n they never
mean to reward, they tend to elevate men's thoughts, ennobling their
ambitions, and inspiring them with purer, holier hopes. What if she
should mean this, and no more than this? Would not her very hatred be
more bearable than such pity? For a while this cruel thought unmanned
him, and he sat there like one stunned and powerless.

For some time the road had led between the low furze-clad bills of the
country, but now they had gained the summit of a ridge, and there lay
beneath them that wild coast-line, broken with crag and promontory
towards the sea, and inland swelling and falling in every fanciful
undulation, yellow with the furze and the wild broom, but grander for
its wide expanse than many a scene of stronger features. How dear to his
heart it was! How inexpressibly dear the spot that was interwoven with
every incident of his life and every spring of his hope! There the green
lanes he used to saunter with Alice; there the breezy downs over which
they cantered; yonder the little creek where they had once sheltered
from a storm: he could see the rock on which he lit a fire in boyish
imitation of a shipwrecked crew! It was of Alice that every crag and
cliff, every bay and inlet spoke.

"And is all that happiness gone forever?" cried he, as he stood gazing
at the scene. "I wonder," thought he, "could Skeffy read her thoughts
and tell me how she feels towards me? I wonder will he ever talk to
her of me, and what will they say?" His cheek grew hot and red, and he
muttered to himself, "Who knows but it may be in pity?" and with the
bitterness of the thought the tears started to his eyes, and coursed
down his cheeks.

That same book,--how it rankled, like a barbed arrow, in his side!--that
same book said that men are always wrong in their readings of
woman,--that they cannot understand the finer, nicer, more subtle
springs of her action; and in their coarser appreciation they constantly
destroy the interest they would give worlds to create. It was as this
thought flashed across his memory the car-driver exclaimed aloud, "Ah,
Master Tony, did ever you see as good a pony as you? he 's carried
the minister these eighteen years, and look at him how he jogs along
to-day!"

He pointed to a little path in the valley where old Dr. Stewart ambled
along on his aged palfrey, the long mane and flowing tail of the beast
marking him out though nigh half a mile away.

"Why didn't I think of that before?" thought Tony.