r mother comes out from the cottage door behind, and lays her hand
upon the girl's shoulder. The spell is broken; and hiding her face in
her hands, Grace bursts into violent weeping.

"What are you doing, my poor child, here in the cold night air?"

"My two, mother, my two!" said she; "and all the poor souls at sea
to-night!"

"You mustn't think of it. Haven't I told you not to think of it? One
would lose one's wits if one did too often."

"If it is all true, mother, what else is there worth thinking of in
heaven or earth?"

And Grace goes in with a dull, heavy look of utter exhaustion, bodily
and mental, and quietly sets the things for supper, and goes about her
cottage work as one who bears a heavy chain, but has borne it too long
to let it hinder the daily drudgery of life.

Grace had reason to pray at least, for the soldiers who were going
to the war. For as she prayed, the Orinoco, Ripon, and Manilla, were
steaming down Southampton Water, with the Guards on board; and but
that morning little Lord Scoutbush, left behind at the depot, had bid
farewell to his best friend, opposite Buckingham Palace, while the
bearskins were on the bayonet-points, with--

"Well, old fellow, you have the fun, after all, and I the work;" and
had been answered with--

"Fun? there will be no fighting; and I shall only have lost my season
in town."

Was there, then, no man among them that day, who

"As the trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,
Heard in the wild March morning the angels call his soul"?

* * * * *

Verily they are gone down to Hades, even many stalwart souls of
heroes.

CHAPTER III.

ANYTHING BUT STILL LIFE.

Penalva Court, about half a mile from the quay, is "like a house in a
story;"--a house of seven gables, and those very shaky ones; a house
of useless long passages, useless turrets, vast lumber attics where
maids see ghosts, lofty garden and yard walls of grey stone, round
which the wind and rain are lashing through the dreary darkness; low
oak-ribbed ceilings; windows which once were mullioned with stone, but
now with wood painted white; walls which were once oak-wainscot,
but have been painted like the mullions, to the disgust of Elsley
Vavasour, poet, its occupant in March 1854, who forgot that, while the
oak was left dark, no man could have seen to read in the rooms a yard
from the window.

He has, however, little reason to complain of the