and dip into modern poetry--great rubbish, I fear! Nobody like
our old friend Will of Avon, or even your namesake, worthy Phineas
Fletcher."

I reminded him of the "Shepherd's life and fate," which he always liked
so much, and used to say was his ideal of peaceful happiness.

"Well, and I think so still. 'Keep true to the dreams of thy youth,'
saith the old German; I have not been false to mine. I have had a
happy life, thank God; ay, and what few men can say, it has been the
very sort of happiness I myself would have chosen. I think most lives,
if, while faithfully doing our little best, day by day, we were content
to leave their thread in wiser hands than ours, would thus weave
themselves out; until, looked back upon as a whole, they would seem as
bright a web as mine."

He sat, talking thus, resting his chin on his hands--his eyes, calm and
sweet, looking out westward--where the sun was about an hour from the
horizon.

"Do you remember how we used to lie on the grass in your father's
garden, and how we never could catch the sunset except in fragments
between the abbey trees! I wonder if they keep the yew hedge clipped
as round as ever."

I told him Edwin had said to-day that some strange tenants were going
to make an inn of the old house, and turn the lawn into a bowling-green.

"What a shame! I wish I could prevent it. And yet, perhaps not," he
added, after a silence. "Ought we not rather to recognise and submit
to the universal law of change? How each in his place is fulfilling
his day, and passing away, just as that sun is passing. Only we know
not whither he passes; while whither we go we know, and the Way we
know--the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

Almost before he had done speaking--(God grant that in the Kingdom I
may hear that voice, not a tone altered--I would not wish it altered
even there)--a whole troop of our young people came out of Mrs. Tod's
cottage, and nodded to us from below.

There was Mrs. Edwin, standing talking to the good old soul, who
admired her baby-boy very much, but wouldn't allow there could be any
children like Mrs. Halifax's children.

There was Edwin, deep in converse with his brother Guy, while beside
them--prettier and younger-looking than ever--Grace Oldtower was making
a posy for little Louise.

Further down the slope, walking slowly, side by side, evidently seeing
nobody but one another, were another couple.

"I think, sometimes, John, that those