irthday, when he firmly believes himself to be in peril of his life.
The birthday has only come round once since he has been here, and then
he sat up along with the night-porter. 'She's looking for me,' is all
he says when anybody speaks to him about the one anxiety of his life;
'she's looking for me.' He may be right. She may be looking for him. Who
can tell?"

"Who can tell?" said I.

THE FOURTH DAY.

THE sky once more cloudy and threatening. No news of George. I corrected
Morgan's second story to-day; numbered it Seven, and added it to our
stock.

Undeterred by the weather, Miss Jessie set off this morning on the
longest ride she had yet undertaken. She had heard--through one of
my brother's laborers, I believe--of the actual existence, in this
nineteenth century, of no less a personage than a Welsh Bard, who was
to be found at a distant farmhouse far beyond the limits of Owen's
property. The prospect of discovering this remarkable relic of past
times hurried her off, under the guidance of her ragged groom, in a high
state of excitement, to see and hear the venerable man. She was away the
whole day, and for the first time since her visit she kept us waiting
more than half an hour for dinner. The moment we all sat down to table,
she informed us, to Morgan's great delight, that the bard was a rank
impostor.

"Why, what did you expect to see?" I asked.

"A Welsh patriarch, to be sure, with a long white beard, flowing robes,
and a harp to match," answered Miss Jessie.

"And what did you find?"

"A highly-respectable middle-aged rustic; a smiling, smoothly-shaven,
obliging man, dressed in a blue swallow-tailed coat, with brass buttons,
and exhibiting his bardic legs in a pair of extremely stout and
comfortable corduroy trousers."

"But he sang old Welsh songs, surely?"

"Sang! I'll tell you what he did. He sat down on a Windsor chair,
without a harp; he put his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat,
looked up at the ceiling, and suddenly burst into a series of the
shrillest falsetto screeches I ever heard in my life. My own private
opinion is that he was suffering from hydrophobia. I have lost all
belief, henceforth and forever, in bards--all belief in everything,
in short, except your very delightful stories and this remarkably good
dinner."

Ending with that smart double fire of compliments to her hosts, the
Queen of Hearts honored us all three with a smile of approval, and
transferred her attention