rs have passed since then, and the seven Campbells are no longer
boys Honorius has been taken into partnership with his father, and is
known by the whole country-side as 'the young doctor;' Johnnie is
serving the Queen in a line regiment in India; and Willie has lately
been ordained, and is working hard as a curate in a large manufacturing
town. So three of the seven have had their wish. But Seymour has been
taken by one of his uncles, a rich banker, into his counting-house;
Duncan is not gone to sea,--he has just passed a competitive
examination for the Indian Civil Service; as for Archie, he is still
only a schoolboy, and he and Honorius live at home, while the others are
scattered far and wide.

But nowhere on earth could you find all those seven Campbells now, and
there has never been any need to decide on a profession for Georgie: the
youngest, the darling, the flower of the flock, has been called to rest
the first. Wide tracts of sea and land lie between the mother and her
darling Johnnie, and a wider distance still severs her from her little
George, yet to her the seven are but as one band, united for ever by a
common faith and mutual love. And so much is this the feeling of them
all, that if you should chance to meet one of those Campbells, and to
ask of their number, I think, like the child in the ballad, he would
answer, 'We are Seven.'

[Illustration]

CECIL'S MEMORABLE WEEK.

CHAPTER I.

THE SENTENCE.

IT would be hard to find a pleasanter family group than that which had
gathered round the tea-table at Wilbourne Rectory one hot bright evening
in the end of July: a kindly-looking mother, with a dark, sweet,
brunette face, that _would_ not be careworn spite of forty years of
life, seven children, and a slender purse; a tall, slight, brown-bearded
father, a little bald, and with deep lines of thought on the broad
forehead and around the rather sunken blue eyes; a fair, round-faced
girl of fifteen, sitting next him; two smaller lasses, with long black
hair almost straight, clear brown complexions, and a bit of bright
scarlet bloom on each cheek, that was just like the mother's, only
fresher and less fixed; a little curly-haired lad of eight, that was
like nobody in particular; and last, but not least, a Sandhurst cadet, a
well-grown youth of seventeen, with dark hair, cut very short in
military style, and a little dark down on cheek and lip, which _he_
called whiskers and moustaches. He sa