ng mass of daisies, and buttercups,
and red clover, and blue speedwell.

A long way off, but still clearly visible in the valley below,
glistened the stone-tiled roof of the old square-towered church,
guarded by its sentinel yews.

A great horse-chestnut stood like a giant bouquet of waxen bloom
beside a granite monument which threw a long shadow over the green
turf mounds towards the west, and marked the grave of Sir Timothy
Crewys.

Peter saw that monument more plainly just now than all the rest of his
surroundings, although he was short-sighted, and although his eyes
were further dimmed by sudden tears.

His memories of his father were not particularly tender ones, and his
grief was only natural filial sentiment in its vaguest and lightest
form. But such as it was--the sight of the empty study, which was to
be his own room in future; the strange granite monument shining in
the sun; the rush of home associations which the familiar landscape
aroused--augmented it for the time being, and made the young man glad
of a moment's solitude.

There was the drooping ash--which had made such a cool, refreshing
tent in summer--where he had learnt his first lessons at his mother's
knee, and where he had kept his rabbit-hutch for a season, until his
father had found it out, and despatched it to the stable-yard.

His punishments and the troubles of his childhood had always been
associated with his father, and its pleasures and indulgences with his
mother; but neither had made any very strong impression on Peter's
mind, and it was of his father that he thought with most sympathy, and
even most affection. Partly, doubtless, because Sir Timothy was dead,
and because Peter's memories were not vivid ones, any more than his
imagination was vivid; but also because his mind was preoccupied with
a vague resentment against his mother.

He could not understand the change which was, nevertheless, so
evident. Her new-born brightness and ease of manner, and her strangely
increased loveliness, which had been yet more apparent on the previous
evening, when she was dressed for dinner, than on his first arrival.

It was absurd, Peter thought, in all the arrogance of disdainful
youth, that a woman of her age should have learnt to care for her
appearance thus; or to wear becoming gowns, and arrange her hair like
a fashion plate.

If it had been Sarah he could have understood.

At the thought of Sarah the colour suddenly flushed across his