tion. Most of us have recognised the fact that
a dram of spirits will create,--that a so-called nip of brandy will
create hilarity, or, at least, alacrity, and that a glass of sherry
will often "pick up" and set in order the prostrate animal and mental
faculties of the drinker. But we are not sufficiently alive to
the fact that copious draughts of fresh air,--of air fresh and
unaccustomed,--will have precisely the same effect. We do know that
now and again it is very essential to "change the air;" but we
generally consider that to do that with any chance of advantage, it
is necessary to go far afield; and we think also that such change of
the air is only needful when sickness of the body has come upon us,
or when it threatens to come. We are seldom aware that we may imbibe
long potations of pleasure and healthy excitement without perhaps
going out of our own county; that such potations are within a day's
journey of most of us; and that they are to be had for half-a-crown
a head, all expenses told. Mrs. Trevelyan probably did not know that
the cloud was lifted off her mind, and the load of her sorrow made
light to her, by the special vigour of the air of the Moor; but
she did know that she was enjoying herself, and that the world was
pleasanter to her than it had been for months past.

When they had sat upon their hillocks, and eaten their
sandwiches,--regretting that the basket of provisions had not been
bigger,--and had drunk their sherry and water out of the little horn
mug which Mrs. Crocket had lent them, Nora started off across the
moorland alone. The horse had been left to be fed in Princetown, and
they had walked back to a bush under which they had rashly left their
basket of provender concealed. It happened, however, that on that day
there was no escaped felon about to watch what they had done, and
the food and the drink had been found secure. Nora had gone off, and
as her sister and Priscilla sat leaning against their hillocks with
their backs to the road, she could be seen standing now on one little
eminence and now on another, thinking, doubtless, as she stood on the
one how good it would be to be Lady Peterborough, and, as she stood
on the other, how much better to be Mrs. Hugh Stanbury. Only,--before
she could be Mrs. Hugh Stanbury it would be necessary that Mr. Hugh
Stanbury should share her opinion,--and necessary also that he should
be able to maintain a wife. "I should never do to be a very poor
man's