you?"

"Anything else, if she will allow me. She would wish to convert me.
I am not at all anxious to convert her, really believing that she is
very well as she is."

"Yes," said Hampstead; "that is the worst of what we are apt to call
advanced opinions. With all my self-assurance I never dare to tamper
with the religious opinions of those who are younger or weaker than
myself. I feel that they at any rate are safe if they are in earnest.
No one, I think, has ever been put in danger by believing Christ to
be a God."

"They none of them know what they believe," said Roden; "nor do you
or I. Men talk of belief as though it were a settled thing. It is so
but with few; and that only with those who lack imagination. What
sort of a time did you have down at Castle Hautboy?"

"Oh,--I don't know,--pretty well. Everybody was very kind, and my
sister likes it. The scenery is lovely. You can look up a long reach
of Ulleswater from the Castle terrace, and there is Helvellyn in the
distance. The house was full of people,--who despised me more than I
did them."

"Which is saying a great deal, perhaps."

"There were some uncommon apes. One young lady, not very young, asked
me what I meant to do with all the land in the world when I took it
away from everybody. I told her that when it was all divided equally
there would be a nice little estate even for all the daughters, and
that in such circumstances all the sons would certainly get married.
She acknowledged that such a result would be excellent, but she did
not believe in it. A world in which the men should want to marry was
beyond her comprehension. I went out hunting one day."

"The hunting I should suppose was not very good."

"But for one drawback it would have been very good indeed."

"The mountains, I should have thought, would be one drawback, and the
lakes another."

"Not at all. I liked the mountains because of their echoes, and the
lakes did not come in our way."

"Where was t