dmiral Bell; for, as you well know, a truer
and more warm-hearted man than he does not exist."

"What do you expect for that, doctor?" said the admiral.

"There is nothing," said Henry, "that I could relate at all, that I
should shrink from relating to Admiral Bell."

"Well, my boy," said the admiral, "and all I can reply to that is, you
are quite right; for there can be nothing that you need shrink from
telling me, so far as regards the fact of trusting me with it goes."

"I am assured of that."

"A British officer, once pledging his word, prefers death to breaking
it. Whatever you wish kept secret in the communication you make to me,
say so, and it will never pass my lips."

"Why, sir, the fact is," said Henry, "that what I am about to relate to
you consists not so much of secrets as of matters which would be painful
to my feelings to talk of more than may be absolutely required."

"I understand you."

"Let me, for a moment," said Mr Chillingworth, "put myself right. I do
not suspect, Mr. Henry Bannerworth, that you fancy I ask you to make a
recital of circumstances which must be painful to you from any idle
motive. But let me declare that I have now a stronger impulse, which
induces me to wish to hear from your own lips those matters which
popular rumour may have greatly exaggerated or vitiated."

"It is scarcely possible," remarked Henry, sadly, "that popular rumour
should exaggerate the facts."

"Indeed!"

"No. They are, unhappily, of themselves, in their bare truthfulness, so
full of all that can be grievous to those who are in any way connected
with them, that there needs no exaggeration to invest them with more
terror, or with more of that sadness which must ever belong to a
recollection of them in my mind."

In suchlike discourse as this, the time was passed, until Henry
Bannerworth and his friends once more reached the Hall, from which he,
with his family, had so recently removed, in consequence of the fearful
persecution to which they had been subjected.

They passed again into the garden which they all knew so well, and then
Henry paused and looked around him with a deep sigh.

In answer to an inquiring glance from Mr. Chillingworth, he said,--

"Is it not strange, now, that I should have only been away from here a
space of time which may be counted by hours, and yet all seems changed.
I could almost fancy that years had elapsed since I had looked at it."

"Oh," remarked the doctor, "time