ion. My
glimpses of the sea and sky are few and far between. The heavens that I
usually find over my head are made of canvas; and the country scenes I
wander through are run on wheels."

"But don't you think," said Miss Honnor to him (and it seemed so
cheerful to be away from the London gloom and out here in the clearer
air; to find himself sitting so near this young lady, able to regard her
dress, listening to her voice, sometimes venturing to meet the
straightforward glance of her calm eyes--all this was a wondrous and
marvellous thing)--"don't you think you enjoy getting away from town all
the more keenly? I shall never forget you in Strathaivron; _you_ were
never bored like some of the other gentlemen."

"Each and every day was one to be marked by a white stone," he said,
with an earnestness hardly befitting railway-carriage conversation.

"The wet ones, too?" she asked, pleasantly.

"Wet or dry, what was the difference?" he made bold to say. "What did I
care about the rain if I could go down to the Aivron or away up to the
Geinig with you and old Robert?"

"You certainly were very brave about it," she said, in the most friendly
way; "you never once grumbled when the sandwiches got damp--not once."

And so the three of them kept gayly and carelessly talking and chatting
together, as the long train thundered away to the south; while ever and
anon they could turn their eyes to that changing phantasmagoria of the
outer world that went whirling by the windows. It was rather a
wild-looking day, sometimes brightening with a wan glare of sunlight,
but more often darkening until the country looked like a French
landscape, in its sombre tones of gray and black and green. Yet,
nevertheless, there was a sort of picturesqueness in the brooding sky,
the russet woods, the purple hedges, and the new-ploughed furrows; while
now and again a distant mansion, set on a height, shone a fair yellow
above its terraced lawn. Scattered rooks swept down the wind and settled
in a field. The moorhens had forsaken the ruffled water of the ponds and
sought shelter among the withered sedge. Puffs of white steam from the
engine flew across and were lost in the leafless trees. Embankments
suddenly showed themselves high in the air, and as suddenly dipped
again; then there were long stretches of coppice, with red bracken, and
a sprinkling of gold on the oaks. To Lionel the time went by all too
quickly; before he had said the half of what he wa