! Mr. Raeburn was
about the only man living that I believed in. You can understand that I
owe him an immense debt of gratitude."

"That is what you referred to in the House last year!" said Erica. "How
curiously lives are linked together! Words spoken by my father years ago
set thoughts working in you you make a speech and refer to them. I read
a report of your speech in a time of chaotic wretchedness, and it comes
like an answer to a prayer!"

"Another bond between us," said Donovan.

After that they were silent; they had left the high road and were
driving along winding country lanes, catching glimpses every now and
then of golden corn fields still unreaped, or of fields just beginning
to be dotted with sheaves, where the men were at work. It was a late
harvest that year, but a good one. Presently they passed the tiny little
village church which nestled under the brow of the hill, and then came a
steep ascent, which made Donovan spring out of the pony chaise. Erica's
words had awakened a long train of thought, had carried him back to the
far past, and had brought him fresh proof of that wonderful unity of
Nature which, though often little dreamed of, binds man to man. He gave
the ponies a rest half way up the hill, and, stretching up into the high
hedge, gathered a beautiful spray of red-berried briony for Erica.

"Do you remember that grand thought which Shakespeare puts into the
mouth of Henry V."

"'There is some soul of goodness in things evil.'
'Tis wonderful to look back in life and trace it out."

He spoke rather abruptly, but Erica's thoughts had been following much
the same bent, and she understood him.

"Trust is easy on such a day as this and in such a place," she said,
looking down to the beautiful valley and up to the green, encircling
hills.

Donovan smiled, and touched up the ponies.

It seemed to Erica that they had turned their backs on bigotry, and
annoyance, and care of every description, and were driving right into
a land of rest. Presently they turned in at some iron gates, and drove
down a long approach, bordered with fir trees. At the end of this stood
the manor, a solid, comfortable, well-built country house, its rather
plain exterior veiled with ivy and creepers. Donovan led her into the
hall, where stately old high-backed chairs and a suit or two of
old armor were intermixed with modern appliances, fishing tackle, a
lawn-tennis box, and a sprinkling of toys, which indicate