with the breath which the listeners
breathe, the flute's mellow gush streams along. The sun slopes in peace
towards the west; not a cloud in those skies, clearer seen through yon
boughs stripped of leaves, and rendering more vivid the evergreen of the
arbute and laurel.

Lionel and Sophy are now seated on yon moss-grown trunk, on either side
the old grey-haired man, as if agreeing for a while even to forget each.
other, that they may make him feel how fondly he is remembered. Sophy is
resting both her hands on the old man's shoulder, looking into his face,
and murmuring in his ear with voice like the coo of a happy dove.
Ah, fear not, Sophy; he is happy too--he who never thinks of himself.
Look--the playful smile round his arch lips; look--now he is showing
off Sir Isaac to Vance; with austere solemnity the dog goes through his
tricks; and Vance, with hand stroking his chin, is moralising on all
that might have befallen had he grudged his three pounds to that famous
INVESTMENT.

Behind that group, shadowed by the Thorn-tree, stands the PREACHER,
thoughtful and grave, foreseeing the grief that must come to the old man
with the morrow, when he will learn that a guilty son nears his end, and
will hasten to comfort Jasper's last days with pardon. But the Preacher
looks not down to the death-couch alone; on and high over death looks
the Preacher! By what words Heavenly Mercy may lend to his lips shall he
steal away, yet in time, to the soul of the dying, and justify murmurs
of hope to the elm of a life so dark with the shades of its past? And
to him, to the Preacher, they who survive--the two mourners will come
in their freshness of sorrow! He, the old man? Nay, to him there will be
comfort. His spirit Heaven's kindness had tempered to trials; and, alas
for that son, what could father hope more than a death free from shame,
and a chance yet vouchsafed for repentance? But she, the grim, iron-grey
woman? The Preacher's interest, I know, will soon centre on her:--And
balm may yet drop on thy wounds, thou poor, grim, iron-grey, loving
woman.

Lo! that traitor, the Flute-player, over whom falls the deep grateful
shade from the eaves of the roof-tree reprieved; though unconscious as
yet of that happy change in the lot of the master which, ere long,
may complete (and haply for sons sprung in truth from the blood of the
Darrell) yon skeleton pile, and consummate, for ends nobler far, the
plan of a grand life imperfect;--though as