gings had been taken down and the bed itself lifted
from the ground before the very eyes of the intended purchaser; but
that had been too much for him. He had given in. There is England's
greatness! Can it be wondered--much as we pose to despise them--that
we are the only nation in Europe which has given shelter to the tribes
of Israel?

In spring-time, the Manor looked wonderful--the lawns cut for the
first time since the winter, the hedges of blackthorn splashed thick
with snow-blossom, and daffodils, as if sackfuls of new-minted gold
were emptied underneath the trees and elves had scattered pieces here
and there from out the mass. Birds were building in all the thickets,
and the young leaves--virgin green--shyly hid their love-making.
Everything alive was possessed with a new-found energy. The
sparrows--most ostentatious of any bird there is--flew about,
trailing long threads of hay, with an air as if they carried the
Golden Fleece in their beaks each time they returned to the apple
trees. But other creatures were as busy as they. Strange little brown
birds--whitethroats and linnets perhaps, if the eye could only have
followed them--flew in and out of the blackthorn hedges all day long.
Thrushes and blackbirds hopped pompously about the lawns, and the
starlings chattered like old women on the roofs of the red gables.

The house itself was modelled as are nearly all such residences of
the Tudor period, the gables at either end making, with the hall,
the formation of the letter E so characteristic of the architecture
of that time. Only two additions had been made, oriel windows to
enlarge the rooms at each end of the gables; but they had been
executed, some seventy years before Sir William Hewitt Traill's
occupation of the place, by a man who had respect for the days of
King Harry and they had long since toned into the atmosphere. A great
tree of wisteria lifted itself above one of the windows, and on the
other a clematis clung with its wiry, brittle shoots.

The huge cedars, holding out their black-green fans of foliage like
Eastern canopies--the high yew-trees, to whom only age could bring
such lofty dimensions, all surrounded the old, red building and
wrapped it in a velvet cloak of warm security. Tulips in long
beds--brilliant mosaics in a floor of green marble--were let into
the lawn that stretched down the drive. Away on the horizon, the
rising ground about Wycombe showed blue through the soft spring
atmosphe